Factory Girl: Worthless

By Chuck Ansbacher

Wednesday February 7, 2007

Bio-pics are consistently the worst shit to get thrown on screen. If you wanted to inform the public on the life and times of a cultural icon–especially one who has countless hours of actual footage of themselves deteriorating in a vault somewhere–why wouldn’t you make a documentary? Edie Sedgwick only died 36 years ago, and as the closing credits of Factory Girl reveal, most of her peers from the old Warhol days are alive, sane, and willing to talk about her on camera. But no, bio-pics are never made to inform anyone about anything. They are simply made to bolster the career of their stars, and to deceive the viewer. If you, like most people, learn all of your history from the movies, by now you believe that Salieri killed Mozart, Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter is an innocent human-rights crusader, Ray Charles went blind after witnessing his little brother’s death, and Edie Sedgwick and Bob Dylan had hot, multi-position sex in a barn. But all of that is bullshit. The last made up “fact” is such bullshit that in Factory, Bob Dylan isn’t even called Bob Dylan. No, the character Hayden “ruined Star Wars ” Christensen plays is actually named “Billy Quinn.” Why? Because Dylan sued the producers of this movie for defamation, and swears the shit never happened. Whether Dylan is fibbing is up for debate (loads of his songs, including “Like a Rolling Stone”, seem to allude quite obviously to Edie), but that doesn’t matter. Bio-pics not only dramatize the truth, they flat out lie. They are simply a chance for actors to take an easy role to impress idiots (because oh man Jamie Fox was Ray Charles in that movie!), and for studios to cash in. And fuck Jimmy Fallon too.