A 4K Restoration Brings Explosive Sundance Winner ‘I Shot Any Warhol’ Back to Theaters

Thirty years ago, director Mary Harron‘s “I Shot Andy Warhol” screened at Sundance and joined “sex, lies and videotape,” “House Party,” “Reservoir Dogs,” and “Gas Food Lodging” on the long list of all-time great feature debuts to premiere at the festival. As IndieWire exclusively announces, Janus Films this summer will celebrate the film‘s 30th anniversary with the theatrical release of a new 4K restoration, giving audiences the opportunity to discover or revisit “I Shot Andy Warhol” the way it was meant to be experienced — on the biggest screen possible.

Harron deservedly won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for her ferociously entertaining look at Valerie Solanas, the feminist writer who, as the title announces, attempted to murder pop artist Andy Warhol in 1968. “I Shot Andy Warhol” is one of those rare first films, like Walter Hill’s “Hard Times” or Lawrence Kasdan’s “Body Heat,” that comes from a director with an apparently fully formed command of the medium — every composition, cut, and music cue is impeccably orchestrated to propel Solanas’ story forward with exuberance, impact, and clarity.

Harron pulls off something in “I Shot Andy Warhol” comparable to that of Welles, Hitchcock, and Kubrick in their best work, creating a visual language that is simultaneously drunk on the expressive possibilities of cinema and rigorously analytical — it’s a movie that goes straight for the nervous system with its passion and energy while still encouraging a slightly distanced, multi-faceted reading from a variety of perspectives. Harron gives Solanas her due in a movie that’s even-handed but in no way safe or timid; neither indictment nor hagiography, “I Shot Andy Warhol” makes you realize just how simple (and simple-minded) the majority of biopics are by comparison.

Of course, a great biopic needs a great lead performance, and “I Shot Andy Warhol” has a stunner in the form of Lili Taylor’s turn as Solanas. Taylor takes a character whose defining traits — particularly her anger — could easily have tempted lesser actors toward caricature, and proves herself constitutionally incapable of false moments. Harron and co-writer Daniel Minahan portray Solanas as clearly unhinged, but not entirely wrong in her observations or unjustified in her grievances; the movie doesn’t excuse her actions, but it understands them. Taylor’s depiction of an outsider desperately looking in earns comparison with Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle and Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo.

Did a more interesting actor than Taylor emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Consider her work in “Mystic Pizza,” “Say Anything,” “Dogfight,” “Household Saints,” Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” and Abel Ferrara’s “The Addiction,” just to name a few. Taylor’s combination of taste and fearlessness in this era was unparalleled, and she was never better, or given a better opportunity to showcase the full spectrum of her talent, than in “I Shot Andy Warhol.”

Taylor’s performance could probably have carried “I Shot Andy Warhol” on its back, but thankfully Harron’s attention to detail means every part, from Warhol (Jared Harris) and Ondine (Michael Imperioli) to Paul Morrissey (Reg Rogers), is inventively cast and fully realized — even the background actors give a sense of existence beyond the scope of the narrative. The dense visual and aural context is essential here; Harron and her department heads bring every detail of Warhol’s Factory and its surroundings to vivid life, and the score (by, in a nice touch, The Velvet Underground’s John Cale) and color palette are faithful to the period but evoke it with immediacy rather than nostalgia.

The supremacy of filmmaking craft on display here is what makes Janus’ restoration so worthy of celebration. While “I Shot Andy Warhol” is undeniably a great film regardless of the mode of exhibition, the chance to appreciate its nuances and power in a theater is not one to be missed. Harron went on to make more great films (most famously “American Psycho”), but she never made one more alive than her first — or one more worthy of rediscovery and re-release.

The new 4K restoration of Mary Harron’s “I Shot Andy Warhol” will open theatrically in New York at IFC Center on June 12, followed by a nationwide rollout.