DAVID DALTON: “The vulgarians, as if lifting up the lid of a dayglo Hell, had exposed the Albino king and his weird court to the light of day and quite suddenly the velvet underground of New York’s gay, speed freak nightworld was all the rage… Like alligators in the sewers, New Yorkers prided themselves on breeding oddities and eccentrics… The world had turned upside down overnight, the result of unprecedented sunspot activity, the Age of Aquarius, too much fluoride in the water supply, extraterrestrials – whatever the case suddenly freaks were the new aristocracy. Spectrally thin, with alien bodies, they lived on powders and synthetic potions…. To pass the time they dance, gossip, talk on the phone, and perform in absurdist dramas, which only serve to reenact their alienated situation.”
TONY SCHERMAN: “Andy’s alternative to the old, crumbling Hollywood empire might have been called Factory Films, if it had ever taken itself that seriously. It was to be Andy’s idealized – and mock – Hollywood, not the industry as it existed in 1965 (which he knew to be at a creative low ebb) but a parody of the Tinseltown of old, where moguls ruled over indentured, glamorous stars: the dreamland for thirties and forties America in general and for gay men of Warhol’s generation in particular. This new movie factory, with its own stable of players and its own new style of glamor, would mix adoration and ridicule, simultaneously parodying and paying tribute to the real, vanished thing. In place of the Hollywood model, he would create a new psychological cinema that would examine the personalities of his eccentric crowd with mantislike obsession. The studio system masked the flawed psyches of its stars with illusion, plot, and glossy production values, but Andy intended to do just the opposite. This might seem a perverse ambition for someone who worshipped the old stars of Hollywood – Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe – on bended knee; his home at 1342 Lexington Avenue was a shrine to Hollywood stars, from the great divas like Garbo to frothy starlets and vacuous dreamboats like Tab Hunter, with breathless fan magazines littering the floor with the lives and loves of debased saints. But like almost everything Andy felt deeply about, it was a love-hate relationship. He idolized Hollywood stars but thought the plots kitsch and the dialogue corny. Both, in Andy’s peculiar approach, were unnecessary, because all you needed to see was the star as she was. His films would ruthlessly expose the neurotic behavior of his superstars. No need to pretend you were a Russian empress or the scheming wife of a railroad baron… Just as Andy had envisioned, a new crop of beautiful freaks were about to appear onstage, ready for their close-ups.”
JOHN WILCOCK: “In those days, the mid 60s, Andy was churning out films at a tremendous rate, often a reel a day (each reel being a complete movie) and I tried to be around as much as possible. One of the peculiarities of the Warhol clan, however, was their extreme reluctance to commit themselves to anything, and so it was necessary to constantly check in for the schedule. Most of the movies were being made at the Factory, but whenever someone could arrange for the loan of a penthouse or other exotic location, the entire menage would assemble, filling elegant Park Avenue homes with a tangle of wires, sound systems, floodlights and would-be superstars of indeterminate sex in flamboyant clothes (all of whom would lay waste to the contents of any bathroom closet like a swarm of locusts). Any apartment swept by the tidal wave of Andy Warhol Films Inc. was changed forever.”
SAM GREEN: “It was terrific, and it was kind of like we were all social climbing together – not social climbing, but social exploring – and the point of doing the movie was really to get into people’s apartments, to get to know all these rich people who wanted to have their lives immortalized in a movie. It was all done in New York. Andy would call up and he would say, ‘Oh, I want to do a bathroom movie. Do you know somebody with a fabulous bathroom with a terrific view? Oh, and it should have gold fixtures in the bathtub, and it would be so terrific…’ I would phone up this woman on Sutton Place and say, ‘Listen, there’s this madman named Andy Warhol who’s got all these funny characters around him, and they’re making this movie and it’s just going to be ridiculous, and if you’d like to be in a movie, could we come up Saturday and use your bathroom?’ Then this whole group of people arrived, someone with the cameras and Gerard Malanga with the whips and Baby Jane with her hairdresser, and she wouldn’t open the door until Andy put a painting through the door. I would really call it social climbing because Andy would say, ‘Oh Sam, do you think you could arrange for us to go social climbing?’ And I would say, ‘Like what?’ And he would say, ‘Oh, you know so many people with terrific houses and with lots of servants, and we could come down for the weekend and do a movie in the stables and maybe Baby Jane can fuck with the horse.’”
ULTRA VIOLET: “Making a film for Andy is very glorious for a person because it gives you a chance to find out who you are or who you want to be. When you see the rushes, you can see yourself without any direction or put-on, so it’s really you, and it gives you a chance to find your own identity, and I think it’s just fantastic. He doesn’t mess you up. In Hollywood you have to learn lines, you have to say them in a certain manner; it’s such a put-on. It’s just the total opposite. It’s wide open to reality; it’s a search of a really great reality with no magnification and no sensation.”
PAUL MORRISSEY: “Most of our audiences… are degenerates, looking for sex and filth… Degenerates are not such a great audience, but they’re a step up from the art crowd. We would always rather play a sexploitation theatre than an art theatre.”
DONALD LYONS: “Andy made movies with a contempt for the audience, but his love of film was real. He was determined to have a film studio, but he couldn’t, because of what a movie is – a narrative movie, at least. Hollywood was a church we’d all grown up on. That’s why his movies were so exciting to us.”
STERLING MORRISON: "Dylan was always around, giving Nico songs. There was one film Andy [Warhol] made with Paul Caruso called The Bob Dylan Story. I don't think Andy has ever shown it. It was hysterical. They got Marlowe Dupont to play Al Grossman. Paul Caruso not only looks like Bob Dylan but as a super caricature he makes even Hendrix look pale by comparison. This was around 1966 when the film was made and his hair was way out here. When he was walking down the street you had to step out of his way. On the eve of the filming, Paul had a change of heart and got his hair cut off - close to his head and he must have removed about a foot so everyone was upset about that. Then Dylan had his accident and that was why the film was never shown."
PAUL MORRISSEY: “Who gives a shit about acting? I’ve seen enough acting for ten lifetimes. What interests me is when I see a personality emerge. Without that, the acting is worthless.”
ULTRA VIOLET: “Anyone who appears in a movie is automatically a Star. Make two movies and you are a Superstar.”
JOHN WILCOCK: “The strangest thing was that he almost never seemed to be doing anything other than standing there watching other people produce. Yet he had this incredible capacity to make people produce, although of course when you’re standing scriptless in front of a camera that grinds inexorably away, it emanates a pressure all of its own to say or do something. But it always seemed that Andy was the eye of the storm, the calm center around which everything else raged and roared while he retained absolute equanimity.”
JONAS MEKAS: “The terror and desperation of ‘Chelsea Girls’ is a holy terror… it’s our godless civilization approaching zero point. It’s not homosexuality, it’s not lesbianism, it’s not heterosexuality: the terror and hardness we see in ‘Chelsea Girls’ is the same terror and hardness that is burning Vietnam and it’s the essence and blood of our culture, of our ways of living: this is the Great Society.”
PAUL MORRISSEY: “The opening scene of ‘The Chelsea Girls,’ nothing more than Nico combing her hair, will last when all the druggy rhetoric is forgotten.”
BRIGID BERLIN: “I was stoned out of my…You see, at that time, when I did that movie and I was living in the Chelsea, when I was in with Rod La Rod and all of those people… Andy walked in my room to do ‘Chelsea Girls,’ and Donny, the hairdresser, was setting my hair. I looked like a 700 pound canary. I had these fantastic gold chains that I had collected. They were stolen from me right after that movie was shot. I could see them in the movie and that was it… I did that thing at the time of ‘Chelsea Girls,’ and now I don’t talk about it with other people. I’m not proud to say I take fifty shots of amphetamine a day. I mean, I don’t now, but I used to make it all up and say it, because I was proud of it. I used to love to give it to other people. Now, I would never give another person amphetamine, because I think that is complete self-destruction and the cruelest and the meanest thing that a human being can do. I could kill the doctor who did it to me.”
RONALD TAVEL: “When I came back, the scripts were even sparser, and there was no one taking them seriously except Mary Woronov. She was so serious. She memorized not only her part, but also everybody’s part. She spoke everyone’s part because she knew that they weren’t going to do it. It’s one of the striking things in the film.”
MARY WORONOV: “I saw a movie that I did for Warhol. It’s about Jack Kennedy getting killed, and I play Jack. I could have been brilliant. It was done on a couch instead of a car. And Ivy Nicholson is Jackie. I have to hand it to her, mad as she is, she crawled across the top of the couch like Jackie crawled across the car. I played Jack Kennedy and I had nothing to say! Why didn’t I discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis? Ondine was trying to keep the boat afloat. But because I was so gone on amphetamine, I was just sitting there going, ‘Power, power…’”
ULTRA VIOLET: “I am around for most of the filming, and at the first showing I position myself at the theater exit to gather comments from viewers. These run the full gamut, from ‘a grand epic of the underground’ to ‘a paroxysm of disintegration,’ with such in-between opinions as ‘fat, disgusting lesbianism,’ ‘quel ennui,’ ‘elegant,’ ‘nasty mockery,’ ‘only a fool will sit through it,’ ‘degrading,’ ‘very hip,’ and ‘Warhol should be locked up.’ After he sees it with a real audience in a real movie house, I ask Andy his impression. He says, ‘People are so fantastic – you just can’t make a bad movie.’”
HENRY GELDZAHLER: “Andy’s films, especially films like ‘Chelsea Girls,’ are visions of hell, and he is a moralist, and he’s not approving. He’s standing outside and saying, ‘My God, this is what it’s all about.’ He’s not really making a judgment on us, but he’s pointing to it.”
ONDINE: “The whole Catholic Church is gone and Greenwich Village is in its place. My flock consists of homosexuals, perverts of any kind, thieves, criminals of any sort – the rejected of society, that’s who I’m Pope for.”
JOHN WILCOCK: “If the camera is on, as long as camera film is grinding away relentlessly, and you’re there being filmed, you are pressured to act. So a lot of action started by being physical. I mean, people would throw drinks at each other and stuff like that. Ondine was very provocative and angry and insulting to people, so one of the most dramatic things in ‘Chelsea Girls’ is Ondine, who hates most chicks anyway, putting down this girl Rona Page and telling her what a stupid little bitch she is and really getting angry at her and hitting her, so Rona goes off in tears. Andy relentlessly grinds away, and here’s a piece of real life in front of the camera.”
STEPHEN KOCH: “He wanted some action. Ondine was a totally histrionic flamboyant creature, and as far as he was concerned, this thing was either going to be interesting or not and it was up to him to do something about it.”
ONDINE: “’Chelsea Girls’ wasn’t funny. It was the most horrible movie ever made. I mean, everyone’s worst fears were suddenly realized and thrown up there… It’s an absolute solemn black mass.”
NICO: “I cannot say which was the best for me. I cry all the way through ‘The Chelsea Girls’ and I laugh all the way through ‘La Dolce Vita.’ I think that is the only difference.”
NICO: “Did you notice that it does not have a title of one word? Andy’s films had simple titles. They were simple words and they were elementary subjects. I thought the film would be special because it had a special title. It is a complicated film; it is like a labyrinth, like the Chelsea Hotel is. But it is like a complicated photograph of Andy. He is looking at his friends. A voyeur. And it is like an old theatre, you know? A stage with three walls only, and the camera and Andy presented the final wall. And I am a painting on the wall.”
