by Andy Warhol
Paloma’s party just missed. The people were too old or something. I’ve decided I’m just going to go to openings of stores and galleries, that’s my new philosophy.
And the big news of the day was that Rupert’s house in New Hope, Pennsylvania, burned down, so he didn’t come in. A coal got caught in the chimney. I never had a priest exorcise my room that had the spontaneous fire. I blessed it myself—I got holy water. But I still think there’s something funny about that room. I had the Picabia painting of the devil that fell down in there and also the ceiling fell down.
Tuesday, March 20, 1984
Went home and glued and then walked over to Jill Fuller’s house, she was having a dinner for Henry Mcllhenny who just sold a $3.9 million Cezanne. The auction house probably did a deal and settled for 2 percent or 1 percent or 5 percent or maybe even no percent just for the prestige of getting the painting. And it was an old evening, just old people, nobody young. Jill’s ex-husband Gino Piserchio, one of our sixties superstars, was in the kitchen cooking. He’s a caterer now. A chef. And Henry’s got three stomachs now.
Friday, March 23, 1984—New York—Palm Beach, Florida
It rained all day, but by 6:00 when Jane Holzer picked us up it had stopped for a little bit. So we went over to the street where Sweet Baby Jane’s ice cream parlor was, in the block Jane owns, I think—the one that has Van Cleef & Arpel.
I did interviews with the newspapers and People. Jane didn’t even give me a full dish of ice cream, just a little spoon. The place has the usual stuff you sell with ice cream. Oreos and things. Boring.
Monday, March 26, 1984—New York
New York Central sent the wrong paint over three times. And then Jay had a dislocated shoulder. He dislocated it playing basketball when somebody fell on him and his bone was sticking the wrong way and he’d spent the weekend at St. Vincent’s and he’d just gotten out. And he was supposed to take a vacation starting at the end of this week, so I told him to take it starting immediately, but he refused. He doesn’t want to waste vacation time being disabled, he wants to work disabled. So now we’ve got to be moving some things up to the new building and he won’t even be able to help.
Tuesday, March 27, 1984
Benjamin didn’t pick me up because he went directly to the office to help with moving. Jean Michel came by and Paige came in at the same time and they had a fight. And Paige has now been kicked out of the apartment she was staying in on West 81st Street, the board of the building wanted her out probably because they’d see dreadlocked blacks coming in there all the time and they were scared, they wouldn’t know they were artists. Paige is so charming, though, I’m surprised she couldn’t change their mind.
Somebody from the New York Post called, asking what was chic and what was un-chic. I guess they wanted someone else to write their article for them.
Wednesday, March 28, 1984
I’d forgotten that David Whitney was coming down with Jasper Johns to get a painting for Jasper’s benefit, he’s got a Jasper Johns Foundation for needy artists. I don’t know who picks who’s needy. Probably some idiot like Barbara Rose, right? Or Robert Hughes. Oh, I bet that’s who it is. I just bet. I’m going to ask David. So they came and they wanted the biggest one. The Ink Spot painting. The Rorschach Blot. Jasper liked it.
Thursday, March 29, 1984
It was raining and snowing out and this was the day we had to film all day doing the Cars video for their song “Hello Again” at the Be-Bop Cafe on 8th Street. Benjamin came in drag to pick me up for the shooting. He was going to be in it, too.
I had to be a bartender and wear a tux. The crowd of extras looked like the old Factory days—Benjamin in drag, and a bald-headed mime in a Pierrot outfit, and John Sex with his snake. And then there was Dianne Brill with her big tits and hourglass figure. The Cars were cute.
They finally got to my part at 8.00 and I had to sing a song but I couldn’t remember the words. And I had to mix a drink while I was doing it, and with my contacts on I couldn’t see the Coke button on the soda dispenser.
And that meant being face to face with the Cars for a while, and it was hard to talk to them, I didn’t know what to say. I finished at 9:15. One of the kids gave me a ride home.
Sunday, April 1, 1984
It was such a beautiful day. The whole town came out of the woodwork. Walked toward the park and a woman lunged at me and said, “I’m Mary Rosenberg, you gave me my best advice, you told me, ‘Hang in there,’ “ but I didn’t know who she was. I just closed my eyes and headed through the park with people pointing at me all the way—“That’s that famous artist.”
So then at the other end of the park I met Jon and we walked. And I had with me all the corn flakes that were stale to give to the birds, but I found a spot without birds, so I guess I actually fed the rats.
Bought New York ($1.50). Looked at the movies, decided to see The Ten Commandments (cab $4, tickets $10, popcorn $10). And let me go on record: Cecil B. DeMille is the worst director ever. We’d missed an hour but it was still three hours to go and a half-hour intermission. And all those actors were terrible. I mean, Edward G. Robinson, forget it. And forget Yvonne DeCarlo and Ann Baxter, too. Charlton Heston was okay, he was good-looking. The orgy scene was (laughs) people dropping grapes on each other—it sounds like an old Andy Warhol movie, right? And then they would lift their skirt two inches off the floor. That was it. That was the orgy. Edward G. Robinson—you couldn’t believe it. And Dustin Hoffman is going to wind up in his shoes, I just know it.
The movie finished. Benjamin had called in the afternoon and said that Victor was coming in from L.A. for a birthday party for him at Halston’s. And that made me nervous, after hearing about Marvin Gaye’s father shooting him. I could just picture Victor going nuts and jumping out a window or something dramatic. And by the way, last week when I was trying to clean up, I picked up a box and out fell the picture of Marvin and me that PH took in like 1976.
Went home, glued, then I went over to Halston’s. Wait a minute, somebody’s ringing my doorbell … it’s those stupid Polacks again. They’re still coming over and ringing my bell! So okay, at Halston’s, at midnight, Victor arrived. I gave him a framed Keith Haring T-shirt and he hated it and threw it away, but then he said he wanted it back for the frame. He’s staying at the Barbizon, I think.
And then Alana Stewart arrived and Bianca and Alana wrestled on the floor for fun and I would have gotten the best pictures but I’d forgotten my camera. Alana’s in town for the opening of Where the Boys Are.
Monday, April 2, 1984
That Girl Mario Thomas called me up and was like a bulldozer—“We want you to do Gloria Steinem’s portrait and we want it right away.” So I had her talk to Fred and I guess it’s arranged. It’s a benefit for battered wives or battered mothers. So I think it’s going to be auctioned off and we split the money.
Tuesday, April 3, 1984
Got the new French Vogue with my stuff in it and the Polaroids looked okay. Ming Vauze had a full page. These magazines are like books now, they’re so thick, so expensive. Then cabbed downtown with Ming himself to meet Lidija ($6). Worked out a few minutes, but I was an hour late for a portrait.
Did I tell the Diary Brigid gave Freddy the cat to Rupert, and so Freddy was caught in the fire when Rupert’s house burned down in Pennsylvania, but he hid in the stove so he was safe.
Thursday, April 5, 1984
Fred got me so mad in the morning being so grand when I asked him what was happening with the Michael Jackson portraits. He was giving me these very calm, low-key stock answers, repeating them to me, like “I’ve got a grip on it,” and “It’s under control,” and things like that, and I told him, “Oh don’t give me that.” So then when he started asking me questions, I decided to just give him his own medicine, and that’s what I started telling him, “It’s in my control….”
And Gael Love said that Doria and Ron have gotten an apartment in L.A. and that Ron’s going to be getting $6,000 for
articles he writes, so they wouldn’t be doing anything more for us.
Maura came by and made 14,000 calls to L.A., The New Show folded and she’s going out there and wants to get to Barry Diller’s party. And she was saying, “If you have any stocks sell them all, because with this national deficit, I mean …” And she just says what her father tells her. So I guess Senator Moynihan wants everybody to panic.
The press had called a while ago and asked what did I think about Campbell’s soup having new plastic cans, the crushable kind, and I said, “Oh yeah, sure, great idea, great, great!” So now I just got the cutest letter from a person at Campbell’s soup saying, “I’m so glad that you agree with us that we needed a new look.” I should have said, “And I’m going to get a new wig.”
Saturday, April 7, 1984
Benjamin and his roommate Rags heard that there was a birthday party for Julian Lennon at the Be-Bop Cafe so we decided to crash that. Got a limo that was $3 per person ($20). Got there and pretended we thought it was open for regular business. And somebody tried to introduce me to Julian Lennon but he just looked at me and didn’t have much reaction, and so we left, and then on the street we ran into a kid who asked us if we were going to Area and we said yes and took him with us. And at Area I held up the walls for a few hours.
Tuesday, April 10, 1984
Benjamin picked me up and we went over to Sotheby’s. And there was only one thing I wanted. Anything with any style will end up at Fred Leighton’s. There was a Verdura pin of a big black Negro’s face with cabochon ruby eyes and lots of stones.
Jean Michel called me twice this morning from L.A. and wouldn’t speak when I answered because he didn’t think it was me. Then on the third time he did and he told me that he’d been at the Roxy, Lou Adler’s place, “with Jack and Shirley and Debra and Warren and Richard Pryor and Timothy Hutton.” Just about thirty people. And then there were parties at Morton’s and Spago, and he got home at 5:00, so he felt like a movie star.
Dr. Karen came to the office and she decided to set up an office at the office, so that was fun.
I made an appointment to see a nutritionist. Dr. Linda Li on the West Side.
Gael Love called a few times. Robert Hayes has been out with a cold for three weeks, and somebody put a bug in my head, like “What’s wrong with Robert?” But Gael said, “No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
Went to pick up John Reinhold to take him to Yoko’s black-tie birthday dinner for Vasarely’s (cab $4). So we went to the Dakota and had to leave our shoes in the hallway. She had lots of pretty boys as waiters. I couldn’t tell which one was Sam Havadtoy. Her live-in love. He’s a decorator. And it was very chic. We ate in the kitchen, it was fresh vegetables and pasta and maybe something like veal. I couldn’t recognize anybody but everybody was somebody. John Cage was there and Merce Cunningham.
And little Sean Lennon fell in love with me, just madly. He said, “Why is your hair like that?” I said, “Punk.” He said, “What’s your name?” I said, “Adam.” Then I asked him to get me a double champagne and when he came back with it he said somebody had told him I was Andy Warhol, and then he went around to everyone telling them, “Do you know who that is? That’s Andy Warhol.” And I did my old trick, I tore a dollar bill in half for him. And he said, “You have to give me an autograph,” and so I signed, “To Sean, Andy.” And he said, “I’m not interested in your first name, I want your last one.” And I told him that I wasn’t so famous at all, that the other people were there really famous, like John Cage, and that he should get his autograph. So he did, and John signed the most beautiful signature. And then Sean had him sign a “J” and then he came over and ripped the “J” in half and gave me half. But John had done it on the back of the really beautiful signature so that was ruined—Sean could have had a beautiful John Cage autograph.
Oh, and when I was cleaning at home just the other week, out of a drawer fell pictures of John and Yoko that I’d taken in the sixties or early seventies, and two of the photographs were double exposures of their faces, and it killed me to give one of those up, but I did. The one where you could tell them apart I gave to her, and the one where the features were all together I kept. When could I have taken those photos? Let’s see… I was going around town with John and Yoko when I was looking to buy a building downtown, so it was before I got the Bowery place, which was around ‘69, and there were three buildings on Greene Street, each for $200,000, that were all being sold together and Yoko was going to buy one and John was going to buy one and I was going to buy one. But then Yoko got greedy and wanted all three. And then they wound up not buying any of them. But by then I’d been pushed out of the picture. And that building would be worth millions today. I think that was the year she had that show in upstate New York where she flew everybody up there on one of those creaky airlines, like One-Way Air or something. She spent $25,000 to fly everybody up there but then she didn’t have any other freebie for them—no food or anything. Just up there. And there was an “in” party and an “out” party, that kind of stuff. What year was that in? I can’t remember if it was before I was shot or after. It could have been ‘67 or ‘68 or ‘69 or ‘71. I just don’t know. What makes me think it was before I got shot was that it was just me who went up there and I think if it was after I was shot then Jed would have come, too.
Dinner was served and I sat next to Walter Cronkite and Sean, and I told Sean that if he wanted to be a host he should get us food. And I had him take pictures for me of all the shoes lined up in the hallway. And Sean had the flu and the girl next to Walter Cronkite had the flu and so I was being coughed on, so I just know I’ll get it.
I talked to Walter Cronkite and that was interesting. I told him I’d just read the Jody Powell thing in Rolling Stone. He said he thought Carter was the most intelligent president. And he said that years ago when he went to interview Nixon one of those times he was running for president, they sat him outside the door and he heard Nixon on the phone saying “piss” and “cocksucker” and “fuck,” and Walter Cronkite thought it was a setup to have him hear all this so he would think Nixon was really macho, but then years later when the Watergate tapes came out he was surprised to hear Nixon talking like that all the time.
And then I heard Sean talking to this guy and asking what his name was and he said, “Coppola,” so then I told him how much I loved The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. And we talked about how he had so many great kids in those two movies, that it was like American Graffiti—all the kids would become the next generation of big stars.
And I didn’t know Coppola was from New York. He said he went to Hofstra and I said that we’d done a lecture there once with Viva. And he said that his little girls miss me, I met them in Colorado skiing. He was with his wife who didn’t say anything. And then Sean saw that I had bluejeans on and he started saying, “You’re the only real person here, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.” He’s so cute.
And one of the waiters was somebody I’d discovered for Interview and he’d had a whole page as a bright young new star, he was in Jack Hofsiss’s play, and he went to L.A. for a year and now he’s back and being a waiter—it was really sad. I forget his name, although he told me again last night. From Georgia. Something like Bruce, maybe. I dropped John Reinhold (cab $6). Got home at 12:30. Decided to read the Daily News and got to bed at 2:00.
And Yoko looks really good.
Wednesday, April 11, 1984
I think Jean Michel called a couple of times before 8:00 but hung up. Then at 8:00 he called and we talked. He said he was coming to the office that afternoon but he never made it. I had a 10:30 appointment with Dr. Linda Li, who was recommended to me by Timothy Dunn, a model who came by, and by Joey the hairdresser (cab $4.50). She’s a pretty Chinese lady, and she told me to hold out my arm and push and then she’d knock it away like karate, and she said I was fine, but I don’t know what that meant. The Patty Cisneros lady, Bob’s friend who’s so grand, was waiting there and she looked fat. Then cabbed ov
er to 720 Park Avenue to Emily Landau’s lunch($5).
Thomas Ammann was there and Fred arrived drunk, talking like Mrs. Vreeland and being grand, but he did talk about interesting things. Furniture and everything. She had beautiful black guys serving. She’s the one who owned the apartment at Imperial House that Liza bought. I did her portrait but it never really looked good, and the reason I wanted to do it again was because she has all these great paintings like Rauschenbergs and Picassos and I didn’t want to have mine looking bad there.
Thursday, April 12, 1984
Jean Michel came by. He’d been out all night. Got him to work on one of our joint paintings. He wanted spaghetti so we got some from La Colonna ($71.45). He fell asleep and then he got up and he was up front by the phones with a big hard-on, like a baseball bat in his pants. I guess that’s being young, I forget about those things.
Gael’s been doing double work since Robert Hayes has been out. And the kids say that they think it’s mental with him more than anything, but that when they go over to see him he is actually coughing. And three weeks is a long time to have a cold, isn’t it?