Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1991)

This documentary about the ever visible yet elusive Andy Warhol is an entertaining portrait of the artist as a popster. in Superstar, writer-producer-director Chuck Workman (Stoogemania) steers swiftly from Warhol's humble beginnings in Pittsburgh to the sex, drugs, and rock & roll years at the painter-filmmaker's Factory to his superstardom, a status gained through his gloriously banal paintings of soup cans and luminaries and through artful self-promotion. The commentary, from celebs and onetime celebs (Grace Jones, Viva) and writers (Hilton Kramer, Tom Wolfe), is mostly savvy, while interviews with Warhol, blank and unblinking as a reptile, evoke mumbled monosyllabic responses: ''Is there anything special you're trying to say in these films?'' ''Uh, no.'' Called a ''highly intelligent blotter'' by one curator, Warhol, who died in 1987 at age 58, had a chameleonlike ability to move with the times. That talent has made his art — and this documentary — a picture of ourselves. A-