Factory Girl
Movie Review
By Victoria Joyce
(SugarBuzz Hollywood)
SugarBuzz Magazine
To this day Holly Golightly is an icon to young American women. Remember Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffanys?” That’s who Edie Sedgewick wanted to be when she went to the Big Apple in 1962. Bone thin, blonde streaks and broke with rich parents. Poor Edie. She ended up being the Anti Holly.
In case you didn’t hear, Bob Dylan filed legal proceedings against the producers and tried to stop the film.
In this movie Sedgewick and Dylan have a red-hot romance making Edie’s mentor, Andy Warhol jealous. Ooohh! Love Triangle! So, OK, it didn’t happen that way in real life. In real life, Bob met Edie at a party. It’s a movie for crying out loud! Is Dylan trying to protect his reputation? Jesus, Bob, sweetie, it was the 60’s! No AIDS, remember? So Mr. Zimmerman got a lot of love and broke a lot of hearts. Like we didn’t know that? We all found out later, free love isn’t free.
Sedgewick’s story has been kicking around Hollywood since forever. (Like Janis Joplin’s). Self destructed at 28, Edie is in the same club with Janis, Jimi, The Lizard King and Gram Parson of free fallen angels. She left her mark. Rock legend says a dozen songs were written about her by Dylan, Velvet Underground, the Cure, etc. And supposedly she is the blonde in “Blonde on Blonde.”
In “Factory Girl” Sienna Miller is Edie and Guy Pierce is Andy with Hayden Christensen as Billy Quinn (heh heh). The performances are wonderful. It’s hard to tell them from the real people. (Real people?) The Village Voice calls this movie “Edie for Dummies.” Cute.
All the reviews are wrong. It’s a very cool movie. The songs on the music track killed us. The first song, two minutes into the film is “Dino’s Song” by the Quicksilver Messenger Service. OK, so it’s a few years off the mark. The song came out in 1967 not 1962. Still the perfect song to open the film with a twangy-folk-rock chord change and lovely vocals with lyrics about being free. Kind of a knock off of the Byrds, Quicksilver was the standout band of the San Francisco 60’s hey day. They never got their due.
Director George Hickenlooper has wonderful taste in music. (He did “Dogtown” and “The Mayor of the Sunset Strip,” the Rodney Bingenheimer documentary.) The Tim Hardin tune over the end credits will kill you (“Red Balloon”). And yeah, the Velvet Underground look-a-likes with Lou and Nico show up toward the end and lip sync something. They used a lot of garage rock and bubble gum from the day; McCoys (“Fever”), Jaynettes (“Sally Go Round the Roses”), Strangeloves, (“I Want Candy”), Count Five (“Psychotic Reaction”), Pretty Things (“Don’t Bring Me Down).
An excellent assembly from beginning to end. For some reason there will be no soundtrack available. We got word from the music people at the Weinstein Company there was no “label interest.” Further proof record companies are irrelevant and obsolete.
Couple of cool performances by Mena Souvari, Jimmy Fallon, Illeana Douglas and would you believe Mary Kate Olsen? LOVED the cameo of Don Novello as Dylan’s manager. Farther Guido Sarducci, remember?
It’s hard to do the recent past in a movie and get it right. Nice, nice work here. The clothes, the hair, the music, the boots. And Edie’s eye makeup is perfect. She did that raccoon dark circle that gave the big-eyed baby doll look. Like Cher, Twiggy and Peggy Moffitt. Not sure who did it first.
A lot of people are very annoyed with this film. Not me. Loved it. In this movie Andy Warhol invents the word “Superstar” just for Edie. I think that’s what got a lot people pissed.