Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn: A Walk on the Wild Side with Andy Warhol’s Most Fabulous Superstar

Copeland reminisces about his friendship with trans actress Holly Woodlawn (1946–2015) in this bittersweet memoir. Fresh out of college in 1985, Copeland left his childhood home in Missouri for Hollywood, with aspirations of becoming a screenwriter. Instead, he found menial jobs in and out of the industry. A few years later, with only a few dollars to his name, Copeland took a videography gig at an executive’s birthday party, where he serendipitously met Woodlawn, a former Andy Warhol superstar from the 1970s. After initially seeking to have Woodlawn star in a film he wrote, Copeland became fast friends with her. However, he says that greed and alcohol addiction during the writing and promotion of Woodlawn’s 1991 autobiography, A Low Life in High Heels, which Copeland coauthored, soured their relationship. Copeland ebulliently discusses his misadventures with Woodlawn and fondly recalls friends they hung out with and places they frequented. Although Copeland alludes to his anxieties as a gay man who lived paycheck to paycheck during the height of the AIDS crisis, little is written here about his life outside of Woodlawn’s universe after their first meeting.