Julia Scorsese

Julia Scorsese, Martin Scorsese’s wife, enters Andy Warhol’s diary through a series of social encounters that reveal her forceful, affectionate manner and her sense that Warhol had played a meaningful part in her marriage’s public life. She also speaks to him about how Martin’s films were made and about her own contributions, though these accounts remain her claims as recorded by Warhol.

Encounters Around New York, New York

After a screening of New York, New York, Julia invited Warhol to join the party at The Sherry-Netherland. She repeatedly urged him to stay and asked him to be Martin’s best boyfriend, explaining that Martin had few friends. Her insistence made Warhol feel that his presence carried symbolic weight for her, even though he could not determine exactly what it represented.

At the party, Julia told Warhol that Martin’s first wife was there and that her presence unsettled her. Warhol had not known Martin had been married before, and the disclosure surprised him. The scene placed Julia’s animated efforts to draw him close beside her evident unease about another woman’s presence; Warhol’s account records both without resolving their tension.

The Story Julia Told About Warhol’s Role

In July 1977, Julia collected Warhol for lunch with a writer at Serendipity. She said she believed he had saved her during the New York, New York screening: in her telling, he had noticed she was not seated beside Martin and had moved her next to him. She connected that gesture to rumors that Martin was having an affair with Liza Minnelli, saying the seating arrangement had helped prevent the newspapers from picking up the story. Her repeated emphasis on the incident suggests how much significance she attached to Warhol’s intervention, though the diary presents this as her interpretation rather than independent confirmation of the rumor or its consequences.

Julia’s attentiveness could also feel intrusive to Warhol. At lunch she repeatedly patted his head, praised him, brought champagne after learning the restaurant had no liquor, and tried to arrange a date for him with her writer friend. Later, at Elaine’s, she proposed introducing him to the writer of Annie, saying he should meet some real men. Warhol was unsure what she meant. His account conveys a mismatch: Julia’s exuberant attempts at intimacy and matchmaking left him baffled and uncomfortable.

Her Accounts of Filmmaking and Authorship

Julia described Martin’s filmmaking as a process in which performers rehearsed, scenes were videotaped, and selected material was later recreated on camera. She said the plot could be altered during shooting, offering as an example that an earlier version of New York, New York sent Martin’s character into the record business. Her description presents the film not as a fixed script simply transferred to the screen, but as work reshaped through rehearsal and production.

She also said she had written a substantial part of Taxi Driver and claimed to have given Robert Altman the idea of setting A Wedding in Chicago rather than Los Angeles. In the same conversation, she defended Martin’s role in developing actors such as Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel after Warhol argued that stars, rather than directors, producers, or writers, were what audiences came to see. The exchange captures a difference in emphasis: Warhol stressed the drawing power of fresh faces, while Julia insisted on her husband’s creative influence and on the work behind those performances. Later, Warhol recorded a lunch interview with David Hockney, but the diary gives no indication that Julia was involved in that meeting.