Am I crazy or does nothing beat a sexy girl reading? (image) Aw.... Trinidad So what could be better than an SG pic thread dedicated to this niche love of mine? Go on... Indulge me!

“My dream has always been the same since I was a kid, to somehow show people life through different colored lenses,” writes Nikki Sixx in the introduction to his new book, a collection of very personal words and images called This Is Gonna Hurt. “Now more than ever I feel it’s important to see... more

“My dream has always been the same since I was a kid, to somehow show people life through different colored lenses,” writes Nikki Sixx in the introduction to his new book, a collection of very personal words and images called This Is Gonna Hurt. “Now more than ever I feel it’s important to see that way. We need to be aware that the warped perspectives of television, Internet, and magazines are sometimes poisonous,” he continues. “I cannot walk down the street without feeling I am being subjected to some constant sales pitch on what we should look like, smell like, dress like, or even worse, what we should be like.”

A devout nonconformist, Sixx wears many hats in his life. SuicideGirls last caught up with Mötley Crüe’s co-founder and bass player shortly before the release of his bestselling book, The Heroin Diaries, a collection of journal entries that chronicled his self-destructive – but ultimately self-saving – journey to the other side of drugs. To accompany its release, Sixx put together a side project called Sixx:A.M. – a band which went on to have a life of its own. The musician, songwriter and author also has his own clothing line, and hosts two radio shows, Sixx Sense (which airs Monday to Friday) and The Side Show Countdown (which is broadcast on weekends).

But it’s Sixx’s work as a photographer that made a further conversation with the multi-talented man mandatory. His photography, as seen in this first bound collection, is shockingly beautiful. However, the beauty within the images is of a kind that complies with nothing except Sixx’s own very individual aesthetic. Reflecting the contradictions that have often troubled him, his often pre-conceived portraits are both ethereal and hyper-real at the same time.

Sixx spoke with SG by phone from the Funny Farm, his photography studio and creative sanctuary…

Nicole Powers: I read your book cover to cover, and what really struck me is how incredibly in tune your philosophy about beauty is with that of SuicideGirls.

Nikki Sixx: Oh, absolutely. I think it's probably spot on isn't it?

NP: It really is...Your rejection of mainstream ideas of beauty - the way you see beauty in people and things others might find ugly, and the way you find ugliness in what most of society calls beauty.

NS: Yeah, it's a conflict for me. One of the hardest things for me was growing up in Seattle. We all hung out, it was me and about five or six other guys, and about five or six girls. We were these outcasts. We were a cross between these punk rock kids and these glammed up heavy metalers. You had The Sparks, and you had The Stooges, and you had some very early metal, Black Sabbath and some Zeppelin, which was almost a little too heavy for us. It was all a big mixture of styles and looks and fashion. We were all into the fashion. Then there was the jocks. They despised us. Then you had bussing, and you had all the black kids being bussed in, and all the white kids being bussed into the black areas. It was a smart thing to do because it was a break down of that racial wall. It was a really hard time to grow up, but it was a magical time to grow up, and we really sort of clicked together. We were like these outcasts, these misfits. We didn't even have tattoos at that time...

Growing up that way and feeling part of something really important, like art, and then playing in this rock band that was also an outcast, and then all of a sudden one day being a sex symbol. Being the most popular kid, when I was always the one laughed at. It was really hard for me. I think it was really confusing and I just carried a lot of that confusion into my addiction. I didn't want to be famous. I wanted to fucking play rock & roll. I never really understood the whole fame thing.

NP: Right, you hadn't changed inside, but the world flipped on a dime and all of a sudden, almost overnight, had a very different attitude towards you.

NS: Right. So, it was weird because I'm then surrounded by those people that didn't get me, who all of a sudden said they did get me. Of course everybody wants to be understood, so, you then go, 'Oh, you understand me. But, wait a minute, I don't trust you. But I want to trust you.' It was so conflicting. It was like, 'Oh, I'm attracted to her, but she's the enemy. But why is she the enemy? She didn't do anything to me.'

Life goes along, and you start realizing that most of this is just conflict that you have inside you. I start to look at people, and I really start to go, 'I need to see who you are really deep inside.' I found that most of the people that I trust were the people that were like-minded in the fact that they were always outcasts. They were always misfits. They were always the supposedly misfortunate, and I would always go, 'aren't they fortunate,' and I'd relate to you. So through photography I was like, 'We are so much alike.' It also allowed me to soften my stand and not be like, 'Fuck you people.' I was realizing that I was becoming like the very people I didn't like, judgmental...That's what I learned in the process of my book was to just let go a little bit and trust.

NP: In the introduction, you talk about how your photography is an addiction. I have a theory about addictions, in that you don't really get rid of them, but you can replace one with another.

NS: Without a doubt.

NP: For you, is photography that new replacement addiction?

NS: I wouldn't call it a new addiction. I would say it's maybe one that's been in the closet that I haven't really shared with many people. It's very much like when Mötley Crüe came out and everyone's like, 'Oh my god have you heard this new band?' Well, those guys in that band individually and collectively had been playing for years. It wasn't that we just one day picked up a guitar and we were this thing. I think that's the same with my photography. I've been doing it for years and getting better and better and better...

NP: The images, they're very accomplished and they have a very specific style too. It's a very cohesive collection of images.

NS: It's interesting you say that because one thing I felt is that it was not cohesive. I didn't realize how much photography I have. I thought I had about 10,000 images. I took a hard drive and I reformatted it because I have multiple hard drives backed up and I found 40,000 photos...I thought to myself, maybe I should have put more of a cohesive collection together. So I think it's very interesting that you say it's cohesive. That actually makes me feel good, so thank you.

NP: I think that's because you're seeing it from the inside. Looking from the outside in there's a really specific style, even in the way that you use lighting.

NS: I'm at Funny Farm right now, and my friend and someone I really look up to Paul Brown, a photographer is in the other warehouse. He rents an office over there. He always laughs when I use flash...It's so hard for me to want to use flash because it fills the frame so much that I find so little mystery in it. I'm looking for the mystery in the shadows. What I love about painters is a lot of times there's as much expression in the shadows as there is in the subject. A lot of times, especially some of the painters from the 1700s and back, their source of light was either sunlight or candlelight, maybe moonlight. It was so fucking moody. I'm always looking for that. I've got a collection of lights that I've bought from the 1940s through the late '70s. They're big hot lights and they weigh 150-200 pounds apiece. They're really a pain in the fucking ass. I'm always burning myself and breaking shit. They're very crude, and it seems to allow me to play in the shadows more.

NP: Your subjects definitely appear out of the shadows.

NS: Yeah, it feels more honest that way.

NP: When you're shooting, you seem to try and find a moment where there's some honesty behind your subjects eyes. I love the story where you talk about shooting at a brothel in Stuttgart. Only one of the prostitutes there would even agree to be photographed, and you deliberately ask her some painful questions so that she stops thinking about posing and starts to reflect on her life - and it's that moment that you want to capture.

NS: Yeah. It's kind of like putting your foot in a rattlesnake's pit. You know you're bound to get bit eventually, but for some reason I find it so intriguing to just keep pushing my foot in and pulling it out, in and out, in and out, in and out. Always fucking pushing it. Sometimes you get bit, but there's never an ill intention behind it.

NP: When you describe that moment you write about how you felt bad about asking those questions, but, at the same time, you knew what you needed to do to get the shot.

NS: Yeah...I would love that girl to see the book. Maybe someday she'll pick it up and see that little chapter on herself.

NP: Then she'll probably have very different feelings about that strange guy that came in and asked some strange and hard questions.

NS: Yeah, and wasn't interested in sex.

NP: You write about how you often go on forays to the worst parts of a town to find the kind of people that most of society likes to forget, and you describe the conversations that you've had, and the bonds you've forged.

NS: Yeah, that's the beautiful part of all this, I have so many personal experiences...I would watch people come to my studio. I won't name names, but they are people who are in the industry. They would be business people, right, [who are] not usually around creative people except for during the signing of contracts and such. They're associates and people that I work with...and they would recoil...I would watch them wanting to get closer and closer to the fire, but backing away...Finally, after an hour or two, people would be sitting in the lounge and hanging out and having a bite to eat. I was going through the photography and checking things, then all of a sudden I would see these people completely bonding and exchanging phone numbers. I was like, 'My job has been done here.' I'm like cupid from hell. Everyone is falling in love with each other, and it's all because we just broke down the wall and let them get close to each other. I kind of feel that's the magic part of the book.

NS: You know, when I asked my daughter to write something for my book and she wrote that little piece on the back, it blew my mind. Did you see the little piece on the back of the book?

NP: I actually didn't read the back cover. I'm just turning to it now. Normally back covers are just a marketing synopsis, so I didn't even think to read it.

NS: With me, there's not a dot in the book that I haven't looked at or made sure there's a message or something in it. There's not one inch of the book that hasn't been touched by me on one level or another. That was so important, to put that much into it. If people are going to hold it in their hand and live with it, put it next to their bed stand and walk around with it and tell people about it, you have to really - you can't just throw it together.

NP: I can tell, with the layout and your choice of fonts, every page is a work of art - even the pages between the photography.

NS: Isn't it amazing. The paper, we worked with Paul on that. Paul found this letterpress collection from a bible from the 1800s, that's what our font is. It's fucking amazing.

NP: It seems too that even the process of writing the book was very therapeutic for you.

NS: Yeah, it feels like I've given birth. I feel really relieved. It's so nice to talk about it with people who have it in their hand. I did an interview before your interview and the person obviously either didn't A) understand, or B) didn't have it, or C) didn't understand. Because they were asking me about Charlie Sheen, and Vince wrote a book and he said a bunch of nasty stuff about me. I said, "Did you like the way I described my sister in the book through the photography? You're asking me about Charlie Sheen and I'm telling you my sister was institutionalized. I'm sharing that with you. I mean I feel a little insulted but I guess that you have a purpose."

NP: That story was so moving to me, the fact that you wanted to reach out but you left it too late. You read that, and it reminds you not to put things off.

NS: The great thing about writing is that if you can be honest, which I learned to do through journaling because no one is supposed to read your journals and your diaries - and if you're smart you don't write a book about them like I did. You just let it all hang out, so to speak, and then you learn from your own mistakes. Isn't that what we're here to do? To learn from our own mistakes. How exciting when somebody can write a book and show you their mistakes, and how they learned from it.

I'm spiritual. I don't believe in organized religion, that's my belief, but I was reading a book on Buddhism. What's really interesting is that Buddhists will tell you their part in failure every single time. It's so satisfying. You go, 'That's your part in why it didn't work.' Then they show you what did work, how to make it work. They're not holier than thou. That's what I like about the feeling of writing. Wow, I was speeding. I got pulled over. I got a ticket. I told the cop to fuck off. He threw me in jail. Note to self: Next time you're going to speed at least don't tell the cop to fuck off. I just think that's the kind of stuff people can go, 'You know, I think I'm not going to speed in my life.'

NP: In the chapters where you chronicle the breakdown of your relationship with Kat Von D…that Buddhist perspective definitely comes across.

NS: I think in the end it's so easy to pull the trigger, and so satisfying not [to]. Sometimes if you really wait long enough, they'll pull the trigger on themselves. That's one of my greatest joys in life is really people that have done the wrong thing, usually put their own toe in the trigger and you get to sit back and get no blood on your hands. It's like karma is a bitch, ain't it? Life has that way of working itself out if you let life work itself out.

I know I've put my own toe in the fucking trigger enough times because someone's got to pay the fucking devil at some point. Nothing's for free. So when you fuck up, you've got to take responsibility or you've got to pay the fucking devil. It's just a matter of time if I think I'm getting away with something. You never get away with anything. Ever. So that's kind of like my part in the book. It's saying, 'Hey, here's my part in the story.' On a million levels, whether it was my teenage years, my young adult years which are also adolescent, or, some of my years where I'm maturing and becoming a father and still trying to contain myself - you know - as much as possible.

I have a hard time walking a straight line sometimes. I'm the first one to tell you. I really feel good that I don't flip off the cops anymore when they drive past me. I used to do this thing when the cops would drive past me and I would be in my car and I would like flip them off. My friend would always go, 'Why do you do that?' I'd go, 'I don't know, I just feel like fuck them.' I don't do that anymore - but every now and then I do...

This Is Gonna Hurt was released by William Morrow (a division of HarperCollins) on April 12, 2011. A companion Sixx:A.M. album, which shares the book’s name, is imminent. Visit SixxAMMusic.com for more information.

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award for... more

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer and dumptrucks full of other nominations and accolades.

His most recent feature, Source Code (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) could be pitched as "Die Hard by way of Quantum Leap served in eight-minute repeating chunks of Groundhog Day."

SuicideGirls talked to Jones (who is the son of Rock god David Bowie) in Boston in a luxury hotel that used to be a prison, while Jones was getting texts from Gyllenhaal asking how things were going and two of the three devices brought to record the interview shit the bed. Warning, minor spoilers follow.

Michael Marano: Without giving away too much of their plots, both Moon and Source Code deal with issues with identity in enclosed environments, which are artificial constructs. Is modern society by definition a construct? And how do you find authenticity, which is sort of the quest of both these main characters [in Moon and Source Code], in these artificial constructs?

Duncan Jones: I would say that you're correct, that both these films do deal with that. I would say that it wasn't a conscious choice on my half to be doing two films that covered the same ground in that way--or, at least, different aspects of the same ground. When I read the Source Code script, because it was something that had been written by Ben Ripley, it was introduced to me by Jake Gyllenhaal. I actually had a chance to meet with [Gyllenhaal] and I very much wanted to work with him. I'm a huge fan of his. And he suggested that I read this script, Source Code. He was a big fan of Moon... and I think he was the one who saw the similarities, more than I was. I think he saw Moon, read Source Code, and said, 'I think that would work well together!' When I read the script, I was immediately getting excited about the big differences [between the two movies]. The fact that it was a pace-y, sort of Hollywood-feeling film where I thought there were some interesting ideas in it. There was a little touch of romance, a little touch of mystery. I would get to work with more than one actor! After Moon, this was a big move for me! And then it wasn't until afterwards that I started to notice the similarities. So I think that on a subconscious level, the question of identity in particular was something which was appealing to me.

MM: Both Moon and Source Code have protagonists who are facing, in the classic sense of the word, glamours--the appearance of a world or reality that is based on illusion.

DJ: I haven't heard that word in a long time! That's kind of cool.

MM: You came of age in the 1970s, in the UK, and that was a world of glamour and science fiction. It was a world in which women with purple wigs could be on Gerry Anderson's Moon Base [on the ultra-rad-mod-fashioned SF show UFO]. It was also sort of the Golden Age of Doctor Who. Does this inform your storytelling? This collision of glamour and hard science-fictional constructs?

DJ: I don't know. It's true that I was born in London in the early 1970s, but we traveled so much. I have a very eclectic taste in movies and literature, not only because of the fact that I was traveling so much. But [because] my father's influences, when I was growing up, were pretty varied. And what made him enthusiastic, obviously, trickled down to me. I used to read every evening. That was sort of a house rule. I had to read an hour or two a night. And science fiction in particular was one of the things that was kind of my candy. If I was finding it difficult to get my nose--or brain, rather--into a 'For Kids' biography of Abraham Lincoln, he'd hand me George Orwell's Animal Farm or something to keep me interested and keep me reading. That sort of was my introduction to science fiction.

MM: Source Code is, in some respects, a disaster movie. And yet the very nature of this disaster movie, which deals with identity, demands very strong subjective camera and sound work. How do you balance disaster-movie spectacle and intimacy, when you've got a story like this?

DJ: Well, reading the Source Code script for the second time--the first time I read it just as the audience--reading it for the second time, I was trying to do it with my director's hat on. And that's where you really see where the problems lie, or at least the puzzles that need to be solved. One of which is: we're going to be revisiting an event multiple times. Visually, I wanted to keep that stimulating and interesting and keep the audience engaged and feeling by the end of the film that they've seen something fresh the whole way through, and not been subjected to a repeated event. But at the same time, the whole story--well, as much as possible--is told from the perspective of Colter Stevens, our main protagonist, Jake's character. And you need to find a way to move the camera in such a way that it always, as much as possible, his perspective on things. I approached it fairly strategically. I broke down those elements where there is a repetition, and tried to ensure that each time there is visual variety. Not just in the camera positions, but also if there was enough of a change in the narrative or if new characters were being introduced, that we could move events around the environment, the train that he is on, so that by the end of it, it doesn't feel like you've actually seen the same thing twice.

MM: There are two main dramatic arcs in Source Code. You have the Jake/Michelle arc [taking place repeatedly on the train] and you have the Jake/Vera arc [taking place at the same time in a different context]. These are essentially two one-act plays that are going on simultaneously. How did you structure these two dramatic arcs? These two intense dramas happening parallel to each other?

DJ: I think it's fair to say there were unique acting challenges for all of our principal actors in this film. Jake has the obvious one. He's a character who finds himself at the center of a mystery with revelations occurring throughout, that really allow him to react in dramatically different ways throughout the whole film. So, as an actor I think he has the opportunity to do many things. But there is a lot of freedom there. For Michelle Monaghan, who is a character who finds herself on a train repeating the same event, she has an arc which has to last over the course of the entire film, and she has to repeat [the same] eight minutes, and generate parts of an arc each time. So that every time, she's starting in the same place. And each time, there's a different ending. And if you look over the course of the film, there's an evolution from the start to the end of the film. That's particularly difficult. One of the things we were able to do [for her] was shoot the film in order, to try to help her. Otherwise, it would have been pure chaos. For Vera Farmiga's character, it was a very different problem. She has an arc, but she also has to perform inside a confined environment. A lot of her performance is being recorded by a camera which is sitting right in front of her [character]. And she has to be able to communicate and get across her state of mind with small nuances, knowing that the camera for most of the time is capturing her in a medium close-up.

MM: Source Code deals with quantum physics and different universes, and I couldn't help but think of a quote from Philip K. Dick which says all existences, all possible universes, are like an infinite number of suits lined up in an infinite closet. And God wears different universes and realities according to His different moods. Looking at your take on alternate realities and universes in Source Code, where does quantum physics end and philosophy begin? Or, did you just want to make a fun movie?

DJ: Well, that's an interesting question. Because Ben Ripley has written a script which I think is structurally incredibly sound. [A]s a fan of science fiction, I see that genre being split between hard scifi and soft scifi, with hard scifi being stories where you can see how the world we live in today can by a process of evolution or technological innovation wind up where the science fiction is. And soft science fiction is where you're talking about dragons and magic and crazy stuff. Now, time travel and parallel realities, for me, feels like it's in the gray area between [hard and soft scifi]. And although I think the logic is consistent and makes sense in its own right, it's difficult to know how we go from the reality we're in now, to one where we have the technology to actually be able to access that power. So, I wanted to set up some very clean rules at the start of this film that explain what it is that we're investigating, [and to] through lightening the tone of the movie, and injecting it with some humor, ask the audience to just take a leap of faith.

MM: And speaking of quantum issues, and quantum leaps--

DJ: I can see where you're going with this! [Laughs]

MM: There is a [vocal] cameo from a certain, well, it's [Quantum Leap star] Scott Bakula! Can we say it?

DJ: Yes! It is the Scott Bakula!

MM: Can we say it?

DJ: Absolutely!

MM: Do you want to address this bit of vocal casting?

DJ: It's kind of fun! And for people who read this and see the film, and know ahead of time, I'm sorry. But at the same time I think, hopefully, what is particularly effective about this cameo is that it's at a moment where I think the audience will be emotionally invested to the point that they will just buy into what's going on. And that suddenly, for those of you who are fans of Quantum Leap, you will realize that the voice is Scott Bakula, which makes a lot of sense, when you've seen the film. And that's one of those little in-jokes. For me, it's kind of fun, and I am a scifi fan, and when I was reading the script, there was a particular moment at the start of the film, where Jake sees himself in the mirror and sees someone other than who he thinks he is. And I was just thinking, 'Ah! It's Quantum Leap!' [Laughs] And to have that opportunity to make a little tip of the hat the show was important.

MM: If I could just jump back to Philip K. Dick and written science fiction. Source Code, in terms of theme and outlook, has more in common with a lot of Philip K. Dick, than do a lot of recent movies that are nominally adaptations of his work. [In Source Code] you've got the fragility of reality, scary government agencies working behind the scenes pulling the levers of reality, you have the question of 'What is human and what is construct?' Were you consciously referring to Philip K. Dick?

DJ: A great deal of my imagination stems from my love of Philip K. Dick, and also J.G. Ballard, another science fiction author I love. So, absolutely! Certainly not in a conscious way. But he was formative in my appreciation of scifi.

MM: Source Code deals with an act of terrorism on US soil. Did you feel a need to be sensitive with regard to possible raw nerves while making this movie, so that you could make it a fun ride?

DJ: There were early drafts of the script that were set in New York. And I know that the producers felt it was important to move it from New York for obvious sensitivity reasons. They were looking for a city that would work. And Chicago, being a location everyone on the East and West Coasts can relate to, seemed like a sensible idea. I think that Chicago is a great city anyway. It's very multi-cultural. And for me, in particular, there is this sculpture in [Chicago's] Millennium Park by Anish Kapoor called The Cloud Gate, which really lent itself to some of the subtexts of the story. And I wanted to use it. Fortunately, Mr. Kapoor gave us permission and we were able to. So there was extra value added by being based in Chicago.

Source Code in theaters now

Hunx and His Punx are a Bay Area punk band fronted by Arizona transplant and sometime hairdresser Seth Bogart, a.k.a. Hunx, that have a Ramones-like musical philosophy: take ‘60s Phil Spector-ish girl group music and simplify and speed it up. Their songs are mostly direct odes to love and sex, sung... more

Hunx and His Punx are a Bay Area punk band fronted by Arizona transplant and sometime hairdresser Seth Bogart, a.k.a. Hunx, that have a Ramones-like musical philosophy: take ‘60s Phil Spector-ish girl group music and simplify and speed it up. Their songs are mostly direct odes to love and sex, sung in Hunx’ distinctly nasal delivery, supported by the lovely harmonies of his all-female backing group. Having just released their first full-length album, Too Young To Be In Love, and played a solid week at SXSW, Hunx and his punkettes are now embarking on a nationwide tour -- so I was lucky Seth found a few minutes to talk with SuicideGirls about why SXSW sucks, getting stoned, and French perverts.

Keith Daniels: So where are you at right now?

Seth Bogart: I’m on my dressing room floor.

KD:[Laughs] What city?

SB: I’m in San Francisco! I mean, I’m on my dressing room floor in every city.

KD:I have to tell you I’m a little nervous because I’ve read that you don’t like phone interviews, or music writers either.

SB: Where did you read that?

KD:An interview with you I was just reading. You said you thought phone interviews were boring.

SB: Weeeeell, I’ll be nice to you. I’m not mean! I just like to be face to face.

KD:Yeah, well I wish we could go to the bar or getting fucking stoned and do this, too.

SB: That would be so much better!

KD:Believe it or not, it’s often boring for the people asking the questions, too. People don’t want to say anything too interesting or they might get in trouble.

SB: That’s true.

KD:I read that you quit smoking cigarettes recently. How’s that going?

SB: I quit, like, a month ago! My butt got way bigger. It’s so cool.

KD:You do tend to gain little weight. I’ve been eight days without and it’s killing me.

SB: It all went to my butt. So you’ve been eight days without a cig?

KD:Yeah.

SB: Did you just quit? Oh my god, let me turn down my music. [Silence] Sorry. I was up in my closet. So, are you having a hard time [not] smoking?

KD:I wasn’t having too hard of a time, but this is the first interview I’ve done since...

SB: ...ooohh yeah, you always smoke when you do it.

KD:Yeah, I know, man. It’s such a good prop to talk.

SB: You’ll get over it. How did you quit?

KD:Just stopped, y’know?

SB: Yeah.

KD:I really like your music because, to me, it’s about what rock’n’roll is supposed to be about: sex and love, simple emotions.

SB: Thank you.

KD:Is that how you feel about it?

SB: I don’t know what rock’n’roll is supposed to be like, but I know we’re really good. I know that live we’re way better than most stupid dude bands.

KD:You’ve got all these guys with these long beards trying to be so serious.

SB: So boring. I just want to entertain like it’s Poison playing or something. You know what I mean?

KD:Like it’s the Sunset Strip in the ‘80s?

SB: Yeah, like some costumes and stuff.

KD:If you had a big budget, what kind of show would you put on?

SB: Ohmygod, I don’t even know. There would be, like, elephants and motorcycle entrances and a million dollar light show. It would be crazy.

KD:You’ve said that you’d like for people to either hate your music or be obsessed with it. Do you feel like indifference is the worst reaction?

SB: Don’t you think? I think it is. When we play, people either get really into it, or they’re in the back shaking their heads in disapproval. And... I’m wondering if I should eat this chocolate weed thing I found in my room.

KD:[Laughs] Like a pot brownie or something?

SB: Mmm. It’s like a truffle. I bought it the other day, and I ate a little bit of it last night and got really stoned. Then I realized that me and my friend were imitating a Gremlin for, like, an hour. Then I was like, “Oh, I think we’re stoned!” [Laughs]

KD:[Laughs]

SB: What was I saying? I don’t remember what I was saying.

KD:We were talking about indifference.

SB: Oh yeah.

KD:But as you get bigger that’s going to happen more, as you get out of your home town. You get those guys who just stand there with their arms crossed. What happens when people who don’t get it start coming to your shows?

SB: I don’t know, because that’s never really happened. I don’t notice, anyway.

KD:What are you thinking about when you’re onstage and you’re looking out at the first couple of rows?

SB: Usually I’m so wasted I don’t know what’s going on.

KD:[Laughs] So you usually get drunk before a show? Stoned?

SB: I get wasted. I don’t get stoned because one time I did that and then I was laying on the floor screaming at my band -- telling them that they were playing way too fast even though they were actually just playing regular. I don’t think [we’re] very good music to get stoned to.

KD:Do you [do that] because you’re nervous? Or to get in character...?

SB: I feel like it’s an anxiety-slash-nervous thing, and I also feel like... I don’t know, I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot because I kind of don’t want to be drunk for a whole month, but sometimes when you go on a tour you’re like in a car all day. Then you get to a club and you’re there for like, six hours, and it’s so much funner if you can just get wasted. I just feel like it can be so boring to be stuck in a bar all night -- so why not get wasted? But I get scared because sometimes I get bummed out when I drink that much. I’m kind of struggling with it.

KD:How was South by Southwest?

SB: The worst. Hated it.

KD:Why was that?

SB: We’ve done it the last three years in a row, and every year I’m like, “I’m never going back here,” but we had a record coming out so we got pressured into going.

KD:But why do you hate it?

SB: Because it’s a bunch of assholes! You play, like, 20 shows a day and then have to do a bunch of really stupid interviews, and it’s just not fun. We didn’t even get to hang out. Also, we were taking the bus and, like, walking everywhere, and sleeping on our friend’s floor. Meanwhile, all the record label people have, like, some fancy hotel. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I’m just being a baby.

KD:You’re going to be playing in Tucson in a couple of days. That’s where you’re from, right?

SB: Yeah, hometown!

KD:Is this your first time going back with the band?

SB: We played there a year and a half ago with the band Girls. My mom and my brother were there. Hopefully they won’t come again.

KD:Did you feel like that held you back a little?

SB: Oh! I just found a Valium on my floor. Cooool. Um, it didn’t hold me back, but it was just, like, weird.

KD:From reading your Twitter, though, they sound pretty supportive.

SB: Yeah, they’re rad, but it’s just awkward or something.

KD:I would have a hard time getting up in front of my mom...

SB: My mom thinks I’m a porn star.

KD:[Laughs]

SB: I’m not kidding! She saw my weiner. She saw me naked on the internet.

KD:Well, so did anybody who saw that Girls video.

SB: She didn’t see that, thank God. She saw some photoshoot that was in Paris.

KD:Is that the thing you mentioned for Playgirl?

SB: No, it wasn’t Playgirl. She saw that, but she was cool with it because I was wearing a jock strap and you could only see my butt. She saw this one where I’m in this old car and had a boner, in Paris. She saw that because someone posted it on my Facebook thing. So she was disappointed.

KD:Oh well, not like it’s the first time your mom’s ever seen you naked.

SB: I know. I just told her it was art, but the truth is this French guy was a total pervert and it made me horny. He told me to take my pants off and I was like, “OK!”

KD:You’re touring with four girls now. What have you learned about women from being stuck with them in such close quarters for so long?

SB: Well, I feel like I already am like a girl, so it’s just like being with the girls, you know what I mean?

KD:Nothing surprising?

SB: Well, I’ve been touring with girls forever, so it’s nothing to me.

KD:I’ve read that you’re... 31? Is that right?

SB: Wow, you know a lot.

KD:[Laughs] I do a little research! We’re actually the same age. I’m wondering if you’re as scared of getting old as I am.

SB: To some extent. I feel like an old lady and a young teenage guy at the same time. I guess I’m scared, but not that scared.

KD:How do you feel like an old lady?

SB: Just... like an old grandma.

KD:“9 o’clock, time for bed”?

SB: “Time to get under the covers and watch some TV!”

KD:If you were God and could recreate the world, what would you change first?

SB: I’d probably make money, like, gone.

KD:Something like Star Trek where money doesn’t even exist?

SB: Yeah, because I feel like that’s the root of every problem. Not every problem, but a lot of them.

KD:So tell me about Hollywood Nailz. Is that coming along? I saw your Kickstarter.

SB: We’re halfway done with the first episode. We had like a 1-900 phone sex from outer space commercial. We had a gay judge... it’s like Judge Judie but with Judge Barry. We still need to do the other half. We’ll do it when I get back from the tour in July.

KD:So it sounds like you’re doing skits, SNL style?

SB: Yeah, it’s skits, mostly. There’ll be some talk-show elements to it.

KD:Do you watch a lot of reality shows?

SB: I love Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Have you seen RuPaul’s Drag Race? Because it’s my favorite show.

KD:Just the clips they play on The Soup, to be honest. I don’t watch a lot of TV.

SB: Neither do I, but ohmygod, it’s, like, the best show. Oh my god I just opened my email... crazy.

KD:You’ll never win that battle.

SB: So, what I was saying? Oh, RuPaul’s Drag Race. You’ve got to see it. I only watch that and Gossip Girls.

KD:Are you planning on doing more Hunx & His Punx records, or will you move on to another project?

SB: I’ve written two more records that I’m going to finish when I get home. They’re like solo albums. One’s like ‘90s high energy dance music. The other one is really sad, acoustic... not all acoustic, but like Hunx & His Punx, only sadder and not as oldies-sounding.

KD:Are you a decent guitar player?

SB: I can play every instrument but, like, really shitty. [Laughs]

More information on Hunx and His Punx can be found at Hardly Art.

“My dream has always been the same since I was a kid, to somehow show people life through different colored lenses,” writes Nikki Sixx in the introduction to his new book, a collection of very personal words and images called This Is Gonna Hurt. “Now more than ever I feel it’s important to see... more

“My dream has always been the same since I was a kid, to somehow show people life through different colored lenses,” writes Nikki Sixx in the introduction to his new book, a collection of very personal words and images called This Is Gonna Hurt. “Now more than ever I feel it’s important to see that way. We need to be aware that the warped perspectives of television, Internet, and magazines are sometimes poisonous,” he continues. “I cannot walk down the street without feeling I am being subjected to some constant sales pitch on what we should look like, smell like, dress like, or even worse, what we should be like.”

A devout nonconformist, Sixx wears many hats in his life. SuicideGirls last caught up with Mötley Crüe’s co-founder and bass player shortly before the release of his bestselling book, The Heroin Diaries, a collection of journal entries that chronicled his self-destructive – but ultimately self-saving – journey to the other side of drugs. To accompany its release, Sixx put together a side project called Sixx:A.M. – a band which went on to have a life of its own. The musician, songwriter and author also has his own clothing line, and hosts two radio shows, Sixx Sense (which airs Monday to Friday) and The Side Show Countdown (which is broadcast on weekends).

But it’s Sixx’s work as a photographer that made a further conversation with the multi-talented man mandatory. His photography, as seen in this first bound collection, is shockingly beautiful. However, the beauty within the images is of a kind that complies with nothing except Sixx’s own very individual aesthetic. Reflecting the contradictions that have often troubled him, his often pre-conceived portraits are both ethereal and hyper-real at the same time.

Sixx spoke with SG by phone from the Funny Farm, his photography studio and creative sanctuary…

Nicole Powers: I read your book cover to cover, and what really struck me is how incredibly in tune your philosophy about beauty is with that of SuicideGirls.

Nikki Sixx: Oh, absolutely. I think it's probably spot on isn't it?

NP: It really is...Your rejection of mainstream ideas of beauty - the way you see beauty in people and things others might find ugly, and the way you find ugliness in what most of society calls beauty.

NS: Yeah, it's a conflict for me. One of the hardest things for me was growing up in Seattle. We all hung out, it was me and about five or six other guys, and about five or six girls. We were these outcasts. We were a cross between these punk rock kids and these glammed up heavy metalers. You had The Sparks, and you had The Stooges, and you had some very early metal, Black Sabbath and some Zeppelin, which was almost a little too heavy for us. It was all a big mixture of styles and looks and fashion. We were all into the fashion. Then there was the jocks. They despised us. Then you had bussing, and you had all the black kids being bussed in, and all the white kids being bussed into the black areas. It was a smart thing to do because it was a break down of that racial wall. It was a really hard time to grow up, but it was a magical time to grow up, and we really sort of clicked together. We were like these outcasts, these misfits. We didn't even have tattoos at that time...

Growing up that way and feeling part of something really important, like art, and then playing in this rock band that was also an outcast, and then all of a sudden one day being a sex symbol. Being the most popular kid, when I was always the one laughed at. It was really hard for me. I think it was really confusing and I just carried a lot of that confusion into my addiction. I didn't want to be famous. I wanted to fucking play rock & roll. I never really understood the whole fame thing.

NP: Right, you hadn't changed inside, but the world flipped on a dime and all of a sudden, almost overnight, had a very different attitude towards you.

NS: Right. So, it was weird because I'm then surrounded by those people that didn't get me, who all of a sudden said they did get me. Of course everybody wants to be understood, so, you then go, 'Oh, you understand me. But, wait a minute, I don't trust you. But I want to trust you.' It was so conflicting. It was like, 'Oh, I'm attracted to her, but she's the enemy. But why is she the enemy? She didn't do anything to me.'

Life goes along, and you start realizing that most of this is just conflict that you have inside you. I start to look at people, and I really start to go, 'I need to see who you are really deep inside.' I found that most of the people that I trust were the people that were like-minded in the fact that they were always outcasts. They were always misfits. They were always the supposedly misfortunate, and I would always go, 'aren't they fortunate,' and I'd relate to you. So through photography I was like, 'We are so much alike.' It also allowed me to soften my stand and not be like, 'Fuck you people.' I was realizing that I was becoming like the very people I didn't like, judgmental...That's what I learned in the process of my book was to just let go a little bit and trust.

NP: In the introduction, you talk about how your photography is an addiction. I have a theory about addictions, in that you don't really get rid of them, but you can replace one with another.

NS: Without a doubt.

NP: For you, is photography that new replacement addiction?

NS: I wouldn't call it a new addiction. I would say it's maybe one that's been in the closet that I haven't really shared with many people. It's very much like when Mötley Crüe came out and everyone's like, 'Oh my god have you heard this new band?' Well, those guys in that band individually and collectively had been playing for years. It wasn't that we just one day picked up a guitar and we were this thing. I think that's the same with my photography. I've been doing it for years and getting better and better and better...

NP: The images, they're very accomplished and they have a very specific style too. It's a very cohesive collection of images.

NS: It's interesting you say that because one thing I felt is that it was not cohesive. I didn't realize how much photography I have. I thought I had about 10,000 images. I took a hard drive and I reformatted it because I have multiple hard drives backed up and I found 40,000 photos...I thought to myself, maybe I should have put more of a cohesive collection together. So I think it's very interesting that you say it's cohesive. That actually makes me feel good, so thank you.

NP: I think that's because you're seeing it from the inside. Looking from the outside in there's a really specific style, even in the way that you use lighting.

NS: I'm at Funny Farm right now, and my friend and someone I really look up to Paul Brown, a photographer is in the other warehouse. He rents an office over there. He always laughs when I use flash...It's so hard for me to want to use flash because it fills the frame so much that I find so little mystery in it. I'm looking for the mystery in the shadows. What I love about painters is a lot of times there's as much expression in the shadows as there is in the subject. A lot of times, especially some of the painters from the 1700s and back, their source of light was either sunlight or candlelight, maybe moonlight. It was so fucking moody. I'm always looking for that. I've got a collection of lights that I've bought from the 1940s through the late '70s. They're big hot lights and they weigh 150-200 pounds apiece. They're really a pain in the fucking ass. I'm always burning myself and breaking shit. They're very crude, and it seems to allow me to play in the shadows more.

NP: Your subjects definitely appear out of the shadows.

NS: Yeah, it feels more honest that way.

NP: When you're shooting, you seem to try and find a moment where there's some honesty behind your subjects eyes. I love the story where you talk about shooting at a brothel in Stuttgart. Only one of the prostitutes there would even agree to be photographed, and you deliberately ask her some painful questions so that she stops thinking about posing and starts to reflect on her life - and it's that moment that you want to capture.

NS: Yeah. It's kind of like putting your foot in a rattlesnake's pit. You know you're bound to get bit eventually, but for some reason I find it so intriguing to just keep pushing my foot in and pulling it out, in and out, in and out, in and out. Always fucking pushing it. Sometimes you get bit, but there's never an ill intention behind it.

NP: When you describe that moment you write about how you felt bad about asking those questions, but, at the same time, you knew what you needed to do to get the shot.

NS: Yeah...I would love that girl to see the book. Maybe someday she'll pick it up and see that little chapter on herself.

NP: Then she'll probably have very different feelings about that strange guy that came in and asked some strange and hard questions.

NS: Yeah, and wasn't interested in sex.

NP: You write about how you often go on forays to the worst parts of a town to find the kind of people that most of society likes to forget, and you describe the conversations that you've had, and the bonds you've forged.

NS: Yeah, that's the beautiful part of all this, I have so many personal experiences...I would watch people come to my studio. I won't name names, but they are people who are in the industry. They would be business people, right, [who are] not usually around creative people except for during the signing of contracts and such. They're associates and people that I work with...and they would recoil...I would watch them wanting to get closer and closer to the fire, but backing away...Finally, after an hour or two, people would be sitting in the lounge and hanging out and having a bite to eat. I was going through the photography and checking things, then all of a sudden I would see these people completely bonding and exchanging phone numbers. I was like, 'My job has been done here.' I'm like cupid from hell. Everyone is falling in love with each other, and it's all because we just broke down the wall and let them get close to each other. I kind of feel that's the magic part of the book.

NS: You know, when I asked my daughter to write something for my book and she wrote that little piece on the back, it blew my mind. Did you see the little piece on the back of the book?

NP: I actually didn't read the back cover. I'm just turning to it now. Normally back covers are just a marketing synopsis, so I didn't even think to read it.

NS: With me, there's not a dot in the book that I haven't looked at or made sure there's a message or something in it. There's not one inch of the book that hasn't been touched by me on one level or another. That was so important, to put that much into it. If people are going to hold it in their hand and live with it, put it next to their bed stand and walk around with it and tell people about it, you have to really - you can't just throw it together.

NP: I can tell, with the layout and your choice of fonts, every page is a work of art - even the pages between the photography.

NS: Isn't it amazing. The paper, we worked with Paul on that. Paul found this letterpress collection from a bible from the 1800s, that's what our font is. It's fucking amazing.

NP: It seems too that even the process of writing the book was very therapeutic for you.

NS: Yeah, it feels like I've given birth. I feel really relieved. It's so nice to talk about it with people who have it in their hand. I did an interview before your interview and the person obviously either didn't A) understand, or B) didn't have it, or C) didn't understand. Because they were asking me about Charlie Sheen, and Vince wrote a book and he said a bunch of nasty stuff about me. I said, "Did you like the way I described my sister in the book through the photography? You're asking me about Charlie Sheen and I'm telling you my sister was institutionalized. I'm sharing that with you. I mean I feel a little insulted but I guess that you have a purpose."

NP: That story was so moving to me, the fact that you wanted to reach out but you left it too late. You read that, and it reminds you not to put things off.

NS: The great thing about writing is that if you can be honest, which I learned to do through journaling because no one is supposed to read your journals and your diaries - and if you're smart you don't write a book about them like I did. You just let it all hang out, so to speak, and then you learn from your own mistakes. Isn't that what we're here to do? To learn from our own mistakes. How exciting when somebody can write a book and show you their mistakes, and how they learned from it.

I'm spiritual. I don't believe in organized religion, that's my belief, but I was reading a book on Buddhism. What's really interesting is that Buddhists will tell you their part in failure every single time. It's so satisfying. You go, 'That's your part in why it didn't work.' Then they show you what did work, how to make it work. They're not holier than thou. That's what I like about the feeling of writing. Wow, I was speeding. I got pulled over. I got a ticket. I told the cop to fuck off. He threw me in jail. Note to self: Next time you're going to speed at least don't tell the cop to fuck off. I just think that's the kind of stuff people can go, 'You know, I think I'm not going to speed in my life.'

NP: In the chapters where you chronicle the breakdown of your relationship with Kat Von D…that Buddhist perspective definitely comes across.

NS: I think in the end it's so easy to pull the trigger, and so satisfying not [to]. Sometimes if you really wait long enough, they'll pull the trigger on themselves. That's one of my greatest joys in life is really people that have done the wrong thing, usually put their own toe in the trigger and you get to sit back and get no blood on your hands. It's like karma is a bitch, ain't it? Life has that way of working itself out if you let life work itself out.

I know I've put my own toe in the fucking trigger enough times because someone's got to pay the fucking devil at some point. Nothing's for free. So when you fuck up, you've got to take responsibility or you've got to pay the fucking devil. It's just a matter of time if I think I'm getting away with something. You never get away with anything. Ever. So that's kind of like my part in the book. It's saying, 'Hey, here's my part in the story.' On a million levels, whether it was my teenage years, my young adult years which are also adolescent, or, some of my years where I'm maturing and becoming a father and still trying to contain myself - you know - as much as possible.

I have a hard time walking a straight line sometimes. I'm the first one to tell you. I really feel good that I don't flip off the cops anymore when they drive past me. I used to do this thing when the cops would drive past me and I would be in my car and I would like flip them off. My friend would always go, 'Why do you do that?' I'd go, 'I don't know, I just feel like fuck them.' I don't do that anymore - but every now and then I do...

This Is Gonna Hurt was released by William Morrow (a division of HarperCollins) on April 12, 2011. A companion Sixx:A.M. album, which shares the book’s name, is imminent. Visit SixxAMMusic.com for more information.

"I like horror movies, that's all I really wanted to do," said filmmaker turned Millionaire Matchmaker Destin Pfaff when SuicideGirls first spoke to him just over a year ago. "I was so against getting sidetracked. And she sidetracked me - magically," he said of his reality TV... more

"I like horror movies, that's all I really wanted to do," said filmmaker turned Millionaire Matchmaker Destin Pfaff when SuicideGirls first spoke to him just over a year ago. "I was so against getting sidetracked. And she sidetracked me - magically," he said of his reality TV star boss, Patti Stanger. "I love matchmaking, and will always do it," Pfaff adds, however, 2011 is the year he gets his film career seriously back on track.

His first full-length feature film, Sushi Girl, has just gone into production. Co-written and produced by Pfaff, the title of the film refers to the female (played by newcomer Cortney Palm) that serves as the centerpiece of a reunion dinner for members of a gang who we're involved in an ill-fated diamond heist.

The cast features an eclectic and surprising mix of names, which includes Mark Hamill, a.k.a. Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, Noah Hathaway, who played Atreyu in Neverending Story, and Sonny Chiba, whose breakout role was that of Takuma Tsurugi in the martial arts classic, The Street Fighter.

Pfaff was kind enough to invite SuicideGirls onto the Universal Studios set to meet the cast and get a behind-the-scenes perspective on the action. But first we stopped by his trailer for a quick chat about how Sushi Girl came to be on Pfaff's menu.

SuicideGirls: Where did the idea for the script come from?

Destin Pfaff: It was actually kind of a drunken idea.

SG: The best ideas are.

DP: The best ideas come from Jack Daniels. It came from this idea that what if all these random gang bosses - we're talking an Italian mafia boss, a Crips or Bloods-type head gang member, and a head of Yakuza or something like that - all had dinner together.

SG: Right.

DP: Part of the idea of having this dinner together was to get rid of each other. That kind of morphed into [the idea that] if these garish bad guys were to eat dinner together, how would they eat dinner? Well, off of a naked woman. It's all about the aesthetics, it's all about presentation...

SG: And the machismo.

DP: Exactly. Then that just sparked a whole other idea which is like - if you're this kind of guy that's just staring at this attractive woman and not even thinking about what she's thinking about, not even thinking about her personality, not thinking about anything about her, just like, "Oh, look at that hot piece of ass I'm going to eat off of," what's under those layers and what kind of plan or idea does she have, and what does she think about you? That kind of morphed into this whole idea about Sushi Girl.

SG: So you wrote the script yourself.

DP: I wrote the script along with my writing partner Kern Saxton who's directing the feature.

SG: How long did it take from writing the script to being here today, which is day four of production?

DP: We wrote the script about a year and a half ago, two years ago. We had a false start in production a year ago, unfortunately the plug got pulled about a week before we started.

SG: Ouch.

DP: But we're better for it. We got a better cast. The real core cast of people that we really wanted - Tony Todd, Andy Mackenzie, Jimmy Duval, Cortney Palm - they stuck around through thick and thin for us, and then we were able to loop in some surprising actors like Sonny Chiba and Mark Hamill.

SG: Those are two huge and very interesting names to have. How did that come about?

DP: Sonny Chiba, the producers and I, Kern, Suren Seron and Neal Fischer [who collectively make up Assembly Line LLC], met through a friend of ours named Tommy. Sonny had come to talk to us about some film projects and about doing some stuff together. We mentioned Sushi Girl, and that this could be our tip toe into bigger and better things. He read the script and he loved it, loved the idea of it, and we flew him all the way from Japan to come do our movie. Similar story with Mark Hamill. A friend of a friend, a couple of agent conversations and enough phone calls to make anyone go crazy until he actually read the script. Once he did, we had him...

Noah Hathaway's story is my favorite because we were looking for one of our leads, Fish, and completely randomly, one of our producers, Suren, Facebooked Noah and just said, "Hey we're big fans. What are you doing? You should really be in our movie," not even thinking we'd have a response. The next day we had a response, sent him a script, talked to him via Skype. He's in Amsterdam, he's a tattoo artist now. It just happened to be that that email hit him the day after he told his wife he wanted to come back to LA to start acting again, to come to pilot season and all that. It was just serendipitous. He read for us. We did an audition via Skype from Amsterdam, and he killed it. He nailed it. He flew in the next day.

SG: After Sonny signed on to do the movie, did you change any of the script to allow for some martial arts scenes?

DP: I can't give too much away about the Sonny character because it's kind of a mysterious, very dangerous sushi chef that he's playing. But once we landed Sonny Chiba, there were definitely some line changes and movement changes - we wanted to use him so badly, any way we could.

SG: Tell me about your sushi girl.

DP: Cortney Palm is our sushi girl. She is an up and coming young actress. This is her first major role in a motion picture, and she's spectacular.

SG: How did you find this amazing location?

DP: Fung Lum's is a character in itself. It's a dilapidated Chinese restaurant on the Universal Studios lot. My understanding was it was like this big deal thing in the late '80s or early '90s...and then some bad things were found out about it. You can look on the internet. Let's just say the owners weren't the most honest of people. So they shut it down, and it was on the Universal lot so Universal took ownership of it. They started filming a couple of movies here, movies like Balls of Fury and 80 billion episodes of CSI, and now us.

SG: Have you actually got a sushi chef onsite?

DP: We do. He's here today too. He is awesome!

SG: What's the fish line in the budget?

DP: The fish line is gold fish that we can go to the nearest store to get and hopefully nobody knows the difference...Don't tell anybody, we just make it look really pretty. It's amazing what you can do with airbrushing.

SG: This is day four of the shoot. After nearly a month spent working with sushi, are you going to actually want to sit down and eat the stuff ever again?

DP: Anytime I can eat sushi off of a naked girl, I will.

SG: Sonny's the sushi chef in your movie. What was your all time favorite film of his?

DP: I'll be old school and say Street Fighter, hands down. I've watched Street Fighter probably more than I've watched any other film that I own. I love Street Fighter. Sonny Chiba is, as Quentin Tarentino says, "Not a good guy, not a bad guy, but a bad ass motherfucker." And he is. In real life, he really is. There's also a little known Sonny Chiba movie called Bear Fighter where he actually fights a bear. That's another fun one.

SG: Did you ever do martial arts?

DP: When I was kid I took Taekwondo. I sucked. I'm the worst fighter ever.

SG: So this is why you have to write and direct martial arts movies.

DP: I have to live vicariously through all of my actors.

SG: If you're using your movies to live your life vicariously, what would the next movie be?

DP: It would be a lesbian astronaut movie.

SG: The things that you could do with lesbians in zero gravity is kind of awesome.

DP: I'm telling you..Sushi Girl 2 in space with lesbians.

SG: You have to start work on that script immediately.

DP: Half way through already.

For the latest on Sushi Girl visit the film's website and twitter.

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award for... more

Duncan Jones's debut feature Moon (2009), a retro-1970s science-fiction/art-house epic that ingeniously managed to hit a lot of the same notes that Kubrick and Tarkovskiy hit despite a miniscule budget and having only one principal character (played by Sam Rockwell), nabbed Jones a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer and dumptrucks full of other nominations and accolades.

His most recent feature, Source Code (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) could be pitched as "Die Hard by way of Quantum Leap served in eight-minute repeating chunks of Groundhog Day."

SuicideGirls talked to Jones (who is the son of Rock god David Bowie) in Boston in a luxury hotel that used to be a prison, while Jones was getting texts from Gyllenhaal asking how things were going and two of the three devices brought to record the interview shit the bed. Warning, minor spoilers follow.

Michael Marano: Without giving away too much of their plots, both Moon and Source Code deal with issues with identity in enclosed environments, which are artificial constructs. Is modern society by definition a construct? And how do you find authenticity, which is sort of the quest of both these main characters [in Moon and Source Code], in these artificial constructs?

Duncan Jones: I would say that you're correct, that both these films do deal with that. I would say that it wasn't a conscious choice on my half to be doing two films that covered the same ground in that way--or, at least, different aspects of the same ground. When I read the Source Code script, because it was something that had been written by Ben Ripley, it was introduced to me by Jake Gyllenhaal. I actually had a chance to meet with [Gyllenhaal] and I very much wanted to work with him. I'm a huge fan of his. And he suggested that I read this script, Source Code. He was a big fan of Moon... and I think he was the one who saw the similarities, more than I was. I think he saw Moon, read Source Code, and said, 'I think that would work well together!' When I read the script, I was immediately getting excited about the big differences [between the two movies]. The fact that it was a pace-y, sort of Hollywood-feeling film where I thought there were some interesting ideas in it. There was a little touch of romance, a little touch of mystery. I would get to work with more than one actor! After Moon, this was a big move for me! And then it wasn't until afterwards that I started to notice the similarities. So I think that on a subconscious level, the question of identity in particular was something which was appealing to me.

MM: Both Moon and Source Code have protagonists who are facing, in the classic sense of the word, glamours--the appearance of a world or reality that is based on illusion.

DJ: I haven't heard that word in a long time! That's kind of cool.

MM: You came of age in the 1970s, in the UK, and that was a world of glamour and science fiction. It was a world in which women with purple wigs could be on Gerry Anderson's Moon Base [on the ultra-rad-mod-fashioned SF show UFO]. It was also sort of the Golden Age of Doctor Who. Does this inform your storytelling? This collision of glamour and hard science-fictional constructs?

DJ: I don't know. It's true that I was born in London in the early 1970s, but we traveled so much. I have a very eclectic taste in movies and literature, not only because of the fact that I was traveling so much. But [because] my father's influences, when I was growing up, were pretty varied. And what made him enthusiastic, obviously, trickled down to me. I used to read every evening. That was sort of a house rule. I had to read an hour or two a night. And science fiction in particular was one of the things that was kind of my candy. If I was finding it difficult to get my nose--or brain, rather--into a 'For Kids' biography of Abraham Lincoln, he'd hand me George Orwell's Animal Farm or something to keep me interested and keep me reading. That sort of was my introduction to science fiction.

MM: Source Code is, in some respects, a disaster movie. And yet the very nature of this disaster movie, which deals with identity, demands very strong subjective camera and sound work. How do you balance disaster-movie spectacle and intimacy, when you've got a story like this?

DJ: Well, reading the Source Code script for the second time--the first time I read it just as the audience--reading it for the second time, I was trying to do it with my director's hat on. And that's where you really see where the problems lie, or at least the puzzles that need to be solved. One of which is: we're going to be revisiting an event multiple times. Visually, I wanted to keep that stimulating and interesting and keep the audience engaged and feeling by the end of the film that they've seen something fresh the whole way through, and not been subjected to a repeated event. But at the same time, the whole story--well, as much as possible--is told from the perspective of Colter Stevens, our main protagonist, Jake's character. And you need to find a way to move the camera in such a way that it always, as much as possible, his perspective on things. I approached it fairly strategically. I broke down those elements where there is a repetition, and tried to ensure that each time there is visual variety. Not just in the camera positions, but also if there was enough of a change in the narrative or if new characters were being introduced, that we could move events around the environment, the train that he is on, so that by the end of it, it doesn't feel like you've actually seen the same thing twice.

MM: There are two main dramatic arcs in Source Code. You have the Jake/Michelle arc [taking place repeatedly on the train] and you have the Jake/Vera arc [taking place at the same time in a different context]. These are essentially two one-act plays that are going on simultaneously. How did you structure these two dramatic arcs? These two intense dramas happening parallel to each other?

DJ: I think it's fair to say there were unique acting challenges for all of our principal actors in this film. Jake has the obvious one. He's a character who finds himself at the center of a mystery with revelations occurring throughout, that really allow him to react in dramatically different ways throughout the whole film. So, as an actor I think he has the opportunity to do many things. But there is a lot of freedom there. For Michelle Monaghan, who is a character who finds herself on a train repeating the same event, she has an arc which has to last over the course of the entire film, and she has to repeat [the same] eight minutes, and generate parts of an arc each time. So that every time, she's starting in the same place. And each time, there's a different ending. And if you look over the course of the film, there's an evolution from the start to the end of the film. That's particularly difficult. One of the things we were able to do [for her] was shoot the film in order, to try to help her. Otherwise, it would have been pure chaos. For Vera Farmiga's character, it was a very different problem. She has an arc, but she also has to perform inside a confined environment. A lot of her performance is being recorded by a camera which is sitting right in front of her [character]. And she has to be able to communicate and get across her state of mind with small nuances, knowing that the camera for most of the time is capturing her in a medium close-up.

MM: Source Code deals with quantum physics and different universes, and I couldn't help but think of a quote from Philip K. Dick which says all existences, all possible universes, are like an infinite number of suits lined up in an infinite closet. And God wears different universes and realities according to His different moods. Looking at your take on alternate realities and universes in Source Code, where does quantum physics end and philosophy begin? Or, did you just want to make a fun movie?

DJ: Well, that's an interesting question. Because Ben Ripley has written a script which I think is structurally incredibly sound. [A]s a fan of science fiction, I see that genre being split between hard scifi and soft scifi, with hard scifi being stories where you can see how the world we live in today can by a process of evolution or technological innovation wind up where the science fiction is. And soft science fiction is where you're talking about dragons and magic and crazy stuff. Now, time travel and parallel realities, for me, feels like it's in the gray area between [hard and soft scifi]. And although I think the logic is consistent and makes sense in its own right, it's difficult to know how we go from the reality we're in now, to one where we have the technology to actually be able to access that power. So, I wanted to set up some very clean rules at the start of this film that explain what it is that we're investigating, [and to] through lightening the tone of the movie, and injecting it with some humor, ask the audience to just take a leap of faith.

MM: And speaking of quantum issues, and quantum leaps--

DJ: I can see where you're going with this! [Laughs]

MM: There is a [vocal] cameo from a certain, well, it's [Quantum Leap star] Scott Bakula! Can we say it?

DJ: Yes! It is the Scott Bakula!

MM: Can we say it?

DJ: Absolutely!

MM: Do you want to address this bit of vocal casting?

DJ: It's kind of fun! And for people who read this and see the film, and know ahead of time, I'm sorry. But at the same time I think, hopefully, what is particularly effective about this cameo is that it's at a moment where I think the audience will be emotionally invested to the point that they will just buy into what's going on. And that suddenly, for those of you who are fans of Quantum Leap, you will realize that the voice is Scott Bakula, which makes a lot of sense, when you've seen the film. And that's one of those little in-jokes. For me, it's kind of fun, and I am a scifi fan, and when I was reading the script, there was a particular moment at the start of the film, where Jake sees himself in the mirror and sees someone other than who he thinks he is. And I was just thinking, 'Ah! It's Quantum Leap!' [Laughs] And to have that opportunity to make a little tip of the hat the show was important.

MM: If I could just jump back to Philip K. Dick and written science fiction. Source Code, in terms of theme and outlook, has more in common with a lot of Philip K. Dick, than do a lot of recent movies that are nominally adaptations of his work. [In Source Code] you've got the fragility of reality, scary government agencies working behind the scenes pulling the levers of reality, you have the question of 'What is human and what is construct?' Were you consciously referring to Philip K. Dick?

DJ: A great deal of my imagination stems from my love of Philip K. Dick, and also J.G. Ballard, another science fiction author I love. So, absolutely! Certainly not in a conscious way. But he was formative in my appreciation of scifi.

MM: Source Code deals with an act of terrorism on US soil. Did you feel a need to be sensitive with regard to possible raw nerves while making this movie, so that you could make it a fun ride?

DJ: There were early drafts of the script that were set in New York. And I know that the producers felt it was important to move it from New York for obvious sensitivity reasons. They were looking for a city that would work. And Chicago, being a location everyone on the East and West Coasts can relate to, seemed like a sensible idea. I think that Chicago is a great city anyway. It's very multi-cultural. And for me, in particular, there is this sculpture in [Chicago's] Millennium Park by Anish Kapoor called The Cloud Gate, which really lent itself to some of the subtexts of the story. And I wanted to use it. Fortunately, Mr. Kapoor gave us permission and we were able to. So there was extra value added by being based in Chicago.

Source Code in theaters now