The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Victor Bockris called and said that the dinner with Mick Jagger at William Burroughs’s was on. Victor’s doing a book on Burroughs. Decided to stay at the office and not go home. The driver passed 222 Bowery, he was going too fast (cab $3).

  We went upstairs and I hadn’t been there since 1963 or 1962. It used to be the locker room of a gymnasium. There’s no windows. It’s all white and neat and it looks like sculpture all over, the way the pipes are. Bill sleeps in another room, on the floor. I don’t think he’s a good writer. I mean, he wrote that one good book, Naked Lunch, but now it’s like he lives in the past.

  A girl who was there—Marcia was maybe her name—said she’s been photographing Kenneth Anger at his place on 94th Street. I told her not to mention my name or he might beat her up, that he thinks I’m the Devil. She said the apartment is all red, and he has everybody’s picture up and he puts everybody down. Bill was asking Mick about the “drug culture” and the “revolution” and all that and then Mick and Jerry left. I stayed there for a little bit. Then Victor Bockris walked me down and we waited for half an hour before a cab came (cab $5). Home at 11:00.

  Sunday, March 2, 1980

  It was very cold out. I went to church. Then I had to be ready at 2:30 to go to the Regency to take photographs of Sylvester Stallone. Fred was waiting. Suite 1526. Sylvester was looking good. He’s back with his wife, Sasha, she was there, she’s cute and smart, she looks very young. I don’t know why he would leave her for Susan Anton.

  I made him take off his shirt and he was wearing some kind of medal. I used ten rolls of film, because he’s really really hard to photograph. From the front his neck is skinny, then from the side it looks three feet wide. From the front he has a huge chest, and from the side no chest at all. His hands are pretty, I used his hands, but sometimes they look tiny and sometimes they look huge. He’s like Rubber Man.

  He had the bodyguard who was the bodyguard Tom Sullivan used in Cocaine Cowboys, so we talked about Tom. Sylvester talked about the Academy Awards, he said he hated All That Jazz. He said the Academy Awards ignored him and Woody Allen this year.

  He said he’s about to go to Hungary to do a movie, an action movie, and then after that he wants to do the Jim Morrison story. I told him we were really good friends with Jim, and that Tom Baker was his good friend and that he should talk to Tom who’s in town, by the way, and he’s calling me.

  I told Stallone he should do the Linda Lovelace book. He said that he was worried, I guess, that he was a one-movie person, and he named a few people that were one-movie people. He named somebody from The Boys in the Band.

  We were there for about an hour. His wife had gone into the other room and she didn’t come out to say goodbye, I don’t know why.

  Monday, March 3, 1980

  Cab to Union Square ($2, supplies $8.10, $20.50). I was meeting Carol, a cousin of mine from Butler, Pennsylvania. She drove me up the wall because she talks so slow. Then she left and I worked all afternoon. I made Rupert come up. I needed someone to go with me to the Ted Kennedy poster signing. So we went up there, to Madison Avenue (cab $4) to the Brewster Gallery. But Ted Kennedy didn’t show up, he was in Massachusetts. It would only have been good if he was there signing, too. I’d been signing all afternoon. All the Kennedys were there. Kerry and one of her sisters, and Kerry’s prettier. They’re all funny-looking, those kids. Pat Lawford was there, and they posed us together. She was nervous so she was drinking and she gave a speech. It was hard work. Kerry went around selling the posters. They were $750 and $2,000.

  Tuesday, March 4, 1980

  Catherine Oxenberg came for her cover Interview lunch at 1:00, and she’s only eighteen so she was nervous and really blabbed everything about her mother sleeping around and how Sharon Hammond’s sister Maureen was married to her father, but how Maureen is now living with Catherine’s half-brother who’s maybe nineteen and she must be about forty, I guess. Her mother’s Princess Elisabeth of Yugoslavia. It was a Balducci’s lunch, it was a good interview. Tom Baker came to say goodbye, he’s leaving town. I told him about Sylvester Stallone wanting to play Jim Morrison and he said Stallone was too old to do it.

  Wednesday, March 5, 1980

  Picked John Reinhold up and we walked over to lunch at Pearl’s. We talked about diamond dust. The dust is actually just like powder, but the chips are what would look pretty and they would make a painting cost $20,000 or $30,000. It was nice to see Pearl again.

  Thursday, March 6, 1980

  Lunch was for Richard Gere and his girlfriend Silvinha, who’s in this issue of Interview. Fred invited a couple of Swedish people, and Chrissy Berlin and Byron the pool player who’s somebody Zoli fell in love with, but he doesn’t want to be a model—he plays pool and thinks modeling is too frothy. He knows everything, like that at British Airways on Tuesdays and Thursdays on Park Avenue, you just sign in and there’s free shrimp buffets.

  Amina, the black model who’s writing a play, kept saying, “Where is that Richard Gere? He’s supposed to be here!” But then when he came he didn’t pay attention to her, so she didn’t like him anymore and she came over to where I was signing Kennedy posters. Robyn brought the lunch from 65 Irving, but then Brigid ate every bit that was left, so he didn’t have any.

  Then it was a beautiful day so I said why didn’t Brigid and Chrissy and I go over to University Place to see if Bea was in her antiques shop. We passed out Interviews to the junkies who’ve moved from Park and 17th to the corner of 14th. Then we were all in Bea’s and Brigid said she’d be right back, that she was going across the street to get a pack of cigarettes. And a second after she left, I heard a big noise and a thud, and I just knew. I ran out, and there was Brigid lying in the street with a truck one inch away from her fat belly. Then she got up and she was laughing and she said, “No no, I’m all right.” It was a truck from an art restorer. The kid was sweet, he wanted to take her to the hospital, but she was so relieved she was all right that she said no. She was just scared out of her wits. Chrissy was so nervous she had to go home.

  I was so happy Brigid was alive that I told her she could have anything in the world so she had ice cream cones ($.75 x 4 and $.90 cookies from Greenberg’s and then cake $12, Big Macs $8.52). We walked around for an hour to make sure she was okay. All we could think about was here today/gone tomorrow. I hope it taught her a lesson to be more careful.

  Then we went back to the office. I told her she could have the rest of the day off but it turned out they needed her. She went to an A.A. meeting and then came back. Fred was really drunk at the office, he’d been to the Cecil Beaton memorial thing. He was talking like Diana Vreeland and making business calls, so I just hope he called the right people.

  Monday, March 10, 1980

  Got up and watched the Today Show and the weather guy I liked so much they just got rid of. The Ryan guy, he was so great. Then the Donahue Show had four fairies on. Again.

  Sent Brigid to the bookstore to buy eight copies of Popism ($94.56).

  I stayed downtown and cabbed with Vincent and Shelly to Charles Maclean’s party, it was in Jennifer Bartlett’s studio on Lafayette Street. It was a big party for English kids. Clare Hesketh, the wife of Lord Hesketh, said, “Oh, isn’t Fred wonderful, he stayed up until 11:00 this morning with me.” I said, “Oh really? That’s very interesting. He came to work at 11:15.”

  Tom Wolfe was there and Evangeline Bruce and the McGraths. Oh, and also Steve Aronson, and he introduced me to a lot of writers.

  Tuesday, March 11, 1980

  Kenny Lane called me and invited me to lunch at his place to meet a Kuwaiti sheik (cab $3). The place was really pretty. Kenny introduced me to the sheik and his wife—they call the women sheiks, too—and she said, “My husband is short, so if he comes over to talk to you he may stand on a chair.” She buys modern art, and he’s out to buy $200 million worth to stock his museum with—like Kuwaiti rugs.

  Marion Javits was there and she did the funniest thing, she said to Bob, “Ask me qu
estions the way a newspaper reporter would, and let me see how I would answer.” And so Bob asked her why did she smoke marijuana in public and why does she go to Studio 54. And Marion said, “Because it turns me on.” And Bob said, “But you can’t say that, Marion.” And so then she said, “Well, perhaps you’re not aware that my husband introduced legislation to legalize marijuana.”

  Then we had to go back to the office (cab $3).

  Rupert came, I closed up at 7:00.

  Dropped Bob off. Glued myself together and walked over to Diana Vreeland’s. Elizinha Goncalves was there and Fernando Sanchez and Sharon Hammond, and I taped Mrs. Vreeland. She told us the funniest story about going to see Deep Throat. She has this friend who lives on top of her building who lost her eyesight but one day she called Diana up and said, “Diana, I can see. I have my eyes back, and I want to go to a movie.” Diana said, “So I took her four blocks to see Deep Throat. And we got to the theater and the ticket lady said, ‘Do you two ladies realize what you’re getting yourselves into?’ And my friend was so excited she was going to the movies she kept saying, I’m so thrilled, I’m so excited.’ So we get into the theater and like in all pornographic movie theaters, there’s nobody there. Just about twenty men, most of them asleep, they’ve slept through the thing seven times and don’t know where they are, and the movie comes on and my friend’s eyes were popping out of her head. She hadn’t seen anything for ten years and now she was getting Deep Throat. And for days after that she called me up saying, ‘Diana, do you think that girl’s hurt her insides? How did she do it? Her throat must be all bruised.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t really think about things like that—to me the whole movie was a romance.’ “ And Bob said, “Diana, how could you do that to an old lady?” And she said, “What else do you take someone to see who hasn’t seen anything in ten years? It gave her a lift!”

  Then she took us to Quo Vadis.

  Wednesday, March 12, 1980

  I bought a hundred Popisms from Harcourt Brace.

  Gregory Battcock came down, I gave him some books. Gerard called up for two copies of the book. We still need an idea for the next cover of Interview. I gave Brigid the tape of Diana Vreeland and Sharon Hammond, but I forgot that for about ten minutes Sharon and I were talking about Brigid on it. I had told Brigid about Diana Vreeland going to Deep Throat. So that sounded funny, that’s what I thought I was giving Brigid and that’s what she thought she was getting. But as Brigid had the earphones in and was listening to the tape she got ten different colors on her face. Sharon was saying things like, “Well yes, if Brigid leaves her job, yes, I’d love to take it over.” And then Brigid thought I was being mean, giving her the tape, but I just forgot we’d said anything about her on it. She got so upset she called her sister Chrissy to come over and hold her hand. On the tape I was saying that she got hit by a car—whammo—and that afterwards I’d bought her five ice cream cones, and Brigid got hysterical when she heard that—she said it was only three cones, that the other two were mine. But I think I convinced her she had four. I named the flavors. Chrissy’s weight is going up. She’s 145 and Brigid is 166½. Brigid was in a state of shock for the rest of the day, she stayed until 6:30.

  I called Brigid when I got home. She and Chrissy had just gone to dinner and had dessert. I had to think of a way to get Brigid to lose weight and so I told her I’d give her $5 for every pound she lost, but that she had to give me $10 for every pound she gained. She’s bringing her electric scale in to the office tomorrow.

  Saturday, March 15, 1980

  Farrah Fawcett called and said she was on her way down to Union Square, and she arrived in half an hour with Ryan O’Neal. They looked at her portrait and I didn’t think Farrah liked it, but then she studied them for about half an hour and finally said she loved it. I had Bob come down because I thought he could talk them into doing a cover, and she said she would. And she looked pretty, her hair was all washed, and she looked very very nice. She’s sweet. So then they left and I stayed alone with Rupert. Dropped him off (cab $4). Then glued myself together because I was invited to Prince Abudi’s dinner for Marion Javits.

  His place was just around the corner, at 10 East 68th Street, and as I’m walking in, in comes Ultra Violet, wearing the same dress from the sixties, with the same gold coins, and I said, “Gee, Ultra, you shouldn’t do that—it might have been a camp when a gold coin was worth $35 but now they’re, you know, worth $775 apiece, so you should be careful.” But she said she’s had to sell most of the good ones, she was just wearing her pesos, very heavy pesos. And it was really fun seeing her again, I kept asking her, “Well, who invited you, how did you get here?” I think she’s a good friend of Marion’s. I have a funny feeling that maybe she services people or something, I have a funny feeling that maybe that’s it—like when there’s a guy, an older guy maybe, she’ll go out with him or something. But she was fun. I spent the whole evening with her because it was a really awful party. Abudi was very quiet. Although he’s a Saudi Arabian prince he didn’t have any young princesses there, so it was just all the people I know, like Sam Green and Kenny Lane, and Marion’s boyfriend who makes holograms. And she likes him. I don’t see what she sees in him, but he’s the mistress. What would you call a guy who a woman sees? A “lover?” A gigo —no, a lover, I guess.

  And who else was there? Oh, the Bulgaris came, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them, because Ultra Violet went to the caviar dish and she said it smelled like a tin and then Kenny Lane came over and said it was the best caviar you could buy, so then she decided to eat half a pound of it. And she said she was going to write her memoir. Oh! And she finally told me how she got sick. It was all over Ruscha, the artist, Ed Ruscha. She had fallen madly in love with him and he had a wife and he just couldn’t handle it, and she just went too crazy because she was too in love with him, she let her whole nervous system fall apart. And that’s when she was eating a piece of gold every day—somebody told her that Indian people eat gold or something like that, and it ate a hole in her stomach.

  And now Ruscha doesn’t have the wife but it’s not the same. And she’s looking for another young somebody. It ended up we were there until 3:00.

  Sunday, March 16, 1980—New York—Washington, D.C.

  Went to Washington to the Goldman Fine Arts Gallery and Judaic Museum at the Jewish Center in Washington. To the gallery. And they had Popism and Exposures. It was hard. Every single person would think that they had to ask me an intelligent question: “Did you use all these different pieces of paper to show all the different facets of Gertrude Stein’s personality?” I just said yes.

  Monday, March 17, 1980—Washington, D.C.—New York

  Well, it was St. Paddy’s day. Bob ordered breakfast up. I didn’t have a good sleep. We watched the Match Game and it was a fast round where the answer was “Andy Warhol” and one person was guessing “Peter Max” and then “Soup Can” and then “Pop Artist.”

  Our breakfast was cancelled at the White House. I guess the Carter administration doesn’t want to see us anymore because I did the Ted Kennedy poster. But we were glad we didn’t have to get up so early to be over there at 7:30. We slept till 11:30.

  A girl came and took us to Kramerbooks, it’s a bookshop/coffee house, and so everybody was drinking. Bob loves the place because it’s where he picked kids up when he was at Georgetown. People were shoving everything at me to sign and I signed it all—underwear, a knife. Oh, (laughs) and I signed a baby.

  We had to get the shuttle at 9:00 (tickets $153). Bought some newspapers and a Newsweek ($2). And Newsweek had a great review of Popism.

  And I forgot to say that at the bookstore in Washington Sargent Shriver went out of his way to come by and say hello. He used to be so handsome. And oh God, it’s just so hard to talk to old ladies like I have to sometimes—they’re so old and their teeth are crooked and all you see is their mouths, and it’s just so hard to stand it, and I guess that’s about all the philosophy for now. Went to bed, had a glass
of wine, fell asleep.

  Tuesday, March 18, 1980

  I’d invited Ultra Violet for lunch, and in the daylight she really looks like an old woman, but at night, with makeup, she really looks gorgeous.

  Then Divine was at the office. He said he had $2,000 to spend on a birthday present for Joan Quinn, and I told him we didn’t have anything that cheap. But then afterwards it occurred to me that I’m sure he was just getting something for Joan’s husband to give to her, that he had given Divine the money, so he was playing games. Because I mean, Divine wouldn’t have had $2,000.

  And I don’t know why Divine is so fat, he had one sandwich and then I offered another and he said, “Oh no, thank you.” And Divine really is the only one who you can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. Because of the long earrings, maybe. Like Edie Sedgwick earrings. And actually his face is the Edie type of face, but fat.

  Rupert came by and helped out.

  Bob was nervous, he was giving a lecture at Bard College that night, and he left at 4:00. His first lecture on gossip.

  Karen Lerner called and said that the 20/20 segment was put off for two more weeks. But I’m thinking, I don’t really want it to go on, anyway, because when you get publicity on TV it just makes too many people aware of you. I think I’m just doing okay with the little bit of publicity that I get, anyway. Because also, they use you up. And it’s scary. Yeah, I think you can just get along on a steady little bit of publicity.

  Carmen D’Alessio called and said she visited Steve Rubell in jail and that he sleeps, eats, and plays handball. He’s talking to Neil Bogart about buying Studio 54. He says when he gets out he wants to do something completely different.