The Cars’ “Hello Again” music video shoot

The Cars’ “Hello Again” music video shoot brought Andy Warhol into a different kind of image-making: rather than directing a portrait session or interviewing a celebrity, he performed a small role in a band’s video. Filmed at the Be-Bop Cafe on Eighth Street on March 29, 1984, the shoot occupied the entire day despite rain and snow. Warhol’s account follows the production from the trip to the set through his scene and the ride home, preserving the practical mishaps alongside the deliberate spectacle around him.

Production and setting

The weather set an unwelcoming backdrop for the day’s work. Warhol recorded that it was raining and snowing, and that the crew had to film all day at the Be-Bop Cafe. Benjamin Liu arrived to pick him up in drag and was also to appear in the video. The setting was a working cafe on Eighth Street, temporarily turned into a performance space for The Cars and a collection of extras.

Warhol’s scene came late in the schedule. He was eventually called to perform at eight o’clock, and the work continued until he finished at 9:15. That timing gives the diary entry its production-day rhythm: a long wait before a short, specific assignment, followed by an ordinary trip home when one of the younger participants gave him a ride.

Warhol’s role on camera

For the video, Warhol had to play a bartender in a tuxedo. The role combined several tasks: he was expected to sing while mixing a drink. He could not remember the words when his part came up, and wearing contact lenses made it difficult for him to see the Coke button on the soda dispenser. His account thus records a performance that did not proceed effortlessly, even though the role itself placed him inside a staged musical scene.

The diary also notes that being face to face with The Cars made conversation difficult for him; he did not know what to say to the band. This awkwardness sits beside the highly visible nature of his appearance. Warhol was not merely observing the musicians or arranging their images from behind the camera: he was an on-set participant expected to deliver a line of action, sing, and handle a prop while the group was present.

The Factory recalled in the extras

The crowd of extras reminded Warhol of the old Factory days. Its details came from the people and their costumes: Benjamin Liu appeared in drag, a bald-headed mime wore a Pierrot outfit, John Sex brought a snake, and Dianne Brill stood out in the ensemble. The Cars themselves struck Warhol as cute. These particulars make the Factory resemblance less a claim about a return to the past than a visual association prompted by a mixed, unconventional group assembled for the shoot.

That resemblance also places the video within a recurring feature of Warhol’s working life: people and images gathered around a media project. By 1976, Interview had become a glamorous venue for celebrities and fresh faces, with the promise of appearing in the magazine replacing the earlier promise of appearing in a film. The music-video set offered another occasion for that world of public images to coalesce, this time through costumes, extras, musicians, and Warhol’s own appearance.

Performance and mediated identity

Other diary entries show Warhol moving among interviews, photographs, and video. In 1981, Vincent Fremont videotaped David Hockney at lunch before Hockney went into another room for an interview. In 1978, Warhol observed Shaun Cassidy’s shift in manner as he moved from an interview into a crowd of fans and then into a photographic session. These episodes do not establish that the Cars shoot followed the same process; they show instead how frequently Warhol’s diary registered the making of public images and the changes that could occur in front of a camera or audience.

The “Hello Again” entry turns that attention toward Warhol himself. His role required a prepared look—the tuxedoed bartender—but the account emphasizes the immediate difficulties of carrying it out: missing lyrics, an elusive dispenser button, and uncertain conversation with the band. The contrast is especially striking beside Warhol’s controlled portrait practice, which could involve selecting from about sixty Polaroid photographs, choosing and retouching an image, and aligning a silkscreen with prepainted canvas. The video, by contrast, caught him in a timed performance whose small errors remained part of the diary’s record.

The scene’s significance lies in this double position. Warhol remained a familiar figure within a Factory-like gathering, yet he was also a working performer inside someone else’s music video. The entry ends not with a reflection on the finished image or its reception, but with the concrete fact that a young participant drove him home. Its record of the shoot is therefore less a retrospective account of a completed media product than a close description of the labor, waiting, costume, and uncertainty involved in taking part.