Edie Sedgwick (1943 – 1971)
American actress, socialite, and heiress who starred in many of Andy Warhol's short films in the 1960s.
Sort of Egyptian, with her head tilting in just the right, beautiful way. People called it 'The Sedgwick', and Edie was the only one who did it everybody else was doing The Jerk.
I do love Alice in Wonderland though, that's something I think I could do very well. Don't you think we ought to do an A.W.? A.W.'s Alice in Wonderland? Andy Warhol's Alice in Wonderland? A.W. stands for a lot of things, I understand. It, uh, it would make a fantastic film. So I wanted somebody to write the script for it, in a modern sense. I think it would be the most marvelous movie in the world, if it could be done. Don't you think? Really, I don't think they'e done one since they did a Walt Disney one which isnt really doing it. In a sense it is, but not in the way it really should be done. What's needed right now is a real scene. I mean not just cartoon characters, but the actual character of people because there's so many fantastic people that you might as well use the people.
Everything that happened to me has been a paradox for life. The very things that I should have done would have been the trap. The very things I might have given into, that demanded, that said, this is your life. I mean, this is your only way to survive, are the things I found hardest to end. 'Cause I believed in something else. You have to work like mad to make people understand... Even if I don't make it, you know, I really insist on believing, and then I fall off the edge because there's nobody else to follow it. And I would just fall off the edge.
I have an accident about every two years, and one day it won't be an accident.
She was also a compulsive liar; she just couldn't tell the truth about anything. And what an actress. She could really turn on the tears. She could somehow always make you believe her that's how she got what she wanted.
Edie wasn't crazy in any way, shape or form...drugs would simulate madness.
After Ciao! Manhattan she came back to the Factory and we tried to make a movie with her, Warhol and I, but we just wiped our hands of her, there was nothing we could do with her. How many times can you tell a person to stop doing something without really getting bored with it? I'd never seen Warhol walk away from his camera in a fit of just absolute, abject disgust but during that filming, a little movie of his called Edie and Ondine he just said, "Stop, I won't film anymore." He said "this is disgusting, just absolutely disgusting." She was so full of self-pity and so humble and so everything else it was just awful, it was horrible, intolerable.
It's not going to interfere with the film. I heal miraculously. I've been in an auto accident and another fire. They thought I'd need plastic surgery, but I haven't a scar...No, I don't think I'm accident prone, but it's strange.
I made a mask out of my face because I didn't realize I was quite beautiful. God blessed me so. I practically destroyed it. I had to wear heavy black eyelashes like bat wings, and dark lines under my eyes, and cut all my hair off, my long dark hair. Cut it off and strip it silver and blonde. All those little manoeuvres I did out of things that were happening in my life that upset me.
When she was walking along the street, she dropped her purse and a whole bunch of reds and things fell out. A cop car pulled up, 'What ya doing?' And then the cops get the idea that she was carrying drugs on her. So they got out and threw her up against the car, her hands up over the hood, at which point her purse spilled open again and they're whites, the reds falling everywhere! The cop who had pushed her against the car turned around and began picking up the stuff, so she wheeled around and gave him a kick in the ass man, with all the energy and hate she could. The court put Edie on probation for 5 years. After the bust she became a patient at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara.
I think she had a naivete. That's how she was able to dominate...because she had no self-judgement, except on this deep level.
Edie saw herself as tough like a little tomboy.
The colors...oh, I see the most fantastic things. Do you realize when people just close their eyes what they see? It's unbelievable. Colors and things, forms of every sort. I wonder if that happens for everybody?
I was always intimidated and self-conscious when I talked to her or was in her presence because she was like art. I mean, she was an object that had been very strongly, effectively created.
It's not that I'm rebelling. It's that I'm just trying to find another way.
When I was in the hospital, I was very suicidal in a kind of blind way, I was starving to death and just 'cause I didn't want to turn out like my family showed me, you know, that's all I ever saw of people, was my own family. I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone. Oh, God. So I didn't want to live.
It was a hot, bright day, and she wore sunglasses, a tight blouse, and short pants. I was spellbound. Edie livened up the meal considerably by skipping out on dessert to slip out through the French doors to the backyard, where she stripped down to her panties to sunbathe half naked I remember nothing but a sense of spectacular whiteness against the green lawn while the grownups sipped coffee from demitasse cups, unaware.
Her looks, her expressions, I think, were her sense of humour.
It was sad but not shocking. There was something about Edie that said, "This is a one-act play. It's not going to go on forever."
I think something very weird's going on now, 'cause the power that is permitted to youth is quite extraordinary. And they are sort of run by that kind of power.