Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29066 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-07-10
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Synopsis
Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO) transports New York to a pre-feminist, late 1960s, Andy Warhol art scene in this stylistically inflammatory flick that harkens back to such films as BORN IN FLAMES. Lili Taylor plays the angry Valerie Solanas with a vengeance that just won't quit. Solanas is mad. She's a manic spitfire, has hell to raise, and is armed with the SCUM MANIFESTO. Encouraged by Warhol's queerly noncommittal attitude, Solanas is convinced he will produce her play UP YOUR ASS. Between writing and turning tricks at the Chelsea Hotel, she meets Maurice Girodias, famous publisher of writers like William S. Burroughs, Jean Genet and Pauline Reage. Intrigued by her subversive quality, he signs a contract with her for the completion of two novels. When Solanas realises she's signed the rights over to Girodias, she begins to unravel and sets out on a paranoid mission to stop him and Warhol from controlling her life. Harron's film is a manifesto. Stylistically adventurous, this indie romp is a smart and sassy feminist critique of Andy Warhol's Factory scene. Unlike other films that glamorise it (THE DOORS, BASQUIAT), I SHOT ANDY WARHOL exposes the subtle misogyny that is just barely veiled under all the glamour.

Customer Reviews

Some good performances, but it could have been more adventurous
The film's title is self-explanatory: this is the story of militant lesbian feminist Valerie Solanas' violent attack on the pope of pop art, Andy Warhol, on June 3, 1968. It was partly the forthrightness of the title that so enraged Lou Reed, a friend of Warhol's in the 1960s and lead singer of the Warhol-produced Velvet Underground: "How would people feel about a film titled 'I Shot John Lennon?'". Unsurprisingly Reed refused cooperation, but ex-Velvet John Cale agreed to compose the original score and famous Factory cohort Billy Name served as a dramatic consultant (Billy was also responsible for the original Factory being decorated in silver foil; the replica here, complete with weirdly-shaped silver balloons, looks utterly convincing).

Lili Taylor's performance as Valerie has garnered a host of very complimentary reviews as well as a Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It is certainly an authentic portrayal (as is Stephen Dorff's performance as the transvestite Candy). Another Amazon reviewer has complained that Solanas is irritating because of her fast-talking, misandrist manner, but that is surely intentional: she is after all an anti-heroine and director Mary Harron (who interviewed Warhol herself in 1980) is unlikely to have wanted to give a more sympathetic account than was necessary. Personally, I think the film doesn't go far enough on this score: Solanas was clearly an extremely dangerous woman, so obsessed with Warhol that she even spray-painted the bullets silver, regarded him as a vampire and referred to the shooting three years after the event as "a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed. I should have done target practice". Director Harron could also have made more of the fact that although Solanas was man-hating - she wrote in her SCUM manifesto that "the male is, by his very nature, a leech, an emotional parasite and, therefore, not ethically entitled to live" - she was nevertheless depending on two men to make her famous!

Another point on which the film falters is, for me, Jared Harris' portrayal of the famous pop artist. Warhol was a neurotically tense and severely emotionally repressed individual if you read his diaries or watch his occasional television appearances; Harris' body language is sometimes far too relaxed to convince us that he is Warhol. Having seen Factory Girl, I would say that Guy Pearce really nails him - his portrayal is more accurate and also more entertaining. (David Bowie also took a turn as the pop-artist in the film Basquiat, wearing the silver wig that Warhol had bequeathed him).

Harron's film would also seem to follow an oddly formulaic format for a biopic of two very unconventional personalities. The narrative sequence is predictable, starting with the blood-stricken Andy lying on the floor and then darting back to Solanas' original introduction to the Factory scene and following the narrative chronologically through until the usual short descriptions appear before the credits roll, telling us what happened to the main characters after Warhol recovered. If this is an independent film and the subject matter is supposedly so controversial, why does it feel conventional and even a little bit bland?

A true story about a 1960s feminist
The story of feminist writer Valerie Jean Solanas who shot American artist, filmmaker, writer and general social figure Andy Worhol, is brought to life by director Mary Harron (American Psycho) and actor Lili Taylor (High Fidelity, Six feet Under.)

In the 1960s Solanas wrote what she called "SCUM" manifesto which preached hatred toward men. As her feminist ideals began to blur with mental instability Solanas started to suspect those around her of conspiring to cheat her which eventually lead to her shooting Andy Warhol.

The film follows Solanas from an early age through to her confinement for the crime which perversely gave her manifesto the fame it required to become a feminist classic.

I have to admit that I found the film somewhat tedious with Solanas being such an irritating character that I really didn't care for her plight. Of course when you try to produce a film based on a true story you're somewhat limited but I felt Solanas could have been played with a little more sympathy and a little less brash arrogance. Nevertheless it's a must for anyone interested in the history of feminist literature.