Ciao Manhattan! (1972) Edie Sedgwick had lost her “It” factor and was waiting for most anyone at the bottom of the pool in this portrait by John Palmer and David Weisman that took her far away from the Factory’s lean, mean dramatic scenarios, even if fellow Superstars such as Brigid Berlin (and Berlin’s sister, Richie) had cameos. She’s a little girl lost, doubly off course within the story’s Californian acid-visual sprawl.

Taylor Mead at the Tribeca Film Fest premiere of Excavating Taylor Mead

Excavating Taylor Mead (2005) The tag line is “This is the opposite end of the Robert Evans spectrum.” I’m pissed that I haven’t been able to see it yet, but I’m guessing that William A. Kirkley’s doc portrait focuses on the extreme messiness of Mead’s dwellings in recent years – regardless, he’s worth rescuing from self-entombment. Woe to any unwise heckler who tries to outwit him when he reads at the Bowery Poetry Club. He didn’t write poems like the one that follows by accident:

Look

You’re famous!
Shut up!!

Factory Girl (2006) Come to think of it, Mead’s words up above could and probably should be applied to the major players in this misbegotten attempt to dramatize Edie Sedgwick’s life.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) Mary Harron has made some decent movies, but this terrible docudrama portrait of Valerie Solanas is not one of them. Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling – ugh. This movie also marks the exact point where Lili Taylor’s limitations as an actor became too apparent. The only thing worse is her amazing non-reaction to Owen Wilson’s decapitation in the 1999 remake of The Haunting.

Nico Icon (1995) She was probably a bore, but it would be hard to make a bad documentary about Nico. Susanne Ofteringer made a good if too-brief one, and she did so before the trend of creating documentary portraits about every cult personality under the sun. There are some definite gaps about Nico’s solo records, even if Jackson Brown is roped in so his and Nico’s gorgeous songs from Chelsea Girls don’t go ignored. Not much of anything about Nico's ties to Philippe Garrel, though. But let’s face it, what other movie has material about a mother recording a hospital machine hooked to her comatose son in order to use the sounds in her songs? Junkie behavior doesn't get any creepier.

Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story (2000) This, my friends, is the motherlode. Whatever Shelly Dunn Fremont’s and Vincent Fremont’s look at Brigid Berlin lacks in visual style or concise editing it more than makes up for in motormouth monologue power, courtesy of its subject, the woman from whom Warhol stole many of his best ideas. He profited off her use of Polaroids as art, though her one-copy book of cock self-portraits by famous men must be worth mega-millions. He ran with her obsessive use of the tape recorder, though nothing he did is as brilliant as her play Brigid Polk Strikes!, where she used a phone – broadcast over theater loudspeakers – to call friends of her rich right-wing parents (her dad was the boss of Patty Hearst's dad) to ask for abortion money, left during intermission in a taxi to collect the money, and then returned for the climactic final act: a phone argument with her mother (sample quote: “If you weren’t on drugs that night I’ll eat my hat!”). Whether imitating her mother and eternal sparring partner’s rants, wondering whether her maid is tall enough to dust the top shelves of her closet, or carefully weighing and talking incessantly about food – especially the title dessert -- Brigid Berlin is H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S. In this movie, the monster lurking around the corner and waiting to pounce on the heroine is a key lime pie at the corner deli. And once that pie attacks, look out!

Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (2004) Craig Highberger’s documentary doesn’t have much onstage material to work with, but still has more than its share of memorable moments, thanks to its subjects’ many-faceted life and creative force. One highlight has to be Curtis reciting an amazing poem about a woman similar to his mother, a bartender named Slugger Ann. Another highlight comes when Alexis Del Lago talks about a speed-crazed Curtis endlessly rearranging the “many beautiful theeengs, darling!” in Del Lago’s apartment.

Alexis Del Lago amongst her "many beautiful theeengs, darling!." Photo by Craig Calman.

Ancillary documentaries: How to Draw a Bunny (John W. Walter, 2002), especially for its subject Ray Johnson’s love of the great and ill-fated Warhol Superstar Andrea Feldman; Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan, 2006), for a look at Warhol’s perfect filmic opposite.