ANDY WARHOL: THE FACTORY YEARS
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Warhol moved into the Factory, at 231 E. 47th Street in New York, in late 1963 and stayed until early 1968, when he moved downtown to Union Square. Like the rest of the 60s, Warhol’s years at the Factory were full of turmoil, desperation, and brilliance. Every element of his home and studio, from the floor to the toilet handles, was painted silver by Billy Linich; the Factory was part salon, part gallery, part opium den. Warhol and his endlessly evolving harem of drugged-out devotees not only created some of the most important works of the pop-art era but essentially redefined art in American culture. From the oversize, nailed-shut Brillo boxes to the eight-hour silent film of the Empire State Building (“It’s an eight-hour hard-on,” Warhol gushed) to the multimedia extravaganzas at his discotheque, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the Factory seemed intent on destroying the division between high and low culture once and for all.
It would seem nearly impossible to turn these vibrant, troubling years into boring theater, yet this is precisely what playwright and director Michael Flores has done. His two-and-a-half-hour Andy Warhol: The Factory Years is like a staged version of the Bolshevik revolution minus the gunfire.
Of course, similar performances were the stuff of Warhol’s early films, which were full of self-conscious people garbling their lines. But for Warhol such intentional understaging represented not only a subtle critique of Hollywood banality but a fascination with ordinary reality. His camera recorded whatever happened (in fact, his screen tests consisted of planting the hapless actor before the camera for three minutes, giving him no instruction whatsoever). Warhol’s films, despite their pretentious veneers, are unflinchingly honest, often cruelly so.
