It’s a banner week for Pittsburgh natives in the arts with new streaming biographies of artist Andy Warhol and actor/singer/director Billy Porter on tap.
Warhol is featured in Netflix’s six-hour “The Andy Warhol Diaries” documentary series, streaming next Wednesday, and Porter is profiled in a season-two episode of Apple TV+’s “Dear…,” which streams Friday, and features one celebrity per episode reading letters from fans about the impact the famous person made on their life. Porter’s cousin Alicia Holt wrote one of the letters and talks about her work with the URA’s Avenues of Hope project.
“We’re all searching for connection and to be visible in some way,” Porter said Tuesday, a day before completing the final sound mix on his feature film directorial debut.
“Anything’s Possible” (formerly “What If”) that filmed in Pittsburgh last summer and is expected to be released later this year.
“Learn how to see yourself first so that others can see you is a bit of my message, because that’s what I had to do,” Porter said.
In his “Dear…” episode, Porter describes his youth in Pittsburgh, trying to be masculine enough to fit in and ultimately realizing he didn’t need to conform to “somebody else’s idea of what I should be. When I let that go, I set myself free and won the Tony and the Grammy.”
Porter shot scenes for “Anything’s Possible” at Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum and co-hosted a benefit for the museum last fall in New York. Porter said he finds inspiration in Warhol’s work and their shared hometown.
“He was a visual artist and I don’t do that at all, but what I did get from him was his dedication to his craft and the fact that he was from Pittsburgh and was changing the world,” Porter said. “The idea that he came up with and predicted social media – that’s so profound. He really understood the human condition, the human…