Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’ On Netflix, A Ryan Murphy-Produced Docuseries Look At The Enigmatic Pop Artist’s Life

Who really knows anything about Andy Warhol? Most people know him from his artwork, or his random pop culture appearances in the ’70s and ’80s, or his shock of white hair. But he purposely curated his persona as much as he curated the subjects he drew and painted, to the point that not much more is known about him 35 years after his death. A docuseries based on the 1989 memoir The Andy Warhol Diaries looks to take a detailed look at Warhol’s life.

THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An image of Andy Warhol in silhouette. A narrator says, “Who is the best known and the most controversial artist in America today?”

The Gist: The Andy Warhol Diaries, produced by Ryan Murphy and directed by Andrew Rossi, takes a deep dive into the enigmatic life of one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. Structured around the memoir of the same name, which Warhol dictated over the phone to Pat Hackett for a decade before his 1987 death, Rossi talks to historians and Warhol’s contemporaries in the art world to try to get an understanding of a man who was just as famous for his cult of personality as he was for his art.

Among those interviewed include Debbie Harry and Rob Lowe, but also artists like Jamie Wyeth, Julian Schnabel and Glenn Ligon. Hackett, who edited the diary transcripts into a 1989 book, recounts their phone encounters, which started as just accounting of money spent and developed into one of the most personal looks at the inscrutable artist, even if it came from a somewhat secondhand perspective.

“It was a grand design,” Wyeth said of the image Warhol curated. “He knew exactly he was doing.” Much of it had to do do with acknowledging his flaws and using them to his advantage. During his childhood in Pittsburgh in the ’30s and ’40s, Warhol (born Andrew Warhola Jr.), he wasn’t out but he didn’t try to make an effort to hide his sexuality; in an archival interview, his older brother recalls having to defend Andy against bullies quite a bit.

He combatted the bullies by offering to paint or draw them, providing a bit of intimacy that ingratiated himself to them. When he moved to New York in 1949, it took time to become a successful commercial artist, then he started to take off with his pop art — the Campbell’s cans, the multiple-colored portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Mao Zedong, Jackie Kennedy, etc. — in the 1960s. He also created a community of like-minded artists around him, called “The Factory,” who would assist his efforts to make art at large scale and scope.

All the while he was shaping his persona, to the point where he had convinced most of the art world and the press that he was asexual. But he had significant relationships, as we find out from Jay Johnson, the twin brother of Jed Johnson, one of Warhol’s longest relationships during his years at the top of the art world. Jed was with him Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanos in 1968. He cared for Warhol and never left his side. But the ’70s beckoned, with all of its temptations.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Andy Warhol Diaries is about such a deeply enigmatic public figure, it progresses in a way most biographical docuseries haven’t attempted. The voice of Warhol reading his diary entries is, in part, created by an artificial intelligence method that was similar to what was done for Anthony Bourdain in the movie Roadrunner. 

Our Take: Usually a docuseries’ success is measured by how much new it teaches the viewer about its subject. But how much did we really know about Andy Warhol? Unless you read the 1989 book on which The Andy Warhol Diaries is based, you probably still have this picture of the pale man in the glasses, messy white wigs and little else. Warhol wanted it that way, and this docuseries lays out exactly why he curated his persona as carefully as he curated the subjects of his art.

It also goes into his actual life, which included loves like Johnson and Jon Gould, and his close association with Jean-Michel Basquiat. His life was more than just his appearances at parties and events and random sightings like on The Love Boat or a WWE match.

If there is anyone that deserves the five-episode docuseries treatment, it’s Warhol, because he was so inscrutable during his life. He’s been gone for 35 years, and his influence on art and pop culture still reverberate. Referencing Warhol’s famous quote about everyone being famous for 15 minutes, Lowe says, “he would have loved today, because of the freak show that is contemporary culture.” His somewhat prescient view of fame is one of the big reasons why there is still so much interest in his life, and this docuseries does a good job of opening it up to examination.

The AI voice generation is used as a model, apparently; Bill Irwin actually performs Warhol’s voice. But it likely provided Irwin with a blueprint for how to perform Warhol so he sounded as close to reality as possible. It’s used to good effect, as Irwin reads off Warhol’s diary entries with Warhol’s signature offhanded and droll manner. It certainly is more effective than the wordless reenactments or the footage made to look like grainy 16mm archival footage. There’s so much footage of Warhol that it seemed that the reenactments were less than necessary.

Sex and Skin: A lot of flashes of nude men, as well as the open sex performed at clubs in the West Village during the ’50s and ’60s.

Parting Shot: With the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing” as the backdrop, the temptations of the ’70s appear on screen.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Irwin, who used the AI to his advantage to really sound like Warhol himself.

Most Pilot-y Line: We were wondering why Lowe was included in the interviews, but the their paths did cross and they had a friendship in the ’80s. Also, Lowe had the sharpest observation of how he’d love today’s voyeuristic pop culture.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite some stylistic touches that sometimes distract, The Andy Warhol Diaries is a fascinating look inside the mind of one of the 20th century’s most famous figures, a person who had no intention of letting anyone but his closest friends and family see his real self.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.