I Shot Andy Warhol

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a flashforward to moments after the shooting. This is quickly followed by a scene with Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) in custody for the shooting of Andy Warhol (Jared Harris). The film then takes us back to a time when Valerie is living in New York making a living as a sex worker. A series of further flashbacks point to her difficult childhood, and success in studying psychology at college. Here, Valerie discovers that she is a lesbian, that she can write, and that she has a distinctive view of the world. This leads her to New York City and its downtown underworld. Through her friend Stevie (Martha Plimpton), she meets Candy Darling (Stephen Dorff), who in turn introduces her to Andy Warhol.
Meanwhile, Valerie also meets Maurice Girodias (Lothaire Bluteau), the publisher of Olympia Press. While Valerie wants Warhol to produce her play, Up Your Ass, Girodias wants her to write a pornographic novel for him. Once she signs a contract with Girodias, she comes to suspect his offer is not a generous one and may not be in her interest. She comes to regret signing this contract. At this point, her increasing derangement leads her to believe that Warhol and Girodias are controlling her. The film concludes, where it began, with Solanas' attempted murder of Warhol. The film then steps ten years into the future, where Warhol lives in fear the rest of his life that Valerie will strike again while he continues his life up until his death, and in death Valerie's "pornographic" novel was the SCUM manifesto, which is now regarded as a feminist classic.

Tags: queer

Review:
I Shot Andy Warhol, is based on the true life story of Valerie Solanas, who was a female radical in the 60's and was a lesbian and very against men.
She wrote a play and came to New York, with a friend of hers who is a drag queen named Candy Darling to meet Andy Warhol.
Valerie, gives Andy Warhol's company (called the factor) her play and soon she comes back and talks to Andy about it and Andy gets her to star in a couple of movies that he directs.
But soon Valerie starts to get paranoid and thinks that Andy Warhol, has to much impact on her life and thinks that he and the book publisher are setting her up so she plans to make herself famous by shooting him.
Andy Warhol survived the shooting but died several years later due to complications and Valerie, was sent to a mental hospital and was homeless for quite awhile until she died of pneumonia.
I Shot Andy Warhol, has good direction, a good script, good performances from everybody involved, good original music, good cinematography and good production design.
I Shot Andy Warhol, is a fascinating character study and a very interesting film.
It shows the many different stages in a time of Valerie's life and it is compelling and played very well by Lili Taylor and all of the other actors.
Also being a fan of Andy Warhol, I found the scenes with his factory and underground lifestyles with his films and art to be really interesting as well.
I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) was an interesting movie that I saw on satellite t.v. a few years ago.
The movie was about the lesbian neo-feminist and founder of S.C.U.M. Valerie Solanis (Lili Taylor).
One day Candy suggests to Valerie that she meet with Andy Warhol (Jared Harris).
Jared Harris was perfect as Andy Warhol and Lili Taylor made Valerie Solanis into a tragic person who's life was filled with madness and heartbreak.
This movie is perfect and ideal for those who always wanted to know what happened to Warhol during the late sixties and how his life and attitudes were changed forever.Highly recommended..
Lili Taylor, as I think I've said here before, is one of my favorite actresses, but I have to admit I was hesitant about seeing this film, especially when a friend told me he found it overrated.
Taylor and Jared Harris were fine as Valerie Solanas and Andy Warhol, respectively, but the real surprise for me was Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling.
The Woman's Version of Peeping Tom. If Peeping Tom was directed by a woman, then it would probably resemble Mary Harron's wonderful I Shot Andy Warhol.
What was so great about I Shot Andy Warhol is how it takes a woman who most people would consider a psychopath and it humanizes her.
We see what drives Valerie Solanas to commit her "insane" act of shooting Andy Warhol, and we come to understand why she did what she ended up doing.
In other words, I Shot Andy Warhol successfully gets into the head of "insanity."  After watching this film, I thought of a poem from Emily Dickinson: "Much madness is divinest sense.
Lili Taylor gives a savagely kinetic performance in this representation of a disturbed individual who may just also have been a genius despite, or because of, her treatment at the hands of various men throughout her life.Judging biopics in terms of historical accuracy is for the most part a futile exercise.
The 'so what?' factor is superseded by the fact that this actually happened, and the legacy of Solanas still divides contemporary feminists.As cinema, the film succeeds through the charisma exuded in Taylor's performance.
The female director sets her stall out straight away - what you are hearing now leads through a direct line of cause and effect to the monstrous act you will see committed by Solanas later.If the film has a major flaw, it is the title.
Lili Taylor plays Valerie Solanas, an educated loose cannon, guerrilla female activist and self-described 'bull dyke', who was taken into custody in June 1968 after shooting and wounding Andy Warhol at his New York City office/hangout The Factory.
Good-looking movie investigates a hazy chapter in history, yet leaves some unanswered questions in its wake (I wasn't aware that apparently an assistant was also shot, though the film makes no attempt to explain what happened to him).
Terrific art direction and composition, but the film lags a bit in the narrative department, with Solanas meeting an anti-bourgeois activist which doesn't come to much and has a facetious, puzzling relationship with publisher Maurice Girodias which seems half-baked.
I can think of no other reason why anyone would want to make a film about Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor), the spunky, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, self-centered, lesbian feminist who, in the summer of 1968, shot Andy Warhol (Jared Harris).
and guru of all things avant-garde, who attracted the chic and the trendy to his New York City "Factory", the center of counterculture pop art.In the film Solanas, who harbors an enormous grudge against men, comes across initially as assertive and resourceful.
Costumes, prod design, music, and lighting are all credible.For modern day feminists, "I Shot Andy Warhol" probably is required viewing.
Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor and Jared Harris are all great in this film, particularly Dorff.
Although this film is overlong and often dull, it's still an intriguing look into a feminist gone way over the edge, who directs her wrath upon one of the most polarized artists of the century (you either love Warhol or you despise him, it seems).
People who are neutral towards his "greatness" (like me) or unfamiliar with his work may lose interest in this film; only Lili Taylor's hard-edged performance keeps the somewhat muddled story above water.
And since I've never met anyone who worships the ground Warhol walked on, I can't say as to what those people might think of this film...in its favor, the script is objective towards both Valerie Solanas and Andy.
Lily Taylor was astonishingly good as Valerie in I Shot Andy Warhol.
It's a thoroughly enjoyable fictionalized chronicle of the emergence of the SCUM Manifesto and the events leading up to the shooting of Andy Warhol, by Taylor's character a paranoid schizophrenic, man-hating, lesbian.
I must admit to start that I admired Lili Taylor's performance of Valerie Solanas.
I must confess that I didn't pay too much attention to the counter-culture of the 60's, as I was too busy raising a normal family and earning a normal living, and I also never liked Andy Warhol's art or his films.
Solanas is a trash talking, independent thinker that somehow found herself next to one of the most modern men of our century, Andy Warhol.Lili Taylor helms this unbridled beast Solanas like no actress I have seen before.
Jared Harris is superb as Andy (one of the best reincarnations of him) and Stephen Dorff blazes onto the scene as Candy Darling.
It was a very true story that is more than just Andy Warhol, but also develops themes of feminism and women's rights.
As the title explains, the film tells the story of Andy Warhol, and the girl who shot him.
A bio-pic about Valerie Solanas, a disturbed writer who shot and wounded artist Andy Warhol.This is one of the best films of the 1990s, showing a different side to the often romanticized era of the 1960s.
Based on the true story of Valerie Solanas who was a 60s radical preaching hatred toward men in her "Scum" manifesto.
She wrote a screenplay for a film that she wanted Andy Warhol to produce, but he continued to ignore her.
This is Valerie's story.Dr. Dana Heller, professor of English at the Old Dominion University, argues that the film stages the conflict between Solanas and Warhol as less the result of gender politics – particularly because Solanas intended no connection between her writing and the shooting – than of the decline of print culture as represented by Solanas and the rise of new non-writing media as embodied by Warhol and the Pop art movement.
In the screenplay, Harron and Minahan describe Solanas as "banging at an ancient typewriter" and the film frequently shows her typing, for which she is mocked by Warhol and other Factory regulars.
Solanas' writing is set against the new technologies of reproduction championed by Warhol.The Andy Warhol in this film is nothing compared to the one played by David Bowie in "Basquiat".
The film in general is excellent, though, and Lili Taylor was the perfect person for the role.
Her intelligence and humor and always evident, but for all her strutting arrogance, she conveys an uncertainty and vulnerability that foreshadows what is ultimately a painful and tragic descent into violence and paranoia.The evocation of the late 60's New York underground, and Warhol's Factory in particular, is brilliant, even more so when you consider the low budget and that Andy Warhol's Estate refused to allow any of the artists work to actually be duplicated for the movie.
While the narrative lags in spots and could have benefited with a little tightening in the editing room, I Shot Andy Warhol is still a wonderful testament to the ambitious possibilities of low-budget, independent film-making..
And of course, Lili Taylor plays the idiosyncratic Solanas marvelously.Unfortunately, the focus on the context of the events causes the film to suffer as a narrative.
lili taylor was so great in Household Saints, although the script makes her go a little over the top at the end in this film..
it told of how valerie solanas came to write the SCUM Manifesto and why she shot Andy Warhol, hence the name of the film.
The movie also does an excellent job of portraying the fragmented life and difficult personality of Valerie Solanas convincingly.My only problem with this movie is this: you don't have to be Andy Warhol's biggest fan to think that the fact that Solanas tried to wipe out three people in cold blood (that she only wounded two wasn't for lack of trying) is an at best insufficient reason for turning the lime light on to her.
Making a movie about the Factory scene from Valerie Solanas' perspective is like making a movie about the Beatles as seen through the eyes of Mark Chapman..
Lili Taylor plays Valerie Solanas, a wannabe novelist, that tries to garner fame by shooting Andy Warhol.Taylor does a good job portraying a complicated and highly -disturbed woman.
After seeing a fascinating documentary on Andy Warhol, it has become clear that Marry Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol is a great film.
The film is ultimately a criticism of Andy Warhol's (played masterfully by Jared Harris) cold, chic art world where the only things that matter are money and fame.
Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) wants to build a relationship (a business relationship and, more subtly, a personal relationship) with Andy.
First of all, while I like the way Harris is seen mainly in medium and long shots, giving him Warhol's lack of attainability, the Harron had to give her film that awful docudrama style (I suppose this is better than filming in that hyped-up, over-the-top style that young filmmakers like David Fincher are into).
I Shot Andy WarholBefore I saw this film, I never knew Lili could be so, loud.
Solanas, an impassioned political rhetorician and aspiring playwright, shot Warhol because "he had too much control over my life"--an oft-quoted sign of Valerie's nuttiness that the movie demonstrates was a statement of fact.
As it follows Valerie from panhandling to prostitution, to hunching over a manual typewriter with a Henry Miller squint, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL seems to want to have it every which way.
But the movie has funny, well-observed moments: the climax being a cut from Valerie and her cronies performing her demented play UP YOUR ASS at the counter of an automat, to Warhol and his cronies reading the same inflammatory dialogue on a couch at the Factory.
Lili Taylor gives the performance of her career as the deranged Valerie Solanas, writer, activist, visionary, and would be assassin.
'I Shot Andy Warhol' is first class all the way.
'I Shot Andy Warhol' is to date the best movie made about The Factory scene, and is a stylish, witty, bleak and thought provoking study of Obsession and Art. I hope Mary Harron makes another movie as good as this in the future..
Lili Taylor delivered a great performance, but that doesn't save this film.
This time it's the true story of the mentally disabled woman who shot pop artist Andy Warhol.
What makes Valerie Solanas somone you want to know?I'm sick of seeing movies about the effects of child abuse.
I don't even know the true story behind Solanas, but if people say "Taylor made a brilliant portrayal" than this is not a person I ever wanted to know.
One of the reasons it's so difficult to evaluate this movie is that it's hard to tell exactly how much of herself Lili Taylor is putting into the role of Valerie Solanas, the author of S.C.U.M. Manifesto and some kind of play called Up Your ***.
Here, her performance is outstanding but the part is again limited by the fact that, when you come right down to it, Valerie Solanas is not a particularly likable person, despite occasional flashes of wit, perhaps uninentional on her part, written into the script.
On 1968, Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) shots Andy Warhol (Jared Harris) and turns herself in to the police.
Valerie Jean Solanas (born 1936, died 1988), Wikipedia reads, was an American radical feminist writer best known for the "SCUM Manifesto" and as the would-be murderer of pop artist Andy Warhol.
Anything written about Solanas, understandably, makes her sound like a lunatic on the move — that's why 1996's "I Shot Andy Warhol" is such an impactful film.
"I Shot Andy Warhol" is so much more than a true crime story set to the screen; it's more comparable to a brilliant character study that just so happens to be based on true events.
Astonishing is the way "I Shot Andy Warhol" makes the situation feel as though it is happening before our very eyes.
He's polite to Solanas, never turning her down like he should, but is it because he's nice or because she acts as a distraction to his unhealthy habit of consuming himself with the other?"I Shot Andy Warhol" is gigantically effective; it tells a story coercive even to the most casual of a viewer while also authentically investing in the neuroses of the real figures it brings to the celluloid..
I read in Andy Warhol's biography that he was so repressed that he attracted unstable, outwardly angry people like this to himself all the time.
I had never heard of Valerie Solanas before seeing "I Shot Andy Warhol", but the movie does a very good job telling the story.
Lili Taylor does a really good job showing what sort of person Solanas was.
The movie doesn't try to deify Solanas in any way, it shows what kind of world she came from, and that she tried to make a new life for herself.
Although 'I shot Andy Warhol' might not be everyone's cup of tea, it is a nice, slick film that grabs the viewers' attention right from the start.
It is however Lily Taylor's performance that makes the movie.
Otherwise, 'Andy Warhol' is an intriguing drop into the world of one woman's insanity and it's resulting effects..
The movie without doubt was great, but why do they call Andy Warhol a genius, did he invent something or discover something outstanding?
Or did the director of the movie take some liberties to show the frame of her mind when she shot Andy Warhol?.
A Warhol film is being shot in The Factory, but we learn that Andy won't be around today.
It is the story of Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist lesbian in the 60's who writes her revolutionary manifesto that attempts to rid the world of the male species.
Her hatred for men is text book, sexually abused as a child, forced into prostitution to support herself, that would lead any woman to lesbianism.So, here we have this man hating butch dike played to perfection by Lily Taylor, although since I have never seen Solanas (and I'm sure either had Taylor) I'm not sure if it was true to her, or just Taylor's own wild imaginings of what this woman must have been like.
"I Shot My Load Right Into Andy Warhol's Apathetic Face".As for Valerie S., this woman clearly could not have had a high level of intelligence, while the opposite has been suggested here, rather groundlessly.
A movie about Valerie Solanas, 1960s radical feminist who worked with the pop artist Andy Warhol and - you guessed it - tried to kill him.
The story of Valerie Solanas who as the title indicates was responsible for shooting pop artist Andy Warhol.
I've never seen anything with the real Valerie Solanas in it (nor did I know anything about her until I recently saw Zbynek Brynych's 'Die Weibchen', based on the S.C.U.M. Manifesto), but Taylor does a fine performance, as does pretty much everyone else in the cast.I found this to be an interesting film; Solanas is an intriguing person whose personality was uncontrollable, not in the least by herself.
Had her Manifesto been published straight away and appreciated for the absurd piece of feminist work it has come to be, maybe things could have taken a different turn for her - though I wouldn't dare to feel certain about that, seeing as much of the publicity (probably) came with her attempting to kill Warhol ánd her mental problems may have been too severe anyway...Back to the film, for a minute: I really liked it, being a fairly straight-forward telling of Solanas' life, mostly focusing on (about) a few years up until she shot Warhol.