Sunday with Mister C.

When the author Truman Capote failed to deliver any article for Rolling Stone magazine about The Rolling Stones 1972 tour he was paid to accompany as a correspondent, fellow celebrity artist and friend Andy Warhol was sent to record an interview with him instead. In the Interview Capote described the debauchery he witnessed, Mick Jagger, and additionally provided insights into his own work and life and explains why he felt creatively uninspired to write about The Rollling Stones.

The friendship between Capote and Warhol had developed from somewhat strange origins. Warhol became obsessed with the beautiful and media savvy Capote after the publication of his first novel Other Voices Other Rooms in 1948 that contained a controversial photograph taken by Harold Hama of the boyish looking author gazing provocatively into the camera. On his arrival in New York in 1949, Warhol began to bombard Capote with fan letters and illustrations and took to hanging around his apartment and calling him. In 1952 Andy Warhol’s first exhibition in New York at the Hugo Gallery was entitled ‘Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote.’ Despite Warhol’s pleas, Capote never attended. When he did finally meet his idol in person Capote’s impression of Warhol was that:

“He seemed one of those hopeless people that you just know nothing’s ever going to happen to. Just a hopeless, born loser, the loneliest, most friendless person I’d ever seen in my life.”

Warhol’s stalking of Capote finally ceased after his mother asked him to stop bothering her son. As Warhol became more famous and the two men moved more regularly in the same social circles a genuine friendship eventually developed.

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