[Warhol's] early "epic" films are similar in many respects to the paintings. There is not much difference between a man sleeping—Sleep (1964) and a corpse. Neither even requires much manipulation to translate it into an artifact. In Sleep, which is more of a record than anything else, the "cinema" element is almost irrelevant. It simply provides an environment for the event.

Empire came shortly after Sleep. Differing from the earlier film, it is not completely descriptive. The daytime sequence is hurried along, compressed, to give the main focus of the record, the coming of night, more emphasis. Here, Warhol shows that he is willing to interfere with the natural order of things. Whereas in the paintings he seemingly strived to present the total event, in Empire he selected, albeit "marginally", parts of the event for display. This interference might be dismissed as trivial if it were not for...