This article is about the film Factory Girl. See Factory Girl (song) for the Rolling Stones song. Factory Girl is an
American film based on the life of 1960s
underground film star, socialite, and
Andy Warhol's
Superstar Edie Sedgwick. The film premiered in
Los Angeles on December 29, 2006.
Synopsis
Edie Sedgwick (
Sienna Miller) is a young heiress studying art in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. She moves to
New York City, where she is introduced to
Pop Art painter and film-maker
Andy Warhol (
Guy Pearce). Intrigued by the beautiful
socialite, he asks her to perform in one of his underground movies. Soon she is spending time with him at
the Factory, his studio and also the hangout of a group of
eccentrics, some of them addicts. Her status as
Warhol Superstar and success as a fashion model gain her popularity and international attention.
Amid the excitement, terrible things in her past come to light - abuse from her father, who committed adultery in their home and tried to seduce her repeatedly since her childhood, treatment in a mental hospital when she was a teenager, and the recent suicide of a brother, after their father harshly rejected him for coming out as gay. Extravagant and frivolous, she spends money recklessly on clothes and dinner parties at posh restaurants. Through the family’s financial advisor, she is warned of bankruptcy and her parents’ decision to cut her off unless she leaves the Warhol group. As her money runs out, the effects of her drug abuse become obvious.
Her Cambridge friend Sid introduces her to poet and singer Billy Quinn (
Hayden Christensen). The makers of
Factory Girl created this character so as to resemble
Bob Dylan. Edie sees that Andy is irritated when she tells him about Billy. She tries but fails to keep her love affair with Billy a secret. To reconcile them, she arranges a meeting. Although he agrees to be filmed by Andy, when Billy visits the studio he shows his contempt. As he is leaving, she tries once more to make peace, but Billy calls Andy a “bloodsucker” who will “kill” her. Seeing that she will stay, he kisses her forehead, says, “Take care of yourself, baby,” and walks away.
As addiction takes its toll, Edie’s relationship with Andy deteriorates. Confused, she is unaware of the danger while smoking in bed and starts a fire, surviving with burns. Modeling agencies refuse to hire her, and the explanation given is that she is considered "vulgar." Interrupting a luncheon of Andy and his friends, she demands to be paid and accuses him of ruining her, shouting obscenities. Quiet and sarcastic, he says, “I gave you fifty dollars. Did you spend it already?” He uses this opportunity to tell her that Billy has been secretly married.
When Sid sees her again, she has become a prostitute. In a taxi, he shows Edie, who is very depressed, a photo of herself when they were art students and asks, “Do you remember that girl?” He says that he fell in love with her then, and tells her that she can still be an artist. She says that she cannot bear her loneliness but interrupts him, asking the driver, “Can we go?” When the driver says that they are stuck in a traffic jam, she leaves the cab and runs frantically down the street. The scene changes to a hospital, years in the future. She tells an interviewer that she is overcoming her addiction and is glad to be home in Santa Barbara. Captions give facts about her last few years, her struggle to control drug abuse and her marriage to another patient, which ended in less than four months when she died of an overdose.
Cast
Controversy
Lou Reed, singer/songwriter of
the Velvet Underground, the group managed by Warhol from 1965 to 1967, and also one of the Factory people who knew Sedgwick, told the
New York Daily News, "I read that script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen — by any illiterate retard — in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money... They're all a bunch of whores."
Bob Dylan threatened to sue, saying through his lawyers that the script insinuated his responsibility in Sedgwick's drug abuse and death. Jonathan Sedgwick claimed that an affair his sister Edie had with Dylan resulted in a pregnancy that ended with an abortion.To date no lawsuit has been filed.
The film was set back by numerous delays, including a lawsuit by Sony Pictures, as well as the schedules of Miller and Pearce, so additional shooting was delayed until mid November 2006. Consequently, producer
Harvey Weinstein had to postpone the release date. Director
George Hickenlooper helmed the additional shoots and mixed the final cut of the film in New York City, where he worked in close collaboration with Weinstein. Weinstein released the picture on December 29, 2006, in
Los Angeles. The film was released nationwide on February 2, 2007.
Edie: Factory Girl by Dalton and Finkelstein
Edie: Factory Girl author David Dalton is a former assistant of Warhol. He wrote fifteen books before this, including
A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol. (
Nat Finkelstein is credited as the photojournalist of
Edie.)
Whereas the similarity in titles might suggest that the film is based on the book, there are considerable differences. The film is about Edie’s relationships with two people, Andy and Billy, a character who resembles
Bob Dylan. The book is about Edie as part of the circle associated with Warhol known as the Warholites. Dylan is not described as her lover in the book, although he is said to be a significant figure in her story.
The film-makers did not develop characters based on her friends among the Warholites.
The book describes the Warholites as originally welcoming her into the fold, sympathetic about her problems and charmed by her beauty and personality. Those interviewed for the book generally remember her as likable when she first made friends at the Factory, amiable and fun at parties, if something of a
scene stealer.
The film’s Edie seems carefree when she is about to leave for New York, whereas the book says that she was troubled at the time,
impulsive and reckless, having seen a psychiatrist on a three visits per week basis while living in Massachusetts. The film’s Andy, a heartless
cynic, seems even more villainous at the beginning of the story because his victim is an apparently happy Edie who is naive to the danger she is faced with.
Although the book rejects the idea that Warhol was to blame for her use of
methamphetamine, it is candid about an ugly side: his “morbid fascinations” and his tendency to observe the miseries of people he knew without showing emotion. Author and former Warhol screenwriter Robert Heide relates the widely-circulated story of Warhol reacting to the suicide of an acquaintance by saying, "Why didn’t he tell us? We could’ve filmed it." According to Heide, as the two of them stood on the sidewalk where the acquaintance had recently died, Warhol said to him, "I wonder when Edie will commit suicide. I hope she lets us know so we can film it.”
Like the film, the book tells of her being persuaded to leave Andy by a singer/songwriter, but the book does not support the film’s love story. Rather, it says that she had a relationship with Dylan’s friend
Bob Neuwirth. Her story of a pregnancy aborted when she was injured in Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident was, the book says, one of the fantasies she conceived while mentally ill and
delusional.
Production
Casting
Katie Holmes was set to take the starring role after Miller backed out, but it was reported
Tom Cruise convinced Holmes not to do it because it would be bad for her image. Regarding the rumors, Holmes said, "I declined the role in
Factory Girl based on my own decisions about the movie." The role then went back to Miller. However, Holmes had also stated that even if she did take the part, she would have had to drop out because she was pregnant when the movie was set to begin filming.
Because the post production schedule was so delayed, Hickenlooper continued to sound edit the film after its initial release in Los Angeles on December 29, 2006.
According to Hickenlooper, the budget, once expected to be $8 million, was less than $7 million.
Filming locations
New York City,
Toronto,
Stamford, Connecticut, and
Shreveport, Louisiana served as the filming locations.
Popular culture
The film is referenced by Australian comedian
Ed Kavalee on his radio show
Get This in a ill-fated segment "Sienna Miller movie or prison tattoo?" The segmented was birthed after Kavalee put forward the argument that Sienna Miller was famous for nothing and that nobody would know her movies.
Factory Girl was the only movie or prison tattoo correctly labeled during the segment.
Matthew McConaughey was reportedly in talks with
Richard Marsland to produce a television show about the segment.
