I Shot Andy Warhol

On 1968, Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor) shots Andy Warhol (Jared Harris) and turns herself in to the police. Her reason lies in her anti-male Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) manifesto. She was molested as a child. She attended University of Maryland from 1954 to 58 where she developed her theory of the superiority of women. She prostituted herself and became a lesbian. Homeless in 1966 NYC, Valerie and friend Stevie (Martha Plimpton) meet transvestite Candy (Stephen Dorff). Candy is invited to Warhol's Factory. Valerie tags along hoping to get Warhol produce her play. Valerie meets avant-garde publisher Maurice Girodias while doing her aggressive panhandling.

Lili Taylor is absolutely amazing. However Valerie's aggressively grating character makes it difficult to fully embrace this movie. There is no real tension. The ending is already shown. It's basically an one-woman show. It goes a long way but for me, it doesn't go far enough for greatness. It's one note played over and over again.

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). She's an aspiring writer who's trying to fit in the mid sixties lifestyle of New York City. Valerie lives with her sometimes lover (Martha Plimpton) and co-worker. The two turn tricks, roll certain customers and hang out with a transvestite named Candy Darling (Stephen Dorff). One day Candy suggests to Valerie that she meet with Andy Warhol (Jared Harris). The rest is history. Michael Imperioli co-stars as a very catty Ondine, Tahnee Welch guest stars as Viva and Donovan Leitch appears as Gerald Malanga.

If you want to see how Warhol's "Factory" and it's atmosphere then this is the movie you want to see. 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. I was also impressed with Stephen Dorff, I never knew how great of an actor he has become. 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.

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. Soon, Valerie gets a place and meets a publisher who inspires her to write a novel about her revolution and he plans to publish it. 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. Her book SCUM Manifesto, is now published all over the world. Winner of the award for Best Art Direction at The Gijon International Film Festival, The Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actress (Lili Taylor, who plays Valerie Solanas) at The Seattle International Film Festival, The Best Actress Award at The Stockholm Film Festival and the special recognition for Lili Taylor at The Sundance Film Festival. 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. This film shows a lot of different lifestyles and gives these characters interesting personalities and gives them good character development. The film is also a good looking film and looks like it probably would have back then. A very entertaining and fascinating look at an interesting person who you might not know of and of someone you do know of.

Lily Taylor was astonishingly good as Valerie in I Shot Andy Warhol. She's a versatile and entertaining actress who certainly does not get enough credit. Stephen Dorf as a transvestite... who knew? But he was also incredibly good. The entire cast does a fantastic job. 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. What could be more entertaining than that?

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. There is no 'truth', only interpretation, but if you want to get closer to the facts you really should be in the library, not the movie theatre. The story of Valerie Solanas is especially vexing in this case, because were this a work of complete fiction, the script would never have been made. 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. Her descent into madness is sudden, vicious and uncompromising. The depiction of the shooting, the moment the film has been leading up to, shows a human being divorced absolutely from her conscience. The groovy scene around Warhol's the Factory is both decadent and, viewed from the 21st century, slightly twee. The pastiche of Sixties nostalgia is less foregrounded than Solanas's brutal victimhood. The film begins with a reading of her psychiatric evaluation, where a litany of unpunished crimes inflicted upon this woman by various men is laid out. 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. Audiences could be mistaken for thinking it is about a documentarian of Warhol's life and work. Solanas and her SCUM manifesto, for better or worse, have made their mark, and perhaps 'Solanas' would have been a more fitting (if less marketable) title. Did it take the shooting for that to be the case? A polemical moment in recent history relayed straightforwardly, this is competent, entertaining, edifying cinema.