Netflix's The Andy Warhol Diaries is aesthetically jarring, and a fitting tribute

Variety

"Director Andrew Rossi, with the permission of Warhol’s estate, used an artificial-intelligence program to reproduce his speaking voice, so that 'Warhol' can read aloud from the diaries he kept," says Daniel D'Addario of the Netflix docuseries on Andy Warhol. "The result is a flat, almost robotic recapitulation of observations and events, narrating a vivid stream of footage from his life and career without emotion or intonation. The Andy Warhol Diaries, executive produced by Ryan Murphy, builds, over six well-structured episodes, a sense of its subject as intelligent, but alienated from his feelings and even from his own talent."

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• The disembodied voice that reads from Warhol's diaries proves distracting at first, eventually settling into a kind of soothing rhythm with its detached, mechanical delivery
• The Andy Warhol Diaries is maybe a little sloppy and maybe paints a little outside the lines -- it’s a smart and suitable approach
• The Andy Warhol Diaries isn't for Warhol newbies: The six-hour documentary assumes viewers know the basics about Warhol
• The Andy Warhol Diaries works because it's a love story, not an art story
• Director Andrew Rossi understands something that eludes so many biographers: that conflicting insights can be more revealing than consensus
• How The Andy Warhol Diaries' use of an AI voice avoided the controversy that plagued Morgan Neville's Anthony Bourdain Roadrunner doc's use of AI: The Bourdain controversy prompted director Andrew Rossi to add a disclaimer that appears a few minutes into the docuseries, stating that the AI voice re-creation was made with the Andy Warhol Foundation's blessing.  “When Andrew shared the idea of using an AI voice, I thought, ‘Wow, this is as bold as it is smart,’” says Michael Dayton Hermann, the foundation’s head of licensing. By being upfront, viewers know that Warhol's voice is fake. The problem with Roadrunner was not being upfront with the AI-created Bourdain voice.