In the winter of 1970, Holly Woodlawn received a telegram from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences informing her that the legendary, Oscar-winning director George Cukor had started a campaign to get the Academy to nominate her for an Academy Award for "Trash," supported by petitions whose signatories included Ben Gazzara and Oscar-winner Joanne Woodward. Ultimately, Holly was not nominated.
Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek, an unknown at the time, appeared in "Trash," although her scene was later cut. Spacek has said of the experience, "I was in Andy's 'Trash' when I was a teenager....I didn't mind [that the scene was cut], because I really saw myself as a singer. I went under the name Rainbo. I had this single called 'John Lennon, You Went Too Far This Time,' about John and Yoko (Yoko Ono) posing nude on their album cover." The album cover in question was 1968's "Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins."
This is the first Andy Warhol film in which the transvestite Holly Woodlawn appeared. Holly was only supposed to be in one scene, but the rushes were so good, Morrissey asked her back to do more. She was paid the usual acting fee for a Warhol film: $25.00 a day. When they finished shooting her footage, Holly celebrated by using her final payment of $25.00 on heroin.
The second part of a trilogy, Flesh (1968), "Trash", and Heat (1972), that was conceived as a reference to the expression "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll", then a popular sum-up of the 1960s generation.
Paul Morrissey started shooting the movie in the basement of his brownstone on 6th Street between First and Second Avenue on the Lower East Side in October 1969. Jed Johnson was the film's entire crew, functioning as "gofer, gaffer, grip and editor". Shooting lasted two weeks.