I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is

Host: The warehouse was a cathedral of neon — pink, electric blue, and chrome silver reflecting off half-finished canvases and jars of paint. It was midnight, but the city outside pulsed like an endless art installation. The hum of traffic seeped through the open window, merging with the sound of a record spinning somewhere in the dark — The Velvet Underground, scratchy and slow, whispering through static.

In the middle of it all sat Jack — cross-legged on the cold concrete floor, a cigarette dangling from his lips, staring at a massive white canvas that stared right back. Jeeny stood near the window, her reflection glowing in the glass, framed by the chaos of color, light, and emptiness.

On the far wall, spray-painted in uneven black letters, were the words:
“IN 15 MINUTES EVERYBODY WILL BE FAMOUS.”

Jeeny: (smirking) “Andy Warhol once said, ‘I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is: In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.’”
She turned, her voice playful but heavy with something deeper. “Funny how even his boredom became prophetic.”

Jack: (dryly) “He didn’t predict fame. He predicted inflation. Fifteen minutes used to mean something.”

Host: His voice rasped with cynicism, the smoke curling around each word like punctuation. He flicked ash into a coffee cup already full of it — a small, grey monument to creative fatigue.

Jeeny: “You think he was wrong?”

Jack: “No. I think he was too right. The problem isn’t that everyone gets their fifteen minutes — it’s that they never stop wanting the sixteenth.”

Jeeny: “That’s human nature.”

Jack: “No. That’s capitalism in drag.”

Host: The record clicked softly as it looped. The air was thick with the smell of turpentine and ambition. Warhol’s shadow hung everywhere — in the stacks of photo prints, the scattered magazines, the irony so dense you could almost breathe it in.

Jeeny: “You talk like fame’s a disease.”

Jack: “It is. It starts as validation and ends as addiction. People don’t chase fame for what it gives them — they chase it for what it numbs.”

Jeeny: “Then why do artists still run toward it?”

Jack: “Because they mistake attention for love.”

Jeeny: “And you don’t?”

Jack: (after a pause) “I used to. Until I realized the applause dies faster than the echo.”

Jeeny: “You sound like someone who’s already had his fifteen minutes.”

Jack: “I did. They just weren’t consecutive.”

Host: Jeeny laughed, a sound both soft and defiant. The light from the window caught in her hair, turning it to a halo of silver. She walked toward one of the canvases — a collage of faces cut from old magazines, all smiling, all blank.

Jeeny: “Warhol understood something no one else did — that fame isn’t about merit, it’s about volume. Flood the world with images and sooner or later one of them becomes sacred.”

Jack: “Or meaningless. He made art out of repetition — not because it was beautiful, but because it was inevitable.”

Jeeny: “He mirrored us. We don’t want depth. We want the illusion of depth — just enough to hashtag.”

Jack: “So we curate our lives like galleries.”

Jeeny: “And call it authenticity.”

Jack: “We’ve become our own advertisements.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s evolution — humans as brands.”

Jack: “No. That’s extinction disguised as glamour.”

Host: The rain started outside — soft at first, then heavier, drumming against the window in sync with the record’s rhythm. The city lights blurred into watercolor streaks through the glass, as if Los Angeles itself was weeping makeup.

Jeeny: “You know, I think Warhol wasn’t celebrating fame. He was mocking it — the way priests mock sin by describing it too beautifully.”

Jack: “He didn’t mock it. He commodified it. Turned vanity into a franchise. Sold worship to the masses one silk screen at a time.”

Jeeny: “But he also gave people power. He said: you can be the image. You can control your frame.”

Jack: “And in the process, he erased the soul behind it.”

Jeeny: “You say that like the soul ever mattered.”

Jack: “It used to. Before filters, before followers, before the idea that visibility equals existence.”

Jeeny: “So what are you saying — that anonymity is the last form of rebellion?”

Jack: “No. I’m saying silence is.”

Host: A lightning flash illuminated the room, revealing the layers of unfinished art — portraits, slogans, fragments of identity scattered like debris. Jeeny stood at the center, arms crossed, her silhouette sharp against the chaos.

Jeeny: “Maybe fame was never the disease. Maybe boredom was. People chase attention because it’s the fastest cure.”

Jack: “But cures can be poison. The moment you’re seen, you stop being yourself.”

Jeeny: “And if you’re never seen?”

Jack: “Then you risk vanishing before you’ve even existed.”

Jeeny: “So we’re trapped. Invisible until we’re consumed.”

Jack: “Exactly. Fame’s not the goal — it’s the punishment.”

Jeeny: “And obscurity?”

Jack: “That’s the mercy.”

Host: The music shifted — another song, slower now, the kind that made silence ache a little louder. Jeeny walked to the wall and touched the words sprayed there, her fingers tracing the dripping paint.

Jeeny: “You think he was tired when he said that? Warhol, I mean. You think he’d seen too much of his own reflection to care anymore?”

Jack: “No. I think he got bored with irony. Even prophets get tired of being right.”

Jeeny: “So he replaced meaning with mirrors.”

Jack: “Because reflection is easier than revelation.”

Jeeny: “And we all followed him into the funhouse.”

Jack: “Yeah. And started calling the distortions beautiful.”

Host: The rain eased, leaving behind only the soft hiss of the city breathing. The light from the streetlamp outside spilled through the window, cutting across the floor, touching the half-finished canvas — a portrait of a faceless woman surrounded by color.

Jack stood, stretching, his expression somewhere between exhaustion and clarity.

Jack: “You know, maybe Warhol’s line isn’t a curse after all. Maybe it’s a confession — that we all just want to matter for a minute before we disappear.”

Jeeny: “And what happens after the fifteen minutes?”

Jack: (smiling faintly) “We go back to being human.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the real art.”

Host: The camera would pull back — the two figures standing in the neon-drenched warehouse, surrounded by portraits of faces that could be anyone, everyone. The words on the wall glowed faintly, like an echo carved in light:

“IN 15 MINUTES EVERYBODY WILL BE FAMOUS.”

But beneath it, in smaller, almost invisible handwriting, someone had added:

“AND IN SIXTEEN, THEY’LL BE FORGOTTEN.”

Host: The scene would fade, the record spinning its last note, the city outside pulsing with restless light.

And in the silence that followed, Andy Warhol’s voice — part prophet, part mirror, part ghost — would whisper through time:

Fame is not immortality.
It is the illusion of being seen.

We no longer seek meaning —
we seek recognition.

The camera does not love —
it only records.
The crowd does not remember —
it only consumes.

And yet,
in every photograph,
every post,
every fleeting heartbeat of exposure,
there remains one quiet truth:

Fifteen minutes is not a curse.
It is a mirror —
showing us how brief,
how bright,
and how desperately human
we really are.