Bob Colacello: you never know who you'll end up meeting at Interview, and as Bob Colacello, the magazine's former editor, reveals, you never know where those encounters will take you

CC: How long were you the editor?

BC: For about a year. Then I got a contract to write a book about Andy, which I wrote in Mexico.

CC: Why Mexico?

BC: I quickly figured out that if you wanted to make money working for Andy you had to sell his portraits. They cost $25,000 each, and whoever sold one would get a 20 percent commission. I had sold one to the wife of the Italian ambassador to Mexico, and we all went down there for the unveiling. It had all been done through friends of Andy's whom I had also become friendly with, and they invited me to spend the summer at a house they had rented in Puerto Vallarta. So Glenn O'Brien took over as editor for about a year.

CC: How were your parents feeling about your working at Interview at this point?

BC: They'd become more okay with it. Nelson Rockefeller had shown up one day to buy Andy's paintings, so my father was able to save face with his Republican friends by telling them that his son worked for Andy Warhol. Thanks to Fred Hughes, [former Factory assistant and founding director of the Warhol Foundation] Vincent Fremont, and myself--as well as the portrait business, which led Andy more and more into uptown society--Andy became more respectable.

CC: When did you return to Interview?

BC: I officially became editor again in about 1974, and stayed until 1983.

CC: How did you reshape the magazine?

BC: It all sort of happened naturally. Glenn was actually the one who started adding fashion, and then we thought, "Why shouldn't we include artists? Why shouldn't we include politicians?" And the more we expanded the subject matter, the more our circulation grew.

CC: How would you say the Interview of today differs from when you left?

BC: It's still basically a magazine about discovery: about creating new stars, about finding young people who are just starting out, be it in music, art, fashion, or movies, and promoting them early on--something not many magazines do. Also, because Interview had a very limited budget, we used a lot of new photographers and writers who would work for almost nothing, and I think that's still true. At some point we also had the idea of having one celebrity interview another, and that's still very much the magazine's style. I think the magazine today is probably more geared towards a youthful audience, and it's much more polished now--the layouts and everything are much more sophisticated. And they also use bigname photographers like Bruce Weber.

CC: I understand that over the years, selling portraits became a bigger part of your job.

BC: It did. Andy deliberately kept salaries low, and everyone, including the receptionist, was encouraged to sell portraits. Of course, Andy's so much more famous and respected now that a lot of people regret not having their portraits done, because they're worth a lot more today. But at the time it was a challenge, and it took up a lot of my time.

CC: It's interesting you mention that because many years ago I had just decided to have my portrait done when the phone rang. It was Steve Rubell calling to tell me that Andy had died. What an eerie moment.