by George Wayne
RB:
Well, that is never going to happen. That is so over.
GW:
And like Calvin Klein, you also have a twink fetish, or so the rumor goes.
RB:
A what?
GW:
A twink fetish—you prefer the company of much younger men!
RB:
[Laughs uproariously] Hah! That is not at all true. At all.
GW:
Is there any significant other in your life?
RB:
I have a boyfriend, and he is no twink.
GW:
One thing you love doing on a flawless sun-swept Saturday afternoon in Sagaponack would be what?
RB:
Working in my studio more often than not, and I like to visit Wainscott a lot for some reason. I also like going to the beach, but I will not tell you which one. [Admiring my penmanship] Gosh, I love the way you write. No one can understand it.
GW:
But that is the entire point, Ross. This is the GW version of hieroglyphs! Only GW can translate his entire penmanship. It is done on purpose. That said, do you feel that you are in your most creative fecund of late?
RB:
I am always inspired when I go out to Long Island for the summer, and I am actually looking forward very much to what the rest of the season holds as far as my creative fecund as you call it [laughs uproariously]. I have been putting together a lot of ideas that I will explore in the open air of Sagaponack.
GW:
I think you need to loosen up and sex up the next big projects, Ross Bleckner. Your work is way too dense for my personal tastes. I don’t really get it, to be quite honest. Maybe that is why as your own longtime gallery guru Mary Boone says, “Ross is an artist’s artist.” I think you need to take a field trip to Venice for some adventurous inspiration.
RB:
I’d love to, and I will take you up on that suggestion, but after the summer—it is way too hot and touristy now. As for not “getting my work,” there is not much to get. Yes, it is very layered and very evocative of the elusive light source. But that’s just my way of making you think.
GW:
You resurrected Op art in the 1980s, according to one astute art critic. What would be your ethos or raison d’être for your twenty-first-century work?
RB:
I would say that it will encompass a certain fragility and at the same time, a certain agility, and that is all I will say for now.
GW:
Another fascinating factoid: Back in the eighties, Ross Bleckner lived in an apartment right above the legendary Mudd Club. The Mudd Club is the reason I decided I just had to move to New York City. I will never forget how star-struck and overcome with joy I was when I first walked into that hovel. For there across the room were Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. I was just giddy with glee.
RB:
Yes, I did live above the Mudd Club, and yes, I am not surprised you saw Keith Haring there, because he used to work there at the time. I was never friends with Andy Warhol. I always thought he was a bit of a creep. And to be quite honest, even though I lived above the Mudd Club, I hardly ever went there.
GW:
And why is it that most of your works are titled “Untitled”? That all sounds so forced and pretentious. Why is it that hard just to throw a title on a completed painting.
RB:
Because I like the idea of the person viewing my work to come up with their own ideas, their own thoughts on what that work means and as such what they would want to call it. I guess that all just defines the essence of my ambiguity.
SANDRA BERNHARD
JULY 1988
I did this interview with the comedienne Sandra Bernhard in the summer of 1988. It was one of my first big celebrity “gets.” At the time Sandra Bernhard was a hot commodity and best friends with Madonna. Her brilliant one-woman show, Without You I Am Nothing, was a hit Off-Broadway that year, and the tart-tongued comic gave this interview that helped launch my career as the modern master of the celebrity question and answer.
During that summer of 1988 Sandra and Madonna had tongues wagging all over town with their Sapphic hijinks. The girlfriends had been introduced by the ex-husband [Sean Penn] of the then empress of pop culture [Madonna] in the home of her then new boyfriend [Warren Beatty].
For some reason Sandra Bernhard and Madonna bonded and were virtually inseparable for years to follow. . . .
GW:
When I saw you in Santa Monica a month ago you told me you were on your way to Las Vegas for your debut at Bally’s. How did that go?
SB:
To be honest with you I don’t remember. I was working harder than Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland put together. I was busting my ass up there just to keep it going.
GW:
When are you inspired to write your material?
SB:
I write in a kind of unusual way because I have a collaborator, John Boskovich. So, usually he will think up a new song or an old song, and we will sit down with the band and sort of start working. That’s how we come up with the show. And of course there are a lot of times onstage when I am very spontaneous.
GW:
You and Lypsinka were like the biggest hits at that Thierry Mugler fashion gala at the Century Plaza the other day. That APLA [AIDS Project Los Angeles] fashion extravaganza was everything!
SB:
Yes, I know. It was a real exciting night!
GW:
I was standing backstage that night and Sharon Stone must have passed me a million times and I didn’t recognize her once.
SB:
You didn’t? Well, she’s not really that distinctive, if you know what I mean. She is not really unusual looking.
GW:
Every story I have ever read about you always has one word to describe Sandra Bernhard—“ambiguous.”
SB:
I hate being pigeonholed, but what else are they going to call me? In terms of my sexuality, I’ve always been pretty much open. At the moment I’m involved with a woman, and I will probably continue to be involved with women. I’ve had a new girlfriend for the last two months, but I think she would rather have her name private.
GW:
Speaking of ambiguous. How is your friend David Letterman doing?
SB:
Hah! You are funny! That’s brilliant! I think I may be doing his show again when I get back to New York. The last time I checked on him was right after the New Year and he was in good spirits. He has his niche. You can’t touch David Letterman. I think right now, of all the people with talk shows, he is the most solid. He is most true to himself. He doesn’t try to please the audience.
GW:
I love your loyalty. Are you booked to do the Jay Leno show anytime soon?
SB:
No. I’m not really featuring Jay. I adore Letterman and Arsenio is really comfortable with himself and has a lot of fun with his gig. I don’t need to go hopping from talk show to talk show.
GW:
So what is it about Jay Leno that so gets on your nerves?
SB:
I’ve known Jay for years. He’s just okay. I think he interrupts his guests too much.
GW:
And what do you think about Dennis Miller?
SB:
I think he is just another smug asshole. Just another know-it-all white man.
GW:
And didn’t you pose nude for Playboy?
SB:
Yes. I posed nude for Playboy and I have the September cover.
GW:
You were totally and completely nude?
SB:
Yeah! I mean, you are not looking up straight into my pussy. It’s not a gynecological exam, but you do see my red pubic hair, which everyone is always delighted to see.
GW:
Are you really that comfortable with your body?
SB:
Yes, I really am. I feel great about my body. I work out at Gold’s Gym
in West Hollywood with an incredible trainer by the name of Luis de Freitas. He’s Brazilian and was Mr. World in 1986. He’s great. I work out with him four days a week. I love it, but it’s not like I’m going around preaching it. I’m not obsessed with it, but it has helped my body a lot.
GW:
You’ve become the hip AIDS charity hostess of late. You are quite involved with a lot of AIDS charities.
SB:
I guess I am but I am not just doing this for publicity.
GW:
And you were on that stage in the rain during the APLA event looking flawless in Isaac Mizrahi.
SB:
When you think about the people who have AIDS and are suffering from it, what is it for me to go out in the misty night for an hour. Big fucking deal. And fashion is one of my first loves. I think if I had been ten years younger, I would have had a modeling career.
GW:
Well, look at Kristen McMenamy. She is the new runway star and she is almost the spitting image of you with that sneer.
SB:
I know! When I saw a video of a show last year that she was in I said, “God, that girl looks just like me!” It is so exciting.
GW:
So it’s been a long-held dream to be a model?
SB:
Yes. I wanted to do that more than anything. But now I get to be in a few shows and that is very exciting. I love fashion. The last time I was on Arsenio I wore this beautiful, sheer Vivienne Westwood with big valley hair. It was really cool. I love Vivienne Westwood.
GW:
What is the one thing you could never get used to about Hollywood?
SB:
I guess the extreme phoniness.
GW:
The typical Hollywood cliché.
SB:
Yes! But it’s true! I’m not talking about everybody in Hollywood, but it’s really true. I’m not good at schmoozing the show business world. I can do it with the fashion world where the people are more enlightened. But people in the showbiz world don’t have a lot to say.
GW:
And now to the Madonna question. I hear the friendship between the two of you has cooled of late and that you really don’t speak to each other anymore. Word is that you are so over Madonna because of the way she flirted outrageously with the girl you brought with you to her New Year’s Eve party last year.
SB:
No. I’m not mad at Madonna. But I guess things have cooled a bit between us. A lot of interesting things have taken place over the year that have been out of the realm of my comprehension. So I really don’t know what’s going on.
GW:
Well, clarify the situation, Sandra. Are you over Madonna or what?
SB:
It is too complicated and it is too personal.
GW:
One can assume though that you are not on the telephone every day indulging in babe talk.
SB:
No. We are not.
GW:
How did you and Roseanne Barr become such good friends?
SB:
I met her a year and a half ago at Sue Mengers’s house. We started talking and we really hit it off. We share the same point of view about Hollywood. She is a real down-to-earth person and the next thing I know she called me to do her show.
GW:
And now you are a regular on Roseanne.
SB:
I play a character called Nancy who is supposed to be marrying Tom Arnold’s character. I start taping for the new season at the end of August.
GW:
Tell GW the one phrase that best sums the philosophy of Sandra Bernhard?
SB:
Cast your fate to the winds.
BOB COLACELLO
JUNE 1990
I will always revere the star journalist Bob Colacello for being one of my earliest supporters—one of the very first New York City legends to champion my cause and provide moral support to follow my dreams. I remember being in boarding school and reading Bob Colacello’s genius work as a major editor at Interview magazine. So for me to meet him and then be mentored by this magazine legend was nothing I could have ever imagined.
Bob was a huge fan of my Xerox magazine, R.O.M.E. And he would always take me to dinner in those early days when I was living on Mamoun’s falafel sandwiches and pizza. He would often treat me to dinner at Da Silvano’s because he knew how much I loved the Italian fare there and could never afford it. I did this interview with him for R.O.M.E. because he had just released his new book, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up. And I was thrilled because he was one of the first influencers ever to tell me that my little Xerox-copy-machine-printed magazine, R.O.M.E., was “absolute genius”—his very own words.
We met in Caffe Dante on MacDougal Street. I was so excited to get a signed copy of his book. Because if there was one who could claim to be the official biographer to the court of Warhol—it would have to be Bob Colacello!
He was hired by Andy Warhol in 1970 and went on to mold Interview magazine into prominence while becoming, along with Fred Hughes, one of the artist’s two closest confidantes. When he left Interview in 1983, he had gathered enough material to write ten books. He began work on Holy Terror a week after Andy Warhol’s sudden death in 1987 and he didn’t finish it for another three years.
“Andy wanted to be the official portrait painter of the ruling classes,” he told me as we sat for espresso at the iconic MacDougal Street café. Here I was, completely awestruck sitting before the king of pop journalism for one of my very earliest interviews. . . .
GW:
So you are really up there now “Count Valpolicella.” Life must be even more ultra-fabulous for you than it has ever been.
BC:
It was never that fabulous, was it?
GW:
Oh, you know it was! Are you relieved the book is finally complete and finally published?
BC:
Yes, I am. Three years playing the recluse is not an easy role for me. And it’s just fun to walk by a bookstore and see it in the windows.
GW:
I love that nickname, “Count Valpolicella,” which was given to you by Salvador Dalí. Which chapter did you enjoy writing the most?
BC:
Well, the Imelda [Marcos] chapter was fun to write because it was almost a Restoration comedy of errors. There were some days that I wrote twenty pages, and some days that I wrote half a page. It was a hard book to write because I realized in order to write about Andy and the whole period that he was so much a center of I had to write about myself a lot. I couldn’t say that Elsa Peretti took too much cocaine one night at Studio 54 without saying that I was also doing it with her. I thought if I was going to be honest as I could about everybody else, I had to be honest about myself. And then having made that decision, I thought, God, do I really want to do this. Am I going to make a fool of myself?
GW:
Some critics have concluded that Holy Terror is the Mommie Dearest of Warhol sagas. Time magazine has even called it a “get-even book.”
BC:
My motto as a journalist has always been: no hatchet jobs and at the same time no puff pieces. Time magazine is the Mommie Dearest of newsweeklies. I read The Economist.
GW:
I have to tell you that Victor Hugo is thoroughly pissed with you. He hated his portrayal in the book and he personally told me the book “was nothing but trash.”
BC:
That’s not what he said to me at the book party. He said, “Darling, I love it, including everything you said about me.”
GW:
Well, he told me it was trash one late night when I ran into him at the Limelight. So, Victor is obviously still a total mess.
BC:
Victor gave me an interview for the book. I asked Halston to give me an interview, and Victor Hugo was there when I went to interview Halston. And it was after Andy died but before the diaries came out, so it wasn’t a spiteful interview.
GW:
Was this the “Organza” interview in the book?
BC:
The “Organza” thing was Halston’s way of gossiping about whatever it was that Andy was doing in the bathroom between the orgy photo sessions which were arranged by Victor for the sex paintings which Andy was working on at the time. And Victor collaborated with him on that project. And Victor deserves credit for getting Andy to put down on canvas what a large part of the seventies were about. It was about extreme sexual experimentation. It was about the sexual revolution coming through.
GW:
Victor told me that you were nothing more than a Warhol lackey and that you kissed so much ass that your tongue was virtually all the way up Andy’s asshole. That is what Victor Hugo said to me about you at the Limelight!
BC:
Well, Victor has a very colorful way of speaking, which is kind of half Venezuelan and half West Village. I like Victor. Sometimes, Victor drove me crazy. It was hard when we were trying to run a business there. We had to have limits and constraints and Victor is not the sort of person you can limit. But nobody ever did better windows than the ones Victor did for Halston—nobody! Victor Hugo was the Dalí of window design.