DISGRACELAND - Andy Warhol: Fame, the Future, and Back from the Dead

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Andy Warhol was the first artist to achieve rock star status. He was a Beatle with a silkscreen printer. His work and play space, the Factory, attracted people of all ages; rich and poor, straight and gay, sane and…not so sane. It was in the Factory that he was shot by a would-be assassin. He was rushed to a hospital and pronounced clinically dead. But Andy Warhol's second life began the moment he was resurrected on an operating table. As soon as his heart began to beat again, he became a true cultural icon – bigger than his paintings or his Polaroids or his experimental films, bigger than life itself. Andy Warhol became the future.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

The stories about Andy Warhol are insane. He was the first artist to achieve rock star status. He was rescued by firefighters when a mob of obsessed fans threatened to crush him. His work and play space, the factory, was a regular target for the NYPD. The factory scene attracted people of all ages, rich and poor, straight and gay, sane and not so sane. He was almost killed by a strung out junkie with a loaded pistol. He was shot and critically wounded by a would-be assassin. He died on an operating table before dramatically being brought back to life.

Andy Warhol's second life began the moment his heart started to beat again, and in that second life, he became a true cultural icon, bigger than his paintings or his Polaroids or his experimental films, and bigger than life itself. Andy Warhol was great art. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, That wasn't great art. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Three Sheets Swing, MK1.

I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to a clip from Hang-on Sloopy by the McCoys. And why would I play you that specific slice of Ohio State marching band cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on October 8, 1964. and that was the day that Andy Warhol debuted his first ever museum show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, a turning point not only in the world of art, but in the culture at large. On this episode, artists as rock stars, strung out junkies, would-be assassins, quick-thinking surgeons, the factory in Andy Warhol. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the story. Graceland.

1985, New York City. The Smiths on their first real tour of the United States. The Manchester band's lead singer, Morrissey, on stage at the Beacon Theater. Blue jeans, button-up shirt, casually unbuttoned, flowers in his back pocket. Arrogent, dismissive. Begging, please, please, please, let me get what I want this time. Not a man so much as a persona, a creation, a work of art. Morrissey holds an outstretched hand to the thousands there to see him.

The kids who just hours ago were beating on the windows of the car he was riding in, the same kids who screamed with delight when Johnny Marr rang out the opening lick of this charming man on his guitar. It's all a bit surreal to Morrissey, and he tries hard to make it look like he doesn't really care. Not like Johnny fawning over Mick Jagger backstage that wrinkly old fuck, But then Marissy sees someone out in the crowd. That shock of white hair, the glasses. Andy Warhol stops Morrissey in his tracks. Like Marcy, Andy is a put-on, a persona.

But Andy did it first. Andy walked so that Marcy could run. Morrissey doling out that youthful erotic energy that Andy fails to possess and frankly really never had, but which fascinates and turns him off. nonetheless. But Morrissey, like Andy Warhol, markets himself not as a sexual icon, but as as as as asexual. Whether or not you believe that, whether it's actually true, that's all part of the process, a process that is intentional and precise. Like the image the Smiths chose for the cover

of their self-titled debut album, a man shirtless head hanging down. An image from a 1968 film called Flesh, directed by another Marcy, Paul Marcy, and produced by one Andy Warhol. Right out of the gate, the Smith's owed a debt of gratitude to the man in the white wig who is now standing in the middle of the beacon crowd. And they owed him not just for stealing a photo from a movie of his, but for the very concept of a modern rock and roll concert. The light show, the iconography of a superstar, whether on a stage or in a silk screen painting. It's all. Hall. Warhol is here, at the beacon, witnessing the Smiths. Just like he was at the Cafe Bazaar some 20 years prior witnessing the Velvet Underground. He is everywhere in New York,

or so it seems. Liz Taylor's birthday party at Studio 54, the cock ring on Christopher Street, where guys cruise the bathroom as an Amel nitrate hot wires the dance floor. The anvil 14th, where the hypnotic repetition of a man removing 50 pairs of jockey shorts from his pelvis is just as much a work of art as Andy's 32 Campbell's soup cans. Clam chowder, chicken noodle, cream of vegetable, green pea. Repetition in real life, in art, and in the process. Split pea, cream of mushroom, onion, chili beef. Andy once asked the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed how many songs he'd written that day.

Five, who told him. Five, Andy said. What's wrong with you? Why are you so lazy? Andy Warhol despised laziness when it came to work, just like he despised anything that wasn't new. That's why he was drawn to the Velvet Underground and now to the Smiths.

The newness of Stephen Patrick Morrissey, who dropped his first and middle names to become something completely different, just like Andy, leaving scrawny little Andrew Warholah in the past. Just another working-class Pittsburgh kid with a face that disgusted him in a way of carry himself that betrayed all the ways in which he was different from John Q. Hetero. It was fine, though.

As an adult, Andy Warhol had concealer to remake his face and wigs to hide his rapidly disappearing hair. He needed those things, just like he needed to make great art, just like he needed to be famous. But more than your garden variety celebrity, not some 15-minute, He wanted to be as famous as the Queen of England, as iconic as the meticulous artwork inside the Byzantine Catholic Church of his youth, which transported him away from dreary Pittsburgh, somewhere far down the road, the future. And he did this, and he got there, by becoming something and someone that no one had ever seen

before. September, 1963. Half a year until the Beatles would land on U.S. soil. mere months before JFK's motorcade made that fateful turn into Dealey Plaza. 35-year-old Andy Warhol laid on a mattress in the back of a Ford Falcon next to his assistant, Gerard Malanga. They flipped through magazines while their friends, Wynne Chamberlain and Taylor Mead sat up front and piloted the station wagon through Middle America as if they were in a Kerouac novel. But that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty Jive was old news.

A few years was an eternity, at least Andy. On the road was in the past. Andy and his friends weren't emulating the past. They were doing their own thing, chartering this hunk of Detroit steel in a haze of marijuana smoke and speed. They left New York City in the dust. Back where Andy's silk screens of Marilyn Monroe had recently shifted the tectonic plates of the art world's crusty underpinnings ever so slightly.

50 Maryland's, each one the same but each one different, just like Andy, doling out altered versions of himself to each new person he met, like those waiting for him in Los Angeles, where he was headed now, where his second gallery show was just days away. 23 canvases of Elvis Presley, pistol drawn, eyes looking up and to the left, the same Elvis overlapping over and over, Elvi. Andy hoped these 23 Elvises would send the City of Angels into another Tizzy. His first L.A. show, the aforementioned Campbell's soup cans, really pissed off the so-called connoisseurs,

tastemakers who didn't realize their time was up. Andy was hated as much as he was loved. That's the mark of true fame. In Kansas, they pulled the forward into a truck stop, real salt of the earth. The kind of people whose definition of art was that picture of Jesus hanging on their wall at home. They didn't know Andy Warhol and that he made a name for himself in his adopted city of New York, first with commercial work, illustrations in Harper's Bazaar, town and country, ads in sports illustrated, drug company propaganda and the like, all while sketching his friend's cocks on the side, or that he parlayed department store window dressings into gallery

installations. Low art made high. All they knew was that he looked different, with walking, different, dressed different. He had that New York stink on him, but something about him was tilted. The tuft of white hair on his head, sunglasses so dark you couldn't tell if there were actually eyes behind them. Andy hung back on the fringes, listening, observing, the leader of a pack who also happened to be a loner. Heads turned as Andy and his friends looked around for something to eat. A hush fell over the place. This alien in their midst, Art fucked future boy and his limp-wrist queens. The locals' fascination quickly turned into menace.

Andy, Gerard, Wyn, Taylor, they could all feel it, the eyes staring at him, the threat that didn't need to be spoken to be heard. Andy Warhol didn't let it bother him. These people were stuck in the past. Andy was thinking about the future. About a few more days down the road, where his L.A. Gallery show would take one step closer to the fame he craved. He would get there on time and in one piece.

Andy Warhol was not going to die. Not today. Not inside a Kansas truck stop. Not anywhere. Andy Warhol was going to live forever. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do. Rather be disappointed. I do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going and the air marshal is trying

to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships. or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear,

not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, manjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes.

of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay. That's another, film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exact. Right Network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Philadelphia, 1965. The roughneck standing outside the Institute of Contemporary Art fondled their switchblades. Their leather jackets provided relief against the cool autumn breeze. And they waited for Andy Warhol to step out into the night. That's when they'd jump him. They didn't give a shit about his art, or any art for that matter. They just hated Andy Warhol. His sexual orientation, his stupid brillo boxes, his fame, didn't matter.

They hated that they had to read about him in the paper and see a screwed up little face on TV. Tonight, he'd get what was coming to him. Inside, Andy Warhol was surrounded, swarmed by adoring fans as if he was a beetle. But Andy didn't do beetle suits. Andy wore a black shirt, black jacket, Levi denim, wrap-around sunglasses, the coolest thing that Philly had ever seen. So cool it could only be seen at night. 9 p.m. was the start time for Andy's first ever museum show.

Flash bulbs flash, autograph hounds hounded, hands reached out to touch the hem of his garment, just like the hands that would pound the window of Stephen Patrick Morrissey's car decades later. The cops did their best to keep this particular scene calm, But Andy's scene could not be contained. Every one of the more than 1,600 people attending the show were as much a part of the art as the silk screens hanging on the walls.

Artists didn't have fan clubs and entourages. Not in 1965. Andy Warhol changed all that. The moment he stepped into the museum with Edie Cedric on his arm, 17 years Andy's junior, all dolled up in a pink floor-length jersey tube and earrings that dangled to her collarbone. living on her inheritance while also living as a part of the growing community at the factory.

Andy's work and play space in Midtown Manhattan. Four flights up in one of the oldest elevators in New York to a space 40 feet wide by 75 feet deep, wires sticking out of the ceiling. The concrete floor dinged with so many imperfections it could have been Andy's blemished face. The crew at the factory was growing along with Andy's renown. Not just Gerard and Wynn and Taylor, but Billy Named, Paul Morris, Robert Olivier, to name a few. Bibi Hansen, daughter of an avant-garde artist,

and at 14 years old, one of the youngest factory hangers-on, later described the collective as, quote, drag queens and queers, children, street hustlers, and rough trade, dropouts and runaways, drug dealers, and psychiatric basket cases. We were all outsider insiders at the factory, unquote. And they all did the things outsider insiders do. Gerard made silk screens with Andy, while Billy snorted an infatamine hydrochloride and got ready for his first three minutes of fame in

front of the camera. One of the hundreds of human subjects for Andy's so-called screen tests. Silent films, one take, shot on a black and white bolex. Robert Olivier, meanwhile, shot speed. Ened E. D. Cedric mainline barbiturates and acid while trying to blot out the first 20 years of her life. Her abusive father, her brother who hanged himself at a hospital where he'd been sent to be cured of homosexuality. At the ICA in Philly, though, Edie had her shit together, for one night at least.

She looked incredible. The press said she was Andy's girlfriend, which was, of course, by design. All part of the act, Andy's creation. The two of them looked down at the rapturous crowd from up on their wrought iron staircase

were just moments earlier the cops had escorted them for their protection. There was simply too many people here. They were shouting Andy's name. They tried to tear his clothes off of him. Who knew what they would do if they actually got a hold of him? Andy's newfound fame, the thing he wanted more than anything,

was beginning to turn on him and devour him whole. He began to panic. He looked up. There was nowhere else to go. The staircase he was standing on led to nothing, just the ceiling. He and Yidi were trapped. But the cops noticed a potential escape.

A trapped door at the top of the top of the wall. the stairs that had been sealed up long ago. Philly firefighters wrenched it open with crowbars and pulled Andy and Edie through to another floor, away from the obsessive throngs. From there, they had to move fast. Andy grabbed Edie's hand. They raced through the empty room like George and Ringo racing through a train station, over to a window and a fire escape.

The gang of leather-clad roughnecks waiting to do Andy harm had long since folded up their switchblades and gone home. Instead, Andy and Edie ducked their heads as they slipped into a wall. waiting police cruiser, which now whist them away to safety, then back to the confines of the factory. East 47th Street, four flights up, where the cops would soon show up again. But this time, not to save Andy Warhol from overzealous fans. The NYPD heard all about what was going on at the factory, and I'm not talking about the assembly line of artwork and films that were being produced. films like couch, which was nearly an hour of people literally fucking on a couch.

That was the film. That was it. In the mid-60s, that was not simply taboo, but highly illegal. The constant influx of new people into Andy Warhol's factory scene was totally unsupervised, and an unsupervised scene of, again to paraphrase, Bibby Hansen, drug dealers, street hustlers, rough trade, etc. will undoubtedly bring with it a seedy criminal element. And that criminal element was what the cops were there for.

A men, short for infatomy men, addicts who were always looking for a fix. Mole people, aka the ones so strung out they had to hide the ocular evidence behind a pair of shades. The police arrived unannounced and tossed the place from top to bottom. They hunted down every trace of paraphernalia they could find. They kicked people out. They shut down parties. Police pressure on the factory became such an issue that Andy required all drug use to happen elsewhere.

If you wanted to get high, you had to go to the park down the street near the United Nations building, step out onto a fire escape, or head to the roof. For his part, Andy popped amphetamines only to help him work longer and later, never just to have a good time. At least that's what he told himself.

Besides, he wasn't so much interested in drugs at the moment as he was interested in Danny. Danny Williams was a sound man, an editor, an electrician, and a gaffer, and upon his arrival in New York with Edie Sedgwick in 65, he quickly became a crucial part of the factory's technical team. He also became a crucial part of Andy Warhol's life. He dressed like Andy. He moved in with Andy at his row house on Lexington Avenue.

Andy's romantic relationship with Danny was very private in the way that his non-romantic relationship with Edie was very public. But Andy's idea of a romance was good food and glamorous friends. Danny wanted more. He fought for it, and Andy argued with him. Out for an intimate dinner at a Greenwich Village restaurant, Danny couldn't take it anymore. He was frustrated, confused, hurt. He lashed out at Andy.

He wanted to humiliate him, make Andy feel the way he felt. He jumped from his seat and grabbed Andy's silver wig, ripping it off his head. Andy's face went flush. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at him, staring at the working class kid who couldn't stand his original skin. Andrew Warholah. No one was supposed to see him. He was supposed to be dead and buried in the dust of the past. Andy kicked Danny out of his row house soon after that, but he didn't have the heart to completely cut his ex-lover loose.

Danny went on tour with the factory's great rock band, the Velvet Underground. He was the mastermind of the group's Seminole Lighting Show. which would change rock and roll forever. But Danny was changed, too. He was now addicted, an Ahead, a mole person, a speed freak, who showered once a week. In July of 1966, he went back to his parents' home in Massachusetts, where he borrowed his mother's car and drove it out to a rocky cove along the ocean. And no one ever saw him again.

They just found the car, along with his clothes, folded up in a pile by the water. Danny Williams' family was despondent. His mother rang the factory. Andy refused to come to the phone. I don't care where he is, was Andy's reasoning. He's just an infatamine addict. Danny Williams was now like Andrew Warholah. Dead.

Stuck in the one place Andy would never allow himself to be caught. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends,

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me

and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, Can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance.

Like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been sleepwalking. David O'Yellow. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham.

So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Durbin. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monsu. Camilla Marone,

Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk

into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies

on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criteria closet. Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, great by got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore.

It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies. We can't stop obsessing over. from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. November, 1967, Andy Warhol was expanding, beyond art, beyond film, and now into music. He had his sights set even higher on the culture at large, where the real immortality was at. But all the money he was now sinking into music, into Lou Reed's band, The Velvet Underground, the gear, the rehearsal space, the tour, Andy was seeing very little return on his investment. The band's debut album was a commercial dud. But the failure of the Velvet Underground, the chart, wasn't what was on Andy's mind today. Today, he was thinking about the factory, the workspace and freaksin he had established

and lorded over for the last four years. Their month-to-month lease was being terminated. The building was slated for demolition. Within weeks, the factory would be rubble. Andy needed to find a new space and fast. But the machine aspect of the factory had to carry on in the meantime. Andy kept printing screens and making art, kept calling the press agent he had on payroll

with any and all news about the factory, which the agent would then pitch to the media, drumming up more recognition, thus making Andy Warhol more famous. The boost in Andy's profile brought more people to the factory store, people who wanted something, a fix, a fuck, a place to crash or some cash for a sandwich. Andy Warall had money. He took in the less fortunate, the down and outs, the outsider insiders.

This was the thinking that drove a guy known around the neighborhood as Sammy the Italian to make his way up to the factory with a loaded gun. In reality, Sammy was having a hard time. thinking at all. He was strung out, and he needed to score. But first, he needed to settle a drug debt that he owed to some guys downtown. He figured, like many before him, that Andy Warhol was good for it. The elevator door on the fourth floor opened, and Sammy stepped into the factory, pistol in hand, where Andy, Paul Morrissey, Taylor Mead, Billy Name, and Nico, the Velvet Underground, soon-to-be former lead singer, were hanging around. Sammy waved around his gun and told him to all get on the

couch, and they did as they were told. Then Sammy told them that one of them was going to have to give him some dough right now. Andy was in shock. Nico, on the other hand, was laughing. That thing's not even loaded, she said. Sammy was insulted, and he fired the gun at the ceiling. Sammy's piece was loaded, all right, and he wasn't fucking around. He needed cash, so he opened the gun's cylinder and emptied out all the bullets, but one. Then, He snapped the cylinder shut, pointed the barrel at Andy Warhol, and the others on the couch, and he pulled the trigger. Said he was going to keep pulling the trigger until someone paid him.

Everyone started to frantically dig into their pockets, pulling out dollar bills, change, whatever they could find. Here, Sammy, take it. Just don't fucking pull the trigger. Jesus Christ! Suddenly, a wave of regret came over Sammy's face. Only now did he realize what he was doing. He didn't want to hurt anybody. He really did need the money, though.

or else someone was going to hurt him. That's all. Andy, for one, breathed a sigh of relief. He dodged a bullet, literally. Seven months later, however, he wouldn't be so lucky. June 3rd, 1968. The elevator bell rang out, not on the fourth floor of the building on East 47th Street,

but the sixth floor of a Victorian on the west side of Union Square, where Andy Warhol's factory now made his home. This time, it wasn't Sammy the Italian. coming for Andy, but someone else, another character on the factory's fringes who also wanted something. Valerie Salinas said she lived nowhere, that she was no one, but she clearly wanted to be someone. Like Andy Warhol, she wanted to be famous. But Andy Warhol didn't want to help her with that. He didn't care about her self-published pamphlet, the Scum Manifesto, S-C-U-M, as in the Society for cutting up men, the one that called for overthrowing the government and eliminating the male sex.

Andy was no feminist, and just because he'd let her act in one of his shitty movies, that wasn't going to change anything. He asked her to do that, not the other way around. Because when she asked for something, she got bufkis. Andy wasn't going to turn the script she gave him into a movie. That was clear to her now. It was also clear that Andy hadn't even read the fucking thing. What an asshole. Andy didn't care about other artists. He just cared about himself. And if Andy Warhol wasn't going to help Valerie Salinas become famous by shooting her script, then she would become famous by shooting Andy Warhol. The first two rounds from Valerie's Beretta sent the people in the factory scattering.

Someone yelled, hit the floor, and Andy ducked behind a desk. Valerie found him easily, cowering there in his black leather jacket like a rat. She pushed the hot barrel of her Beretta into Andy's side and pulled the trigger again. The bullet went straight through him and lodged into the hardwood. floor below, and Andy screamed out in pain. Valerie then turned her gun on Mario Amaya, a London curator and critic in town to talk with Andy about a soup can show in the UK. Amaya suffered a minor flesh wound and managed to scurry off to a better hiding place. Valerie would have also shot a third person if her gun hadn't jammed, or so goes one telling

of the story. Within minutes, Valerie Salinas was gone, and Andy Warhol was left dying on the floor of his studio. Everyone wanted something from Andy. Even the ambulance driver who transported Andy six blocks down the street to Columbus Hospital, he told Mario Mio it was 15 bucks to turn the siren on, or so goes another telling of the story. The doctors at Columbus were more sympathetic. When Andy Warhol's unconscious body arrived in the ER, he was pronounced clinically dead. The bullet from Valerie's gun had punctured his stomach, his liver, his spleen, his esophagus, and both of his lungs. The surgeon on duty had one option. A miracle.

Meanwhile, in Times Square, Valerie Salinas walked up to a rookie cop and turned herself in. Being arrested for murdering Andy Warhol thrust her in the right direction, toward a radio station microphone, and one step closer to fame. Valerie, why did you do this? He's a piece of garbage. You know he may die. Good. Do you mean that? Yeah, I do.

Why do you hate him so much? Because he's him. What do you think is going to happen to you now? I have no idea, I don't care. I'm looking forward to going to jail because there's nothing out here but fucking garbage. Valerie Salinas had no patience for garbage, for the things she tried to kill and leave behind. Andy Warhol was dead. Dead like Andrew Warholah and Danny Williams and on the road and pictures of Jesus and living rooms

in any creative thought that wasn't in the service of the new. But Andy Warhol was also alive. The future Andy Warhol, the one who was resurrected on an operating table. The attending surgeon at Columbus Hospital cut open Andy's chest and massaged his heart by hand. Slowly, Andy's pulse returned. He took a deep breath. He was the same but different, just like one of his 50 Maryland's or 23 Elvis's. And also, just like Marilyn and Elvis, Andy Warhol, the impossible survivor of an assassination attempt,

had finally achieved fame at a level that someone like Valerie Salinas could only dream of, the kind that can never be taken away. Andy Warhol turned 40 years old right after he was released from the hospital in the summer of 1968, but he looked and felt much older, and he was frightened. The memory of the hospital, so cold, so empty, where life hung in the balance. The image of his Frankenstein body, all that scarred flesh wrapped tight with a surgical corset to hold his stitched-up organs in place. The sound of gunshots echoing inside the factory, those things haunted him, and they never went away. And neither did Valerie Salinas, at least not at first.

Just months later, around Christmas, that same year, year, Valerie was released from lockup while awaiting trial. Some scum sympathizer, that's again, the Society for Cutting up Men, scum, put up the 10 grand to bail her out. Valerie immediately called the factory, and Paul Morrissey answered. Valerie wanted to talk to Andy. Paul told her that that wasn't going to happen. Valerie said she needed $20,000 for her legal defense, and she wanted Andy to give it to her. Let me repeat that. The woman who shot and nearly killed Andy Warhol, called Andy Warhol, just months later, to ask him to pay for her legal defense. But that wasn't all. She wanted more than money. She wanted Andy to use his connections

to get her on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Of course, Andy Warhol did not give Valerie Salinas anything. Still, she stayed with him for the rest of his life. Her bullet caused permanent damage. An incision during his initial life-saving surgery caused a major hernia. Eating was a chore and volume was necessary. So much value that Andy Warhol was constipated and required a daily enema. His gallbladder became inflamed, but he ignored it because he couldn't do hospitals, not since the shooting. He survived once on the inside and he wasn't about to chance it again. That was Andy's thinking. So he turned to crystals to heal him. Again, Andy's thinking, this time wishful bordering on delusional.

His gallbladder became more diseased, gang-gained even. And when it was finally removed in 1987, it was too late. The night after the surgery, Andy's heart stopped. He was 58. Andy Warhol died in the future he was busy creating. But the crazy thing is that he never got to witness the future that his art had always envisioned. Let me explain. In the two decades between the shooting,

in 1968 and his death in 1987, Andy Warhol kept reinventing himself and what it meant to be an artist. He put a working zipper on the cover of a Rolling Stones album. He became a male model. He commissioned portraits of the upper crust, Shas and Princes and Empresses, Diana Ross, Bridget Bardot, Mick Jagger. He launched Interview Magazine. He started his own cable access show in the MTV age with guests like Duran Duran, The Cars, and Debbie Harry. He called, The more did the new school, all that youthful erotic energy that he never possessed but so desperately craved. Basquiat, Keith Herring, Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

Only now in the 21st century is it obvious that we are living in Andy Warhol's creation. No one knew it at the time, but Andy's greatest work of art was not a Campbell's soup can or a brillo box or even the deliberately constructed image of himself, but rather the reality that we are living in right this very minute. And yes, it's flawed, it's weird, it's dangerous, it nearly kills us, it revolves around some of the worst aspects of people, vanity, greed, viral videos, everyone getting their 15 minutes, but it's undeniable. The selfie you took last night,

the video you shot on your phone with some monotonous slice of everyday life, the live stream that I am filming right now as I record this podcast, They're all just screen tests. They're Andy. Even podcasts, like I said, especially this podcast, which, don't forget, is produced by a company named after an Andy Warhol painting. Double Elvis. The creative device that I used at the top of my show, as well as the one that you know is coming in just a minute. It's my clam chowder.

It's my chicken noodle, my cream of vegetable. It's all repetition. All Andy Warhol. We're all factory kids. Some of us up, some of us down. Some are candies or billies or Evie's or Girards, but we're all free to be who we want to be to create that which resonates with us.

We are art and art is us. We live together in one nation, one world, one future, not under God, but under Andy Warhol. Amen. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page

at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month

weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelamPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rock a roll. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever.

And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yelloo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tena Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the On The Oneson. IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.