I'm Elvis Mitchell. Welcome to the treat.

Director Matt Wolfe's HBO documentary, Pee Wee as himself, was a look at the work and times of writer-performer Paul Rubens that also forced Wolf to examine himself.

For his treat, he opens a book on the life of a figure who also invited the public on her road to fame and excess.

I'm Matt Wolf, and this is The Treat.

One of the things that I think about a lot in relation to my work is Gene Stein's book, Edie.

It is a seminal oral history about Edie Sedwick, you know, the superstar of Andy Warhol's

factory. I remember reading the book. I bought it because I thought the cover was cool. I like

Warhol in the factory, but I'm not like obsessed. But her story is so vividly told through hundreds of interviews that Gene Stein did and so brilliantly edited that it is the most detailed and granular depiction of another human being I've ever read.

Well, what is your definition of a superstar?

Something either fantastic or ridiculous, and that remains to be seen.

It may be ridiculous.

If we can't get it off the ground, it'll be ridiculous.

If we can do a whole movie, it'll be a superstar.

Andy, how did you discover, Edy?

It could be.

Come on, you can tell you.

Oh, a one mistake.

Through her kind of bigger vision as an author, she's able to use Edy as a sort of prism to see all the big issues of America, from privilege and wealth to mental illness and celebrity,

to the disposability of women who are treated as muses, both in popular culture and in high art,

to self-destruction.

It's really about like American ambition

and the ways that people are

...