{"id":233503,"date":"2025-10-18T08:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/233503\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T08:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:43:10","slug":"when-andy-warhol-got-15-minutes-of-mtv-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/233503\/","title":{"rendered":"When Andy Warhol Got 15 Minutes of MTV Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was inevitable that Andy Warhol<\/a> would embrace a network that blurred the boundaries between visual art and pop culture even more effectively than his immortalizations of Marilyn Monroe<\/a>. In 1984, the icon directed<\/a>\u2014and made a cameo as a bartender in\u2014the video for The Cars\u2019 playlist staple \u201cHello Again.\u201d But it was as an unlikely talk show host a year later that he truly got acolytes demanding, \u201cI want my MTV<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warhol on the Small Screen<\/a>The Legacy of 15 Minutes<\/a>Warhol on the Small Screen<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol\u2019s 15 Minutes of Fame\u2014a reference to his career-defining quote to Time magazine back when The Factory was the Swinging Sixties\u2019 hottest hangout\u2014wasn\u2019t the icon\u2019s first rodeo. In 1979, he peered behind the catwalk curtains for a Manhattan Cable Network show titled Fashion. Then, at the dawn of the following decade, he widened its horizons to a mixture of the sartorial and showbiz chat and renamed the show Andy Warhol\u2019s TV. \u201cIt was another tool he used to get to know people and simultaneously reach as many people as he could,\u201d the Andy Warhol Museum\u2019s film and video curator Geralyn Huxley explained<\/a> about his fascination with the small screen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Warhol got the chance to reach more people than ever before in 1985, when he signed up with MTV to create another eponymous vehicle that would pride itself on subverting the norm. For one thing, the show didn\u2019t feature any music videos\u2014something of a rarity in the days before the channel became swallowed whole by reality TV. For another, it barely paused for thought: The majority of celebrity conversations lasted barely long enough to eat a spoonful of Campbell\u2019s soup. Even its title was misleading;\u00a0 each of the five episodes offered half an hour of unadulterated, unorganized chaos.<\/p>\n

The first episode\u2014which aired 40 years ago this month\u2014certainly set the fever dream tone. Debbie Harry<\/a> announced the episode\u2019s theme, \u201cSex, Vegetables, Brothers and Sisters.\u201d In keeping with that bizarre combination, She\u2019s Gotta Have It star Tracy Johns revealed she was a \u201cbroccoli freak\u201d and John Oates put forward the bizarre theory that \u201cThere hasn\u2019t really been any sex in New York since 1983.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the episode, there was a visit to New York\u2019s Pyramid Club, where, according to Harry, \u201ca talented family of self-styled freaks entertain in high style\u201d; a montage celebrating the front cover history of Warhol\u2019s Interview magazine; and random cameos from novelist Tama Janowitz and Frank Zappa\u2019s kids Moon Unit and Dweezil. Warhol also advises Jerry Hall to dump then-husband Mick Jagger and instead play the groupie for Curiosity Killed the Cat, an emerging blue-eyed-soul boyband he\u2019d later direct in their video for single \u201cMisfit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

You Might Also Like …<\/p>\n

Add Mental Floss as a preferred news source<\/a>!<\/p>\n

The show certainly wasn\u2019t Warhol\u2019s only flirtation with MTV. He also helmed the promo for Ric Ocasek\u2019s \u201cTrue to You,\u201d was pictured<\/a> alongside Grace Jones at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards before appearing in her video for \u201cI\u2019m Not Perfect (But I\u2019m Perfect For You),\u201d and worked his pop art magic<\/a> on a moonwalking Buzz Aldrin<\/a>, the same image the channel had appropriated to launch their own giant leap for mankind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Warhol was an avid viewer, too. In one 1984 diary entry, he bemoaned<\/a> the homogeny of MTV\u2019s playlist, writing, \u201cI don\u2019t know what else you can do to these videos to make them different. They\u2019re all the same.\u201d Three years later, he recalled falling asleep to the channel and having \u201crock-video nightmares.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol\u2019s 15 Minutes proved to be the best example of his ability to gather the bohemians of the day all under one umbrella. The second episode saw artist Kenny Scharf cruising the Big Apple streets in his graffiti-strewn Cadillac and photographer Peter Beard swinging on a swing while discussing swinging New York. In episode three, garage rockers The Fleshtones provided the musical backing to a Shakespeare<\/a> sonnet read out by Ian McKellen. And the stacked finale boasted an interview with a relatively unknown Courtney Love\u2014then better known for appearing in the spaghetti western Straight to Hell than as a grunge goddess\u2014and The Ramones<\/a> tearing into the modern rock landscape before performing anti-Reagan<\/a> protest \u201cBonzo Goes to Bitburg.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadly, the latter also came accompanied with footage of its creator\u2019s memorial. In fact, it was while shooting 15 Minutes that Warhol was rushed to New York Hospital to undergo gallbladder surgery<\/a>. The following day, the man who revolutionized the art world, the concept of celebrity, and, to a lesser extent, the TV talk show, was dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Legacy of 15 Minutes<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol\u2019s 15 Minutes might not be as celebrated as Warhol’s experimental art house films or his silkscreen paintings. At best, it served as a minor footnote in all the eulogies that followed, and the only evidence of its existence is various VHS-quality uploads on YouTube. Still, it highlights Warhol\u2019s ability to think ahead of the curve, foreshadowing the kind of gonzo style that became de rigueur for the shows desperately trying to attract the nation\u2019s youth. And its insights into fascinating counterculture movements (however brief) and acts that wouldn\u2019t typically fit within MTV\u2019s remit opened a window that, for the mainstream, had previously been kept firmly shut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps most significantly, it also introduced the host’s immeasurable talents to a whole new generation. \u201cMore and more kids were watching MTV,\u201d producer Vincent Fremont said in 2017<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t know if they knew that Andy was a famous artist, but to them he was certainly a television personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol | Express Newspapers\/GettyImages<\/p>\n

That would have undoubtedly satisfied Warhol, a man who\u2014despite his pioneering status elsewhere\u2014always longed to be accepted on the box.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe few times in my life when I\u2019ve gone on television, I\u2019ve been so jealous of the host on the show that I haven\u2019t been able to talk,\u201d he once wrote<\/a>. \u201cAs soon as the TV cameras turn on, all I can think is, \u2018I want my own show \u2026 I want my own show.\u2019\u201d Luckily for fans of lo-fi, leftfield, late-night broadcasting, his wish was fulfilled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was inevitable that Andy Warhol would embrace a network that blurred the boundaries between visual art and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-233503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}