Saturday, January 01, 2005

Selections of Andy's diary from the year 1980 will be posted during the month of May 2005. Other months will be updated accordingly.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, December 31, 1979

I decided to make it easy and just to to Halston's for New year's Eve. I wrapped gifts for Jade. Went over at 10:00. it was small there, black tie. Bob Denison and Jane Holzer were there, so I guess they've made up. Nancy North and Bill Dugan. Victor called from California and said he was having a good time out there. When the New Year came in we did kisses and ate. Dr. Giller was there. It was just so nice. Jade loved all the presents I brought her. Steve Rubell was there. Then at 3:00 Bianca wanted to go to Woody Allen's party at Harkness House on 75th. John Samuels had a car and double-parked.

Woody's was the best party, wall-to-wall famous people, we should have gone earlier. Mia Farrow is so charming and such a beauty. Bobby De Niro was there and he's so fat. Really really fat. I know he gained weight for the boxing movie, but wouldn't it be funny if he couldnever lose it? He looks so ugly. He must be crazy, because he's really fat.

Mick cam in with jerry, and Bianca ran over and was charming. I don't know how she did it but she got it over with, she broke the ice, the talked for aboutt half an hour. She wanted to get Jerry nervous, which she did. Mick shaved off his beard so he looks really good.

We went over to Studio 54 and the look was "ice." ice wall-to-wall and dripping down the walls. Then Steve said, "Let's go down the the basement," so we did. He just about said, "Anybody have any cocaine?" he wanted it to be like the good old days. It was so flithy down there, with the garbage and everything. Winnie was there, without Tom Sullivan--she said he's in Hawaii.

Then upstairs Duguay and the other hockey guy came in and I was trying to introduce them to Marina Schiano, but they said their real girlfriends were there, from Minnesota, or Indianapolis or something, so they couldn't do anything. Then it was 6 A.M. and Marina and I left, and there was a riot outside, people still wanting to get in. Jack Hofsiss who directed Elephant Man went by in a limo and gave us a ride, there were about twenty boys in it. And I got out at Marina's, because I knew if I stayed in it they'd invite me to go with them, and I wanted to get up and go to work.

Marina invited me up for pizza and I went. I always hear that she gets the best food from all over the city, that she had the people who work for her bring salami from Brooklyn and pizza from Queens and things like that, so I wanted to try it out. It was sort of good, a really cheap kind of pizza, all dough and a little ketchup and a little cheese. Like the cheese doesn't come away when you eat it, there's so much. And when I was there I noticed that she had a pile of food on the stove, and she said it was for good luck, you're supposed to have it piled on the stove on New Year's. So I was there and we talked, and she was asking me about my house, and I told her how much it cost to run it, and she felt that I was being "real" and that she'd really gotten something out of me and that this meant we were friends or something, I don't know. I was waiting for it to get light out, and it never did. I mean, it was 6:30 and it was still dark, and I thought the sun came up at 6:00, but I guess that last year when I left and it was light out it was 7:00, not 6:00.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Friday, December 28, 1979

I walked around passing out Interviews and then I cabbed ($3) to 245 Park Avenue for my meeting with Bob Denison to talk about investments. I walked into the building and got the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor, the door opened and I smelled something burning. I walked into Bob's office and he was running around trying to find out if what was burning was one of his machines. Then the secretary came running in and said the building was on fire, that we should leave.

Bob wanted to take the elevator, but I said no, to take the stairs. The exit door was locked. Just like in Towering Inferno. But we found another exit that wasn't locked and went into the staircase. People said the fire was on the thrity-fifth floor. At the twenty-sixth floor more people got on the stairways and on the twenty-fifth more got on and the twenty-fourth and every floor was the same story. So it was getting slower and slower because there were so many people being added. But nobody panicked because we knew the fire was above us. A couple of people almost fainted, though. When we reached the bottom there were hundreds of people on the street. Bob Denison and I went over to have our meeting at the Trattoria. And I just couldn't believe the way I'd walked into the building and the elevator people just let me go up there when they already knew there was a fire! They must have known by then! And I could have walked onto the blazing floor. Those elevator people just stand around like morons.

The man at the Trattoria came over and said that I always used to come there a lot, and what happened to me. I was too nervous to really eat. I just had coffee.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, December 25, 1979--Vail

The Fords shake hands with absolutely everybody. Betty Ford doesn't look as good as she did in the photos after her facelift, she just looks sort of the same. But now she's a blonde. Before she had brown hair, din't she? It'a a sort of honey-blonde now. At first I thought it was Mrs. Nixon. Bob wanted to meet them so badly, but he would shove me out first and I would shrink back, so it never happened.

Passed out Interviews, there were great places to do it. The people asked for my autograph. Everybody stares at me because I'm wearing my wolf parka by Halston.

We went to a bar that shows ski movies, you drink beer and watch skiers. Nobody came over and asked for our drink orders, so we didn't drink anything and just watched the movie and then left. We were having dinner with Nan Kempner. I began reading Dress Gray and it had the right names that sounded real. Like the main guy is called Ry.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, December 19, 1979

The ABC 20/20 camera crew was coming to the office to film. I worked until 7:30. Then at home I glued myself together. Bob called and said he was exhausted but he really wanted to go to the Alice Mason dinner, so he picked me up and we walked to 72nd Street and lexington. I was next to Norris Church Mailer. I told her we were still interested in doing something with her for Interview but she said she'd put on weight and that she really liked eating better than staying thin for modeling. Then we got a cab to El Morocco, Norris and Norman and Bob and me (cab $5). It was a party for Margaux Hemingway's engagement. I ran into Jamie Blanford there and had a fight with him, I don't know why, I just always do, I hope I didn't (laughs) offend him. And Mimi Trujillo was there. She was married to the son of that dictator and she's a fashion designer. Victor sees her stuff then tells Halston about it--I mean, she does stuff like Halston, but she does it sort of first.

Millie and Bill Kaiserman were there. I introduced Norris to them but I think I did it in a strange way, I guess I said, "This is Norris Church, she wants free clothes." But they should have good-looking people walking around in their clothes for free. There were lots of funny young people, el Morocco's back on its way again.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, December 18, 1979

Had a limo for the day. Picked up Paulette to go to Halston's show. She was stunning, all in a white fur coat. At Halston's I was next to Martha Graham who really looked old for the first time. I guess maybe it's just that she always wears makeup and didn't have any on. The Daily News took a lot of pictures of me and Liza. I told them that I didn't know what to say about her miscarriage but she said she was okay.

We had lunch at the office for a photographer friend of Alexander Guest's who was going to take pictures of Bob and me afterwards for Penthouse. A girl made me and Bob up with black eyes and bleeding lips. It looked good, real. Then they took us down to Avenue C and 4th Street to a school. The whole area looks bombed out. And then the school let ten kids out (laughs) to pose as kids who just mugged us. I was so cold. And a kid yelled at me, "Don't go to too many parties." They said they were allowed out of their typing classes. I don't know exactly what kind of school it was--they had karate classes there, too. The kids were cute. We posed against real graffiti. And I mean, I couldn't believe a school was letting kids out to pose with pussy in Penthouse, and then I found out that they weren't even getting paid! And I told the guy in charge he was horrible for not paying them and he got really funny about it but then they took down their names. Then we went back to the office.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, December 4, 1979

So tired after three weeks on the road with Bob and Fred to promote the Exposures book. The tour began so chicly in Washington when I sat in President Carter's box at Kennedy Center but it wound up in the gutter on Hollywood Boulevard in that B. Dalton's bookstore that used to be Pickwick books. While I was signing there a woman with a knife wound in her stomach came in screaming, "This isn't Andy Warhol! I went to bed with Andy Warhol and he's 7'8, he can't fit through doors, and he wouldn't be standing here like this in a bookshop because he's too paranoid!" (laughs) And that may actually be an accurate quote. And at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas where they had a great party for us in their boiler room, all the kids there said the book was "neat" and "cool." And the Texas people were all so gracious and considerate, they say things like, "It's so kind of you to come all this way to see us." I wish I could talk like that--I can't think of those beautiful lines. Oh, and a big nice man in Dallas even insisted on personally taking us to the discotheque afterwards because, he said, "I'll tell you what, you fellas will need some protection--it's a pret-ty gay atmosphere. Of course, I guess you might be used to it, coming from New York and all." And we laughed and looked to make sure he was kidding and he wasn't.