1964 interview with Andy Warhol
Judging by this 1964 video, it seems like it would be easy to write an ELIZA-style AI program to simulate Andy Warhol. It would answer all questions by saying either "yes," "no," or "I haven't thought about it."
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It would also say:
"I don't know, what do you think?"
Is it really Andy? I recall reading somewhere that he often sent actors in his place to interviews and appearances?
I actually love his responses, because, well... they're really honest and not a taste of the bullshit-stream-of-conceptual-wanktankerous-malarky that plagues the art world today... not that he didn't have his share of the above mentioned, he just didn't make it so in-your-face :)
words cannot describe how much i love this interview. well played, andy, well played.
Here's a little trivia: Warhol had an IQ of 86.
That would not surprise me for a second, Ashabot.
There's a lot of speculation that Warhol was autistic.
I love the knowing look and smile, after she asked if he believed Pop Art was becoming repetitive.
I've shown this footage to students for years as a lesson: if you ask a stupid/closed question, you deserve a stupid/cryptic answer, and if that's good enough for you, you're a lousy journalist.
It's not that Warhol's being stupid or autistic, it's just a strategy he used to employ when doing interviews with morons. I remember reading Warhol talking about the actual strategy being consciously used here: "When asked a simple/stupid yes/no question, give a random yes/no answer." The strategy was one of many things David Bowie borrowed from Warhol, and you can see it in Godard's 1968 "Sympathy for the Devil" movie as well. This worked great for both artists and interviewers; the latter could ask really inane, loaded questions like "Do you think cinema/sex/America/Elvis is dead/the answer/bigger than Jesus/whatever?" and get the kind of shocking quotes they wanted, and the artist could get press attention with minimal effort without really saying anything.