The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

Still photo of Andy Warhol
Film still courtesy of The Danny Williams Estate © 2006-8

Still photo of Danny Williams
Film still courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum. © 2006-8 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Andy Warhol

Minnesota-born filmmaker (and Friend of Failure) Esther Robinson’s film “A Walk into the Sea” is, if you haven’t had a chance to see it, a wonderful, multi-faceted, and revealing documentary. Taking as its subject the filmmaker’s uncle, Danny Williams (who disappeared in Massachusetts in 1966 after spending time at Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York), the film is about lot of things.

For purposes of this blog, I’ll point out that Robinson’s research and interviews of various luminaries from the Warhol days reveal much of the dynamics of an artists’ community (in this case the Factory) and the ways in which a cutthroat community’s machinations and intrigues play upon the fragile egos and sensitive spirits of young artists (like Danny Williams). The trouble seems to have emerged when Williams, a young Harvard grad who wanted to be a filmmaker and who was for a time a favored lover of Warhol’s (and thus able to use Warhol’s equipment to make his own films), fell out of favor with the artist and spiraled into drugs, depression, and abuse at the hands of other Factory denizen.

As A.O. Scott points out in his recent NYT review of the film, the idea of Warhol as a “corrupter and destroyer of innocence” is not new in film. It was a theme in the recent film “Factory Girl,” which starred Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick, a young, well-born New Englander who appeared in some of Warhol’s films and died under mysterious circumstances. “Robinson’s film,” writes Scott, “does a pretty good job of reconstructing the creative and psychological whirlwind around Warhol.”

While there’s no real revelation about what could have happened to Williams, the film makes it clear the truth of the idea that some people–sensitive artists and vulnerable young people–are ill-equipped to handle the high pressure, backbiting and intrigue, and dangerous competition of an artist community. Andy Warhol’s Factory was known for many things—its sexually lenient environment, fake drag weddings, porn theater rentals, plays, free love, and rampant drug abuse—but to this list we now must add a toxic and murderous internecine artist rat race.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Andy Warhol, Danny Williams, Esther Robinson, The art world is its own worst enemy, The excesses of artists, Doomed artist, Artistic failure in movies, The tortured artist, Artistic failure in America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.