Many fans found Andy Warhol's avant-garde films an intriguing challenge to mainstream offerings. Indeed, "Film Culture" magazine once saluted Warhol for "taking cinema back to its origins, to the days of Lumieres, for a rejuvenation and a cleansing."

Not everyone, however, was equally appreciative of Warhol's efforts. "Why did you make a movie like Sleep," Joseph Gelmis once asked him, "about a guy who sleeps for eight hours?"

Warhol's reply? "This person I knew slept a lot."

["Your films are just a way of taking up time?" Gelmis later asked. Warhol's response? "Yeah." Among Warhols films? Eat (an artist spends an hour eating a mushroom, 1963), Kiss (couples kissing, 1963), Sleep (a man sleeps for eight hours, 1963), and Empire (the Empire State Building, recorded from sunrise to sunset, 1964).]