The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Then went over to Jean Michel’s birthday lunch at Mortimer’s that Marsha May from Texas was giving. And finally I gave Jean Michel a gift he really loved—the rhythm and blues six-album set, that Atlantic just put out. And Ahmet Ertegun wrote some of the songs, those were his big years. Jean Michel was reading the liner notes all through lunch.

  And then afterwards Jean Michel wanted to go to Bloomingdale’s, it was 4:30. So we went over there. He wanted to get a $3,000 gift certificate for his mother and when he took out his gold Amex card one guy asked to see ID but the other guy nudged him and said, “It’s okay.”

  Monday, December 23, 1985

  I asked Jay what he wanted for Christmas and he said that in February when there’s business to take care of in Paris, he wants to go and do it for me, so I said good, because that will free me up to stay working here.

  I have a real take-all-give-nothing attitude this year. I’m going to give the kids at Interview who I know Keith Haring watches and autographed America books.

  Worked till 8:30. Sean McKeon stopped by but these days I’m happy just with my two children—Sam and Wilfredo. Benjamin is just so busy with all his other stuff lately. Doing P.R. for fashion designers. But he’s such a good companion. I wish I could think of a way to mesh the things he does so that he would still be working for us. He doesn’t want too much steady responsibility, though. He’s a free spirit.

  Saw The Color Purple and the men in it are so cruel to the women. A real tearjerker. And Whoopi Goldberg reminded me so much of Jean Michel. The hands over her mouth when she laughed, just everything (tickets $18).

  Tuesday, December 24, 1985

  Was picked up by Benjamin. It was fifty-five out, but it felt like sixty, real nice. Went everywhere and had a lot of fun. When we got to the office the Interview party was in full swing. I never went over to it, but people drifted onto our side of the building. It was over right about 4:00.

  And I told Gael to come up and pose for pictures because I was going to do a drawing of her because Fred told me that I had to. She looks good now, very thin. Her hair’s beautiful and her skin is strong and she doesn’t wear makeup. Peter, her husband, had come to pick her up and she was wearing a pale pink leather dress and I said, “Oh, where’d you get that pretty dress?” and the first thing she says is, “Well, you know, I never ever take anything for free, but they sold this to me for $10 because nobody wanted it!” She was very defensive right away to tell me that, as if she knew that I was hearing about all the stuff she gets for presents from her business admirers in L.A., sending her flowers and candy and stuff. I forget that these Interview editors actually are powerful. And I told her she should be going out to dinner with people constantly like Annie Flanders from Details does, and she said, “I’m not a hustler.”

  And Greg Gorman the photographer from L.A was at the Interview party and told me that Joe Dallesandro’s got a big role in a new TV cop series that’s starting in January. Then went home and Gael and Peter dropped me off.

  I ran into the 6’5” son of my neighbor, Dr. Hamilton. He got so tall suddenly this year now that he went off to college. He’s handsome. He’s the one that used to play ball in the street with the father and the one who said he used to see Yul Brynner run into the building across the street to see some woman and this kid would time how long it took them.

  Took a gang to Nippon for Christmas Eve dinner and I gave out the little Be Somebody with a Body paintings (dinner $280).

  And then we went down to Kenny Scharf’s loft on Great Jones. In the bedroom Kenny had these original Flintstones and Jetson cartoon drawings, and he said, “Jon Gould got these for me.” He actually said that to me. That was so odd to hear. He said Jon got them at an auction. I mean, you know somebody, they’re living in your house, and then suddenly they don’t know you anymore but they still see all your friends. I didn’t know the people there, they were a bunch of weirdos.

  I dropped off PH and Paige and Bernard (cab $20).

  Wednesday, December 25, 1985

  Went to 90th and Fifth (cab $4) to meet Paige at the soup kitchen at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. Episcopalian. Tama had already left because I guess it was too hard. And Paige was upset because she felt the food was so horrible for the people. But it’s just that we’re used to such unusually good stuff. It wasn’t worse than high school cafeteria food. And you see people with bad teeth and everything. And we’re so used to all these beautiful perfect people. It’s such a different world.

  And the minister was having a bourbon and he was really cute. The church keeps about twenty people overnight and feeds them but I don’t know if it’s the same ones every night and how they choose them. Passed out Interviews.

  Friday, December 27, 1985

  You know, I still get things from the Czechoslovakian church because I guess they don’t know that my mother’s gone to heaven, and I look down this list of names and they’re so simple and so great, I don’t know if they’ve shortened them or what. Like Coll. Or Kiss. I don’t know what they made them from. And then there’s the Warholas and the Varcholas and the Varhols….

  And at Christmas time I really think about my mother and if I did the right thing sending her back to Pittsburgh. I still feel so guilty. [NOTE: See Introduction]

  Saturday, December 28, 1985

  Susan Blond called and we made a date for dinner and by the end of the day I’d invited ten or eleven people, and I decided that Bud’s would be cheaper than, say, Jams, and so we decided to go there (cab $6).

  George Condo came and he’s that new artist. He makes these small things. And George and Paige were hitting it off but then Kenny Scharf had invited this actress Carole Davis, for George, and she got there late, after dinner—and she played the Jewish girl in The Flamingo Kid. So George got confused about who was his date. And this girl was the hit of the dinner. She was really funny. She just broke up with an Armenian or Indian plastic surgeon in L.A. who’d done three generations of noses, she said, and she talked about her chin job, but I think she’s had a nose job, too. She said her best scene was cut out of The Flamingo Kid, when she tries to give Matt Dillon an ice-cube blow job. She said Matt didn’t relate to her (dinner $600 including tip).

  Bernard dropped me off ($10). And there’s really no American cabdrivers anymore. This one was from Afghanistan or something. Is it that these people are willing to risk their lives and Americans aren’t?

  Sunday, December 29, 1985

  Went to church. Then went to meet James Brown, the artist, at the flea market. And one guy said he had a book jacket that I’d done for a book called the Adventures of… somebody, I forget. A New Directions book. It was the English edition of it and it didn’t have my name on it or anything, and I know New Directions never paid me for an English edition of anything. It was a good all-over pattern of African masks and my mother’s writing, but they ruined it by making me draw a cutesy lady on it. For “commercial appeal.” I had handed it in without it and then they told me to add this lady in. I don’t know how he knew it was mine. Maybe he’d seen the original American edition that had my name on it.

  And then we went to James Brown’s studio near Katz’s delicatessen, and he lives on the third floor of a building and on the ground floor is a whorehouse and it’d been raided three times that day and all these Puerto Rican ladies were running around in like (laughs) silk corsets and the madam looked sort of like Regine. And she had a guy assistant who was really good-looking, like a fairy assistant. And these guys just go there, I guess, it’s like eating. They do it just so they don’t go crazy and they get off in five minutes and it’s over. Like buying a lottery ticket. It’s a renovated building and the madam had a hand-standing mirror in the hallway tilted to see who was coming. That reminded me so much of Billy Name—angled mirrors. Paige was fascinated with the whorehouse. She wanted to film it.

  Tuesday, December 31, 1985

  Well, it was a pretty starless New Year’s Eve. I feel left out. I think Calvin had a p
arty and didn’t invite me, and Bianca’s in town and I didn’t hear from her, she never even called to say she was coming by for her Christmas gift. And I mean, she doesn’t have many other friends. But New Year’s was easy and unemotional. Nobody was mushy.

  During the day, Jay was moping around the office but he’s been better since I had the talk with him about all his negativity probably causing the cold sores on his mouth.

  Bought the papers and saw that the eyeglass place had given an item to the newspapers that I buy my glasses there and that they’re bulletproof like the president of Nicaragua’s (newspapers $5, cabs $3, $2). I mean, I’m not going to go there anymore. Why would they make that up? I mean, what are bulletproof eyeglasses? What could they do for you?

  I was going to call lots of people and wish them Happy New Year but then I couldn’t get it together to call anybody.

  Sam picked up PH and they came to pick me up (cab $10). So we got to Jane Holzer’s and of course she wasn’t ready, after telling me she wanted to get to Roy Cohn’s party at 9:00 so she could really work the room for her real estate. She was still in her bathrobe. So then she got into her makeup and a black Armani jacket and pants. She’s a little heavier.

  And so we went to Roy Cohn’s townhouse, and it was sad to see him like that, it really was. He didn’t look old but God, he looked so sick. I don’t know what to describe it as. And it was people like Joey and Cindy Adams.

  Steve Dunleavy the Australian journalist said, “Give me a bon mot for the new year,” and I couldn’t think of one. Roy’s ninety-year-old aunt was there, she owns Van Heusen shirts, she was the one who gave permission for me to use Ronald Reagan’s old Van Heusen ad in my painting. She was like a WASP dowager, only with a hook nose, and she still has every one of her marbles. Jane went over to her and said, “I’m sure you don’t remember me,” and she said, “Oh yes I do, Jane, and how is your wonderful son Rusty and his horseback riding?”

  And Doris Lilly was there. And Roy’s nephew or something from Palm Beach who writes for the Miami Herald and wants to write for Interview. Monique Van Vooren was there, she walked into the front room shielding her face, she said, “Oh my, it’s the same wonderful lighting as always.” Because it was horrible and bright and with this old crowd it was really a horror show.

  And then Regine was there and she invited us to the $2,000-a-plate Julio Iglesias dinner-concert right afterwards at the Essex House, so we got ourselves excited for that.

  Oh, and I got a Christmas card from Jann Wenner and his wife and a baby. Did they have a baby or did they adopt one? The name was “Wenner.” I don’t remember her being pregnant.

  At Essex House the best thing was a girl came over and gave us all brass key chains that were engraved concert tickets that said: “Julio Iglesias, Essex House, December 31, 1985, $2,000.” And Angie Dickinson was there, who’s always so nice. Sam went over and took her picture and told her he worked for me and she said, “Oh, I love him.” Regis Philbin did a comedy introduction about people calling him Phoebus Region and Rebus Philbin and things like that and then he introduced the celebs and the spotlight went on me, and I froze. And then at midnight they shot big spangles out of the cannons. And there were orchids and it was fun, and Julio’s great line was he comes out on stage and says, “I FEEL GUILTY! I LOVE YOU!” And he kept talking about how we were all one family. And everybody who heard the price of this thing said that it must be a benefit, but it wasn’t, it was just for Julio.

  Left there and went over to the Hard Rock Café and the rock and roll crowd there was the most corny crowd in the world. It always is. Some CNN people interviewed me on what I was going to be doing next year and I said I was working on a Barbie doll. And then somebody who came in told us that Ricky Nelson had just been killed in a plane crash in Texas.

  Wednesday, January 1, 1986

  Sam is so devoted to me, and I guess it’s because I’ve spoiled him. Fred warned me not to turn Sam’s head, but on our first outing I took him to Yoko Ono’s and he got to sit there with Dylan and David Bowie and Madonna and that put the zap on his head and now he’s starstruck.

  Anyway, he called and was eager to work but I just felt like staying home and resting, so I did, decided to just watch TV and take a holiday. Killed some moths.

  Thursday, January 2, 1986

  Worked at the office. Painted some Hamburgers. Went home. Made myself a potato. Sitcoms have the highest ratings on TV now—The Cosby Show and Family Ties. Dynasty slipped to eighth and Dallas is down to ninth—they should turn them into sitcoms. Wouldn’t that be funny?

  Friday, January 3, 1986

  Paul’s movie Mixed Blood is playing midnights at the Waverly, so Sam and I went over (tickets $10, popcorn $5). And I just loved the movie. It was everything he’s done before, but it was photographed well and he seemed to know so much about the Lower East Side and the Alphabet—avenues A, B, C, and D—for someone who hadn’t been in New York for so long.

  Saturday, January 4, 1986

  Sunny day. Karen Burke finally passed her doctor’s exam. She sent me a card that said so.

  Got to work at 4:00. Looked through some Soldier of Fortune magazines because I want to do war pictures. I was Xeroxing from them, having Sam do it, and when I went and looked he had about a thousand pages in the trash! He’d been Xeroxing on the wrong size paper and not getting the whole picture in and I said something and he can’t take criticism, he screamed, “Don’t make me nervous!” And I mean, he knows about money, I don’t know why he’d waste so much.

  Tuesday, January 7, 1986

  I was going to Earl McGrath’s party for Jann Wenner’s fortieth birthday, but first went with Benjamin to this new building in the jewelry district that’s marble but done cheap. It was a fashion show at a place called Bill Robinson’s Men’s Clothes. And the male models were all on pedestals! It looked so great, really wonderful, and the girls were trying to pick them up and the guys were just on their pedestals staring and underneath them everybody else—wasn’t perfect. And you’d go to feel the clothes and your face (laughs) would be right in their crotch. The party was over at 7:30 and the models came down off their pedestals.

  Met Wilfredo there and we walked up to 61st and Fifth to Fereydoun Hoveyda’s art opening at the David Mann Gallery. The wind was so bad, really strong and cold. I hope I didn’t get a cold. Fereydoun was thrilled to see us. His drawings which used to be abstract now look like illustrations for The Arabian Nights. They’re representational now.

  Then cabbed to 57th and Seventh to Earl’s ($6). Ahmet was so cool to me. He used to kiss me and tell me stories but the last couple of times he’s been really cool, like I raved to him about his seven-record-set album and he just listened and then got bored and left. I’ll have to send him a painting or something. Try to find out what I did wrong. Half the people had just come back from a cruise with Jann Wenner. Talked to Jane, his wife, who said they’d been married nineteen years. And they did just adopt a baby. And Jann is so so so so fat, incredible.

  Fred gave me a ride and I got home at 12:00. And Jean Michel had his opening in L.A. and I feel just terrible, I forgot to call him.

  Wednesday, January 8, 1986

  My sister-in-law called me in the morning, she’s in town. She wants to sell me a $90 vibrator because she bought three and doesn’t need them all. She’s a reflexologist. She rubs people’s feet for five hours and gets rid of all their sickness. And it’s just like these people that I go to, but I think that if I were going to her, it would turn me off the whole thing, you know? And my brother Paul, who’s the junkman, he’s doing well, he’s got a farm, a real working farm. They just killed six pigs and they made sausages out of them and stuff. And he’s buying real estate in the black neighborhood and it’s really going to go up. On the river on the North Side. And the wife of my nephew George is still suing him. She’s remarried already. And George went to see the kids, he has two cute little boys, and she ran out of the house and took a picture of his Cadillac to tr
y to get more money out of him. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, he’s still despondent over the marriage breaking up, he’s a nice kid. And the wife I guess was cute. Irish or something. George is the good-looking one in the family, I guess (cab uptown $5).

  Called Jean Michel in L.A. and he said no stars had been at his opening, and he said Jon Gould had been there but he wouldn’t talk about him to me for some reason.

  Thursday, January 9, 1986

  Worked all afternoon. Left at 5:00 to go uptown to Sabrina Guinness’s birthday party at Ann Ronson’s fifteen-room apartment at the San Remo on Central Park West—she’s married to Mick Jones of Foreigner.

  Each room was done in a different style. One room was English, the other room was Art Deco, the next room was trompe l’oeil. There was no food. Just three pieces of chicken sushi. I found some caviar on a tray in the corner of a room where you would never look.

  And there was a black girl there who was one of these over-bubbly girls that I can’t stand—from Africa, she said, but then she said it was so good to be out with people because she lives so shut up in Greenwich with her family, so what do you suppose that means? She said she went to the best London schools. And I guess Michael Douglas likes black girls because he said, “Listen sweetheart, give me your number before you leave,” and when he got up to do something he told her, “I’ll be right back.”