The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  I loved Staying Alive. Then the party at Xenon was at 11:45, so we went over there and on the way we ran into Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon. I’d never met him and I had copies of Interviews with me, the new one, and he said, “Oh I already bought that one.” And she doesn’t have any wrinkles and she’s like 110 years old or something.

  Then coming out of Xenon were eighteen bodyguards and in the middle was John Travolta in his tuxedo and I caught his eye and he came over and said hello. So that was two in one night.

  Thursday, July 14, 1983

  We took our time getting to the theater to see Farrah Fawcett in Extremities. We thought we had plenty of time, but when we got there they were holding the curtain for us. Farrah was good, but not as good as Susan Sarandon had been. And it’s funny, I hadn’t liked Susan Sarandon in anything except The Other Side of Midnight until then, but then I saw that she was really good.

  Some girls tried to pick Benjamin and me up. Then after the play we saw Farrah and Ryan backstage and they were gushy. It’s so hard to talk to actors, all they want is to talk about themselves. And Ryan looks a little older, he’s getting the same lines I have. And he was talking about Paul Morrissey and telling me I should work with him again. And he really wants the part of Dick Tracy that Warren Beatty’s supposed to get. Ryan thought Jon was an important figure at Paramount so he was hustling him. Jon said they’d jogged together once on the beach at Malibu.

  Friday, July 15, 1983

  Maura came at 1:00 to pick me up so that we could go out to interview Richard Gere at the Astoria Studios where they’re shooting Cotton Club.

  We were nervous about our interview because we had a feeling it would be difficult. Maura had read Stanislavsky. And so we went through Dick Sylbert’s sets for Cotton Club which was exciting. And Richard was back in this slum area watching old movies on TV. So what he does is he watches every old movie that has anything to do with what he’s doing and copies details, the way other actors do things. He actually told us his first movie was Days of Heaven which I know it wasn’t, but that’s how uncooperative he was, he wouldn’t give anything. The only interesting thing was telling us that he spent all of the time he wasn’t working in the filthy trenches in Mexico in the hospital hooked up to an IV for dysentery—they’d disconnect him so he could go to work and then he’d be back. It was the movie with Michael Caine. The Honorary Consul And he liked Maura, but she’s a friend of Silvinha’s so that complicated it.

  Sunday, July 17, 1983

  It was hot, another scorcher. I overslept.

  Worked with Chris and Peter on working out their modern marriage. The kid Chris is in love with is being shipped in from California on Thursday.

  Tuesday, July 19, 1983

  Called John Reinhold and invited him for coffee (phone $.50, coffee $5). I told him I needed some toys because I was doing a project with them, photographing them, and he said he’d find some for me.

  Victor and Farrah are now best friends because he told her how bad she was in Extremities and what she did wrong. And now she says her performance is so much better and she owes it all to Victor. But actually, she was really good, and Victor was so high when we saw it that he didn’t know what was going on.

  Thursday, July 21, 1983

  I could never really describe the Diana Ross concert in Central Park. The sky darkened and the rain came and it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Just the event of the century—her hair blowing and soaking wet, and if only they’d had a covering on the place where she was, she could have kept on singing and the kids would have stayed and she would have had her concert for TV. But they stopped it in the middle of the storm and they’re going to do it again tomorrow. She was crying, and Barry Diller was trying to get her to stop but she said that she’d waited for twenty years to do this. The lightning made it dangerous, I guess, but it was like a dream, like a hallucination, watching this spectacle. It was like the greatest scene from a movie ever. When they do her life story in the movies you can just see this huge event and then later she’s crying and saying, “Why did this happen to me?” and then drinking and slitting her wrists. But oh, the thunder and lightning looked so great. So beautiful.

  We were in the VIP area, but because I’d had Benjamin bring an umbrella, we weren’t sitting under the canopy. And Rob Lowe was with us and he’s so beautiful. It’s like his eyebrows are penciled on and his lips painted on—everything so perfect. And he’s just like the kids we know, just regular, and he’s looking for girls, that’s all he can think about. I asked him to draw me a pussy and he drew a pussy and then I said, “What’s that?” and I then drew him a cat. And he and his girl friend are sort of breaking up because whenever she called him on location in Canada the operator would say, “He’s in Nastassia Kinski’s room,” so then when he would tell her the next day that his phone had been out of order she would tell him to stop lying. And he says he’s not in love with Nastassia, though, that it’s just sex. But he was wearing a toy snake around his waist which was a joke on her Avedon poster, so he was thinking about her so maybe he is in love. He’s nineteen. And he was just after any old lady. Just anybody. Like Susan Sarandon. She was there with Richard Gere and Silvinha.

  And oh you should have seen it. Jerry Zipkin in the soaking rain. And I felt so sorry for Jon because he’s worked so hard on this, because Paramount owns Showtime which got the film rights.

  And then finally people were leaving the park and so we followed the blacks and wound up coming out at 72nd Street near the Dakota. And we had to climb a wall and fall into three feet of mud. It was like being in a war zone. And then after we got out of the park I took Rob Lowe and Benjamin to Café Central—I said all the stars go there, Matt Dillon and Sean Penn—and then we got there and had drinks and absolutely nobody was there (drinks $83.50).

  Then I got home and called Rob Lowe at the Sherry and he said that he was waiting for a phone call from Nastassia, so that I should just go ahead without him over to the Gulf + Western building for the party. So I went and when I got there, he was getting out of the cab. So that was kind of mean. I was hurt. I guess he didn’t want to be seen with us again because we were being campy and outrageous. And I said to him, you know, “I just was going to give you a ride, that’s all—it was no big deal.”

  And Cornelia had been at the park, too. And a newspaper photographer took her and pushed her next to one of the people who were stabbed, just to get that kind of a picture of a socialite and a stabbed person. Cornelia didn’t know what was going on.

  And at the party at the Gulf + Western Rob was after Cornelia and Maura. He and Cornelia kept going off alone.

  I gave Diana Ross a Diamond painting. She was looking at tapes of the concert. Barry Diller came over and I told him the concert was so great and he said, “You always like disasters. You liked Grease II.”

  Harvey Mann who works for Liz Smith was there and he was asking me if I’d heard anything more about Calvin and AIDS. He said that they’d killed the rumor in their column. And then Calvin came in and he kissed me so hard and his beard was stubbly and I was so afraid that it was piercing into my pimple and being like a needle and giving me AIDS. So if I’m gone in three years …

  And by the way, Rob Lowe also said that up in Canada where they were all shooting Hotel New Hampshire, Jodie Foster was reading the Philosophy book.

  Friday, July 22, 1983

  It was the day of the second Diana Ross concert because they decided to redo it (cab $8). Cornelia came. Rob Lowe didn’t come. The concert was anticlimactic because it was just regular.

  But then afterwards the kids started rioting, and if it weren’t for the police the whole place would have gone crazy. It was 99 percent black. The guy who owns Café Central took us out of the park so we came out at the right spot uptown to go to Café Central. He had a cane.

  And when we got there, Rob Lowe came and Andrew McCarthy who’s also in the movie Class. He gets Jacqueline Bisset. And he’s just regular, a nice kid.r />
  At Café Central they’re trying to treat people rotten to be like Elaine’s. The waitress came to our table and said, “You’ve got to leave this table, it’s reserved for Lorna Luft.” And Cornelia just burst out laughing that anyone would ask her to move to make room for Lorna Luft. And it was so stupid because if they’d just been nice and said, “Would you mind since there’s not so many of you now, moving to a smaller table?” I mean, they knew we were leaving anyway because we’d said we were going to the 11:00 show of Class, which Rob and Andrew had passes for. Maybe this kind of treatment makes some people want to go there, but it sure doesn’t make me want to go there (dinner $100 with tip).

  So then we went over to 66th and Second and Cornelia was chattering away, she repeats everything over and over, just like her mother, she has to keep talking. And Andrew was rolling his eyes.

  The movie was so great and cute. Afterward I tried to sell Andrew and Rob’s autographs in the lobby for a nickel, but nobody bought any.

  Monday, July 25, 1983

  Mrs. Winters’s son, Al, who’s the caretaker now, called and said that Paul Morrissey is out in Montauk in the little house and I don’t think Halston and Victor know he’s there. And he’s following Al around and telling him what to do and driving him crazy. And Al says, “Call Vincent,” and Paul says, “Listen, I own half this property.” And now Paul wants me to sign a new piece of paper—he’s decided that the one he drew up with his lawyers and made me sign is too advantageous to me or something. I told him, “No, forget it, I’m not signing anything more.” All these years Paul made such stupid deals for us with other people and now here he’s trying to be so “shrewd” in business with me, putting all this energy into that, as if I didn’t give him better deals than anybody else all the time anyway, for all those years.

  Tuesday, July 26, 1983

  Christopher brought his new young live-in love that he imported from California to live with them over to the office and I gave them a cold shoulder. I’ve been trying to give Chris less work but he came and got all these assignments out of me. And the only reason I got all involved with Chris and Peter and giving them advice is because I thought if they could make their relationship work, then there was hope for me. But now Peter is with this bank teller George and Chris is with his new kid Brian, and I don’t believe in modern marriages.

  Benjamin and I stopped in Bloomingdale’s and the fairies were making the bread in the window—you could see it, kneading it and everything.

  Wednesday, July 27, 1983

  Cabbed to meet Lidija ($6). Did my exercises. Then Tim Leary came down because he was meeting Gordon Liddy and we were going to do a promotional interview, just a short thing because they’re going around doing debates now together.

  And Gordon Liddy talked about “takeovers.” Like if you’re walking down the street and someone thinks they’re stronger than you they take you over. And he pulled a knife out of his waist, and I couldn’t believe it. I was surprised that he’s so small. He’s about my size, and in a way he’s like Mr. Milquetoast. And he pulled out these pictures of his three sons from a leather envelope. And here’s the big bruisers in swimsuits and you can see the outlines of their dicks. These were like 8” X 10” color photographs—artistic, with ripples in the water! I mean, this is a very strange way to take pictures of your kids to carry around! And he was thrilled because one of the kids was going to be a Marine. They’re all at Fordham. And he said his girls didn’t want him to carry their pictures, but I’m sure he didn’t care about the girls, he was just thrilled with the big bruisers. And one of the boys had a two-inch cat, a little kitten, that he was holding. And he also had pictures of his house, on the Potomac. And Tim was there with his hippie talk, and Gordon Liddy would spout facts about how many A-bombs have been exploded. And he’s sort of lost, Liddy, it’s odd. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He liked me a lot, he wants us to see more of each other. Tim left and he stayed on for a while.

  Thursday, July 28, 1983

  Got up early and had to move fast because I had an early appointment at the office with Pia Zadora, so I was excited.

  She arrived and was so cute. Her husband, Riklis, came and showed pictures. She’s so sweet, and I think she’s going to be a big star. Her skin is beautiful. They’ve got a new house in California and she liked some paintings.

  Later the office was so busy, it was the day before Fred’s birthday and he didn’t want anyone to know, but (laughs) Suzie Frankfurt sent a huge balloon and carnations.

  Monday, August 1, 1983

  Peter Sellars and Lew Allen came to lunch and they’ve rented an apartment for the dummy. The robot of me who’ll star in An Evening with Andy Warhol. And the play is scheduled to go on a year from November. And all these magazines like Life and everything are supposed to do big things on it. And somewhere along the line Bob Colacello has a part of it—I guess we’ll be linked together for life because of it.

  Then Vincent picked me up (cab $6) in black tie, and we went over to the New York State Theater for the North American Watch banquet. Mr. Grinberg pushed me into General Haig and he was sweet, we talked about his interview in Interview. I wasn’t at ex-President Ford’s table, but I sat right behind him.

  I ate because I was down to 121 and I got scared because when I get below 120 I lose my appetite, and you’re more susceptible to things when you’re that thin.

  Haig made a speech about war and missiles and he’s for all that, and after just hearing Gordon Liddy last week, well I guess you do need that stuff, but I don’t know what I believe in, because fighting’s wrong, but then if you don’t fight …

  And Ford made a speech about how he’s happy being retired and how he’s going to be working for Reagan’s reelection, and how the economy is better and so people could buy more watches —he just about said that.

  Friday, August 5, 1983

  Bianca’s trying so hard to marry Calvin because she doesn’t have any money. She said that when she told him he was too heavy, two weeks later he’d lost all the weight. So Halston was just hating Bianca so much, and he told me to bring Jerry Hall to see him and he would just give her everything, just anything she wanted. He was saying about Bianca, “I’ll fix her wagon,” and that was scary. So awful. And Steve Rubell called from Fire Island and I was talking to him and then Calvin got on the phone and asked me to get Bianca and I said, “Bianca, it’s Steve.” And Halston looked up and said, “It’s Calvin, Bianca.”

  Monday, August 8, 1983

  Poor Monique Van Vooren was guilty of fraud, cashing her mother’s checks for a total of $18,000. And it was just so peculiar because I saw her and she denied it to me. I mean, she should have just said she was guilty, she should have just said, “Oh my god, it’s true, I’m a thief,” something like that. And Jackie Curtis called me over the weekend to wish me happy birthday.

  Cabbed to meet Lidija ($5). Chris came over and he’s raving about the “expanded family” life they’re having—their “modern marriage” where they’re both seeing different people and acting like they live in a commune. I think it’s all disgusting and I told him I don’t want to hear about it. I’m now telling Vincent to give Christopher less darkroom work, I want to punish him.

  Glued myself together and then went to Claudia Cohen’s new apartment on Central Park South where she was having a party to look at the five seconds of fireworks that were going to be in the park because of Beethoven’s overture. She was having a big fire on her balcony, I’m surprised she didn’t get into trouble for it. She was barbecuing hamburgers. And I had some because I was starved.

  Tuesday, August 9, 1983

  It was interesting that when John Russell wrote about Schnabel on Sunday, the portrait of me was the only one he didn’t mention. And I know Schnabel thought that mine would be the one that got him a lot of press.

  Paige stayed overnight with Jean Michel in his dirty smelly loft downtown. How I know it smells is because Chris was there and said (la
ughs) it was like a nigger’s loft, that there were crumpled-up hundred-dollar bills in the corner and bad b.o. all over and you step on paintings. The day Jean Michel came over to exercise with me he made a point of saying that Paige had made it to work on time, so that’s how he was letting me know. He’d thought that Paige was Jay’s girlfriend, which she was at one point, but then he asked her out and she went. And they had a date and this was the date—they rented a U-Haul and went out to Brooklyn to a black neighborhood and went to a White Castle and had eight hamburgers and then two people came in with big sticks and they thought they were going to kill them. You know, it was a “kooky date.”

  This was the day before he went to St. Moritz to see Bruno. Mary Boone and Bruno are both handling him. And Thomas Ammann without either one of them knowing had a few works of Jean Michel’s to sell. I don’t know where he got them. He said from some “secret source”—oh wait! I bet it was Paige! Oh Thomas is a creep, meeting all these people through us and then being secretive. I bet they were from Paige because she had that show a few months ago of Jean Michel’s stuff!

  Thursday, August 11, 1983

  Tried to get the office to start packing. Worked all afternoon on Pia Zadora, called her and she was away for two weeks on a film.