Page 24 - Demo_HS)Midsummer2022

Bob Colacello
Photo by Jonathan Becker
I was pretty familiar with the basic Bob Colacello story from reading Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, his magnificent 1990 book, which is part art history, social history, comedy, and memoir. Colacello was getting his master’s in film at Columbia University in 1970 when
a review he’d written for the alternative paper New Times caught the attention
of Paul Morrissey, the movie director (Chelsea Girls, Trash) and Warhol’s right- hand man. Interview magazine’s then editor, Soren Agenoux, called to ask if the 22-year-old grad student would be willing to write reviews.
Would I be willing? Would Lana Turner wear a sweater? Colacello thought. The next day he turned in his first assign- ment, a review of a wild, radical Brazil- ian western called Antonio das Mortes, and was told they paid $25 an article but
She could meet Warhol.
ix months later, Colacello was the new editor
of Interview and Warhol’s new right-hand man. He likes to say he was dropped on Mount Olympus.
As delightful as it is, Holy Terror can be painful
to read. Every few pages you can’t help thinking
how much fun it must have been hanging out with Elizabeth Taylor and Warhol in Rome, driving to the Brooklyn Museum with Andy, Jackie Onassis, and Lee Radziwill, partying with the Stones at the Sherry-Netherland, having tea with Salvador Dalí
at the St. Regis, attending Candy Darling’s birthday party at Scavullo’s townhouse, socializing in the back room of Max’s Kansas City with the Warhol Super- stars—and that’s only up to 1973!
And what was Colacello up to before he met every- one and saw it all? What has Bob been up to in the past four decades besides writing nonstop for Vanity Fair and now Air Mail, cranking out hundreds of long-form articles, writing a massive biography of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, putting out two books
of photographs, and still going out every night?
A few days before his 75th birthday he took a few questions.
Holy Terror is a total blast. How can a book about the ’70s not feel at all dated?
People still love it. The paperback from Vintage Books came out in 2014. It has a new introduction called “So Much Has Happened: 1990-2014” about everything that happened after it was first published. It was written at a time when a sense of humor was
ART & CULTURE
IT’S ALL ABOUT
BOB COLACELLO
24
HAMPTON SHEET MIDSUMMER 2022
BY GEORGE GURLEY
Andre Leon Talley, Steve Rubell, and Andy Warhol at Mortimer’s, New York Photo by Bob Colacello
still permissible and certain chapters—like “Chasing Imelda Marcos,” which is about trying to get her to agree to have her portrait done—are a total comedy of errors.
Why hasn’t there been a Bob Colacello biopic yet?
There has been talk about making Holy Terror into
a TV series or a movie, so we shall see. Along came [writer-director-producer] Ryan Murphy with Netflix and The Warhol Diaries series and my project got shelved.
I would think there would be more interest now.
Well, maybe there is now, but nothing is more com- plicated than getting a project actually done in the entertainment industry and I never really count on it. That Netflix series, which you are in a lot, is somewhat dreary at times.
It made Andy into such a sad sack, longing for love, but Andy was really funny, and we had a lot of good times. It was so one dimensional. As I said in my review in Air Mail, “Andy was the Oscar Wilde of Union Square, not Virginia Woolf.”
What was Warhol like in the Hamptons?
Andy hated the beach. He would never have bought in Montauk if Paul Morrissey hadn’t pressured him into doing so. Andy couldn’t take the sun; he was essentially albino and turned purple in the sun. He would only go out to Montauk when Jackie and Lee [Radziwill] were going for a weekend or Elizabeth Taylor or Mick Jagger were there.
Last summer you began working for the Peter Marino Art Foundation in Southampton. What’s he like?
First of all, he’s so brilliant, kind of a genius, I think, but he is also really funny. Peter Marino has the abil- ity to relate to everybody, whether it’s the grandest of ladies, many of whom are his clients, the richest of the new young finance guys, many of whom are his clients, or his Hispanic gardeners and blue-collar construction workers. He relates to everybody and they in turn relate to him, even though some people who don’t know him start off being a little nervous about the way he dresses, and I tell them, “He’s branding.”
Yeah, what’s up with that?
Peter started wearing the full-leather motorcycle look because Karl Lagerfeld told him, “If you want to be famous you have to have a look, an extreme look. You have to brand yourself.” Like what Lagerfeld did with his 18th-century powdered hair and all the rest of it. Peter, until 10 or 12 years ago, dressed very, very preppy with bow ties and Brooks Brothers jackets, and sometimes he would wear those Austrian loden jackets with double buttons across the front. He
was upset about the fact that people knew the name “Peter Marino” but when he went to a party no one took his photograph, because no one knew what Peter Marino looked like, really. The way he dressed was a branding decision. It was his way to get photo- graphed at parties.
Who are some of the artists being featured and that you’ll be interviewing at the foundation?
This year we’re starting with Vik Muniz, who is com- ing from Brazil for the weekend. He makes portraits