Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture
Shooting Stars
S1 • E2 Feb 2, 2001
In this film we explore Warhol's shift from painting to film-making. No less radical in this area, he eschewed Hollywood conventions, setting up at The Factory his own rival East coast studio churning out films in which nothing happened. In his one reel three-minute screen tests he proved himself a true documentarian fascinated by the depths of nothingness, that would, years later, be the key ingredient of reality television. Meanwhile, to fund his experimental agenda Warhol also became a commercial portrait artist, charging wealthy patrons for flattering portraits that ,through their sheer number, became another vast work of social documentation. Warhol further capitalized on this shrewd business approach by taking on the management of seminal rock group The Velvet Underground, and playing host at the Factory to an outrageous coterie of people that his patronage transformed into superstars, culminating in an assassination attempt that he barely survived yet that set the seal on Warhol's status as both a star and a brand.