TAVEL, Ronald
Andy Warhol’s Ridiculous Screenplays

Ronald Tavel’s piquant memoir of making films with Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s offers fresh insights into the pop artist’s unique personality and working methods and will entertain anyone interested in the art and sociology of the period. Tavel (1936–2009) worked with Warhol from the winter of 1964 through the summer of 1967, writing seventeen screenplays at his request, including Screen Test #2, The Life of Juanita Castro, Horse, Vinyl, Kitchen, Hedy, and two sections of The Chelsea Girls. Tavel’s sharply engaged, opinionated account of the genesis and frequently chaotic realization of these iconic 1960s experimental films revisits the unique creative atmosphere at Warhol’s famous Factory on East 47th Street, the artist’s unpredictable interventions, and the far-out Factory denizens and superstars. In Tavel’s inimitable prose, Factory regulars Billy Name, Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, and countless others make their personalities felt as Warhol relentlessly absorbs them into his oeuvre. When Edie Sedgwick refused to act in Shower, which Tavel had written for her, Warhol suggested the author do it as a stage play. An Appendix traces the subsequent emergence of the Theatre of the Ridiculous and Tavel’s developing career as an award-winning playwright.

Published by Fast Books Press, 2015
Artists' Writings / Performance / Film & Video / Theatre