Warhol's filming of Cocaine Cowboys

Andy Warhol’s filming of Cocaine Cowboys was a small but revealing excursion from his familiar roles as artist, publisher, and interviewer into acting as himself. Invited to appear in Tom Sullivan’s movie, Warhol traveled to Montauk expecting to interview Jack Palance on camera. The production changed that plan: he was given lines and a scene at the beginning of the film, where he took photographs of people fleeing with cocaine. His diary records both his discomfort performing and his eventual judgment that he was not as bad on screen as he had feared.

From a Planned Interview to a Film Role

Warhol first noted that his planned trip to Montauk had been postponed by a week. His intended role was straightforward: he would play himself interviewing Jack Palance. The revised plan, once he arrived, was less familiar. The filmmakers decided to put his appearance at the opening of the movie and gave him lines in a scene involving people who had run off with cocaine. The shift from interviewer to scripted performer made the appearance more than a brief enactment of Warhol’s public identity.

That distinction mattered to Warhol. He considered himself poor at acting because he did not know how to seem real. On set, the difficulty was not simply remembering lines: the scene required him to behave naturally while playing a version of himself inside a constructed story. The diary gives no account of repeated rehearsal or extensive takes. Later, Warhol noted that he had been allowed only one take, and wondered whether he would have improved with more opportunities. His self-criticism thus remained tied to the practical limits of the shoot, rather than to a general rejection of the film.

The altered scene also placed Warhol inside the movie’s action. Instead of interviewing Palance as initially expected, he was filmed taking pictures without realizing that he was photographing people escaping with the cocaine. The camera in his hands echoed his familiar work as a photographer, but here the act was scripted and embedded in a crime plot. The appearance joined a recognizable element of Warhol’s public persona to a fictional situation, while leaving him uncertain about how to perform it.

The Montauk Shoot

Warhol’s trip to Montauk included a stop at Burger King, where he bought two steak sandwiches for Mr. Winters. He also brought Winters an abstract painting and copies of Interview magazine. Winters did not want to appear in the film, despite Warhol’s effort to persuade him. The small exchange captures the informal social work surrounding the production: Warhol arrived not only as a cast member but as a visitor carrying food, art, and magazines, trying to draw another person into the movie.

The production itself was busy. Warhol observed that many young people were on the property, with about twenty already out shooting and many others still around. He met Tom Sullivan’s Danish wife, Winnie, and later checked into a yacht-club hotel. Sullivan brought over a Betamax recording, and the group had dinner at the hotel, which Warhol found unpleasant. Palance had initially stayed there but, according to Warhol’s account, disliked the service and left.

At midnight, the group drove to Southampton to watch footage from the previous day in a movie theater. Warhol thought the rushes looked somewhat promising, noting the airplane shots and Palance’s presence. He also thought Sullivan was effective and observed that the band appeared in the film. From this, Warhol guessed that introducing Sullivan’s band was one purpose of the project. The viewing gave him an early sense of the movie’s shape before his own scene was complete; afterward, he was driven back to the hotel and fell asleep in his clothes.

People and Stories Inside the Film

Palance played Rof, a former manager of Jayne Mansfield, while Sullivan played Destin, a singer with a band. Warhol asked Sullivan how Palance had been cast. Sullivan told him that the filmmakers had considered Rod Steiger because they wanted an older, tough actor; they eventually contacted Palance, who had a farm in Pennsylvania and, as Sullivan described him, was willing to take roles because he liked drinking. Warhol also noted Palance’s age, his youthful appearance, his dog Patches, and his girlfriend, details that make the star’s off-screen presence part of the diary’s record of the shoot.

Warhol saw an especially close correspondence between Sullivan’s role and the filmmaker’s life. At dinner, he interviewed Sullivan and heard a story that matched Destin’s backstory: Sullivan had been burned in a plane crash in Colombia, then found by people who took him to New York in a private plane. The parallel made the film’s invented character seem to draw directly on Sullivan’s own experience. Rather than describe this as a revelation about the movie’s intentions, Warhol recorded the resemblance between the two stories.

The Finished Cut and Warhol’s Assessment

When Sullivan brought Cocaine Cowboys to the office on Betamax in November, Paul Morrissey watched part of it and found it too slow; Brigid Berlin, who came in and out, shared that reaction. Warhol liked the movie. Seeing the finished version also softened his doubts about his own performance: he decided he was not so bad in it, even though the production had given him only one take. He compared it favorably with his first film appearance, The Driver’s Seat, and singled out the music as a strength.

His approval was not unqualified. Warhol called the story dumb, describing its central setup as cocaine dealers dropping drugs from a plane, which a maid and a secretary discover and steal. Sullivan said the non-union production had cost $950,000; Warhol could not see how the expense had reached that amount. The contrast between a costly production and a story he considered foolish gives his appraisal its dry edge. Cocaine Cowboys remained, in his account, a movie he enjoyed despite its slow pace, implausible-sounding premise, and the awkwardness he felt while acting in it.