NARRATOR: 

Warhol’s Red Liz, is, of course, Elizabeth Taylor. For some thoughts on this image, we talked to someone who could give us the local angle on Warhol’s cultural influence.  

MARK HUESTIS: 

My name is Marc Huestis, and I am an impresario-slash-producer-slash-filmmaker in the lovely city of San Francisco. 

NARRATOR: 

He shares some thoughts about Warhol, and the very notion of “celebrity.” 

HUESTIS: 

His obsession with celebrity started in the early sixties and, you know, was sort of an evolution of the branding of the Brillo boxes and stuff like that, where he was one of the first people to see that, indeed, celebrities were brands, as well. 

Liz is like a saint to drag queens. It’s interesting; it’s a chicken and egg thing to me. Which came first, gays’ and drag queens’ obsession with Liz, or Warhol creating that obsession for drag queens to be obsessed with?  

Usually, drag queens before then would have much more obscure icons, like Maria Montez or, you know, even Carmen Miranda or whatever. And Liz, to me, really kind of merged the popular culture with the burgeoning sexuality of a generation. And I think that all fed into the blossoming of the hippies, and also the blossoming of androgyny and the blossoming of drag as art.