I Shot Andy Warhol

Valerie Solanas is a university-educated, ferociously sharp woman living in sixties New York by panhandling and prostitution. She runs off copies of her text, the SCUM Manifesto, by hand and sells them on the street. To get her play staged she gets into Andy Warhol's Factory and hands him the script. Warhol says neither yes nor no, and the script disappears. On 3 June 1968 Solanas walks into the Factory and shoots him. The film does not justify the shooting, but nor does it exhibit Solanas as a curiosity. It shows the Factory from the inside as a place where everyone is using everyone, and Solanas's only offence there is expecting to be taken seriously. Mary Harron's first feature, co-written with Daniel Minahan. Lili Taylor plays Solanas, Jared Harris plays Warhol, and Stephen Dorff plays Candy Darling from the Factory circle. The hardest thing the film does is use the SCUM Manifesto without either quoting it approvingly or dismissing it; the text is read aloud and the audience is left to decide. Who it is for: anyone drawn to sixties New York, the Warhol circle and true-crime narrative. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a warm protagonist. Solanas is never easy to like in any scene, and the film does not defend her.