The Factory

Andy Warhol's factory was an old New York loft building located at 231 East 47th Street and was used from 1963 until 1967. The factory had been splendidly and lavishly decorated by Warhol's close friend Billy Name. He had used a concept of utilizing silver foil around the loft space, something that many people have continued to reproduce to this day. The factory was used by Warhol, and his assistants, to produce silk-screens and artwork during the day and for holding factory parties at night.

Warhol's infamous factory is a place that has been well-documented elsewhere - housing a strange combination of artists, poets, drugged crazed people, socialites, party goers and drug dealers. Visitors would be dazzled by the shining silver walls and once inside, receive a jolt to the ears through music and visionary effects. The sounds of Maria Callas and pop music piping out from the sound system. During the mid-sixties, the factory became the most exciting place to be - and to be seen - in New York.

The Films

During 1964, Edie started to develop her acting skills and managed to get some small parts in the first Warhol directed films. These films were not such a great success commercially at that point - but marked a concerted effort for Warhol to change from artist to film maker. The early films were often only screened inside the factory, at parties or later-on as backdrops used during concerts of Warhol's band, the Velvet Underground. However, through a connection with Jonas Mekas, an underground film-maker, the films started to receive regular showings at the New York Film Makers Co-operative. As a result, Warhol's films started to become more popular and started to generate some media interest.

Edie very quickly became an underground film star, often noticeable by her striking presence on screen - Edie had now died her hair silver to match Warhol's - and although she did not follow any kind of coherent plot or script, as would be available to modern film actresses, she still received favorable comments about her acting talent. When Warhol decided to get much more involved with the development of these films, Edie then had entire Warhol films staring herself. Edie believed in her acting and she began to dream about starring in larger budget films, films made in Hollywood. She was very happy, and enjoyed factory life building close relationships with some of the Warhol's factory entourage who loved her deeply.

Edie Sedgwick's Warhol films include:

Vinyl, Beauty#2, Kitchen, Poor Little Rich Girl, Bitch,

Restaurant, Prison, Face, Afternoon, Space,

Outer and Inner Space, **** - Ondine and Edie, Lupe.

The exact number of films in which Edie appeared is difficult to determine at this time. A couple of very accurate film books include reliable information about Warhol's early films. These books are written by Stephen Koch and Billy Name.

In the 1990's, after the death of Andy Warhol, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts recovered a significant number of items from storage. It has since started the ambitious project of trying to secure and preserve many of the stored items of Warhol memorabilia.

Film Reviews: Outer and Inner Space by Amy Taubin, Village Voice:

"A portrait of Edie Sedgwick, Outer and Inner Space is Warhol's first double-screen film and also his first piece to use video. It's also the piece that makes the strongest link between his serial painted portraits (like the Jackies and the Marilyns) and his film portraits. Using a prototype home-video recorder lent to him by Norelco, Warhol shot two half-hour tapes of Sedgwick, who, in both of them, is shown in close-up, her profile filling the left side of the screen, conversing with someone outside of camera range. With her hair slicked back and her head tilted upwards, she looks a bit like the Jean Seberg Joan of Arc, and it's serious torture that is about to be inflicted on her. Warhol proceeded to shoot two 33-minute films in which Sedgwick is positioned in front of the monitor on which her own image is playing. When the film is projected double-screen, we see four talking heads of equal size; the effect is that Sedgwick is whispering in her own ear. Since Warhol was not very careful in his sound recording, it's a struggle to make out what any of the Edies are saying. You begin to feel as if you're at a seance, and the mediums raising Sedgwick from the dead are video and film. Next to the ghostly Edies on the monitor, the filmed Edies look animated and three-dimensional.

As in Beauty #2, the other great Warhol film of Sedgwick, the dramatic tension is a result of Warhol attempting to shatter Sedgwick's fragile psyche (and her upper-class social veneer) by splintering her attention and using her wounded narcissism against her. Sedgwick has to listen to her own voice chattering on while she makes polite conversation with someone who's behind the camera. Once or twice, she breaks the rules and turns to confront herself on the video, but mostly she tries to be a good actress and do what her director tells her to do. The film has become an ingenious memento mori of them both."

Comments on Warhol's Films

"The most unsentimental and conceptually satisfying endings are those of the great Warhol talkies of the mid '60s, Beauty #2and Outer and Inner Spaceamong them. They end because the last frame of a 33-minute roll of film has run through the camera and the filmmaker has decided not to reload. What made him decide to stop shooting? His sense that enough was enough, that the situation had been exhausted, and that the actors had done all they could do? Perhaps he had other things to attend to. Perhaps he considered shooting more the next day. Perhaps he did shoot, but it didn't turn out well, or it seemed redundant. Or, maybe, this was a period in which he felt that two 33-minute reels shown sequentially or concurrently (side by side) added up to the right length for a film, regardless of what was taking place on screen. In any event, for me, these endings, which could never be precisely anticipated, and which occurred out of a conjunction of the limitations of the moviemaking machinery with the will of the director and with a plethora of unknown contingencies, seemed to speak, after the fact and most marvelously, to the way life ends for many people, including the director himself." Amy Taubin - Village Voice.