THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607050308
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 67 lines
ON THE STRENGTH of a quite remarkable performance from Lili Taylor, director Mary Harron has made a hilarious film out of both the craziness and levity of the '60s cult of celebrity.
In ``I Shot Andy Warhol,'' there are parties in which topless girls appear quite casually. There are bitchy cat-fights between untalented hangers-on who use Andy Warhol's studio, The Factory, as a place for both hiding and showing off. Returning to our psyche are folks like the transvestite Candy Darling and the ``superstar,'' Viva. It was a society trying so hard to bust loose from its restrictions that excesses became ordinary.
There was an emptiness that is so vapid that the film, in less imaginative hands, might have been mindless sensationalism. Because of its nonchalant approach to pseudo-depravity, it emerges as something of a gem. Not since the much under-rated ``To Die For'' has there been a dark comedy that is so playful.
At the center of things is not Andy Warhol, the soup-can silk-screener who was intent upon putting down everything ``ordinary.'' Rather, this is an intriguing study of Valerie Solanas, the founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men).
Lili Taylor, clad in a mannish outfit and chain-smoking as she spouts obscenities about the uselessness of men, is not someone you'd want to tangle with. ``To call a man an animal is to flatter him: he's a machine,'' she reasons as she delivers portions of her ``SCUM Manifesto'' straight into the camera.
Taylor creates such a believable and desperate underdog that, in spite of her radical nature, we can't help but eventually pour our hearts out to her. Like the character Robert De Niro played in ``King of Comedy'' and Ratso Rizzo, as played by Dustin Hoffman in ``Midnight Cowboy,'' she is a tragedy in that the very fame she worships is both unattainable and not worth attaining.
After becoming a hanger-on in the Warhol group, she decides to shoot him when he is reluctant to back a perfectly dreadful play she has written. She nails him two times in the chest, plus a shot for arts businessman Mario Amaya (who later became curator at Norfolk's Chrysler Museum). It didn't kill Warhol, but he never really got over it, physically or mentally. As for Valerie, she spent three years in a state hospital for the criminally insane.
Stephen Dorff, recently mentioned as a possibility for the elusive position of ``next James Dean,'' changes his image entirely to play the lipsticked Candy Darling. Jared Haris, who passes for Warhol only with the help of a wig, suggests that the artist was a shy, reluctant leader to the movement.
Above all, the performance of Lili Taylor should not be missed.
If you don't laugh, you will be terrified at this film - and perhaps relieved that we already lived through it. There is a relentless urge, though, to laugh at the audacious absurdity of it all. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ORION PICTURES
Lili Taylor is suberb in the lead role of ``I Shot Andy Warhol.''
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``I Shot Andy Warhol''
Cast: Lili Taylor, Jared Harris, Martha Plimpton, Stephen Dorff,
Tahnee Welch
Director: Mary Harron
MPAA rating: R (nudity, language and much of it)
Mal's rating: Three 1/2 stars
Location: Naro in Norfolk by CNB