"Femme Fatale" is a song by The Velvet Underground from their 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico. At producer Andy Warhol's request, band frontman Lou Reed wrote the song about Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick.^[1] The song was released as a B-Side to Sunday Morning in December 1966.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground

No interpretation really needed. The lyric speaks for itself.

When you’re young & on drugs you’re as happy as all get out. Everyone thinks you’re special. They adore you. They want to worship you. They want to have you. And sometimes you let them.  

You’re a princess/prince of the city & you go your own way & the crowd marvels at your beauty & strength. But that all grows old & you keep trying to recapture it but can’t. And the crowd moves on to its next victim.

And you either survive or you don’t.

Edie didn’t last very long.  Did she?

Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, socialite, fashion model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s.[1][2] She was dubbed an "It Girl",[3] while Vogue magazine also named her a "Youthquaker".[4]

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In the fall of 1963, Sedgwick moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and began studying art with her cousin Lily Saarinen.[14] During this period she partied with members of the bohemian fringe of the Harvard social scene, which included many gay men.

Sedgwick was deeply affected by the loss of her brothers, who died within 18 months of each other. Francis (nicknamed "Minty") also had a troubled life; he became an alcoholic in his early teens, triggering a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, and in late 1963 he suffered a serious breakdown and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital before being transferred to Silver Hill. According to her friend Ed Hennessy, Sedgwick told him that Minty had finally admitted to his father that he was homosexual, and that this had enraged Fuzzy, who said that he would never speak to him again. Shortly after this, in May 1963, on the day before his twenty-sixth birthday, Minty hanged himself with a tie from the door of his bathroom at Silver Hill.

By the time of Minty's death, Sedgwick had moved to New York City. She lived at first with her senile grandmother, who had an apartment on 75th Street, but in late fall 1964 she took an apartment in the East Sixties between Fifth and Madison, which her mother decorated lavishly. Edie embarked on a constant round of partying and spent her trust fund at an astonishing rate; according to friend Tom Goodwin she went through eighty thousand dollars in just six months and bought huge amounts of clothing, jewellery and cosmetics. After her 'chauffeur' crashed the gray Mercedes she had been given by her father, she began using limousine services constantly, moving from company to company each time she had exhausted her credit. She also began experimenting with drugs and was reportedly introduced to LSD by friends from Cambridge who knew Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.

***

In March 1965, Sedgwick met artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol at Lester Persky's apartment. She began going to The Factory regularly in March 1965 with her friend, Chuck Wein. During one of those visits, Warhol was filming Vinyl, his interpretation of the novel A Clockwork Orange. Despite Vinyl's all-male cast, Warhol put Sedgwick in the movie. She also made a small cameo appearance in another Warhol film, Horse, when she entered towards the end of the film. Although Sedgwick's appearances in both films were brief, they generated so much interest that Warhol decided to create a vehicle in which she could star.

The first of those films, Poor Little Rich Girl, was originally conceived as part of a series featuring Sedgwick, called The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga. The series was to include Poor Little Rich Girl, Restaurant, Face and Afternoon. Filming of Poor Little Rich Girl started in March 1965 in Sedgwick's apartment. The first reel shows Sedgwick waking up, ordering coffee and orange juice, and putting on her makeup in silence with only an Everly Brothers record playing. Due to a problem with the camera lens, the footage on the first reel is completely out of focus. The second reel consists of Sedgwick smoking cigarettes, talking on the telephone, trying on clothes, and describing how she had spent her entire inheritance in six months.

***

According to Paul Morrissey, Sedgwick had said: "'They're [Dylan's people] going to make a film and I'm supposed to star in it with Bobby [Dylan].' Suddenly it was Bobby this and Bobby that, and they realized that she had a crush on him. They thought he'd been leading her on, because just that day Andy had heard in his lawyer's office that Dylan had been secretly married for a few months – he married Sara Lownds in November 1965... Andy couldn't resist asking, 'Did you know, Edie, that Bob Dylan has gotten married?' She was trembling. They realized that she really thought of herself as entering a relationship with Dylan, that maybe he hadn't been truthful."[15]

Several weeks before the December 29, 2006, one-week release of the controversial film Factory Girl (described by a review in The Village Voice as Edie for Dummies[16]), the Weinstein Company and the film's producers interviewed Sedgwick's older brother, Jonathan, who asserted that she "had an abortion of the child she was (supposedly) carrying by Dylan".[17] Jonathan Sedgwick, a retired airplane designer, was flown in from Idaho to New York City by the distributor to meet Sienna Miller, who was playing his late sister, as well as to give an eight-hour video interview with details about the purported liaison between Edie and Dylan, which the distributor promptly released to the news media. Jonathan claims an abortion took place soon after "Edie was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash and sent to an emergency unit. As a result of the accident, doctors consigned her to a mental hospital where she was treated for drug addiction." No hospital records or Sedgwick family records exist to support this story. Nonetheless, Edie's brother also claimed "Staff found she was pregnant but, fearing the baby had been damaged by her drug use and anorexia, forced her to have the abortion."[18][19] However, according to Edie Sedgwick's personal medical records and oral life-history tape recorded less than a year before her death for her final film, Ciao! Manhattan, there is credible evidence that the only abortion she underwent in her lifetime was at age 20 in 1963.

Throughout most of 1966, Sedgwick was involved in an intensely private yet tumultuous relationship with Dylan's closest friend, Bob Neuwirth. During this period, she became increasingly dependent on barbiturates. Although she abused many drugs, there is no evidence that Sedgwick ever became a heroin addict. In early 1967, unable to cope with Sedgwick's drug abuse and erratic behavior, Neuwirth broke off their relationship.

Sedgwick auditioned for Norman Mailer's play The Deer Park, but Mailer thought she "wasn't very good... She used so much of herself with every line that we knew she'd be immolated after three performances."[20]

In April 1967, Sedgwick began shooting Ciao! Manhattan, an underground movie. After initial footage was shot in New York, co-directors John Palmer and David Weisman continued working on the film over the course of the next five years. Sedgwick's rapidly deteriorating health saw her return to her family in California, spending time in several different psychiatric institutions. In August 1969, she was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital after being arrested for drug offenses by the local police. While in the hospital, Sedgwick met another patient, Michael Brett Post, whom she would later marry. Sedgwick was in the hospital again in the summer of 1970, but was let out under the supervision of a psychiatrist, two nurses, and the live-in care of filmmaker John Palmer and his wife Janet. Staunchly determined to finish Ciao! Manhattan and have her story told, Sedgwick recorded audio-tapes reflecting upon her life story, which enabled Weisman and Palmer to incorporate her accounts into the film's dramatic arc.

Sedgwick married Michael Post on July 24, 1971, and under his influence she reportedly stopped abusing alcohol and other drugs for a short time. Her sobriety lasted until October, when pain medication was given to her to treat a physical illness. She remained under the care of her physician Dr. Wells, who prescribed her barbiturates, but she would demand more pills or claim that she had lost them in order to get more, and often combined the medications with alcohol. Post was later put in charge of administering her medication; by his account, she took at least two 300 mg Quaalude tablets and two capsules of three-grain Tuinal every night, in addition to alcohol and whatever other drugs she may have been secretly consuming.

On the night of November 15, 1971, Sedgwick went to a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum, a segment of which was filmed for the television show An American Family.[21] After the fashion show, she attended a party where (according to the accounts of her husband and brother-in-law) a drunken guest insulted her by calling her a heroin addict and repeatedly asserting that her marriage would fail. Sedgwick phoned Post, who arrived at the party and, seeing her distress at the accusations, took her back to their apartment around one in the morning. On the way home, Sedgwick expressed thoughts of uncertainty about their marriage.[22] Before they both fell asleep, Post gave Sedgwick the medication that had been prescribed for her. According to Post, Sedgwick started to fall asleep very quickly, and her breathing was, "bad – it sounded like there was a big hole in her lungs", but he attributed that to her heavy smoking habit and went to sleep.[23]

When Post awoke the following morning at 7.30 am, Edie Sedgwick was dead. The coroner ruled Sedgwick's death as "undetermined/accident/suicide". The death certificate was signed at 9:20 am and states the immediate cause was "probable acute barbiturate intoxication" due to ethanol intoxication. Sedgwick's alcohol level was registered at 0.17% and her barbiturate level was 0.48 mg%. She was 28.[24] Allegedly when learning of Sedgwick's death, film director Paul Morrissey responded with "Edie who?"[25]

Sedgwick was buried in the small Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California in a simple grave. Her epitaph reads "Edith Sedgwick Post – Wife Of Michael Brett Post 1943–1971".[26] Her mother Alice was buried next to her in 1988.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edie_Sedgwick

Femme Fatale

Here she comes, you better watch your step
She's going to break your heart in two, it's true
It's not hard to realize
Just look into her false colored eyes
She builds you up to just put you down, what a clown

'Cause everybody knows (She's a femme fatale)
The things she does to please (She's a femme fatale)
She's just a little tease (She's a femme fatale)
See the way she walks
Hear the way she talks

You're written in her book
You're number 37, have a look
She's going to smile to make you frown, what a clown
Little boy, she's from the street
Before you start, you're already beat
She's gonna play you for a fool, yes it's true

'Cause everybody knows (She's a femme fatale)
The things she does to please (She's a femme fatale)
She's just a little tease (She's a femme fatale)
See the way she walks
Hear the way she talks

-- song written by Lou Reed