I Shot Andy Warhol Movie Review

『A Voice That Was Never Loved, Echoed Through a Gunshot』

🎥 Film Overview

🎬 Title: I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
🌍 Country: 🇺🇸 USA / 🇨🇦 Canada
🎞️ Genre: Biography / Drama / Psychological
🗓️ Production & Release: Killer Films, 1996, Feature Film
⏳ Runtime: 103 min
📢 Director: Mary Harron
🖋️ Screenplay: Daniel Minahan, Mary Harron
📺 Platforms: Apple TV, Google TV, YouTube Movies (US availability; may vary by region)

👩‍💼 Cast: Lili Taylor – Valerie Solanas
Stephen Dorff – Candy Darling
Jared Harris – Andy Warhol

🧩 Deep Story Exploration (Spoilers)

🎭 Valerie Solanas: From Scapegoat to Prophet

The film’s central focus lies in its interpretation of the complex figure of Valerie Solanas. Director Mary Harron refuses to dismiss her as a forgotten lunatic; instead, she situates Solanas’s rage and radicalism within the broader context of her time.

• The Radicalism of the SCUM Manifesto: The film continuously portrays Solanas as she writes her incendiary feminist text, the SCUM Manifesto, which advocates the elimination of men. It is not shown as the product of madness but as a sharp and scathing critique of patriarchal capitalism built on the subjugation of women. The film interprets her ideas not as delusions, but as a cry born from social alienation and neglect.
• The Line Between “Madwoman” and “Visionary”: Though depicted as a woman struggling with homelessness, sex work, and paranoia, Lili Taylor’s performance imbues Solanas with both irony and courage. Despite poverty and abandonment, she retains a fierce belief in her own intellectual superiority—framing her not as a mere “eccentric,” but as a defiant anti-establishment thinker.

🪶 The Cold Portrait of the Factory

Solanas’s encounter with Warhol and her entrance into his “Factory” world becomes a sharp critique of the hypocrisy underlying New York’s 1960s art scene.

• Art and Exploitation: While the Factory projected an image of freedom and avant-garde experimentation, it was also dominated by Warhol’s detached, voyeuristic indifference. He exploited the pain and talent of the anxious, fragile “superstars” around him, converting their chaos into aesthetic material for his art.
• Solanas vs. Warhol: Though both were outsiders, their forms of isolation differed. Warhol distanced himself through cool detachment, maintaining power through emotional absence. Solanas, on the other hand, clung to her autonomy through fervent, paranoid passion. To her, Warhol embodied the ultimate patriarchal system that ignored or stole her creative work (especially her play Up Your Ass).

💡 The Paradox of Fame and “15 Minutes of Infamy”

The film ironically fulfills Warhol’s prediction that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” through Solanas’s tragic act of violence.

• The Failed Artist and the Successful Assassin: Solanas sought recognition for her radical plays and writings but was ignored. Ironically, she achieved true fame only by shooting the most famous artist in America. The film presents the act as both her final warning to society and the completion of her own “artwork.”
• The Aesthetics of Violence: Some critics interpret Solanas’s violence as inseparable from her SCUM Manifesto—an avant-garde performance of ideological rebellion. Harron avoids sensationalizing the shooting, instead portraying it as the inevitable culmination of Solanas’s obsessive logic.

🌑 Black-and-White and the Gloom of the Sixties

The film masterfully recreates the texture and tone of late-1960s New York, immersing viewers in its decaying atmosphere.

• Documentary Realism: Harron incorporates scenes of Solanas’s police interrogation and her readings from the SCUM Manifesto in a documentary-like style, adding realism and intellectual depth.
• John Cale’s Music: The score by John Cale of The Velvet Underground echoes the dark, cynical mood of the Factory era and perfectly enhances the film’s retro aura.

I Shot Andy Warhol neither mocks nor glorifies Valerie Solanas. Instead, it exposes the violence, hypocrisy, and desperate craving for recognition embedded within 1960s art and society through her pain, her philosophy, and her fatal act. If her gunshot wounded Warhol physically, the film suggests that Solanas’s life poses a more profound question to us—about the diseased soul of a culture obsessed with 15-minute fame.

🎯 Personal Rating

💕 Love Scene Intensity: ♥♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★