New York and everything.

"Glenn O'Brien's TV Party - which featured appearances by Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Klaus Nomi, Debbie Harry, John Lurie, Tuxedomoon, DNA, David Byrne, Jean-Michel Basquiat, hip-hop pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Funky Four Plus One, among many other guests - ran for four years, from 1978 - 1982," Steve Gallagher reminded us in the Filmmaker blog when Danny Vinik's TV Party screened at Tribeca last year. O'Brien, former editor of Interview, contributor to the Voice and so on, naturally has a million stories to tell, and he tells more than a few of them to Charlotte Robinson in PopMatters. "A lot of the people who were my contemporaries, the artists, were in bands.... That was what you did, a little bit of everything." The interview's accompanied by two clips.

Ric Burns has completed his four-hour Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film and it'll screen at Film Forum from September 1 through 14 before airing on PBS later in the month. Ed Gonzalez in Slant: "More light is shed on the culture vulture's personal life than ever before, and though we are told over and over again why Warhol and his art still matter, the documentary doesn't shill for the man."

Updated through 9/3.

"Laurie Anderson narrates, and Jeff Koons reads Andy's voice when needed (a slyly apt bit of casting, since Koons's entire career could be seen as a vast Warhol quotation, and his own press face is as calculatedly plastic)," writes Ed Halter in the Voice. "The result is an intellectual history of Warhol, bucking the trend toward the star-studded VH1-ization of biodocs and constructed with a mission to dispel the artist's own self-created image as high-fashion hobnobber in favor of a more profound depiction. Burns argues for a cogitating, agitating Warhol: deep thinker, cultural barometer, and world changer.... Warhol's advice to other artists is suitably cited: 'Do everything.'"

Updates, 9/1: Bilge Ebiri has a fun, long talk with Burns at Nerve.

"Ric Burns's solemn four-hour hagiography Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film may set a record for the number of times the label 'genius' is applied to its subject," writes Stephen Holden. "The label sticks." The film "assures us that Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century, just as Picasso was of the first half."

More from Salon's Andrew O'Hehir in Salon, who's hesitant to buy just that.

Update, 9/2: "'There is no artist as famous as Andy Warhol who is held in as much contempt,' Burns told The Reeler," who remarks of the doc, "Like Warhol's most accomplished work, it manages fastidiousness and cleanliness - even austerity at times - without being antiseptic."

Update, 9/3: IndieWIRE interviews Burns.

Posted by dwhudson at August 29, 2006 1:18 PM