Year: 2007
Director: Esther Robinson
Writer: Shannon Kennedy
Cinematographer: Adam Cohen
Cast: Callie Angell, Brigid Berlin, John Cale, Nat Finkelstein, Gerard Malanga
Running Time: 75 min.
Filmmaker Esther Robinson’s uncle disappeared over forty years ago. Her family rarely referred to him, but when they did they applied a little varnish – Uncle Danny Williams, they said, “went to the sea.� On a visit to the family home in Massachusetts in 1966, Danny had taken his mother’s car to the Boston Bay shoreline and never came back. Some three decades later Esther discovered a cache of twenty short films by Danny Williams filmed around Andy Warhol’s Factory, and decided to turn a family mystery into a documentary.
In 1965, Danny Williams was living a drug-filled, fast life. In Manhattan, he became a familiar part of the Warhol Factory, and became Andy Warhol’s lover and roommate. He also designed the groundbreaking Velvet Underground/Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI) light show. Right before the EPI national tour in 1966, Warhol ended their affair. Danny was gaining some fame in his own right; envious Factory members accused him of grabbing credit for Warhol’s work and maneuvered his ouster. Then he disappeared.
Esther Williams’ film features sections from her uncle’s short films, which are stunning discoveries. These are interlaced with interviews with her family and with members of The Factory (including director Paul Morrissey, John Cale of the Velvet Underground and poet Gerard Malanga). The result is a haunting and luminous film about two families who denied Danny Williams: his own family, inadvertently hiding from view the trajectory of his wild life, and The Factory, conspiring to submerge Danny Williams’ growing fame.
