by Breanne Fahs
184. Smith, “The Shot That Shattered the Velvet Underground”; “Andy Warhol Fighting for Life”; “Warhol Still Grave.”
185. Among the variant spellings reported for this officer’s name were Shemalix and Schmalix. Bockris, Life and Death of Andy Warhol, 1998 edition. See also Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 349. The first statement about the flower child quote from Valerie was in Michaelson, “Valerie.” Valerie denied saying this in “Warhol Still Grave.”
186. Indictment paperwork, New York City police records, June 3, 1968. See also Smith, “The Shot That Shattered the Velvet Underground.”
187. Shepard, “Warhol Gravely Wounded,” June 4, 1968; Dorr-Dorynek, “Lonesome Cowboy”; Smith, “The Shot That Shattered the Velvet Underground”; Ultra Violet, Famous for 15 Minutes. Note that her bail was eventually paid by her friend Geoffrey LeGear.
188. Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 351.
189. “Andy Warhol Fighting for Life.” The quote in the heading of this section is from Lou Reed, “Songs for Drella,” as quoted in Fahs, “Radical Possibilities,” 599. Andy Warhol thought it a strange coincidence that the date of the News headline was precisely six years to the day after the June 4, 1962, “129 DIE IN JET” headline that he silkscreened for his painting. See Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 349.
190. Ben Morea, as quoted in McMillian, “Ben Morea, Garbage Guerrilla.” Pamphlet by Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker to support Valerie Solanas, June 4, 1968, reprinted in Dorr-Dorynek, “Lonesome Cowboy” and in Kritchman and Smith, “Valerie Lives!” Quote preceding the pamphlet is from Morea, interview by Fahs, March 10, 2011; see also McLemee, “Dark Superstar.”
191. Harron and Minahan, introduction to I Shot Andy Warhol, xxiv.
192. Kaufman and Griffin, Outlaw Bible, 204.
193. Harron and Minahan, introduction to I Shot Andy Warhol, xxv.
194. Between 9:43 and 9:51 p.m. on June 3, 1968, Valerie had a conversation with Lankler. See “Statement of Valerie Jean Solanas to Lankler.”
195. This copy, with a 1965 copyright and spanning twenty-nine single-spaced pages, was written after Margo Feiden’s partially complete thirty-plus double-spaced version that contained Valerie’s early notes for the play. This raises questions about the timing of how Valerie distributed her copies of the play, as Valerie had only earlier copies on her person when approaching Margo Feiden and Lee Strasberg on the morning of June 3. Nevertheless, Valerie’s relationship to Up Your Ass—whether motivated by seeking fame, subversiveness, a relentless desire to promote the goals of SCUM, or the value she placed on textual integrity—likely contributed to her shooting Andy.
196. Coburn, “Valerie’s Gang,” 9.
197. Taubin, “Shooting Andy Warhol,” 36.
198. Margo Feiden still believes that Warhol did not possess a copy of Up Your Ass and that Valerie did not shoot him because of the play. In an exchange with Glenn O’Brien, she said, “She did that shooting as a publicity stunt to be famous, so that I would produce her play. Why should Andy Warhol’s name, in any way, be sullied? Why should people think that she had any justification for what she did? He gave her none.” O’Brien replied, rather lamely, “That’s what upset me about that film, I Shot Andy Warhol [1996]. I knew the woman who made that film, and I felt it was really unconscionable and exploitative, that it represented that she had some justification, when obviously there was none.” In the same interview Feiden indicated that the play she possessed was called The Society for Cutting Up Men, when it was in fact a partial copy of an earlier draft of Up Your Ass. Feiden further said that the women’s movement “had nothing to do with why she shot him. Nothing! Are you sure there was a play that she had given him and that he lost it? Are you sure of that?” See O’Brien, “History Rewire”; see also Feiden, interview by Fahs, March 15, 2010.
199. Smith, DWAN Solanas Supplement no. 3.
200. Coburn, “Valerie’s Gang,” 11.
201. “New York: Felled by SCUM.”
202. Bockris, Life and Death of Andy Warhol, 1998 edition, 235.
203. Michaelson, “Valerie.”
204. Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.”
205. An acquaintance at the Chelsea Hotel quoted in “Andy and a Girl Who Hates Men.”
206. Smith and Van der Horst, “Valerie Solanas Interview,” 32.
PROVOCATION
1. Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
2. Dunbar-Ortiz, Outlaw Woman, 138.
3. Smith, “To Live with a Man.”
4. Atkinson, interview by Fahs, February 1, 2008. Unless stated otherwise, all quotes from Atkinson in this chapter are from this interview.
5. Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, 41.
6. Dana Densmore, interview by Breanne Fahs, Santa Fe, NM, October 24, 2009.
7. Bernadine Dohrn, quoted in the epigraph above, was then the interorganizational secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. See Morgan, “Do You Remember La Pasionaria?”
8. Dunbar-Ortiz, Outlaw Woman, 119.
9. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
10. Kate Millett, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992. Further quotes from Millett are from this interview.
11. Florynce Kennedy, as quoted in Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
12. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, June 11, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
13. Solanas, letter to Atkinson, June 16, 1968.
14. Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Maurice Girodias, June 27, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
15. Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Valerie Solanas, June 27, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
16. Atkinson, letter to Girodias, June 27, 1968.
17. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, June 26, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
18. Solanas, letter to Atkinson, July 5, 1968.
19. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, August 5, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
20. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, August 27, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
21. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
22. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
23. Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.”
24. Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.”
25. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
26. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
27. Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
28. Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Guy Gravesen at Rampart magazine, July 28, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
29. Solanas, letter to Atkinson, August 27, 1968.
30. Valerie Solanas, letter to Judith Brown, October 1968, quoted in Judith Brown and Carol Giardina, letter to Kathie Amatniek, October 6, 1968 (microfilm), part 2, series 7A, Redstockings Organizational Collection, Redstockings’ Women’s Liberation Archives for Action, Gainesville, FL. Note that Kathie Amatniek changed her name to Kathie Sarachild.
31. Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
32. Valerie Solanas, letter to Maurice Girodias, September 27, 1969, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
33. Solanas, letter to Girodias, September 27, 1969.
34. Dunbar-Ortiz also remembers sending long letters to her husband, Jean-Louis, trying to transform him into the leader of a male feminist movement. “I did not succeed,” she writes. One such letter included the following: “Jean-Louis, I haven’t rejected Che [Guevara] in admiring Valerie Solanas. For me, Che will always be a saint, and I learn from him, try to be like him. Yet I know he did not mean what I have made of his message. He was dedicated to patria o muerte, and for me it’s humanidad o muerte. Che, in using an old symbol and an inherently oppressive fixture, the nation-state, did not deal with patriarchy and ho
w the state reproduces it and requires it. . . .Women are not taken seriously even when they die bravely for a cause. It is the same with Valerie. She is viewed as a psychopath even by radicals, the same ones who call Che a great revolutionary and Billy the Kid a social bandit, but a female rebel is neither—she is surely either a spy or a seductress, or at best a helpmate.” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, letter to Jean-Louis, July 5, 1968, as cited in Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.”
35. Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.”
36. The quotes are from Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Sara Evans, 209; Ti-Grace Atkinson, 107.
37. Dunbar-Ortiz, letter to Jean-Louis, July 5, 1968.
38. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
39. Baxandall, interview by Fahs, April 8, 2011.
40. Laura X, interview by Mary Harron, location unknown, circa 1992.
41. Carol Hanisch, interview by Mary Harron, location unknown, circa 1992.
42. Koedt, interview by Harron, circa 1992.
43. Valerie Lives!, pamphlet (Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action), 3. This group recommended SCUM Manifesto as “mind food” and in the pamphlet chided Maurice Girodias and Paul Krassner for frequently referring to Valerie’s clothing: “Our nomination for the award in the flippy yippy artsie fartsie ‘radical’ left category is Paul Krassner whose commentary is published along with the Manifesto, and whose hipness is revealed by such phrases as: ‘Didn’t pluck out the stray hairs between her eyebrows.’” See bibliography in the pamphlet.
44. Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
45. Valerie Solanas, letter to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, September 13, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
46. Jacqueline Ceballos, interview by Breanne Fahs, Phoenix, AZ, September 27, 2009.
47. Mary Eastwood, open memo to Betty Friedan, June 29, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
48. Morgan, Saturday’s Child, 315.
49. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
50. Atkinson wrote to Jo Benson at 25 magazine of the profound impact Valerie’s actions and words had on the women’s movement: “I have thought of writing a quite separate piece on the response with the Women’s Movement to the Manifesto, which, if you can believe it, has been at least as interesting and certainly more violent than Valerie’s work.” Ti-Grace remained a hinge between the two worlds—the world of Valerie and that of her interpreters. See Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Jo Benson, July 14, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
51. Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Valerie Solanas, July 9, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
52. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, September 27, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
53. Dunbar-Ortiz, “From the Cradle to the Boat.” See also Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
54. Dunbar-Ortiz, interview by Fahs, December 11, 2008.
55. Press release from Ti-Grace Atkinson, October 21, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA; Atkinson, letter to Solanas, June 27, 1968.
56. Kennedy, Color Me Flo, 62.
57. Ti-Grace Atkinson, letter to Valerie Solanas, November 10, 1968, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
58. According to Peter Moritz Pickshaus, Rosetta Reitz, an art and music critic, radical feminist, and close friend of Valerie, was asked by the criminal court to keep Valerie’s papers and writing. See Pickshaus, letter to Mary Harron, March 12, 1993.
59. Newton, interview by Harron, circa 1994.
60. Valerie Solanas, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, February 27, 1969, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
61. Valerie Solanas, letter to Robin Morgan, October 10, 1970, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Archives, Durham, NC.
62. Robin Morgan, letter to Valerie Solanas, June 9, 1969, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Archives Durham, NC. Robin mailed the letter to the Women’s House of Detention; her check registers from 1973 note that a seventy-five-dollar payment was stopped and that Valerie never received it.
63. Morgan, Saturday’s Child, 315. This was also mentioned in Valerie Solanas, letter to Robin Morgan, undated, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Archives, Durham, NC,.
64. Brown and Giardina, letter to Sarachild, October 6, 1968.
65. Morea, interview by Fahs, March 10, 2011.
66. Ben Morea, as quoted in Hahne and Morea, Black Mask, 158.
67. Morea, interview by Fahs, March 10, 2011.
MADNESS
1. The quote is from Moore, “Bag Lady of Feminism.”
2. Valerie Solanas, “Indictment Paperwork,” June 3, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY. Valerie’s name was misspelled as Valarie Solanas in the court documents, and her age was given as twenty-eight, four years younger than she was.
3. Roderick Lankler, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992.
4. Shad Polier, memo to Barney Rosset and Fred Jordan, January 24, 1972, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
5. Dr. Ruth Cooper, Psychological Report, June 13, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent quotes from Cooper are from this report.
6. The Rorschach has received much criticism for its diagnostic capacity; many critics have noted that it is not reliable for diagnosis and should never be used in psychiatric settings for that purpose. Its ability to detect psychosis, however, has been a strong point of the Rorschach for many decades, though few psychologists and psychiatrists receive full training on how to administer and score the test now. I received formal training in both the Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception Test while getting a PhD in clinical psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. Though psychologists occasionally use these tests today, most rely on more quantitative and less projective methodologies. As a practicing clinical psychologist, I can attest that projective tests are still sometimes used today to assess psychotic thinking and unconscious desires.
7. Cooper.
8. Harron and Minahan, introduction to I Shot Andy Warhol, xxvi.
9. Sternberg and Mannucci, Psychological Report, Elmhurst Hospital, June 26, 1968. Note also that Valerie had requested that a copy of SCUM Manifesto be sent to Dr. Sternberg. Girodias complied with this request on June 17, 1968, and sent Dr. Sternberg a letter with the SCUM Manifesto included; see Maurice Girodias, letter to Dr. Arthur Sternberg, June 17, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
10. Valerie Solanas Indictment Paperwork Filed by Florynce Kennedy, June 7, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
11. Sternberg and Mannucci, Psychological Report, Elmhurst Hospital, June 12, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
12. Valerie Solanas, letter to Maurice Girodias, June 1968 (exact date illegible), Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
13. Bender, “Valeria Solanis,” 52.
14. Bockris, Life and Death of Andy Warhol, 2003 edition, 307.
15. Don Engel, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992.
16. This also suggests that Girodias may have wanted the publicity arising from the shooting and that he himself circulated the rumor that Valerie first wanted to shoot him but ultimately decided on Andy Warhol.
17. Coutros, “Offbeat Artist/Producer.”
18. Valerie Solanas, as quoted in Wilda Holt, letter to Ti-Grace Atkinson, undated, Ti-Grace Atkinson personal collection, Cambridge, MA.
19. Valerie Solanas, letter to Maurice Girodias, June 7, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY. Further dates of letters, all in this collection, appear in the text.
20. Maurice Girodias, letter to Valerie Solanas, July 26, 1968; August 2, 1968; July 9, 1968, Mary Harron personal col
lection, Brooklyn, NY.
21. Maurice Girodias, letter to attorneys Shriver and Brooke, October 30, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
22. Valerie Solanas, letter to Maurice Girodias, undated (likely April or May 1968), Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
23. Maurice Girodias, letter to Woodrow A. Shriver, October 25, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.
24. Vivian Gornick, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992.
25. LeGear, letter to Girodias, December 1, 1968.
26. Valerie Solanas, letter to Maurice Girodias, August 25, 1968, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY. Several documents described Valerie’s distaste for the periods in the abbreviation S.C.U.M. that Girodias had used in the title. LeGear wrote, “She also objects to the periods of abbreviation in the title. She is a true writer in all this, but every detail in the Manifesto has its reason, its meaning—and therefore its effect on the content. Valerie is as careful a thinker as a writer.” LeGear, letter to Girodias, December 1, 1968. “Auntie Wahoo” is a name Valerie used for Andy in her letters; for example, a letter of May 8, 1969, is addressed “Auntie Wahoo, 1342 Lexington Ave, NYC 10028” (Andy Warhol Museum Archive, Pittsburgh, PA).
27. LeGear, letter to Girodias, December 1, 1968. This same letter indicates that Valerie believed that Girodias may have sensed the power of her words as “the seed, if not the fruition, of a new order. Yeats’ ‘beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born,’ the 21st century, two thousand years of a new, a really new order.”
28. LeGear, letter to Girodias, December 1, 1968.
29. See Harron and Minahan, introduction to I Shot Andy Warhol, xxvii.
30. Maurice Girodias, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992.
31. Iris Owens, interview by Mary Harron, New York, circa 1992.
32. Maurice Girodias, letter to Valerie Solanas, January 7, 1969, Mary Harron personal collection, Brooklyn, NY.