Reed emerges from Haynes’ film as a brilliant but prickly creative force. This reportedly irritated Reed because Nico could not hold her pitch, but Cale eventually figured out what to do with her unpolished voice. Warhol’s pairing of Nico with the band is remembered as an imposition at first, but it’s acknowledged that her cool beauty and Andy’s cover art pretty much secured the record deal. Still, the band’s association with the Factory burnished their reputation, landing them gigs at art events and museums even when commercial and critical success for their raw garage sound remained elusive. Warhol’s banana print adorns the front cover and he receives producer credit, but Cale explains that he was the producer only insomuch as he was in the studio breathing when the record was being made. The eternal debate over Warhol’s actual contribution to the work of artists in his stable is wryly addressed in discussions of the Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album with Nico. Some of the most hilarious recollections come from Factory superstar Mary Woronov, who danced with the band at some performances, including the Warhol-produced Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows that helped establish them. But the simple fact that someone in the Warhol entourage was almost always filming means there’s ample representation both of core members and of other artists, friends and musicians in their orbit. In theory, this should be a skewed assessment of the band given that Reed, guitarist Sterling Morrison and enigmatic occasional guest vocalist Nico have all passed away, leaving only erudite musicologist Cale and delightfully straight-talking drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker to provide hindsight perspective. Black-and-white, portrait-style footage of Reed and fellow VU founder John Cale, shot by Warhol - who required them to remain silent, not to smile and to blink as little as possible - provides a mesmerizing motif as observations from the two of them and others who were part of the scene play simultaneously in audio and filmed interviews.įilm critic Amy Taubin, a frequent presence at the Factory, says of the Warhol Silents, “It was all about extended time.” Haynes and editors Affonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz use that temporal porousness in subtle ways to erase the usual historical/analytical distance of pop-culture docs and instead create something more stimulatingly immersive and wildly trippy. The archival research that went into the project must have been a massive task, but much of the key material comes from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. In the breadth of its observations about the restless creative energy of the time, Haynes’ film is as much a sweeping study of a radical art movement as a behind-the-music exploration of one great epochal band. he wanted to create the equivalent of their prose in rock music. It also draws on literary influences that inspired Lou Reed’s songwriting, among them Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr. Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition)
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