The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter... more

The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter (who previously collaborated with his famous sibling on the 1996 film Follow Me Home) explore the motivations that might transform change from an abstract concept into tangible social movement in the forward direction on an individual level.

Human beings, by their very nature, resist change. This innate intransigence is often only overcome when the consequences of maintaining the status quo are significantly more painful than personal growth and transformation. In La MISSION, the central character finds himself at such a crossroads.

Che is a tough walking and talking Latino man who has secured the position he enjoys within his local community thanks to his testosterone-charged social skills, which are prized among his peers. However, Che is himself a victim of cultural stereotypes which dictate what a man should be, and unless he can reconcile his outdated ideas of masculinity and overcome the homophobia that to this day is a very real part of his culture, he risks losing the one thing that is most important to him - his son, Jes, whom he finds out is homosexual in the film's opening act.

The story was inspired by two characters in the Bratt brothers' life: Che is based on an older schoolmate and natural born leader whom Benjamin and Peter looked up to as kids (though the real-life Che has two sons, neither of which are gay), while Jes' journey echoes that of a family member who experienced a similar struggle for acceptance when his father discovered he was gay. But the family roots in La MISSION go even deeper. The film is set in the San Francisco neighborhood in which the brothers were raised, and its underlying message of hope and transformation is a testament to the convictions of Peter and Benjamin's activist mother, Elda Bratt, who participated in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 (with her two young children in tow).

Though the subject matter of La MISSION may seem a little earnest for some, the underlying issues are handled in a sophisticated and subtle manner, which belies the power of the film. Politics take a backseat, as the viewer is immersed in the colorful lowriding culture Che reveres, and the very personal issues which father and son are fighting to overcome. Heartfelt and touching, La MISSION is all that independent filmmaking should be.

SuicideGirls spoke with Peter and Benjamin to find out more about La MISSION, and their wider calling to inspire and enact change through the ancient art of storytelling and their shared passion for film.

Question: What inspired you to specifically write about homophobia within the context of the Latino community?

Peter Bratt: Homophobia is only one of the things explored in La MISSION. What I was interested in was our ideas of masculinity and power. Benjamin's character Che is a patriarch who has really learned to negotiate life using the "might makes right" credo. He uses violence and intimidation to control his world, and in turn, holds a place of respect in the streets and in the community. I think you'll find the same thing in the dominant culture. It doesn't matter if it's a Fortune 500 executive, a star athlete, or a movie icon like Brando's Godfather -- we're conditioned to admire "powerful men" who acquire their power through domination and control. Regardless of race, these types of male figures are what most men are encouraged to emulate.

With La MISSION, my intent was to try to equalize that balance of the masculine and feminine. In that way, the film also explores issues of domestic violence perpetrated against women; it looks at homophobia, and to some degree class and race. Why? Because within a culture of domination, all those things are connected. The character Che, through the power of the love he has for his son, is ultimately forced to confront those old male identities, which he has cultivated over a lifetime. And in turn, he has to find something else within himself that is more feminine than it is masculine -- something that is perhaps more difficult to do in the Latino world than it is in the mainstream.

Directly related to all of this, of course, is how we regard the "feminine." As a culture, we look down upon feminine traits like emotion, nurturing, love, etc. In fact when we talk about those very subjects, we often apologize for doing so. I've done this several times when discussing the film. We say, "This might sound corny, but..." We apologize for those things because they are seen as "feminine" and therefore inferior and not worthy of our respect.

In the film, Che sees his gay son as "weak" and therefore feminine. And that's what's really at the heart of Che's shame -- that his son is no longer a "man," and is now a "bitch" or "pussy." The sad truth is that this speaks just as much to our culture's misogyny as it does its homophobia.

Q: Benjamin and Peter, much of your shared background went into this movie. Can you talk about your family, your mother in particular, and growing up in The Mission?

PB: Benjamin and I were born and raised in San Francisco by a single mother. We were children during the '60s and the '70s, which was a really active time for social movements. You had the Black Power movement, the Brown Berets, you had a lot of people of color asserting who they were culturally and politically. Our mother was part of that social movement that was happening all around the country and really vibrantly in San Francisco. We were raised with this kind of social activist consciousness that was very much a part of the time, and certainly a huge part of what was taking place in The Mission district, which was largely Latino and also Native American at the time.

Along with the social activism of the time there was this incredible artistic movement. The two kind of melded together. You had artists who were singing, writing poetry and painting pictures that were very political in nature and yet incorporated all these cultural artistic sensibilities. We were kind of incubated in that and I think that comes through in the film. Even today when you walk through The Mission, it's largely an immigrant Latino community. If you walk through you see murals on almost every building, and a lot of times the murals depict the struggle of immigrants, of indigenous people throughout the different stages of California history. You have all this geography and peoples interacting and growing, some leaving, some changing, and I think that comes through in the story a little bit.

Q: Definitely. The subject matter of the story is very political, but you've managed to make it an incredibly personal story, and it's incredibly moving as such.

PB: Oh thanks.

Benjamin Bratt: One thing I want to make clear is that there was an agenda of afoot when the story was written. The story, although it's very culturally and geographically specific in its examination, Peter as a writer wanted to take a broader look at archetypes that are very familiar to all of us.

PB: I think at the core of the story what I wanted to explore as a writer was the idea of change and transformation. As we know, Obama was elected on a platform of change we can believe in, and that speaks to a lot of people. At the time where we're at in human history I think everybody knows that we need to change something in the direction we're going. For me what was interesting is, what does that mean at the very individual level? What does it mean for a character like Che who finds respect and has earned his stripes through domination and often times violence? What does it mean to change that behavior or those attitudes that he's developed over a lifetime?

What I found is that that process often times is really incredibly painful and there's a certain amount of suffering involved. We have to give up something of ourselves in order to make that change. I think just as that happens on an individual level, to change like Obama is suggesting is going to take a collective burning or suffering. That's really the core of the idea that was explored in the film, watching this man motivated through love go through the fire so to speak, and lose a part of himself in order to gain something new.

BB: It's ultimately a spiritual journey that he's set upon by the catalyst of information that he's drawn from the son revealing his sexual orientation.

Q: Given the minority subject matter, was it easy to get the project funded?

BB: The number one thing that dictates what gets made in this town is money, and by and large studios, and even fairly larger independent companies, they won't take on a subject matter for a film if they can't see a marketplace for it. Surprisingly, we found when we first took the story out to what are considered more traditional forms of funding, they didn't get where they could market it, and if they can't understand where and how to market it, they're not interested because they can't make money from it.

PB: I really think it comes down to a question of perception. When Benjamin and I first took the film around, the reaction was, "Why do you want to tell a gay story? We've already dealt with this kind of content. It's kind of passé." I think the underlying assumption there is that mainstream culture has maybe dealt with it on a certain level, but it's still a relatively taboo subject within the Latino community.

BB: And in most minority groups.

PB: So actually right after going to Sundance and talking to distributors and marketing people, you find that what comes under the banner of Latino can't necessarily include an aspect or a texture that has homosexuality in it. Latino is very narrowly defined and just by having an aspect of the story that has homosexuality discussions and conversations going on takes it out of that genre. What that tells me is how Latino culture is perceived is also very narrow.

Q: How's The Mission changed over the years?

PB: When we were growing up [it] was probably Mexican American, today it's still Mexican American but it's equally Central American, there's a Brazilian population, there's African American, there's now a Southeast Asian presence in the neighborhood, and there's also young hipsters who come, and a growing white middle class because of gentrification. To me what makes it uniquely American is that [the cultures] all come together, they borrow from one another, and then sometimes there's a collision. Some people claim the neighborhood is "ours" and "you're taking it away," but if you go way back, the first human communities that lived there were Native American. So it's constantly evolving and changing and I think that's still happening today. But what I think makes The Mission so alive is this kind of social activist nature that it has, and one of the reasons why it does that is because there's still struggle.

Q: I'm told you had to negotiate a gang truce in order to shoot in The Mission. Can you talk about that process?

PB: It's actually not as glamorous as that. We worked with a Mission community member to do outreach to the different non-profits in the neighborhood. One of these was an organization that works directly with the gangs in the area of violence prevention. We were going to be filming in their "territory," so through our outreach person, we respectfully let them know that. And like anywhere, respect goes a long way.

Q: I understand that that community outreach also extended to the local kids.

PB: Well, when Benjamin and I were young, oftentimes the first exposure that we had to art was at a lot of the community centers in The Mission district. There used to be the American Indian center in the heart of The Mission where we went and did classes; There was archery, there was potlucks, powwows. There's The Mission Cultural Center which today still offers photography, silk-screening, dance, música, Capoeira -- which is an Afro-Brazilian martial art which I did for 20-years in The Mission. That still is going on. There's this incredible artistic movement within The Mission.

So we actually went to centers that still exist like that in the community to cast a lot of the young cast members who were acting in front of a camera for the first time. You can see what happens to a young person in this community, which often times is filled with struggle, the working class families and some below the poverty line. When you see a young person go, "Oh wow! These camera and lights, these are here for me," there's a light that goes on, an empowerment, and it's really electrifying to witness.

BB: I think the golden rule for all artists in general, but particularly for writers, is write what you know. So it probably makes less sense for us as filmmakers to tackle say the horror genre, or something like that, as opposed to something like a neighborhood that's near and dear to our hearts. So in answer to part of your question, it's not surprising to me that my brother is the architect of this story. It really does have universal themes, both on the heavy emotional side and in terms of what exists in real life, the levy that hangs in the balance often times in the face of struggle. [It's not surprising] that he sets it within a neighborhood that is not only familiar, but deeply meaningful, not just to us but the extended family that we still enjoy in the city, and it necessarily has a political / social justice bent to it, which is something that was instilled in us by our mother. Essentially it's storytelling from the point of view of something near and dear to our hearts.

Q: Black music dominates the film's soundtrack. Is there any reason you used that rather than traditional Mexican music?

PB: Actually I really believe that African music is the soundtrack of American music. It's at the heart of American music, not just in North America. A lot of the Latin sounds have their West African roots, the clave rhythms of Cuba, salsa, merengue, cumbias, R&B, jazz, soul, it all has freakin' heart.

This country, and a lot of the nation states in the Western hemisphere, was founded on the oppression of indigenous people, and then Africans who were brought here as slaves, so for me that African core influences all cultures -- and the lowrider culture in particular, especially [Benjamin's] character who's an OG lowrider. The lowrider culture went hand in hand with R&B oldies. When people see lowriders and cholos and vatos, and they hear that soul music, the two just seem to go together naturally...Again, it's more like cultural borrowing, and even today you see a lot of African American rappers, they actually have taken the lowrider, which is akin to the Mexican American experience, and made it their own. Again, that's also something that is uniquely American, cultures borrowing and sometimes colliding against each other.

BB: There's something very attractive about the purity if you will of a character like Che. He's almost ritualistic in every detail of his life and how he styles his life, down to the way he irons his pants, the kinds of hats he wears, the types of shoes, the cars he drives, the music that he listens to. It's a very specific choice, and from an actor's point of view, to play someone that detail orientated was really fascinating. And for us, we had the very real human touchstone of the real life Che, who was a consultant on the film. A lot of the gems that come out of his mouth [in the movie] really were generated by him.

Q: The other stars of the movie are the beautiful lowrider cars. How did you set about casting them?

PB: Ben's character, Che, is based on a person we went to school with. He came up in the Mission District and, when we were in middle school, he formed one of the first lowrider clubs in the neighborhood. He's what is considered a "to the bone OG lowrider," meaning he lives by a code, an aesthetic that is unique to the older members of the lowrider community. He was our technical consultant on the set -- which means he helped Benjamin pick out his clothes, helped me select the music, and most importantly, helped us all to find those beautiful cars.

Q: Benjamin, what kind of future do you envision for your brother as a director?

BB: I've always held my brother in the highest regard, not least because of his heart, but I love the way he thinks. I love how he marries the power of this particular medium, this particular art form, with a mind for social justice. He understands that we are our stories. It doesn't matter what culture you're from, what country you're from, what part of the world, we all live by the stories we tell about ourselves. And in those stories are the markers and the indicators for how we interpret ourselves, and it's actually an indication for what our future is too.

I see him as a visionary filmmaker because he starts with the germination of a simple idea and he carries it all the way through, filling out all the various shades of grey with vibrant colors of humanity. To take a focus of a character like Che and set it within a neighborhood that will necessarily have all these external pressures forming the friction between father and son is brave because some of the subject matter, particularly the homosexuality issue, is still very much a taboo subject within the Latino culture. But he's a provocateur as well, and all good art should provoke discussion. I think this will certainly do that.


La MISSION open on limited release on April 9. For more information on La MISSION and details on upcoming screenings go to LaMISSIONTheMovie.com/.

'You're only paranoid if they're not out to get you,' is an adage that's self-evidently true. With that as a given, Massive Attack mainstay 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja) has every right to feel more than a little suspicious and mistrustful, especially when it comes to matters of... more

'You're only paranoid if they're not out to get you,' is an adage that's self-evidently true. With that as a given, Massive Attack mainstay 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja) has every right to feel more than a little suspicious and mistrustful, especially when it comes to matters of internet privacy, security and surveillance.

After the FBI passed on a list of 7,300 UK credit card numbers associated with various porn sites (some legal and some of an illicit nature) to UK authorities, 3D was swept up in the excessively wide net of an indiscriminate police sting in 2003. Though allegations of any wrongdoing were unfounded, the repercussions were severe for the outspoken graffiti artist, vocalist and music producer. His home was raided, and all his computers and hard drives were confiscated for several months. To compound the situation, despite the fact that no charges directly relating to the police operation were ever filed, the furor that surrounded the investigation and baseless accusations (which were leaked and sensationally reported by a tabloid newspaper) meant that touring plans to promote Massive Attack's fourth studio album 100th Window had to be put on hold. The situation was all the more ironic considering the title of that album referred to a book that exposed the flaws in computer security and the rampant misuse of information in the internet age.

That unfortunate episode however was not the only incident that might have put 3D on the various "person of interest" lists around the world. He has been extremely open and vocal about his disapproval of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, going as far as designing and funding a series of anti-war ads which were published in the NME (with cohort Damon Albarn). Furthermore, having made several forays to the Middle East with the band, 3D has frequently voiced his concern for the plight of the Palestinian people, and in 2007 put the issue at the top of Massive Attack's political agenda with a series of sold out benefit concerts for the Hoping Foundation (an organization which aids children of the troubled state).

These distractions coupled with increasing demand from filmmakers for scores and soundtracks, meant that a new full-length Massive Attack release took a little longer than expected to manifest. However the wait - and the adversity - has paid off. Original band member Daddy G (a.k.a. Grant Marshall), who'd been absent from the project for several years, came back into the fold, and the resulting fifth studio album, Heligoland (released last month), debuted at #46 on the Billboard Top 200, giving Massive Attack their highest US chart position to date.

SuicideGirls caught up with 3D while he was in LA on a brief promotional trip ahead of Massive Attack's first North American tour in 4 years. During our phone conversation, he spoke about the new CD (which features contributions from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, and longtime Massive Attack collaborator Horace Andy, among others), and shared his thoughts on the increasingly pointless posturing of British and American party politics, the inherent dangers of our heavily surveilled states, and the futility of exporting such a culture to the Middle East.

Nicole Powers: Where are you calling in from?

3D: I'm at KCRW actually. I'm literally around the corridors making a nuisance of myself.

NP: Did you record an in-studio session there?

3D: No, we didn't actually play. We just put some tunes on and talked a lot of rubbish, you know, very, very British.

NP: Ah, talking bollocks, us Brits are very good at that.

3D: Exactly. I pride myself in my ability to talk absolute rubbish - especially live on radio.

NP: It's a gift. It's like we're all born with a PhD in bollocks in Britain aren't we?

3D: [laughs] Yeah. I've still got some education to go in the area in the field but I'm definitely applying myself to it.

NP: So I guess we should talk some bollocks about your new album shouldn't we? Especially since it was several years in the making.

3D: Yes. Absolutely. Well to be honest, it's one of those things where it's been a long time between the two albums but in fact the actual process of putting this album together probably only [took] about 7 or 8 months. There was lots of discarded material and lots of distractions, soundtrack work, Best Ofs, Meltdown [Festival], and a lot of gigs in between.

NP: There were all sorts of rumors going around as this album was being recorded, lots of reports of collaborations that people heard about but that didn't ultimately make the cut. When you finally came to figure out exactly what you were going to put on the album, in your mind was there a common thread with the tracks you chose?

3D: There wasn't a common thread really. Each track was a captured moment depending on who we were working with. I think it started to feel like it was a collection of tracks that had a relationship with each other, because of maybe the sentimentality or the sonic feel, then it started to become an album I guess. Before that point everything was just an individual moment, and there was no collective [theme or thread].

NP: Because it does have a very different feel. It's more gentle and earthier than some of your previous work.

3D: I don't know about gentle, I don't think it's got a gentleness to it. I think it's got definitely a more organic feel. It depends how you listen to it. If you play it on a certain system you'll get more aggression out of it, and if you play it in a more subdued way you'll definitely get more of the softer atmospherics. But in terms of production it's very stripped back. I was very keen on not doing what we did with 100th Window, and making the contrast between the electronic and the acoustic very obvious.

NP: When you were writing the tracks though, were you still constructing them electronically? Or were you doing things like picking up guitars to write?

3D: A bit or both, it's always a bit of both. But I think in the end in terms of the final mixes and the way we shaped it, it was about highlighting the contrast between the elements. 100th Window was very much about this amalgamation of everything joining, and eventually the process was so extreme that you couldn't tell if there was a string part if it was electronic or natural. [There were] lots of organic parts that ended up sounding very electronic. It became a whole world of different processes, and we wanted to do something a bit different because we've had that experience so we wanted to do something else.

NP: Talk about a couple of your favorite tracks from the album, and the lyrics and the meaning behind them.

3D: I think a couple of my favorite tracks are maybe "Psyche" and "Atlas Air." "Atlas Air" was very difficult. It was a track called "Marrakesh" and it had about ten different identities. We finally discarded all of them and started a new one. It was only connected to its original self by the name on the file on the computer where the files were located but it became a completely new piece of work. In the end, after lots of fucking around with tracks that weren't working, it came together quite instantly and quick.

Lyrically, because of its transformations it got quite mixed up. At one point it was a song about falling in love with an internet porn star and having this complete relationship with someone online only, nothing physical, purely electronic. Then it became a song about rendition. The two demos I did initially for it I discarded. When we constructed a new piece of music I came away from the studio and completely adlibbed the vocal but I still used the lyrics from both the demos on the same bit of paper and threw it all down in one hour. It kind of really worked even though essentially it was quite distorted.

NP: Right, they're two very disparate subjects.

3D: Yeah. Even though I was starting at the porn angle and going for the more political angle in the end, there's still a few lines that hang in there from it that totally had a different meaning. It's an interesting broken collage, which was finally finished I guess, if you ever finish anything.

And "Psyche," a track which Martina [Topley-Bird] wrote the words for, I love because it's like that flittering of the sun on your eyelids when you're driving in a car, going through light through trees. That kind of strange memory of all the summers you've ever had. It can often make you feel sort of sad and quite lost and lonely at times when it comes. But there are times when you get that flickering light, and you actually feel alright with that. The fact that everything's going by and these moments will never be repeated, but that's OK because you're enjoying it for what it is. You actually get to experience it in the present, and don't worry about the past. That song has that feel to me. It's a song about life and growing up, but it makes it feel alright, you know? It's one of those things that makes you feel alright about it all.

NP: So do you feel grown up now?

3D: [laughs] No. I've never felt grown up really to be honest. No, definitely not.

NP: One of the things I love about you guys is that you're not scared of wearing your politics on your sleeve and standing up for the stuff that you believe in. And I think that, especially in America, so many bands are scared to do that now because they're worried about the repercussions, of sacrificing radio play or TV appearances. But without that element it does mean much of the music we're fed is trivial and meaningless.

3D: We came into KCRW with that very thought in mind. The track I played at the start of the session was "Molotov Cocktail Party" by Vivi Bach, who's a Danish actress from the '60s and '70s. It's this track she did with Dietmar [Schönherr] and it was a '60s ironic song about activism...I wanted to use it as a slight statement about the fact that that whole aspect has been lost and has withered really. It's very hard to form groups or take a action because as soon as you communicate electronically they're shut down.

It's very difficult in this day and age. In Britain surveillance culture is insane - cameras everywhere, emails spied on. Since you've had a Labour left wing government in power it's actually got more and more totalitarian than it ever has been under the Tories. But I don't know if a change of government in the UK would actually change that now. I think it's endemic in the political governing system now to basically spy on the population, and to monitor and track the population, whether it's through their credit cards, their SIM cards in their phones, their GPS positions, their activities, their profiles, it's just really, really strange. It's colonizing everything I would expect to happen in the future but it probably isn't as exciting and science fiction as we thought it was going to be, just a little bit more mundane and depressing.

NP: Labour has been a bit like a wolf in sheep's clothing with regards to the Big Brother stuff. They've implemented policies that the Conservatives, had they tried to introduce them, would have never been able to have got through. With the Conservatives, people would have had their guard up for this kind of thing, but because it was warm and fuzzy Labour that introduced these measures people had their guard down. So they've actually been able to go further than the Conservatives would have been able to with regards to increasing surveillance and decreasing an individual's right to privacy. If the Conservatives had done some of the stuff Labour has got away with, the British population would have been up in arms about it.

3D: I think so, I'd agree. And I don't know without Blair if we'd have been involved with the invasion of Iraq at all. If it had of been a Tory leader, whether they'd have supported it, if that person would have had the power or the personality, or whether it was an inevitability forged in the corridors of power around the world anyway. Whether it was just going to happen, there was going to be a regime change because this was the start of a new century of change and this was just one of the areas they wanted to change. Whether, no matter which party was in power, it would have made any difference. But you're definitely right about the way Labour has been able to smuggle lots of policies and laws under the radar.

Ironically it shows how pointless electioneering party politics really is. Because if Labour had been fighting for power they would have opposed all the laws they've just implemented strictly as a matter of rote. So you think what kind of system are we in where the actual point of politics is lost. All politicians now are just electioneering, and no one actually believes in their own policies.

It's quite difficult. And I look at kids, they're so reluctant to engage in politics, students in the UK don't really have any activism left in them. They're just quite happy with convenience food and everything served up to them in a way that's as simple as possible because there's so much distraction and crap around to fill your mind with.

NP: Well it is easy to be apathetic when you don't see the fruits of change. I mean people had such great expectations for Obama but he's not really gone about trying to create change with the fervor that he campaigned for it.

3D: I was a big supporter of his from when I first saw him interviewed as a senator. I thought, wow, that guy, he looks like the next president of the United States - especially considering the two terms of office of George Bush. I thought this is definitely going to be what would be seen as an antidote. But with my limited education in American politics through West Wing and what I read, I do understand that it's almost impossible to implement a lot of the changes he [promised]. Then again, with the healthcare bill, which is being put to the vote, as was pointed out in the West Wing, that's one of the hottest potatoes in all American politics. He's gone with that, and I guess I can't argue with that. He's delivered on the promise even though he's not really helped deliver any promises in terms of legislating peace in the Middle East or shutting down Guantanamo and stopping drones from killing civilians on the Pakistani border. I think in all those cases it just initiates more people into militancy because of their own tragic loss.

The problem with that sort of thing in the UK and America is that we just don't really seriously consider the lives of other humans with an important regard. When you see [an incident] like the missile strike in Afghanistan which killed 30 civilians, if that had been in the UK, the country would go to war. That sort of action would be an act of war. For us, as far as we're concerned, it's just a sad loss of life and we shrug it off. It's the nature of the world we live in I think unfortunately.

This death by remote control thing, which is the way war is being fought...I thought when I saw with the Israeli Cast Lead Operation in Gaza last year how sterile and cynical that was in the sense that the amount of Palestinian deaths versus Israeli deaths was so grossly disproportionate that it couldn't be considered a war of any sort. And the weapons used were very modern, very automatic, very remote control, and a lot of weapons that apparently were not even meant to be in use like the phosphorus [munitions]. They call it a theater of war, it's almost used as some kind of training ground for even greater wars around the world, and those in the Gaza Strip are just stuck and endure it.

It's a shame because we've been to Israel twice and they asked us to come back this year. We said, "No," we're definitely not going to play in Israel. We've played in Beirut before, we've played in Tel Aviv before, but not while people are being strangled economically, socially, culturally, we're not going to come and play Israel. You can't PR the recent actions of your politicians out of the red by putting on cultural events. It isn't going to work. It's similar to engaging the South Africans in sport during the apartheid years. It's a crazy situation.

NP: So where are you touring to support this album?

3D: We've been everywhere. We've been all over Europe last year, Australia, New Zealand, we're coming back to the States in May, festivals, Japan.

NP: You say you're not able to tour the Middle East this time around, but are there any places you want to put on your tour itinerary because of your political agenda?

3D: When we went to the Middle East before it was between the two intifadas and it was an interesting time to engage in the process. You know, you go there, meet the people, get their side of the story. Now that would be impossible to do. We also went to Beirut and played in an amazing set of Roman ancient monuments in a place called Baalbek on the Syrian border, which was a great experience. It's just wonderful. They're very, very interesting places to be. It's very difficult though to take what we do out there. There's limitations with security. I want to go to Beirut this year but there's no way it's going to happen you know.

NP: It's interesting, I'm friends with a band from Iran, and in Iran you can't even make rock music without the threat of arrest. As adults in the West we have the luxury of either being political or not, but in the Middle East the kids that are growing up there don't have the luxury of not being political. They don't have the luxury of enjoying music for music's sake, or the simple pleasure of enjoying it in public with their fellow countrymen. In that region, if you're listening to or playing Western-style music, you're making a political statement whether you want to or not.

3D: Absolutely. It's that whole thing of why did our forefathers fight in the wars? To give us this freedom, which is now being totally eroded by their descendants. It's really a crying shame. Like I said, we have the luxury of choosing, whereas most people don't have the luxury of choice at all.

It's funny, I mean you look at the Iranian situation, and the recent upheaval after the elections. The way that [news] was shared was amazing. The fact that the rest of the world could see first hand, minute by minute what was really happening was an amazing thing. But ironically that's exactly the sort of thing that our government is trying to crack down on - on letting us have that freedom. Yet that freedom, the liberation of the internet, is expounded on as being one of the positives, helping share news and share injustice with the world. Yet if you actually look at the laws that are being passed and the attitudes of those in power, they're trying to completely control that freedom themselves in their own country. So what's the point of going to the Middle East to export our culture and agenda in the first place?

Heligoland is available online and in stores now. Massive Attack's US Tour kicks off at Terminal 5 in NYC on May 11. For full details go to: MassiveAttack.com.

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around... more

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around the world. Guns N Roses took their debut album title from Williams’ painting “Appetite for Destruction” which was also the album cover. He’s one of the founders of Juxtapoz, the biggest art magazine in the world, and it was the title of his first book of paintings that gave the lowbrow art movement its name. He’s written extensively about art including the Rubberneck Manifesto in which he famously argued that “something dead in the street commands more measured units of visual investigation than 100 Mona Lisas.”

Last year Williams had his first solo show in years in New York, “Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical” and this year it opened at Cal State Northridge. Williams was also asked to contribute to this year’s Whitney Biennial. For all his popular success and his evident skill as a masterful painter whose skill and precision at depicting the realistic details in his work make the flights of fancy seems almost natural. His oil paintings, shows the influence of twentieth century pop culture but his craftsmanship and skill are worthy of the old masters. Imagine if Salvador Dali was raised on EC Comics, pop culture and dropped acid, and you have a hint of what Williams’ work is like.

What was most striking about talking with Williams was that an artist who has had such long and influential career was so clearly touched and appreciative of my own observations towards his work. He believes he’s currently working at the top of his game, which for those who attended his recent show is hard to argue with, but he believes with passion that he has the skill and the talent to create work so powerful and affecting to convert the critics of his approach and subject matter. The following is an edited version of a far-reaching conversation about art, comics, Los Angeles and what Williams likes about watercolors.


ALEX DUEBEN: You’ve mentioned that underground cartoonists were your first peer group. You were part of the Zap Comix collective, which included Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson and Spain Rodriguez and others. What were you trying to do?

ROBERT WILLIAMS: Underground comics is closer to art than it is to comics, because you could do as you please. It started in the early fifties when the Kefauver subcommittee cracked down on comics. There was a book called Seduction of the Innocent by a Dr. Wertham that later created an investigation into comics and how they were causing juvenile delinquency and all the really good comics got run out of business. I’m old enough, and my peer group was old enough, to remember the really great comics. Then all of a sudden the spigot was turned off and from that point on it was Disney comics and happy animal comics and whatnot.

It started with the psychedelic poster movement. The fine arts world never acknowledged the psychedelic poster movement even though the psychedelic poster movement was far far larger than the poster movement in the late 1890s with Toulousse-Letrec and other artists. All of the artists that were involved in poster movement were, much like myself, disenfranchised artists. The thing slowly started creeping towards comics. Some of the psychedelic posters started breaking down into panels. Underground comics, the first one that I can remember is Jack Jackson’s God Nose from ’64, so there’s a heritage in this thing. Crumb came out with Zap in 1967. I was working for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth doing illustration, cartoons. They were very irreverent and I was in trouble for it. The seeds were there. Even if Crumb wasn’t born and I wasn’t born this thing was going to surface.

When we started doing underground comics, they were very subversive, very pornographic, very antisocial. Every social more we could find, we would violate. Our attitude was, you think those comicbooks were bad back in the fifties? You ain’t seen fucking nothing yet.

AD: So all that was very conscious and very intentionally dealing with these subjects and in that manner?

RW: You have to understand, we’re in a period of history now where artists think they have to placate everybody in the world. They have to get the largest audience possible. The underground artists and underground world were very happy just to deal with themselves. None of those underground comics were ever made for a general audience. The attitude was, fuck the general audience. It was just like the psychedelic rock posters that had that lettering that you couldn’t fucking read until you knew how to read it. It wasn’t for every idiot. It was for an intelligent arcane audience that was in the know. Now the attitude is we’ve got to make everybody fucking happy, but that time there was a big cultural separation between the underground and the overground. The Vietnam war was the ignition point. That was when the country split right in half.

AD: I’ve read a decent amount of underground comics from that period and I have to admit I’m sometimes unsure how much I get, not just in terms of the references, but because it was for a different audience at a different time.

RW: It wasn’t something to hunt you down and appease you. It was something if it interested you, you go and investigate. It wasn’t something for everyone to get hip to. It was a very closed world. And there’s another factor, Alex. There were two philosophies. There was the graphic abstract world of the comics which I belonged to, that Rick Griffin belonged to, that S. Clay Wilson belonged to, that Victor Moscosco belonged to. And then there was the literary graphic story side of the underground comics that Crumb belonged to and Gilbert Shelton belonged to. They were interested in telling stories. My side of the thing, the abstract world, was more into the abstract illusionary art world to take you through a mind expanding trip. Now eventually as underground comics got more popular and had a larger audience, the literary side took over because people weren’t interested in the abstract side anymore they were more interested in reading the story and throwing the comic book away.

AD: Which is something that continues to do to this day in comics where abstract work is really a largely obscure and ignored corner of comics.

RW: That’s what happened to the underground comics. They got so popular and so big that they started to have to cater to a much larger audience and they had to start making much more sense. The earlier comics weren’t responsible for making any fucking sense. So after about 1970 or ‘71, the psychedelic nonsense really tapered off.

AD: Which is the point when underground comics became a genre essentially.

RW: Yeah.

AD: You guys were making comics, but were those old comics hugely influential?

RW: Absolutely. You have to remember that the only artists who could draw and paint were comics book artists and artists who did B-movie posters and stuff like that. Illustrators. The art world had turned its back on it. Almost every one of us in the underground comics had a fine arts background and faced the same pressures the same bigotry.

AD: You guys liked EC comics and Wally Wood and--

RW: Wally Wood was my hero. I talked to him a couple of times. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better. Unfortunately every time I talked to him both of us were drunk.

AD: And if we go back to Pop Art and Roy Lichtenstein, who took a comics panel and played with it in a way that was disdainful of the panel.

RW: Not only would he take a comic book panel and would denigrate it so it even looked funkier, he would take a comic book panel verbatim and then find stylizations in there and alter them so it looked as if it was even more retarded. He was showing his indifference, because in pop art you show a cold indifference.

AD: He wrecked what art there was in the panel and I think that indifference and coldness you mention is why pop art leaves many people cold.

RW: The buying public in art are not into it that much. They’re interested in the value and how it looks as decoration in a large modern home.

AD: Do you feel art scene at large remains indifferent to you and your style even now?

RW: The art scene now is more open than I’ve ever seen it in my life. But there’s a problem with the art. I knew this a long long time ago. If you get a lot of people that want to be artists, you have to adjust down the capability requirements so that all these people can be artists. You can’t expect to take young people and force them into a rigorous discipline of learning how to draw and paint. That’s what they did one hundred years ago in the old European art academies and in the United States in the early Twentieth century. They had really tough schools. It was hell to get through an art school a long time ago. Now they’ve eased that so you just have to be sensitive and be able to pay the tuition and attend and flop around some colors. The discipline has gone out of it completely.

The arts have to be open for everybody with every kind of style. I’m for making the thing open and free. I don’t think an artist has to learn to paint and draw. I prefer to do that, but I want the ability to have as much right to be in a museum as someone else. I respect their right to put anything in there. If they want to have a pile of sand in the middle of the museum, that’s okay with me. As long as I have room in there.

AD: Your show in Los Angeles which was in New York last year is the first show you’ve had for a number of years. How prolific are you?

RW: I’m slow. I plod along. I used to be a lot more prolific in my thirties and forties and my twenties, but I’m sixty-seven years old and I just work at it continually. I’m just as happy to do a real big tight oil painting and plot every little detail out and crawl across it like a snail. That’s the way it gets done. I’m not the most prolific artist, never really have been.

In the eighties I was turning out two and a half paintings a month. Now I turn out a painting every two and a half months. But they’re a lot better paintings. More detail.

AD: So you’re in the Whitney Biennial this year.

RW: I am in the Whitney Biennial.

AD: Was this a big deal?

RW: It was a very very big deal. I didn’t realize how big it was at the time. I’ve been showing in New York for about twenty, twenty-five years now and it’s just been a slow process of eroding away these obstacles. Eighteen years ago I got into Tony Shafrazi’s gallery and then I proved myself there having a number of sold out shows. I’m sure Tony got me in the Whitney. Tony’s probably the second or third biggest gallery in the world. He’s quite a character.

AD: You’re showing six watercolors at the Whitney. What do you like about watercolors?

RW: I don’t like anything about watercolors.

AD: Um, let me rephrase then. Why did you feel six watercolors would be appropriate for the show?

RW: That way I could have my name in the show six times. And have six different ideas instead one big painting. They said they would accept six small watercolors. They saw my watercolors at the Shazfrazi show. You saw the four. They said they would accept six of those so I sat down and did six.

AD: So you don’t enjoy watercolors?

RW: I enjoy watercolors immensely, but I love those tight ass oil paintings. That’s the real test and that’s the real form of expression. Those are ass busting to do. They’re difficult and if you spend a lot of time on them and they don’t work out, man, it’s really a gamble. I’m at the top of my form and I’m busting my ass on those big oil paintings. Later, when I get old, I’ll be doing a lot of watercolors. Don’t worry about that.

AD: I know you grew up in California and you’ve lived in Los Angeles for a long time. What keeps you there? The city keeps changing so much.

RW: I love the weather. I’ve got hot rods. I’ve got room -- a house on a big lot with room. I love going to New York, but I can only handle New York for about a week and then it starts closing in on me. New York has an energy that maybe you can see it in Tokyo and Berlin and Rome, but New York is the capital of the world when it comes to cultural energy. But I’ve got to get out of there after awhile.

AD: From your perspective, does Los Angeles have a good art scene?

RW: LA is going to take over New York eventually. New York got all its culture from Europe. The old Victorian principle of sophistication. To be sophisticated you have to be inhibited. That doesn’t exist on the West Coast or the Pacific Rim. LA knows to be sophisticated, copy New York, but they fail at it miserably. I don’t mean to run New York down but you come out here and get involved in the art world out here and there is so much energy going in all directions it can’t be contained. It’s like trying to herd kangaroos or something. They try to be sophisticated, but they fail, and in that failure they come up with their own dynamic.

Not only do you have the motion picture industry out here, you have the hot rod culture, the biker culture, the surfer culture, the tattoo culture. On and on and on all started out here. Psychedelic posters. Underground comics. It all started out here. It happened spontaneously. It can’t stop itself.

See more of Robert Williams work here

Get the book Conceptual Reality here

The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter... more

The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter (who previously collaborated with his famous sibling on the 1996 film Follow Me Home) explore the motivations that might transform change from an abstract concept into tangible social movement in the forward direction on an individual level.

Human beings, by their very nature, resist change. This innate intransigence is often only overcome when the consequences of maintaining the status quo are significantly more painful than personal growth and transformation. In La MISSION, the central character finds himself at such a crossroads.

Che is a tough walking and talking Latino man who has secured the position he enjoys within his local community thanks to his testosterone-charged social skills, which are prized among his peers. However, Che is himself a victim of cultural stereotypes which dictate what a man should be, and unless he can reconcile his outdated ideas of masculinity and overcome the homophobia that to this day is a very real part of his culture, he risks losing the one thing that is most important to him - his son, Jes, whom he finds out is homosexual in the film's opening act.

The story was inspired by two characters in the Bratt brothers' life: Che is based on an older schoolmate and natural born leader whom Benjamin and Peter looked up to as kids (though the real-life Che has two sons, neither of which are gay), while Jes' journey echoes that of a family member who experienced a similar struggle for acceptance when his father discovered he was gay. But the family roots in La MISSION go even deeper. The film is set in the San Francisco neighborhood in which the brothers were raised, and its underlying message of hope and transformation is a testament to the convictions of Peter and Benjamin's activist mother, Elda Bratt, who participated in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 (with her two young children in tow).

Though the subject matter of La MISSION may seem a little earnest for some, the underlying issues are handled in a sophisticated and subtle manner, which belies the power of the film. Politics take a backseat, as the viewer is immersed in the colorful lowriding culture Che reveres, and the very personal issues which father and son are fighting to overcome. Heartfelt and touching, La MISSION is all that independent filmmaking should be.

SuicideGirls spoke with Peter and Benjamin to find out more about La MISSION, and their wider calling to inspire and enact change through the ancient art of storytelling and their shared passion for film.

Question: What inspired you to specifically write about homophobia within the context of the Latino community?

Peter Bratt: Homophobia is only one of the things explored in La MISSION. What I was interested in was our ideas of masculinity and power. Benjamin's character Che is a patriarch who has really learned to negotiate life using the "might makes right" credo. He uses violence and intimidation to control his world, and in turn, holds a place of respect in the streets and in the community. I think you'll find the same thing in the dominant culture. It doesn't matter if it's a Fortune 500 executive, a star athlete, or a movie icon like Brando's Godfather -- we're conditioned to admire "powerful men" who acquire their power through domination and control. Regardless of race, these types of male figures are what most men are encouraged to emulate.

With La MISSION, my intent was to try to equalize that balance of the masculine and feminine. In that way, the film also explores issues of domestic violence perpetrated against women; it looks at homophobia, and to some degree class and race. Why? Because within a culture of domination, all those things are connected. The character Che, through the power of the love he has for his son, is ultimately forced to confront those old male identities, which he has cultivated over a lifetime. And in turn, he has to find something else within himself that is more feminine than it is masculine -- something that is perhaps more difficult to do in the Latino world than it is in the mainstream.

Directly related to all of this, of course, is how we regard the "feminine." As a culture, we look down upon feminine traits like emotion, nurturing, love, etc. In fact when we talk about those very subjects, we often apologize for doing so. I've done this several times when discussing the film. We say, "This might sound corny, but..." We apologize for those things because they are seen as "feminine" and therefore inferior and not worthy of our respect.

In the film, Che sees his gay son as "weak" and therefore feminine. And that's what's really at the heart of Che's shame -- that his son is no longer a "man," and is now a "bitch" or "pussy." The sad truth is that this speaks just as much to our culture's misogyny as it does its homophobia.

Q: Benjamin and Peter, much of your shared background went into this movie. Can you talk about your family, your mother in particular, and growing up in The Mission?

PB: Benjamin and I were born and raised in San Francisco by a single mother. We were children during the '60s and the '70s, which was a really active time for social movements. You had the Black Power movement, the Brown Berets, you had a lot of people of color asserting who they were culturally and politically. Our mother was part of that social movement that was happening all around the country and really vibrantly in San Francisco. We were raised with this kind of social activist consciousness that was very much a part of the time, and certainly a huge part of what was taking place in The Mission district, which was largely Latino and also Native American at the time.

Along with the social activism of the time there was this incredible artistic movement. The two kind of melded together. You had artists who were singing, writing poetry and painting pictures that were very political in nature and yet incorporated all these cultural artistic sensibilities. We were kind of incubated in that and I think that comes through in the film. Even today when you walk through The Mission, it's largely an immigrant Latino community. If you walk through you see murals on almost every building, and a lot of times the murals depict the struggle of immigrants, of indigenous people throughout the different stages of California history. You have all this geography and peoples interacting and growing, some leaving, some changing, and I think that comes through in the story a little bit.

Q: Definitely. The subject matter of the story is very political, but you've managed to make it an incredibly personal story, and it's incredibly moving as such.

PB: Oh thanks.

Benjamin Bratt: One thing I want to make clear is that there was an agenda of afoot when the story was written. The story, although it's very culturally and geographically specific in its examination, Peter as a writer wanted to take a broader look at archetypes that are very familiar to all of us.

PB: I think at the core of the story what I wanted to explore as a writer was the idea of change and transformation. As we know, Obama was elected on a platform of change we can believe in, and that speaks to a lot of people. At the time where we're at in human history I think everybody knows that we need to change something in the direction we're going. For me what was interesting is, what does that mean at the very individual level? What does it mean for a character like Che who finds respect and has earned his stripes through domination and often times violence? What does it mean to change that behavior or those attitudes that he's developed over a lifetime?

What I found is that that process often times is really incredibly painful and there's a certain amount of suffering involved. We have to give up something of ourselves in order to make that change. I think just as that happens on an individual level, to change like Obama is suggesting is going to take a collective burning or suffering. That's really the core of the idea that was explored in the film, watching this man motivated through love go through the fire so to speak, and lose a part of himself in order to gain something new.

BB: It's ultimately a spiritual journey that he's set upon by the catalyst of information that he's drawn from the son revealing his sexual orientation.

Q: Given the minority subject matter, was it easy to get the project funded?

BB: The number one thing that dictates what gets made in this town is money, and by and large studios, and even fairly larger independent companies, they won't take on a subject matter for a film if they can't see a marketplace for it. Surprisingly, we found when we first took the story out to what are considered more traditional forms of funding, they didn't get where they could market it, and if they can't understand where and how to market it, they're not interested because they can't make money from it.

PB: I really think it comes down to a question of perception. When Benjamin and I first took the film around, the reaction was, "Why do you want to tell a gay story? We've already dealt with this kind of content. It's kind of passé." I think the underlying assumption there is that mainstream culture has maybe dealt with it on a certain level, but it's still a relatively taboo subject within the Latino community.

BB: And in most minority groups.

PB: So actually right after going to Sundance and talking to distributors and marketing people, you find that what comes under the banner of Latino can't necessarily include an aspect or a texture that has homosexuality in it. Latino is very narrowly defined and just by having an aspect of the story that has homosexuality discussions and conversations going on takes it out of that genre. What that tells me is how Latino culture is perceived is also very narrow.

Q: How's The Mission changed over the years?

PB: When we were growing up [it] was probably Mexican American, today it's still Mexican American but it's equally Central American, there's a Brazilian population, there's African American, there's now a Southeast Asian presence in the neighborhood, and there's also young hipsters who come, and a growing white middle class because of gentrification. To me what makes it uniquely American is that [the cultures] all come together, they borrow from one another, and then sometimes there's a collision. Some people claim the neighborhood is "ours" and "you're taking it away," but if you go way back, the first human communities that lived there were Native American. So it's constantly evolving and changing and I think that's still happening today. But what I think makes The Mission so alive is this kind of social activist nature that it has, and one of the reasons why it does that is because there's still struggle.

Q: I'm told you had to negotiate a gang truce in order to shoot in The Mission. Can you talk about that process?

PB: It's actually not as glamorous as that. We worked with a Mission community member to do outreach to the different non-profits in the neighborhood. One of these was an organization that works directly with the gangs in the area of violence prevention. We were going to be filming in their "territory," so through our outreach person, we respectfully let them know that. And like anywhere, respect goes a long way.

Q: I understand that that community outreach also extended to the local kids.

PB: Well, when Benjamin and I were young, oftentimes the first exposure that we had to art was at a lot of the community centers in The Mission district. There used to be the American Indian center in the heart of The Mission where we went and did classes; There was archery, there was potlucks, powwows. There's The Mission Cultural Center which today still offers photography, silk-screening, dance, música, Capoeira -- which is an Afro-Brazilian martial art which I did for 20-years in The Mission. That still is going on. There's this incredible artistic movement within The Mission.

So we actually went to centers that still exist like that in the community to cast a lot of the young cast members who were acting in front of a camera for the first time. You can see what happens to a young person in this community, which often times is filled with struggle, the working class families and some below the poverty line. When you see a young person go, "Oh wow! These camera and lights, these are here for me," there's a light that goes on, an empowerment, and it's really electrifying to witness.

BB: I think the golden rule for all artists in general, but particularly for writers, is write what you know. So it probably makes less sense for us as filmmakers to tackle say the horror genre, or something like that, as opposed to something like a neighborhood that's near and dear to our hearts. So in answer to part of your question, it's not surprising to me that my brother is the architect of this story. It really does have universal themes, both on the heavy emotional side and in terms of what exists in real life, the levy that hangs in the balance often times in the face of struggle. [It's not surprising] that he sets it within a neighborhood that is not only familiar, but deeply meaningful, not just to us but the extended family that we still enjoy in the city, and it necessarily has a political / social justice bent to it, which is something that was instilled in us by our mother. Essentially it's storytelling from the point of view of something near and dear to our hearts.

Q: Black music dominates the film's soundtrack. Is there any reason you used that rather than traditional Mexican music?

PB: Actually I really believe that African music is the soundtrack of American music. It's at the heart of American music, not just in North America. A lot of the Latin sounds have their West African roots, the clave rhythms of Cuba, salsa, merengue, cumbias, R&B, jazz, soul, it all has freakin' heart.

This country, and a lot of the nation states in the Western hemisphere, was founded on the oppression of indigenous people, and then Africans who were brought here as slaves, so for me that African core influences all cultures -- and the lowrider culture in particular, especially [Benjamin's] character who's an OG lowrider. The lowrider culture went hand in hand with R&B oldies. When people see lowriders and cholos and vatos, and they hear that soul music, the two just seem to go together naturally...Again, it's more like cultural borrowing, and even today you see a lot of African American rappers, they actually have taken the lowrider, which is akin to the Mexican American experience, and made it their own. Again, that's also something that is uniquely American, cultures borrowing and sometimes colliding against each other.

BB: There's something very attractive about the purity if you will of a character like Che. He's almost ritualistic in every detail of his life and how he styles his life, down to the way he irons his pants, the kinds of hats he wears, the types of shoes, the cars he drives, the music that he listens to. It's a very specific choice, and from an actor's point of view, to play someone that detail orientated was really fascinating. And for us, we had the very real human touchstone of the real life Che, who was a consultant on the film. A lot of the gems that come out of his mouth [in the movie] really were generated by him.

Q: The other stars of the movie are the beautiful lowrider cars. How did you set about casting them?

PB: Ben's character, Che, is based on a person we went to school with. He came up in the Mission District and, when we were in middle school, he formed one of the first lowrider clubs in the neighborhood. He's what is considered a "to the bone OG lowrider," meaning he lives by a code, an aesthetic that is unique to the older members of the lowrider community. He was our technical consultant on the set -- which means he helped Benjamin pick out his clothes, helped me select the music, and most importantly, helped us all to find those beautiful cars.

Q: Benjamin, what kind of future do you envision for your brother as a director?

BB: I've always held my brother in the highest regard, not least because of his heart, but I love the way he thinks. I love how he marries the power of this particular medium, this particular art form, with a mind for social justice. He understands that we are our stories. It doesn't matter what culture you're from, what country you're from, what part of the world, we all live by the stories we tell about ourselves. And in those stories are the markers and the indicators for how we interpret ourselves, and it's actually an indication for what our future is too.

I see him as a visionary filmmaker because he starts with the germination of a simple idea and he carries it all the way through, filling out all the various shades of grey with vibrant colors of humanity. To take a focus of a character like Che and set it within a neighborhood that will necessarily have all these external pressures forming the friction between father and son is brave because some of the subject matter, particularly the homosexuality issue, is still very much a taboo subject within the Latino culture. But he's a provocateur as well, and all good art should provoke discussion. I think this will certainly do that.


La MISSION open on limited release on April 9. For more information on La MISSION and details on upcoming screenings go to LaMISSIONTheMovie.com/.

Myke Chambers is all over the place--in the past six months he's been at more conventions than I can list, made multiple appearances on TattooSnob, and has interviews appearing in multiple tattoo magazines... and 2010 is just getting started. In the interview below, Myke lists everything he's... more

Myke Chambers is all over the place--in the past six months he's been at more conventions than I can list, made multiple appearances on TattooSnob, and has interviews appearing in multiple tattoo magazines... and 2010 is just getting started. In the interview below, Myke lists everything he's currently involved with, his plans for 2010, talks about his past and his inspiration for the future.

Tattoo Snob: I know you've experienced quite a bit in your life, can you give us a recap about yourself?
Myke Chambers: Well I grew up pretty much being shipped back an' forth between my folks in Florida, Texas an' Southern California. My little brother an I were kinda like hot potatoes between a split family. Then decided I'd had enough around 15 an' left home with my best friend in the world, my little brother, Stephen “Stevie” Chambers.

I hoped trains back an' forth across the country, ate out of trash cans, got hooked on drugs an' basically just spent over 10 years not giving a fuck about anything...well that's not totally true...when I first left home an hit the streets I was running from a messed up childhood, tho what I found on the streets was something of a shock to me... freedom. I lived a Huck Finn kinda life as a teenager....riding freight trains, sleeping under the stars (bridges and abandoned buildings when called for). I got a taste adventure an freedom an' went off in search of that...tho' somewhere along the way I got lost in the search an trapped in a whirlwind of drugs an booze. That freedom was lost.

Stevie died in a “squat” (abandoned building) fire in Hollywood CA in '96 an that's about when my life turned for the worst... I'd lost everything in life I still cared about. He was the last string holding me to this world... an' that was gone. No amount of drugs or booze could numb that pain... tho' I tried for a long time.

You see my whole life I always ran from pain. Whether it was through anger as a kid or drugs later on or actually physically running from state to state, I could never get away from the pain I was afraid of. It wasn't until years later when I sobered up that I found out the only way to not feel that pain was to go through it... there wasn't any getting around it or running from it... the only way to heal was face it head on... today I deal with my problems, not run, an try to grow from the pain. I stopped running September 8th '05.

My life has been interesting to say the least... from eating out of a dumpster to Sharon Osborne ordering for me when I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted while dining out with her an Ozzy.

I've had some hard times but I wouldn't trade it for the world... they've made me who I am today. I like that guy.



TS: Just about four years ago, you became sober and started really focusing on life and tattooing. Why did you make that decision?
MC: Because life sucked the way I was living.... I literally wanted to die. I had nothing to live for an' I was hurting everyone I loved... but mostly myself. Picture the worst nightmare you've ever had... well that was my life... for years.

Until a little over 4 years ago I was drowning myself in booze an' drugs, until I finally got it together enough to check myself into rehab. I've been sober ever since so now I try to give back as much as I can. I go to jails an' juvenile halls an' speak with guys who are about to get out about my own trials an' experiences an' try to offer them some hope an' direction. Sometimes they'll call me up when they get out an' that's always cool to see them putting their lives back together. I figure I've probably caused way more than my share of hurt an' pain so the least I can do now that I've finally started to figure my life out is try to put something positive back out there.

I love tattooing. It's a gift I've been given an I've worked hard to get to where I am today but I think I've just been put in a place to try an help even more people. For instance, after a new feature on me comes out in a mag I'll get email an letters from all over the world that my story gave them hope... an' that's awesome... because there is hope!! I didn't think so for a long time an' gave up all hope ready to just die. So really my driving force is Love. Love is my religion. I try to always put my hand out to people (an' animals) that want help if I can. Whether it's in dealing with pain an' hard time that I have experience with or in the tattoo industry. I'm always more than willing to help out the new artists with questions. I actually answer email questions from aspiring tattooers personally an' don't blow them off... tho' sometimes I do get busy an forget but when I remember I'll get back to 'em. There's an awesome quote that I love “it's through self forgetting that one finds”... I'm not gonna quote the whole thing but you get the idea.



TS: You eventually wound up in Austin, Texas. How did you choose Austin?
MC: Well, I have a lot of family in Austin an' I kinda grew up there... but there's more to it than that. 
I was living in Long Beach California an' I've always loved it there, but I have two awesome kids an' at the time my son's mom an' I were still together an' decided that as much as we liked it there, it probably wasn't the best place to raise our son, Malachi. Austin is a really cool town, there's a ton of art an' music an' the tattoo scene is exploding out there so we gave it a shot. If you've never been to Austin you're missin' out. It's always kinda been my home base...Austin an' Long Beach, CA.

TS: If we opened up your sketch book right now, what would we find?
MC: I actually just had a crazy drawing spurt the other night when I was in Los Angeles. I started out sketching this branch with cherry blossoms on it for a client an' then moved on to another piece, a neck tattoo for this chick back in Austin an' then I just kept going. I busted out a ton of awesome sketches really fast that I'm really stoked on! The funny thing is one of my clients hit me up about a piece they want the next day for the Dallas show this November an' it's almost exactly like one of the sketches I drew so that was pretty fucking rad.



TS: Your portfolio contains no realistic work, which is definitely a break from the latest trend. Why is that?
MC: Well that's not totally true... I have a realistic tree frog in the back from a few years ago! Hahaha!!

I work with an' I'm friends with some amazing portrait/realistic artists like Dan Henk, Joshua Carlton, Ron Russo, an' Nate Beavers (tho Nate does it all). I totally respect an' love what they do but what I love to tattoo myself is Traditional Americana. I've always been into bright colors an' bold lines. There's just something about solid, simple traditional tattoos that I love. Most of the work I do is custom so I work with the individuals to make it special for them an' something they won't see on anyone else walking down the street. I love when I can take something ordinary, let my creativity flow an' transform it into something that jumps off the skin. One of the things I like about traveling the convention circuit is the chance to meet other artists an' gain inspiration from all the amazing work I see an' stories I hear. When I first started tattooing, after 6 months of apprenticing for my friend Weasel I pretty much thought I knew it all an' was so wasted all the time that once I sobered up I had to learn how to tattoo all over again! Right now I'm just focused on developing my style and growing as an artist every day instead of being content with just an “OK” tattoo. Once you stop learning you've basically given up, ya know?



TS: You've attended a ton of conventions this year, and have a number scheduled for the rest of 2009. Out of all those, which have been your favorites?
MC: Well it would be really hard to nail down one that is my overall favorite so here's a few of my best picks in the US that I've worked: Marcy's “Star of Texas Tattoo Art Revival” in Austin , Juan's“Ink-N-Iron” in Long Beach, Troy's “Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Fest”, the Detroit Motor City Expo an' I had a really amazing time at Durb's “Hell City: Tattoo Vacation” in Arizona this year--that was definitely one of my all-time favorites.

TS: We know you're going to be traveling quite a bit this year, what exactly do you have planned?
MC: Since I sold my shop I'm looking forward to just hittin' the road for a while. I've got a ton of conventions in 2010 up an' down the east coast an' all over the US.

Dan Henk an I are planning a east coast guest spot/convention tour early next year together. We pretty much work all our conventions together so we figured it would be fun to just hope in the truck an hit the road. I'll be posting those dates soon on my website.

I'm also looking forward to spending some more time in Los Angeles where I'll be guest spotting at a couple different shops. When I'm not traveling I'll still be tattooing out of The Austin Tattoo Company, formerly Eternally Bound with Keith Underwood.

TS: When was the last time you were tattooed? What was it, and who did it?
MC: My friend Timmy Barns tattooed a compass on the top of my left hand after we worked the Chattanooga show an' I fuckin' love it! The blues are super bright an' since I had my right hand tattooed already I felt like I needed to balance it out on the left, haha! He also just reworked an old tattoo I had on my neck... You guys watch out for Timmy B!!!!



(in the middle of writing this Myke took a break an headed down to All Hallows Ink in Fullerton, CA to tattoo a friend Kristen Jones, who some people might know from the TV show Tattoo Highway After he tattooed Kristin, she hooked a friend and him up with some sweet little AZ tattoos.)

TS: What other artists do you want to tattoo you?
MC: I really respect an' look up to artists/friends like, Nate Beavers, Russ Abbott, Ron Russo, Jeff Emsminger, Tanane, Ish, Whitfield, Bryan Reynolds, Taylor Cort, J Ranno, Joshua Carlton, Bruce Morgan, Scott Ellis, Keith Underwood, Amanda Leadman, an' Darcy Nutt.... just to name a few. I'd love to get tattooed by 'em... which I will.

Tony Hundahl, an' Steve Byrne are amazing traditional artists so they're on my list, too.

Also, Nick Baxter is one of my good friends an' he's also one of the sickest artist I've seen. He's such an amazing person, too. All I can say about Nick is "WOW."

Dan Henk an' I are about to tattooed each other with really large leg pieces. I'm getting a portrait of Alistair Crowley an' Dan's getting a gas mask thing.

TS: What are you involved with aside from tattooing?
MC: Right now I'm filming this reality TV show, America's Top Tattoo Artist. There are some sick artists involved so it should be pretty cool once we're done filming and it airs. Unless they try to make me the stupid, hahahaha!

I also put out a book of my sketches through King Pin Tattoo Supply.

Something else that I'm really trying to work on more is my painting. Dan Henk an' Nick Baxter an' both amazing painters an we'll hang out an' paint all night at the shop an invite other artist to join us for “paint night”. We try to have paint night as often as possible seeing how we all travel a lot. You can get prints of my stuff at my website, too.

TS: How long can the average client expect to wait before being able to get an appointment with you?

MC: Because I'm traveling so much it really depends. I'm usually booked up for the conventions pretty far in advance so make sure to check out my travel dates on mykechambers.com an' contact me before hand tho' sometimes I get cancellations at the last minute an I'll post those openings on twitter an the like. I have a lot of clients who fly in just to get tattooed so they get priority but I try an' be flexible an' work with people's schedules if they're serious about getting tattooed by me.

TS: What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

MC: I just launched my brand new website, www.mykechambers.com so check that out! It's still a work in progress, but people can see some of my favorite tattoos I've done, check out my paintings an' order prints if they want. I also post all the conventions I'm doing so you can see if I'm coming to your town sometime soon. An' of course I'm on MySpace, FaceBook, an' Twitter. Or people can always hit me up the old fashion way an' email me at mykechambers@gmail.com

TS: Any last words?
MC: Sorry for rambling! Hahahahaha!!!!







Myke Chambers

TattooSnob.com

For her forthcoming release, We Are Born, the darling of downtempo, Sia Furler, hits a distinctly upbeat groove. Indeed, the six tracks we've heard so far are decidedly funky. Just don't, whatever you do, use the F-word in the singer/songwriter's presence - it's very likely to irk... more

For her forthcoming release, We Are Born, the darling of downtempo, Sia Furler, hits a distinctly upbeat groove. Indeed, the six tracks we've heard so far are decidedly funky. Just don't, whatever you do, use the F-word in the singer/songwriter's presence - it's very likely to irk her.

Having come to the attention of the KCRW-listening, latte-sipping music intelligentsia thanks to her turns with English post-trip-hop outfit Zero 7, for a while Sia was inadvertently defined by what was initially intended as a very limited, no-strings-attached guest spot with the lush lounge combo. Thanks to the success of Zero 7's debut album Simple Things (2001), and their follow up release, When It Falls (2004), and the numerous international tours that followed, Sia's personal brand became synonymous with the downtempo pigeonhole Zero 7 prominently occupied.

Seeking to capitalize on Sia's credentials in the 90 bpm & under department, record label execs understandably pressurized her to continue in a similar vein with her solo work, despite a personal preference for something a little less languid. It was therefore no surprise when Sia's evocative track "Breathe Me," became her first breakout solo song, thanks to its prominent use at the end of the final episode of Six Feet Under. Indeed the inspired TV license earned Colour The Small One, the album on which the song was originally featured, a long overdue release in the US in 2006 (the CD was released in the UK 2 years earlier). And while her next solo album, Some People Have Real Problems, helped bridge the gap between the music Sia was expected to make and the music she wanted to make, it's her latest offering, We Are Born, that has finally allowed the Australian born (but currently New York based) artist to come into her own.

SuicideGirls caught up with Sia by phone to find out how she got her groove back, and to get the 411 on her aversion to the F-word.

NP: So you've been teasing us, so far we've only heard a handful of tracks off the new album.

SF: I know, I'm sorry. It's really weird. We've been very mysterious about it. I think that's because we don't really know what we're doing. [laughs]

NP: There's an honest answer.

SF: Because we've got this tour scheduled and of course, you know, we'd had our plan to put the record out before the tour, and now we're shooting the video for the first single. The album is definitely finished. It's been finished, it's been mastered, but we've had a bit of a bidding war between a couple of labels to license this album.

NP: Oh nice.

SF: Yeah, which is awesome, but we're just finalizing all of the paperwork so I actually still haven't signed to this major record label, even though we're proceeding as if I have. They're all doing the work that they would be doing if they were my label but I think that everyone's a little bit tentative to really either send the shit out, or to make an announcement about when it's going to be released.

NP: Right.

SF: I feel that's what the label and my management are doing right now, they're just trying to fucking turn it around really. It's already been pushed from March to April [and after this interview back to June]. They want a long lead time to do all of their ass kissing, you know. It's a tricky business.

NP: I thought it might be because they were frightened to give you access to your own album in case you tweeted it out.

SF: [laughs] Well actually, I've been warned. And even before all of these interviews they're like, "Don't talk about the album. Don't tell too much about the album. Just tell 'em a little bit about it." It's like, "Why?" And they're like, "No, this is about the tour." I'm like, "Oh! OK! You sure?" I think basically, I don't really know, but I guess maybe they're trying to create some mystique, considering I'm like the dichotomy of that.

NP: Well it's a nice turn of events because I remember when I last spoke to you, you were talking about how you couldn't even get Colour The Small One released in America until Six Feet Under used the track "Breathe Me" in their final episode.

SF: Yeah. Nobody cared. Errol [Kolosine] from Astralwerks was the only person who cared. He put it out and did exactly what this new label is doing right now. He just proceeded as if we were signed, even though we were still working out all our paperwork and all of the little tiny details.

I mean [We Are Born] is pretty awesome. I know that it's my strongest commercial record yet and I think that's probably why I'm not surprised that now we have a lot of takers. Because Colour The Small One, there was no radio singles on there. I mean, I understand how the machinery works now and it's not surprising to me that this one is more appealing.

NP: And your last album, Some People Have Real Problems, was firmly in the genre of quirky...

SF: [laughs]

NP: ...In a wonderful way. But when you go to a record store, unfortunately there isn't a quirky section.

SF: [laughs] It's weird actually, 'cause my record before Colour The Small One was like R&B, it was called "urban" in England. So you'd find my first record, which was called, Healing Is Difficult, in the urban section. Then you'd find Colour The Small One in the urban section, and like my ten fans, that bothered them immensely. They wrote to me when I had like eighty members on my message board eight years ago and I knew them all by sight and by name. That was the thing that peeved them the most, that Colour The Small One was in the urban section. It's weird.

NP: This album, it's kind of funky. You've gone funky!

SF: Yeah. I mean it's hilarious that you use that word because it was kind of a running joke that nobody is allowed to use the word "funk." [laughs]

NP: Ooops!

SF: For some reason it irks me, but I'm just going to have to accept that maybe I'm funky.

NP: What's wrong with the F-word?

SF: I don't know. I guess probably it irks because when I first started out it was like the early '90s and I was in a band that we called "a jazz / hip-hop / funk fusion explosion." Like I did trip-hop fusion, like every possible genre that was cheesy at the time. I mean I do love old funk, [but] I guess I've never really been into new funk.

I think I'm scared of being new funk. I'm a big fan of The Funk Brothers and Motown and all that sort of shit, so I don't know why it irks me, that word. Maybe it was just growing up in the '90s in Australia. Australia's never really moved on. If you go to a restaurant or a cafe´, or you're in an elevator, they're still playing Rebirth Of The Cool and Galliano and all that sort of new funk, so maybe it's just that.

It's way more uptempo this whole record. There's still a few weepies on there, you know. There's some weepies for the peepies. But I wanted to make a fun record. I want to go on tour and have some fun.

A lot of these tracks I wrote like five years ago with Greg Kirsten. At the time everyone said it would be career suicide if I put out this uptempo record. Because I'd just done the Zero 7 stuff and put out Colour The Small One. They were like, "You're known as a downtempo artist and your fans will be confused." I was like, "What fans? What are you talking about?"

I wanted to put it out and I was like, "Beck can do it. Why can't I?" And they were like, "He's an established artist and you're a nobody." So I put out Some People Have Real Problems, kind of like as a band aid to those people in my life, advisors and colleagues and people that said I would be committing career suicide.

I put out that album and then "Buttons" off that one did well so I guess it gave them the feeling that it would be OK for me to make the music that I wanted to make now. It was confusing because my first record was R&B and then I got kind of pigeon-holed after the Zero 7 stuff with my downtempo vibe, so it's nice for me to be able to make the music that I've always wanted to. I think they were albums that I needed to make, but this is one that I wanted to make.

NP: So where and when was this album recorded?

SF: Last July in L.A. in Eagle Rock. I recorded it with my usual band plus Greg Kirsten on keyboards and Nick Valensi from The Strokes on guitar.

NP: Very cool.

SF: Yeah. I love it. I like listening to it. I'm excited. I've never listened to my albums after I've finished making them before, and this one I've listened to three times.

NP: Talk about a couple of the tracks that are close to your heart.

SF: Well "The Fight" is my favorite song on the whole record. The title of the album comes from the opening lyric of that song, We Are Born. I don't know why I love that song so much, but it just feels like a victory song. There's something victorious about it. I guess I'm just really attached to it for that reason.

Then "Clap Your Hands" I just think is a really fun for dancing around. It's a pretty shallow song. It's a romantic comedy movie song. Then I guess my favorite ballad on the album is "I'm In Here." I wrote that with Sam Dixon, who I wrote a bunch of the Christina Aguilera stuff with. Those are probably my favorite songs on the record. Oh yeah, "Big Girl, Little Girl." I like that one too.

NP: You mention Christina Aguilera. You've been working with her?

SF: Yeah. I have. We wrote five songs. Four of them are going on her album and one of them is in her new movie, Burlesque.

NP: Wow. How did that come about?

SF: She's totally awesome. It's a really good collaboration. Many years ago I tried to ask her if she wanted to duet with me on "Death By Chocolate" which is on Some People Have Real Problems. My manger at the time, she wrote her an email. She cc'd me on it and said, "Sia is a big fan of Christine Aguilera." She misspelled Christina's name. I remember thinking, "Well there goes that collaboration."

I never heard back from them and it didn't surprise me at all. Then maybe a year ago, David, my current manager, was like, "Well we've got a call from Christina Aguilera's management and she's interested in writing with you, and they want to set up a call." So we tried to set up a call and it took a while to get us both online at the same time. Then eventually, I think it was on the try number three, she called and I was put through about three different people. First it was David, her manager, then it was her assistant, and then it was her husband and then it was her. It was really funny. Every time I'd be like, "Christina?" Then a male voice would come on the phone. Eventually, she was like, [puts on a high voice] "Yeah!"

She just said, "I'd like to step into your world." I said, "So you don't want me to write with your co-writer, you want me to bring one of my own?" And she said, "Yeah." So I decided who I would want out of my friends to make a million dollars, and I chose Sam Dixon, who is my bass player and who I write a lot of songs with. We've been friends for seventeen years, and I thought I would like him to make a million dollars. So we went to her house and it was really easy. We wrote the four songs there and they flew us back to write the fifth song for the movie.

NP: Over how many days did that all happen?

SF: Four days, four songs.

NP: Wow. A song per day.

SF: Yeah, I like to work fast. I like to do everything fast.

NP: What was it like working with Christina?

SF: I guess I was scared, because when you're someone's songwriter you're their bitch. You're not really in charge. I'm in charge of my job and my work. I'm the leader, I'm the boss, so it was kind of exciting to go in being somebody's employee.

I really enjoyed it. I loved it so much so that that's something that I'd like to do, you know, if I decide that touring really isn't for me. Because I'm not really comfortable with the fame aspect, and I don't like touring at this stage. That's why I'm gonna live on the bus for this tour. We're trying something different. I'm taking the dogs, and we're gonna live on the bus. I don't like hotels, I don't like being in different environments all the time.

NP: So what surprised you about working with Christina?

SF: The surprising part for me was just that she was really nice. It was really easy. The surprising part for me I think is that I liked having a boss. I liked working for somebody

NP: I guess having a set period of time where you've got to come up with songs and you've got a deadline, that can be a helpful discipline

SF: Well that's the only way I work. That's how I work for myself too. We schedule a day or we schedule days, and then I have different people come in and I work with them and write songs. We do a song a day, sometimes two. I don't ever like write unless it's scheduled.

NP: So who might be some of your dream artists to partner up with?

SF: I like pop music so I would like to write for pop artists. I'd like to write for Leona Lewis and Britney Spears. A lot of the artists whose voices I love, like Lauren Hill, I'd love to write for them as well, but they write their own music. She's one of my favorite voices. And Amy Winehouse, she writes her own stuff. So there's a lot of beautiful voices that I love but I know I couldn't write for 'cause they're writers; They don't need a top line writer. So I guess that really the only place for me is in pop music because the majority of independent artists write their own stuff...I sent Nelly Furtado a bunch of songs the other day, like about a hundred. I don't know if she'll use any of those but that'd be nice.



Sia's new album, We Are Born, is scheduled for release on June 8 via Monkey Puzzle/Jive Records. Her North American tour kicks off on April 10 in Vancouver, European dates follow in May. For more info go to SiaMusic.net/.

Chloe Sevigny must be a veteran of film festivals. The types of movies she usually does often get their start at Sundance or Cannes looking for distribution. At this year's South by Southwest film festival in Austin, TX, she had two films, Barry Munday and Mr. Nice. Barry Munday is a comedy starring... more

Chloe Sevigny must be a veteran of film festivals. The types of movies she usually does often get their start at Sundance or Cannes looking for distribution. At this year's South by Southwest film festival in Austin, TX, she had two films, Barry Munday and Mr. Nice.

Barry Munday is a comedy starring Patrick Wilson as a womanizer who loses his testicles in a comical attack. He finds out he's impregnated one of his one night stands, Ginger (Judy Greer) and tries to do the right thing for his last chance at fatherhood. Sevigny plays Ginger's sister Jennifer, an antagonistic provocateur who may or may not be a stripper by night. Mr. Nice is a stylized true story of British drug smuggler Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans). It would screen later in the week.

It's been 15 years since Sevigny's debut in the controversial indie drama Kids. That film tackled promiscuity, rape and AIDS among New York City teens in 1995. Sevigny also won acclaim and notice in films like Boys Don't Cry, American Psycho and The Brown Bunny (notoriety in that case, giving on-screen fellatio to ex-boyfriend Vincent Gallo). Now she stars on HBO's controversial polygamist drama Big Love, which just wrapped its fourth season.

Jennifer seems the polar opposite of Sevigny, and indeed Barry Munday is a rare comedy in her body of work. She took the previous interview out into the hallway of the Four Seasons hotel in Austin, because she was nervous with all the onlookers in the interview suite. She kept this interview in the room, but still remained shy and guarded. It's cool. That's what makes her such an independent enigma, the rare actress who's not trying to be the center of attention.

Suicide Girls: You look very stylish today with a striped top and a blazer. How did you put this outfit together?

Chloe Sevigny: My friends are designers in New York. I went into their showroom and just pulled a bunch of stuff to wear during the festival.

SG: Is that how you usually pick your clothes?

CS: I guess so. Sometimes I look on Style.com and I pick stuff and I have it sent, but usually that's more problematic because you don't know if it's going to fit. So it's easier always just to go into the showroom and try stuff on. I always like to have new stuff when I go to festivals. You feel a little more sparkly.

SG: Was it nice to get to be funny in Barry Munday?

CS: I don't think I was that funny though. I think I was more the straight person to Judy's comedic [one], but I tried. I tried. It was really scary. It was hard.

SG: Her aggressiveness at making Barry uncomfortable, didn't you find that funny?

CS: I hope so. I think she was kind of more bad than funny, more of a troublemaker, but I hope it's funny. I hope some of it is funny. I feel like my stuff with Judy at the dinner table was kind of cute and funny.

SG: Are you just self-critical?

CS: I think also because I've only seen the film one time and the first time you see it, you're always just kind of like, "Oh my God, no." So I think I'd have to see it a couple more times to feel more confident about the performance. The first time you're always so critical.

SG: How would you describe the rhythm of this comedy?

CS: I don't know, how would you? It's very odd, no? It's kind of flat. It's not ba-dum bum. There's something different and I think mainly that's Patrick Wilson's performance. He's so hilarious. He's so good in this. His looks, every nuance, every face I was rolling on the floor.

SG: You do it well too.

CS: Do I? I'm just impersonating him though.

SG: Jennifer wouldn't wear something as hip as you are right now. What did you think of her basic suburban style?

CS: Oh yeah, I thought she was very boring. I mean, I think she was supposed to be more contemporary, kind of looking pretty cool but not too cool as opposed to Ginger. I think she was just supposed to kind of be her opposite. It was Ginger still dressing like she did when she was in elementary school in the '70s. I think Jennifer was more just supposed to be her opposite.

SG: You looked great with dark hair in the stripper scene.

CS: Oh thank you. It was a terrible wig. Really bad wig.

SG: Were you happy with that look?

CS: I wasn't crazy about the wig but I liked the look. It was fun. It was fun to do the dance sequence. I practiced the dance sequence a lot and then of course it only lasts for a few seconds and you barely see me once, but it was kind of fun to do although I vowed to myself I would never play a stripper or a hooker, but I thought in this case I could kind of get away with it.

SG: Does it count as playing a stripper when it might just be Barry's fantasy that it was Jennifer?

CS: Yeah, it might be a fantasy. It might not be her. That's how I justified it.

SG: Performing it, were you playing the dance straight and sexy or hamming it up a little?

CS: I was just trying to get through the routine. I wish I had hammed it up more. I wish I had been more comfortable. I think I was dancing pretty straight.

SG: You must be a veteran of film festivals. What are your film festival survival tips?

CS: Well, I always do the wrong thing, like last night I went out too late because I want to experience the city. You have to work but you want to go out and have fun, so it's always a balance that I can never get right. Plus, with the time change, it got me all screwed up last night. Film festival survival, bring a friend or a companion. As an actress at least, I have one of my best friends here with me because sometimes when you're here alone it gets lonely and it's more fun to have someone you're with to go to parties with and run around town with and what not. Visine, for an actress. Drink lots of fluids, remember to eat. I can't obviously see a lot of films because I'm working the whole time I'm here but I think if you go as a viewer to a festival, just to be educated on everything that's out there and pick and choose. Like for me, when I go to music festivals, I always know who's playing on every stage and have mapped out what I want to see.

SG: Do you get to make any new friends when you're at all the events for your own films?

CS: Well, at events you're always meeting tons and tons of people of course. Sometimes you make new friends. I once made a boyfriend in Cannes. I met a boy in Cannes who was a journalist and he became my boyfriend. So you never know.

SG: Which film was that on?

CS: Oh, it was a long time ago. I don't want to talk about it.

SG: When can you sleep? I'm having a hard time with that one.

CS: God, hopefully I'll be able to sleep for a couple hours this afternoon because I have another premiere tonight, Mr. Nice. So I need to rest my head a little bit.

SG: Since you have two films here, are you being pulled every which way?

CS: Not so much. I think we're trying to keep it to a minimum here. It's not like Cannes or one of the bigger festivals where there's so much press. I think the press is more like a grass roots kind of thing around here, South by Southwest.

SG: Have you gotten to see anything?

CS: No, I kind of want to see that Lemmy movie. I don't even know how to get in. I have to ask one of these publicist people if I can get in.

SG: It's hard to believe it's been 15 years since Kids.

CS: I know, shocking, right?

SG: How do you look back on that movie?

CS: I'm really proud of my career and my trajectory and the films that I've made. I'm surprised it's been that long. I'm just glad I'm still around. I'm glad people are still hiring me. I'm glad that I've remained true to myself and only worked on films that I want to work on. Now with the TV show, I feel like people are more exposed to my work which has been really great. I'm pretty satisfied.

SG: Would Kids have to be different if made today? Would it have to address all the texting and social networking?

CS: I don't know. I was watching that How to Make It in America on HBO which has a little bit of a Kids feel. It is a different time. There were a lot more freedoms in the '90s, at least in New York City. You could get away with a lot more on the streets, less distractions. You could say, "Well, let's meet in the park" and you'll meet there. You're not like, "Oh, I'm late" or "I'm not going to make it." You couldn't just cancel on people. It's just a different feeling, different time.

SG: Where are you in your life now, 15 years later?

CS: I'm really happy as I said before with my work. I'm a homeowner. I don't know where I am in life. Just trying to do my thing. Working, hanging out with my friends.

SG: Is it different being part of an artistic community as a grown-up than it was when you started out as a young adult?

CS: I don't know. There's a lot of young kids now on the scene in New York, at least the scene that I'm in. They seem really wild and they're acting out and they're doing their thing. It's kind of amusing. Then you see a lot of kids that behave really crazy and oh, well, they're young. I say, "When I was young, I didn't act like an idiot." I was more of the observer which I still am I guess. I feel like now I have more confidence as a person, walking into an opening or doing whatever. I feel more comfortable in myself and that's a great feeling.

SG: Is there a different TV world you've traveled in now?

CS: I guess so. There's definitely the HBO family because I go to a lot of their events and I think they have great programming and great actors on their shows. I never really felt embraced at all by the film world. Definitely indie film but Hollywood never. I've never even made a studio film. Well, Zodiac, but I feel more embraced by the TV community. I feel like there's less snobbery and elitism.

SG: Is Big Love done for the year?

CS: We're done. We start shooting again next August, the fifth season.

SG: Do you have any insight into why polygamist wives are common but not multiple husbands?

CS: I mean, that was their religion. Brigham Young, what can you say? That was the religion they started. It's kind of stuck. I'm sure if there was another religion, the other way around, of course men as they say rule the world so the men are going to be a more dominant force.

SG: Do you think the women of those communities are getting to see Big Love?

CS: No, I don't think they even know who the president of the United States is. I think that they're kept really repressed and it's really shocking that it happens in America right now.

SG: Do you see awareness happening?

CS: No, no. Not within the compound. I don't even know if they get to look at newspapers.

SG: But at least are people on the outside trying to reach in and help?

CS: Oh, I hope so. I hope so. I think that would be great. I think hopefully people are supporting these different organizations where women can go to to escape. I know I have.

Barry Munday is currently seeking distribution. Look for it later this year.