Milla Jovovich picks up an unlit cigarette with her left hand, grips a Bic lighter with her right, and levels an intense gaze at me. It takes me only a couple of seconds to volunteer “Go for it, don’t mind me.” She smiles out of the corner of her mouth and says “Thank you”... more

Milla Jovovich picks up an unlit cigarette with her left hand, grips a Bic lighter with her right, and levels an intense gaze at me. It takes me only a couple of seconds to volunteer “Go for it, don’t mind me.” She smiles out of the corner of her mouth and says “Thank you” as she lights up, and I start to get the impression that people don’t often say no to Milla. The aura of effortless authority she projects, combined with an ingratiating warmth and easy humor, seems more native to a diplomat or other well-traveled cosmopolitan (she started out as a globe-trotting model) than to a contemporary movie star, most of whom fidget incessantly and approach chatting with film writers as a grim necessity.

As we stretch our legs and begin to talk about the topic at hand – her new film, naturally – her thoughts continually drift to her twenty month-old daughter, Ever, who arrived after what was reportedly a dangerous, excruciating delivery that began on Halloween night ’07 and continued on for three agonizing days. When Milla exclaims at one point that Ever has grown “thirty pounds in twenty months!” she momentarily becomes so flushed and animated that it’s safe to conclude that her career is not at the forefront of her thoughts these days. Which is somewhat ironic, since the thirty-three year-old’s popularity is at an all-time peak. Next month she begins filming Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth installment of the zombie-splatter franchise that rests entirely on her thin shoulders and that continues to justify its big, effects-heavy budgets with box-office results.

For the last few years, Milla has balanced her Resident Evil success with roles in smaller, often obscure indies such as the 2006 revenge film .45, but that dynamic is now shifting as the broader creative community takes more notice of her. A starring role in a Paul Verhoeven epic set in Czarist Russia is currently being considered, and she will also appear in Stone, a psychological thriller co-starring Edward Norton and Robert De Niro. This week , she stars opposite Steve Zahn in A Perfect Getaway, a tropical whodunit dipped in the self-aware, genre-specific humor popularized in films like Scream. The story follows three couples vacationing in a remote corner of Hawaii, where dead bodies begin to turn up on the beach. As Milla tells it, one of the joys of this particular shoot was allowing others to break their backs doing stunt work while she happily played the “new mom” card and focused solely on her acting work and enjoying the scenery.

Ryan Stewart: You came to this movie with skills the male actors don’t have – your action chops. Did you lend them a hand?

Milla Jovovich: Are you kidding? No, not at all. I just let them flounder. I was like “You guys take care of yourself, I just had a baby four months ago, I am not doing any action.” No, what appealed to me about this particular film was that I didn’t have to train and I didn’t have to do any of the action stuff since I’d just had a child. I got to play a girl who is really sweet and really nice and who has a dark side that comes out, cause everything kind of goes wrong at the end, but for the first two acts of the movie I got to just basically be myself. And that’s why I wanted to do it. So, when they tried to get me to do, like, kayaking practice, I was like “Okay, one day, and then forget about it – after that stunt double all the way.”

When I do the Resident Evil movies I do all of my own stunts, because that’s a really big franchise for me and it’s super-important for the fans who love me in those movies to know that I’m doing that for them, but a movie like this? This is a character-driven piece for me. It wasn’t about me fighting and doing action – that’s only the last twenty minutes of the film, you know? People aren’t going to this movie to see explosions and gun fights. I think my fan base is always interested in seeing a different part of me. The people that enjoy my career have enjoyed the different choices that I’ve made over the last twenty-five years and they are into watching to see where I go and how I grow as an actor. They’ve also been able to get their Resident Evil fix every couple of years – and now they’re gonna get another one – but for the smaller films I get to do more versatile things. Obviously, the Resident Evil crowd isn’t going to go see all of my movies, but that’s the fun of having a versatile career – it allows me to do big action and then the smaller pieces as well.

RS: Kayaking can be a pretty intense experience for anyone, not just a new mom – any scary moments during your brief forays into harm’s way?

MJ: The kayaking stuff was scary, for me, because I didn’t want to train. It was a little treacherous because we were out in the ocean near the really sharp cliffs – Puerto Rico has a lot of really sharp cliffs, that’s why it’s great strategically and defensively. The town we were in was not like some beach town, because of all the sharp, rocky cliffs that are hard to climb. It would be hard to dominate Puerto Rico, like, from the sea. In the Middle Ages I’m sure that was great, strategically. Anyway, when we were kayaking the currents were so strong they would just push me into the rocks, and I just said to them “Look guys, I’m not doing this. I’m not here to do stunts and I’m not about to injure myself. I’m not about to flip this boat over and scratch myself up on all these rocks that are really sharp. So, they had to sort of cheat it and just have my stunt double do that stuff that’s really close to the rocks. And then they had me a little further out in the sea to do my close-ups. I have a baby, so I’m not gonna take chances.

Before [the baby] I used to be like, hey, whatever, let’s just go for it! But I’m just not gonna do that now. I mean, it’s one thing to take chances on a big action film, when you know it’s all about that, but since it’s not all about that for this movie, why do I need to take risks? What makes this film interesting is the characters – it’s a thriller. In the end, you can have the best action scenes in the world, but if you don’t care about the characters it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent on the explosions. Whereas, if you start out with some great characters and then you add in some great action, then the audience will be like “Yeah, yeah, yeah – go, go, go!”

RS: Are you starting to feel the bruises a little more than you used to, the next morning?

MJ: [laughs] Definitely, a little bit. Since I had the baby, it’s been a bit hard for me to get back into training mode. It’s like, I’m working all week long and I have a nanny and the baby hasn’t been sleeping because she’s not a sleeper. This last week we’ve been teaching her how to sleep without crying, cause we don’t want to do the whole Ferber thing; it’s a much longer, more drawn-out process when you do it that way, because you go in when she cries and then you start waiting a little longer to go in each time she cries. Finally, she’ll cry for thirty seconds and then put herself back to sleep. You know, she’s finally like “Meh, whatever.” So, now she’s finally sleeping, which is great, but for the last twenty months I’ve had the nanny during the week and then on the weekends I sleep with her and that means no sleep for me. It’s been really hard to have the stamina to do training and still be able to pick up my daughter, who is a big girl – thirty pounds in twenty months! After a hard day of training, she’ll be like “Mama, up, up, up!” And I’m like “Ugh, I love you, but geez!” Then I’ll try to sit down on the couch and again she’s like “Mama!” and I have to get up and go upstairs. Ack!

RS: It sounds like the Resident Evil series forces you to ramp up your exercise regiment every couple of years, no matter what. Has Paul [Milla’s husband, director Paul W.S. Anderson] decided on directing this new one?

MJ: Yep, Paul’s gonna direct this one. The script is done and we start shooting in September. I can tell you that Alice’s clones are definitely coming back, so there’s gonna be ten times more ass-kicking in this one. The real Alice also has some major changes that happen to her – that I can’t really talk about. We’ll also see some new characters from the game in this one as well as some old characters from the other films that will make an appearance – or not – in a mysterious way. There will be a lot of interesting elements to this one.

RS: You might want to consider bringing back that outfit with the cowboy chaps.

MJ: [laughs] It’ll be better than that. Trust me, we’re taking it to the next level.

RS: People love to see you in angry-mode, especially in those movies. They like it when you get to the point that you’re not gonna take it anymore. Do you have a temper for real?

MJ: I have a temper, of course, but it takes a lot. I’m very non-confrontational for the most part, and I think some people might get lulled into a false sense of comfort. I’m very cool, for the most part. I’m sort of like “Oh, that was late? That didn’t arrive? My airplane stuff got screwed up? Hmmm…okay.” I’m pretty cool, but I’m like this [raising her hand to different levels] cool…cool…cool…then I blow up. There are some people who are always all over people’s butts; they’re like “You didn’t do this? You didn’t do that? This is cold!” But with me I’m usually more like [rolls eyes] “Fine, fine, fine” but then at one point I might be really tired or have just finished working hard or maybe I’m sick or whatever, and I’ll suddenly just go “Ahhhhhhh!”

RS: You and Steve Zahn make for a pretty unlikely couple in A Perfect Getaway, don’t you think? I heard a few people cracking jokes about that earlier.

MJ: Well, I think it’s actually rare for you to see a model dating another model. Or some really gorgeous guy with a really gorgeous girl. Usually, if that’s the case they’re both like sixteen or seventeen years old. I think, for the most part, women are attracted to men who aren’t the typical model type, in terms of looks. I think, quite the opposite, a lot of women would be like “Whoa, you’re way too manicured and too into your hair and your facial routine.” I’ve always been attracted to guys who are just normal guys. Steve is an amazing guy, he’s hilarious, he’s good-looking; he’s not a model, but that would be a plus for me. I’d be more apt to be attracted to a guy like Steve than some Abercrombie & Fitch guy, you know? Besides the fact that you don’t see their faces in those ads, just the look of their abs is a little too much for me.

RS: I’m guessing you’re not a Twilight fangirl, in that case.

MJ: Not yet! I’ve actually been trying my hardest to get away from the whole Twilight thing, because I’m an avid reader – I was a huge Anne Rice fan and I’m sure that if I did start on Twilight that would be it for me, for like the next year. I’d have to take, like, a year off and just do nothing except be into the Twilight series. As a mom, at this point, I’ve had to stop reading at 8:00pm and then I’ll say to myself, okay, I’m just gonna read a few chapters and then go to bed – then suddenly it’s three in the morning and I’m still reading. Then I’m a zombie all the next day. So, I’ve had to just kind of put an end to all of that. Maybe when my baby gets a little bit older, I’ll be able to have more time to focus on getting absorbed in some page-turners.

RS: Speaking of novels, aren’t you and Paul Verhoeven still trying to get an adaptation of that Russian book, Azazel, off the ground?

MJ: We’re trying, but at this point it’s pretty much dead. We’ve been trying to get it off the ground for a few years, but Paul finally just wasn’t getting along with the producers. They weren’t agreeing internally even on, to me, stupid stuff like line producer stuff, location stuff, and the money stuff. Now he’s taken on another film – he had to because they just weren’t coming to any kind of agreement. So, for the moment [The] Winter Queen is on hold. Hopefully, maybe when Paul is done with his other film we can get it back up and running.

RS: Is it a goal of yours to tell Russian or Ukrainian stories?

MJ: Oh, I would love to. I’ve really been wanting to find the right one to do and I thought that Winter Queen could sort of be a perfect way for me to slowly get into playing an Eastern European character. It’s definitely something that I’m very interested in. I’d love to play a Russian girl to sort of give that to my Russian heritage. I do think a lot of Russian people are like, why doesn’t she ever play Russian characters?

RS: I’d imagine that one of the biggest challenges of your role in A Perfect Getaway was being mindful of the movie’s huge twists – not contradicting them with your acting choices.

MJ: Yeah, that’s where [writer/director] David Twohy really helped out a lot. As an actor you have to be so in the moment that sometimes you can forget about the big picture. But that’s the nature of our job – we’re not really supposed to be thinking about the big picture all the time. That’s why directors are so important, because they’re thinking about where your character is coming from and where they’re going in the story. There were plenty of times when we would try out different lines in different ways to make sure that we had choices in the cutting room of how much to show or how little to show.

RS: They say you’re a stickler for rehearsal – you like to really dig in and rehearse a lot.

MJ: Who told you that? That’s true, and a lot of people don’t agree with me. Everyone has their own process but for me I definitely need to read lines. And it’s not like when I’m rehearsing I’m giving all the emotion in the rehearsal and I’m doing everything I’m gonna do on the set – not at all. It’s just reading the dialogue and hearing it come out of your mouth and feeling comfortable with your own voice. A lot of times when I’m not prepared [raises her voice a level] my voice starts to rise like this because I’m getting nervous. That’s when I don’t really know what choices I’m making. I have to know where I’m going and what choice I’m making for this or that line. I can say [flat, uninterested voice] “Hey, how’s it going?” or I can go [interested, enthusiastic] “Hi, how are ya!” and it’s a totally different thing.

I need to be comfortable because up here [in the higher register] I’m not telling you the truth – it’s not really me. But if I say “Hey, how’s it going” in my regular voice then it’s coming from my gut and then it just is what it is – it’s just me. When I prepare for a part I tend to watch myself even in my normal, everyday life. If a guest comes over, I’ll say “Hi, my name’s Milla, nice to meet you!” and then later on I’ll find myself trying to remember just how I said that, so that if I have a scene where I have to introduce myself to someone I can be like “Hmm, remember that time my aunt came over and she brought her cousin who I’d never met and I had to introduce myself? Now how did I do that?” [laughs]

RS: I think what I responded to most in this film was its humor, which you also seemed to really understand and play to. It’s very self-referential, and gives the movie a light tone.

MJ: Yeah, a lot of it is tongue in cheek, in a sense. And there are also things you only realize after the movie’s over, and then you’re like “Oh God, those people were just completely screwing with each other!” The film also takes you back, I think, to an older school of filmmaking where it’s not at all about explosions or even that much about chase scenes – just very character-driven. It’s about the tension of the situation and not knowing who is telling the truth. Are these people really who they say they are? That’s great for an actor, to get to play a character with a lot of different dimensions. It’s a lot like real life to play a character who could be one way in one situation, but they might also have a darker side that you wouldn’t necessarily know from only meeting them for a few days, you know? That’s a quality I really liked – you have people that seem friendly on the outside, and then you get to know them and start to see other sides that you had no idea existed. That is very much the way life is.

A Perfect Getaway opens in theaters everywhere this Friday.

When you're watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the Cobra Command is tearing up the Eiffel Tower with its laser beams, you probably won't be thinking about the writing. It's an eye candy movie for sure, but somebody did write not only the catch phrases the heroic Joes say, but the... more

When you're watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the Cobra Command is tearing up the Eiffel Tower with its laser beams, you probably won't be thinking about the writing. It's an eye candy movie for sure, but somebody did write not only the catch phrases the heroic Joes say, but the very action sequences themselves.

Stuart Beattie turned Hasbro's classic toy line and animated daily series into a modern day action film. The Australian scribe broke into Hollywood with his work on the first Pirates of the Caribbean, followed by solid hits Collateral, Derailed and 30 Days of Night. After turning his Joe script over to director Stephen Sommers, he's currently back in Oz working on his directorial debut, Tomorrow, When the War Began.

Beattie began researching Joe in 2000 for a different set of filmmakers. It paid off when he finally got the job last year. "Really, I'd been familiar with it for about nine years before I wrote it," he said. "I think stories and movies come out best when you think about them for a long time. I'd just been thinking about the world and the characters and all that in the back of my mind. So once the call came in, it was very easy to just slip right in and start doing it. I knew what the movie had to be and what parameters I had to stay within and what lines I could not cross."

His un-produced scripts may be as interesting as his hits. Beattie wrote a script for a Halo movie which, as of now, has no studio attached. While scouting locations for Tomorrow, When the War Began., Beattie made time for an international call. He stayed on the phone for a half hour to geek out about '80s toys, video games and pirates.

Fred Topel: How do you approach adapting a toy line and cartoon as opposed to the theme park ride you adapted with Pirates of the Caribbean?

Stuart Beattie: You know, it's much the same. You take it very seriously. I think you can get inspiration or use as source material anything for a movie, as long as you take it as seriously as you would any other kind of source material. So as I did with Pirates, I looked at G.I. Joe and I said, "Okay, well, if this organization was to really exist in the world, how would it really exist? What would it do and who would be the kind of people that would be the operatives and how would the command structure run? What kind of missions would they be sent on and who would they go up against?" I really just try and ground it in as much reality as I can for me, to make it so that it really could be real. I mean, the movie ultimately is a fantasy piece but I kind of approach it from the point of view that you have to take these things for real. They have to be serious and that, to me, is the best way to get emotional truth out of the characters and out of the situations so that when you get these fantastical sequences, they have this element of real truth to them which is what I think makes them interesting. With real truth becomes believability. With believability comes investing with the characters, caring about what happens in the big fantastical sequence because you're invested in these characters. It all comes from that place of truth for me, no matter what the source material. I just take it very seriously. That's the best I can tell you I think.

FT: If you read interviews with the actors, they all say they have to overact. Where does that come from?

SB: I would imagine that's from Stephen. They're portraying characters that I guess are larger than life in the sense that they've been around for 20, 30 years. There's a kind of iconic value to them. So you'd probably have to talk to Stephen about that but it all works with the tone of it and everything. So maybe it's just that there are a lot of characters in there, so you've got to kind of really make your mark I guess and really deliver something interesting. Maybe that's what they're talking about.

FT: Did you have any guidelines or restrictions from Hasbro?

SB: I actually didn't, although after the movie I was given the guidelines, but during my experience of writing it, I was writing it right before the writer's strike. So I really didn't have time to go to Hasbro and get the speech or anything. I just kind of wrote what I thought would be a really great summer action movie and stayed away from obvious things, like I knew I didn't want the G.I. Joes to be bad or be corrupt or have a mole within. If you grow up with G.I. Joe, you kind of know the basic elements and you know what line not to cross. So I just kind of stayed within those lines because I wanted to make sure that it was first and foremost a G.I. Joe movie. I didn't want it to feel like a Jason Bourne movie or a James Bond movie or any other kind of movie. I wanted it to be strictly G.I. Joe. I was very familiar with the property before I came onto it so I knew the parameters already.

FT: Did you know this from your own childhood or from your kids?

SB: No, because I grew up in Australia so I knew of G.I. Joe but I never played with any of the G.I. Joe action figures. My knowledge of the property came in 2000, nine years ago when I was originally approached by another set of producers, another whole incarnation to write the movie of G.I. Joe. They sent me the whole bible and all the comics and all that kind of stuff. I just really got into it then. That thing, that iteration of the project obviously never came to fruition and I never really did anything with it but, the material I kept because I knew it was fun and interesting. So I had all that stuff on my shelf when I got the call from Lorenzo [di Bonaventura - Producer] in mid-September saying, "We need you to write a movie." So I pulled all that stuff off the shelf and I was right back into it.

FT: When did black suits come into the design?

SB: That would've been some time in pre-production. It would've been the choice of Stephen and the costume designer. I'm not sure. I delivered the script, literally delivered the script on the day before the strike. We went on strike. The strike lasted the entire length of the pre-production and then the strike ended on the first day of shooting, actually the day before the first day of shooting. So I missed the whole pre-production so I assume that that stuff came up somewhere in those three or four months.

FT: Is it true you worked lines like "Kung Fu Grip" and "Sold Separately" into the script?

SB: I didn't get "sold separately" in although I should've. I did get "kung fu grip." "Lifelike hair" was the other one. "Lifelike hair" and "Kung fu grip," they're the famous taglines on the G.I. Joe products. You have to get them in. You have to get in "Knowing's half the battle" and there were certain things, like I say, to make it a G.I. Joe movie you've got to get them in. You've got to get certain characters in. you've got to get certain relationships in. You've got to get certain vehicles in. They're the kind of basic elements you need to really make it a G.I. Joe movie.

FT: What are the crazy set pieces you just wanted to see in a movie?

SB: To me it kind of falls under the loose banner of anything that I have not seen before, and I think audiences are starving for originality. I know I certainly am so I kind of take the premise: if I've seen it before, then I don't want to do it. I want to do something that I haven't seen before in the hopes that no one else has seen anything like this before. In the hopes that that will give people a real kick. I couldn't say, "Oh, I wanted to see a chase on the streets of Paris" or "I wanted to see a convoy attack" or whatever it was. It would be things like I come first from a place of story and what's the next thing that needs to happen here in the story. Then I'd think okay, now what's a really cool way to do that that I haven't seen before? What's a great way to execute that that I haven't seen before?

FT: What made Tomorrow, When the War Began the right film for you to direct?

SB: Several factors. Firstly, I wanted it to be Australian. Secondly, I wanted it to be in a genre that I knew it would be an interesting movie to see. I wasn't interested in doing kind of the bleak urban drama that we do a lot of down here. I was interested more in doing a fun piece, a commercial piece. Then, thirdly, I was looking for something that had great characters. Of course, the two never really go together. I don't have the budget to do what we did on G.I. Joe so it's a much, much, much smaller budget but it's enough to deliver a good, exciting action movie. It just has all those elements that are really terrific and just what I was looking for.

FT: What happened with Halo and why hasn't anybody made that movie yet?

SB: That was actually something, I'm just a Halo fan basically and I always had very specific views on what I thought the movie should be. When that [Peter Jackson/Neil Blomkamp] iteration of Halo kind of ended, Fox and Universal pulled out and the project went dead, I was just relieved. And then I went on strike and I had nothing to do so I thought well, why don't I use the time to put my money where my mouth is and just write the Halo script that I would've always wanted to write, never with the intention of selling it. I just really wanted to write something that I would love writing but I would never get a chance to do any other time. So I sat down and I wrote this script. Then after the strike ended, I just started inquiring, 'What's going on, what's going on?' I just heard Microsoft said that it was just sitting there and no one was doing anything with it. It's a wonderful story, the movie based on the "The Fall of Reach" which is the prequel to the first game. It's just something that I have on my shelf and I'm just constantly pushing.

FT: We'd like to see a great video game movie. There may have been a few good ones but really no great ones. What do you think it will take?

SB: You know, I think we have to wait a few years for that. My theory on the whole video game adaptation is that the people in charge making movies based on video games don't play the video games and don't know the video games and don't love the video games. So we have to wait a few years until the people who do play video games and love them are the ones kind of in charge and calling the shots. I think it's kind of like how we had to wait for the Sam Raimis of the world to get into a position where they were powerful enough to make the movies of the comic books that they grew up on and they loved. That's when we got great comic book movies. So I just think because video games are like 10, 15 years behind comic books, we have to wait for those of us who love video games and specific games to get enough clout to be the ones making those movies. We love those games, cherish those games and respect those games. One day, yeah, someone will really make a terrific Halo movie. Hopefully it's me or hopefully it's sooner and it's someone else.

FT: So to be clear, you weren't involved with the Peter Jackson project?

SB: Not at all, no. I had nothing to do with that. This was just something, after that went away and was done and totally finished, I had some time on my hands because I was on strike and I'm a fan and I happen to write screenplays.

FT: What's your process? Do you keep a regimented schedule?

SB: I very much keep banker's hours. It's very important to me to work Monday through Friday and 9 to 6 and be on time with most of the world and take my kids to school, go to the games on the weekends and live life. I think life informs everything that you write. Even if nothing's coming, I'll sit there and I'll write crap. Writing crap's better than writing nothing. At least with crap, you've got something to work with the next day. Like okay, well, that's crap. I can do better than that. The terrifying thing is the blank page, so whatever you have to do to get past the blank page, that's the process. I start at page one every day. Every day I start at page one because I can't write page two until I know I've done page one the best that I can, because I think if I write a great page two and page one sucks, then I might have to change page two.

FT: So you rewrite as you go?

SB: Oh yeah, every day. Start at page one, and it also gives me confidence to go and write page two if I'm like, "Oh, page one, pretty good."

FT: Some writers just wait until they're finished and go back to revise.

SB: Right, see, that's not me because I would worry that I did something wrong on page one and every other page after that just does not work anymore. So I want to know that all the work I've done previously is the best that it can be before I do the next part so that I don't get into that trap. It's just a personal thing. That's just how I do it.

FT: You helped create a monster with Pirates. What were your thoughts on how that series progressed?

SB: Oh, you know, God bless, good luck. I think it's a really fun world. I kind of feel if anything like it's just more justification really. I was hammering Disney for 10 years to make that movie. I just loved that the first movie turned out so well that the world really embraced this series of movies. If they want to keep making them and everyone's happy to make them and they're good quality, there's nothing I can say. God bless, good luck and it's great.

FT: Would you consider taking a crack at another one?

SB: I wouldn't personally, no, just because I kind of crave in my personal work doing things that I haven't done before. Especially those films, they're so successful, I'd really probably only fail. But it's a world that I've traveled in a lot now, so I'd much rather leave it to other people and take on something fresh and new. They've offered me a lot of other toy movies, movies based on toy lines and I just keep turning them down. G.I. Joe was that movie for me. I invested everything I could in G.I. Joe. I wouldn't have anything left to invest in The Monopoly Game or the Viewfinder Game, whatever that they're doing. Movies are such an investment, such a personal investment. There's so much of your heart and soul in them that it's not something in a way you can repeat. You can't repeat it in the same world and all that. It's just a personal thing so I always need to be doing something fresh and something original.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be released theatrically August 7, 2009

Man I love this job! After three long years of wooing I finally got a chance to talk with the legendary comedian Al Franken. After many successful years as a standup comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, Franken has released a number of hysterical and popular books such as Why Not Me? and Rush Limbaugh... more

Man I love this job! After three long years of wooing I finally got a chance to talk with the legendary comedian Al Franken. After many successful years as a standup comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, Franken has released a number of hysterical and popular books such as Why Not Me? and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. When Franken released Lies and the Lying Liars in 2004, esteemed filmmakers Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus followed and him and documented the experience. Now it’s all been put together in the film Al Franken: God Spoke.

Check out the official website for Al Franken: God Spoke

Daniel Robert Epstein: What did you think when such prestigious documentary filmmakers wanted to do a film on you?

Al Franken: I was very excited because I liked their work.

DRE: Did you ever feel pressure to be on for the camera?

Al: No, I thought that would be a bad idea. There were certain things I know I did that I wish were in the movie but it’s their movie [laughs]. You know that party where the Republicans all are?

DRE: Yeah, the Newsweek party.

Al: Yeah, I saw Charlie Rose at the party and Charlie sees the camera and he goes, “How long have they been following you?” I said, “Like a year.” He goes, “well, how are you going to end it?” We didn’t know at the time and I said, “you know what, if we can’t find an ending I may have to murder someone and Charlie, it could be you.” Then a couple months later, we’re in Minneapolis and I was saying something like, “Why don’t we just end the movie by including that clip in earlier and then have me murder Charlie Rose.” They would follow me as I go into his apartment building, go up the elevator, knock on his door, Charlie answers and then you cut to me pistol whipping Charlie while he is on his hands and knees begging for his life. Charlie is doing a terrible job of acting and then we cut to Kevin Spacey as Charlie Rose and me pistol whipping him and killing him. Then we cut to The Charlie Rose show with Charlie, [director] Nick [Doob] and me asking why we put Kevin Spacey in. Now I knew they weren’t going to end the movie like that but I thought it would be very funny to put that in. But they decided otherwise.

DRE: Is this the closest we’ll get to an HBO type special from you?

Al: I’m not ruling out an HBO special for me in the future.

DRE: It was a lot of fun for me to see you interacting with all your “enemies.” Is it difficult for them to attack you because you have years of comedy experience so you could snap back at them?

Al: They can certainly attack me when I’m not there. They do that all the time. I was with Mark Luther who is our resident dittohead [a fan of The Rush Limbaugh Show] on my Air America show. He’s the guy we have on like once a week and we play Rush Limbaugh and Mark has to try to defend him. Mark has known me for 39 years. He said he was listening to some right wing show and this guy said he was at a hot dog stand with me at the Republican convention in San Diego and this guy tried to say hi to me and I was really rude. I said to Mark, “Does that sound like me?” Mark says, “you know that doesn’t.” I got to put up with that crap.

DRE: How important is it for you to never lie?

Al: It’s really important to me not to lie. It’s real important not to make mistakes. But you make mistakes. There’s a difference between making a mistake and lying. We had one mistake in [the book] Lies and the Lying Liars. We included a preliminary report on the damage that was done when the Clintons left the White House. The report said there was no damage done, [laughs] but remember Arie Fleischer [George W. Bush’s press secretary at the time] and all these guys were saying there was all this huge vandalism that was done by the Clintons as they left but that was just a big myth. The second report came out and said that there were some W keys removed from the computers. There was also some incredibly minor stuff that might have occurred when a rug came up or a phone line got ripped out. But that was a mistake because we used a preliminary report but that happens. There’s a big difference between that and then doing the painstaking lying that Ann Coulter does, where you just have to labor and labor just to make a lie.

DRE: In the movie you say she’s a smart lady. Is she smart enough to delude herself or does she know she’s lying?

Al: I think she is deluding herself some of the time and she knows she’s lying some of the time and justifying it. I did a debate with her which I will not do anymore because it is not any fun. I repeated a litany of lies that she’s done and she just wouldn’t respond. She’d go, “This can’t be about Ann Coulter. Ok, I’m a flawed person.” I think there’s something desperately wrong with her and I think that there’s a self-esteem issue there. Most of us try to do our best work and see our work as an extension of ourselves and try to do something that is good.

DRE: Are you serious about running for senate in Minnesota?

Al: I’m serious about it but I don’t know if I’m going to do it. Obviously it’s a big personal decision and also I don’t know what the rest of the DFL thinks. I’m getting an idea that a lot of people want me to do it [laughs]. I told myself I don’t have to decide until next year.

DRE: What’s it take to get young people involved in politics today?

Al: They just got to feel that it means something, that it means something to their lives. Our politics has to be more about the future than it is now. Look at these huge deficits and look at the investments in prisons and weapons as opposed to investments in education.

DRE: It’s all short term.

Al: Very short term thinking. But we also have to convince kids that it is worth the work and it is actually a lot of fun and also real important at the same time. How many things are fun and important at the same time? [laughs]

DRE: Just to talk about comedy, Harry Shearer said that everyone who’s ever worked on SNL secretly hated it.

Al: No, there were times when I hated it. There were times when it drove me nuts, especially toward the end where it was getting unwieldy with all the cast members. There was just a tendency to start getting too many people. It started to get frustrating to me because we would produce too much and I had kids and we were staying there way too late at night. But mainly I loved being there. The best memories of my life are always going to be rolling on the floor laughing up on the 17th floor on a Tuesday night and writing with incredible writers and cast members. That’s the quintessential memory of Saturday Night is Live.

DRE: Robert Smigel told me you brought him to Saturday Night Live.

Al: Yeah and it was a very interesting thing. He was in this review in Chicago and there was really funny stuff in it and there was stuff that wasn’t really funny. I said “Somebody in this group is really good.” [laughs] They had the right ethic of every one of them writes everything and none of them writes anything kind of thing. That’s all fine and dandy except I couldn’t hire everybody and somebody there was the guy. So I kept coming back to the show and figuring out by who was in what sketch and talking with them and it was Smigel. I really saw a talent there.

DRE: As a comedy fan I must ask, would you and Tom [Davis] ever do something together again?

Al: We actually just did. We did a fundraiser in Minneapolis on June 8th and we did a half hour together.

DRE: Old stuff?

Al: Some old, some new. It was great.

DRE: Is it wrong for me to want Joe Lieberman to become president just because he’s Jewish?

Al: Wesley Clark is half Jewish.

DRE: Oh good! Great I’m in!

If you had a tattoo, what would it be?

Al: Oh, it would be a dot on my ankle [laughs].

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

The rest of the world is just now figuring out what David Hackney knew way back in 1974: that his band, Death, had created something groundbreaking. Death, made up of David and his brothers, Bobby and Dannis, was one of the earliest bands to make the kind of rock music we now think of as punk. The hard-rocking... more

The rest of the world is just now figuring out what David Hackney knew way back in 1974: that his band, Death, had created something groundbreaking. Death, made up of David and his brothers, Bobby and Dannis, was one of the earliest bands to make the kind of rock music we now think of as punk. The hard-rocking Detroit sound they helped pioneer would become a major influence on Bad Brains and other important punk acts, but Death themselves only ever put out one single, with only 500 copies pressed. They didn't know they had become underground legends until recently, when Bobby's sons discovered Death, and the Hackneys found themselves with all the attention they deserved, just 30 years later.

Thanks to a collection of old studio recordings and demos originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape, some of which were literally kept in the attic, Death has its first full album out on Drag City Records. It's very appropriately called ...For the Whole World to See. Sadly, David Hackney, the leader and main songwriter of the band, passed away in 2000, before he could see the band's success play out exactly as he predicted it would. The rediscovery of Death is a fitting tribute to David's memory and talent. In a turn of events that even David couldn't have predicted -- but that he probably would have loved -- the next generation of Hackneys formed a band called Rough Francis, and they play Death's old songs live.

SuicideGirls had the privilege of talking with Bobby and Dannis on the phone from their home in Vermont, about their brother, their sons, and how rock n' roll never dies.


Jay Hathaway: So, if I could just go back to the beginning, why did you decide to call your band Death? Where did the name come from?

Bobby Hackney: Well, the name came from our brother David, back in the 1970s. Well, I would say '73, really. He had a concept in rock n' roll that he was going to spin death from the negative to the positive. So it was really our brother David's concept.

JH: That's interesting, because not everybody saw it as a positive thing. I heard the story about how Clive Davis wanted you to change the name...

BH:: [laughs] And that was our brother David! See, the thing is, Don Davis, who was the owner of Groovesville Productions, who were signed up with -- they were a production company, and they owned United Sound Recordings in Detroit -- he had signed us up, and we were in United Sound recording these tracks. In the meantime, some of the demos of the tracks, he was shopping around, because he had relationships with Arista Records, Columbia Records, Stax Records, he had relationships with a number of record labels.

He had given our tape to a bunch of music moguls at that time. Clive Davis had heard the tape, and we could possibly have had a deal, but he didn't like the name. If we had changed the name, we would've probably had a deal. David just adamantly refused to change the name and said "no way." But at the time, we were young, and we didn't articulate to Don Davis that David had come up with the name Death, and that we had even written a couple of rock operas around that name. Like cocky rock n' rollers at the time, we just took it as an insult for anybody to tell us to change our concept.

JH: Did you ever record any of those rock operas?

BH:: Some of them...It's interesting, because throughout this whole process, we've re-digitized our whole songwriting archive with Death, and our demo archive. We have a lot of bits and pieces to those rock operas that David was working on. We've got a chance to do some really interesting music and maybe even put out some of it, if we can remaster it, and yet keep it within its true form.

JH: Is that something you're working on right now?

BH:: To be honest with you, the whole Death situation has kind of overtaken our lives. We had moved on, because of the fact that we had moved to Vermont years ago, and we've done reggae music and some other things since. That didn't define us, because of the whole Clive Davis thing, because we moved here with David and recorded two more albums under the name Fourth Movement. So, we continued to make rock n' roll music, but David got homesick and went back to Detroit and Dannis and myself continued on just as bass and drums. We were exploring the music, and reggae just happened to come along our way. We really got attracted to reggae music 'cause the bass and the drums were the lead instruments. So, we formed a band called Lambsbread, and we thought that that episode was over, with the whole Death thing, and now it's kind of resurfaced.

JH: Now that that's happened, did you have to put your reggae music on hold to work on Death again?

BH:: Our music now is a train that actually connects, and you could say that Death is the locomotive that may be running everything, but we have the Fourth Movement, we have Lambsbread, that are all interconnected with each other. So, it's kind of like a train, and we're just developing a way to bring this to an audience and present the whole picture. I know that Death will be the dominant thing that people will see.

JH: But you still have to stay true to the original ideas if you put all of this old music out ...

BH:: Exactly! That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to be true to each original idea, 'cause each one was a music of its own time. Death was a big influence for the Fourth Movement, and the Fourth Movement was a big influence for Lambsbread. Ironically enough, Lambsbread was a big influence for resurfacing Death.

JH: How do you think things would have been different in your lives and in your music careers if you'd stayed in Detroit instead of moving to Vermont when you did?

BH:: The problem with Detroit was that up until 1976, Detroit was an awesome rock n' roll town. You gotta understand, our big emphasis wasn't on doing shows. If you were a band in Detroit at that time, the big emphasis was always on getting into the studio with your original music, and getting the best original music that you can out on the airwaves. We got caught up in the disco tsunami, the ebb tide that hit Detroit and every other major city around that time.

When we put out "Politicians in My Eyes", we only pressed 500 of 'em. Up until that point, in Detroit, you could usually walk in with your acetate or your 45 and say to a disk jockey, y'know, "Play this for me, man." They would play it a few times, give it a week or two weeks, garner some response, and then you'd have a local hit. Nobody had told us that the whole corporate scheme was developing in radio to where tapes were being fabricated of pre-recorded music somewhere else.

They were playing "Politicians in My Eyes" and "Keep on Knocking" at maybe 3 o'clock in the morning. Our friends used to tell us that they heard it on the radio, but you would never hear it on enough of a rotation that it would make a difference. They told us that we had to get with a major label to get that rotation. So right around '76, this whole disco, corporate thing came in, and we couldn't get our records played. I think if we'd have stayed in Detroit, I don't know where it would have gone. Even in Vermont, it got worse when the whole John Travolta thing hit a couple of years later. We saw a lot of the rock n' rollers we looked up to jumping ship and doing disco.

JH: It's sort of funny how now people look at disco as this superficial trend from that time period, and the kind of stuff you guys were making is seriously influential ...

BH:: We kind of knew that at the time. We were doing this artistic songwriting, and what we were talking about had to do with what was going on at the time. That was during the time of the Vietnam War, a lot of social upheaval, the world was changing. We were tuned in to what was going on. The disco thing to us was the music industry trying to glaze over everything and say, "It's alright, everybody just party. Have a good time. Pretend like the troubles of the world aren't there." If you were a true rock n' roller, you couldn't relate to that.

JH: So when your sons discovered your music, could they relate to it?

BH:: [laughs] That's like years later, you know, when we had moved to Vermont. When we were starting up with Groovesville Records, even though they gave us the blessing to take the masters and they gave us the blessing to put out the single, we still had a contract at least for 10 to 15 more years. In other words, if something was to happen with the music, they would be included. So we weren't really interested in using a lot of the music, because we looked at it like, the statute of limitations will run out and all the rights will revert back to us. We used to talk to our kids all about it, like, "Oh yeah, we were in a rock band in Detroit in the '70s," but we never really got into depth. All that stuff was on reel-to-reel tapes. By that time, we were in the digital world like everybody else, so it just stayed kind of up in the attic and in vaults. We didn't really think too much about it, until it surfaced and our kids kind of dug it up. One of them was in California and heard the music at an underground party.

JH: And he knew it was you?

BH:: Well, he called me up and he said, "Hey Dad, did you know these people are groovin' to your music at these underground parties? Every time they play you, the crowd goes wild, and people just rush the dance floor." I'm like, "What are you talking about? Lambsbread?" I thought he was talking about our reggae band, you know? He was like, "No, Dad, you were in a band in the '70's called Death." And then I got a little quiet ... [laughs] It was just kind of a shock for us to find this out.

JH: Were you surprised that it still resonated with the next generation?

BH:: Well, all the old rock n' rollers back when we were playing, they always told us that good rock n' roll could never die. That's what we always heard coming up as kids, from a lot of the old blues guys and rock n' rollers. I think that this is proof positive of that.

JH: So, are you writing any new songs with your sons for Rough Francis? Do they have their own music, or do they just play old Death songs?

BH:: They started and debuted their album playing a lot of the Death stuff, and now they're playing their own stuff. We are in production rehearsal with the possibility of doing a 10-city tour to see if everybody likes what they see. I think they won't be disappointed.

JH: What was it like to hear them play your songs for the first time?

BH:: Oh man, it was really emotional for us. Very emotional for us because of our brother that we lost. Hearing these songs live and hearing crowds react to them the way we had always envisioned it, I think it was really emotional for me and Dannis.

Dannis Hackney: Seeing the reaction, and thinking about what Dave said all the time when he was listening to it, it gives you goose bumps ...

JH: It sounds like he was right about it all along.

BH:: Yeah, he was. He was.

DH:: Yeah, he was totally right. It was just the fact that he had more faith in it than me and Bob did at the time.

BH:: We all knew that we were doing some really heavy-duty rock n' roll, and we were very into and proud of what we were doing at the time, but after all was said and done, David believed right up until the end of his life that the world would come looking for this music one day. It's just blowing our minds that it's happening almost word-for-word to what he said.

JH: Did you realize at the time that other bands had started making music that sounded so much like what you had been doing years before? Did you know that punk had gotten so big?

BH:: People were telling us, but we never...I mean, we used to hear some of the Bad Brains, and it would remind us of the stuff we did back in Detroit, but we never had any idea that we were a major influence with those guys, and with some of the other bands.

JH: How did you go from that to making reggae music?

BH:: After we moved to Vermont, we changed the name from Death to The Fourth Movement. David was a big influence with that, and they were gospel albums, really, gospel rock albums. They were really experimental stuff, just some far-out stuff. We went through a lot of rejection because of the message we were conveying, and I think David just got a little homesick for Detroit and decided to migrate back there. I think in the back of his mind, he wanted us to follow him there, but we just really wanted to keep moving forward. We loved Burlington. At the time, Burlington was such an awesome music town. It was like Haight-Ashbury. We had a real heavy-duty musical vibe, mixing in with the culture. We got jobs at the University of Vermont. I became a disk jockey, and I became affiliated with a bunch of local promoters. One of them was a reggae promoter who was bringing in Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and we got to meet all of these people. Peter gave us some real good advice. We did really well. Then along comes the Death thing and just drops on us like a big temple from heaven, you know. [laughs]

JH: [laughs] Wow. It's got to be pretty overwhelming.

BH:: I mean, something like that happens to you, you gotta stop in your tracks, man. You got no choice!

JH: Any other exciting things everyone should know about?

BH:: The record's just been released in Japan, and people are going crazy over it. We're pretty happy about that. We're just going to see what kind of a fun ride this is. The music has come back to us. The feeling has come back to us. We've been enjoying what we've been playing. We're just going to see how far we can go with it.

DH:: It's like Bob Seger said...come back, baby! Rock n' roll never forgets!