The Treat: Matt Wolf

0:00Elvis Mitchell:I'm Elvis Mitchell. Welcome to The Treat. Director Matt Wolf's HBO documentary, Pee-wee as himself, was a look at the work and times of writer-performer Paul Rubens that also forced Wolf to examine himself. For his treat, he opens a book on the life of a figure who also invited the public on her road to fame and excess.

0:22Matt Wolf:I'm Matt Wolf, and this is The Treat.

0:32Matt Wolf:One of the things that I think about a lot in relation to my work is Gene Stein's book, Edie.

0:43Matt Wolf:It is a seminal oral history about Edie Sedwick, you know, the superstar of Andy Warhol's factory. I remember reading the book. I bought it because I thought the cover was cool. I like Warhol and the factory, but I'm not like obsessed. but her story is so vividly told through hundreds of interviews that jean stein did and so brilliantly edited that it is the most detailed and granular depiction of another human being i've ever read well what is your definition of a superstar something either fantastic or ridiculous and that remains to be seen it may be ridiculous if we can't get it off

1:21Elvis Mitchell:the ground, it'll be ridiculous. If we can do a whole movie, it'll be a superstar. Andy, how did you discover Edie? It could be.

1:28Matt Wolf:Come on, you can tell.

1:29Elvis Mitchell:Oh, a bun mistake.

1:32Matt Wolf:Through her kind of bigger vision as an author, she's able to use Edie as a sort of prism to see all the big issues of America, from privilege and wealth to mental illness and celebrity, to the disposability of women who are treated as muses, both in popular culture and in high art, to self-destruction. It's really about, like, American ambition and the ways that people are employed and discarded through their own personal trajectories.

2:11Elvis Mitchell:Miss New York Girl of the Year, millionaire, millionaires, socialite, bull****, Andy Warhol superstar, all this really had a bad effect on. It's strange, wherever I've been, I've been quite notorious, and quite innocently so, but I've never been anywhere where I haven't been known. I remember many times in New York...

2:41Matt Wolf:Edie wasn't someone I thought was symbolic of our larger world, but she is somebody who taps into so many big themes about American ambition and media and celebrity. And the way Jean Stein wrote this oral history is so connected to what I do. It's really taking a composite of many perspectives to render a portrait of somebody. But she does it so effectively that it feels like one kind of thread of prose. It doesn't feel like eclectic voices. It feels like one voice. But what's accomplished in her form of oral history is a level of granular detail that creates the most vivid portrait of another human being I've ever read or seen.

3:35Elvis Mitchell:director Matt Wolf on writer Gene Stein's 1983 book Edie an American Biography The Treat is produced by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist I'm Melvis Mitchell it's The Treat

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