Mary Harron: ‘I Shot Andy Warhol’

Mary Harron's 1996 film 'I Shot Andy Warhol' isn't just a biopic of a pop art icon—it's a radical reimagining of the Factory era through the fractured lens of Valerie Solanas, the woman who nearly killed Warhol. What makes this film extraordinary isn't its depiction of violence, but its fearless excavation of a forgotten feminist radical whose manifesto was dismissed as lunacy—until now. Harron reveals that Solanas wasn't a madwoman, but a brilliant, darkly comic intellectual whose rage was a direct response to the systemic devaluation of women in the 1960s. The film, shot with a dreamlike, almost Alice-in-Wonderland surrealism, captures the electric chaos of Warhol’s world while exposing its cruelty toward outsiders. Harron’s own journey—from journalist to director—mirrors Solanas’s quest for recognition, and her decision to cast Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling (a transgender icon) was a groundbreaking act of empathy and political courage. The film’s legacy is undeniable: it resurrected Solanas’s manifesto as a feminist classic and redefined how we see both Warhol and the cost of fame. Today, its themes of identity, gender, and artistic ownership feel more urgent than ever.