Film Review

The radical feminist author of “SCUM Manifesto” and the bygone world of Warhol’s Factory come to life in the 1996 film, now restored to 4K.

Still from I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), dir. Mary Harron (all images courtesy Janus Films)

Andy Warhol occupies a strange, almost mystical place in the cultural imagination. There is Warhol the man (“Andy” to his Factory acolytes) and Warhol the monolith. There is the painfully self-conscious Midwesterner and the turtlenecked Rumpelstiltskin, spinning ephemeral straw into art-market gold. There is the son who takes his mother to mass every week and the mop-headed libertine whose debauched parties are legendary. Has there ever been another figure at once so socially awkward and hungry for attention? Has there ever been another American so engrossingly contradictory? 

Meet radical feminist Valerie Solanas. Remembered for her 1967 “SCUM Manifesto,” a scathing call to arms for the “Society for Cutting Up Men,” the misandrist is also known for shooting one of the biggest icons of the 20th century. Mary Harron’s 1996 drama I Shot Andy Warhol — named for Solanas’s declaration immediately following the attempted murder in 1968 — dares to consider Warhol and Solanas as equals, both yearning for mass approval, both deeply misunderstood, both caught in the crosshairs of rapid social change. Now restored to 4K for its 30th anniversary, I Shot Andy Warhol is a film ahead of its time — one that resembles today more than the decade in which it was made.

• Film Review
• Film
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• Andy Warhol
• Valerie Solanas