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Originally Posted by Genteel Death
To me he was incapable of distancing himself from his visual artist approach to images when using a video camera, and that's why he sort of gave up and let someone else do most of the work.
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Warhol obviously liked a certain idea of Hollywood but seemed to have no interest at all in storytelling. Although I'd say that, even more than his interest in visual qualities, his main inspiration always seemed to be with personalities - the Superstars being the one constant linking his early single camera stuff and Morrissey's more narrative films. Even with his supposedly more banal subject matter (Eat, Sleep, Empire,) he never just chose his stars at random. They were always people or things (the Empire State building) that he felt had a certain star quality. (It's not just a random person sleeping or eating, it's John Giorno or Robert Indiana.) That's why I think there's a core contradiction in Warhol's own idea that anyone could be famous for 15 minutes. He was very particular about who did and who didn't qualify as a 'star'. His was a different criteria to Hollywood's but arguably even more selective. I can only think of a handful of bona fide Hollywood stars who would've cut it at The Factory alongside the likes of Viva or Ondine.