The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Monday, August 13, 1984

  Jane Fonda called and I took the call and that was dumb because she always wants something. It’s funny the way she just calls people and asks them to do things for her. She wants me to go up to Boston with the paintings I did of her, which she never even bought—she borrowed one but it’s back, and the prints were made to sell for her husband’s campaign—but he can’t be running again, can he? That was just last year, wasn’t it?

  Tuesday, August 14, 1984

  Brigid’s pug walked across the painting I’d just done. He had orange and purple feet. Madame Defarge kept knitting away. Worked till 7:00. I didn’t go to dinner with Edmund Gaultney and the people who want to do a portfolio. Hedy and Kent Klineman. She’s a friend of Jane Holzer’s. But I just get this feeling about it: People finance a portfolio and then start to get nervous and dump all the prints (cab $7).

  Home at 10:30. Watched Ann Jillian play Mae West and she was good. They always give them a big love affair, they make that the big thing.

  Wednesday, August 15, 1984

  I’m still looking for ideas. This fall it’ll be a whole new look, new people. Because five years into the decade is when it really becomes a decade. The eighties. They’ll be looking over all the people and picking the ones from the last five years that’ll survive as the eighties people. It’s when the people from the first five years will either become part of the future or part of the past.

  Worked till 4:30. Cab to the crystal doctor and this time it was a real experience. This session was like an exorcism. He had me lie down on his table and close my eyes, and then he asked me, “Do you know where you are?” and I kept saying, “Well what do you mean?” and he kept saying, “Do you know where you are?” And I kept saying, “What do you mean?” and finally I said I was lying on his table and he said, “Oh, I thought you might not know because your eyes were closed.” And he would touch me here and there and when I wouldn’t have any reaction he said that I wasn’t in touch with my pain. But it didn’t hurt is the thing. But he said it was because I wasn’t sensitive to the pain yet and that I would have to become sensitive to it. And he took my crystal and asked it, “How long? One minute? Two minutes? One hour? One day?” And at four days the crystal told him yes, so that’s how long it’s going to take for this crystal to be programmed. I said that I could go and get another one that’ll be ready sooner. He said no. So I’m going to wait four days and then I have to have it with me always and not more than ten feet away when I’m asleep. I really do believe that all this hokum-pokum helps, though. It’s positive thinking. And it’s why people wear gold and jewels. It does have something. And if you wear pearls around a stone it does do something for you. He said I had some negative powers in me and I asked him how long I would have to come to him and he didn’t tell me. It’s so abstract. But you do feel better when you get out.

  And the funniest thing was I picked up some chiropractor magazine and Jack Nicholson, our Interview cover boy, was on the cover of that, too. Standing with this chiropractor to the stars.

  I had a fight with Fred. His attitude is so—it’s like he’s a magazine-editor-on-the-phone. And I don’t know if he’s on the ball or not. I know he’s doing his best, but …

  Thursday, August 16, 1984

  DeLorean got freed, he’s thanking the Lord.

  Monday, August 20, 1984

  Jean Michel called at 7:30 A.M. from Spain but I was in the shower and I missed it. He was in Ibiza and now he’s in Majorca, he’s the new darling of the Bruno set. And I’m just expecting him one day to come in and say, “I hate all these paintings, rip them up,” about the ones we’ve done together, or something. Oh and Keith told me that the name Jean Michel used to use, SAMO, stood for “Same Old Shit,” and he said that Jean Michel was the biggest influence on the new artists.

  Cabbed to Jams to meet Philip and David and Keith and Juan ($6). The food was so good, fish cooked with the right spices, coriander or sage—it makes such a difference when you cook right with spices.

  I tried to get a design out of Philip for a one-room house. They cried poor. I cried poor. Keith cried poor. It was everybody crying poor. So crazy. David had three martinis but was normal, somehow. We were there from 7:30 to 10:00. I asked Philip how it was to be in an airplane crash and he said exciting. This was about seven years ago. He was the only one not hurt. They landed in cherry trees (dinner $400).

  Philip’s having dinner at the Newhouses’ and Sandy and Peter Brant will be there, too, and Si Newhouse has the Natalie picture there and we’re just hoping he buys it. And with that group there it could go either way. Because Peter and Sandy might just try to sell him one of mine that they have instead. Or else they could want him to pay a lot for the Natalie so that it would make the value of theirs go up. I have another Natalie somewhere, but I can’t find that Warren. It’s missing from the Factory. I mean it must be around somewhere rolled up. And if Newhouse doesn’t buy it I think I should write a letter to Robert Wagner. I think they’re bringing his series Hart to Hart back because people have been writing in.

  Wednesday, August 22, 1984

  Gael Love called and said she signed the deal with the Swatch people where if you buy two subscriptions to Interview you get one Swatch and if you buy two Swatches you get one subscription. She thinks it’ll bring in 30,000 new subscriptions.

  And this morning I woke up to The Toy with Richard Pryor and it’s funny. I asked PH to write him a letter from me saying that I wanted her to do the first part of an interview with him when she’s in L.A. next week, and that I’d then do the second half myself when he comes to New York, and I signed the letter and sent a Philosophy book so we’ll wait to hear.

  Tuesday, September 11, 1984

  PH finally got back from L.A. The Richard Pryor people told her Richard was “in seclusion” in Hawaii and that they were going to “wait to give him his mail when he gets back in October.” She was out there trying to get a screenplay she wrote sold—Coppola’s Zoetrope studio had it for two years and didn’t get it financed and then they went bankrupt. While she was out there she wrote up the treatment I asked her to about a sixties “Girl of the Year” because I want to show it to Jon and maybe he can get Paramount interested.

  And it’s a good thing she’s back because she was about to get fired from her one-minute-a-day job. While she was gone Truman died. His old boyfriend Jack Dunphy got $600,000 and was carrying the ashes in a golden book with “TC” engraved on the side. And Brigid figured out that Kate “Harrington” isn’t Truman’s niece—she’s actually Kate O’Shea! The daughter of Truman’s old boyfriend Jack O’Shea. The one who lived on Long Island and had a wife and lots of kids. And I’m doing paintings now of Truman for the cover of New York magazine.

  So Jean Michel just called me and I haven’t heard from him in two days. Now he’s staying all the time at the Ritz Carlton instead of down on Great Jones, and his room is like $250 a night. Fred went off to Lord Jermyn’s wedding. Jay’s on jury duty and Kate broke up with him and I don’t know, he seems sort of relieved.

  I read the article in the Times, very low-key, that said that Barry Diller was leaving Paramount to go to Fox! And that he was getting $30 million. So Jon will probably now work for Frank Mancuso there at Paramount or something. It’ll actually be better for him. Barry did make the place great, though.

  I worked on Judy Garland for Ron Feldman. The “What Becomes a Legend Most” advertisement.

  Wednesday, September 12, 1984

  Richard Weisman called and said dinner was on with Kathleen Turner from Body Heat and Romancing the Stone. Went to Richard’s and Kathleen Turner in real life is so chic and worldly. She says she’s about to star opposite Jack Nicholson in something that I didn’t get the name of because I felt I should know it. And she just got married to this guy, Jay, and they’re a funny couple. He’s about my height but with heels on she was taller than him. He started out in Lance Loud’s band the Mumps, and then he worked for his fathe
r and then he went into business with this friend of his and bought all these real estate properties in the slump of ‘74 when they were cheap and he became a millionaire.

  And Richard had a girl there who was like Judy Holliday, but dumb for real. Really dumb. I haven’t met a girl like this for a long, long time. I don’t know where she would come from. She was an airline stewardess. She said to me, “Gee you look peculiar,” and they said, “He’s an artist,” and she said, “I have a sister who’s an artist, yeah, and she looks peculiar like you, too.” And then she asked me if I did something to my hair. And then Richard took her upstairs to talk to her.

  Thursday, September 13, 1984

  Went to Dr. Bernsohn’s and I asked him if we could put him in Interview and he said, “I’m not doing the kind of things I would want people to know about.” But you do feel energy when you leave there. And the same with Dr. Li—you feel energy. So something is happening. That guy Christopher made me go to, I didn’t feel different at all. But these ones do something. Like when Eizo made his hand sweat just by concentrating. Dr. Bernsohn is strange, he said he was living with his parents until just recently. Now he’s buying a co-op. He said he’ll give me stones that’ve been programmed for him but he’ll reprogram them for me. And he said he wants to come down and look at my paintings to see the vibrations he gets from them, but I’m afraid he’ll see a $50,000 one and say, “I want that.” And then what will I do? If I say no he’ll want to cure me of negativity. It’s like a—what’s that word?—a “scam.” But then you do feel energy, so it’s working. And the healing people do have such hot hands. There must be something to it.

  Cabbed to 52nd and Lex to meet Jonas Mekas and Timmy Forbes at Nippon (cab $6). They’re trying to raise money for the Filmmaker’s Co-op. I asked Jonas if he’d seen any movies lately and he said no, that he was just trying to raise money. And really (laughs) he never saw movies. He never did.

  Worked on the Truman Capote cover for New York.

  Friday, September 14, 1984

  The MTV awards were so exciting, it was like the Brooklyn Fox shows in the sixties with so many stars. Diana Ross was my date, but she was in another row, the first row, because she was picking up Michael Jackson’s awards. Lou Reed sat in my row but never even looked over. I don’t understand Lou, why he doesn’t talk to me now. Rod Stewart and Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd and Peter Wolf were there.

  After it was over it was raining so hard. Like a repeat of the Diana Ross concert in Central Park. We went over to Tavern on the Green and everyone had to stand in the rain for twenty minutes with everyone’s umbrellas dripping down your neck, and then inside it was wall-to-wall celebrities but they’d been so humiliated by standing in the pouring rain that all everybody did was complain to each other.

  Saturday, September 15, 1984

  Had dinner with Jean Michel who brought a woman who’s doing a cover article on him for The New York Times Magazine. He’s getting the cover! And he told her all this stuff about being a male prostitute before but she can’t use it. I guess he told her because he wanted to be fascinating. The right woman can get anything out of him.

  Sunday, September 16, 1984

  By the way, John Reinhold told me that he keeps a really personal diary. He hides it in a closet and he took it out and read last year’s entries. It’s dangerous, but he only uses initials, like, “I went with B.” If I did it that way, though, I’d forget who “B” was.

  Jean Michel called and he told me about the problems he’s having with Shenge, who takes care of his place on Great Jones Street. Shenge has his own place downstairs but then he goes up and uses Jean Michel’s bath and bed, and now after staying at the Ritz Carlton, Jean Michel is used to having his bed tucked in. He found Shenge on the streets, he wasn’t living anywhere. He’s like a Rastafarian. He’s married, he has a wife and little boy in the Bronx, I think. Shenge’s bed used to be right by the front door so it was like he was just yanked in off the street, it was so peculiar.

  Got a cab and picked up PH to go to the Odeon to have dinner with our Interview photographer Matthew Rolston and the Holland boy—he’s Joanna Carson’s son—who PH just met in L.A. ($10). He was very good-looking and I offered to make him a “First Impression” with Matthew doing the photograph. Matthew said that when he shot Joan Rivers for Interview she told him she used to be a photo stylist and worked for Cecil Beaton. And Matthew wears brooches. He’s the one who started Michael Jackson wearing them. When he photographed Michael for Interview he gave him his own brooch and Michael then started wearing them all the time. But Matthew must like women, because when he photographs them he makes them look gorgeous (dinner $150).

  Monday, September 17, 1984

  Vincent picked up the small Truman Capote portraits that I’d done for New York. When they saw them they said they’d thought I was going to do something new, but I’d done them my usual way because that’s what I thought they wanted. They’re going to pay a user’s fee. But I don’t know about these low prices I get when I do stuff for magazines, because I think of the time Carl Fischer took my picture for the New York cover for the Philosophy book—I mean, he had a whole set built, and then he had eight assistants or something, so look how much they probably spent on that. So I got all worked up thinking about how cheaply I work, and it made me call Vogue and ask them where the money they owe me was.

  Keith told me that he rented a store for $1,500 across from the Puck Building. So I guess he is a little like Peter Max. But then Peter Max never did get in the good art collections that Keith’s in. And he said he won’t sell his stuff to any other store, it’ll just be in his own store.

  And Nick Rhodes buys art, but he doesn’t listen to anybody, and I told him that it’s stupid not to, that it’s just like buying stocks. But he said, “I just buy what I like.” And I remember Kaye Ballard saying the same thing when she bought pictures twenty or thirty years ago and then couldn’t even get back what she paid for them.

  And Bruno had called earlier. These combined paintings of Jean Michel and me and Clemente that he said were “just a curiosity that nobody would want to buy” that he paid $20,000 for like fifteen pictures for, he’s now selling for $40,000 or $60,000 apiece! Yes! And I have a funny feeling that he’s actually giving Clemente more because I can’t see him doing this for this little. And I should get more because I bring up the prices … oh but well, Jean Michel got me into painting differently, so that’s a good thing.

  Tuesday, September 18, 1984

  I got home and watched Tyrone Power in Jesse James. And that’s really looking at something. Maybe he couldn’t act, but gee.

  Thursday, September 20, 1984

  Well this was the day of big plans to see the chief crystal doctor who was in town, Dr. Reese.

  Cabbed ($3) there to 74th between Park and Madison. They make you pay beforehand. And they give you your fifteen minutes and then get you out fast. And so I went into the room and it was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. An old lady like in her sixties, pudgy and like a meat market guy, and the doctor was a big guy like from Hick City. And the room was so little. And they run their hand over you in funny places and say code letters, you know, and they’ll say they’ve run into a “hole” or something like “There’s a hole here escaping,” and they’ll say, “C85, 14, 15 D-23, circumvent 18, 75 dash 4….” And then he said something and Dr. Bernsohn said, “Oh he doesn’t have any feeling”—about me. And the doctor said to me, “I’ll tell you about it next week,” after the other doctor said, “I didn’t know I had such an extreme case.” But afterwards I wasn’t spaced-out or anything. When we’d walked in, there was a guy in a daze. Afterwards Benjamin and I we went to Fraser Morris and got lunch and ate it on the ledge at the Whitney Museum, we didn’t even know it was the Pop Art show inside.

  And a woman came by and saw me eating chicken and said, “That’s a no-no,” and she was right. I’m not supposed to eat meat. But I’m trying to be more normal. I si
gned a lot of autographs. Then we went up to Vito Giallo’s store and ran into Paloma Picasso, who’s just in town for a day, to promote her perfume. She’s so skinny again, it’s incredible, and no lines.

  Good newspaper headlines about Muhammad Ali having some disease. I got them for the new Front Page paintings I want to do. And John Reinhold called me yesterday morning and said that the Polish Institute next door to me was being sold and that he’d gone to look at it—$2.7 million.

  Then I went to Judy Green’s party at 555 Park.

  Arlene Francis was there and her little husband Martin Gabel who’s still alive who she has to push around like a toy.

  C.Z. invited me to the memorial for Truman.

  Saturday, September 22, 1984

  Called Jon at Paramount and asked him to meet me at MOMA. Got in free to the primitive art show where they have the old primitive stuff and the new stuff beside it to show what had been taken from what. Then went to see the Irving Penn show, and it was all the photographs that I remember so well that were what made me come to New York in the first place. It was fun to see them again, they weren’t anything so different, but… And I kept thinking that I should have bought a camera when I first came to New York, because photography was wide open, and if you could just do what was “as good as” you could be big. I mean, you took a picture of a famous person and how could you go wrong? I would be doing TV commercials today. Things would’ve been different. It’s just something to think about. And Irving Penn’s photos, it’s funny to see that the models were all older, like thirty-five. He used his wife a lot—Lisa Fonssgrives. And I remember so well that one photo where the things spill out of the girl’s purse and it’s tranquilizer pills and things. The shows were wonderful.