The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Tuesday,May 21, 1985

  My day started off with destruction. I picked up this rug and the moths had eaten it right through. They’re all in the back. I’m going to spread more moth stuff. So far they only got an Indian rug, but they could eventually get to my Stephen Sprouse things.

  Benjamin came and we decided to walk down Madison to the office. We didn’t have any Interviews. Rupert arrived at 6:30 and worked a little. His boyfriend picked him up in Rupert’s Rolls Royce, he was out there waiting like a nagging wife, I guess Rupert wants that, though. Poor Rupert is henpecked. And I’m just waiting for them to have the big fight. The guy is taking him for a ride. So there he was waiting in this grand left-side-driving Rolls. And they gave me a ride home because it was raining and hard to get a cab.

  And during the day I bought lots of newspapers for the front pages—they had the sextuplets on ($2). And People magazine has the article on the artists and it has “Andy Warhol, fifty-eight.” And then “Keith Haring, twenty-two.” So if anybody asks, just tell them I’m eighty. Always, “He’s eighty.”

  Wednesday,May 22, 1985

  I found more moths.

  Andy Friendly still won’t give the money for our TV show, so I guess we’ll just do it on our own with Paige trying to get advertisers.

  Went down to Keith’s party at the Palladium and it was packed, that huge place—packed!

  Then decided to go to Private Eyes, the video club. It was their Gay Night and jammed, wall to wall. These kids, if you saw them on the street you would never think they were gay. They look like L.A. kids. Stayed there a few minutes. Then got home at 2:00 (cab $6).

  Thursday, May 23, 1985

  Somebody told me that Jackie Curtis had a long obituary in The New York Times. I still keep wanting to think it was a put-on like his weddings. They said he was thirty-eight, so I must have met him when he was what? Eighteen?

  Here from Dusseldorf, the partner of Hans Mayer, came to lunch at the office. And Fred and I had words because he was being so elegant and grand and said to me in right front of Hete, “Why don’t you tell Hete how you really feel about the gallery not paying you.” You know, so I was stuck. Fred really is bored. He wants to do a change, I guess. Like Paul Morrissey did.

  And then Paige picked me up, but she was only in a taxi, not a car. And I said I’d said to get “a car” and she said, “Well this is a car” (cab $9). Then got to the Apollo and there were millions of cops. It was the Hall and Oates taping and it was benefit for the Negro College Fund. Hall and Oates came on and they were great, did all their hits. Boy George arrived with Cornelia and they were in a box and he was throwing kisses. And then two of the Temptations came on and jammed with them, and they were great, and you could really see that that’s who Hall and Oates copied. And when it was over we left and the cops were just crazy for Boy George. I’ve never seen anything like it. They just all wanted his autograph so much, and Marilyn said to one of them, “I want to have an affair with you,” and he said, “I have someone you’ll really like.” I mean, I really have never seen that kind of thing going on with the cops.

  Saturday,May 25, 1985

  Walked to work. Kenny Scharf came by. And he said he doesn’t know what to do because he likes to feel free and do whatever he wants but he does love Teresa and the baby, but he feels he has to have that free feeling. So Kenny was there for hours and then left at 7:00.

  And you know, in the pizza place next to the office on 33rd Street, the one that’s owned by Koreans or Chinese, it was so sad, because they were cleaning up and throwing out all the stuff from, maybe, the basement, books and things, and I wanted to go through it all but I didn’t. And this woman was holding these two big white dogs and I don’t know if she belonged there or if she didn’t. You don’t know about people. Everybody just does their own stuff on their own scale. There was a naked baby in the middle of the floor.

  Sunday,May 26, 1985

  Another hot day. Rode around the city and over to New Jersey with Chris and Randall. Peter and Chris are trying to decide whether they should keep it together or not. And Randall is a gymnast who came to New York to see the world and the first person he sees is Chris so you know what part of the world he’s seeing.

  Then went home and watched TV. Deceptions with Stefanie Powers. I went to sleep, facing life alone.

  Wednesday,May 29, 1985

  Was picked up by Benjamin and there was a note from Crazy Matty at the door. He’s been leaving notes for Brigid at the office.

  Then cab ($4) to meet Paige for her lunch at the office with some advertisers. And the reason Paige sells so many ads is she actually enjoys the people she meets from selling ads, she likes entertaining them for business, which not many people can do.

  Then Jean Michel came over to paint and he was laughing and kidding around and Paige called up to me on the phone and screamed, “Get him out of here!” And I just didn’t know what to say, she hung up before I could even think, and then she just left the office. She was calling Jean Michel a creep and everything.

  Cabbed to Canastel’s ($5) to Katie Ford’s dinner where she said she’d have male models. And this is the place where the guy wanted me to do a mural for the wall but wasn’t going to give us enough credit—I was going to do it with Jean Michel, but eventually the wall would’ve been worth more than the whole restaurant. But this place was great, just jammed, and pink lights and just really good food and steamed vegetables for appetizers that were as big a serving as the main course at the Odeon. Like California food.

  So I was with this model with blond hair and piercing black eyes, and he knew all about “walk-ins.” They’re when somebody else walks into your body. It makes sense. It happens if you’re having this trauma or if you’re sick or something. And you know, when I was little I remember I was really sick and didn’t like school and had to be dragged there and then one day I changed—after that I loved school and everything, so I think somebody may have walked into me then…. I’m not clear on who the walk-ins are. Souls. And I’m not clear on where they come from.

  Monday,June 3, 1985

  Benjamin picked me up and we went to the West Side to Dr. Linda Li. She told me Fantastik is poison, not to use it (phone $2). Decided to stay out as long as possible because it’d been a couple of days of me being cooped up, and it was a beautiful day. Went to Bagel Nosh ($10) and stood in line for scrambled eggs and it was so dirty but it was okay, I faced it. Wandered to 46th Street. Saw the sights. Took pictures of drunken ladies sleeping on park benches and felt that life was just so awful. And I don’t know what I try to look good for. Everybody when you look at them really close is so awful-looking. So animalistic.

  And then it was time to go to the opening of my Reigning Queens show down on West Broadway and Greene Street. This is the show that George Mulder got together. Some one-night Dutch benefit thing. Rupert’s “wife” picked us up in the Bentley and the missus was disgruntled. And then we got down there and parked next to Victor’s limousine. Victor just got some kind of settlement from Halston. I think he had to sign a paper saying he wouldn’t talk about Halston ever, but I mean, what does that mean? He’s happy now that he’s got this wad of money, but when it’s gone …

  And I’ve hit rock bottom. This show, I have sunk to the bottom of the gutter. The rock bottom of the skids of the end of the line. It was like having an opening in somebody’s rent-controlled apartment. I mean, they had a paper covering a mirror! And they had hors d’oeuvres that I think they were making in the kitchen. And these Dutch TV people were all around. It was so lowdown and tacky. Fred wasn’t there. He’d already left, didn’t want to face me, I guess he was in shock. We found him dazed, wandering along Christopher Street later on, on his way up to the Ballroom for the Scavullo benefit for the church in Greenwich Village. We just ran into him on a fluke and gave him a ride.

  So we left there and went up to the Scavullo thing and I sat down but then Cornelia was screaming that there was a fashion show and that I was su
pposed to be in it, so somebody grabbed me and took me to the basement, and it was every famous beautiful model and the tits were flying all over the place. And I was in Stephen Sprouse, and Cornelia and I got the biggest applause. And Boy George was in the audience and Marilyn, and they said let’s go to dinner, they had a limo, but I went in a cab anyway, up to Mr. Chow’s (cab $6).

  It was me and Benjamin and Boy George and Marilyn and Cornelia and Couri Hay and they all act like horrible brats—Couri screamed across the restaurant to Dianne Brill, “Get your pussy over here,” and this is a place with just regular people, and then Cornelia would say to somebody who’d told them to please be quiet, “You look like a dried duck,” or something like that. Just awful. And then Marilyn saw Mary Wilson sitting at a table and went over and Benjamin just collapsed because she’s his favorite singer, and then she came over and thanked me for going to her comeback concert a few years ago (dinner $400).

  And Boy George and Marilyn like me I think because they can say mean things and then I’m not quick enough to think of a comeback, so I’m not a threat to them.

  Wednesday,June 5, 1985

  Picked up by Benjamin. Put out all the mothballed things onto the street and was shocked by how much there was. Dr. Linda Li and Dr. Bernsohn both told me that mothballs were absolute poison. Bernsohn said he wouldn’t get within forty feet of them.

  And I asked Bernsohn for ideas for paintings. And I brought up “walk-ins” and told him how I think somebody might have walked into me when I was shot, in addition to somebody maybe walked irto me when I was little. But somehow these walk-in theories don’t make total sense to me. He said that if your body is really weak and sick nobody will walk into it. And then I said, “But then people could be walking into you the rest of the time.” I don’t get it yet.

  Cabbed with Jon who’s back in town for a couple of days to 32nd Street to see Rambo. And the movie was ridiculous. It was like Friday the 13th but with explosions.

  Thursday, June 6, 1985

  Went over to Macy’s to judge the Madonna look-alike contest. They expected 200 girls but there were only 100. They’d spent a fortune, these girls, on the clothes and jewelry. It was over pretty fast, by 5:10, and it’d started at 4:30.

  Went to Radio City Music Hall for Madonna’s concert (cab $6). And the show was so great. Just so simple and sexy and Madonna is so pretty. Now she’s thinner and just so great. And afterwards we went downstairs where there was a private party, the level with the ladies’ rooms. And Madonna came down with Jean Michel—I guess he’d gone backstage. And she was fun. She said she was going to the Palladium and might go to Keith’s dinner, and she was so sweet and nice. So we went and drove to Iso on 11th Street and Second and then Madonna did arrive, she came in a truck. And they sat her next to me, and she was just great. They were teasing her about her false eyelashes, saying they were bigger than Louise Nevelson’s. And everyone was so thrilled, the waiters were on the floor. She was drawing cocks on Futura’s pants.

  Monday,June 10, 1985

  The morning started off with the doorbell ringing so loud and it was Crazy Matty and the neighbors are really getting upset from him hanging around all the time. When Benjamin came he went out to talk to him and Matty has his days all mapped out—his schedule is as big as mine. Like at 1:00 he’s going to go bother Warren Beatty at the Carlyle, at 3:00 he’s going to make a nuisance call to Woody Allen, then at 8:00 he has the Emmys to attend where he’ll stand behind the police lines and scream at Celeste Holm on her way in, things like that. I gave him $.25 to call Brigid at the office and divert him away from me.

  I just don’t know what to send Leo for the show he’s doing. Anything I send it’ll just look like the stuff by the kids who’re making it that way now, only they do it better than me. So nobody will even want to copy it. And Jean Michel said he got a huge bill—like maybe I think $100,000—from his dealer in L.A., Gagosian, for his stay there when he was living so high.

  Thursday, June 13, 1985

  Then got a cab and the driver knew all about me, said he’d just seen Bad on video and knew all about the building on 33rd Street. He said, “You made my night.” That’s a good song title [singing]: “I made your night, I made your night,” so I had to give him a big tip ($7).

  Friday,June 14, 1985

  During this morning I went down to the Seagram’s building for that “How to Paint” video thing that the computer company, Commodore, wants me to be a spokesman for. And I guess I got the job. I was afraid that they were going to put a spotlight on me and have me draw in front of 700 people, but it was okay. It’s a $3,000 machine that’s like the Apple thing but can do a hundred times more.

  Wednesday,June 19, 1985

  In the morning Amos still wasn’t feeling well. I’d given him part of a Valium when he was yelping the day before and I thought he’d be fine. When I called to ask Jed to take him to the vet he wasn’t in town, so I took him myself (cab $3). Dr. Marder wasn’t there so we saw Dr. Greene, then dropped Amos back home. Then went up to Bernsohn’s and that was interesting. I told him that the crystal I’d put in the kitchen at the office to repel roaches wasn’t working, that we were getting more roaches than ever. He said he was going to call Dr. Reese about it, and later, in the afternoon, he called and said that the crystal was now reprogrammed to un-reverse itself, so now we’ll see the proof. But anyway, while I was still there, the most interesting thing was that he told his secretary Judy to get up on the table and pretend to be Amos and he asked her what was wrong with her and she said that she had a crushed vertebra on her left or right side. And I hadn’t told him! And she told him that farther down she also had maybe an ulcer. And then Judy said she didn’t want to be a dog anymore, that she wanted to go back to human, so she did. He said to give Amos comfrey for the ulcer.

  There was a big lunch at the office. The Mosses were coming, from A&M records—the wife I did the portrait of. Their son is going to acting camp.

  Thursday, June 20, 1985

  Amos still wasn’t feeling well. I let him run around but I don’t know if I should have.

  Ran into David Whitney and Michael Heizer and they said to come along to the Whitney to look at what they were doing. And I did and I got so jealous. People can walk on it. Silkscreened textures on big pieces of cardboard. Big like a house. And they’re just going to throw it out after the show’s over. It’s a hill formation.

  And somebody told me that my old friend Ted Carey who I once split the cost for a Fairfield Porter portrait with—he painted us both together—has you-know-what.

  I left work early (cab $6) and when I got home Paige was calling, crying hysterically that the big opening she was having that night for her Mexican artist Julio Galan was banned by the board of directors of the co-op building where she was having it. It was in the same building that got mad when she gave the black graffiti artists a show. I told her that she just had to buck up and reschedule the show someplace else.

  So I cabbed down to Indochine for a dinner for Elizabeth Saltzman. Shawn Hausman had a beautiful fifties car and after the dinner he drove us over to Area where they had these kids on skateboarding loops. It looks so dangerous, like a twenty-five or thirty-foot arc, fifteen feet high. One kid fell when the light went in his eye.

  Wilfredo who used to work for Armani who works for us was there and his brother was picking him up to take him home to New Jersey. Because Wilfredo got kicked out of his apartment and now he’s got to go home to New Jersey every night, and his mother’s very careful and makes his brother come into the city to pick him up and the brother likes it because that way he gets to go to all the clubs with Wilfredo. So then went to the Palladium. Wilfredo’s brother drove. Cornelia was there with Philippe Junot. Stayed five minutes and went home (cab $6).

  Friday,June 21, 1985

  I yelled at Brigid a lot yesterday. She threw out an important piece of artwork. It was a doodle that Michael Viner wanted made into a painting for his wife Deborah Raffin.

&n
bsp; Lunch was for the Krizia people. And Paige by then was a new person, completely recovered from the night before when she had to stand in front of the building for four hours telling people as they a rrived that the art show was cancelled, and somebody who was there said that each time Paige would have to say it, she’d burst out crying all over again. I asked her how she was able to recover so quickly and she said it was part of her job. So that was good. I told her she should put her advertising commission money into a loft and have four or five art shows a year there.

  I decided to go to the Whitney Tower wedding which was at 5:00 at St. Bart’s. Fred was an usher (cab $3.50).

  The bride looked beautiful. I was sitting next to Charles Evans. Nick Love from L.A. read a good paragraph from the Bible. He’s got the style of the thirties which I think will come back sometime for actors. I wasn’t invited to the reception. Had tennis shoes on and walked uptown with Joan Quinn.

  Called Jean Michel but he hasn’t called me back, I guess he’s slowly breaking away. He used to call me all the time from wherever he was.

  Saturday,June 22, 1985

  Changed into black tie before Roy Cohn’s birthday party. Called PH to say I was leaving immediately to pick her up but then noticed a note from Matty outside the door so I waited a few minutes and peeked out the window and didn’t see him, made a dash to Park and got a cab. Picked up PH. Got to the Palladium (cab $5.50). We were at a table with Vera Swift and Philippe Junot and Jacqueline Stone and some prince from Austria and Vera’s daughter Kimberly and a man I didn’t know and two women I didn’t know. Said hello to Barbara Walters who just announced her engagement a few weeks ago, and she looks really good.