Paul Morrissey

Paul Morrissey was a filmmaker whose work helped define the Factory’s transition from underground experiments to feature-length productions, and whose long association with Andy Warhol joined creative collaboration to increasingly complicated questions of money, rights, and shared property. He began as an assistant on Warhol’s movies, made Flesh during Warhol’s recovery from the 1968 shooting, and became a director in his own right. Though he later spent years in Europe and their business dealings grew strained, Morrissey continued to return to Warhol’s professional and social orbit.

Factory Filmmaking and His Own Features

In the late 1960s, the Factory’s principal activity was making feature-length films on 16mm, with the intention that they could be enlarged to 35mm for commercial release. The productions drew on the unconventional people who gathered at Max’s Kansas City or came to the Factory hoping to be discovered. Morrissey had assisted on Warhol’s Factory films before Warhol was shot in 1968. While Warhol was recovering at home, Morrissey made Flesh, his own film, starring Factory receptionist and bouncer Joe Dallesandro as a hustler trying to raise money for his girlfriend’s abortion. In the fall of 1968, Flesh began a long commercial run at the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street. The change in circumstances was telling: with Warhol temporarily absent, an assistant took charge of a feature that carried Factory performers and sensibility into a sustained theatrical engagement.

Morrissey continued directing with Trash in 1970 and Heat in 1971. The work was not always his alone: Women in Revolt and L’Amour, made during the same period, were collaborative Factory productions in which Warhol, Morrissey, Fred Hughes, and Jed Johnson all participated in casting, shooting, and editing. A photograph captioned as having been taken on the set of Flesh identifies Jackie Curtis, Dallesandro, and Geri Miller; another records Morrissey walking in the Village with Warhol and Jed Johnson in 1972. Together, these details place him both behind the camera and among the Factory’s familiar social circle.

Warhol’s diaries also register Morrissey’s blunt involvement in judging films. When Tom Sullivan brought Cocaine Cowboys to the office on Betamax, Morrissey watched part of it and considered it too slow; Brigid Berlin agreed, while Warhol liked it. Warhol later defended his own performance and noted that the production had cost Sullivan $950,000 despite being non-union. The episode offers a compact picture of Morrissey’s place in the group: he was not merely a past collaborator but an active, candid presence in its discussions of new filmmaking.

Collaboration, Departure, and the Magazine

In 1974 Morrissey went to Italy to direct two films for Carlo Ponti’s production company, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula. Warhol presented the films, and Jed Johnson and the diary’s narrator went to Italy to work on them. Once the productions were finished, Morrissey remained in Europe. His departure effectively ended his role as a major influence at the Factory, though it did not end his connection to Warhol or their shared business interests.

Morrissey’s association with Warhol extended beyond films. When Warhol began the magazine Interview in 1969, the original concept was oriented toward movies: celebrities would speak in their own words, ideally in conversations with other stars. The magazine was financed on a deliberately small scale, in keeping with Warhol’s preference for developing businesses without surrendering too much ownership to outside backers. The account of its early production recalls a legal problem in the first issue: a lawyer warned that one description of a film critic could be libelous, and names Andy Warhol and Morrissey as the people involved in the episode, though the surviving passage breaks off before explaining what they did. As Interview grew, its promise of publication took the place of Warhol’s earlier offer to put newcomers in a movie. The magazine became a glamorous outlet for new faces as well as established celebrities, extending the Factory’s talent-finding activity into print.

The later record shows Morrissey continuing to move between filmmaking and Factory relationships. In 1978, Warhol heard from Nelson that Robert De Niro might help secure financing for Trash II, which Nelson was writing with Morrissey. Years later, Warhol noted that Morrissey was making films with David Weisman. That partnership surfaced socially as well: at a dinner party, Morrissey jokingly brought Weisman over to Warhol, knowing that Warhol had resented him since Ciao Manhattan. Warhol could not bring himself to make peace and turned away. Morrissey’s humor exposed a boundary that his own long history with Warhol did not automatically overcome.

Film Rights, Contracts, and Disputes

The creative partnership was shadowed by disagreements about ownership and payment. In a call from California, Morrissey told Warhol that Ponti had offered him a script; Morrissey said he would not make another film for Ponti until Ponti settled money owed over Frankenstein and Dracula. The same call turned to the possible rental of Warhol’s Montauk property to De Niro. Morrissey favored offering a low price to secure the rental, while Warhol thought the price should be raised because the income was not enough to cover running the property. Their different judgments about a practical decision sat alongside the unresolved film debt.

That conflict sharpened when Frankenstein began playing in fifty theaters. Warhol was frustrated that Morrissey had been negotiating detailed contractual percentages while, in Warhol’s view, failing to pursue the money being made from the film’s release. Warhol responded by considering whether to insist on even more explicit terms before signing the contract Morrissey wanted. The dispute was not simply a question of whether the films succeeded; it concerned who would protect and receive the value generated by their circulation, including foreign rights and what would happen if one party were no longer available to negotiate.

In a separate dispute over Montauk, the caretaker told Warhol that Morrissey was staying in the small house and directing the caretaker’s work. Morrissey claimed that he owned half the property and wanted Warhol to sign a new document, arguing that the earlier document was too favorable to Warhol. Warhol refused. He recalled that Morrissey had made poor deals with other people over the years and resented the intensity with which Morrissey now pursued what Warhol regarded as a more advantageous arrangement between them. The episode gives the property a double role in their relationship: it was both a source of rental income and a contested measure of what each believed he was owed.

Their professional contact did not disappear into these quarrels. Warhol reported that Morrissey was showing Mixed Blood at midnight screenings at the Waverly, and that the rights to Trash had been recovered from Cinema 5, requiring someone to collect them physically. Warhol later went to see Mixed Blood and praised it, particularly its photography and its knowledge of the Lower East Side and its Alphabet City avenues. The approval was specific and ungrudging: despite his complaints about contracts and money, Warhol could still recognize the strength of Morrissey’s work.

Renewed Contact and Lasting Influence

Morrissey continued to propose projects and ideas after his long European stay. At one point he wanted to remake Pepe Le Moko with children. Warhol acknowledged that Morrissey had good ideas, while also expressing reservations about the older, disreputable associations he brought to their work; Brigid Berlin was meanwhile retyping contracts at his request. Later, Warhol described the two of them as becoming friendly again and found Morrissey more approachable. Their reconciliation was not presented as a final resolution of every disagreement, but as a change in their day-to-day ease after a period of tension.

Morrissey also served as a link to people and projects from the earlier Factory years. He told Warhol about Ondine traveling around the country with a 16mm print of Chelsea Girls, showing it and giving lectures, and about Tom Baker traveling with a print of I, a Man. The films’ continued circulation depended on fragile physical prints, even as former performers carried them into new settings. In another recollection of the summer of 1968, Warhol noted that Morrissey, Jed Johnson, and Ultra Violet had been cast in the party scene of Midnight Cowboy while he was in the hospital. These memories preserve Morrissey’s place not only as a director but as a participant in the overlapping film worlds around the Factory.

Warhol’s later social observations show a less exclusively professional connection. At a party for an agent, Morrissey arrived with his nieces and was among those who recognized and appreciated the host’s emerald earrings, Regency furniture, and Lalique. On another occasion, Joe Dallesandro called Fred Hughes seeking financial support; Warhol angrily urged Fred to tell Dallesandro to ask Morrissey instead. The moment suggests that Morrissey remained associated with the people and obligations of the old Factory circle, even when Warhol did not want to take responsibility for them himself.

By the mid-1980s, the relationship could still swing between guardedness and ordinary contact. Warhol reported Morrissey’s work with Weisman, resisted a reconciliation with Weisman when Morrissey presented them at a party, and elsewhere described renewed friendliness with Morrissey. That uneven pattern is central to Morrissey’s place in the diaries: he was a formative collaborator whose filmmaking helped carry Factory culture into commercial theaters, a persistent partner in negotiations over the resulting work, and a familiar presence whose ideas Warhol could value even while contesting his business demands.