Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

Although I'm not sure how many stars to rate the 1990 documentary "Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol," written(?), produced, directed, and (most importantl!) edited by Chuck Workman (The Source), it's easier to evaluate the movie than to evaluate its subject. Born Andrew Warhola on 6 August 1928 in  Forest City, Pennsylvania (near Scranton) from Slovakian immigrant parents, the future artist/entrepreneur grew up in a mostly Slavic working-class area of Pittsburgh. He graduated from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945 and from  what was then Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in 1949.

With his Carnegie Tech friend Philip Pearlstein, who speaks at some length in the documentary, he moved to New York and almost immediately succeeded as a commercial artist for Glamour. He began painting newspaper cartoon figures around 1960 and the (in)famous multiple Campbell's soup cans. "Pop" art as exemplified by Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein (also speaking twice in the documentary) and packaged by Sidney Janis (ditto) in his New York gallery.

In 1965 Warhol announced his retirement from painting and began making movies in what came to be called "The Factory" (at 33 Union Square West) with "superstars" such as Viva and Ultra Violet(both of whom pop up three times), Joe Dallesandro (all but unseen in the documentary) and Candy Darling (who predeceased Warhol and shows up in an archival interview from an opening and in stills). The movies were mostly directed by Paul Morissey, though Candy Darling insisted on Warhol directing scenes with her. Warhol also produced the first Velvet Underground album.

Even more ghostlike after surviving the shooting by Valerie Solaris in 1968, Warhol appeared at every remotely fashionable opening in New York, and helped make Studio 54 the most fashionable disco (though I got in without any problem). Having survived a gunshot that affected seven internal organs, Warhol died on 22 February 1987 following what should have been routine surgery to remove his gall bladder.

Other than beginning with the shock of his death (how can a ghost die?), the documentary is pretty much chronological. The comments of family members at a bucolic family reunion are pretty dull, but establish that his roots were ordinary rather than eccentric.

The documentary also established beyond any doubt that Warhol could draw. Beyond that, he had some ability to recognize talent (I'd include at least Viva with Lou Reed, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring) and to pick up ideas (I don't remember who in the movie says he was like a blotter.) Warhol can't have been as much a dullard as he seemed in interviews in which he expanded not at all on yes or no answers. ("Don't know" was a frequent, nominally longer answer to questions than those two monosyllables.)

Warhol delegated a lot -- making the silk screens, directing the movies, providing content for Interview (though he took an interest in securing advertisers). His paintings of consumer goods, celebrities, and automobile crash sites have been accepted as art. Workman does not include anyone challenging that acceptance. David Hockney delivers the backhanded compliment that Warhol's art looks as good in reproductions as the originals do. (Most began with reproductions of photos or labels, so what's on a magazine or book page is a reproduction of a reproduction that was tinted with an overlay of paint.) Fran Lebowitz expounds on his broadening the category "celebrity": "making fame more famous" in her formulation. (A project she has continued, I'd say.)

We do learn that after initial misgivings, Campbell's executives decided Warhol's soupcan paintings were a tribute to the iconicity of their product, so good for business.

There is speculation about whether Warhol had sex. He liked to look at masculine bodies and maybe point cameras, but no one alive seems to know what (or with whom) he did.

The background music ("Last Dance" goes on the longest) is predictable, though apt. Insights are minimal. Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, and others are more bemused than insightful about the man behind the mask of the bewigged ghost. Well, there is a consensus that he loved money and hated to spend any of it, but how he was able to become not just a celebrity but a celebrity-maker remains mysterious.

Warhol always said there was nothing behind the surfaces of his art. Workman has no thesis, no answer to the question "What made Andy tick?" The DVD has a commentary track, so Workman may provide more answers there, though I sort of doubt it.

©  2009, Stephen O. Murray

Also see my review of "Who the F__k is Jackson Pollack?"

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: VHS