The life and fast times of Andy Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick are the subject of this film. It’s a cautionary tale about fame (Edie turned out to have more than 15 minutes after all), vice, and the perils of life in the limelight. Long before reality tv, and YouTube the media and the fame it brought were an iron clad fence erected by Hollywood’s star system that outsiders simply couldn’t penetrate. Then came Warhol’s factory which catapulted seemingly random people into the public consciousness, and made them “celebrities”. Instant fame was born.
Edie Segwick as featured in Vogue Magazine 1966
Edie Sedgwick as featured in Life Magazine 1965
Sedgwick was the most enduring figure to emerge from Warhol’s experiment. One of the original “it” girls Eddie is regarded by some as a idle debutante who rose to fame because Warhol exploited her beauty and emotional/psychological imbalance and regarded by others as a true free spirit, with intense charisma who lived “in the moment” and in doing so, made other’s feel more alive when in her presence or even just by viewing her- perhaps, both are true.
The film (which has be label as historically inaccurate by some who were there), is an engaging look at an enigmatic young woman’s life, that offers some insight into a time when the rules of society were shifting rapidly and new norms had yet to be established.
Warhol defined Sedgwick in his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol as “a wonderful, beautiful blank” and “the mystique to end all mystiques.”
