‘It’s not about heroes and villains’: the triumphant return of long-lost indie I Shot Andy Warhol
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Janus Films is releasing a 4K restoration of Mary Harron's 1996 film 'I Shot Andy Warhol' on June 12 in New York and Los Angeles, with UK and Australian dates to be announced
- Mary Harron had spent six or seven years trying to get the film back in circulation after its rights passed through a succession of bankrupt distributors, leaving only a 'battered YouTube upload sourced from a long-out-of-print DVD' as a viewing option
- The film originally opened Cannes' Un Certain Regard section in 1996 and has since become a 'queer cult classic' and one of the 90s' 'most formally adventurous biographical dramas'
- Lili Taylor plays Valerie Solanas as a 'ragtag artist' seeking an audience, with Jared Harris as Warhol and Stephen Dorff as transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling, a figure Solanas disdains
- Harron describes Solanas's politics as an analog to today's trans-exclusionary radical feminism, calling her 'kind of a Terf' who held 'visionary ideas' alongside 'deeply held prejudices'
- Harron discovered Solanas in the 80s at a Brixton bookshop via the Scum Manifesto and originally pitched a BBC documentary before pivoting to the anti-biopic feature form
- Years after release, Solanas's niece approached Harron at a Seattle screening and told her she and her mother 'really loved the film' and called it 'a very good portrait of Valerie'
Why it matters: The re-release rescues a formally inventive queer cult film that was effectively orphaned by a chain of bankrupt distributors, restoring access for audiences who previously had to hunt down a degraded YouTube copy. It also lands the film in a cultural moment where Harron herself frames Solanas's politics — including views she openly labels 'Terf' — as newly legible against today's 'back step towards male dominance and authoritarian regimes.'
