Jon Gould

Jon Gould was a Paramount Pictures executive and a central, though deliberately under-recorded, figure in Andy Warhol’s diaries. Their connection moved between movie-business collaboration and intimate companionship: Warhol tried to draw Gould closer, at times sharing his home with him, while Gould insisted on privacy and independence. As Gould’s work and life shifted toward Los Angeles, the diary’s personal account narrowed into absence, secondhand news, and finally the record of his death.

Identity and Introduction

Gould enters the diary both as a person Warhol wanted near him and as a colleague in the movie business. In May 1981, Warhol offered Chris Makos a gold watch if Makos could persuade Gould to do something with him. Warhol hoped for romance, but wrote that even if nothing romantic happened, he still wanted Gould to move in so they could see what followed. The arrangement reveals how closely Warhol tied emotional hope to ordinary proximity: sharing a home itself seemed to him a possible beginning.

Their early closeness was not matched by equal openness. During a trip that included East Falmouth, Gould decided to visit his family in Amesbury rather than return to New York with Warhol and the others. Warhol understood that his hopes for progress on the trip had not been fulfilled. On the flight back to LaGuardia, he recorded feeling so unhappy that he did not care whether the plane crashed. The abruptness of that thought conveys the depth of his disappointment without establishing that Gould shared the same expectations.

Pursuit, Distance, and Privacy

In June 1981, Gould returned to town after Warhol had been ill, but had already made weekend plans because he thought Warhol was going away. He said he would call and did not. Warhol took the missed call as evidence that the relationship had fallen apart, resolved that he had to pull himself together, and cried himself to sleep. The episode sits alongside his awareness that Gould had a family who loved him, while Warhol tended to avoid visits from his own family. Their different access to family life sharpened his sense of being alone.

A later dinner offered a partial reopening. Gould apologized for not visiting, and the two arranged to eat together. During a serious conversation, he told Warhol that Warhol was not serious enough: when Gould said something significant, Warhol would answer lightly. Warhol took this criticism as something he would have to work on. They also discussed the movie business, where Gould disliked being caught between Barry Diller and another boss. Their relationship thus included a professional strain that was not simply a backdrop to their personal lives; it was part of what they could talk about together.

Warhol’s diary also became a point of conflict. After learning that Warhol had written personally about him, Gould became angry and warned him not to do so again if he wanted Gould to continue seeing him. Warhol responded by saying that future entries would cover only the business angle, presenting Gould as a Paramount Pictures employee with whom he was trying to develop scripts and movies. That restriction shaped the surviving account: the diary repeatedly registers Warhol’s longing, but also marks the boundary Gould placed around what could be recorded.

Shared Life and Uneven Intimacy

In July 1981, Warhol described their relationship as coasting along and confessed that he needed to be in love. He was jealous of Gould’s close family ties and discovered that Gould was a twin, like Jed Johnson; his twin was named Jay. This detail made Gould’s family life more vivid within the diary, but did not lessen the contrast Warhol felt between Gould’s ready connection to relatives and his own habit of keeping family at a distance.

By March 1983, Gould still kept an apartment of his own but was living in Warhol’s house, in the fourth-floor guest room. The arrangement gave the two a sustained daily proximity without resolving Warhol’s uncertainty about their relationship. When Victor reported seeing Gould at a gay club, Warhol did not raise it with him. Chris Makos was still asking whether he could collect the promised watch, and Warhol answered that not yet. The watch, first offered as an inducement in 1981, had become a small recurring measure of how unresolved Warhol’s plan remained.

Not every shared moment carried the same unease. In September 1983, Warhol and Gould walked to the Castle in Central Park, rented a rowboat, and spent an hour on the lake. They got stuck on a rock; four girls bumped into their boat, and then the pair were alone again. Warhol remembered the scene through a film reference and noted that he could not swim. The outing is recorded as a brief, particular pleasure—an hour together outdoors—rather than as proof that the larger uncertainty had disappeared.

Work, Illness, and Growing Separation

The diary connects Gould’s professional ambitions to Warhol’s hopes for movie projects. In Aspen in January 1984, Warhol described Gould as aloof and said Gould needed to be his own person; Warhol, in turn, felt he was always about to leave and could never relax. A month later, Gould again asked Warhol not to write personal details about him. An editorial note records that Gould was admitted to New York Hospital with pneumonia on February 4, released on February 22, readmitted the following day, and released again on March 7. That day, Warhol instructed the housekeepers to wash Gould’s dishes and clothes separately from his own. The practical instruction sits beside the diary’s guardedness: care continued, but the personal account remained constrained.

By 1985, Gould was working in Los Angeles, and Warhol heard through Dr. Bernsohn that he planned to go to Tibet with Dr. Reese, for his health and perhaps to research scripts about crystals. Warhol described him as completely gone from New York and considered finding someone else to work on movie projects with. He also feared Gould might claim ideas Warhol had developed, including a proposed Music Hotel project with Maura Moynihan. Recalling Footloose, Warhol said Gould later treated the idea as his own because he had once been present when people discussed it. Yet Warhol recognized that ideas can circulate and that it is the person who carries one through who matters. The passage preserves both his resentment and his qualification of it.

A later report briefly suggested a dramatic new career prospect: Dr. Li told Warhol that Gould had said he had a $100 million production deal, with $50 million from a South African crystal businessman to be matched by Paramount. The diary presents this as information relayed to Warhol, not as a verified outcome. By December, Gould came to New York without calling him, and Warhol wanted to avoid a screening at the Gulf + Western Building because it would bring that absence to mind. In January 1986, Jean-Michel Basquiat told Warhol that Gould had attended an opening in Los Angeles but would not discuss him.

Final News and Narrative Significance

In September 1986, Susan Pile called from Los Angeles and said Gould was in the hospital there. A following diary note records that he died on September 18, aged thirty-three, after an extended illness. It adds that he had become severely ill and blind, and that he denied having AIDS even to close friends. The diary does not establish an AIDS diagnosis; it preserves the denial as part of the uncertainty surrounding his illness. The news arrives after years in which Warhol’s access to Gould had been narrowed by distance, privacy, and missed contact.

Gould’s significance in the diary lies not in a fully narrated biography of his own, but in the changing limits of Warhol’s account of him. At first Warhol tried to secure closeness through an invitation, a promised watch, and the hope of living together. Later, shared rooms and outings coexisted with Gould’s insistence on independence and control over what Warhol wrote. Finally, as Gould’s life shifted to Los Angeles, he became increasingly absent from Warhol’s direct experience. His death closes that arc without resolving the questions the diary repeatedly leaves open about their relationship, their projects, and what might have happened had Gould remained nearby.