June 3 - I Shot Andy Warhol

Here is today's movie with a scene that happens today - June 3. I hope you enjoy it and watch this film tonight. 

I SHOT ANDY WARHOL

Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol [1:39 to 2:07]. While his friends hold a premature wake, the police interrogate Solanas. She has been committed and a nurse recounts Solana’s case history. She was born in a troubled family, including sexual abuse. At boarding school had a lesbian encounter and considered herself one after that. Solanas got a degree in psychology and moved to New York where she wrote a misandrous and communistic manifesto. She lived with a transvestite, Candy Darling and prostitutes herself to men to earn money.  Through Candy Solanas is introduced to Andy Warhol and the group of artist around him, collectively called “The Factory”.    She meets Maurice Girodias, a publisher, who gets her to sign a contract to write a pornographic novel. Much of the rest of the film concerns her efforts to get Warhol to produce a play she has written. Solanas hangs around the party scene at the Factory. One of the men she sleeps with has a gun, which she takes. Solanas goes on a TV show to promote her ideology and gets humiliated. She blames Warhol at least in part for this. Finally, on June 3, 1968, she goes to the Factory and shoots Warhol. Leaving the building she hands the gun over to a policeman. [1:28:51 to 1:33:31] Through onscreen print we learn that Solanas was committed for three years while Warhol did survive the shooting. 

A very bizarre film. I think even the most ardent feminist will agree that Solanas had serious mental issues. Her passionate hatred of Warhol seemed to have no basis in actual reality.

Andy Warhol by Arthur C. Danto (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009) at page 102 gives the date of the shooting

Producer - Tom Kalin and Christine Vachon

Director - Mary Harron

Screenplay - Mary Harron and Daniel Minahan

Runtime – 1 hour 43 minutes

Released – May 1, 1996

Starring –

Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas

Jared Harris as Andy Warhol

Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling

Martha Plimpton as  Stevie

Lothaire Bluteau as Maurice Girodias

Anna Levine as  Iris

Peter Friedman as Alan Burke

Tahnee Welch as Viva

Jamie Harrold as Jackie Curtis

Donovan Leitch as Gerard Malanga

Michael Imperioli as Ondine

Reg Rogers as Paul Morrissey

Bill Sage as Tom Baker

Jill Hennessy as Laura

Coco McPherson as Brigid Berlin

Lorraine Farris as Susan

Craig Chester as Fred Hughes

Victor Browne as  Danny

Billy Erb as Rotten Rita

Anh Duong as  Comtesse de Courcy

Myriam Cyr as Ultra Violet

watch a I Shot Andy Warhol trailer