Some documentaries approach a subject straight on. Others come from an angle. A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory begins with a mystery. Why did director Esther Robinson’s Uncle Danny walk out one night, never to be seen again? Some families have a story — sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. Robinson had never met her Uncle, but she was fascinated by what happened to a relative she had never met.
In the mid Sixties, Danny Williams was a promising young artist who had moved to New York City and was working with Andy Warhol. But then everything seemed to fall apart. One night in 1966, home visiting his family, he went out in a family car. The vehicle was later found; Williams was not.
But as Robinson begins to probe what happened to her uncle in New York, she gets a clearer picture of exactly what he had accomplished. Warhol was perhaps the most famous American artist of his time, and his studio was called the Factory. It was not only a production studio but also a place to hang out and party. Regulars included the Velvet Underground, Edie Sedgwick, Joe Dallesandro, Paul Morrissey, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Mary Woronov, and others. Robinson found that her uncle designed the light show for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a traveling spectacle that included art, film, music, and dancing. Williams’ light design drew great critical attention, which in turn engendered jealousy. In fact, it becomes clear that Warhol was very calculated in the way he played his followers off one another. He could make anyone feel special at any time and then turn them against each other.
For example, it seems that Williams and Warhol were intimately involved, which led to Warhol loaning Williams one of his precious film cameras to use. Robinson lucks out when a curator suddenly offers up a box of films that Williams made at the Factory. It turns out that Danny Williams had used that Bolex camera to make a series of 20 experimental films, shot in amazing high contrast black-and-white. Even more impressive, all of the effects – fast motion, slow motion, strobe-like cuts – were done in the camera and couldn’t be seen until the film was processed.
It becomes clear that Williams’ tragic fall is pretty typical for the group. Survivors are interviewed, including Paul Morrissey, Brigid Berlin, Billy Name and Gerard Melanga, as well as John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Warhol seemed to care for no one, but used his “love” to keep people in line. When you fell out, you fell hard. Williams was clearly a talent who fell too soon.
Tags: Silverdocs, Factory, Andy Warhol, A Walk into the Sea, Danny Williams