Saturday, August 28, 2004

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, November 30, 1978

I was invited to a Valentino's dinner for Marisa Berenson. Walked over to the Mayfair House to Le Cirque. Lee Radziwill and Peter Tufo were there and Andre Oliver and Baryshnikov. The card next to me said "Jessica" and it turned out to be Jessica Lange, who's now going with Baryshnikov. And when she arrived I said, "I've heard so much about you," and she said the same thing. She was good friends with Cory Tippin and Jay Johnson and Tom Cashin and Antonio Lopez. She said she's stayed out in our Montauk house when Tom and Jay were ou there painting and roofing. She said that Dino De Laurentis didn't even offer her another part for a year and a half after "King Kong," so now she's going to do a part in the new Bob Fosse film--it sounds like it's just a small part, though.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, November 13, 1978

I think I may try brushing the piss on the Piss Paintings now.

Went over to Jamie and Phyllis Wyeth's at East 66th Street for Phyllis's birthday party that Jamie had called that afternoon to invite me to. Joanne du Pont's name came up. I don't think Jamie likes her much, but I don't know why not--I mean, he married into the du Ponts, too.

Nan Kempner arrived. Bo Polk arrived and everyone was thrilled that Barry Landau wasn't with him. Then Barry arrived. And Bo should eally be careful, because Barry even takes Polaroids now, and it could hurt the people if someday somebody showed the pictures of everybody at his bathtub parties. Because at the time it's just all fun, but if it got printed in the papers it would look like something else.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, November 1, 1978

Tom Sullivan came by to show Cocaine Cowboys to us on a Betamax. He was smoking marijuana, and it was funny to smell it at the office. Paul Morrissey watched a little fo it and said it was too slow, and Brigid was in and out and thought so, too, but I liked it.

And I decided I'm not so bad in it. They only let me do one take and I think if I'd been able to do more I would have gotten better. but I was better than in "my first film," The Driver's Seat. And Cocaine Cowboys has some good music in it. It's a dumb story though. These dealers drop cocaine from a plane and a maid and a secretary find it and steal it. Tom said it cost him $950,000.00 to make it, but I don't see how, it was non-union.

Ed Walsh came by to show us architectural plans for the building we own on Great Jones Street [Andy bought this carriage house at 57 Great Jones Street as well as a four-story building around the corner--referred to as '342' or 'the Bowery'--in 1970]. We're going to fix it up and then maybe rent it out.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Saturday, October 28, 1978

Thomas Ammann called. He's staying at Fred's house. We went to Christie's and got catalogues, because some of my old drawings are up for sale. They're from Bill Cecil, who was killed in a car crash. His family was in the American antiques business. I think that's how I started collecting American stuff--I got my first cupboard from them, the cupboard that's now in the interview office, the one they keep the pencils and rubber cement in (catalogues $6, $22, $8, $10).

Victor said that Halston had been trying to reach me to invite me to the benefit for John Warner that Liz Taylor Warner was having that night. Liz looked very fat, but very beautiful. Chen, her secretary, was there. But John Warner wasn't even there. Liz was upset at how awful the party was. Halston told her he would have just given her the $10,000 if that's all she was getting from it. Some face doctor that said I'd met him in California three years ago started talking to me, he said he was screwing all day and had come seven times. I don't know why he was telling me. He asked me how old I was and I said, "Thirty-five," and he said I looked forty-five. He said that if I go to him I can look like a "normal thirty-five-year-old," because he would do nutrition and things. I guess that's why he was telling me he was screwing, that i could come seven times if I went to him, too.

Then Aline Franzen who was in charge of the party decided to do her auction thing but nobody at this thing was about to buy anything--they were all just wearing the teentsyest jewel you could buy at Bulgari, or something. Aline said, "This is my painting that I did myself with my whole heart and who will bid on it?" and nobody did. Finally Liz hit me and said, "You better bid on it," and I said no, that I wanted to bid on the two tickets to Studio 54, and finally Liz screamed, "All right, I'll take it myself," and Aline said, "No, Liz you can't," and Aline threw herself on the floor and was crying and it was such a comedy and then Liz's secretary Chen said she would take it, and Liz screamed, "No, Chen, you can't you don't have the money." And Lee Grant was an auctioneer, too, she auctioned off two teeth, porcelain ones I think, for $2. I'm telling you, nobody in this crowd was going to buy a thing. Oh, poor Liz. and Aline said, "You rich people are being cheap." And then John Cabot Lodge got up and made a peculiar speech because he talked about the Red Enemy, and it was so weird. Then Halston and Liz said they would meet afterwards at his house.

So Halston and I went to his house together. Liz sneaked in later and he gave her some coke and she got high and happy. I told her, "Look, you've got nine days until the election, you've got to really get down and talk to the Negroes." I said, "This lady stuff isn't going to work." And she said, "Oh, lawdy lawdy lawdy." And I told her, "Listen, if you lose the election and you leave your husband, I want to play Truman Capote for me on Broadway." So she stared laughing and went into a trance and tried to talk like Truman, and Halston and Liz were talking intimately in the other room and he told me later that John Warner wasn't fucking her.

I told her, "Elizabeth"--you really do have to call her Elizabeth--I said, "Elizabeth, it would be so great to see you in the White House." And she was cute, she said, "Oh, but I just want to be a senator's wife," I mean, can you imagine me in the White House? A Jew and married seven times?

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, October 2, 1978

Doug Christmas wants to show the piss paintings in Paris after we go to Denmark, so I'll have to drink more water and make more. I can do two a day now, and Fred told me to put two of them together, that they look more interesing that way.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, September 26, 1978

Dropped Fred. Truman was coming to the Factory at 3:00 for the High Times Christmas cover photograph of him and me. Truman was early, 2:30. Bob MacBride peed on one of the Piss paintings in the back for me, and he kept going back to see if the colors had changed. Truman told Brigid about the drying-out place, and she interviewed him, and that's where her sister Richie is, too.

Paul Morrissey was down, and he and Truman talked all afternoon about scripts and things. Then Toni arrived four hours late, she had a Santa costume for me and a little girl outfit for Truman. But Truman wasn't in the mood to go into drag, he said that he was already dressed like a little boy. Truman was really drunk, hugging around.

Truman was pleading with Brigid to get him a drink and not tell Bob--this is after she caught him drinking in the kitchen. Ronnie was trying to make the makeup girl. My makeup wasn't working, it was no use, I had too many pimples.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, September 21, 1978--Los Angeles

Went to the Getty Museum. It was thrilling. A reproduction of a building they haven't excavated yet in Italy--they know where it is but there's another building on top of it. Bought a book on painting ($17).

Bob arrived in L.A. and described the YSL Opium party for us. Then Joan Quinn arrived in fuschia hair and lots of matching amethysts. Fiorucci sent a limo in exchange for us going to their opening. We went to pick up Ursula Andress first. She's staying with Linda Evans. The house is very big, English country-style, a pool and tennis courts. Ursula was wearing a YSL scarf over the cast of her broken arm. She was surfing in Malibu with Ryan O'Neal when Hurricane Norman hit her and broke her arm, tore it out of her socket. Joan whispered that everyone in L.A. wonders if it was Hurricane Ryan that actually did it.

We went to Fiouricci where we ran into Ronnie Levin with Susan Pile and Tere Tereba. Susan screamed that the party was cancelled but we thouught that was just a joke and started to get out of the limo but a cop pushed us back in and said we were blocking the traffic, that the party was cancelled by order of Beverly Hills Fire Department. A transvestite handed us business cards through the window.

Then we went back to the hotel and then I went with Sue Mengers and everyone else waited around for Mick Jagger to call. Sue is ireally fat again. And God, her attitude is so cheap. There was no dinner, so she suggested we stop at Burger King on the way to Diana Ross. it was so abstract, you talk into a machine. She ordered a double Whopper but then she worried that maybe two separate hamburgers would have been cheaper.

Sue treated the driver like dirt and I know that if I ever said one little remark to her that she didn't like, she would never speak to me again. She said she'd introduced Isabella Rossellini to Martin Scorcese and that they've been living together for two months. She hates Jerry Hall because Jerry told Bob Weiner that Sue wanted to take an acid trip with Timothy Leary. "What do they think I ammm." Like it had ruined her reputation. So vulgar. God. Arrived backstage and she said, "I miss Ross's agent." A cute little waiter was serving meatballs. She said, "If we knew there would be meatballs we wouldn't have had to stop at Burger King." I got myself really drunk drinking straight Stolichnaya. Sue told me she'd just been really after John Travolta, to represent him, but he reminded her that she'd turned him down when he was on TV in Welcome Back Kotter and she didn't remember it. But then, she said, sitting on the toilet seat one night she remembered it.

Then Diana Ross came out looking really lovely. Thirlled to see me, kissed me. Then she went on stage. She had a shot of brandy in her coffee before she went on.

We were sitting in the seventh row. Universal Amphitheater. a plane went over with lights on it that said, "Welcome to the show." Laser beams on the stage. She came out of a big screen, down an elegant staircase. Her brother is cute. I want him photographed in Interview. She told me she got the whole idea for her show from the inteview photo of guys carrying her down a staircase.

Diana didn't say she liked her cover and I just know it's because it made her look too black. At the end of the show she did a Wiz number and she apologized for the music being too slow, and said "Forgive me, audience," which she didn't have to say because no one knew the difference.

Afterwards, backstage, Diana started to cry. She wanted to have another rehearsal tomorrow. Then Berry Gordy and Diana had a fight, he told her he wasn't going to spend the money on another rehearsal. Diana wanted Sue to take her side, but Sue said it wasn't her area and then she said to me, "Let's get the hell out of here."