Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey

Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s collaboration grew out of the Factory’s filmmaking world and changed as that world changed. Morrissey had assisted on Warhol’s films before the 1968 shooting; while Warhol recovered, he made Flesh, his own feature. Their work later included jointly developed Factory films and the launch of Interview, but the partnership was not a simple division of labor: it encompassed independent projects, group efforts, and a gradual separation. By 1974, Morrissey’s move to Europe had effectively ended his role as a major influence at the Factory, just as the magazine was becoming a new means for Warhol to draw people into his orbit.

Filmmaking Before and After the Shooting

In the years from 1968 to 1972, feature-length 16mm films were the Factory’s principal activity. They were intended for commercial release after being enlarged to 35mm, and the people who appeared in them often came from the wider social world around Max’s Kansas City or arrived hoping to be discovered at The Factory. Morrissey had worked on Warhol’s Factory films before Warhol was shot. The shooting interrupted that arrangement: during the summer of 1968, with Warhol at home recovering from his wounds, Morrissey took the opportunity to make a film of his own, Flesh.

Flesh marked an important distinction within their collaboration. Morrissey directed it independently, rather than making it as one of Warhol’s films. Its lead was Joe Dallesandro, a handsome Factory receptionist and bouncer, playing a male hustler who tries to raise money for his girlfriend’s abortion. The film began a long commercial run at the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street in the fall of 1968. Warhol’s absence from the work was therefore not the end of Morrissey’s activity in the Factory’s filmmaking environment; instead, the period of recovery coincided with Morrissey establishing himself as a director in his own right.

Jed Johnson assisted Morrissey on Flesh. Johnson had begun working at the Factory that spring, first stripping paint from the loft’s wooden window frames and building shelves for film cans. In his spare time, he taught himself to edit on the Factory’s Moviola, using reels of San Diego Surf and Lonesome Cowboys, films Warhol had made during an earlier filmmaking trip to Arizona and California. The production thus brought Morrissey’s independent direction together with a workplace and film practice shaped by Warhol, while also drawing in a newer Factory worker who was developing technical skills.

Shared Films and Separate Projects

Morrissey continued directing films after Flesh, including Trash in 1970 and Heat in 1971. At the same time, Women in Revolt and L’Amour were made as collaborative Factory efforts involving Warhol, Morrissey, Fred Hughes, and Johnson in casting, shooting, and editing. These projects show the partnership operating within a wider production group: Warhol and Morrissey were central names, but the films emerged through shared work rather than through a two-person arrangement alone.

The different kinds of credit attached to these films matter to the shape of the relationship. Flesh was Morrissey’s own film, whereas Women in Revolt and L’Amour involved a collective process. The account also distinguishes Morrissey’s subsequent solo directing from the films presented under Warhol’s name. In 1974, Morrissey went to Italy to direct two movies for Carlo Ponti’s production company, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Andy Warhol’s Dracula, which Warhol ultimately presented. Johnson and the diary’s narrator went to Italy to work on them. Once those films were finished, Morrissey remained in Europe, effectively ending his position as a major influence at the Factory.

Interview and the Changing Center of Their Work

The relationship extended beyond film production into Interview’s beginnings. When Warhol decided to start the magazine in 1969, he wanted it to focus on movies and on stars talking in their own words, preferably interviewed by other stars. The project began on a very small budget, consistent with Warhol’s preference for financing new ventures himself and building them gradually. Morrissey was among the people involved in this early work: when a lawyer warned that a description in the first issue might be libelous, Warhol, Morrissey, Johnson, Gerard Malanga, Fred Hughes, the diary’s narrator, and whoever else happened to enter the loft spent about six hours crossing out a word in bundles of printed copies with black felt-tip pens. The episode makes the magazine’s low-budget improvisation tangible: a legal problem discovered after printing was addressed by hand, collectively, inside the Factory.

Interview was initially conceived around film, but by the 1970s it increasingly took over a function that the movies could no longer reliably provide. Commercially exhibitable films had become prohibitively expensive, and Warhol could no longer offer newcomers the prospect of appearing in a movie with any certainty that it would be made. The magazine’s growing circulation and celebrity appeal offered another reason for fresh faces to come by the office. Its promise of a place in print replaced the earlier promise of a film role. This shift helps explain how the collaboration’s setting changed: Morrissey remained associated with filmmaking, while Interview became one of the chief engines of Warhol’s continuing activity and social reach.

Diverging Paths

The films and the magazine reveal a partnership with distinct phases rather than a single, continuous undertaking. Morrissey’s independent direction during Warhol’s recovery coexisted with his earlier experience assisting on Warhol’s films; later, group productions brought the two together with other Factory collaborators. The magazine’s launch drew Morrissey into a different kind of collective work, including the practical labor of correcting its first issue after the presses had run.

By 1974, however, the Italy productions represented a transition more than a renewed shared base at the Factory. Warhol’s role was to present the films directed by Morrissey, while Morrissey’s decision to stay in Europe brought his major influence at the Factory to an effective close. The subsequent rise of Interview further changed the balance: as commercial filmmaking became harder to sustain as a source of new opportunities, the magazine supplied the faces and activity that films had once brought to Warhol. Their collaboration is therefore also a record of changing media and working arrangements—from the Factory film set, to the printed page, to separate professional directions.