Factory Girl Blogosphere Smackdown

Not only is there an an ongoing blog wrangle between Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells commenters and Factory Girl director George Hickenlooper—having to do with the suggestion that the director may have been pushed off his problem-riddled late-awards-season entry, which the Weinstein Co. opened on December 29 in L.A. via MGM—but online rivals Wells and MCN's David Poland are at it again too. Poland referred to "Hollywood El-Swear," while Wells called Poland "a pissy, pathetic little bitch," among other things. Jeez guys.

There are only six reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, not enough to generate a ranking, but Wade Major's Business of Film review is the most positive, and it damns the film with faint praise:

Ironically, the one figure who seems to disappear in the effort is director Hickenlooper, an oft-overlooked indie icon whose resume includes the documentaries Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse and Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the dramas The Man from Elysian Fields and The Big Brass Ring and the original short that inspired Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade. Hickenlooper’s Reds-style insertion of interview footage with figures who knew Sedgwick never quite clicks, and, if not for the strength of the performances, his evocation of the era and Warhol’s Factory would come off as uninspired. Clearly, haste and budget are contributing factors, and Hayden Christensen’s bizarre attempt at channeling Dylan (referred to as “Billy Quinn” for legal reasons) doesn’t help. But, even when the film loses direction and fumbles about, Miller is undeniably engaging. That’s probably not enough to save the movie from obscurity, but it should, at the very least, guarantee bigger and better things for its star.

And here's the LAT's Kevin Crust:

A brisk, superficial treatment of the tragic supernova life of Edie Sedgwick, "Factory Girl" disappoints as both biography and drama. The film charts the "poor little rich girl's" trajectory as decidedly downward from Cambridge art student to Andy Warhol's disposable model/actress/muse and finally to institutionalized drug addict. As a hopped-up ramble through the Pop Art '60s, it's more like "That Girl" on speed than anything else.

Directed by George Hickenlooper from a screenplay by the improbably named Captain Mauzner (story credited to Simon Monjack & Aaron Richard Golub and Mauzner), the movie never gets beyond a psychosexual portrayal of Sedgwick as victim. Fans well-schooled in the lore of Warhol in general and all things Edie in particular will come away with no deeper understanding of the principals while newcomers will wonder what the fuss was all about in the first place.

David Ehrenstein savages the film in The LA Weekly:

Directed by the conspicuously semicompetent George Hickenlooper (The Big Brass Ring, The Man From Elysian Fields) from a script credited to three writers of no particular distinction, this docudrama presumes to tell all we need to know about Edie Sedgwick, the Andy Warhol “superstar” whose rise and fall continues to reverberate 35 years after her death. For those who were around back then, as I was, it’s easy to see why: Edie was pretty, funny, oddly elegant and quite bright, until the amphetamines she was using in increasing quantities dragged her into semicomatose incoherence. 1965 was her big year, when she appeared to great effect in Warhol’s Vinyl, Poor Little Rich Girl and Beauty #2. Sedgwick and her personal Svengali, fellow Factory dweller Chuck Wein, then sought to take the act elsewhere, with a film project known as Ciao! Manhattan!, which was begun by Wein in 1966 as a black-and-white drama about New York scene-making but completed in color in 1972 (by John Palmer and David Weissman) as a “reality-based” exploitation flick of Edie at low ebb. It’s a shame that Ciao! Manhattan!, which incorporates Sedgwick’s passing into its action, is better known today than her Warhol efforts. But as hapless as it is, it’s still preferable to Factory Girl, a film whose current notoriety stems from Bob Dylan threatening to sue its makers.

He has a point. Maybe even a case.

I don't understand why Harvey Weinstein insisted on rushing this movie into the awards fray if it wasn't up to par. It's not like Hickenlooper or any of the principals were powerful enough to force his hand. Why not take the time to make it as good as it could be?