BOB COLACELLO

The story of how the Brooklyn-born Colacello was drawn into the highest reaches of New York society is an illustration of just how possible anything was. He was living at home with his parents in Rockville Centre, Long Island while he studied film at Columbia; one evening at dinner with his parents he got a phone call. On the end of the line was Paul Morrissey, a movie director at Andy Warhol's Factory. He and Warhol had just read Colacello's glowing review of their latest film, Trash, in the Village Voice; would he like to come round to meet them? At this point – 1970 – Warhol was as big a star as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. Colacello excitedly told his parents what had happened. 'My father went white and said, ''If you go and work for that creep on Union Square, I will not only break your movie camera, I'll break your legs!" Colacello was a good middle-class boy, and he loved his father. But, naturally, he made his way to the Factory at the first available opportunity. 'I went up to the sixth floor and got off the elevator and there was this little foyer with a steel bulletproof door with a little glass window. I looked through and there was Andy Warhol sitting at an Art Deco desk eating lunch.' Warhol took to him instantly, and Colacello's timing was just right because, after being shot in the stomach, Warhol was waving goodbye to the Factory's superstars, speed freaks and street people.

-The Telegraph
Sept 23 2007