Factory Girl - Edie: Factory Girl By Dalton and Finkelstein

Edie: Factory Girl By Dalton and Finkelstein

Edie: Factory Girl author David Dalton is a former assistant of Warhol. He wrote 15 books before this, including A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol. (Nat Finkelstein is credited as a photojournalist of Edie.)

Whereas the similarity in titles might suggest that the film is based on the book, there are considerable differences. The film is about Sedgwick’s relationships with two people, Andy and Billy, a character who resembles Bob Dylan. The book is about Sedgwick as part of the circle associated with Warhol known as the Warholites. Dylan is not described as her lover in the book, although he is said to be a significant figure in her story. The film-makers did not develop characters based on her friends among the Warholites.

The book describes the Warholites as originally welcoming her into the fold, sympathetic about her problems and charmed by her beauty and personality. Those interviewed for the book generally remember her as likable when she first made friends at the Factory, amiable and fun at parties, if something of a scene stealer.

The film’s Sedgwick seems carefree when she is about to leave for New York, whereas the book says that she was troubled at the time, impulsive and reckless, having seen a psychiatrist on a three visits per week basis while living in Massachusetts.

Although the book rejects the idea that Warhol was to blame for her use of methamphetamine, it is candid about an ugly side: his “morbid fascinations” and his tendency to observe the miseries of people he knew without showing emotion. Author and former Warhol screenwriter Robert Heide relates the widely-circulated story of Warhol reacting to the suicide of an acquaintance by saying, "Why didn’t he tell us? We could’ve filmed it." According to Heide, as the two of them stood on the sidewalk where the acquaintance had recently died, Warhol said to him, "I wonder when Edie will commit suicide. I hope she lets us know so we can film it.”

Like the film, the book tells of her being persuaded to leave Warhol by a singer/songwriter, but the book does not support the film’s love story. Rather, it says that she had a relationship with Dylan’s friend Bob Neuwirth. Her story of a pregnancy aborted when she was injured in Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident was, the book says, one of the fantasies she conceived while mentally ill and delusional.