BEAUTIFUL DARLING Available on DVD Jan. 12

Chronicling the short but influential life of transgender pioneer Candy Darling, a major part of Andy Warhol's entourage and one of the inspirations for the Lou Reed song, "Walk on the Wild Side," BEAUTIFUL DARLING delivers audiences to a bygone era, recapturing the excitement of a long lost New York City to recount the story of Darling, a star in the constellation of Warhol's Factory.

By the mid-sixties Jimmy Slattery, born in the Long Island suburb of Massapequa in 1944, had become Candy, a gorgeous blond actress and throwback to Hollywood's golden age. This persona won her starring roles in two Warhol movies, parts in mainstream films, and a lead role in Tennessee Williams' play. Her ethereal beauty attracted such tastemaking photographers as Robert Mapplethorpe, Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon and Peter Beard. She was the inspiration behind two of Lou Reed's best known songs, Candy Says and Walk on the Wild Side, and was one of the most unusual and charismatic fixtures in the explosive downtown, underground scene of late 1960s/early '70s New York.

Candy's journey of self-discovery and transformation becomes, for director James Rasin, a tragic allegory for our fame and media obsessed times. But it is also a gripping story with a simple, universal theme: One person's pursuit of their own American Dream. The film interweaves rare archival footage and both historical and contemporary interviews (Tennessee Williams, director Paul Morrissey, writer Fran Lebowitz, Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn among many others) with excerpts from Candy's own diaries and letters, which are voiced, to devastating effect, by Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe Award winning actress Chloë Sevigny.

Watch the trailer here:

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