I Shot Andy Warhol

On 3 June 1968 the militant feminist Valerie Solanas walked into Andy Warhol's studio, The Factory, with a revolver hidden in a paper bag. She fired three shots into the famous pop artist's chest. Warhol survived the assassination attempt, but the shots echoed around the world. Valerie Solanas received more than her ''fifteen minutes of fame'' which everyone ought to have - according to one of Warhol's mottoes. Her dramatic protest action became an effective propaganda stroke for her manifesto, which she had tried to distribute on a small scale previously, and for the action group, SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men), where she was sole member. The event is the starting point for Mary Harron's film, which is a penetrating, dynamic and bizarrely entertaining study of the in-crowd and the down-and-outs which made up the New York pop art scene in the late 60s. At the centre, Harron has placed this highly intellectual drop-out and sharp tongued agitator who saw the male sex as a biological accident and who was a zealous supporter of a method of reproduction which would in the future be able to guarantee the birth of only female babies. Valerie Solanas saw men as useless everyday articles and especially male artists who she saw as incapable of mirroring ''real life''. Male artists - in particular Warhol-were only able to produce degenerate rubbish.This portrait is brought to life by Lili Taylor, who confirms here her position as the foremost of American independent film stars. Quick-answering and opinionated, she storms through the film delivering bitingly ironies and brazen below-the-belt jokes which would have filled Groucho Marx with admiration. It is intensive and vital, and highly-strung acting which also manages to convey the excoriation and vulnerability which must also have left its mark on the rebellious outsider. The actors give this film a strongly authentic character. Richard Harris' son Jared presents a strangely lifelike Andy Warhol, weak and evasive. Lothaire Bluteau (from Jesus of Montreal) gives sharp-edged contours to the legendary book publisher from Olympia Press (Henry Millar's and Burrough's publishers). But the biggest surprise is Stephen Dorff (who was the fifth Beatle in Backbeat). His guest appearance in the transvestite business as one of Warhol's most celebrated ''superstars'', Candy Darling, is an unexpected - and convincing - quick-change number.