Warhol's Subtle Sadism

The Pope of Greenwhich, aka Ondine, aka Robert Olivio
One of the most memorable sequences belongs to the queen with the Bronx bray, Ondine. He decided to be "the Pope of Greenwich Village," taking the "confession" of Warhol's alleged favorite, the brainless, shrieking, drug-drenched Ingrid Superstar. Ondine is a powerful presence here, eloquently expounding on his many duties as "the Pope" in one breath and screeching his hatred of the church in the other. In a hilarious extended dialogue, he accuses her of being a lesbian — "I've seen you at Page Three and a lot of other dyke joints!" — while she alternately denies and embraces the idea, as the mood strikes her. "You're a subspecies, my dear. You're not even a vegetable!" he screams. Inevitably, the pressure of 35 minutes of improv, even for the self-consumed Ondine, proves too much, and when another woman enters the scene and denounces him as a phony, Ondine verbally and physically assaults her. Ondine's demand that the camera be stopped after he loses control were met with a bland but incontestable denial by Warhol, whose decision to keep the camera running at all cost produces some disturbing effects. Throughout the film there are moments where his refusal to stop shooting, his encouragement of the stars' hunger for the spotlight at any cost, skirts the sadistic. Perhaps "skirt" is too tame; Warhol biographer Victor Bokris mentions that "To turn the pressure up, Andy and Paul [Morrissey] would plant rumors about unpleasant remarks someone had made about someone else."

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