I'm wearing my new "Edie" tee today.

I saw "Factory Girl" last week, the bio on socialite/model/artist Edie Sedgwick, starring Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce. Fascinating look into Warhol's "The Factory" - basically his NY studio/entourage of artists, bohemians, druggies and other assorted deviants that was his primary focus in Manhattan from 1962-1968, and Edie's involvement in it. It details her rise to becoming the queen of the underground film culture - and her fall (her death in 1971 was ruled "undetermined/accident/suicide"...her death certificate claims the immediate cause was "probable acute barbiturate intoxication" due to ethanol intoxication).

Above: That's - now I can't remember if that's Sienna or the real Edie. Darnit. You'll have to click on READ MORE! to see more pix of Edie. See what I mean though (I think it is Sienna)? Sienna did a fantastic job of capturing Edie's persona and if you compare pics of Edie and Sienna, the resemblence is remarkable. Lou Reed, whose band, The Velvet Underground, was sponsored by Warhol early on, called the movie, "one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen in a long time".

If I've piqued your interest, here's a brief clip about Edie, from the Andy Warhol docu on PBS, as well as a trailer for "Ciao! Manhattan" - Edie's last film that I believe was never completed - or is available in a very rough cut. That's Edie narrating on the trailer. You can surf the Internet yourself for clips from the movie. You'll also wanna click on READ MORE! for more pix of the real Edie and to see my friend/co-worker Robert Yu with Sienna at a dinner party. She's a doll.

(WAIT! There's more...)

From Wikipedia - Who was Edie Sedgwick? In many ways, she was the generic good-time girl, a renegade spirit from a blue-blooded family of pill-popping, highly strung neurasthenics. Arriving in New York in the 1960s, she soon became part of Warhol's Factory, a midtown artist's studio reconceived as an assembly line for the production of silkscreen prints, sculptures and experimental films...

Above: The real "factory girl", Edie Sedgwick.

...Here, even among the assorted hipsters, drag queens and rent boys who liked to party and hang out, she shone. Warhol dubbed her a "superstar". She may have worked briefly as a model for Vogue, but she was essentially a glamorous frippery - a scenester rather than a creator, an early example of someone who was famous for being famous. She couldn't act, or sing, but she could be - splendidly. This is not a negligible talent, and from early in her short-lived life, she was commemorated by artists: the Velvets wrote a song about her; Dylan's Just Like a Woman is reputed to be about her, too. Madonna dressed up as her in the video for Deeper and Deeper.

My interest in the 60's goes back to - well, my childhood, I guess. I was born in '64 and my music influences are heavy into surf music, doo wop, The Beatles, The Beach Boys; I've also been extremely interested in the counter-culture scene of the day - hippies, SDS, Abbie Hoffman, "Steal That Book!", Vietnam and the anti-war movement, Kent State, Swinging 60's, HAIR (the musical, which I was in AND naked on stage), etcetera, etcetera. Too young to understand any of this while it was happening, it's fascinating for me to go back and LISTEN and SEE what was going on when I was a child - an extremely unique period in our country's history. I think of the lives ruined due to the drug culture that was inherent (and accepted) throughout that decade and wonder how many other "Edie's" were lost. Or how many "Edie's" we're in danger of losing today.

Above: Sienna as Edie in "Factory Girl". Was I right? Tell me she's not Edie's spitting image.

Edie with Warhol.

My buddy Robert Yu - a couple years ago - with Sienna at some dinner party. Mmm...de-lish! Please tell me, Jude Law, what you were thinking??