Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol on 3 June 1968, in his studio on Union Square in New York. She was a writer who had given him a script. Warhol was declared dead for a moment, survived five hours of surgery and wore a surgical corset for the rest of his life.
The studio was the Factory, on the sixth floor at 33 Union Square West. Solanas fired three times and wounded two men: Warhol, and the art critic Mario Amaya, who survived.
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Solanas was not a stranger who slipped in off the street. The year before, she had stood in front of Warhol's own camera. He gave her a part in his film I, a Man, which opened in New York in August 1967.
Between that film and the gun was something she had handed him, and he never gave it back. I don't believe this was a random attack. It had a year of history behind it.
On the afternoon of 3 June 1968, Paul Morrissey, who ran the studio's film work, told her that Warhol would not be in. She walked into the building anyway and rode the elevator up and down until he arrived.
What You'll Discover
What Warhol never gave back.
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How long his heart stopped.
Where she went that evening.
What the bullet left behind.