Four years before her corporate thriller classic American Psycho shocked audiences, Mary Harron released her ambitious feature debut, I Shot Andy Warhol. Anchored by a powerful performance by Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto and the woman who shot Warhol, the scrappy, independent feature premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, before going on to Cannes and then to theaters. It later played on cable and was released on home video, but within a few years, those sightings became scarce. As was the case with many movies of the ’90s indie film boom, rights holders went out of business, or the rights were bought and sold without telling the filmmakers. Although I Shot Andy Warhol is only celebrating its 30th anniversary, it had already become a missing movie, long stuck in legal limbo and unavailable to screen for audiences.
“About six or seven years ago, Criterion reached out to me and said they wanted I Shot Andy Warhol to go on Criterion,” Harron tells The A.V. Club. “Then we found out that nobody knew who had the rights. It took several years just to track down who had the rights, and then once we found out who had the rights, who has the elements—because Samuel Goldwyn went bankrupt, then Orion went bankrupt, then somebody else—and so finally there’s some stuff in a vault, and then some of the elements are at Technicolor. But Criterion can’t put it out unless you have the music licenses. Then it took years to track down the damn music licenses because no one had kept a record.”
In searching for the rights to her movie, Harron joined forces with directors like Nancy Savoca to help other filmmakers regain their movies. Their group, Missing Movies, helped Mira Nair regain the rights to Mississippi Masala and enabled Savoca’s Household Saints to once again play theaters. Both films have enjoyed recent 4K restorations, theatrical re-releases, and new home video releases as part of the Criterion Collection. Now, it’s I Shot Andy Warhol‘s turn.
I Shot Andy Warhol begins at the end, showing the climactic attempted murder of the celebrated artist. As Solanas (Taylor) is interrogated, the movie flashes back through her tumultuous past, focusing on how she arrived at The Factory, Warhol’s studio, as a pushy drifter desperate for the artist to produce her play. After selling the rights to her next book to a sleazy publisher, Solanas realizes the deal she rushed into was too good to be true. She assumes all men, from the publisher to Warhol (Jared Harris), are out to get her, and she spirals out of control.
As Solanas, Taylor plays the leading role like a boxer hungry for a fight, and it doesn’t matter who she hurts in the process. Her shoulders are almost always defensively raised, and if they aren’t haunched in such a reactive pose, then she’s standing tall, trying to look bigger and more important in a room that is likely to look past her. One of the best parts of watching new restorations is seeing details that had been lost in previous transfers, and in the case of I Shot Andy Warhol, it’s a chance to marvel at the hair and makeup team that made Taylor look as grungy as the city streets, the dirt under her fingernails as permanent as the scowl on her face.
The new 4K is also the chance to see the bold colors conjured by production designer Thérèse DePrez and costume designer David Robinson, and captured by cinematographer Ellen Kuras (who supervised the restoration). Shifting from the bright corners of the city to its dingy bars, run-down flats, Warhol’s shiny playground, and his lurid parties, Kuras transports viewers through the various stages of Solanas’ descent that look as unmoored as she is. It’s a far different New York than the one Harron would develop just a few years later for the nearly monochromatic world of the Financial District in American Psycho.
Harron’s approach to revisiting the ’60s is by way of the ’90s. Although she recreates Warhol’s stark black-and-white screen tests when filming Solanas reading her manifesto, Harron and Kuras move away from recreating the 1960s look on film, swinging towards more contemporary bright colors and camera movement. “I was just reminded of how beautiful the lighting was,” Harron says of revisiting the film in its new restoration. “I love those scenes in The Factory because that created this kind of world, like this hidden land, a cave of wonder.” The retro sensation can also be felt in the film’s soundtrack, one hard-fought for this re-release, featuring an original John Cale score and covers of popular contemporary songs by R.E.M. and Wilco. This is a movie about the past revisited by the present, and now, I Shot Andy Warhol has become its own time capsule.
Thirty years after its initial release, I Shot Andy Warhol is a fascinating portrayal of a deeply wounded lost soul, but also an interpretation of a bygone New York, one where various ideologies would clash on the street outside of diners, and where artists and revolutionaries would print their advertisements and manifestos side-by-side. While not all of Solanas’ angry SCUM may sit well with viewers today—it didn’t sit well with her contemporaries either, alienating her from other queer and trans friends and acquaintances—Taylor commits to the difficult role. It’s an attempt to understand a reprehensible act, as detailed as a documentary reenactment but given its own artistic spin by an ambitious director making her first feature. The end is inevitable—it is the movie’s title, after all—but Harron and Taylor make Solanas’ difficult story one of compassion, not absolution.
As her debut reemerges into the light of day, Harron has some advice for the next generation of filmmakers so that they can avoid the fate of I Shot Andy Warhol and other missing movies currently unavailable to screen or stream. “Look after your work, or try and keep track of things,” she says. “I wish someone had told me this. Keep track of who has the rights to your film. Keep track of where the elements are going. Make sure they don’t lose all the licenses. Because everybody’s onto the next thing when that’s over. Let’s go and make another one. But if you don’t know where those things are, then you will be like me and spend six, seven years trying to get your film back out.”
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