I Shot Andy Warhol

I Shot Andy Warhol centres on Valerie Solanas, a radical figure in 1960s New York who wrote the SCUM Manifesto, a tract arguing for the overthrow of men. She completed a screenplay and hoped Andy Warhol would produce it, but he showed no interest and brushed her aside. Convinced that he and others were working against her, she eventually turned up at his studio and shot him.

The film was Mary Harron's first outing as a director, arriving several years before American Psycho, and she wrote the screenplay with Daniel Minahan. Lili Taylor plays Solanas, with Jared Harris as Warhol, Martha Plimpton as Stevie, Lothaire Bluteau as publisher Maurice Girodias, Anna Thomson as Iris and Peter Friedman as Alan Burke. Christine Vachon and Tom Kalin produced the drama, a British and American co-production running 103 minutes, which took roughly 2 million dollars worldwide.

Audience response has been modest: on TMDB it holds 6.2 out of 10 from 96 votes. The film looks at the collision between Solanas's convictions and the Warhol circle rather than at the shooting alone, tracing how a marginal artist and a celebrated one came to a violent impasse.