The film is Burns' cinematic argument that Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th Century. (Picasso is credited with having that honor in the first half of the 20th Century.) It is narrated by Laurie Anderson and explores his astonishing output from the late 1940s to his death in 1987.

In one segment, Burns compares Warhol's portraits of such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor with the icons of saints that Warhol saw in his boyhood Byzantine Catholic parish, where he spent many hours as a child. Burns follows Warhol through his meteoric rise in New York's commercial art world during the 1950s. Burns cites 1962, the year Warhol first exhibited his soup can paintings in Los Angeles, as the turning point in Warhol's career. Burns also describes in detail Valerie Solanas' near-fatal shooting of Warhol in 1968.