Andy Warhol’s Paramount Logo
Reflections on Paramount’s Jon Gould from the Netfliz doc-series, The Diaries of Andy Warhol
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Jon Gould, an executive a Paramount, who was in a 5-year relationship with Andy Warhol, is featured in several episodes of the binge-worthy but too-long docu-series, The Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix. It is a rich look at a legend, the lost art world of NYC, the aids crisis, and the emergence of Pop Art.
Because of Jon’s relationship with Andy, a half dozen Paramount logos silk-screened and signed by Warhol ended-up on the Paramount lot. Jon Gould saw to that. A few still hang in various offices on Melrose Avenue.
Even though we were friends, I never understood Jon. He was closeted, lived too much on the surface, and never admitted to having aids, or being intimately involved with Andy Warhol. I remember being summoned to his house in 1986 on a bright Saturday morning, a month before he died at age 33. Fully clothed in his preppy polo and khakis, Jon lay on a massage table. The Purpura, the telltale sign of the dreaded Kaposi Sarcoma, ran down his forearms and over the back of his neck. Remarkably, he still did not admit to being sick or being gay. On the porch overlooking the Hollywood Hills, his friends were all given small crystals to press against his clothed body so the sunlight through the rock might heal him. It was cultist, well meaning, and desperate. Those were such sad, sad days.
Now, we are so beyond that time. We live in a major cultural shift of acceptance and repatriation. It’s happening with such alacrity, we can barely comprehend it. Those of us of a certain age are in a state of perpetual whiplash. I think the best way to ride-out this “creative destruction” is to seek love always and to discover a daily praxis that leads you to the sunshine-strength within.
