Read I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Online
Authors: Kenneth Goldsmith
I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews (10 page)
RICHARD EKSTRACT
1965
Tape Recording, September-October 1965
In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol acquired his first video recording equipment. “The idea was for me to show it to my ‘rich friends (it sold for around five thousand dollars) and sort of get them to buy one” wrote Warhol in POPism. “I remember videotaping Billy [Name] giving Edie [Sedgwick] a haircut on the fire escape. It was the new toy for a week or so.” (POPism, 119)
The deal for the equipment was arranged by Richard Ekstract, publisher of Tape Recording, a fanzine devoted to the then-new art of home audio taping. Ekstract contacted Warhol in 1964 to ask him to be a judge in a contest called “Pop Sounds” put together by Tape Recording, which was seeking the audio equivalent to Pop Art. Unfortunately, most of the submissions received were gags and the contest was cancelled. However, soon after, Warhol started calling Ekstract for advice on audio and video equipment, and subsequently Ekstract became Warhols tech guru for the better part of the 1960s.
In early 1965, Norelco came out with the first affordable video recorder. “Andy called me up and said he had been making these underground movies and asked for a loaner on this Norelco video recorder for both a black & white and a color camera” recalled Ekstract. “I thought it would be good publicity for Norelco to lend him one and have a world premiere underground party for him.”
Ekstract had heard that there was an unused train tunnel beneath the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and thought the location would be an ideal setting for the premiere of Warhols videos made with the new equipment. The party was held on Friday, October 29, 1965. Entering through a hole in the street, denizens of the New York underground mixed with Park Avenue housewives, all dodging rats and roaches. The party was a success but the exact content of the tapes–recorded on an obsolete one-inch format which makes playback virtually impossible today–remains unknown.
In conjunction with the party, Tape Recording ran the following interview with Warhol featured on the cover of the September-October 1965 issue of the magazine. The interview was conducted at the 47th St. Factory by Ekstract with Robert Angus, the editor of Tape Recording. The piece was unedited except for Ekstracfs amending of technical facts that Warhol himself was unclear about.
–KG
If you think recording sound is fun (and it is), just think of the tremendous possibilities available when you can tape sound and pictures with the same recorder. That day was brought much closer to tape enthusiasts this summer when Ampex, Matsushita and Sony introduced home video tape recorders in the $1000 price range. The race is now on to produce video tape units for $500 or less. When that happens tape recording will surely be America’s number one hobby.
To test the new medium, TAPE RECORDING magazine approached tape enthusiast and home moviemaker Andy Warhol to produce some experimental home video tapes. Warhol, for the uninitiated, is an artist who rose to sudden fame a few years ago when the Pop Art movement swept America. His paintings of such common objects as Campbell Soup cans and Brillo boxes became the rage in art circles and now hang in many of the most prominent homes and museums both here and abroad.
About two years ago, Warhol began experimenting with 16mm movies. He was welcomed by the members of the “Underground Movie” camp who make experimental films in the hope of extending the art of motion pictures to new and exciting visual art forms.
Warhol made his reputation in the Underground film movement with films such as “Sleep,” eight hours of film of one person sleeping. Another of his epics was “Empire,” eight hours of film recording the Empire State building. Warhol and his group have now made underground movies on home video tape to give TAPE RECORDING’S readers a preview of the techniques involved in the new medium. Thus we embarked on an adventure which is continuing even as this is being written.
Warhol used a Norelco slant-track video recorder which retails for $3950 and operates in the same manner as its lower priced counterparts. With the recorder, Norelco supplied a remote control television camera with a zoom lens. For special applications, he also used a Concord model MTC 11 hand-held video camera with a Canon zoom lens. Video tape was supplied by Reeves Soundcraft. The rotary head recorder operates at a tape speed of 7½ ips and uses one inch wide video tape.
TAPE RECORDING: How did you get involved in making Underground movies?
WARHOL: I was going to Hollywood. That’s how it all happened.
TAPE RECORDING: You mean. . . .
WARHOL: Hollywood is the movie capital of the world so I bought a movie camera to take along. A 16mm Bolex. I was with Taylor Mead, a famous Underground movie star. My first movie was called “Taylor Mead in Hollywood"
TAPE RECORDING: What did you shoot?
WARHOL: Anything and everything. I was just learning to use the camera.
TAPE RECORDING: How did Underground movies get their start?
WARHOL: I don’t know. Lots of people were making these movies and Jonas Mekas organized a co-op, the Cinémathèque, to exhibit them.
TAPE RECORDING: What was your next film?
WARHOL: Next came my “Sleep” movie.
TAPE RECORDING: What were you trying to show?
WARHOL: It started with someone sleeping and it just got longer and longer and longer. Actually, I did shoot all the hours for this movie, but I faked the final film to get a better design.
TAPE RECORDING: You mean. . . .
WARHOL: Yes, it’s the same 100 feet of film spliced together for eight hours. I’d like to do this movie again someday with someone like Brigitte Bardot and just let the camera watch her sleep for eight hours.
TAPE RECORDING: Sounds like fun.
WARHOL: Yes, but frightfully expensive.
TAPE RECORDING: How much do these “longies” cost?
WARHOL: Thousands of dollars.
TAPE RECORDING: Do you get any income from Underground movies?
WARHOL: No.
TAPE RECORDING: Pretty expensive hobby.
WARHOL: All my painting money goes into it.
TAPE RECORDING: Did you make any sound movies?
WARHOL: Yes, I bought an Arricon sound camera with a 1200 foot reel. But the optical sound wasn’t very good. The sound on video tape is much better.
TAPE RECORDING: Home videotaping is such a new medium. How does it feel to be pioneering in it?
WARHOL: Like Alice in Wonderland.
TAPE RECORDING: What do you see as the essential difference between film and videotape?
WARHOL: Immediate playback. When you make movies you have to wait and wait and wait.
TAPE RECORDING: How about lighting?
WARHOL: You don’t need any for video. Just a light bulb. It’s so scary. The tape machine is so easy to use. Anyone can do it.
TAPE RECORDING: Do you prefer tape to film?
WARHOL: Oh, yes.
TAPE RECORDING: How long did it take you to become proficient with the video tape recorder?
WARHOL: A few hours. All you really have to master is the picture rectifier which compensates for the light in the room. Once you know that, it’s just a matter of keeping your heads clean.
TAPE RECORDING: How will video tape affect home movies?
WARHOL: It will replace home movies. Its the machine we’re going to use to do our 31-day movie.
TAPE RECORDING: What?
WARHOL: It’s the story of Christ.
TAPE RECORDING: How much will it cost?
WARHOL: A lot.
TAPE RECORDING: Do you consider yourself just like the average tape or film hobbyist?
WARHOL: Oh, yes. Anybody can do what I do.
TAPE RECORDING: Have you recorded from a television set with the video recorder?
WARHOL: Yes. This is so great. We’ve done it both direct and from the screen. Even the pictures from the screen are terrific. Someone put his arm in front of the screen to change channels while we were taping and the effect was very dimensional. We found you can position someone in front of a TV set and have it going while you’re recording. If you have close-ups on the TV screen, you can cut back and forth and get great effects.
TAPE RECORDING: That’s interesting. Have you been trying to do things with tape that you can’t do with film?
WARHOL: Yes. We like to take advantage of static. We sometimes stop the tape to get a second image coming through. As you turn off the tape it runs for several seconds and you get this static image. It’s weird. So fascinating.
TAPE RECORDING: How do you insure getting the pictures on tape that you want?
WARHOL: Simple. You make a test on your TV monitor. If the test is good you know your result will be good.
TAPE RECORDING: Is it that easy out-of-doors, too?
WARHOL: Yes. We took the recorder onto our fire escape to shoot street scenes.
TAPE RECORDING: What did you get?
WARHOL: People looking at us.
TAPE RECORDING: Can you edit video tape?
WARHOL: No.
TAPE RECORDING: Does this bother you?
WARHOL: No. We never edited our films before because we wanted to keep the same look and the same mood. You lose this when you try to re-create a scene days later after you’ve gotten back the processed film. Therefore, we just accepted whatever we got. Now with videotape, we can do instant retakes and maintain our spontaneity and mood. It’s terrific. It has been a great help.
TAPE RECORDING: While taping, how do you get your actors to give you their most in front of the camera?
WARHOL: I don’t ask for the most.
TAPE RECORDING: How about filters? Have you used any standard lens filters as you would in motion picture photography?
WARHOL: We tried a red filter, a polarizing filter and a green filter, I think. The red filter helps change the contrast by lightening all reds as well as reducing contrast. Even though video tape and film have different response curves, the effect of filters is very similar on tape to the effect on black and white film.
TAPE RECORDING: How about lenses?
WARHOL: As with motion picture photography, the better the lens, the more potential you have for good picture making. We used the Norelco VE2612 turret zoom lens, the standard lens on the Concord MTC-11 and a Canon zoom lens, TU, C16. We got acceptable results with all three. The Norelco lens was the best, however.
TAPE RECORDING: Does sound present any particular problems in making videotapes?
WARHOL: Really good, synchronized sound is one of the most exciting things about home videotapes. There is no “double-system” sound or editing needed. It’s built right in. The only thing to be careful about is the position of the microphone. A little experimenting before taping is all that’s needed.
TAPE RECORDING: How important is sound to your Underground videotapes?
WARHOL: It’s important to us because the people we’re working with have something to say.
TAPE RECORDING: What’s the most fun you’ve had with your video recorder?
WARHOL: Oh, it’s so great at parties. It’s just terrific. People love to see themselves on tape and they really behave normally because the equipment is so unobtrusive.
TAPE RECORDING: What kind of comments do you get from people at these parties?
WARHOL: Ooh. Aah. Ooh. Aah.
TAPE RECORDING: Anything else?
WARHOL: Aah. Ooh.
TAPE RECORDING: What else can people do with their home video recorders?
WARHOL: Make the best pornography movies. It’s going to be so great.
TAPE RECORDING: You think Mr. and Mrs. America will. . . .
WARHOL: Yes. And they’ll have their friends in to show them.
TAPE RECORDING: Any other things you like about the video recorder?
WARHOL: Oh, yes. You can spy on people with it, too. I believe in television. It’s going to take over from movies.
TAPE RECORDING: Have you any last advice for home movie makers?
WARHOL: Get a video recorder.
LANE SLATE
Produced by NET, 1966; 30 min. 16mm, b/w
In this split-bill black-and-white film appearance with Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol makes one of his most cold and contentious appearances on film. The first fifteen minutes of the half-hour documentary feature a cheerful Lichtenstein in his studio talking about a special iridescent plastic background that changes character as the position of the viewer changes. The second half of the film features a distant, emotionless Warhol who reluctantly answers questions fired at him by an aggressive and skeptical off-screen interlocutor. Warhol remains tight-lipped as he sits on a stool in front of a silver Elvis painting. The camera frequently zooms close-up on Warhol’s face, framed by a broken pair of dark sunglasses; his fingers cover his lips, causing him to mumble hesitant and barely audible responses.
The Warhol interview is not continuous; rather it is interspersed throughout Factory vignettes: Warhol working on a silkscreen print, creating a floating sculpture, and relaxing with friends while the narrator’s voiceover attempts to explain Warhols art. Clips of Warhol films are shown and quotes from other Factory habitues intersperse the Warhol segments, all accompanied by a “groovy” soundtrack. The film finishes with footage of the Velvet Underground and The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
USA Artists: Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein was one of a nine-part series made for NET (National Educational Television, the precursor to PBS) by director Lane Slate. It included profiles on contemporary artists of the era such as Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Jack Tworkov, and Robert Rauschenberg, among others. Lane Slate died in 1990.
The interview was transcribed by the current editor.
–KG
Q: Andy, you’ve said casually, “Since I don’t believe in painting any more. . . .”
WARHOL: Uhhh . . . Well, ah . . . I don’t believe in painting because I hate objects and, uh . . . ah . . . I hate to go to museums and see pictures on the wall because they look so important and they don’t really mean anything. . . I think.
Q: People think of you as the perfect Pop artist without really knowing what that means or, I think, really knowing what your work is about. I’d like to try to talk some more about the paintings and the things you did earlier because . . . there’s something that I think needs to be explained for the public, which has, at this point, a certain impression of you .. . and I’m not sure that it’s the one that you would want them to have, although I don’t think it matters to you very much. Is that true?
WARHOL: What?
Q: Does it matter to you that people feel one way or another to you? I mean, you have the kind of reputation now, which is a little bit apart from what you really are, I think. Does it matter to you that this is so, that they feel one way rather than another about you?
WARHOL: Uh, oh . . . I don’t really understand. What do you mean? Uh . . . this is like sitting, um, at the World’s Fair and riding one of those Ford machines where the voice is behind it. It’s so exciting not to think anything. I mean, you should just tell me the words and I can just repeat them because I can’t, uh . . . I can’t. . . I’m so empty today. I can’t think of anything. Why don’t you just tell me the words and they’ll just come out of my mouth.
Q: No, don’t worry about it because. . . .
WARHOL: . . . no, no . . . I think it would be so nice.
Q: You’ll loosen up after a while.
WARHOL: Well, no. It’s not that. It’s just that I can’t, ummm . . . I have a cold and I can’t, uh, think of anything. It would be so nice if you told me a sentence and I just could repeat it.
Q: Well, let me just ask you a question you could answer. . . .
WARHOL: No, no. But you repeat the answers too.
Q: All right. Well, I don’t know the answers. . . .
WARHOL: Oh, well . . . you’ll . . . you’ll be. . . .
Q: Okay. Before you started to silkscreen, you made a number of paintings and you made comic strips, right?
WARHOL: Uh . . . I guess I made comic strips, uh . . . before I did . . . before I did . . . uh . . . the silkscreen things.
Q: And you made some other paintings of things that were not done mechanically. What were they?
WARHOL: I made, uh . . . I guess they were ads . . . from magazines.
Q: And then you made, uh. . . .
WARHOL: And then I made, uh. . . .
Q: Things like. . . .
WARHOL: Things like. . . .
Q: Uh. . . .
WARHOL: Uh. . . .
Q: A lot of people might be inclined, it seems to me, to put you down because they could say that your work has a certain distance: it’s mechanical and you don’t really make it and all of those things. And yet, like anyone else, when you start to talk about it, the things you say are about really caring; I mean, you want people’s lives to be better.
WARHOL: Uh . . . Uhhhhhh . . . Yeah, well I guess I really don’t, uhhh . . . It’s too hard to care and I guess I. . . Well, I care . . . I still care but it would be so much easier not to care.
Q: In other words, are you saying that you are involved in this idea of making people more conscious of their lives but you don’t really want to get into their lives deeply. . . .
WARHOL: Uh . . . Oh, yes . . . yeah. I don’t want to get too involved.
Q: I think that this is a very important thing about all of your work: the idea of your own distance that you keep from it. Is this because of this feeling that you don’t want to get that close to it?
WARHOL: Uh . . . yes. I don’t want to get too close to it.
Q: You never, in any of your work, have ever really said anything that tells anyone anything about you. You don’t want that to happen, do you?
WARHOL: Uh . . . well, there’s not very much to say, you know, about me.
Q: But you’ve done some extraordinary things. I think that for me the high point was the opening of the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia
1
when so many people came that they had to take all the pictures down and thousands of people jammed in there and there were no pictures to speak of, just you. And you had the real character of a celebrity there, the kind of celebrity you really haven’t had in America now. Do you realize that?
WARHOL: Oh, oh. It was so riveting and glamorous.
Q: Well, Andy, do you have any thoughts at all about the fact that so many people like the idea of just being able to watch you sitting in a chair or standing on a balcony?
WARHOL: Oh, uh . . . but that won’t last very long.
Q: You don’t think so?
WARHOL: No . . . urn, no, because just sitting there, um . . . doesn’t really mean anything. But, what I really want to do is, I guess, do some movies and, uh, sort of tape what weVe done and sort of combine them together or something like that.
Q: When you began, you made your films very simply without moving the camera and now you’ve tended to make them more and more complicated. You’re getting into sound now. What are you trying to do now?
WARHOL: Uh . . . well, I just, uh . . . well, I got tired of just setting the camera up because it just, uh . . . means repeating the same idea over again so Fm changing, um . . . I’m trying to see what else the camera can do. And I’m mostly concerned with, uh . . . doing bad camerawork and, uh . . . ah . . . and we’re trying to make it so bad but doing it well. Where, um . . . where the most important thing is happening you seem to miss it all the time or showing as many scratches as you can in a film or all the dirt you can get on the film, uh . . . or zoom badly, where you zoom and you hit. . . uh . . . miss the most important thing. And, uh . . . your camera jiggles, ah . . . so that everybody knows that you’re watching a film. Because everybody else can do . . . I don’t know, it’s so easy to do movies, I mean you can, uh . . . uh . . . just shoot and every picture comes out right. So that’s what I’m working on right now.
Q: I want to change the subject again. I would like to ask you to say something about the new sculpture.
WARHOL: Uh . . . oh, the new thing I’m working on is sculpture because, uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . since I didn’t want to paint any more and I thought that I could give that up and do movies and then I thought that there must be a way that I had to finish it off and I thought the only way is to make a painting that floats and I asked Billy Kluver
2
to help me make a painting that floats and he thought, um, about it and he came up with the, uh . . . silver . . . since he knew I liked silver, he got all these silver things that I’m working on now and the idea is to, ah . . . fill them with helium and let them out of your window and they’ll float away and that’s one less object. And, and, well, it’s the way of finishing off painting and, um. . . .
Q: So you think that this will finish off painting and then. . . .
WARHOL: For me, yes. . . .
Q: For you. So you feel that instead of having a painting, which is an inert object hanging on the wall, that what we really need is to have things which involve people more directly?
WARHOL: Oh . . . ah . . . well, we started .. . we’re sponsoring a new band, it’s called the Velvet Underground. And, um, and we’re trying to, ah . . . well, since I don’t really believe in painting any more I thought it would be a nice way of combining, uh . . . and we have this chance to combine music and art and films all together and we’re sort of working on that and, uh . . . the whole thing is being auditioned tomorrow at nine o’clock. And if it works out it might be very glamorous.
Q: What sort of thing do you intend to do with the band?
WARHOL: Ah, well, it would be kind of the biggest discothèque in the world and we’ll have twenty-one screens and, I don’t know, three or four bands.
1
Andy Warhol
, exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, October 7 through November 21, 1965.
2
Billy Kluver. Engineer, 1927–2004. In 1966 he co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology, a not-for-profit service organization for artists and engineers.