The unanticipated theatrical success of Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls (1966), which moved from downtown to uptown, from underground to mainstream, signaled that a number of important cultural changes were taking place. For years the Underground had been the site for censorship battles in cinema, as evidenced by the court cases involving Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, and Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour – the latter deliberately provoked by Jonas Mekas to challenge prevailing censorship laws. In 1967, the whole situation began to change, largely due to the success of films such as The Chelsea Girls and Michelangelo Antonioni’s portrait of swinging London, Blowup (1966). Almost overnight, sex films became the rage, as movie theaters and even some regular theaters, such as the Hudson, began converting into sex cinemas and screening films imported from Scandinavian countries with provocative titles such as Dear John (1964), and I, a Woman (1967). Warhol had recycled My Hustler (1965) to play at the Hudson Theater, and, following its successful run, the owner, Maury Maura, was seeking to book additional films. With prodding from Paul Morrissey, Warhol was only too happy to oblige him.

Warhol’s first deliberate effort to make a commercial sexploitation film was I, a Man (1967), which was supposed to feature both Nico and Jim Morrison, but Morrison backed out at the last minute – possibly because Warhol wanted him to have sexual intercourse on-screen – and he was replaced by an actor friend of Morrison’s named Tom Baker. In I, a Man, Baker attempts to have sex with eight different women: Cynthia May, Stephanie Graves, Ingrid Superstar, Nico, Ultra Violet, Ivy Nicholson, Valerie Solanas, and Bettina Coffin. The scenes are separated by shots of Baker reflectively smoking a cigarette. It’s a very simple premise – one that certainly fits the notion of a sexploitation film by presenting an opportunity to display a number of different female bodies, while also being a test of Baker’s seductive power. In terms of the casting, I, a Man featured Warhol superstars: Nico, Ingrid Superstar, and Ultra Violet. In addition, Valerie Solanas, the lesbian author of the SCUM Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) and Ivy Nicholson would add unpredictable elements to the film.

There appears to be a short treatment or outline for Baker’s various sexual escapades. In the first scene with Cynthia May, she and Baker lie in bed, but her parents are expected to come home, which is the reason she wants him to leave. Because of this, Baker persuades May to have sex under the bed, deliberately frustrating the viewer from being able to see any of the sexual action other than their feet. In the scene with Valerie Solanas, she brings up her supposed motivation for the scene. As Tom confronts Valerie on the stairwell, she provides what must have been the direction given to her, namely, that she had originally “squished” his ass in the elevator. In the last scene with Bettina Coffin, Baker keeps asking her where they’ve met. She originally says Gregory’s, but then claims not to know and doesn’t consider it important. Like an amnesiac in a classic film noir, Baker obsessively returns to this issue. He asks questions, such as: “Where are we? When did we get here? Was I here when you arrived? Did we come together?” Coffin eventually remembers that they met at Max’s Kansas City. As a result of confusion over where and when they met, Baker contends that their relationship is based on a lie and questions whether he can have sex with her. He also is turned off by the fact that she has a husband, even though he vaguely admits that he’s also in a relationship.

The scene starts to feel more like an absurdist play rather than a sex scene. Bettina Coffin often looks directly at the camera (viewer) when she’s not engaging Baker’s eyes. She answers most of his questions with the response, “Right,” indicating her desire to agree with Baker, as if he’s really a dangerous psychopath whom she doesn’t want to upset. Baker starts to open his shirt, gets up, and moves offscreen as if to undress, but Coffin says, “Well, wait a minute, why don’t we talk awhile?” She continues, “You know, I’d like to talk to you, not just make love every minute. I like to work up to it.” He answers, “Who said I was going to make love to you?” She counters, “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to make love.” As a result, Coffin suddenly gets confused and defensive and pulls up the top of her dress.

Baker was much more of a traditional actor. He attempts to do standard improvisation, which makes him appear to be very much a fish out of water in this film. Tom Baker considered the best scene in I, a Man to be the one with the Bettina Coffin. Until this point, it’s fair to say that I, a Man fails to deliver as a sexploitation film. The scenes with Nico and Ultra Violet fizzle. Baker and Nico merely flirt, while he and Ultra Violet French kiss and, in a closeup shot, she moves her long skinny tongue in and out like a snake. The scene with Coffin, on the other hand, is the only truly erotic experience Baker has in the series of encounters with women. Warhol must have realized this because he saved it for last. Unlike Baker, who discloses almost nothing about himself because he’s too busy role playing, Coffin reveals as much personal information about herself as you’d find in any psychoanalytic session. For this reason, she’s fascinating to watch.

According to Tom Baker, the scene with Bettina Coffin was the first one shot, followed by Ivy Nicholson and then Valerie Solanas. Interestingly, these are the three most intriguing scenes in the film, even though the one with Nicholson wound up being truncated. In Mary Harron’s biopic on Valerie Solanas, I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), we see a recreation of the scene with Valerie from I, a Man. Before this we view an incident with Ivy Nicholson, where in the course of the scene she discovers that Baker doesn’t have any clothes on. Ivy yells, “I told you I wasn’t going to do this if he were nude. I told you this. I told you this a hundred thousand times.” Ivy slaps Paul Morrissey in the face and screams, “I am Mrs. Andy Warhol. I deserve some respect. You’re a fucking untalented liar, and I don’t what the fuck he sees in you.”

I, a Man went through a number of variations, even subsequent to its theatrical release at the Hudson. In the present version, which contains scenes with the eight women already mentioned, the first half must have seemed very confusing to viewers at the time expecting to see soft-core pornography. Baker’s first two encounters with woman don’t result in much sex. There’s a closeup shot of Baker playing the guitar in the bathroom. He eventually strips naked, very briefly revealing his genital parts. Warhol shows him getting dressed, omitting the part where he probably took a shower. The camera focuses on him tightening his belt buckle. The action is repeated in strobe cuts.

In his third encounter, roughly twenty minutes into the film, Baker sits at a table with Ingrid Superstar. He asks her to show him her breasts. She replies, “You want to see my fried eggs?” Baker complains about Ingrid’s posture, and tells her she needs to take better care of herself. He feels her breasts, and says, “Think how these are going to look in five years.” Ingrid responds, “I just hope they don’t turn into runny eggs, you know.” Baker covers her up with a towel. He tells her, “You look as if you might have some supernatural powers.” Baker then gets her to lie on the table for a séance. He asks her to think of someone dead, even someone she doesn’t know. After throwing out several names, Ingrid finally suggests John Wilkes Booth. Baker takes off his shirt and asks her to repeat five times, “Why did you kill Lincoln?” After finding out that she has an architect lover, Baker demands that she pay him for his spending time with her.

Halfway through the film, Ivy Nicholson stands teasing her hair in only her bra and panties as Baker sits on the bed. He says, “Your back is longer than your legs.” She responds, “Still not good enough. Try again.” The two have the following exchange:

NICHOLSON: I hate the morning.
BAKER: You should go back to bed.
NICHOLSON: I was never in bed. Did you think I was in bed?
BAKER: That’s exactly why I’m upset. I didn’t think you were there for a second. Because it was pretty dull, as a matter of fact, Miss Tigress.
NICHOLSON: You were in bed with someone else. I wasn’t in bed with you.
BAKER: Who was I in bed with?
NICHOLSON: I don’t know.

After a series of strobe cuts, Nicholson sits in striped outfit that makes her look like a dejected prisoner. What has been elided is the emotional scene from I Shot Andy Warhol discussed earlier.

Ivy feels betrayed, whereas Baker appears apologetic. We get only small fragments of the rift. Ivy sits in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. She says, “No, but I can remember when I was in my carriage and hearing sounds. (her voice cracking) And I can remember my first shock.” After strobe cuts, the camera is now closer on Nicholson. Her hair is no longer teased. She moves her hands through her straight hair. She says, “And I have Mongol blood, so I think that too. My Mongol blood . . . Mongol conquerors . . . you must be strong when you get knocked down and have to stand up . . . right up quickly.” As is, the scene is nearly impossible to decipher, but we nevertheless pick up the subtext of it, as if we’ve arrived right after some major traumatic event.

Who knew at the time that the inclusion of Valerie Solanas would guarantee that I, a Man would become an important historical document whatever anyone thought about the artistic merits of the film. Yet, as strange as it might seem within the context of a sexploitation film, the scene with Valerie, in many ways, epitomizes the real power and energy of Warhol’s cinema. Valerie’s hatred of men stemmed from her own personal history. She reportedly was sexually abused by her father as a child and resorted to prostitution as an economic means of survival. In the SCUM Manifesto, Valerie writes with a venomous rage, mixed with trenchant humor, about the inherent inferiority of the male species: “Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he’s lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks they’ll be a friendly pussy awaiting him.” She talks about females “who’d sink a shiv into a man’s chest or ram an ice pick up his asshole as soon as look at him.”

Set on a stairwell, rather than an apartment, which suggests a potential site of sexual molestation, Tom Baker’s attempt to coerce Valerie to let him into her apartment bristles with subtext. Even if you didn’t know anything about Valerie, there’s a creepy quality to the scene, but, Warhol, of course, is interested in creating a situation that has built-in dramatic conflict. The two characters have opposite goals. Baker wants to get inside her apartment, whereas Valerie wants to prevent this at all cost. Given her personal background and his ostensible desire to screw, it has the potential to develop into a combustible situation. That’s why its recreation in Mary Harron’s film can never measure up to what Warhol managed to stage in I, a Man.

The scene begins with a pulsating stairwell that been lit to look like a German Expressionist set, with the verticals suggesting prison bars. Valerie comes up the stairs followed by Tom Baker. When they arrive at the door to her apartment, he asks, “You got the key?” Valerie searches her pockets, has second thoughts, and suddenly asks, “Hey, what am I doing up here with a finko like you?” A strobe cut restages it on the landing just below, but we hear Valerie repeat the last part of her dialogue. She then says, “I can’t figure it out – you’re a fink.” This makes even Baker laugh. He responds, “You don’t even know me.” They talk about the business of his squishy ass. He wants to go inside, but Valerie indicates that her roommate is there, and adds that she’s squishier than him. Valerie asks him, “What else do you got?” He says, “I don’t talk about those things, baby.” Baker suggests that they can explore each others bodies, but Valerie quite rightly insists, “I have the upper hand. We must not forget that.”

Valerie squishes Baker’s ass once more in an attempt to get rid of him, but he trails after her. At the landing, Tom says, “Listen, Valerie, just stop here for a second. I just want to see something.” They disappear into the shadows, but he has his hands on her. Valerie, says, “Hey, come on, man. I mean, like this is rape. I don’t dig that shit.” Baker takes off his shirt, while Valerie struggles, “Hey, come on, man! Goddamn it. Hey, come on! What’s this shit, man?” She protests, “My roommate’s very jealous. She’s possessive. She’s very possessive.” After strobe cuts, the two smoke cigarettes in a different location on the stairs. Valerie claims not to like his “tits” and they argue about them. Baker finally says, “What is it in your head that you don’t dig men?”

In the strobe cuts that follow, Valerie waves off the camera and then later smiles for a very brief visible moment – a decidedly mixed message that matches the bizarre dynamics of the situation. Alluding to the SCUM Manifesto, Baker asks her, “What is this some philosophy you have in life that you don’t . . . ?” Valerie, however, turns the tables on him by inquiring whether Baker likes men. He indicates that he hasn’t “balled” men since he was young. He argues that, in pursuing women, he’s following his “instincts.” Valerie responds that she’s also following hers, and asks pointedly, “Why should my standards be lower than yours?”

Since they both share the same instincts, Baker suggests a possible threesome with her roommate, but Valerie indicates that her roommate wouldn’t like him. After strobe cuts, the camera moves closer to Valerie, as her face, especially her eyes, moves in and out of the light. Baker tries to block her way, but Valerie claims not to live there and, in a stunning gender reversal, says, “I want to go home. I want to beat my meat.” She pushes past him, and, in another shot, Valerie asks the crew whether she should go all the way down the stairs, as she heads out and the scene ends.

Baker claims that he never felt that Valerie posed a personal threat. Instead, he says, “I found her intelligent, funny, almost charming, and very, very frightened.” Baker never explains why Valerie seemed frightened, but it’s clear that he has been given enough information about Valerie to push the scene to the limits – the hint of possible rape, the allusions to the SCUM Manifesto and the biological basis for her sexual politics – in order to make Valerie feel threatened and uncomfortable. Warhol listed Valerie in the published credits under a silly pseudonym “Valeria Solanis.” Although Valerie reportedly was humiliated when she saw the actual film, she nevertheless wrote Warhol a postcard dated August 25, 1967: “Dear Andy, I’ve been noticing gross misspellings of my name in articles and reviews connected with ‘I, A Man.’ Please note correct spelling.” In the true Warhol tradition, even Valerie appreciated the value of publicity.