Valerie Solanas: "I'm Going To Shoot Andy Warhol..."

Forty-one years later, Margo Feiden finally opened a folder containing a manuscript that had sat on her bookshelf since the day Andy Warhol was shot.

She put it there after spending three hours with Valerie Solanas, who was on the fringes of Warhol’s circle. Ms. Solanas had written a play with an unprintable title and had shown up, uninvited, at Ms. Feiden’s apartment, unkempt and irrational, hoping to talk her into producing it.

Ms. Feiden, who later became an art dealer and the agent for the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, said in a recent interview that she told Ms. Solanas she would not stage it. Solanas countered, “Oh, yes you will, because I’m going to shoot Andy Warhol.”

A few hours later, around 4 p.m. on June 3, 1968, she did.

Ms. Feiden said that Ms. Solanas had handed her the folder around noon. She said, " Ms. Solanas pulled out a gun as she left her apartment and repeated that she intended to shoot Mr. Warhol. “I told her, ‘You don’t want to do that; don’t go kill him."

As Ms. Solanas was gone, Feiden said, she made any number of telephone calls to people who could have warned Warhol. She did not know how to reach him directly but called a cousin, who knew Warhol. She said she also dialed her local police precinct house; Police Headquarters in Manhattan; and the City Hall office of the mayor at the time, John V. Lindsay. No one called back. She put the folder on her bookshelf and kept quiet out of concern for the safety of her daughter, then 18 months old. Her concern deepened with testimony at Ms. Solanas’s trial that suggested Ms. Solanas’s motivation for the shooting was that Warhol had misplaced or lost a copy of the play. (In 1980, Warhol wrote that he had “looked through it briefly, and it was so dirty” that he suspected Ms. Solanas was working for the police on “some kind of entrapment.”)

Ms. Feiden decided to set the record straight after watching a public television documentary that said Ms. Solanas had been at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan on the morning of the shooting. “That’s not the way it was, she was with me all that morning. She left my living room with a gun with the stated purpose of shooting Andy Warhol.”

Ms. Feiden remembered the folder, which she put on the shelf that afternoon. Inside were about 30 mimeographed pages — 30 pages that John McWhinney, a Manhattan manuscript dealer, said were not in two other copies of Ms. Solanas’s play that he has sold. “It’s either a continuation or it’s something that Valerie was working on, a script that was yet to be titled,” he said.

Stuart Pivar, who founded the New York Academy of Art with Warhol and became a close friend of his, said Ms. Feiden’s account “seems to ring true in every single thing that she says.” He also said that he hoped the play, with the extra 30 pages, would be produced. Feiden is stuck between the answer she gave Ms. Solanas — no way — and yes. “But then she’d be getting exactly what she wanted by shooting him, so I’m on a seesaw."

She still hasn't read those 30 pages.

-James Barron ("A Manuscript, a Confrontation, a Shooting," New York Times, City Blog, 6.23.09. Image:

Dinner With Andy Warhol

Date: Fall of 1985
Place: New York City
Restaurant: NOBU- 57th and 6th Ave
Cuisine: Japanese
Courses: 8

The Introduction:

The back of his fried blonde head sat three rows in front of me. I felt…important.

She and I were dressed to the nines that night. We had just seen a bad fashion show at the institute and had walked outside. I was in the midst of hailing a cab when I felt three gentle taps on my shoulder. I turned around and he softly said, “Would you girls like to have dinner with us tonight?” I stared at his waxen pocked-marked complexion and two-toned owl-eyed sunglasses, which obliterated his eyes for about 5 seconds before coolly replying, “Yes.” He took my arm and said, “You and she will ride with me and the others will follow.” The others were Jean-Michel Basquiat, his latest smacked out protégé, Eric Goode, the owner of AREA and Elizabeth Saks of 5th Ave.

The Cab Ride:

We sat in the back seat. He insisted on the middle position and soon began an onslaught of questions:

“What’s your name?”

“Where are you from?”

“Ohio!” I’m from the Midwest too. Pittsburgh. Terrible place. Have you ever been there?”

“What do you do? Do you go to school? “What School? What do you study?”

Before we could barely answer, he would interject little compliments:

“Oh, that’s super!” “You’re Super!”…”Super”
“Oh, you’re beautiful!” “You’re beautiful” …Beautiful.”

“Michelle, who’s your favorite Movie Star?”

“Marilyn! I met Marilyn. Tragic. You have a great voice, you know. It sounds a lot like hers did.”

I said nothing. My heart was pounding.

“It’s true. Her voice was much deeper in real life. That little girl voice was only for her films.”

His voice was surprisingly soft with a slight snake-edged undertone.

I suddenly felt like I was being conned.

The Restaurant:

The owner—an excitable middle-aged Japanese man greeted us at the door. Immediately, he asked Andy for his autograph. Andy signed the book and said, “You both should sign it too.” but never handed us the book.

We waited in the lobby while the private dining room was being prepared. The other party soon arrived and blandly introduced themselves. Basquiat mumbled a hello and said nothing else the entire evening. The other two giggled and necked in the corner. Andy mentioned he was going to make a new movie.

No one responded.

We were ushered into a beautiful dining room—no chairs. Cushions. No shoes permitted. Two Geisha Girls waited at either side of a huge cherry wood table. I sat at the end opposite Andy and beside Basquiat who immediately produced a Tupperware container full of pot and put it beside him.

The owner ecstatically announced we were going to experience a traditional Japanese meal served in traditional Japanese style. He grandly stated that he would introduce each course as it was served.

An awkward silence.

Andy simply nodded and asked me what I wanted to drink.

“Ah a martini! I love a girl who can guzzle gasoline.”

He smiled at me. Ordered a Coke and began to gossip:

“Do you know Nikki Haskell?”

“Yes” (I lied)

“What do you think of her?”

“She’s great.”

“Oh, really? I think she’s terrible. Oh, you girls are super! Jean Michel, we should put her in our next film!”

Basquiat said nothing. The other two snickered. My friend looked like someone stuck a poll up her ass and I…ordered another martini.

To change the subject, I asked him about the past. I mentioned that I had read the book, EDIE and wondered how factual it really was.

He simply said, “Edie who?”

Succubus.

Dinner was served.

I don’t remember any more conversations probably because there were none. I do remember having difficulty eating my blowfish. Andy barely ate anything. Basquiat never smoked any of his pot nor offered it to anyone else. Elizabeth Saks and Eric Goode played footsy under the table with Basquiat. My friend continued to look uncomfortable and I ordered yet…another martini.

Andy paid the check, knelt at my feet and asked if he could help me put my black riding boots on. My hand on his shoulder, I let him do most of the work. He was tender and took his time. I wondered…

The owner offered to drive us downtown to AREA. We piled into his Mercedes limo. Andy sat in the front. We drove in silence. Said Thank yous and curt Goodbyes before entering the club.

That was the last we saw of them.

-VioletPlanet ( Image: -Unknown, Andy Warhol & Edie Sedgwick at a cocktail party, 1960s).