Andy Warhol's Factory People is a three-part oral history that tells the story of Warhol's famous 1960s Silver Factory as told by the friends, superstars, and foes who worked with, partied with, filmed with, and slept with Andy from 1964 to 1968 in the Factory.Book I Welcome to the Silver Factory, Book II Speeding into the Future, Book III Your 15 Minutes are UpIn Book I, the Silver Factory era begins in 1963-64.Andy Warhol. Ever wonder what all the fuss was (and still is) about? So much has been written about this art colossus-his obsession with celebrity, his sloppy silk screens of Marilyn and Liz and Brando, his endless Campbell soup cans and Coca Cola bottles, his mind-numbing movies-that there are those who feel his fifteen minutes of fame should have been up long ago. Instead, he has become a lasting icon of popular taste. As the New Yorker's art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in his review of the Metropolitan Museum's huge 2012 show of Warhol and his impact on 60 other artists, "Like it or not, we are all Warholian."The familiar soup cans, along with the cokes, cows, fatal car crashes, flowers and Brillo boxes, were all prominently featured in our three-hour documentary, Andy Warhol's Factory People, which spans the years l964 to l968, arguably the artist's busiest and most creative period. As were the familiar superstars he made famous, superstars like Viva and Edie Sedgwick and Ultra-Violet and Nico and the Velvet Underground. But what set apart our film, and now distinguishes our book from the many other books about Warhol, is that we also tracked down the forgotten Factory people, the remarkable and often bizarre assortment of people who were behind Warhol's unprecedented rise to spectacular success. These people often paid a price for linking their destinies to the gifted but frustrated graphic artist who decided in the early sixties to "start Pop art" because he "hated" Abstract Expressionism.
About the Author: Catherine O'Sullivan-Shorr (also credited as Catherine Shorr) is an award-winning writer, film/sound editor and documentary filmmaker involved in the film and television industry for over thirty years, working with producers, directors and editors such as John Huston and Rudi Fehr on Prizzi's Honor, Norman Jewison on A Soldier's Story, John McTiernan on Predator, Wes Craven on Shocker, Jacques Dorfman on Shadow of the Wolf, Joel Silver on Die Hard (received an Oscar nomination with Richard Shorr) and Gérard Corbiau on Farinelli (received a César Award with Richard Shorr). She also received an Emmy for editorial work on The Day After for ABC. O'Sullivan attended St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, and is an alumna of Universidad de las Americas, Mexico City. She later attended the London Film School while working at Shepperton Studios in the United Kingdom. She has published articles and stories in the Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Reader, Buzz Magazine, Libido, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The New York Press, Paris Magazine, and L'Originel, Metaphysique et Avant-Garde, Paris, France. She has also won best fiction awards at, among other venues, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. As a script doctor, O'Sullivan worked on numerous screenplays, including: La piste de l'aigle (Galatée films, prod. Jacques Perrin, Yvette Mallet, Paris), 'The Magic Chess Player' (an historic drama, for Made in Europe Productions, Paris), Hemingway's 'The Fifth Column' (Planet Group Entertainment/Esparza-Katz Productions, Los Angeles), 'Game One' (Tony Roman Productions, Montreal, Quebec) and co-wrote (with Norman Spinrad) the film treatment of Druid-The Legend of Vercingétorix (Jacques Dorfmann, Eiffel Productions, Paris). O'Sullivan, with partner Patrick Nagle of Planet Group Entertainment, has produced numerous documentaries. Her three hour series, Andy Warhol's Factory People was produced for France Television 4 and broadcast in the U.S. on Ovation Television. The series has been broadcast in twenty other territories and sold to over 400 universities worldwide. She recently completed a subsequent book, also entitled Andy Warhol's Factory People, which brings more to light about Warhol and the Factory and the New York City scene in the Sixties. O'Sullivan is currently working on a novel on Baja California entitled Lava.