As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy

The story of countercultural model and actress Edie Sedgwick, told by her sister with unfailing empathy, sharp insight, and first-hand observations of her whirlwind life.

As It Turns Out is a family story. Alice Wohl is writing to her brother Bobby, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1965, just before their sister Edie Sedgwick met Andy Warhol. Wohl, after seeing Edie’s image reflected back to her in a clip from Andy’s extraordinary film Outer and Inner Space, decided to put her continuous dialogue with Bobby on the page and to understand, for Edie’s sake and for all of ours, what made her and Andy such iconic, unforgettable figures in American culture and in our collective imagination. What was it about Edie? What was behind those eyes, behind the face that captured Warhol and the attention of a generation?

Wohl tells the story only a sister could, from their childhood on a California ranch and the beginnings of Edie’s lifelong troubles, brushed aside by their parents, to her life and relationship with Andy, inside the silver walls of The Factory and projected larger than life in the many major films they made together. More than just a first-hand observer of this phenomenon, Wohl writes with a keen critical eye and careful reflection about the lasting impact of Edie and Andy's artistic, cultural, and personal creative force. As It Turns Out is a letter to a brother about their sister, about the world she helped create and the woman behind the magnetic image. Wohl asks and What was it about Edie?

Includes black-and-white photographs