Ciao Edie

I've been reading and watching a lot about Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and The Factory lately, in preparation for my upcoming "Pop Goes the Sixties" film program, including Warhol's book POPism, the Jean Stein/George Plimpton oral history Edie: An American Biography and documentaries by Ric Burns (Andy Warhol for PBS' "American Masters" series) and Bruce Torbet (who made the ultra-rare 1967 short Superartist, Andy Warhol and whose seminal Factory footage circa 1965-1966 turns up in Ric Burns' doc as well).

But nothing captures the essence of Edie - who died of a drug overdose when she was 28 on November 15, 1971 - like the Ciao Manhattan Tapes, a 7-minute compilation of her thoughts and footage taken from John Palmer and David Weisman's Caio! Manhattan (1972). Made during the last two years of her life, it shows Edie ready to tell her story in a way Warhol was unable to in his experimental films. In 1970, Sedgwick was released from a psychiatric hospital under the live-in care of filmmaker John Palmer, who encourgaed her to record these audio tapes reflecting upon her life story and which enabled Palmer and Weisman to incorporate her actual reality into the film's dramatic arc. Anyway, here it is, so you don't have to plod through the entire loopy Ciao! Manhattan movie. As one YouTube viewer commented, "What a star -she does have a great voice- there's nothing like classy drug addict." Yes, indeed.


The Ciao Manhattan Tapes (6:47)


And here's a spoof of Warhol, The Factory, Nico and the Velvet Underground by Ab Fab-bers Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in a pseudo-BBC documentary. Paul Morrissey has called this "the most accurate portrait ever made" of the Factory scene.

Andy Warhol Factory Spoof (10:16)


Oh, and here's the trailer for the Sienna Miller biopic Factory Girl, which I haven't seen.

Factory Girl Trailer (2:13)