Nicole Eisenman as Keith Richards
	Oh, Nicole. I have known Nicole for years. We are from the same desperate community of East Village lesbians, connected through various events and experiences involving political organizing, art and literary production, tangled sex and girlfriend hook-ups, bad parties, and other social and emotional situations specific to our particular ghetto. I had wanted to put Nicole in my 1996 "Incandescent" exhibition, which featured Cosima and others. But Nicole was still using heroin then and I couldn't accept that, so I didn't invite her. She got cleaned up in 1996 though, at the Betty Ford Clinic. So in 1997, when I was invited to make another museum show, this one for Le Magasin, Grenoble, I asked Nicole to make a new installation for my show "Vraiment: feminismŽ et art." She produced a fantastic mural about a fictional Grenoble airport in the Alps on a long curved wall of the Le Magasin galleries. Like most of Nicole's larger works, the installation included all kinds of weird tableaux and mis en scene scattered on the floor, extending outward from the painted wall. She produced the reference to the Alps Mountains by piling up cans of an American dog food called Alpo. She made a little 'airport bar' from those small bottles of liquor they give you on the airplane and one of the French artists, Nil Yalter, actually grabbed one of the little Vodka bottles and started drinking it the day of the opening. There was also a long curving piece of wood covered with sandpaper and reflective tape that functioned as the airport 'runway'. Months after the exhibition, when the artwork was shipped back to New York, the agent from Deitel, the international art shipper, called me to verify what art was what (typically, Le Magasin, Grenoble hadn't packed or labeled things properly for the return transport) and he thought that this bizarre piece of curved wood might be Adrian Piper's "Art for the Artworld Surface Pattern", 1977, which was also featured in the show. I guess his hunch was based on the fact that the sandpaper was a 'surface pattern'. This was really funny and I had to say: "No, that's Nicole airport runway strip!" He couldn't have understood but sent the thing over to the Jack Tilton Gallery, with whom Nicole works, anyway. Nicole was the most obvious choice possible for Keith Richards. Like Keith, she's the kind of person who seems to be completely unconscious in life, perpetually reacting. Although both Keith and Nicole are capable of intense creative focus that results in the production of great music and art respectively, on the personal level, in their interactions with people, they perpetually struggle to make and keep connections. They seem to always need someone else to show them where the door or the light is: they just can't find what they need. Nicole even physically resembles Keith: skinny and angular, with pale skin and dark curly hair. Since we are working with the Keith Richards of circa 1968, when he and Anita were heavy users, we also wanted someone who could easily simulate 'nodding out'. Heavy drug usage, like Catholic School, Prison Time and Military Service, is the kind of experience that only those who have been there can ever fully comprehend. Leslie and I agreed that we would wait until we saw Nicole somewhere to invite her. We waited a few months. Then Nicola, a French artist who was also featured in the "Vraiment" exhibition at Le Magasin, Grenoble, called about a party she was hosting for Lea Lublin, an artist from Paris who was also in "Vraiment". Lea was going to be in New York in the spring of 1998, on her return from the opening of "Out of Action", the large performance art survey organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Nicola asked me to invite the artists and crew from New York who had been involved with "Vraiment" to Lea's party. The party was at Nicola's apartment in the Chelsea Hotel. The glittery and sordid history of the Chelsea still lingers so strong - I almost never refuse an invitation to anything there. We all like to go. There are so many memories living at the Chelsea: Gertrude Stein, Nico, Dylan Thomas, Eddie Sedgwick, Virgil Thompson, Sid Viscious, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen. Even if the party is bad, something is still bound to happen in the lobby on your way in or out. Sure enough, when we arrived at the Chelsea for Nicola's party for Lea, I noticed a small elderly woman in a mink coat seated in a corner of the lobby. As the elevator doors closed, Leslie turned to me: "Did you see who was in the lobby? That was Sylvia Miles." "Sylvia Miles?" I exclaimed. "Well, it's time to go home. That was the party!" A survivor of the Warhol Factory, who appeared in more than a few of Warhol's films, Sylvia is best known for her appearance in John Schlesinger 1968 Midnight Cowboy, one of my favorite American movies. We proceeded to Nicola's party, which hosted the usual wonderful assortment of people one finds at Old School (people who have been in New York since the 1960s) parties: artists, actors, prostitutes, filmmakers, dancers, hangers-on, and trust fund kids who don't know anything. After about twenty minutes: Sylvia Miles entered the party. (She had been waiting in the lobby, in her fur, because she thought it was too early for her arrival!) While Leslie was involved with inviting Nicole to play Keith for Anita Pallenberg, I became taken with the idea of convincing Sylvia Miles to make a cameo appearance. After Nicola introduced me to her, I found myself observing the actress from across the room, thrilling at the thought of how fantastic it would be to have one of the 'real' Warhol Factory people in our Warhol-influenced project. Even from across the room, I could tell she wasn't the kind of person one was likely to refer to as 'nice'. Training in the Factory wasn't exactly like studying at Julliard, and most of the survivors (the ones that aren't dead) carry the scars. Although the room was quite crowded, the chair right next to Sylvia Miles remained empty for more than a few minutes (with good reason, I was soon to discover). Finally I couldn't contain myself any more. I excused myself from the conversation I was having with Ghada Amer (who plays the Rolling Stone reporter in Anita Pallenberg), and slid into the seat next to Sylvia Miles. I tried to induce her into conversation. And she tried to kill me. Every polite appeal I made, she countered with an aggressive and hostile retort. I was just trying to strike up conversation - I didn't ask her for anything and never even got close to inquiring as to whether she would consider doing a cameo for Anita Pallenberg. Evidently Nicola had told her that I was an art critic - and no doubt had greatly exaggerated my stature in the field. What else explains the fact that Sylvia Miles was screeching at me lines such as: "I AM AN ARTIST, JUST LIKE YOUR OTHER ARTISTS!" Really, I hadn't said anything about art or anything. I guess, like everyone else, she wants a museum retrospective and since someone told her I am an art critic she knows that it is due to my own personal efforts against her that her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art hasn't happened yet. It was awful. My friends on the couch were laughing at me: I was the only one stupid enough to sit down next to the old witch. Well, that was the end of my fantasy about bringing one of Warhol's people into our cast. But as I was receiving my education in the etiquette system of The Factory graduates, Leslie successfully brought Nicole onto The Anita Pallenberg Story. And that's how Nicole came to be Keith Richards.
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	Stephanie Theobald as Julie Burchill
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	John Yau as John Yau
	Yvonne Force as a groupie
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