It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky... more

It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot off Third Street in L.A.’s Fairfax District, an 11-year-old Marc Canter caught his fellow classmate, Saul Hudson (aka, an 11-year-old Slash of Guns N’ Roses), suspiciously eyeballing Canter's mini-bike parked outside. “In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know.” Slash laughs. “It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how [Marc and I] met and we’ve been friends ever since.”

By high school, Slash was into guitars and Marc was taking pictures of local rock bands. With a few candid photographs of his best friend, Marc Canter unknowingly began to document the rise of the greatest rock band of its time: Guns N’ Roses. Over twenty years in the making, Marc’s new book, Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction, is a collection of exclusive interviews, rare photographs and original memorabilia including show flyers, magazine articles, ticket stubs, set lists, and hand-scrawled song lyrics. From the band’s first gig at the Troubadour in 1985, to signing with Geffen Records, to being dubbed “The Most Dangerous Band in the World,” Marc Canter was there, up close and personal, camera and tape recorder in hand. The result is a comprehensive account of the band’s early days, as well as a portrait of Marc and Slash’s friendship, still strong to this day.

“My goal here,” Marc says, “is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

SuicideGirls met up with both Slash and Marc Canter at legendary rock and roll hangout Canter’s Deli, in the heart of Hollywood, to chat about Reckless Road and the stories behind the photographs. Even more, we got them both in front of the camera for their first-ever, joint video exclusive.

Reckless Road is in stores and available online now.

Watch Part One and Part Two of the video interviews.


Erin Broadley: So, Reckless Road is a fascinating book.

Slash: It’s great. It’s probably the best rock and roll coffee table book I’ve ever seen.

EB: Slash, the story goes that in 1976 you and Marc became friends when you tried to steal his bike?

Slash: [Laughs] Was it 1976? I guess, yeah [laughs]. I didn’t actually steal it; I was checking it out. It was a mini-bike, and it was outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Third Street… he was inside and saw this kid suspiciously checking out his bike and decided to intervene before something happened.

EB: [Laughs] Little kids protect their bikes, man. It’s their livelihood. It’s all they’ve got.

Marc Canter: They call it a mini-bike but really it’s a motorbike. We went to Third Street School but I didn’t know his name; I just knew his face. So I had this motorbike and was parked at KFC and I’m in there, buying whatever, he was walking home, saw it and was thinking about stealing it. He looked inside to see who it might belong to or if anyone was looking and then he saw me and thought, “Oh, I know him from school.” So he went in and instead of stealing it, asked if he could ride it. We became friends from that point on and pretty much never looked back.

Slash: In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know. It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how we met and we’ve been friends ever since. After Marc and I hooked up in fifth grade, we were friends for a while though junior high school. Then somewhere in junior high school I took off and moved into deeper East Hollywood and I didn’t see him for a while. At some point in high school we reconnected and he’d turned into this mega rock fan, which I had too, but he was really serious. He had his cameras and shit and he would sneak them into concerts… his favorite band was Aerosmith. He used to buy all kind of photos. Aerosmith was one of the major bands that I was a fan of when I started playing guitar and they definitely influenced what direction I went. So we had that new thing in common. I had started playing guitar at that point, and he just started taking pictures of everything because that was his way, you know [laughs]. It’s funny because I look at the book now and all those pictures that he was taking all the time, as far as I was concerned he was just casually taking pictures of everything. I didn’t expect it to be something later on. I never would have imagined that him being around all the time just taking 35 mm pictures would amount to this documentation later.

EB: Right. There’s a part in the book where, Slash, you say that the first thing you did as soon as you could put three chords together was start a band. And Adam Greenberg said it was almost like going to a rock and roll school. What was the creative climate like in L.A. as teens, learning how to play music?

Slash: I was pretty much an outcast in school and as a musician I was an outcast… When I first picked guitar up it was during the summer time so I spent that summer learning how to play and I think by the next semester I started looking for musicians. At that time, Van Halen had come out so there were a lot of musicians in junior high. That’s where it all started. I met Ron Schneider and Adam Greenberg and that was probably the third throw-together band I had, but it was the first one that started playing keg parties and, you know, terrorizing people’s houses...

EB: Playing the senior citizens’ center.

Slash: Yeah, [laughs] all these bar mitzvahs. It was a cover band that could never find a singer. Which is, like, the story of my life. Still is, to this day.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: It wasn’t a big, heavy-duty, rock and roll scene in high school. There were a few musicians I was friends with. I went to four high schools, so every one I went to had its little clique of Eddie Van Halen wannabes [laughs]. Marc was hanging out, keeping tabs on the whole thing. Marc was also the first guy, when Guns N’ Roses first started, before Guns N’ Roses was even a nightmare, Marc was probably the only person interested in what I was really doing, [laughs] for the most part.

EB: Duff said that Marc was a pillar of stability for the band. How so?

Slash: When Duff and I first met, we met at Canter’s Deli. I used to work there and Marc would always help me out. I always had a job but if I was in between jobs, I would work at Canter’s. He was financially stable and I wasn’t [laughs]… he was just a really good, loyal friend. I still, to this day, don’t have many loyal friends. So when Guns first started, he instantly took the job of marketing and doing all the promotion. We all did it but I was real fanatic about it, I never slept. [Laughs]

EBidn’t you get fired from the Fairfax newsstand for conducting band business on their hours?

Slash: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s where I used to sell tickets… to customers at work. People would come in and I’d sell Troubadour tickets.

MC: I used to feed the band. Not three meals a day, not every day, but when they were hungry they knew they could come to me and I could get them a pastrami sandwich or whatever was needed. And why not? They’re my friends. I would drive them places, I had a car, I had gas -- they didn’t. I’d buy them guitar strings, whatever they needed, little things… I was paying for some of the band magazine ads that were coming out. First we started with quarter page ads and they were like $288. It wasn’t a big deal. Then after two of those, we went to full page and it got to be a little bit more expensive. But, at that time, I knew that would work for the record company people, like, “What’s going on here? This band keeps selling out these Troubadour gigs and they’ve got full-page ads. It’s not just some flunky, fly by night band.”

Then they found someone to help them with the demo tape but that person gave out in the middle and didn’t put any more money in, so they needed a couple hundred bucks to get it out of hock. I did what I could. I didn’t do everything but I helped because they’d do the same for me if they were in my situation. I lived at home, I had a good job, I didn’t have any expenses and pretty much, if they did work, they had to support themselves. I always knew Slash would make it as a guitar player, even if he was just a guitar teacher, because there was such a talent there. His playing was very seductive; you’d feel goose bumps when he’d play because he just hit those certain notes.

EB: Slash, when you first hooked up with Axl, Marc wrote that you guys had an amazing chemistry and I think that this really comes through in a lot of these early photographs. What were those early days like when you and Axl first entered into each other’s lives?

Slash: When we first hooked up, it was pretty uneventful, the first time we met actually I answered an ad that Izzy and Axl had in the paper looking for a guitar player. I went down there to where they were staying, which were some little guest room off of a house above Sunset. It was real dark, it was one room, they had like a bed that took up 75 percent of it, a TV that took up another 10 percent, and there was like 15 percent walking space.

EB: [Laughs] Just a path.

Slash: [Laughs] Right. Axl was on the phone and Izzy was the one I did all the talking with. I’d already met Izzy because he had come into my music store looking for copies of this picture of Aerosmith that I drew for Marc. He showed up at my work one day… this little, scraggy Johnny Thunders comes walking in and he’s looking for Saul Hudson, right? That’s how we met and he played me a tape of his band later that night. It was really ratty, with a tiny voice in the background screaming at the top of its lungs. But it was in key so I was interested. He told me the name of the band was Hollywood Rose… so later on I answer this ad and it turns out to be Izzy and this guy Axl. The whole time I was there, Axl never got off the phone. Axl was in Mark Twain mode, Twain wreck, which was when he starts talking, ‘cause he won’t stop.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: That was our first meeting. Nothing came of out of that. Nothing happened. Then I was another time when I was actually seeing my dad. I didn’t see my dad that often but one time we hung out and we went down to Harry’s Barbeque and I looked over and there was Axl and he was talking to this chick and, again, he was doing all the talking and she was just sitting there. That went on for the whole time I was there [laughs] so I didn’t approach him and that was that. At some point we all hooked up when Axl approached me about playing with Hollywood Rose, which I thought was a pretty good idea at the time. Axl picked me but never talked to Izzy about it so I came along one day not knowing that there was any of this drama going on. I walk into this rehearsal studio called the Fortress in Hollywood… this grungy little room and Izzy was there and, because Axl had made this decision without Izzy’s input, Izzy quit. So Steve Darrow and Steve Adler came in and we put a band together with the four of us. That was the beginning of me and Axl’s real relationship… it started with the Hollywood Rose band.

EB: So it was chemistry but was it a volatile chemistry?

Slash: Well, yeah, that’s what I’m getting at [laughs].

EB:Some people think volatile chemistry fuels creativity.

Slash: I don’t think volatility fuels anything. I don’t agree with people who think you need that controversy to make music. It’s not really conducive to writing songs. If you have chemistry, you don’t need all that other shit [laughs]. Anyhow, but it started off cool and I liked Axl… he came and stayed at my house but then the yin and yang of Axl’s personality started to present itself. One minute he was really, really cool and somebody that I liked a lot. You could spend almost two days with him like that. Then the smallest little thing would turn around and change his personality completely. I’m pretty even keeled; nothing really phases me. I’m probably like that to the extent that some people don’t understand how I can be so fuckin’ blasé about things [laughs]. So we had a real contrast going on, but the music was cool. When we had a good time, we had a great fucking time. But when it was bad, I couldn’t understand the origins of some of these issues and why they would be blown out of proportion to the extent that they were. To him, it meant everything. But to me, I could just never understand it.

So this band lasted for a little while. We did a bunch of gigs. Marc documented those gigs. They’re in the book. Finally, we had this one gig where Axl got into a fight with somebody in the front row at the Troubadour and at that point I’d already been through another thing with him jumping out of my car one night. It was just tedious. The good times were good but the tedious times were really trying. So at this particular gig, when he got into this fight with this guy, and the gig wasn’t going as well, I thought it was pointless. After that show I was like, “You know what? I don’t have time for this.” [Laughs] So I was in a couple bands during that period. I was very ambitious but, at the same time, there was a limit to what I would and wouldn’t do to get by in this business. I wouldn’t do a lot of conformist sell out kind of stuff.

When Duff came into town, we met at Canter’s. Steven, my girlfriend, Steven’s girlfriend, a bottle of vodka… Duff comes in and we went up to the men’s room and hung out up there and drank the bottle of vodka and formed a little unity. We wanted to start a band with the three of us but, once again, we couldn’t find a singer. That went on for like a month and finally that split up and Duff had, ironically enough, just moved into this cheap little apartment right across the street from Izzy’s apartment. So those guys met and the next thing you know, Duff ended up joining their band, which I think had become Guns N’ Roses at that point. They had Duff, Izzy, Axl, Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner who was the other drummer from L.A. Guns. I was working at Tower Video at the time and Axl and I sort of had a certain amount of animosity going on which was slowly but surely fading. Axl came into my work one day and goes, “Do you want to play with me and Izzy?” As much as I was really unsure about dealing with Axl again, I really liked Izzy and I liked Duff, obviously, so it seemed like maybe it’d be a cool idea. I went and jammed with Izzy one night and he had the song called “Don’t Cry” and we put the guitars together and that’s really what started it.

At that point Duff came in with this idea of doing a Pacific Coast tour and going up to Seattle. He put all the gigs together from his experiences with a punk rock band up there in the Pacific North West and so I said, “Sure, let’s do this.” Rob Gardner chickened out; he didn’t want to take this perilous, fucking road trip with no real exact future in it. So we called Steve Adler and he came down and we rehearsed one night and that was basically it. We set off on that tour and our car broke down, fuckin’ 100 miles out of L.A. so we ended up hitchhiking all the way to Seattle. That’s really what cemented the band. The chemistry just on a human level between the five of us… just as guys who stick to their guns with what it is they want to do. That trip really had a lot to do with it.

EB: There’s something special to these Guns N’ Roses photographs. Band photos today are so heavily retouched and photoshopped together. There’s something about how raw these photos are that really captures the band’s gritty nature. Like the Reckless Road cover…

MC: The cover is them, the day they came back from their “Hell Tour” in Seattle. They had a gig booked at the Troubadour on June 6, 1985… it was on a Thursday night, and there was something really special there. But it wasn’t enough to solidify the band. Then a day or two after that, they went on that Seattle tour. The car broke down, they ate onions in the field, they hitchhiked…

EB:That’s where the real camaraderie formed.

MC: They had each other’s backs after that. When they came back to Los Angeles they wanted to do a photo shoot to make flyers for the next gigs that they had. They booked a bunch of gigs and said, “Let’s go fuck up L.A. We can do it now. If we lived through this we can do anything.” So if you look at the look on their face, they’re a gang. This is a gang now.

EB: They had their road warrior experience and now they’re ready to take it to the streets.

MC: Yeah. If you fucked with one of them, the other one would jump on your back and kill you. It was like they were a gang. And they started writing songs; each gig they came up with a new song, pretty much. And it was a great song. Just boom, after boom... There were no what they’d call “dead songs”... No fillers or throw always; every song they wrote was perfect. In fact the leads for the songs, the first time they ever played them are the same leads that you hear on the record. It was pretty much self-produced in that way because it worked. There was something special there. But anyway, back to the photos, yeah, my friend Jack Lue started taking pictures before I did and he would sneak his camera into concerts. Jack always did that and what happened was, to be honest with you, Eddie Van Halen was going to play at the Roxy and Jack Lue couldn’t make that gig so he gave me his camera, showed me how to use it and said, “Take pictures.” So I took pictures and I had fun and when I got them back, I was freaked like, “Whoa, these are really cool.”

From that point on I started taking pictures at every concert we went to. That was in 1982. Right around that same time was when Slash was playing gigs everywhere. And now that I knew how to shoot, and I saw that it works, of course I was going to shoot him. I was already tape-recording his shows. Now I had a tape, and photos and the flyer. So I just kind of kept everything because I saw something that was special. If you don’t tape-record it then it’s just gone. After awhile we met Axl and then it was like, wait a minute, now there’s not only Axl, there’s Izzy, Steven and Duff… there’s like five Jedis working together. It wasn’t just Slash anymore. Now it was just like all of them together made a chemistry. Now, I was not only documenting Slash, but I was documenting...

EB: All these other big personalities as well.

MC: Right. And it just became so much fun. I used to get butterflies in my stomach before the gigs. I wasn’t going to be surprised; I knew what I was going to see. But it was just so exciting. So here I am taking pictures and I'm hearing “Rocket Queen” for the first time. It’s one thing when you do some covers and a couple of originals but all of a sudden you start writing these new ones that are just really, really, good songs. You’re taking pictures going, “What am I hearing?” Then you get home and you listen to the tape and you go to that song and you hear it two or three times and you’re like, “Wow, we have a Led Zeppelin here.” They could do no wrong. It all worked! The vocals, the melodies, the lead guitar, the drums – it was the first attempt and it didn’t even need tweaking, it was there. Every now and then you’d hear a song for the first time and Axl, the next time they’d play it, would change a couple lyrics, or some of the lyrics weren’t completed. The first time they played “My Michele” there were some verses simply missing. They went without vocals. But, other than that, pretty much, they knew what they wanted.

EB: In Reckless Road, Marc, you write, “My goal here is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

MC: It’s interesting, I’ve met some people that when I told them that I did this book they take a look at it and they’re the least likely Guns N’ Roses fans just because they’re into different kinds of music like jazz or whatever, but they respect what’s there. They’re glad it’s there to be documented and to watch history in the making. It’s the making of one of the greatest records ever made. I’ve met a couple people that really, not that they hate the band, they just don’t like that kind of music at all. But they can appreciate that it’s been documented. Like at Canter’s, a lot of the employees got books and they have never even heard of Guns N’ Roses. Some of the older waitresses, they’re 65-years-old and how could they possibly know what this is? But because I'm involved in it, they’re interested in it. I have a book all of a sudden and they want to read it. So they take it home to read it and they’re sucked into it and can’t stop.

EB: The band is as seductive in this book as the band was on stage. The book also states, “Launching a successful rock band in the ‘80s required three ingredients: a dream, some talent, and die hard ambition.” Were those really the three most important things back then?

Slash: Well, because of the climate of what was going on in Hollywood at the time, which was really excessive, commercial glam-metal kind of deal, everybody was getting signed. Motley Crue had already gotten big and famous and Ratt was coming out and then there were all these fuckin’ offshoots of that, cruising up and down Sunset Boulevard. We were sort of like the ugly ducklings of that whole thing. We didn’t fit in with any of it. We were the black sheep and we enjoyed that; we loved the fact that we were the scary band out of the bunch. We hated the rest of them and we provided a kind of entertainment that was very seedy. If you asked us if we were extremely talented, [laughs] I don’t think we would have looked at it that way. Really, when it comes down to it, I’d say blind ambition, desire, and the integrity and the passion for the music was probably the most important thing. There was a lot of integrity in the band and there was a lot of really focused passion for what every individual did… everything about the songs was really driven from the heart.

Looking back, there was definitely something unique going on which turned out to be a lot bigger than what most of our peers were doing. We were a gang of five that was a force to contend with. We were a 24/7 experience. We lived with each other and were together all that time. Everything we went through, which was a lot, we did together and that’s what strengthened that bond. It was really important as to what the band sounded like… it was a collaborative effort, every single song. Then we became very successful at that time but we were this vagabond bunch of drunken gypsies that sort of stuck together. But we were still pretty naïve really in a lot of ways.

MC: You want to hear the funny part to that? Jason Porath actually wrote that part in the book. And, in the manuscript I have, the third thing was “Slash” [laughs]. He actually wrote the word “Slash” but he changed it on his own before the book came out because he though it was a little bit too much Slash serving. Plus, the rest of the band had plenty of talent so he changed the word to "talent". The truth is, Izzy would be the backbone of a lot of those songs but Slash tweaked those songs… if Slash weren’t there, who knows? Slash would put the funky punch into it. Like “My Michele,” he added those four little jerky parts to change the song. Plus, you already know what he could do in the studio with his leads. Even if he had nothing to do with writing the song -- like “November Rain,” that was Axl’s song -- Slash comes in and puts the leads in that just rip you to pieces. So, he wasn’t far off when he put “and Slash.” It’s a good ingredient to have in the mix [laughs]. Slash will always call me after a gig and I’ll always tell him what I thought of it, good or bad, and he always gets exactly the truth out of me. He’s always very modest about it. Whenever I say, “That was great, that was great,” he’s very modest about what his talent is. He never wants to reveal how good he really is. After doing the Use Your Illusion tour for two years and playing big stadiums, there’s a certain amount that goes to your head that puts you in a rock star mode and on a pedestal. But as far as the actual talent, they were always modest about it.

EB: Another part in Reckless Road states, “The eventual merging of the Appetite lineup of Guns N’ Roses can be more easily attributed to chaos theory than a straight forward chronology.”

MC: Yeah, that’s pretty much the way it went down. There was no loyalty. Like Vicky Hamilton says in the book, they were trying on band members like clothes. You hung around people that were into the same music you liked and you jammed together. You found a garage and you jammed in that garage and if it worked, great. If it didn’t work then you moved on. Eventually, these five musicians found each other and, on top of finding each other, they went on that little road trip to Seattle which made them a little bit closer. At the same time, they knew they were the best at what they did. And the music industry sucked; there was nothing going on. Motley Crue was really the only band left and that wasn’t enough to make a whole scene. There was really nothing going on and Guns N’ Roses just came by and changed everything, putting the f-word on the record… it was really ballsy [at the time] and a lot of it has to be credited to Tom Zutaut for allowing them to do that because Axl was at the point where he was going to change the lyrics. Tom said, “No, leave it alone.”

MTV had a lot to do with it. The band had sold like 200,000 records underground and it was kinda dying out and MTV wouldn’t play the video. David Geffen pulled a favor and called in an executive at MTV and they said, “No, we can’t do it because we don’t want to lose our commercials because they’re known as drug addicts and they look like they’re going to rape my daughter” … that kind of thing. They didn’t want bad press out of it. So, they played the video on a Sunday night at like six in the morning Eastern Time and the switchboard blew up. Then, that next week, they got put right into Top 10 rotation for “Welcome to the Jungle” and from that point on they started selling records, like 200,000 a week. So, they went a whole year before the record even went to number one. Appetite For Destruction wasn’t just one song; the whole record is good. That’s why it’s going to stand the test of time. And another reason why is because its so raw and natural. And another reason why is because they were living on the streets. It’s the fact that you’re getting the raw energy and it wasn’t tampered with. What they wrote was ready to go.

EB: On a personal note about your friendship, it says in the book that in 1985 Axl asked Marc to talk to you, Slash, about not getting drunk before a show. Was it unfair of him to put Marc in that kind of position as a mediator?

Slash: Yeah…

EB: Or was he just the only one you would listen to?

Slash: Well, no I think there’s been many times that Axl has reached out to different people like my mom or my dad or girlfriend or Marc or something like that. But nobody wants to try and tell me what to do so it is very uncomfortable.

EB: No one wants to be the middleman between you and Axl!

Slash: Yeah, it’s never worked. If somebody like Marc or my dad actually does approach me just to sort of follow through with carrying the message, it’s done very delicately [laughs]. It’s not really effective [laughs]. That’s funny though.

EB: What do you think has enabled you and Marc to stay friends after so many years of chaos?

Slash: Well, because the chaos never had anything to do with Marc so our relationship has always been intact. He never really had to deal with the out of control me… he never put himself in that place. He never was judgmental; he was real objective. That always made me feel like he never crossed that line with me and so I’ve always had a respect for him and I would never rub him the wrong way because of that mutual respect. I never did anything to take advantage of him or make him overly uncomfortable or expose him to the darker stuff that was going on behind the scenes. He was never forced to be around that. So we’ve always had that mutual thing for each other.

EB: That’s once in a lifetime, man.

Slash: Yeah. And to this day, if he calls me, he can ask me for anything. He called me this morning all freaking out trying to get all this stuff done. I said, “Marc, don’t worry about it.” [Laughs]

MC: The thing about me, any friends that I’ve made over the years, I still have. If they need something, I’m there. And if I need something, they’re there. I’m a good person to be friends with because I'm an easygoing guy. Slash has always kept in touch. The friendship has always been there.

Video Exclusive Part One:

Video Exclusive Part Two:



Go to RecklessRoad.com for more information.

(image) by Blogbot (image) [Moxi Suicide in Marquee] This Sunday (April 29) on SuicideGirls Radio, host Nicole Powers (SG's Managing Editor) will be joined live in-studio by Moxi Suicide. Moxi has modeled for SuicideGirls since 2008. She is a self proclaimed sexpert and is currently developing her... more

by Blogbot


[Moxi Suicide in Marquee]

This Sunday (April 29) on SuicideGirls Radio, host Nicole Powers (SG's Managing Editor) will be joined live in-studio by Moxi Suicide.

Moxi has modeled for SuicideGirls since 2008. She is a self proclaimed sexpert and is currently developing her own vibrator line. A CSULA Graduate, she is a passionate advocate for gay rights and women's sexual exploration. She enjoys seeing live music in her spare time. Follow her at @sgmoxi.

Tune in to the world's leading naked radio show for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don't let yo’ momma listen in!

Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight at: suicidegirlsradio.indie1031.com/

And follow @SG_Radio on Twitter because we like cyberstalkers.

Since the Girls board is overload, I've decided to start this topic here. Just to point out Synnove's hot new profile pic: (image) so hot!

Some SuicideGirls have been modeling for the site for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years. We thought it would be fun to show you a look back and some of the SuicideGirls throughout the years. This week we bring you Vice! Vice has been a SuicideGirl since 2008. She has 16 photo sets and she dons the hottest... more

Some SuicideGirls have been modeling for the site for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years. We thought it would be fun to show you a look back and some of the SuicideGirls throughout the years.

This week we bring you Vice!

Vice has been a SuicideGirl since 2008. She has 16 photo sets and she dons the hottest lingerie and goes from red to blonde. Enjoy this sexy look back at the stunning Vice...

From her first photoset Espionage shot in 2008 by Ron Spomer:





Vice says "meow" in her photo set Little Kitties shot in 2008 by Ron Spomer:





Looking stunning in a bra and panties in her photoset Rapturous shot in 2008 by Lorelei:





Vice is Undeniable in nude fishnets in her photoset from 2008:





Vice's beauty seen through Zoetica's camera lens in Patchwork makes for a beautiful, timeless set from 2008:





Dot and Vice get close and personal in their photo set Void Of Course shot in 2009 by Sean:





Just when you think Vice can't get any hotter, she comes back at you with the photo set So What shot in 2009 by Alissa:







She is a Redheaded Devilwoman in her photo set from 2009 shot by Shazzy and we love her for it:







Vice is sexy and stylish in her photo set Spread shot in 2009 by Cherry:







Dripping gold and swimming in the blue light, Vice doesn't disappoint in her photo set The Colour of Living shot in 2009 by Cherry:





Vice gets playful with Ajilee in Camera Play shot in 2010 by Alissa:






Sex and cigarettes is what her photo set Trash shot in 2010 is all about:





Vice Returns with platinum hair in her photo set from 2011 shot by Hildreth:





One thing we know for sure is Vice's amazing bum from her photoset Historic shot in 2012 by Alissa will be going down in history:







Hope you enjoyed the lovely look back at the stunning SuicideGirl Vice! Be sure to keep an eye out for a new set coming soon to member review!

Become a member TODAY for only $4 a month (if you sign up for a year) to see all 16 nude pin-up photo sets of Vice - http://suicidegirls.com/join/

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman) Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane... more

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World...

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)



[THE KILLSWITCH REVIEW – CHAPTER ELEVEN, PART ONE]

[SUPERBOWL CXC]

[Previous Chapter]

Regina reached for Haggerty’s hand as the turbines kicked in and the multimillion-dollar stealth jetcraft fired off. Stelwyn was at the yoke, his bodyguards seated on either side of him. Haggerty watched the receding compound turn to sand beneath the floorview window. He needed to ascertain the situation at headquarters but had to wait until they were far enough away not to lead the authorities to Svoboda’s door.

“How long until we can touch down at the stadium?” he asked Elsa.

“Approximately fourteen minutes, Jason, provided we can land at the coordinates Mr. Stelwyn suggests.”

“We’ll land all right,” Stelwyn promised.

Regina handed Haggerty a small bottle of water and he dosed a celtrex. “Patch me through to the office,” he told Elsa. “Tanner’s line, visual on.”

Elsa punched her codes into the small display comlink above her. Tanner looked like he had not slept and was none too pleased about it. Seeing Haggerty on his display, he spilled his coffee on his disheveled suit.

“Holy shit, Haggerty, do you have any idea —”

“Save it, Tanner. I’m not guilty. What’s Corbin’s status?”

“AWOL, same as you. Heard you tried to pin this on her.”

There was no time to make his case to Tanner. “Are the Dragon and agent Keenan there?” he asked.

“In the boardroom. It’s now the Federal command post dedicated to hanging your ass in a sling.”

“I’ll need you to transfer me, but first I’m calling in favors, Mitch.”

“I’m all ears,” Tanner said.

“I need whatever information you can give me on a double press for a couple named Jennings.”

“Jenkins, double press?” Tanner said, tapping keys.

“Jennings, not Jenkins!”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad. Jennings not Jenkins it is.” Tanner continued to tap keys. “Here it is. Uh-oh, it’s a red flag.”

“Criminal violation?” Haggerty said, surprised.

“Looks like,” Tanner confirmed.

“No time for the full report. Just read me the epitaph.”

“There’s two,” Tanner said. “First one’s Mr. Brent Jennings, 98, and Mrs. Katherine Jennings, 95. Consecutive presses. Eulogic proceedings convened on September 12, 2152 by BBI Agent William O’Connell. Both presses judged clean. Life insurance settlement to be placed in trust and paid in installments to surviving child, Maximilian Jennings.”

Max’s parents, Haggerty assumed. “Who was the insurance underwriter?” he asked.

“Cromwell and Sons.”

Haggerty frowned. Cromwell and Sons was the biggest insurance firm in NewVada. They handled a large percentage of the cases Haggerty reviewed. Still, what were the odds they would be the agency in all three cases he’d become involved with in the past twenty-four hours: Nyuga-Rosenberg, Tyler Stelwyn, and now the Jennings double press?

“The second epitaph is from you,” Tanner said.

The hair rose on the back of Haggerty’s neck. He dug his fingernail into his thumb.

Tanner continued. “KV units exhumed for post-press revisit by senior agent Jason P. Haggerty due to suspicious stamp from the coroner. Mr. and Mrs. Brent Jennings. Consecutive presses judged clean. Date of death corrected to August 12th, 2152. Insurance policy voided. Jesus, Haggerty, you’re a real bloodhound.”

Haggerty remembered now. He’d reviewed the recordings multiple times, acting on a hunch. The parents had pressed legally but the dates reported were false. The original audio timestamp had been altered. Haggerty had caught it and correlated the actual press date with a pair of banshee lights on the board — one of the rare events where a circuit malfunction lit up a box that hadn’t been used (BBI workers joked that such lights showed who was planning to press next). The Jennings couple’s legal suicides had occurred before the allotted waiting period expired and Max, who had worked for the company that made the KV units, had rigged both the boxes and BBI’s light boards. He’d also found a way to crack the coroner’s records and cover his tracks. Haggerty’s discovery had cost Max the proceeds of his parents’ insurance policy.

“There was a criminal investigation pending but no follow-up here,” Tanner said. “What’s this got to do with anything?”

Haggerty recalled the avatar’s words: You will discover yourself as a source of that rage. “I’ll explain later,” he told Tanner. “One more favor before you connect me to the boardroom. I need to know if these five individuals registered for boxes.”

“Haggerty, this could be my ass. . . .”

“You owe me, Mitch.”

“All right,” Tanner grunted. “Gimme the first one.”

“Elsa, read us the birth names of each of the members of Clone Jesus,” Haggerty instructed.

“Processing,” Elsa said. “Alphabetically by last name, the first is Bin Ibriham, Jaleel, aka Whisper.”

“Negative,” Tanner said, his fingers dancing over his boards. “Next.”

“Howard, Gerard, aka Cherub.”

“Uh-uh.”

The next two names were also negative. Haggerty began to doubt his line of reasoning.

“Olaffson, Clifford, aka Zephyr,” Elsa said.

“Match!” Tanner said. “And guess whose name is on the time and date list, same office? Corbin, Nia. That mean something?”

“Only conspiracy to commit mass murder,” Haggerty said grimly. “Thanks, Mitch. Now patch me through to the Dragon.”

Consuela stood beside a tall, youthful-looking man with dark blond hair, dressed in the unimaginative suit apparently required for all FBI agents.

“Where are you, Mr. Haggerty?” agent Keenan demanded.

“On my way to the Superbowl,” Haggerty said. “You might want to meet me there. I’m convinced the next performance is going to be even more dramatic than the one last night.”

“Sonofabitch,” Keenan swore. “Any reason why I should think you’re not involved?”

“I’m afraid I’m short on hard evidence at the moment, but would I be speaking to you now if I was involved? Listen, agent Keenan, I know who’s pulling the band’s strings — Corbin and the owner of that club, a kid named Max Jennings.”

“The club where the only evidence was your DNA?”

“That’s right. Jennings invented the new drug that was loaded into the units at the triple press. He’s got a grudge against Stelwyn for firing him over it, and a grudge against me for getting his parents’ insurance claim cancelled. Corbin’s only twenty-three years old. I’ll wager that Doug Zabrowski found out and she killed him for it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not all you need to clear you, Mr. Haggerty,” Consuela said.

“I’ll vouch for him,” Stelwyn interjected.

“Who is that?” agent Keenan asked.

“Antonio Stelwyn,” Consuela answered.

“We’re about to touch down at the stadium,” Haggerty said. “I believe Max Jennings and Corbin are there. All I ask is that you keep your agents off my back while I try to get at them. Afterwards, I’ll surrender to you.”

“Touchdown in forty-eight seconds,” Elsa warned.

“What if I say no?” Keenan said.

“I can’t afford to give you that opportunity.”

Haggerty clicked off. Stelwyn pulled the nose up hard and powered down fast, dropping the craft directly into the slot reserved for his car — much to the shock of the thousands of spectators observing the game on giant viewscreens in the acres-long parking lot. He popped the hatch and he and his guards deplaned.

Haggerty unstrapped in his form-fitting plasticine seat.

Elsa turned to him. “Jason, I feel it necessary to inform you that I have less than forty minutes of power reserve left.”

Haggerty touched her hand. “What are the options?”

“I can stay with you at full operation or shut down to sleep mode and double my time, or borrow this craft and return to BBI and upload. My primary concern is for your safety. I do not fear reset.”

Haggerty weighed her words. If Elsa drained to zero without upload, the recordings she held would be lost, along with everything she’d experienced since the last time she’d uploaded. The evidence contained within her might be the only effective way of clearing his name and, more important, stopping the conspiracy. Losing it would be disastrous.

“Go to BBI and upload, Elsa. If there’s time.”

“If I leave within the next seven minutes, I should make it,” she said.

Stelwyn stuck his head through the hatch, clearly disturbed by the delay. Haggerty explained the situation quickly. Stelwyn handed him the keycard.

“Go, Elsa. Upload, make encrypted copies of the recordings, and put them someplace safe. Then show them to agent Keenan.”

Haggerty set one foot out of the jetcraft. Elsa placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I find myself in a quandary, Jason. My concern for your safety has overridden your desire to salvage the evidence stored within me. I cannot leave you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, scratching his neck. “The situation is under control and the evidence must not be lost. Now go!”

“I cannot,” she said. “You scratched your neck. You do that when you are not telling the truth. There is a great deal to worry about, and I must protect you.”

A loud horn sounded the start of the second quarter.

“We’ve got to get in there!” Stelwyn urged.

“Elsa, I order you to short your PLC. We must save the recordings.”

“Jason, I—”

“You’re too important to me, Elsa. Command override, two-four-Juliet. Short your PLC now!”

Elsa’s eyes fluttered; Haggerty imagined he could smell the electrical burn as she fried her loyalty chip’s bioelectric synapse. A small blood clot appeared in the upper corner of her left eye.

“Now go,” he said. He joined Stelwyn and Regina on the ground. “Show it all to the Federal agents.”

Elsa brought the hatch down and began her preflight preparations.

Haggerty took Regina’s hand; they followed Stelwyn and his bodyguards toward the South Gate. He glanced back once to see the ascending jetcraft disappear in the sky. Stelwyn’s bodyguards cleared a path to the ticketpoint, through throngs of milling kids calling out for tickets. A young man in a Clone Jesus jacket hawking “Samples, get your free samples!” shoved a small plastic bag into Regina’s hand.

“Try it, you’ll like it,” he said with a glazed stare.

Regina clutched Haggerty’s arm tightly. She held up the small white unit with a trembling hand. Haggerty scanned the crowd. Many of the youngsters carried similar bags. One was on his knees, throwing up.

* * *

Excerpt from The Killswitch Review, published by Yard Dog Press. Copyright 2011 Steven-Elliot Altman.

Steven-Elliot Altman is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and videogame developer. He won multiple awards for his online role playing game, 9Dragons. His novels include Captain America is Dead, Zen in the Art of Slaying Vampires, Batman: Fear Itself, Batman: Infinite Mirror, The Killswitch Review, The Irregulars, and Deprivers. His writing has been compared to that of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton and Philip K. Dick, and he has collaborated with world class writers such as Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves, Harry Turtledove and Dr. Janet Asimov. He’s also the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology The Touch, and a contributor to Shadows Over Baker Street, a Hugo Award winning anthology of Sherlock Holmes meets H.P. Lovecraft stories.

Steven also bares ink on his body, and is bi, as in bi-coastal, between NYC and LA. He’s currently hard at work writing and directing his latest videogame Cursed Love, an online free to play gothic horror RPG from Dark Hermit Studios, set in Victorian London. Think Sherlock Holmes, Jack The Ripper and Dorian Gray mercilessly exploit the cast of Twilight. Friend Cursed Love (Official Closed Beta) on facebook and you can have fun playing out this tawdry, tragic romance with Steven while the game is being beta tested!

Diane DeKelb-Rittehouse spent several years in Manhattan as an actress before marrying her college sweetheart and returning to the Philadelphia area where she had been born. Diane first worked with Steven-Elliot Altman when they created the acclaimed, Publisher’s Weekly Starred-Review anthology The Touch: Epidemic of the Millennium, in which her story “Gifted” appeared. Diane has published a number of critically acclaimed short stories, most notably in the science fiction, murder, and horror genres. Her young adult fantasy novel, Fareie Rings: The Book of Forests, is now available in stores or online.

Interested in buying a printed copy of The Killswitch Review? Well, Steve’s publisher Yard Dog Press was kind enough to put up a special page where SuicideGirls can get a special discount and watch a sexy trailer. Just follow this link to KillswitchReview.com and click on the SG logo.

* * *

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by Laurelin (image) It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. I remember the feeling like it was yesterday, a once sharp pain now only a memory that makes me cringe only because of the way I almost remember feeling. It’s faded now, the sharp feeling of loss from so long ago to be replaced with... more

by Laurelin



It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. I remember the feeling like it was yesterday, a once sharp pain now only a memory that makes me cringe only because of the way I almost remember feeling. It’s faded now, the sharp feeling of loss from so long ago to be replaced with this new experience, one that’s a bit more bittersweet and almost entirely silly.

I remember the first time. I was standing at the Ocean Mist in Rhode Island at an all ages rock show. The bar was perfect; on stilts that went into the ocean so when you looked away from the crowded stage and sticker covered walls you could see only the blue of the ocean. The windows were open in the summer and you could taste the salt on your tongue while you breathed in the bass from the speakers. As a teenager, it was heaven.

I had had a crush on this guy forever, and I had decided that while we were all out that night I was finally going to tell him how I felt. The music faded to a dull pounding in my brain as I walked over to him, and my stomach flipped somersaults. I somehow managed to spit it out, not remembering exactly what I said but distinctly remembering his face, his blank expression that told me that I was wrong, he would never like me back, and I turned and ran. Later a friend told me that he was embarrassed, that I was too tall, disproportionate. I wanted to die.

All these years later, finally comfortable with who I am, how tall I am, my life and my choices. All these years later still struggling with the truth and just finally giving up and telling someone I still have feelings for them even though I know nothing good will come of it. I don’t know why I said it. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell him, it’s not like I couldn’t sleep or live without finally getting this off my chest. I know it was stupid and it does nothing but makes things awkward. (All these years later that still hasn’t changed.)

I don’t feel better. I don’t know if I feel worse. I don’t think things can be the same, but they shouldn’t have to be different. I imagine that in the grand scheme of my life, this is going to be something I look back on and laugh at. A psychic once held my hand and said, “You have already been so lucky, you’ve had two great loves and two great heartbreaks. This thing you hold, this is neither. So why can’t you move on?”

It’s something that now, I can remedy with calling other ex-boyfriends and drinking with girlfriends, where as back then I cried myself to sleep for days. This time, only a train ride home with a bit of smudged mascara, a woeful realization that I’m not as tough as I make myself out to be. I feel bad for myself. I feel bad for making him struggle to find the right words to not hurt my feelings. I feel bad for the past three guys I’ve dated, because I have kicked them all to the curb with a handful of lies and half truths once we hit the one month period. Better off alone until I figure this out, don’t like to be alone so I start things I can’t finish.

“It’s okay, because you know this is silly,” my roommate says as I’m trying not to let anyone at the bar see me cry. “I know,” I mumble, and I DO know. I don’t even notice the guy walking up behind me and ordering shots. “Two please,” he says and passes one to me with a kind smile. My eyes dry almost instantly, and I know how stupid I must look. We cheers and the shot goes down like fire, but I seem to have found my coy smile, and this guy is kind of cute.

“Rough night?” he asks.

“It’s nothing,” I say smoothly, and the lie spreads like butter on warm toast, so well that I almost believe it. Almost.



***

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i love hips. not just the bones in the front. from the back too. Charity's best feature are her eyes. (image) but oh those hips. (image) (image) and then theres sash. (image) and phinn (image) i could go on. but i must swoon. who loves hips? more

i love hips. not just the bones in the front. from the back too.
Charity's best feature are her eyes.

but oh those hips.



and then theres sash.

and phinn

i could go on. but i must swoon. who loves hips?

One of the biggest hits at this year's Toronto fest, "Lars and the Real Girl" is a love story played razor-straight, between a 27-year-old shut-in and the "anatomically correct" life-sized doll he buys off the Internet. As played by Ryan Gosling, Lars is an emotional non-entity,... more

One of the biggest hits at this year's Toronto fest, "Lars and the Real Girl" is a love story played razor-straight, between a 27-year-old shut-in and the "anatomically correct" life-sized doll he buys off the Internet. As played by Ryan Gosling, Lars is an emotional non-entity, living in a small house next door to his brother and sister-in-law and communicating with no one else except his cubicle-mate at work. The doll's arrival at his door, in a giant wooden crate, knocks something loose and he's soon out in the community, interacting with people like never before. The only catch is that in order to embrace this new Lars, the townsfolk must also accept "Bianca," his half-Brazilian, half-Danish girlfriend who he pushes around in a wheelchair and who never speaks.

I recently sat down with director Craig Gillespie to get some insight into how he went about walking this tightrope between comedy and drama and absurdism, to find out if there was a love scene shot for the film, and to ask why he thinks audiences are responding so well to the story of a man and his sex doll. "Lars and the Real Girl" hits theaters on October 12.



Ryan Stewart: Are you going to push for an Oscar nomination for Bianca?

Craig Gillespie: Wouldn't that be wild? I tell you, it's the most understated, giving performance you could have.

RS: I told one of the publicists earlier they should have wheeled her in for the roundtables, to give us a chance to ask her questions.

CG: [Laughs] She came in for the read-through, when we did the read-through before we started. It was the first time Ryan met her. I had Bianca wheeled in and put next to him.

RS: I noticed earlier that you bristled when someone made some random joke about the sexual element -- you didn't want any part of that. Do you feel that neutering the sexuality is the key to making this project work?

CG: Particularly on the set. I mean, very quickly, when I interviewed a crew member they'd start joking about the doll and I thought we really have to be careful to set an environment for Ryan that he can perform, because this is really sort of a traumatic, emotional journey that he's gone through. It's a real commitment on his part, to be able to get into that space. That was a tricky element there, and we decided to treat her with as much respect as Lars as a character does. So we'd have her change off set, in her own space, and only have her on the set if she was in the scene. She'd never be sitting around. People couldn't really approach her.

RS:Why didn't you include a scene of Lars selecting her and buying her? He overhears about Real Girls from his co-worker, and then we cut right to the big box arriving on his doorstep.

CG: You know, Nancy's script is so well-thought-out, and there are certain things that are better left unsaid and happen off-screen. We don't see his darkest hour, when he orders this doll. It's a six-week process and you start to see him in his decline, but you don't know quite what his intellectual state is at this point, or how delusional he is, or where that moment happens. I think it's a hard thing to portray on film, and this way we're told it happens and so we go with that.

RS:The reason I asked about a buying scene is because if I were you, with this material being so tonally tricky, I would have said, "I'm going to jump on every opportunity to make them laugh, if nothing else."

CG: I was actually the opposite. Ultimately, the goal is to go on this journey with Lars and that, to me, was the most important thing. I actually said to people, in terms of the studio, the producers and actors, I said, "I don't know how funny or not funny this movie's gonna be, but I want to make sure they go on this journey and that they embrace this character." The humor is honestly a by-product, and the great thing about it is, every screening we have, it's different. Sometimes it's so loud you can't hear the dialogue. Other times, it's much quieter. It becomes a very personal choice -- what you find humorous.

RS: Did you see this specifically as a first-love story?

CG: It is, it is. I joked with Ryan that this is probably closest to The Notebook for him. It's really, basically, a love story and the whole way we treated their relationship was like they're a couple. What that couple is going through, and where the friction is, and what they're arguing about, and the give and take within their relationship. That's where all the motivation came from. When he's seeing Kelli at the office and he's noticing her, or she's distracting him, it's not that he's even admiring her, it's that he can't help but keep watching her. He doesn't know where his feelings are coming from, but then he goes home and he takes them out on Bianca, because that's what happens in a relationship, particularly with men.

RS: Ryan has said, about this film, that everyone's first love is all about them anyway, so this is really no different.

CG: I think that's a nice comment. You're in love with the idea of love. This is his learning curve and he's trying things out with her. He says to her, "You look really pretty today" and then he goes to the office and says it to the receptionist, you know? He's learning how to deal with women and with a relationship.

RS: But could he really learn anything about women through his interaction with Bianca? Could it be insulting to suggest that?

CG: Well, he's surrounded by strong women. Karin is a very strong woman and I think a lot of Karin is projected into Bianca. The way that she's dressed and the dark hair and she wears Karin's clothing. He sees that relationship that Karin has with Paul and I think in his relationship with Bianca, the dialogue that we talked about them having, she's a very strong woman. She's really tough on him. She's, in a way, the catalyst that forces him to make these choices. Like a typical relationship, I find that women are, a lot of the times, are the motivators of pushing men into making these tough choices, "When are we gonna get married? What are we doing? Where is this relationship going?" Those kinds of questions came up to us, as he was working through this character.

RS: It's hard to pin down exactly what kind of mental illness Lars is afflicted with. Aside from the delusional aspect, he also finds human contact to be physically painful. Was Ryan comfortable with the character's psychological ambiguity or did he want to pin things down more?

CG: We talked about how specific we'd get about that, and I think what's nice in the way that Nancy deals with psychotherapy is that a lot of the time there's no black and white, clear-cut answer to somebody's issues and problems. There's no magic pill, which is what Gus is looking for. Sometimes they work through stuff and sometimes they don't. People go to therapy for a long time and sometimes they figure things out and they don't even know how. In terms of that, we didn't actually have to know the answers of how these afflictions manifested themselves. Obviously there are the elements of his mother dying in childbirth and Karin is now pregnant, which could be a trigger for what's going on. But what's nice in Nancy's script is that you don't have to have all the answers. Ultimately, he's not aware of looking for these answers He's in a delusion that he's in a relationship. Life is normal to him.

RS: He's also highly functional for someone in such a delusional state. He shows up for work everyday.

CG: Oh yeah. The hard part in the acting was how aware he is of the delusion. There are a couple of key scenes ... it's not really in the script how he behaves or reacts to this, but when Paul, his brother, says to him, "You know this is a plastic thing, right? It's not real." --

RS: -- He says nothing.

CG: Yeah, he says nothing. Does he hear him? Does he not hear him? Does he acknowledge it? Does he ignore it? So we had to sort of struggle through those questions, which there was no template for.

RS: How much time did you have to work it out? Did you do it in rehearsals?

CG: It was a constant discussion. One way we looked at it was that there's a child who has a toy, a teddy bear that they have an enormous amount of affection for. And they know -- in some sense, they know that it's not real, but they have this whole imaginary world that they deal with, this child, and the parents come in and they go along with this world, but if the parents were to say, "Your teddy bear is sick and we're taking him to the hospital," there might be some dilemma for the child, like, "That's not quite right. This is my world, not theirs." So we would talk about where we'd have those moments. When they say, "Let's take her [Bianca] to see Dagmar" [a psychiatrist] then he's like, "But this is my reality, what's going on here?"

RS: I liked the part where Kelli, his would-be love-interest at work, suddenly finds a boyfriend and becomes rather cold to him, which he certainly notices. So the outside world can still intrude on him.

CG: Absolutely. She's a large catalyst for his relationship with Bianca, too, and why it turns sour. His observations of her, and he doesn't even know why he has these feelings for her or why he keeps looking at her, but that's what makes him come home and have an argument with Bianca and take it out on Bianca. Bianca's done nothing wrong. It's a classic relationship thing, where he's got these feelings and this resentment for being in this situation. He can't articulate it and doesn't know quite where it's coming from. All these forces are acting on him.

RS: Did Bianca have lines in the script, for Ryan to react off of?

CG: No, those conversations were Ryan. One of the first things that happened, the first scene we shot with Bianca and Ryan was him arriving at the party and he pulls her up the stairs. We had talked a lot about their dynamic and their conversations and their relationship, and so at that point he came over and said, "I feel like I should talk to her here. If I'm taking my girl out and these are my friends, she's gonna be nervous to meet them all, so maybe I should say something to calm her down." And he came up with that piece of dialogue. I thought it was just the most beautiful thing and I said, "Talk to her as much as you want." A lot of those little moments is him figuring out how he would be in that relationship.

RS: The party scene is also the scene where people come closest to making fun of Lars openly, but even that is remarkably tame. Some people think that the most fantastical element of this film is how indulgent the townspeople are of Lars, and how they bend over backwards for him and collectively support his delusion. What do you make of people who see it that way?

CG: I feel that, in some ways, it's more a comment on the person than on the film. [Laughs] You have the choice. You can either embrace Bianca and what's going on, or you can shun it. Fortunately, it seems like most people are embracing it. I'm somewhat cynical myself, so I really wanted to acknowledge that there were some realities there. That scene at the party was a dance between how people are reacting to this, and when you see those two people, the contrarians, saying, "That's just gross -- he has sex with her?!" and "That's what she's for, babe" you can't get more blunt than that about someone not wanting to be a part of this. Or that classic guy comment of, "So she's flexible, huh?" [spoiler alert] Those people are there, and then those people are very specifically not at the funeral. So in my mind, it's not that "the whole town" goes along with it, but he has this bubble around him of family and friends that protect him. You see Margo doing that in that scene where she says, "So, I hear you two are getting married." That's where the crowd goes nuts because you realize that everybody is on Lars's side at that point. I thought there would maybe be chuckles about the sex comments, but there's not -- I think people are mortified that he might get hurt here.

RS: Right. I like the way the delusion spins off and carries on outside of Lars's presence. At one point, we hear that Bianca has been elected to the school board!

CG: It's funny, that line gets so ... people are embracing the concept so much that it just erupts. It's a little surprising, but it's great. Also, on that point about the believability of it, I like the comment that "there's no such thing as a normal family." You can talk to any person and within their family is some kind of heartache or hardship that's happened with an individual. It could be anything from alcoholism to being a manic depressive, but there's usually some kind of human tragedy that they're dealing with. And they deal with it. They don't shun it. They don't say, "You know what? We can just close that door, cause that person's a little out there." They try and deal with it and friends try and deal with it and help. This is just a more extreme example of that.

RS: But certainly there's a school of thought that would say intervention is more of a caring response than indulgence of a problem. Maybe that's reading too much into it. The script needed to be a certain way.

CG: I think what's beautiful about Nancy's script is the optimism and the hope and the love that everybody wants to bestow on Lars. Bianca is that conduit. I feel like they knew that Lars had issues and troubles. This community is a small town and they obviously know the story of his mother dying and the depressed father, but they have no way to deal with him. They have no way to get to him, and when Bianca turns up, that's their conduit. They have access all of a sudden. They've been wanting to help, but they have no way of doing it. I think that's a beautiful part of the story and what I wanted to keep, just for the tension aspect, was that sense that something could go wrong. You see it, I think, when the guys turn up to bowl. You're like, "Oh no, I hope they don't do something here." I wanted to keep that; it's something I sort of pulled from Being There with Peter Sellers. He's in this bubble. The whole time, you're hoping he doesn't get found out. He comes close and comes close and then never does. It's sort of a beautiful thing about the film and I wanted to try and pull it off. You would typically expect some antagonist to come along or for it go to a dark place, and what's so pleasantly surprising is that it doesn't.

RS: What do you think is the basic appeal of movies like Lars and Harvey and Being There? What's so compelling about a man and his delusions, and people wanting to buy into them?

CG: I think it reinforces the goodness in people, and it's rare to have it be pulled off in a palatable way sometimes. Not too manipulative or hokey. This does it in a respectful way and, I think, in a plausible way and you rarely see that in films these days. People tend to think that films need to have a dramatic, dark context to be worthy of telling.

RS: There's no love scene in this film, but I'm sure you must have thought about including one at some stage, as tricky as it would be. It had to be in there at some point.

CG: There was a scene where he bathes her. He has that argument with Emily and realizes how much they've been doing for him, and Paul and Emily have been bathing her, and in the next scene he says, "I'm gonna bathe her now and look after her." But very shortly after that, he's already questioning the relationship on a romantic level, because of what happened with Kelli in the bowling alley, and we had sort of passed that milestone of there being any sexual exploration at that point. It became something different, and it didn't fit in the piece. And the sexual side wasn't what this was about. It was about him being able to bestow love. He has all this love to give and nobody to give it to. It's an emotional connection, not a physical one.

RS: You think Lars is better for having had the experience? You think he's well?

CG: Three movies from now he'll be well. [Laughs] I think this will always be a real thing to him. I don't think one day he'll be like, "Wow, was I messed up back then." He had this incredibly intimate relationship and it was dignified and he grew from it.

RS: You said three movies from now -- you kind of paint yourself into a corner, though, sequel-wise.

CG: Yeah. Maybe there'll be a TV show, not a sequel.

by Nahp Suicide (image) [Baz in Let Me Bang] Shazzy is from Montreal. She currently splits her time between Montreal, Toronto and Tokyo. She has been an SG photographer since 2005 and has shot more than 200 sets. How did you first get involved with SuicideGirls? I had a couple friends (Tao and Raquel)... more

by Nahp Suicide


[Baz in Let Me Bang]

Shazzy is from Montreal. She currently splits her time between Montreal, Toronto and Tokyo. She has been an SG photographer since 2005 and has shot more than 200 sets.

How did you first get involved with SuicideGirls?

I had a couple friends (Tao and Raquel) who were interested in modeling for the site. This was February 2005. It was a total coincidence that I ended up shooting their sets a day apart. SG was just starting to blow up in Montreal back then.



What's your background photography-wise?

I have a degree in photography from Dawson College. I graduated just in time - the following year they destroyed the darkrooms and switched 100% to digital photography.




[CurLee in Hell Yes]

What was the first photo you had published?

I think it was a shot of Ritchie Hawtin in the Montreal Mirror. 



How would you describe your style?

Minimal. DIY.

What gear do you use?

Canon 5D Mark II


[Reo in Squeaky Clean]

How important is Photoshop in your final images?

It used to be really important but in the last few years I've really toned it back. These days I usually clear up some blemishes and that's it. Less is more.



What gives you ideas and inspires you to create such amazing sets?

LOLCATS.




[Silvia in Stay On The Line]

What is your favorite image?

This one (NSFW) of Silvia from Stay On The Line.

Tell us why it's your fave and how you achieved it?

I'm a huge fan of natural light and I like how the silhouette really accentuates her curves. I achieved it by underexposing a couple stops.



Is there anybody or anything you would love to photograph that you haven't?

A sunset in Nebraska. Or Mick Jagger! He's fuckin ballin.


[Tao in Spider Girl]


[Silvia & Sliver in Candy Kiss]


[Kali in Blue Dog Motel]


[Eli in The Metro]


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Some SuicideGirls have been modeling for the site for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years. We thought it would be fun to show you a look back and some of the SuicideGirls throughout the years. This week we bring you Opaque! Opaque has been a SuicideGirl since 2006. She has 17 photo sets and she takes you... more

Some SuicideGirls have been modeling for the site for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years. We thought it would be fun to show you a look back and some of the SuicideGirls throughout the years.

This week we bring you Opaque!

Opaque has been a SuicideGirl since 2006. She has 17 photo sets and she takes you through a sexy journey in each one. Enjoy this adventurous look back at the stunning Opaque...

From her first photoset Purple Bubbles shot in 2006 by Aaron:





Her big blue eyes a peaceful pool to dive into in her photo set Freckles shot in 2006 by The Zeitgeist:





She strikes a pose in a vivid radiance in her photo set Electric Lady shot in 2006 by The Zeitgeist:





Looking sweet and innocent in Jonathan Livingston Seagull shot in 2008 by Chas Ray Krider:





So radiant in Language Of The Birds shot in 2008 by Alissa:





As the goddess of the dawn in Aurora shot in 2008 by Alissa:





Dazed, charmed, and hopelessly drawn to her neon glow in Story of Love shot in 2008 by Cherry:





Beautiful and delicate in Pearl shot in 2009 by Lavonne:







Gives us chills in Ice Queen shot in 2009 by Shazzy:





Gets naked in the pool in Skinny Dipping shot in 2009 by Alissa:





Looking colorful and playful in Impish shot in 2009 by Zoetica:





Opaque has eyes that can see straight through to your soul in Fiery Eyes shot in 2009 by Fractal:





Captivates us wearing lingerie in Blush shot in 2009 by Lavonne:







In Lothlorien on Middle Earth shot in 2010 by Alissa:





Looking elegant in Carnivale shot in 2011 by Alissa:







Hope you enjoyed the lovely look back at the stunning SuicideGirl Opaque! Be sure to keep an eye out for a new set coming soon to member review!

Become a member TODAY for only $4 a month (if you sign up for a year) to see all 17 nude pin-up photo sets of Opaque - http://suicidegirls.com/join/