The essence of Warhol's art—and by extension that of the Factory he heads—is the straight look at things as they are, and acceptance of appearances as an important part, perhaps the most important part, of the truth. It is the same whether the object is a Campbell's Soup can or the Empire State Building or some people just living, just talking, just being in front of the camera. And if what people are is what they appear to be, what they appear to be is very importantly what they think they are, what they want to be thought….
We all define ourselves to some extent according to our own fantasies; the only difference with Warhol's drag ladies is that the discrepancy between the fantasy and the visible reality is likely to be more evident…. The point about My Hustler or Bike Boy or The Chelsea Girls, is that everything is taken on trust, everything is right there in front of the camera. Inevitably some of the people are more interesting than others, but we decide this fairly and squarely on the evidence; there is no snide angling from behind the camera. The Warhol films play scrupulously fair with their characters; the films do not build myths, they merely record them. They are documentaries, but documentaries of the human spirit, of subjective rather than objective reality. (p. 137)
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