The Key to Warhol's Diaries

In public, Andy Warhol was prone to utterances like "Great," "Wow," and "Fab," so it's surprising that Pat Hackett got an hour's phone conversation out of him every morning. But apparently Andy's private syllables were far less mono-. "You couldn't get him to shut up," Hackett insists. "Sometimes I had to lie and say I had something to do, just to get off the phone."

The message units were worth it, though. Hackett has now edited 20,000 pages of the fab gab sessions down to 800 book pages called The Andy Warhol DiaH ries (Warner), and the first printing of 200,000 will have many going great, wow, and even golly. According to Hackett, the contents (kept secret until the book hits the stores later this month) are on the juicy side: "A lot of people will be upset. Andy really noticed when people were stupid."

A Warholite since '68, Hackett started the book by recording the artist's cab receipts over the phone in 1976. When she first asked him where he'd gone in all those cabs, Warhol began to dish and pontificate, and didn't stop until he died two years ago. "It helped him collect everything that happened the day before—he was a big collector," she grins. And feeler/thinker: "A lot of things tortured him all the time—he was very sensitive."

On her own, the Connecticut-born co-author of POPism: The Warhol '60s, Andy Warhol's Party Book, and the film Bad is concentrating on screenplays, because, she says, "I don't have anything to say for myself. I have things for other people to say." After promoting the diaries, Hackett never wants to talk about Warhol again, though she says she'd like to talk to him. Can Pat hack it alone without her mentor? "Wouldn't it be pathetic if I didn't?" she laughs.

MICHAEL MUSTO