The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022) s01e02 Episode Script
Shadows: Andy & Jed
1
Okay, the fire.
I got up in the morning and I thought I smelled a wood-burning fireplace.
I went upstairs and there was no fireplace going.
And I still smelled burning.
So, I went up to the room on the fourth floor, where two kids have been working restoring furniture for Jed's decorating business.
I opened the door.
There was a drop cloth all over the room with a big burn hole about ten inches across in it.
There were open cans of turpentine around.
The windows were closed, and the heat was on.
My biggest fear had happened.
I mean, it was like The Exorcist.
I'm going to have a cross blessed and put it up there.
I was absolutely shaking.
Then we spent the whole morning cleaning up.
I just don't know what started it.
And I don't know what stopped it.
And when I looked at where the fire had been, right in the center of the room, it was like an omen to show what would happen.
I was so angry.
Remember when Tom Tryon used to live across the street and I would watch him in his window writing? Now I'm living a nightmare like one of his stories.
The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around.
You can't be on your own.
But then the best love story is just two love birds in a cage.
There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy They say he wandered very far Very far Over land and sea A little shy And sad of eye But very wise Was he The greatest thing You'll ever learn Is just to love And be loved In return After Andy was shot, Andy was frightened that somebody would again try to assassinate him.
So the 1960s Factory couldn't be repeated.
So, Interview Magazine was the platform where he could go to Studio 54, he could go to parties, he could go to the White House.
So, Interview became the new version of the Factory.
Interview Magazine was a subsidiary of Andy Warhol Enterprises.
He had Interview Magazine.
He had his portraits.
He had the commercial branding, films that he did.
It was Andy's business empire.
That's a lot for an artist to do.
It was a complicated operation.
That's why there was a Bob Colacello.
Bob was editor-in-chief of Interview Magazine.
People have such a fascination with the little tiny details of what other people do, what they eat, what they drink, and what they wear.
And I suppose that if you keep a record of all those details, of all that trivia long enough, which is what everything Andy does is in a sense, it does add up to a total picture of our time.
That's why there was a Fred Hughes.
Fred Hughes was Andy's exclusive business manager.
You could say a diamond in the rough, and he polished up really well.
He created his own style.
He created his own kind of affectations.
He was just a brilliant promoter, salesman, confidant.
She's as famous as the Maja of Goya because Andy did her portrait.
That's why there was a Vincent Fremont.
I was vice president of Andy Warhol Enterprises.
You start from the bottom.
I swept floors like Jed used to do.
I answered phones, I took film cans up to the labs.
Andy was very loyal, and we became great friends.
But again, Andy's loyalty to friends is something not to disregard.
It was really important.
I was the only one trusted with the money.
Business art is the step that comes after art.
I started as a commercial artist and I want to finish as a business artist.
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.
Early on when I met him, he was already an iconic figure.
To make yourself into a product, it sounds a little nasty, but, I mean, in a positive way.
And that's really quite prevalent now.
The person becomes a brand, and you can give Warhol a lot of credit or blame for that.
During the hippie era people put down the idea of business.
They'd say, "Money is bad and working is bad.
" But making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art.
He made all these proclamations about business as art, but there's a way in which he believed that firmly and there's a way in which he was satirizing something.
That kind of split is typical of his personality.
I'm a commercial person.
- Why? - Well, I got a lot of mouths to feed.
Got to bring home the bacon.
Andy had been rather depleted physically and probably creatively in a way by the shooting and the long recuperation.
Uh no.
It just Well, I work less, I guess.
That's about all.
His art business was kind of limited at that point to commissioned portraits.
If you look at Warhol post shooting, post 1968, it really is like life after death for him.
And I think there's a building up again of his confidence with all of the portraits.
You know, it's more and more portrait painting, and it's almost like he's remembering how to paint again through the portraits.
Andy mentioned this term of "The portrait of society," an accumulation of commissioned portraits, portraits of this sort of new version of royalty.
It's a grand project.
The ABC 20/20 crew was coming to the office to film.
I'm just so scared.
I just think our whole business is going to fall apart after that kind of big network exposure.
By the '70s, his portraits were taking on a new look and commanding huge prices.
$50,000 for a commissioned portrait.
These are paintings commissioned by rich and fashionable people, for Andy Warhol is now America's most sought-after portrait painter.
Money that allowed him to branch out into writing and publishing, primarily a magazine called Interview.
Is this how it's going to look? - The picture will be down here.
- It's bigger? Oh great.
So, uh, did you sell any ads today? You did? It was everybody's job to bring in money.
So, Bob and Fred Hughes excelled in the portrait commissions.
Andy would be like, "Did you pop the question last night?" To any rich lady I encountered or, you know, fashion designer.
"Pop the question" meant "say they should get a portrait done.
" It was to make those people feel they were as much an icon as Marilyn, Liz, or Jackie.
Look, here's how it all works.
You meet rich people.
You hang around with them.
And one night, they've had a few drinks.
And they say, "I'll buy it.
" Then they tell their friends they must have your work.
So, you get your price established.
And that's all you need.
That's all it takes.
Farrah Fawcett, on a recent trip to New York, came to Andy's studio to have her portrait done.
- I wanted to keep my hair kind of messy.
- Oh yeah, your hair's so beautiful.
It is, it's really great.
- We were going to do it straight, but - Oh no, it's great the way it is.
The Polaroid process that was step one of the portraits could go on for an hour as Andy might take 20 rolls of Polaroids.
Warhol portraits begin with a series of Polaroids, snapshots which are blown up, printed on plastic sheets, and turned into silk screens.
Maybe a couple big smiles might yeah.
Even if you didn't have a good angle, he found one.
He found a way to make everyone look good.
After 40 pictures, Andy captured the look he was after.
Two weeks later, the enlargements were back and Andy began to paint, a process which, up until now, he has never shown or talked about.
That's too blue.
It's too blue.
Andy has always worked with assistants, and usually paints two hours a day in the afternoon.
Oh yeah, that's a good color.
You have a little brush? He painted six portraits of me.
He would say, even though other people might be filling in the color, he would choose which color went where and he was very precise.
And if he followed your lip line, he liked you.
But if he made your lipstick go over your lip line, then he didn't like you very much.
It really is pretty.
I have to think about it some more.
It was considered so outrageous that Andy would do commissioned portraits and in interviews say, "Oh, I'm just a traveling society portrait painter.
I just do whatever my hairdresser Fred Hughes tells me to do.
" These are mostly portraits that I did when I traveled a lot.
And so, I sort of feel like I'm an old-fashioned American portrait painter.
These journalists would be outraged and they'd write the stories in this outrageous way.
But that just fed everything.
You know, it just kept the press coming back for more.
Well, they're beautiful, rich, and famous.
That's what it means to me.
The most popular first questions were, "Are you gay?" or "Are you rich?" But he wouldn't come out and say, "Yes, I'm gay.
" I don't think Andy ever pretended he was straight, but Andy certainly didn't talk, as far as I know, about Jed in the press ever, and I don't think Jed did either.
Andy always acted like he was above sex almost.
He would never show the weakness of wanting it or give up his position of power, maybe, to give anyone the possibility of turning him down.
He would say, "Oh, sex is such hard work.
" I mean, he just he deflected personal questions.
Sex is work.
It's more work than - Sex is too hard, too.
- It really is, yeah, it's too hard.
He understood that the thing that celebrity does is it buys you protection in the sense that you're so famous, people stop judging you.
They just want to meet you because you're famous.
Went out on the street with some Interviews.
And I was curious to see if people were still recognizing me all the time from the 20/20 TV show.
But they weren't.
So, this means that TV makes you famous for one day and then it fades.
I must be too weird for TV because it's always the same thing, and it's scary because they use you up.
I think I'm doing okay with the little bit of publicity I get anyway.
I guess he was essentially a confused person, but he found a way to turn his confusion into art that reflected the greater confusion of America as a country.
Worked very late.
I was going to go to the movies, but then it got too late.
Ended up taking the dogs for a long walk with Jed.
Up to 88th Street and back down.
When we came back, Jed's family was there and Mrs.
Johnson thanked me for being so nice to her son and made me blush.
Had a very good time.
Okay, I'll call you back.
Okay, bye.
Let me see the cover again.
Did you bond with Jed as a spouse or significant other? Definitely.
That was sort of where we fit in.
Like, "Who's that?" "Oh, that's Vincent's wife.
" "Oh, that's Andy's boyfriend.
" You know, our husbands worked together.
Or wives or Who's the husband? Who's the wife? I don't know.
But I don't think Andy thought of Jed as his wife in that domestic way because Jed went out and worked.
You know, that was That's still like a '50s idea, you know.
But I think they were very supportive of each other as far as their careers were.
You know, at some point I think Jed couldn't just be the janitor for the Factory.
I mean, he wasn't going to become a painter or something else.
And he wanted a legitimate relationship to the activities of the Factory.
So, he became the editor of a lot of the films.
The early movies were Andy.
But later, Paul Morrissey, they were all his.
I mean, everybody knows Paul directed those movies, but Andy Warhol was the brand, like New Line presents or, you know, Warner Brothers.
Jed had worked with Paul on I guess about five films.
And then they asked that Jed be the director of Bad.
Jed thought that if he did the film that it would bring Andy closer to him because Andy, in a sense, was a filmmaker and then Jed would be a filmmaker, and it would legitimize more and more their relationship.
So, he took this on and it was it was a horrible experience.
Pat Hackett had written Bad.
I think it was too dark for people.
I loved Bad, I found it hilarious.
But Bad was kind of a movie like they were killing dogs, they threw a baby out the window.
I mean, it was stuff that would be more at home in my movies.
All right.
All right! Somehow they allowed it to get an X rating when there was no on-screen violence.
I mean, it's all implied.
That's what I'm going to do to you if you don't shut up.
And it got some good reviews and some bad ones.
The reviews for Bad were bad.
I read the reviews.
It sounds like the censors didn't take out the baby being thrown out of the window.
Stupid people like Frank Rich can write four pages on some nothing movie, but about Bad they just describe what it is and leave it at that.
Don't they know that their job is to say what something means? And, of course, it was a huge flop, and Andy did nothing to resuscitate it, and boom, you know.
Andy had never lost money on a film, I guess.
So when it didn't make money, Andy blamed Jed.
That's when he really started intensely working with his interior design.
In the 70s, Jed found this big grand house that looked like the White House.
When Andy moved into the house with Jed on 66th Street, Jed started to put it together and he had such an eye that he created this incredible home.
What was the inside of the townhouse like? Beautiful.
Andy liked quantity, not the best.
And I think it was Jed who made Andy buy museum quality furniture.
The whole house was beautiful.
But Andy started building this resentment of how much money Jed was spending.
Jed had convinced him that he should stop collecting junk and start collecting real stuff.
So, stop collecting the cookie jars and buy a real piece of furniture.
He had Empire furniture, he had art deco.
Upstairs rooms all stenciled.
Only paintings of other artists.
Andy's bedroom, it was just this beautiful carved bed.
Dark wood and greens.
I mean, it was just really lush.
I think that Andy really loved coming home and Jed being around, and the dogs, and that the house was done up for him.
Like it was a family in a way.
And it was very comfortable for him.
I walked to the office.
Sandy Brant was there with Jed, going over decorating schemes for Peter Brant's office building in Greenwich.
Jed is in the decorating business now.
Jed was really close with Sandy Brant.
That was one of his great friends and she's fabulous.
They'd collect a lot of American antiques, American furniture.
When the wind blows And the rain feels cold With a head full of snow Jed had amazing taste.
He had just incredible taste.
If you could afford it.
The sound of strangers sending He was spending all his time with people like Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent, and Karl Lagerfeld.
Jed did a lot of the decorating work for people like Pierre Bergé.
I am just living to be lying By your side He did this amazing apartment for Mick Jagger.
But I'm just about a moonlight mile He decorated two of our homes.
He would just do things so beautifully.
Luxurious but space, you know.
What he did for us, I never touched it.
It was so perfect.
Jed's decorating business is doing well.
He's billing millions.
On page six in The Post a few days ago, there was a headline that said, "Warhol man does Mick Jagger's apartment.
" And there was an article in The Daily News last Sunday.
They said I was a has-been.
It was funny.
I don't think that Jed looked for famous people.
His clients just happened to come along, partly because of Andy, maybe in the beginning, and then because of the quality of the work that he did.
So, it was always about quality and it was always about being really tasteful.
There's something about life with Jed that is different from other people.
I think that speaks to maybe where Warhol was in his life at that moment, of recovery, and recovery of his own career after the shooting.
In that moment, Warhol's not getting good critical attention for his work from the art world.
For the second time in less than a decade, New York's Whitney Museum has mounted a major exhibition of Warhol's portraits.
I don't consider it a feast of great painting.
It's an interesting promotional event, but I rather looked on Warhol's work that way from the beginning.
I don't think Andy got credit for how great he was.
I think he was consistently insulted in the United States.
When Robert Hughes said his portraits embalmed people in the back of their limos, he pretended like, "I got six pages and four color photos," but it made him really mad.
Warhol's autistic stare was the same for heroes and heroines.
All you learn is that celebrity breeds clones.
Thousands of signs for itself, a series without limit.
The image is less painted than registered.
No nuances, just slips in the silk screen.
It wants you to glance at it like a television screen rather than scan it like a painting.
Warhol is nearly as famous as Picasso, at least on the level of chitchat and gossip.
But Picasso was famous for his energy and masculinity.
Warhol for his passivity and sexlessness.
Robert Hughes was very negative and offensive.
And he had a lot of words that were pretty nasty.
The essential clue to Warhol's character is that he's a Catholic and a homosexual and his whole sensibility has very much to do with camp.
If Warhol was once subversive, and in the early '60s he was, by the end of the '70s he'd relapsed into being another kind of commercial artist, doing Nescafe Society portraits.
A painter without a subject.
A famous artist who loved nothing but banality and sameness.
"I want to be a machine, to print, to repeat.
" And that was the most cunning sort of Dandyism.
When asked to defend himself against his critics, he replied in his typical deadpan way.
Oh, I can't.
They're right.
To think he's just an artist of the '60s and it passed him, that was something he worried about and that has something to do with the art world thinking that artists are disposable and that they're only interesting for a small period of time.
I think that there's a fear that gets put into people.
I got up early.
I talked to Jed's business partner about furniture restoration and about the fights I've been having with Jed.
You know, the idea of a gay man in the mid-'70s developing a relationship that he would live with his entire life was very bizarre.
I mean, I know that they exist, but in general, those relationships were not widely embraced and they were challenging.
We want the freedoms to love, and sometimes even to love a bit in public that belong to the heterosexuals in this country.
When you told Andy two people were getting married, he said, "Oh, is he gay? Is this a cover-up?" I'd say, "No, Andy.
" Because he was so cynical about those things because he couldn't really enjoy them himself.
I think a lot about people who aren't supposed to have any problems.
They get married and live and die and it's all wonderful.
I don't know anyone like that.
They always have some problem.
Even if it's that the toilet doesn't flush.
I used to just try to make him laugh.
Like my mom would tell me how to keep a man: to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a whore in the bedroom.
And I said, I'll hire the first two and do the last bit myself.
He had rooms that he'd let you in, rooms that he wouldn't let you into, and rooms that he wouldn't even let himself into.
And it was probably easier to enjoy yourself and have fun than try to create another type of life, which would have been pretty profound, pretty difficult.
There was no doubt that Andy really loved Jed, but Jed wasn't getting the physical or the demonstration of it, you know, emotionally, that he really craved.
And then when Andy was going out a lot with the Studio 54 period, it was you know, very confusing for him.
He went through a period where he took speed and you know, you can't sleep with that, you just want to stay up all night and do things.
Victor and I cabbed to Studio 54.
It was filled with beautiful people.
Studio 54 is probably the Mount Olympus of the disco world.
Right now it is the center of the universe for those who dance to 125 beats a minute.
Do you only admit celebrities? No.
We admit everybody.
How do you choose? What are your admission criteria? We want people who are just there to have fun.
Couples, gay people.
Just everyone was there.
The band struck up "New York, New York" and they carried Liza and Halston did photos with her.
Stevie kept giving me more drinks and then somebody shoved a Quaalude in my mouth.
Then I drank vodka.
And it went down.
And that was a big mistake.
Stevie introduced me to Roy Cohn.
He was with four beautiful boys.
I just love all the boys at Studio 54.
They want to be famous and they can't wait.
Because I feel blind Because I feel blind There's so much nostalgia around Studio 54.
And young people think, "Oh my God, you were there.
What was it like?" When you hear "Studio 54" what does that do? Does your pulse quicken and your feet start moving? It's where you come when you want to escape.
It's really escapism.
I was, you know, really involved in drugs, and you know, I went there to take drugs.
At the time it seemed kind of glamorous, but it's not really glamorous.
It's really kind of sad.
I think the room, it being an old studio, an old theater, and the lights That has a lot to do with it.
I mean, you have to build the nice mouse trap to attract the mice.
And it was so exciting for people to be public about that stuff when it was really being very destructive.
Went to Studio 54 for Liz Taylor's party.
I thought it was just going to be about 15 or 20 people, but it was more like 2,000.
Truman Capote was there, and he and Bob were dancing all night, and the photographers were taking pictures.
Bob was watching someone take poppers and he said to Diana Vreeland, "It really becomes more like Pagan Rome every day.
" And she said, "I should hope so.
Isn't that what we're after?" I went home by cab and got in around 6:30 somehow.
I actually slept through Pat's call.
Woke up at noon when Jed came in to shake me.
The nightlife is taking its toll.
I think Jed imagined that Andy might be being unfaithful or something, but I don't think Andy was.
No.
But I think Jed just wanted to you know, he was quiet, he liked the family life, he was making a home, he just wanted Andy to you know, be nicer and just behave.
You know, stay home more, go to bed early.
So, there's this Jed quote here.
Um, "When Studio 54 opened, things changed with Andy.
That was New York when it was at the height of its most decadent period, and I didn't take part.
I never liked that scene.
I was never comfortable and I didn't like the people.
Andy was just wasting his time, and it was really upsetting.
He just spent his time with the most ridiculous people.
So, things changed.
" And were some of those ridiculous people Victor Hugo? - Victor Hugo would have been, like - one of the main ones.
Yeah, Jed didn't like Victor Hugo at all.
You let the public decide what to call your art? - I don't care.
- You just do it.
- What else do you like to do, Victor? - Everything.
Victor Hugo is the infamous boyfriend of the late American fashion designer Halston.
He is a muse to many people, including Andy Warhol, and he is a gay icon in some bad boy image, I guess.
He was a bad boy too.
Who was Victor Hugo? This horrible person.
Hey, walk the night I think he read one book on art about Dadaism and decided he was an artist.
Victor, what are you doing? Victor's creating art.
Why do you think Andy was drawn to Victor? You know, Andy is more seemingly shy.
Victor was the opposite.
He would say anything and do anything.
And I know he had a big dick.
Anything that involved Victor was always a mess.
So, why would Andy see something in him? I think Andy never stopped having a kind of nostalgia for the freewheeling days of the Silver Factory.
And Andy associated creativity with craziness.
And he would actually say to, you know, Vincent, Pat, me, Jed, "Oh, you kids are just so boring.
" Victor took me to the factory to introduce me to Andy.
Concurrently, at the same time, he was actually helping Andy with a series of prints that Andy primarily did for himself.
Victor came down with a nude poser.
I'm having boys come and model nude for photos for the nude paintings I'm doing.
But I shouldn't call them nudes.
It should be something more artistic, like landscapes.
Victor would arrive at 6:00 or 7:00 with these boys.
And most of these boys are either gay porn stars or people he found at the gay baths.
But, so the process was to Take Polaroids of these guys having sex, you know, a lot of anal sex.
Fist fucking.
There's penetration, blowjobs.
Victor's got a, you know, penis in his mouth like a cigar.
It is basically a dick going in a hole.
I mean, they were just sex parts.
For your love Victor called and we went into porno magazine stores for research materials for the landscapes.
Then took landscapes pictures of an ex porno star that Victor brought.
I took shots 'til I ran out of film.
When I opened the door, it was bright daylight.
I was surprised.
I think Andy was turned on, but, you know, people always are curious what happened after that.
He got so excited.
I don't know.
No one knows.
But I think that was a way that Andy made peace with his homosexuality.
To think about Warhol as a gay man throughout a period where it would have been dangerous or taboo to talk about that side of his life in the work and then to put out work that is undeniably about queer desire is radical.
When you sideline the Sex Parts, that's part of that division, and it's happening in the art history and in the archive.
What can be talked about and what can't be talked about.
I think really, it's about seeing something like the Sex Part paintings on par with something like the Shadow paintings.
Andy was always saying, "Oh, how could I do abstract paintings that aren't really abstract?" And that was the camouflage, the Piss paintings, the Rorschachs.
But the first ones were the Shadows, and they were genuinely abstract because you didn't know what they were of.
They sometimes seemed like it could be a torso and a hard-on.
The Shadow paintings were made around the time that he's making these Sex Part paintings.
I don't know if it's an erection.
I've read some scholarship that says it could be but because it's a shadow of some thing, you're always thinking about the thing that is off-screen.
You're just seeing the after party, you know.
It was snowing a little.
I glued and went down to the Shadows opening.
People kept wandering in and out all day.
It wasn't too many people.
Out of the 400 people Bob and I had invited, only six came.
So 394 of our best friends were no-shows.
Victor was the only well-dressed person.
A black umbrella with pearls.
The bathroom was crowded.
I guess people were coke-ing up.
Rene Ricard arrived and was saying that my work was just decorative.
That got me really mad.
I got so red and was telling him off, and everyone was stunned to see me so angry.
I was out of control and screaming at him.
Everybody saw the real me.
I feel like Warhol is an opportunist in a good way.
Like, he himself called the Shadow paintings "disco decor," and so the aura of, you know, Studio 54 and sex and gay sex and all that stuff can be in there, but also hidden, covert, you know.
Bob said he had dinner the other night with Diana Vreeland and that Diana was saying that I'm not avant-garde anymore.
She said that Jackie O had said I'm not avant-garde either.
But they don't even know what I do.
I think some of those paintings are really extraordinary.
I think it was like presenting sex to the public in a way that hadn't been seen.
But Jed felt that Andy was keeping really bad company and he felt that he was not doing serious work.
Andy thought that Jed just didn't understand.
It was a bad day.
Family problems.
Jed came by the office and was in the back of my working area.
And when Jed saw the stacks of Polaroids of all the landscapes I photographed, all the close-ups of cocks and things, he began screaming that I had degenerated so well to be spending my time that way, and he left.
He was really upset.
I don't think Andy ever thought that he was betraying Jed, but when Jed saw the photographs, he thought that it was more than just that objective thing of photographing body parts.
It was more the sexual voyeuristic sort of thing that Andy was interested in, and Jed didn't like that.
I was upset about Jed being upset.
So I decided to treat myself to junk food.
I called Jed and he hung up on me.
Then I went home and took the dogs out and they wouldn't pee.
Jed was very, very sensitive.
He would sometimes say that Andy could be cold, and we all know that Andy doesn't like emotions and always was saying, "I want to be a machine.
I don't want emotions.
" And I used to say to Andy, "Maybe you should show Jed a little more affection," and he was like, "Oh, Bob if I showed my emotions, I'd have a nervous breakdown.
" Life gets more exciting every day but then I have to go home to my horrible home life where the situation with Jed gets worse every day.
I mean, you think about a person constantly and it's just a fantasy, it's not real.
And then it gets so involved.
You have to see them all the time and then it winds up that it's a job like everything else.
So, I don't know.
Jed was so unhappy because Andy wasn't committing in a way emotionally and Jed really needed some emotional reinforcement.
And then, you know, Jed wanted more attention.
He tried to, twice take his life.
And it was always after having a big fight with Andy.
He took pills.
I guess he thought he was going to punish Andy or something.
The first time, you know, Andy sort of acted like he didn't understand.
But he was empathetic and sad.
Then it happened again.
They had another big fight and Andy called me, and he said, "Jed and I had a big fight and he's hiding in a closet and I think he took pills.
" And when I got there, Andy had already left.
So that surprised me, um that Andy would do that.
And this time he was less sympathetic and he was more angry.
When Jed came back, he said, "Why did you embarrass me this way?" Which I think, you know, was very hurtful.
I watched the Flying Wallenda on the news.
"The only place I feel alive," said Karl Wallenda, "Is on the wire.
" and there he was this morning, 120 feet in the air, ten stories He fell from the high wire and got killed.
You saw it all.
He was walking and he got to the middle.
And the wind came and he just He fell.
And then the cameras went in close.
They showed him lying there.
I called Bob and we talked until three in the morning because I was waiting on Jed to get home.
He was having dinner with Alan Wanzenberg, the architect.
He's working with Jed now.
He was suspicious that something was going on with Jed.
And, uh you know, I we've all experienced that kind of jealousy where you don't know.
You feel something's happening, but you don't know for sure, you're asking other people, and I could feel that, and it's painful, that kind of jealousy.
Jed always needed an architect to work with and Alan was doing freelance work and that's how they met.
And then started having an affair with him.
And Jed decided to leave Andy and So I waited around for the phone to ring and it didn't.
And I was depressed.
I don't know, I promised myself I wouldn't go down this path, but the whole story with me and Jed and Andy, I, you know If you think about it and I don't think about it very much, but if you think about it, I think that some of it was just plain old-fashioned jealousy.
You know? I'm not saying they didn't love each other in their own capacity, but what their capacity for love was at that time was probably different.
I think if Andy had wanted Jed to have more of a domestic life together, he'd have done more to protect that as I think Jed was giving all the obvious signs of it.
"Andy, I don't know what you're looking for.
Sorry you didn't find it at home.
I don't think, or don't want to think, you'll get it from Victors and nights at Studio 54.
You did have all my love and respect.
I'm sorry it went wrong.
Thinking of you with sincere love, Jed.
" And I think that's true.
I mean, I think that he really tried.
Cold.
I haven't seen it this cold in a while.
Too much cold, my friend.
Bundling up, staying warm - Scarf over the nose.
- And generating collective heat.
Well, I'll tell you, that's pretty much how everybody feels in the area.
It's just too cold, so almost everybody is staying inside.
Jed finally moved out.
And I don't want to talk about it.
The apartment he bought on West 67th Street to work in now he's decided he'll live in it too.
I'm just a freak.
I can't change it.
I'm too unusual.
I watched Rebel Without a Cause, and, gee, it was so strange to see Sal Mineo looking like a baby.
And James Dean looked so modern.
The jeans and the Lacoste shirt, and the red windbreaker.
Leaning over with no underwear showing.
James Dean had his head on Natalie's lap.
And then Sal Mineo came and put his head on James Dean's stomach.
When he fell asleep, James Dean and Natalie tiptoed away to go kiss and be romantic.
I love you, Jim.
I really mean it.
And it was sad because Sal Mineo didn't have anybody.
I sent roses to Jon Gould, the gay vice president at Paramount.
And then I decided I should fall in love.
And that's what I'm going to do with Jon Gould.
I was falling in love I saw your eyes And you made me smile For a little while I was falling in love I saw your eyes And you touched my mind Although it took a while I was falling in love I was falling in love I saw your eyes Saw your eyes Saw your eyes And you made me cry Made me cry Made me cry And for a little while Little while Little while I was falling in love
I got up in the morning and I thought I smelled a wood-burning fireplace.
I went upstairs and there was no fireplace going.
And I still smelled burning.
So, I went up to the room on the fourth floor, where two kids have been working restoring furniture for Jed's decorating business.
I opened the door.
There was a drop cloth all over the room with a big burn hole about ten inches across in it.
There were open cans of turpentine around.
The windows were closed, and the heat was on.
My biggest fear had happened.
I mean, it was like The Exorcist.
I'm going to have a cross blessed and put it up there.
I was absolutely shaking.
Then we spent the whole morning cleaning up.
I just don't know what started it.
And I don't know what stopped it.
And when I looked at where the fire had been, right in the center of the room, it was like an omen to show what would happen.
I was so angry.
Remember when Tom Tryon used to live across the street and I would watch him in his window writing? Now I'm living a nightmare like one of his stories.
The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around.
You can't be on your own.
But then the best love story is just two love birds in a cage.
There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy They say he wandered very far Very far Over land and sea A little shy And sad of eye But very wise Was he The greatest thing You'll ever learn Is just to love And be loved In return After Andy was shot, Andy was frightened that somebody would again try to assassinate him.
So the 1960s Factory couldn't be repeated.
So, Interview Magazine was the platform where he could go to Studio 54, he could go to parties, he could go to the White House.
So, Interview became the new version of the Factory.
Interview Magazine was a subsidiary of Andy Warhol Enterprises.
He had Interview Magazine.
He had his portraits.
He had the commercial branding, films that he did.
It was Andy's business empire.
That's a lot for an artist to do.
It was a complicated operation.
That's why there was a Bob Colacello.
Bob was editor-in-chief of Interview Magazine.
People have such a fascination with the little tiny details of what other people do, what they eat, what they drink, and what they wear.
And I suppose that if you keep a record of all those details, of all that trivia long enough, which is what everything Andy does is in a sense, it does add up to a total picture of our time.
That's why there was a Fred Hughes.
Fred Hughes was Andy's exclusive business manager.
You could say a diamond in the rough, and he polished up really well.
He created his own style.
He created his own kind of affectations.
He was just a brilliant promoter, salesman, confidant.
She's as famous as the Maja of Goya because Andy did her portrait.
That's why there was a Vincent Fremont.
I was vice president of Andy Warhol Enterprises.
You start from the bottom.
I swept floors like Jed used to do.
I answered phones, I took film cans up to the labs.
Andy was very loyal, and we became great friends.
But again, Andy's loyalty to friends is something not to disregard.
It was really important.
I was the only one trusted with the money.
Business art is the step that comes after art.
I started as a commercial artist and I want to finish as a business artist.
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.
Early on when I met him, he was already an iconic figure.
To make yourself into a product, it sounds a little nasty, but, I mean, in a positive way.
And that's really quite prevalent now.
The person becomes a brand, and you can give Warhol a lot of credit or blame for that.
During the hippie era people put down the idea of business.
They'd say, "Money is bad and working is bad.
" But making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art.
He made all these proclamations about business as art, but there's a way in which he believed that firmly and there's a way in which he was satirizing something.
That kind of split is typical of his personality.
I'm a commercial person.
- Why? - Well, I got a lot of mouths to feed.
Got to bring home the bacon.
Andy had been rather depleted physically and probably creatively in a way by the shooting and the long recuperation.
Uh no.
It just Well, I work less, I guess.
That's about all.
His art business was kind of limited at that point to commissioned portraits.
If you look at Warhol post shooting, post 1968, it really is like life after death for him.
And I think there's a building up again of his confidence with all of the portraits.
You know, it's more and more portrait painting, and it's almost like he's remembering how to paint again through the portraits.
Andy mentioned this term of "The portrait of society," an accumulation of commissioned portraits, portraits of this sort of new version of royalty.
It's a grand project.
The ABC 20/20 crew was coming to the office to film.
I'm just so scared.
I just think our whole business is going to fall apart after that kind of big network exposure.
By the '70s, his portraits were taking on a new look and commanding huge prices.
$50,000 for a commissioned portrait.
These are paintings commissioned by rich and fashionable people, for Andy Warhol is now America's most sought-after portrait painter.
Money that allowed him to branch out into writing and publishing, primarily a magazine called Interview.
Is this how it's going to look? - The picture will be down here.
- It's bigger? Oh great.
So, uh, did you sell any ads today? You did? It was everybody's job to bring in money.
So, Bob and Fred Hughes excelled in the portrait commissions.
Andy would be like, "Did you pop the question last night?" To any rich lady I encountered or, you know, fashion designer.
"Pop the question" meant "say they should get a portrait done.
" It was to make those people feel they were as much an icon as Marilyn, Liz, or Jackie.
Look, here's how it all works.
You meet rich people.
You hang around with them.
And one night, they've had a few drinks.
And they say, "I'll buy it.
" Then they tell their friends they must have your work.
So, you get your price established.
And that's all you need.
That's all it takes.
Farrah Fawcett, on a recent trip to New York, came to Andy's studio to have her portrait done.
- I wanted to keep my hair kind of messy.
- Oh yeah, your hair's so beautiful.
It is, it's really great.
- We were going to do it straight, but - Oh no, it's great the way it is.
The Polaroid process that was step one of the portraits could go on for an hour as Andy might take 20 rolls of Polaroids.
Warhol portraits begin with a series of Polaroids, snapshots which are blown up, printed on plastic sheets, and turned into silk screens.
Maybe a couple big smiles might yeah.
Even if you didn't have a good angle, he found one.
He found a way to make everyone look good.
After 40 pictures, Andy captured the look he was after.
Two weeks later, the enlargements were back and Andy began to paint, a process which, up until now, he has never shown or talked about.
That's too blue.
It's too blue.
Andy has always worked with assistants, and usually paints two hours a day in the afternoon.
Oh yeah, that's a good color.
You have a little brush? He painted six portraits of me.
He would say, even though other people might be filling in the color, he would choose which color went where and he was very precise.
And if he followed your lip line, he liked you.
But if he made your lipstick go over your lip line, then he didn't like you very much.
It really is pretty.
I have to think about it some more.
It was considered so outrageous that Andy would do commissioned portraits and in interviews say, "Oh, I'm just a traveling society portrait painter.
I just do whatever my hairdresser Fred Hughes tells me to do.
" These are mostly portraits that I did when I traveled a lot.
And so, I sort of feel like I'm an old-fashioned American portrait painter.
These journalists would be outraged and they'd write the stories in this outrageous way.
But that just fed everything.
You know, it just kept the press coming back for more.
Well, they're beautiful, rich, and famous.
That's what it means to me.
The most popular first questions were, "Are you gay?" or "Are you rich?" But he wouldn't come out and say, "Yes, I'm gay.
" I don't think Andy ever pretended he was straight, but Andy certainly didn't talk, as far as I know, about Jed in the press ever, and I don't think Jed did either.
Andy always acted like he was above sex almost.
He would never show the weakness of wanting it or give up his position of power, maybe, to give anyone the possibility of turning him down.
He would say, "Oh, sex is such hard work.
" I mean, he just he deflected personal questions.
Sex is work.
It's more work than - Sex is too hard, too.
- It really is, yeah, it's too hard.
He understood that the thing that celebrity does is it buys you protection in the sense that you're so famous, people stop judging you.
They just want to meet you because you're famous.
Went out on the street with some Interviews.
And I was curious to see if people were still recognizing me all the time from the 20/20 TV show.
But they weren't.
So, this means that TV makes you famous for one day and then it fades.
I must be too weird for TV because it's always the same thing, and it's scary because they use you up.
I think I'm doing okay with the little bit of publicity I get anyway.
I guess he was essentially a confused person, but he found a way to turn his confusion into art that reflected the greater confusion of America as a country.
Worked very late.
I was going to go to the movies, but then it got too late.
Ended up taking the dogs for a long walk with Jed.
Up to 88th Street and back down.
When we came back, Jed's family was there and Mrs.
Johnson thanked me for being so nice to her son and made me blush.
Had a very good time.
Okay, I'll call you back.
Okay, bye.
Let me see the cover again.
Did you bond with Jed as a spouse or significant other? Definitely.
That was sort of where we fit in.
Like, "Who's that?" "Oh, that's Vincent's wife.
" "Oh, that's Andy's boyfriend.
" You know, our husbands worked together.
Or wives or Who's the husband? Who's the wife? I don't know.
But I don't think Andy thought of Jed as his wife in that domestic way because Jed went out and worked.
You know, that was That's still like a '50s idea, you know.
But I think they were very supportive of each other as far as their careers were.
You know, at some point I think Jed couldn't just be the janitor for the Factory.
I mean, he wasn't going to become a painter or something else.
And he wanted a legitimate relationship to the activities of the Factory.
So, he became the editor of a lot of the films.
The early movies were Andy.
But later, Paul Morrissey, they were all his.
I mean, everybody knows Paul directed those movies, but Andy Warhol was the brand, like New Line presents or, you know, Warner Brothers.
Jed had worked with Paul on I guess about five films.
And then they asked that Jed be the director of Bad.
Jed thought that if he did the film that it would bring Andy closer to him because Andy, in a sense, was a filmmaker and then Jed would be a filmmaker, and it would legitimize more and more their relationship.
So, he took this on and it was it was a horrible experience.
Pat Hackett had written Bad.
I think it was too dark for people.
I loved Bad, I found it hilarious.
But Bad was kind of a movie like they were killing dogs, they threw a baby out the window.
I mean, it was stuff that would be more at home in my movies.
All right.
All right! Somehow they allowed it to get an X rating when there was no on-screen violence.
I mean, it's all implied.
That's what I'm going to do to you if you don't shut up.
And it got some good reviews and some bad ones.
The reviews for Bad were bad.
I read the reviews.
It sounds like the censors didn't take out the baby being thrown out of the window.
Stupid people like Frank Rich can write four pages on some nothing movie, but about Bad they just describe what it is and leave it at that.
Don't they know that their job is to say what something means? And, of course, it was a huge flop, and Andy did nothing to resuscitate it, and boom, you know.
Andy had never lost money on a film, I guess.
So when it didn't make money, Andy blamed Jed.
That's when he really started intensely working with his interior design.
In the 70s, Jed found this big grand house that looked like the White House.
When Andy moved into the house with Jed on 66th Street, Jed started to put it together and he had such an eye that he created this incredible home.
What was the inside of the townhouse like? Beautiful.
Andy liked quantity, not the best.
And I think it was Jed who made Andy buy museum quality furniture.
The whole house was beautiful.
But Andy started building this resentment of how much money Jed was spending.
Jed had convinced him that he should stop collecting junk and start collecting real stuff.
So, stop collecting the cookie jars and buy a real piece of furniture.
He had Empire furniture, he had art deco.
Upstairs rooms all stenciled.
Only paintings of other artists.
Andy's bedroom, it was just this beautiful carved bed.
Dark wood and greens.
I mean, it was just really lush.
I think that Andy really loved coming home and Jed being around, and the dogs, and that the house was done up for him.
Like it was a family in a way.
And it was very comfortable for him.
I walked to the office.
Sandy Brant was there with Jed, going over decorating schemes for Peter Brant's office building in Greenwich.
Jed is in the decorating business now.
Jed was really close with Sandy Brant.
That was one of his great friends and she's fabulous.
They'd collect a lot of American antiques, American furniture.
When the wind blows And the rain feels cold With a head full of snow Jed had amazing taste.
He had just incredible taste.
If you could afford it.
The sound of strangers sending He was spending all his time with people like Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent, and Karl Lagerfeld.
Jed did a lot of the decorating work for people like Pierre Bergé.
I am just living to be lying By your side He did this amazing apartment for Mick Jagger.
But I'm just about a moonlight mile He decorated two of our homes.
He would just do things so beautifully.
Luxurious but space, you know.
What he did for us, I never touched it.
It was so perfect.
Jed's decorating business is doing well.
He's billing millions.
On page six in The Post a few days ago, there was a headline that said, "Warhol man does Mick Jagger's apartment.
" And there was an article in The Daily News last Sunday.
They said I was a has-been.
It was funny.
I don't think that Jed looked for famous people.
His clients just happened to come along, partly because of Andy, maybe in the beginning, and then because of the quality of the work that he did.
So, it was always about quality and it was always about being really tasteful.
There's something about life with Jed that is different from other people.
I think that speaks to maybe where Warhol was in his life at that moment, of recovery, and recovery of his own career after the shooting.
In that moment, Warhol's not getting good critical attention for his work from the art world.
For the second time in less than a decade, New York's Whitney Museum has mounted a major exhibition of Warhol's portraits.
I don't consider it a feast of great painting.
It's an interesting promotional event, but I rather looked on Warhol's work that way from the beginning.
I don't think Andy got credit for how great he was.
I think he was consistently insulted in the United States.
When Robert Hughes said his portraits embalmed people in the back of their limos, he pretended like, "I got six pages and four color photos," but it made him really mad.
Warhol's autistic stare was the same for heroes and heroines.
All you learn is that celebrity breeds clones.
Thousands of signs for itself, a series without limit.
The image is less painted than registered.
No nuances, just slips in the silk screen.
It wants you to glance at it like a television screen rather than scan it like a painting.
Warhol is nearly as famous as Picasso, at least on the level of chitchat and gossip.
But Picasso was famous for his energy and masculinity.
Warhol for his passivity and sexlessness.
Robert Hughes was very negative and offensive.
And he had a lot of words that were pretty nasty.
The essential clue to Warhol's character is that he's a Catholic and a homosexual and his whole sensibility has very much to do with camp.
If Warhol was once subversive, and in the early '60s he was, by the end of the '70s he'd relapsed into being another kind of commercial artist, doing Nescafe Society portraits.
A painter without a subject.
A famous artist who loved nothing but banality and sameness.
"I want to be a machine, to print, to repeat.
" And that was the most cunning sort of Dandyism.
When asked to defend himself against his critics, he replied in his typical deadpan way.
Oh, I can't.
They're right.
To think he's just an artist of the '60s and it passed him, that was something he worried about and that has something to do with the art world thinking that artists are disposable and that they're only interesting for a small period of time.
I think that there's a fear that gets put into people.
I got up early.
I talked to Jed's business partner about furniture restoration and about the fights I've been having with Jed.
You know, the idea of a gay man in the mid-'70s developing a relationship that he would live with his entire life was very bizarre.
I mean, I know that they exist, but in general, those relationships were not widely embraced and they were challenging.
We want the freedoms to love, and sometimes even to love a bit in public that belong to the heterosexuals in this country.
When you told Andy two people were getting married, he said, "Oh, is he gay? Is this a cover-up?" I'd say, "No, Andy.
" Because he was so cynical about those things because he couldn't really enjoy them himself.
I think a lot about people who aren't supposed to have any problems.
They get married and live and die and it's all wonderful.
I don't know anyone like that.
They always have some problem.
Even if it's that the toilet doesn't flush.
I used to just try to make him laugh.
Like my mom would tell me how to keep a man: to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a whore in the bedroom.
And I said, I'll hire the first two and do the last bit myself.
He had rooms that he'd let you in, rooms that he wouldn't let you into, and rooms that he wouldn't even let himself into.
And it was probably easier to enjoy yourself and have fun than try to create another type of life, which would have been pretty profound, pretty difficult.
There was no doubt that Andy really loved Jed, but Jed wasn't getting the physical or the demonstration of it, you know, emotionally, that he really craved.
And then when Andy was going out a lot with the Studio 54 period, it was you know, very confusing for him.
He went through a period where he took speed and you know, you can't sleep with that, you just want to stay up all night and do things.
Victor and I cabbed to Studio 54.
It was filled with beautiful people.
Studio 54 is probably the Mount Olympus of the disco world.
Right now it is the center of the universe for those who dance to 125 beats a minute.
Do you only admit celebrities? No.
We admit everybody.
How do you choose? What are your admission criteria? We want people who are just there to have fun.
Couples, gay people.
Just everyone was there.
The band struck up "New York, New York" and they carried Liza and Halston did photos with her.
Stevie kept giving me more drinks and then somebody shoved a Quaalude in my mouth.
Then I drank vodka.
And it went down.
And that was a big mistake.
Stevie introduced me to Roy Cohn.
He was with four beautiful boys.
I just love all the boys at Studio 54.
They want to be famous and they can't wait.
Because I feel blind Because I feel blind There's so much nostalgia around Studio 54.
And young people think, "Oh my God, you were there.
What was it like?" When you hear "Studio 54" what does that do? Does your pulse quicken and your feet start moving? It's where you come when you want to escape.
It's really escapism.
I was, you know, really involved in drugs, and you know, I went there to take drugs.
At the time it seemed kind of glamorous, but it's not really glamorous.
It's really kind of sad.
I think the room, it being an old studio, an old theater, and the lights That has a lot to do with it.
I mean, you have to build the nice mouse trap to attract the mice.
And it was so exciting for people to be public about that stuff when it was really being very destructive.
Went to Studio 54 for Liz Taylor's party.
I thought it was just going to be about 15 or 20 people, but it was more like 2,000.
Truman Capote was there, and he and Bob were dancing all night, and the photographers were taking pictures.
Bob was watching someone take poppers and he said to Diana Vreeland, "It really becomes more like Pagan Rome every day.
" And she said, "I should hope so.
Isn't that what we're after?" I went home by cab and got in around 6:30 somehow.
I actually slept through Pat's call.
Woke up at noon when Jed came in to shake me.
The nightlife is taking its toll.
I think Jed imagined that Andy might be being unfaithful or something, but I don't think Andy was.
No.
But I think Jed just wanted to you know, he was quiet, he liked the family life, he was making a home, he just wanted Andy to you know, be nicer and just behave.
You know, stay home more, go to bed early.
So, there's this Jed quote here.
Um, "When Studio 54 opened, things changed with Andy.
That was New York when it was at the height of its most decadent period, and I didn't take part.
I never liked that scene.
I was never comfortable and I didn't like the people.
Andy was just wasting his time, and it was really upsetting.
He just spent his time with the most ridiculous people.
So, things changed.
" And were some of those ridiculous people Victor Hugo? - Victor Hugo would have been, like - one of the main ones.
Yeah, Jed didn't like Victor Hugo at all.
You let the public decide what to call your art? - I don't care.
- You just do it.
- What else do you like to do, Victor? - Everything.
Victor Hugo is the infamous boyfriend of the late American fashion designer Halston.
He is a muse to many people, including Andy Warhol, and he is a gay icon in some bad boy image, I guess.
He was a bad boy too.
Who was Victor Hugo? This horrible person.
Hey, walk the night I think he read one book on art about Dadaism and decided he was an artist.
Victor, what are you doing? Victor's creating art.
Why do you think Andy was drawn to Victor? You know, Andy is more seemingly shy.
Victor was the opposite.
He would say anything and do anything.
And I know he had a big dick.
Anything that involved Victor was always a mess.
So, why would Andy see something in him? I think Andy never stopped having a kind of nostalgia for the freewheeling days of the Silver Factory.
And Andy associated creativity with craziness.
And he would actually say to, you know, Vincent, Pat, me, Jed, "Oh, you kids are just so boring.
" Victor took me to the factory to introduce me to Andy.
Concurrently, at the same time, he was actually helping Andy with a series of prints that Andy primarily did for himself.
Victor came down with a nude poser.
I'm having boys come and model nude for photos for the nude paintings I'm doing.
But I shouldn't call them nudes.
It should be something more artistic, like landscapes.
Victor would arrive at 6:00 or 7:00 with these boys.
And most of these boys are either gay porn stars or people he found at the gay baths.
But, so the process was to Take Polaroids of these guys having sex, you know, a lot of anal sex.
Fist fucking.
There's penetration, blowjobs.
Victor's got a, you know, penis in his mouth like a cigar.
It is basically a dick going in a hole.
I mean, they were just sex parts.
For your love Victor called and we went into porno magazine stores for research materials for the landscapes.
Then took landscapes pictures of an ex porno star that Victor brought.
I took shots 'til I ran out of film.
When I opened the door, it was bright daylight.
I was surprised.
I think Andy was turned on, but, you know, people always are curious what happened after that.
He got so excited.
I don't know.
No one knows.
But I think that was a way that Andy made peace with his homosexuality.
To think about Warhol as a gay man throughout a period where it would have been dangerous or taboo to talk about that side of his life in the work and then to put out work that is undeniably about queer desire is radical.
When you sideline the Sex Parts, that's part of that division, and it's happening in the art history and in the archive.
What can be talked about and what can't be talked about.
I think really, it's about seeing something like the Sex Part paintings on par with something like the Shadow paintings.
Andy was always saying, "Oh, how could I do abstract paintings that aren't really abstract?" And that was the camouflage, the Piss paintings, the Rorschachs.
But the first ones were the Shadows, and they were genuinely abstract because you didn't know what they were of.
They sometimes seemed like it could be a torso and a hard-on.
The Shadow paintings were made around the time that he's making these Sex Part paintings.
I don't know if it's an erection.
I've read some scholarship that says it could be but because it's a shadow of some thing, you're always thinking about the thing that is off-screen.
You're just seeing the after party, you know.
It was snowing a little.
I glued and went down to the Shadows opening.
People kept wandering in and out all day.
It wasn't too many people.
Out of the 400 people Bob and I had invited, only six came.
So 394 of our best friends were no-shows.
Victor was the only well-dressed person.
A black umbrella with pearls.
The bathroom was crowded.
I guess people were coke-ing up.
Rene Ricard arrived and was saying that my work was just decorative.
That got me really mad.
I got so red and was telling him off, and everyone was stunned to see me so angry.
I was out of control and screaming at him.
Everybody saw the real me.
I feel like Warhol is an opportunist in a good way.
Like, he himself called the Shadow paintings "disco decor," and so the aura of, you know, Studio 54 and sex and gay sex and all that stuff can be in there, but also hidden, covert, you know.
Bob said he had dinner the other night with Diana Vreeland and that Diana was saying that I'm not avant-garde anymore.
She said that Jackie O had said I'm not avant-garde either.
But they don't even know what I do.
I think some of those paintings are really extraordinary.
I think it was like presenting sex to the public in a way that hadn't been seen.
But Jed felt that Andy was keeping really bad company and he felt that he was not doing serious work.
Andy thought that Jed just didn't understand.
It was a bad day.
Family problems.
Jed came by the office and was in the back of my working area.
And when Jed saw the stacks of Polaroids of all the landscapes I photographed, all the close-ups of cocks and things, he began screaming that I had degenerated so well to be spending my time that way, and he left.
He was really upset.
I don't think Andy ever thought that he was betraying Jed, but when Jed saw the photographs, he thought that it was more than just that objective thing of photographing body parts.
It was more the sexual voyeuristic sort of thing that Andy was interested in, and Jed didn't like that.
I was upset about Jed being upset.
So I decided to treat myself to junk food.
I called Jed and he hung up on me.
Then I went home and took the dogs out and they wouldn't pee.
Jed was very, very sensitive.
He would sometimes say that Andy could be cold, and we all know that Andy doesn't like emotions and always was saying, "I want to be a machine.
I don't want emotions.
" And I used to say to Andy, "Maybe you should show Jed a little more affection," and he was like, "Oh, Bob if I showed my emotions, I'd have a nervous breakdown.
" Life gets more exciting every day but then I have to go home to my horrible home life where the situation with Jed gets worse every day.
I mean, you think about a person constantly and it's just a fantasy, it's not real.
And then it gets so involved.
You have to see them all the time and then it winds up that it's a job like everything else.
So, I don't know.
Jed was so unhappy because Andy wasn't committing in a way emotionally and Jed really needed some emotional reinforcement.
And then, you know, Jed wanted more attention.
He tried to, twice take his life.
And it was always after having a big fight with Andy.
He took pills.
I guess he thought he was going to punish Andy or something.
The first time, you know, Andy sort of acted like he didn't understand.
But he was empathetic and sad.
Then it happened again.
They had another big fight and Andy called me, and he said, "Jed and I had a big fight and he's hiding in a closet and I think he took pills.
" And when I got there, Andy had already left.
So that surprised me, um that Andy would do that.
And this time he was less sympathetic and he was more angry.
When Jed came back, he said, "Why did you embarrass me this way?" Which I think, you know, was very hurtful.
I watched the Flying Wallenda on the news.
"The only place I feel alive," said Karl Wallenda, "Is on the wire.
" and there he was this morning, 120 feet in the air, ten stories He fell from the high wire and got killed.
You saw it all.
He was walking and he got to the middle.
And the wind came and he just He fell.
And then the cameras went in close.
They showed him lying there.
I called Bob and we talked until three in the morning because I was waiting on Jed to get home.
He was having dinner with Alan Wanzenberg, the architect.
He's working with Jed now.
He was suspicious that something was going on with Jed.
And, uh you know, I we've all experienced that kind of jealousy where you don't know.
You feel something's happening, but you don't know for sure, you're asking other people, and I could feel that, and it's painful, that kind of jealousy.
Jed always needed an architect to work with and Alan was doing freelance work and that's how they met.
And then started having an affair with him.
And Jed decided to leave Andy and So I waited around for the phone to ring and it didn't.
And I was depressed.
I don't know, I promised myself I wouldn't go down this path, but the whole story with me and Jed and Andy, I, you know If you think about it and I don't think about it very much, but if you think about it, I think that some of it was just plain old-fashioned jealousy.
You know? I'm not saying they didn't love each other in their own capacity, but what their capacity for love was at that time was probably different.
I think if Andy had wanted Jed to have more of a domestic life together, he'd have done more to protect that as I think Jed was giving all the obvious signs of it.
"Andy, I don't know what you're looking for.
Sorry you didn't find it at home.
I don't think, or don't want to think, you'll get it from Victors and nights at Studio 54.
You did have all my love and respect.
I'm sorry it went wrong.
Thinking of you with sincere love, Jed.
" And I think that's true.
I mean, I think that he really tried.
Cold.
I haven't seen it this cold in a while.
Too much cold, my friend.
Bundling up, staying warm - Scarf over the nose.
- And generating collective heat.
Well, I'll tell you, that's pretty much how everybody feels in the area.
It's just too cold, so almost everybody is staying inside.
Jed finally moved out.
And I don't want to talk about it.
The apartment he bought on West 67th Street to work in now he's decided he'll live in it too.
I'm just a freak.
I can't change it.
I'm too unusual.
I watched Rebel Without a Cause, and, gee, it was so strange to see Sal Mineo looking like a baby.
And James Dean looked so modern.
The jeans and the Lacoste shirt, and the red windbreaker.
Leaning over with no underwear showing.
James Dean had his head on Natalie's lap.
And then Sal Mineo came and put his head on James Dean's stomach.
When he fell asleep, James Dean and Natalie tiptoed away to go kiss and be romantic.
I love you, Jim.
I really mean it.
And it was sad because Sal Mineo didn't have anybody.
I sent roses to Jon Gould, the gay vice president at Paramount.
And then I decided I should fall in love.
And that's what I'm going to do with Jon Gould.
I was falling in love I saw your eyes And you made me smile For a little while I was falling in love I saw your eyes And you touched my mind Although it took a while I was falling in love I was falling in love I saw your eyes Saw your eyes Saw your eyes And you made me cry Made me cry Made me cry And for a little while Little while Little while I was falling in love