“Beautiful Darling”: Documentary Focuses on One of the Stars of Andy Warhol’s Factory

NEW YORK, NY.- Corinth Releasing presents the U.S. theatrical premiere and nationwide theatrical distribution of “Beautiful Darling”. After its World Premiere at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, and its U.S. Premiere in New York City at the prestigious New Directors/New Films, the film has continued to win accolades from audiences and critics at dozens of festivals and museum screenings around the world. It has also garnered first place wins at the 2010 Chicago International Festival and the Montenegro International Documentary Festival.

Recapturing the excitement of a long lost New York City, “Darling” tells the story of transgender pioneer Candy Darling, a star in the constellation that was Andy Warhol’s Factory. Born James Slattery in suburban Long Island in 1944, by the mid-sixties Jimmy had become Candy, a gorgeous blond actress and throwback to Hollywood’s golden age. This persona won her starring roles in two Warhol movies, parts in mainstream films, and a lead role in a Tennessee Williams’ play. Her ethereal beauty attracted such taste-making photographers as Robert Mapplethorpe, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon and Peter Beard. She was the inspiration behind two of Lou Reed’s best known songs, “Candy Says” and “Walk on the Wild Side”, and was one of the most unusual and charismatic fixtures in the explosive downtown, underground scene of late 1960s/early ’70s New York.

Candy’s journey of self-discovery and transformation becomes, for Rasin, a tragic allegory for our fame and media obsessed times. But it is also a gripping story with a simple, universal theme: One person’s pursuit of their own American Dream. The film interweaves rare archival footage and both historical and contemporary interviews (Tennessee Williams, director Paul Morrissey, writer Fran Lebowitz, Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn among many others) with excerpts from Candy’s own diaries and letters, which are voiced, to devastating effect, by Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe Award winning actress Chloë Sevigny. Photographs and never-before-seen footage of Candy center-stage in the heyday of The Factory give the film a gritty glamour, and the feeling of a fairy tale that the audience suspects will not have a happy ending.

The film’s counterpoint to Candy’s burning — and ultimately falling — star is the story of Jeremiah Newton, one of her closest friends and admirers and the executor of her estate. Rasin follows the aging Jeremiah as he journeys through a past that has never entirely subsided into mere memory: Reminiscing over his friendship with Candy; poring over the memorabilia he saved from destruction at the hands of Candy’s homophobic mother; and finally burying Candy’s ashes — thirty five years after her death — in a simple ceremony that brings the story full circle. The film is part-70’s celebrity gazing, part cinéma vérité road trip, and partly a moving indictment of intolerance for differences of all kinds. But mostly it’s an inspirational tribute to an unforgettable human being who refused to let others define her or her dreams.

Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar a feature length documentary film with Chloë Sevigny

WHERE: The IFC Center, 323 6th Avenue, New York, NY

WHEN: April 22, 2011 Time TBD

WHO: Director James Rasin and producer and co-star of the film, Jeremiah Newton, will attend; as will many of the Warhol stars featured in the film

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