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The Chelsea Girls and Cannes

Taylor Mead felt that the French didn't really understand The Chelsea Girls. In an interview with author Steven Watson for the book, Factory-Made: Warhol and the Sixties, Taylor talks about the French reaction to The Chelsea Girls: "They couldn't believe The Chelsea Girls was for real. It was too American for them or something, and I thought what am I doing among these frogs... they don't get it. They just don't get it..."

In the same interview Taylor talks about Warhol telling him there they had 'so many movie ideas that would be so good for you'. Taylor's reaction was "well, that didn't quite convince me, but the next day I ran into Mickey Ruskin. He said, 'Taylor I have this great restaurant, Max's Kansas City, you'd fit right in, you're gotta come back to New York.' And that did it. The way he said that. And of course I fitted right into Max's for the next four or five years." (SW)

According to Warhol, Taylor Mead rang him from Europe after Andy and his entourage had reurned to New York, saying: “I’ve been in La Dolce Vita land too long, Andy... "Chelsea Girls is the real thing. I’m coming home.” (POP241)

Andy Warhol (via Pat Hackett in Popism):

"When Taylor Mead left New York in '64 to go live in Europe, he was a little disappointed in my filmmaking style; he felt I wasn't being sensitive enough to actors' performances. I remember how annoyed he was once when I filmed a reel of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and him on the couch at the Factory - that I did it from the side and you couldn't really see who was who - and then on top of that, we lost the reel. He thought that was just too irresponsible, and I heard he was calling me 'incompentent'... Taylor had planned to stay in Europe until the Vietnam war was over, but already in '67 he was beginning to get tired of France." (POP240-1)

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