#andy warhol's bad

[twixnmix]

Debbie Harry photographed by Brian Aris, 1979.

[pop-art-sixties-seventies]

Andy Warhol's Bad, 1977.

[lobbycards]

Bad aka Andy Warhol's Bad, Italian Lobby Card (Fotobusta). 1977

[susantyrrell]

In March 1977, Susan Tyrrell held a Bad premiere party at her home. In The Andy Warhol Diaries, he called it "really great".

Lots of people showed up. Photos by Ron Galella.

[affiches-cinema]

Andy Warhol's Bad, 1977.

[britneyshakespeare]

this picture of sal vulcano really does have its own sorta je ne sais quoi that not only do i understand why from very early days it has been a staple on impractical jokers but it became a meme outside of that. it's not just like any sort of unflattering pic. it has its own kind of majesty

[bitter69uk]

“At four in the afternoon, Elizabeth Taylor sauntered onto the set, followed by her secretary, her hairdresser and her wardrobe mistress. She didn’t look puffy; she wasn’t that short and her eyes really were purple. She was already costumed in the one dress her character wears throughout the movie, a pink, green, yellow, orange and blue print Valentino that more than met the script’s requirement for something “garish and vulgar” and was said to have cost $22,000 including four copies to rotate during shooting. Her hair was teased up and out – the script again – but she still looked beautiful, “really beautiful”, as Andy put it. Her secretary and her hairdresser were a pair of Mediterranean musclemen named Ramon and Gianni, in matching tight white t-shirts and tight white trousers, accessorized with red patent leather belts, shoes and shoulder bags. Every so often between takes Ramon would pull a mirror out of his bag and hold it up in front of Elizabeth’s face; then Gianni would pull a teasing comb out of his bag and hand it to Elizabeth, who would fitfully tease her own hair higher. She looked almost mad when she did that, though one couldn’t be sure if she was just in character or almost mad.” From Bob Colacello’s juicy account of the tempestuous production of Italian-made psychodrama The Driver’s Seat in his book Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up (1990), in which his then-boss – cadaverous pop art visionary Andy Warhol – makes a memorable guest star appearance as “a rich creep of undisclosed nationality and occupation” (dubbed with an incongruous British-accented voice!). The Driver’s Seat (aka Identikit) was released fifty years ago today (20 May 1974) and remains mesmerizingly strange. Suffering whiplash mood swings as a woman with a “date with death”, Taylor gives one of her definitive performances. The Driver’s Seat dates from my favourite Elizabeth Taylor era in the late sixties and early seventies when she was gutsily portraying variations of women-having-a-nervous-meltdown in oddball “failed art movies” (like Boom! (1968), Secret Ceremony (1968) and X, Y and Zee (1972)). Taylor goes full blast cray-cray in The Driver’s Seat and it’s awesome to observe.

[gotankgo]

Andy Warhol's Bad ((1977)

Atlanta - September 2nd, 1977

[bitter69uk]

"The last thing my mother said to me was, 'SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.' I've always liked that, and I've always tried to live up to it." Susan Tyrrell

Born on this day 79 years ago: tempestuous maverick “outsider actress” Susan Tyrrell (18 March 1945 – 16 June 2012). Tyrrell possessed the talent and beauty to be a mainstream movie star (those heart-shaped cheekbones!), but her destiny lay in portraying grotesques, harridans, shrews and alcoholics. (When she died, The Guardian’s headline summarized her as “Actor often cast in sleazy, raunchy roles.” Seriously – what higher praise could an actress possibly hope for?). Films I’ve loved her in: Fat City (1972), Andy Warhol’s BAD (1976), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), Forbidden Zone (1980), Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) and John Waters’ Cry-baby (1990). (Afterwards, Waters reflected, “She had talent, yes but God she was exhausting”). Hell, I’m such a Tyrrell devotee I’ve even suffered through dreck like Poker Alice (1987) and Powder (1995) to catch a fleeting glimpse of her. (At least with made-for-TV Western Poker Alice you get to see Tyrrell and Elizabeth Taylor engage in a rolling-on-the-floor catfight. Or at least, their body doubles). If you’ve never experienced Tyrrell onscreen, I’d recommend starting with her rare starring role in ultra-freaky 1981 horror movie Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker (aka Night Warning). She’s ferocious in that one! Pic: polaroid of cult cinema royalty Susan Tyrrell and Joe Dallesandro during production of Cry-baby. I want to be them when I grow up.

Susan Tyrrell and Joe Dallesandro on the set of Cry Baby, 1990.

[boag]

Yesterday I was on Twitter and someone quoted this tweet that had a video of some gay kid reading the shit out of his friend and making her legitimately cry and they said smth like “so much gay boy humor is literally just misogyny like y’all need to start calling them faggots and moving on” and they got so much hate and all these people being like “this isn’t misogynistic it had nothing to do with her being a woman!!” or whatever and the person who said it was trying to explain to these people that verbally berating a girl you’re allegedly “friends” with and continuing to tear her apart after she’s gone silent and stopped playing along and is trying to blink back her tears and thinking it’s okay bc it’s a “joke” is literally just treating women like shit for ur own amusement… which is misogynistic . And these people were acting like they claimed the sky was green bc they called it misogyny . There is no hope for women 😭😭😭

[rolloroberson]

Debbie Harry promo shot for Andy Warhol’s “Bad”.

[lobbycards]

Bad aka Andy Warhol's Bad, Italian Lobby Card (Fotobusta). 1977

[susantyrrell]

Stefania Casini, Andy Warhol and Susan Tyrrell.

[weaselle]

i want to talk about real life villains

Not someone who mugs you, or kills someone while driving drunk, those are just criminals. I mean VILLAINS.

Not like trump or musk, who are... cartoonishly evil. And not sexy villains, not grandiose villains, not even satisfyingly two dimensional villains it is easy to hate unconditionally. The real villains.

I had a client who was a retired executive for one of the big oil companies, i think it was Shell or Chevron. Had a home just outside of San Francisco that was wall to wall floor to ceiling full of expensive art. Literally. I once accidentally knocked a painting off the wall because it was hanging at knee height at the corner of the stairs, and it had a little brass plaque on it, and i looked up the name of the artist and it was Monet's apprentice and son-in-law, who was apparently also a famous painter. He had an original Andy Warhol, which should have been a prize piece for anyone to showcase -- it was hanging in the bathroom. I swear to god this guy was using a Chihuly (famous glass sculptor) as a fruit bowl. And he was like, "idk my wife was the one who liked art"

I was intrigued by this guy, because in the circles i run this dude is The Enemy. right? Wealthy oil executive? But as my client, he was... like a sweet grandpa. A poor widower, a nice old man, anyone who knew him would have called him a sweetheart. He had a slightly bewildered air, a sort of gentle bumbling nature.

And the fact that he was both of these things, a Sweet Little Old Man and The Enemy, at the same time, seemed important and fascinating to me.

He reminded me of some antagonist from fiction, but i couldn't put my finger on who. And when i did it all made sense.

John Hammond.

probably one of the most realistic bad guys ever written.

If you've only ever seen the movie, this will need some explaining.

Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park in 1990, and i read it shortly thereafter. In the movie, the dinosaurs are the antagonists, which imo erases 50% of the point of the story.

book spoilers below.

In the book, John Hammond is the villain but it takes the reader like half the book to figure that out. Just like my client, John is a sweet old man who wants lovely things for people. He's a very sympathetic character. But as the book progresses, you start to see something about him.

He has an idea, and he's sure it's a good one. When someone else dies in pursuit of his dream, he doesn't think anything of it. When other people turn out to care about that, he brings in experts to evaluate the safety of his idea, and when they quickly tell him his idea is dangerous and needs to be put on hold, he ignores his own experts that he himself hired, because they are telling him that he is wrong, and he is sure he is right.

In his mind, he's a visionary, and nobody understands his vision. He is surrounded by naysayers. Several things have proven too difficult to do the best and safest way, so he has cut corners and taken shortcuts so he can keep moving forward with his plans, but he's sure it's fine. He refuses to hear any word of caution, because he believes he is being cautious enough, and he knows best, even though he has no background in any of the sciences or professions involved. He sends his own grandchildren out into a life-threatening situation because he is willfully ignorant of the danger he is creating.

THIS is like the real villains of the world. He doesn't want anyone to die. Far from it, he only wants good things for people! He's a sweet old man who loves his grandchildren. But he has money and power and refuses to hear that what he is doing is dangerous for everyone, even his own family.

I think he's possibly one of the most important villains ever written in popular fiction.

In the book, he is killed by a pack of the smallest, cutest, "least dangerous" dinosaurs, because a big part of why we read fiction is to see the villains face thematic justice. But like a cigarette CEO dying of lung cancer, his death does not stop his creation from spreading out into the world to continue to endanger everyone else.

I think it is really important to see and understand this kind of villainy in fiction, so you can recognize it in real life.

Sweetheart of a grandfather. Wanted the best for everyone. Right up until what was best for everyone inconvenienced the pursuit of his own interests.

And my client was like that too. His wife had died, and his dog was now the love of his life, and she was this little old dog with silky hair in a hair cut that left long wispy bits on her lower legs. Certain plant materials were easily entangled in this hair and impossible to get out without pulling her hair which clearly hurt her. When i suggested he ask his groomer to trim her lower leg hair short to avoid this, he refused, saying he really liked her usual hair cut.

I emphasized that she was in pain after every walk due to the plant debris getting caught in her leg hair, and a simple trim could put an end to her daily painful removal of it, and he just frowned like i'd recommended he take a bath in pig shit and said "But she'll be ugly" and refused to talk about it anymore.

Sweet old man though. Everyone loved him.

[thedrillerkiller]

Off to do last minute Christmas things…