The Vandals Took the Handles

How much was Edie Sedgwick (1943-1971) involved with Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Bob Neuwirth, or anyone else, and just how much impact did she really have on fellow artists and celebrities? While I thoroughly enjoyed Jean Stein's Edie: American Girl edited with George Plimpton (N.Y.: Knopf, 1982; reissued by Grove Press), it leaves a number of mysteries like these either partially or completely unsolved. The lack of an index doesn't help, but Stein herself clearly appreciated the difficulties of taking a comprehensive look at Edie's life and times. In the Afterword, she notes: "a close friend of Edie Sedgwick pointed out that Edie kept us all in different compartments. He warned me that learning about her other friends would take ten years. He was right." Given the renewed interested in the Warhol 60s and intervening years, it seems time for another attempt at a Sedgwick biography. Like the mystery of Jimmy Hoffa, it's something that may require veterans of the times -- especially eye witnesses -- to either step forward and tell their version, or for us to wait until they're gone and for someone else to be able to tell the full story a la Johnny Cash and June Carter in Walk the Line.

This is also the fundemental challenge for George Hickenlooper and his fictionalized Sedgwick biopic Factory Girl, which is tentatively set for release in September 2006 and stars Sienna Miller as Edie. Because I like what I've seen of Hickenlooper's work so far, I'm keeping an open mind about this project -- unlike Lou Reed, who's already dismissed it. Here's what he reportedly said: "I read that script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen -- by any illiterate retard -- in a long time." Don't sugarcoat it, Lou!

I'll tell you what is worth seeing on DVD -- Robert Stone's Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004). It's fascinating, and sets the creation of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the context of its times. I thought it telling that several of the people who created this group were strongly influenced by Costa-Gavras' incendiary Latin American movie State of Siege (1972), which involves the kidnapping of a CIA agent (played by Yves Montand) by revolutionaries. You may recall that the Hearst case carried extra interest because of the way she eventually came to side with her captors. Was this classic brainwashing, the Stockholm Effect, or pure ideological "enlightenment"? Luckily, Patty Hearst was a resilient person, and has, since her release, become involved with other sorts of show biz, actively associating with filmmaker John Waters, for instance. Bill Clinton pardoned her the day before G.W. Bush moved into the White House. Everything's in the timing. State of Siege was not only sporadically banned in the U.S.A. and other countries at the time of its release, but perhaps more eerily, it is simply not available anymore. Not sure why, since incidents like this happen daily in Iraq and elsewhere nowadays. Like so many other classics, I'd like to see it made available in digital format. And by the way, the elusive Bob Neuwirth -- the guy who supposedly sped Edie into a drug-fueled decline -- has his own website that seems to have died on the virtual vine and is now sitting on the internet, ca. 2002: http://www.bobneuwirth.com/

Ciao!