As the frontman for heavy duty California rock band Korn, Jonathan Davis has turned angst into an art form, and has sold an impressive 32 million albums worldwide since the group's inception in 1993. Having battled addiction and long-term depression, much of the inspiration for Davis’ lyrics has... more

As the frontman for heavy duty California rock band Korn, Jonathan Davis has turned angst into an art form, and has sold an impressive 32 million albums worldwide since the group's inception in 1993. Having battled addiction and long-term depression, much of the inspiration for Davis’ lyrics has come from internal demons. But right now he’s making noise about an external issue that will likely affect us all in some way – the April 20th drilling explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Owned by Transocean but leased and operated by BP, the disaster at the rig appears to be caused, at least in part, by the oil giant’s concern for profits above safety. Channeling his anger at the company’s culpability into action, Davis is the instigator behind a boycott of BP’s products by a coalition of touring bands. Initially it consisted mostly of those on the traveling Mayhem Festival bill, which Korn are currently co-headlining, however the coalition’s ranks have rapidly swelled and now include artists such Lady Gaga, Anthrax, Backstreet Boys, Maroon 5 and Filter.

Though the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, the human and environmental issues it raises are far closer to home for Davis. He was born and raised in Bakersfield, a city within the borders of Kern County, CA, which has the dubious honor of being the largest oil producing county in the US. Though rich in oil, eighteen percent of Bakersfield’s population lives below the poverty line. The city also ranks as one of the least educated in the nation.

Music was a way out for Davis, but his ties to his hometown remain strong, as evidenced by the first single off Korn’s new album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are. The track is called “Oildale (Leave Me Alone)” and is named after a suburban town 3.5 miles northwest of downtown Bakersfield. Surrounded by oil wells, Davis calls Oildale “the most impoverished, fucked-up place I think I've ever been to.” Though this statement is anecdotal, if the video for “Oildale” which was shot there is anything to go by, it's clear the place could do with benefiting a little more from its oil wealth.

SuicideGirls caught up with Davis shortly after he came off stage after performing at the Mayhem Festival in Idaho. Talking the day after the new album’s release (Korn III: Remember Who You Are has since debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 sales chart), we spoke about life, music, organized religion, close encounters of the crop circle making kind, and his hope that his wrath for big petroleum will prove to be contagious.

Andrea Larrabee: How did the BP boycott come about?

Jonathan Davis: That thing started out, for me, just seeing what was going on. I was just disgusted with that company. Myself, personally, I wasn't going to buy any of their products. I told my management about it and they're like, well, let's boycott it if you feel that strongly about it. So we started the whole boycott just to send a message to those companies. If enough people don't buy their products then they'll feel it. We're not going to put them out of business or anything, it's just [about] trying to say that you need to be held accountable for destroying these people's lives. Why didn't [they] spend that extra money to make sure that this didn't happen? Hopefully by us doing that - and we're getting more and more bands that are joining everyday - it'll send a message to those oil companies to spend the money to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because it's only one well - there's hundreds of them in that gulf, and thousands in the whole word. They need to be held accountable to make sure the safety measures are there.

AL: This kind of corner-cutting seems to be something that's endemic in the whole industry. I don't know if you remember the Exxon Valdez spill that happened 21 years ago.

JD: I remember that as a kid, yeah.

AL: That was basically caused because Exxon were too cheap to repair or replace a broken sonar on the tanker. And the situation after the spill was exacerbated because the company was too cheap to implement safety measures they'd already promised were in place which were a condition of operating out of the port in Valdez. Two decades on, we've learned nothing, and are dealing with a similar but far worse situation.

JD: Well BP, basically if they'd have spent seven million more dollars and two more days this would have never have happened. It's just them being cheap.

AL: What do you mean by that?

JD: It came out on air that if they'd have used a more expensive - the proper - concrete, which would have cost seven million more bucks and an extra two days for them to pour it, that that wouldn't have happened. All that stuff, it's just retarded.

AL: If we're going to prevent anything like this happening again in the future we have to penalize BP today as a deterrent for other companies who might be tempted to put profits above safety. And it feels like BP have left us to clear up their social and environmental mess, while their priority clean up-wise appears to be sucking up the oil so they can sell it.

JD: Yeah. Like they had the idea to funnel it into a tanker. They're worried about the fucking oil and not the people [whose livelihoods] they've destroyed. I mean they've got more money than god - we'll just pay everybody and everything will be fine. But there's no amount of money that these people could get. Some of those places [that have been affected] have been around for hundreds of years. They've been passed down from family to family - like this oyster factory on the gulf coast I saw. This guy, his dad gave it to him, and his grandfather, and his grandfather before that. It's been like a hundred years. And they're going to have to close their doors because they don't know what's going to happen, if the oysters are going to be ruined forever.

AL: Knowing what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster gives me huge cause for concern with regards to this spill. I mean those affected by Exxon Valdez were originally awarded a $5 billion settlement, but the oil company, because they had deep pockets and they could, appealed and appealed against it. After being held up in court for years, the settlement was ultimately reduced to $507 million, and it took two decades for the first payments to reach those who were entitled to it, by which time people had committed suicide, succumbed to illness caused by the pollution, and their livelihoods and those of their children had been destroyed. The money got there way too late to help, and it just seems like the same thing is going to play out this time.

JD: It probably will because those companies are untouchable. Obviously the government's not going to do anything about it because [the politicians] make back door deals with them. The bottom line is oil is our life. Our wars are fought over it. Everything is surrounded by this stupid fucking brown shit that comes out of the earth...[It's something that] everybody has a vested interest in so it's up to the people - us - not just sit by and let shit happen and depend on our government to work it out. It's on us to do something.

AL: You talk about oil being our lives, but really the wealth generated by it only benefits a tiny percentage of already obscenely wealthy Americans. I had a very profound experience a few years ago when I went to Norway for the Øya Festival. While I was there I learned that a massive percentage of the country's oil wealth goes back to the people. The money pays for health care, social services, education, and the arts. Meanwhile, the oil companies drilling in California don't have to pay any royalties to the local or federal governments - even though the oil is being sucked from beneath land that belongs to all of us. And we have a bankrupt state.

JD: I know, it's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. There's countries in Europe and all around the world, people got it together. It just seems like here, in the States, it's so fucked up. I see it first hand because in the town I live in, where we did the "Oildale" video, there's hundreds of pumps around in Oildale but it's the most impoverished, fucked-up place I think I've ever been to. All these people who live near the oil fields, they don't receive anything. They're poor, it's overrun with drugs, it's disgusting, and if we [got] something out of it it'd be amazing. Just the fact that in Norway, they've got social services, art, everything - fuck! I want to move to Norway.

AL: When someone wants to put an oil well in our backyard or off our coast, we're always told the local economy needs it and it's going to bring wealth to the community. But here in America, very rarely does the local community substantially profit.

JD: None of them profit. It sucks the life out of [them].

AL: The sad thing is that those in Alaska are better off than those in Oildale, Kern County, CA. At least the residents of Alaska are getting checks from the oil companies at the end of the year. What's going on in California in that respect is worse than Alaska - worse than Sarah Palin territory if that's possible!

JD: It is. It's fucking horrible...It's so simple, make these companies pay for the oil they're pumping out and give [the money] back to the government or the community.

AL: These oil companies do seem to operate above the law, and above governments. Do you have any hope that this boycott will actually have any real effect?

JD: I hope it does. I mean I saw a report that BP's sales were down in places anywhere from ten to forty percent. I hope they go down more. I hope people get pissed off. I mean they've got lots of money and it's going to affect them in some way. They should be held accountable. I'd love to see them be put the fuck out of business. It's just unfair. It's just really unfair that a company can do that and get away with it. And the [Exxon] settlements that have taken fucking two decades, it's just a horrible situation all the way around.

AL: The boycott started out with you and the bands on the Mayhem Tour, but it's since spread with artists such as Lady Gaga signing up. Who are the most recent additions?

JD: I haven't seen the latest list. I know Disturbed and a lot of hard rock acts have come on board.

AL: What kind of messages of support have you been getting from the other artists involved?

JD: We're getting people saying why don't you do a concert or something like that. But those concerts don't really make that much money, and with everybody's scheduling, the best solution we have now is as simple as not buying their products.

AL: Well it's a kind of democracy that you can practice everyday. You vote everyday with your dollars.

JD: Yeah, so the biggest thing anyone can do is take their money away from them.

AL: So would you also ask that your fans boycott BP?

JD: I would totally urge them to do that. It's a decision that they have to make. I'm not into really political shit, to me it's about seeing the environment and people being hurt. It's more coming from a human standpoint. I think if you're human and you actually see what's going on down there, you'll feel compelled to not buy their shit.

AL: Could you see yourself at some point taking the Willie Nelson route and using vegetable oil?

JD: In a perfect world, yes. But out here it's hard to find it when you're going from town to town. What needs to happen is it needs to be available at every station. If you could go to any station and pump vegetable oil into your car, it'd be easy and I think everyone would do it.

AL: The new album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are, I know that the original concept for it, which you've since deviated from, was to explore the themes of the five symbols of the downfall of man. In interviews you listed them as being organized religion, drugs, power, money and time, but I would also add oil to that list as a factor in the downfall of man.

JD: Yeah, I would too.

AL: Oil is probably responsible for as many, if not more wars than religion. Often people substitute the word religion for oil because fighting in the name of religion is more palatable then oil.

JD: Yeah, definitely, it is. It's a fucked up world we live in. I wish we could just get it right.

AL: So the new album, it was released yesterday?

JD: Yes.

AL: How's that been going?

JD: It's been going great. Everyone that's got it that I've ran into is really loving it. We're very proud of it. It was very hard for me and Rey [Luzier] and the band to make, mentally, the stuff we went through. But musically and the way we recorded it was more [about] going back to the old school way of doing things. We recorded it on two-inch tape, no Pro Tools or click tracks or any of that shit. It seems like music in general has become so dependent on all these machines to make everything perfect that music has lost its soul. We did it the old fashioned way. That's what we wanted to do. It was so amazing making it, hearing it the old way, and hearing the music breathe and the tempos fluctuate around the vocals. It gave it its own kind of soul. So we were very, very happy about it.

AL: Tempo fluctuations are so important. A song should speed up when you're heading into a chorus because you're so excited about getting there. To not have that emotion expressed with a natural tempo shift means you're killing some of the very excitement that you're trying to create.

JD: Yes. It just takes the emotion out of it. And we did some simple little things, like I sang all the choruses and it's all just one voice. There's some backing voice just to lift up the choruses here and there, but I haven't done that in years. I'm used to using a stack of vocals and getting them tuned and all this stuff. I totally fell into that hole, and it sucks. People are just relying on technology so much it's taken the human out of everything.

AL: In the lyrics and in your vocals you can definitely hear very raw emotion.

JD: Yeah, you can feel it. Now if I'd have done that same shit and done three or four vocals on it, it would have took away from that. That's what I love about listening to the record, you can feel the emotion on every chorus and every little thing that's different each time around. It makes for an enjoyable listen.

AL: Lyrically, which tracks are closest to home emotionally?

JD: All ten of them are. [laughs] I swear. If you knew the fucking shit I went through making this. It was basically me and [producer] Ross [Robinson]. It was one big purging of me trying to figure out what makes me so unhappy all the time. And I came up with big topics like people pleasing, or guilt, and just living in the past. All these things I figured out working with him that were sparking me to start writing.

AL: I know that you're suffered from depression for a long time and that you are self-identifying pathological people pleaser. It must be really hard to feel so compelled to please when you have a ton of people hanging around you because of the very nature of the industry you're in.

JD: Yeah. It drives me crazy. I mean I put myself out there and sacrifice myself to make them happy. I'm trying and I'm learning as time goes on to stop that, and I'm learning to be able to say no. That's hard for me but I'm doing all right. It's a work in progress.

AL: I have a terrible time saying no. Someone will ask me to do something and I'll say no in my head but I'll hear my voice saying yes, because I don't want to ever upset anyone or appear like an asshole. How do you get past that to learn to say no when you need to?

JD: You've just got to jump in and do it. Like with swimming or anything else, you just do it. It's not going to be as bad as you think it's going to be. It really isn't, and it feels good. Just stick to your guns and you feel kind of a weight lifted off your shoulders.

AL: You also debuted Korn Live: The Encounter recently which features concert footage shot amidst a crop circle.

JD: Yeah. It was a TV show on HDNet that we did and it was one of the most amazing things that we've ever participated in. We're huge fans of Pink Floyd's Live at Pompei and we kind of used that as a template for it. We had circle makers come out from the UK. They stomped out a crop circle and we did a show in the middle of it. And something happened, we started jamming between songs and it just turned into one big jam concert with our new songs and some old songs. Looking at it, it's just amazing.

AL: So you took all your gear and a generator out into the middle of a field?

JD: Yeah, basically, we did. Our stuff, the generators and lights. It was the most insane load-in I ever saw because we didn't have enough plywood. When you're in a wheat field they have ditches for irrigation lines for where the water comes through, so it's not level ground. Everything's on wheels and these poor guys were out in a hundred degree heat just busting their asses to get everything in there and [trying not to] destroy the crop circle in the process. It was a huge undertaking but we pulled it off.

AL: Obviously if you're bringing in world-renowned crop circle artists into the mix on camera you're taking the supernatural element out of crop circles. Did you ever believe that extra terrestrials were involved in their creation?

JD: When nobody knew what was going on, sure. Because like how can someone do that? But when you see how they do it, how easy it is to actually make a crop circle. The guy took me out and I actually did my own crop circle, and they're relatively easy to do.

AL: That's so funny. I remember when they first started turning up, you'd get all these experts talking on TV about how difficult to near impossible it would be for a human to create these things.

JD: [laughs] I know, and it's so fucking simple. All it is is a measuring tape and a four-foot board with a rope - three simple tools. It's hard pushing that wheat over. I mean it's work, but relatively, I saw how easy it was to make, and if you've got a couple of guys you can just knock it out pretty quick. I mean the circle makers did it in one day, that whole big thing.

AL: You're famously very anti organized religion. Do you wish that debunking religion was as easy as debunking the myths behind crop circles?

JD: Yeah. Any kind of organized religion I can't stand because it's just another fucking con business. I see it. I mean I worked closely with them when I worked as a funeral director back when I was a kid. I saw how corrupt [it was] and how fucking it's just one big show. But it's something necessary. Over the years I've watched, people need hope and something they believe in. So if it affects them in a positive way, then good. I'm not going to sit here and judge them and say they're assholes. It's just something that's not for me.

AL: Well I can understand it, because working at a funeral home you must have seen them reach into people's pockets when they're at their most vulnerable.

JD: Oh yeah. And then I had this Catholic priest try to tell I was gay and sleep with me, and it was just all this crazy shit.

AL: Was that at school?

JD: No, that was when I was a funeral director.

AL: I know that you've been sober for many years. Did you do the Twelve Step program which demands that you invite a higher power into your life?

JD: No. I know it works for some people. Some people need that. Some of these Twelve Step programs are just another substitute for addiction. They really push god on people, or a higher power, which I understand. You need something when you're doing it. But I had friends that had gone through it, and it's really like a fucking cult. All these people telling you, you can't hang out with this person because they drink and it's going to make you relapse. And the whole thing with how they treat alcohol or any kind of drug addiction as a disease - it's bad, you're always going to be an addict, you're always, bad, bad, bad, bad, without any positive kind of reinforcement - it just wasn't for me. So when I quit, I stopped in one day and I never looked back. For me, I just think about all the things I would lose if I was to drink or do drugs again. I mean I've got children, I've got a beautiful wife, family, and all that would go away - and that's more important to me than getting fucked up.

AL: How many years has it been now?

JD: August 22nd, it'll be twelve years.

AL: Congratulations. Do you still get the urge?

JD: Every day. Every day. 'Cause I'm out here on the road and everybody's partying and drinking. I surrounded myself with that. Actually I'd say the first eight or nine years I was in the party chopping up lines, making drinks for people. It's more about the ritual. I was enjoying the ritualistic side of it, but not seeing the people in the morning, how they're hurting. [I like] not being like that guy.


Korn III: Remember Who You Are is out now via Roadrunner Records. For all things Korn visit modlife.com/korn.

Jason Schwartzman loves the Suicide Girls. He called out his favorite by name and even mentioned another one by her signature tattoo. It makes sense that he’d be so cultured, coming from the Coppola family. They have high class tastes in film, music and even fine wine (try the Coppola shiraz. It’s... more

Jason Schwartzman loves the Suicide Girls. He called out his favorite by name and even mentioned another one by her signature tattoo. It makes sense that he’d be so cultured, coming from the Coppola family. They have high class tastes in film, music and even fine wine (try the Coppola shiraz. It’s delightful.)

Alternative beauty is especially relevant to Schwartzman’s latest movie. In Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Scott (Michael Cera) has to fight his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes. Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) expresses a lot of Suicide Girls qualities, the way she dresses and her different hair colors (three hair changes in the film), though no visible tats. We’ll assume the tats are in the director’s cut.

Schwartzman plays Gideon Gordon Graves, the evilest of Ramona Flowers’ seven evil exes. He’s the final battle for Scott. How cool is that? A Hollywood movie about two guys battling it out over a Suicide Girl? It’s based on the comic book by Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Shaun of the Dead Wright, full of martial arts battles and video game style.

When Schwartzman debuted as Max Fischer in Rushmore, kung fu action wouldn’t have been anyone’s prediction for his future. Everyone grows up though. Now a 30-year-old man, Schwartzman sports a moustache as he makes the press rounds for Scott Pilgrim. He seemed happiest to talk about Suicide Girls though, exclaiming “No shit!” when he heard we were at the table.

Fred Topel: So Ramona Flowers has some Suicide Girls qualities.

Jason Schwartzman: I love the Suicide Girls. I like the girl Radeo. I like Radeo, that’s her name.

FT: Radeo will be happy to hear that. So you’re really familiar with the Girls?

JS: I was just talking to my publicist, Matt Labov, because he  represents Will Ferrell and I was telling him that one of the Suicide Girls got a tattoo on her thigh that says “Milk was a bad choice” from Anchorman. She [James] has that tattooed on her thigh, because he drinks milk on a really hot day and he goes, "Argh, milk was a bad choice," and that’s what she got tattooed on her thigh.

FT: Do you go for the Suicide Girls type?

JS: I went with my girlfriend in high school to get her first tattoo ever when she turned 18. That was the thing she did right when she turned 18. She went and got a tattoo.

FT: What was it?

JS: A star, right here [on her thigh], real original.

FT: How do you like it rockin the ‘stache? Is that just your own thing or for a film?

JS: I’m doing that for me, for my wife, for us. She said she liked it.

FT: Do you do a lot of gaming yourself?

JS: When I was a kid I played a lot of Super Nintendo and Nintendo NES and stuff, but not recently. I want to now. I’m afraid though. I know on some levels it would be addictive for someone like me because I spend a lot of time alone, and that would be so much fun I can’t think about it.

FT: What were the top five video game you really liked as a kid?

JS: Breakthrough was my favorite one. There was Double Dribble, Metroid, MegaMan and Mario Brothers.

FT: With all the video game influence in the film, do you think it plays to non gamers?

JS: I’ll tell you tomorrow because my mom has never played a video game in her life and she’s coming tonight to see the movie. I’m curious to see it. I’m pretty sure the reaction will be that she will be happy. The best case is that she will be happy, but I think it will be mesmerizing to her. People also love to see stuff that they don’t know anything about, new worlds. I think that people that don’t know a lot about video games will be just like, "What is that?" I think it will be a sense of wonder or something.  I think that’s very interesting.

FT: How about comic books?

JS: One thing I really love is the R. Crumb's Kafka book. He kind of illustrates the life of Kafka. It's great. Also The Beats. He does a little autobiography of the beat poets [with Harvey Pekar.]
I hate to admit it but I wish all my books in high school were comic books. I mean like textbooks. I can learn and retain it so much easier for some reason when words and pictures, showing it to me at the same time. I mean, it sounds so silly to say but a page of words is daunting when we’re reading about the beats. "Oh, Kerouac?" Now it all makes sense if it's so well done. It’s like right in between a movie and a book.

FT: How much fun did you have playing the bad guy?

JS: It was really fun. It was really scary because when I showed up I guess they shot the Katayanagi twins after I shot my big sword-fighting scene. But, for the most part they had shot all the exes, I think, in chronological order so I kind of showed up toward the end. It was really scary for me because Edgar was showing me a bunch of stuff they had edited together and it was like, "Look at this!" and it was all so great. It was just kind of like a thing I was thinking to myself, "This is a really great opportunity for me to ruin his movie." It’s like I’m coming in at the end and what if I f*ck this up, and I didn’t want to be too much. I didn’t want to be cliché, you know? These things were floating around in my head. So I was just asking so many questions like, "What do you want? Where do you want Gideon?" Edgar and Bryan were so helpful to me, and one thing Bryan said was great was, "Just remember this whole movie is through Scott Pilgrim’s eyes, so you don’t play Gideon Graves as if this was in the real world. Don’t think like that. Approach it as you play how Scott sees Gideon. Be his idea of the worst nightmare ex-boyfriend." So that’s really where I was coming from, like who would I hate to meet if my ex-girlfriend was like, "This is my ex!" I would hate someone saying like, "Hey!" and being nice, trying to help me, and being really sweet.

FT: What was Edgar's direction?

JS: Edgar said he saw Gideon as passive-aggressive. Well, to me that’s a tricky thing to play because there are some passive-aggressive people where you can tell they are passive-aggressive instantly, and then there are other passive-aggressive people where you don’t realize it until it's too late. I asked Edgar about that. "How overt do you want his douchey-ness?"  I hate to say it. It was tricky, because it’s not like you're going to meet him and go, "Oh, he’s a great guy. Obviously you know he’s got to fill this role of the seventh evil ex. He’s got to be that, but where do you want it?" He came up with this great thing which was kind of like 10 is evil Satan, one is just a great person, a wonderfully sweet guy with really no evil at all and then we would do different takes of different levels of it just so he had it. Then in the editing room he could kind of put them together. Although I don’t like to watch myself, one thing I can see that Edgar did was take one take where I’m a real cocksucker asshole and another where I’m sincerely nice and it makes Gideon seem unstable, which I like.

FT: What was the average number you ended up at? Were you more of an 8 or a 2?

JS: I would think I was more like a six, six or seven.

FT: Was it difficult being a musician in a movie with music and not actually drawing on that talent at all?

JS: Did I want to run in there and play in the scenes?

FT: Did you ever have that impulse watching everyone else having a good time?

JS: Totally! I’m glad that I wasn’t because it’s very hard, as you’ll find with any musician, to just make them stop playing. Alison Pill was sitting at the drum set for so many hours and I was like, "That is the exact person who should be behind that drum set for 12 hours." If I had a guitar in my hand it would be so distracting. Anytime there was an instrument around, it’s not like you want to show off. It's fun. You want to get your hands on them. It's fun. It’s hard to be around instruments and not play them.

FT: There was a big Scott Pilgrim experience at Comic-Con. What was it like to be amongst your fans, and be there without your publicists and manager and just be in the middle?

JS: I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that. When I was in my band, you play and then you take your instruments off stage and then go hang out in the bar and drink with everybody. It never seemed like there was much of a difference. I just went and got a bunch of shirts made and people were like, "Can I take your picture?"  I think it’s a different thing for someone like Robert Pattinson because I heard people will try to grab him and really try to hold him and rips his clothes. I’ve never experienced anything like that, except at home.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World opens August 13.

To anyone who came of age in the late 80s or early 90s, director Joel Schumacher’s resume speaks for itself. The titles include The Lost Boys, his uniquely atmospheric horror film with its Jim Morrison-esque vision of a sun-baked Venice boardwalk under threat from miscreant vampires; Flatliners, the... more

To anyone who came of age in the late 80s or early 90s, director Joel Schumacher’s resume speaks for itself. The titles include The Lost Boys, his uniquely atmospheric horror film with its Jim Morrison-esque vision of a sun-baked Venice boardwalk under threat from miscreant vampires; Flatliners, the occult thriller about rogue medical students killing and reviving each other, which cemented the stardom of Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kevin Bacon; Falling Down, the Michael Douglas-starring psycho-on-the-loose thriller which inspired a Newsweek cover and a national conversation about the rise of white panic conservatism; Batman Forever, which heralded the arrival of Jim Carrey as the maniacal Riddler and returned Batman to its campy TV roots, for a while. With a career spanning four decades, there have been many downs to match the ups, but through it all Schumacher’s identity as one of America’s most recognizable journeyman directors has never waned.

This past weekend marked the release of Twelve, his latest project, and the most recent to feature one of his recurring motifs: a cast of impressive young newcomers to the business. Emma Roberts, niece of Julia, is Molly, a sheltered Manhattan teen who is blissfully unaware that her would-be boyfriend Mike (Chace Crawford) is
actually “White Mike,” a notoriously prolific drug dealer known throughout Manhattan.
50 Cent also stars as Lionel,
a colleague of White Mike’s in the drug trade; Emily Meade is Jessica, an Upper East Side princess who gets hooked on a virulent street drug called “Twelve,” and Rory Culkin plays Chris, a well-to-do brat trying to get
together with a neighborhood blonde while keeping his increasingly strung-out brother in check. How the film resonates with 70 year-old Schumacher, who himself had a checkered youth in a very different Manhattan of the 1960s, was one of the things we

spoke about when he called up SuicideGirls last week.

Ryan Stewart: I was thinking about how Twelve fits in with the rest of your
filmography, if at all. I’d say that it’s further confirmation that you’re suspicious of the
leisurely upper classes and what they do with their money. Just look at Batman! Too
much money is the curse, right?

Joel Schumacher: [laughs] No! I wish that was the story. Certainly the access these kids have to money is not helping, it just encourages them. But no, Ryan, you sound like a very smart guy and you know that the values – or lack of values – of the kids in this movie are going on everywhere. I think that’s just where our culture is. We're all
victims and villains in this. We live in a culture where recognition has become more important than accomplishment. Just be famous! It doesn't matter what you're famous for. There's that moment in the movie where Emily Meade, that terrific actress who plays Jessica, is talking to her teddy bears and she's wondering if she died what would
happen, and if that party in the movie really happened you know that would be all over the media for two weeks. And just what the bears say would be true! One news show would have the mother on, crying, another would have the girlfriend on and we'd know
what everybody had for breakfast, and the boy who is responsible for it -- that's Billy Magnussen, who does such a good job of playing Claude -- we would know everything about him. We'd know what he had for breakfast, we'd know everything that was on his computer, we'd know more about him than some of the people we work with. He would get all the attention. I think a lot of adults are at the mercy of all that, not just kids.

RS: So the values of the broader culture are the target here, not one class of
people.

JS: Well, who is the most famous person on any reality show? The worst
behaved! They are the ones who get all the attention and we are the ones responsible for this. I'm not pointing fingers, we're all in this together, and we sort of know it. I think these kids are certainly the victims of bad parenting. Remember, these are children. These
are kids who are sixteen, seventeen, eighteen at the most. I would love to say to you that this is only happening to the rich, but you know that's not true. I think if we went to a trailer park or the suburbs, no matter how well-meaning the parents there are, we'd see that a lot of them are single parents and they work and they have to put food on the table
or they're going through a divorce. There are a lot of problems that go on which don't make it easy for parents to be on the case all the time. I think there are some people who are lax, who are irresponsible, but I also think there are other people who just can't help
it. The kids are sometimes left on their own, and in the world we live in they are expected to grow up very fast now. They have sex really soon, they want to get dressed up and have all those fabulous material possessions. I actually think it's worse in other parts of the socio-economic structure. Those [less well-off] kids are going to do all that stuff, but
it's either going to be through credit or getting in debt, or their parents getting in debt, or crime.

RS: Do you know a lot of teenagers in your personal life? Could you speak the lingo well enough?

JS: Well, I've made a lot of films with young people and there are certainly a lot of young people that I work with. I have a lot of god children and a lot of friends with kids. But the cast will assist me in showing me how young people act. And this was a great cast and they were fun. But I don't impose those things on people, I don't sit with teens and try to convince them that I'm cool and should hang out with them or be their bro. [laughs] No, no. I'm their director and that's what I'm there for. But the novel itself was written by a seventeen year old, Nick McDonell.

RS: This was obviously a quick, down and dirty shoot. Is there time for any sort of mentoring of the young cast on a professional level?

JS: I don't know if I had anything to offer, but I sure had time to talk to each and every one of them, for sure. They are so talented, and it's my job to first hire talented people and then to remind them of how talented they are. You can't make someone talented, and these kids have the chops, as they say. You guide them a little bit, you know? Each actor, no matter what age they are or where they are in their experience, will need something different from a director and my job is to try to sort of suss that out, to
figure out if they need a parent, if they need a shrink, if they need someone to kick their butt; whatever it is that each person needs, they'll let you know. It's the same as if you had a whole bunch of children: one rule doesn't work for the whole bunch. And it would be the same even if everyone was a very accomplished actor, you know? I'm starting a film at the end of this month with Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman and I've known both of them for most of their professional lives and I've worked with both of them. I worked with Nicole in Batman Forever and I did 8MM with Nick, and we're friends also. And they are very different talents and very different people. They have different
psyches and different needs, and you want to be there for both of them. Then there are people like Cate Blanchett and Sam Jackson and Philip Seymour Hoffman that really want to kind of be left alone a little bit, to do-do their voo-doo, you know? And what they look to you for is 'little bit to the left, little bit to the right' or 'that was perfect' or whatever. Some of them like to talk things out, some of them like to rehearse a long time, some of them like to shoot right away, each person is different.

RS: Speaking of Trespass, there have been some stories leaking out over the last few days about Nick Cage changing roles from leading man to villain back to leading man.

JS: Well, it's a little unfair, what people are saying. They are both fantastic roles, and there are pluses and minuses to each part, as there is in everything. He being an artist, there are times when he has embraced one role and then saw a way to do the other role. In the role that he settled on, he and Nicole are the married couple -- that's the role I offered him.

RS: Did you get Emma Roberts onto this film through the Aunt Julia connection?

JS: No, you know how Interview Magazine does that thing of having people who are not journalists interview each other? The editors of Interview, Ingrid Sischi and Sandra Brant, asked me to interview Emma when she was seventeen or sixteen, which I did, over the phone, and she was absolutely delightful. She was charming. We didn't meet through Julia at all. The only thing that's even really similar about them is that they are both really talented and both gorgeous. They are very different personalities. And Emma and Rory Culkin were the first people I asked to be in the film, theirs were the first parts.

RS: It's interesting that the film’s title, Twelve, is the name of a new street drug, but that's just a detail. The drug doesn't really have any noticeable properties that we see, and I couldn't figure out why that title.

JS: I never really asked Nick that, but I thought it was brilliant of him to just make up his own drug, because no one would have an idea of what it was and it would give everyone a chance to create what that drug means for them in their own mind, instead of going for an accuracy thing with a drug and then everybody could say "No, that wasn't
my experience!" or "You could never do that on....." You know, it would be endless stuff. And I thought that just having a fictional drug that was instantly addictive was quite interesting. It's a very bold book and I think it's a bold idea to name it after the drug, but I think you could also kind of look at it as the story of twelve people, maybe.

RS: Was there anything in the story that reminded you of your own colorful youth in Manhattan?

JS: Well, yes. You know, I've certainly dipped in and out of glamorous, reckless lives and I had a very long bout in my own life with drugs and alcohol and a lot of risk addiction and bad behavior and I fucked up. But in the long run, I think that no matter how many worlds I've been a part of and how accepting and wonderful people have been to me all my life since I was a kid, I think I've always felt more like White Mike. My
parents died when I was very young, and there are scenes in the film where White Mike is walking in Manhattan alone, just dealing with his own grief and whatever he's living through, and I think I felt connected to that person and the sense of his isolation and his grieving and trying to come to terms with all of that. Over the course of those three days he takes a look at himself, especially when there are events that he is part of that he's
somewhat responsible for, and I think Emma is really great at the end of the movie in nailing him on that and loving him enough to tell him the truth. I think at the end when he goes to visit someone who also grieves, he realizes that his grief is not the center of the universe. That's really the only way to get out of grief: to have compassion and serve
others. As his mother says to him: "We have to live the best lives that we can no matter what happens to us." That's not an excuse. Parents lose their children. People lose their loved ones in war. And yes, you can always sit in the dark and grieve or you can maybe go and visit someone else who's having problems.

RS: Not to keep harping on the names of things, but what significance do you see in that name White Mike? The narrator, Kiefer Sutherland, refers to him by that nickname over and over.

JS: Well, what Kiefer is saying are the words from the book, and that's just
how the book is written. White Mike was a real character, by the way. He was quite legendary for selling drugs to young people and Nick McDonell says he's dead now, but the teenagers in the New York area know White Mike. White Mike became a name, a generic name, for whoever the dealer was in your high-school. White Mike was the guy,
the man. He's the guy who is gonna come with the drugs, and so a lot of people took the name White Mike even though they aren't the real White Mike. So, if someone tells you that they know White Mike, they know their White Mike, but they don't know the real White Mike. But yeah, there was a real White Mike and his name was White Mike, and
in the book he is never referred to as anything else. And I like that name, White Mike.

RS: Kiefer has such a great voice. Have you ever tried to get him to do your
outgoing message?

JS: [laughs] I will now! I'm gonna tell him that. This was our fifth movie together. And also, speaking of Kiefer's voice, what he did in Phone Booth was so great, wasn’t it? You could only see him for a split second at the end of the movie and other than that he was just a voice on the phone -- and he was really controlling the whole movie. And he's just phenomenal.

RS: Your career's had an interesting trajectory, with all different budgets and styles. I’ve heard casual movie-watching friends wonder aloud why you aren’t still making highly-stylized, polished studio films like 8MM.

JS: Well, I think of Twelve as very stylized. Do you mean big gloss?

RS: Right.

JS: I think that depends on the subject matter. And I wouldn't call 8MM glossy, because 8MM wouldn't get made at a studio today. It would be way too controversial. You'd have to make that one as an independent movie. I think Phantom of the Opera is as glossy as it gets. That one would be the king of gloss in my career, and you know, it's different strokes for different folks. I like all kinds of movies myself, and people like the ones that you're talking about should know that I just make all kinds of movies. Tigerland was very gritty and even hand-held!

RS: I’d be remiss if I didn’t get in one question about my favorite of yours,
The Lost Boys. Do you have fond memories of working with Corey Haim?

JS: Oh, he was just dazzling. He was so good-looking and so funny and so charming. There was no way in the world that that fantastic thirteen year-old kid's life could have turned out the way that it did. There was not one clue, to me, that it was ever going to happen to him and it's really tragic. And I did stay in touch with him over the years and it was really like losing a family member. It's just horrible. That's all I can tell you, just that it's so horrible. But making that movie was one of the most fun things that
I've ever done. We didn't know that it would be successful, and we really just made up a lot of it right on the set. It was a blast.

Twelve is playing now in select cities.

Jason Schwartzman loves the Suicide Girls. He called out his favorite by name and even mentioned another one by her signature tattoo. It makes sense that he’d be so cultured, coming from the Coppola family. They have high class tastes in film, music and even fine wine (try the Coppola shiraz. It’s... more

Jason Schwartzman loves the Suicide Girls. He called out his favorite by name and even mentioned another one by her signature tattoo. It makes sense that he’d be so cultured, coming from the Coppola family. They have high class tastes in film, music and even fine wine (try the Coppola shiraz. It’s delightful.)

Alternative beauty is especially relevant to Schwartzman’s latest movie. In Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Scott (Michael Cera) has to fight his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes. Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) expresses a lot of Suicide Girls qualities, the way she dresses and her different hair colors (three hair changes in the film), though no visible tats. We’ll assume the tats are in the director’s cut.

Schwartzman plays Gideon Gordon Graves, the evilest of Ramona Flowers’ seven evil exes. He’s the final battle for Scott. How cool is that? A Hollywood movie about two guys battling it out over a Suicide Girl? It’s based on the comic book by Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Edgar Shaun of the Dead Wright, full of martial arts battles and video game style.

When Schwartzman debuted as Max Fischer in Rushmore, kung fu action wouldn’t have been anyone’s prediction for his future. Everyone grows up though. Now a 30-year-old man, Schwartzman sports a moustache as he makes the press rounds for Scott Pilgrim. He seemed happiest to talk about Suicide Girls though, exclaiming “No shit!” when he heard we were at the table.

Fred Topel: So Ramona Flowers has some Suicide Girls qualities.

Jason Schwartzman: I love the Suicide Girls. I like the girl Radeo. I like Radeo, that’s her name.

FT: Radeo will be happy to hear that. So you’re really familiar with the Girls?

JS: I was just talking to my publicist, Matt Labov, because he  represents Will Ferrell and I was telling him that one of the Suicide Girls got a tattoo on her thigh that says “Milk was a bad choice” from Anchorman. She [James] has that tattooed on her thigh, because he drinks milk on a really hot day and he goes, "Argh, milk was a bad choice," and that’s what she got tattooed on her thigh.

FT: Do you go for the Suicide Girls type?

JS: I went with my girlfriend in high school to get her first tattoo ever when she turned 18. That was the thing she did right when she turned 18. She went and got a tattoo.

FT: What was it?

JS: A star, right here [on her thigh], real original.

FT: How do you like it rockin the ‘stache? Is that just your own thing or for a film?

JS: I’m doing that for me, for my wife, for us. She said she liked it.

FT: Do you do a lot of gaming yourself?

JS: When I was a kid I played a lot of Super Nintendo and Nintendo NES and stuff, but not recently. I want to now. I’m afraid though. I know on some levels it would be addictive for someone like me because I spend a lot of time alone, and that would be so much fun I can’t think about it.

FT: What were the top five video game you really liked as a kid?

JS: Breakthrough was my favorite one. There was Double Dribble, Metroid, MegaMan and Mario Brothers.

FT: With all the video game influence in the film, do you think it plays to non gamers?

JS: I’ll tell you tomorrow because my mom has never played a video game in her life and she’s coming tonight to see the movie. I’m curious to see it. I’m pretty sure the reaction will be that she will be happy. The best case is that she will be happy, but I think it will be mesmerizing to her. People also love to see stuff that they don’t know anything about, new worlds. I think that people that don’t know a lot about video games will be just like, "What is that?" I think it will be a sense of wonder or something.  I think that’s very interesting.

FT: How about comic books?

JS: One thing I really love is the R. Crumb's Kafka book. He kind of illustrates the life of Kafka. It's great. Also The Beats. He does a little autobiography of the beat poets [with Harvey Pekar.]
I hate to admit it but I wish all my books in high school were comic books. I mean like textbooks. I can learn and retain it so much easier for some reason when words and pictures, showing it to me at the same time. I mean, it sounds so silly to say but a page of words is daunting when we’re reading about the beats. "Oh, Kerouac?" Now it all makes sense if it's so well done. It’s like right in between a movie and a book.

FT: How much fun did you have playing the bad guy?

JS: It was really fun. It was really scary because when I showed up I guess they shot the Katayanagi twins after I shot my big sword-fighting scene. But, for the most part they had shot all the exes, I think, in chronological order so I kind of showed up toward the end. It was really scary for me because Edgar was showing me a bunch of stuff they had edited together and it was like, "Look at this!" and it was all so great. It was just kind of like a thing I was thinking to myself, "This is a really great opportunity for me to ruin his movie." It’s like I’m coming in at the end and what if I f*ck this up, and I didn’t want to be too much. I didn’t want to be cliché, you know? These things were floating around in my head. So I was just asking so many questions like, "What do you want? Where do you want Gideon?" Edgar and Bryan were so helpful to me, and one thing Bryan said was great was, "Just remember this whole movie is through Scott Pilgrim’s eyes, so you don’t play Gideon Graves as if this was in the real world. Don’t think like that. Approach it as you play how Scott sees Gideon. Be his idea of the worst nightmare ex-boyfriend." So that’s really where I was coming from, like who would I hate to meet if my ex-girlfriend was like, "This is my ex!" I would hate someone saying like, "Hey!" and being nice, trying to help me, and being really sweet.

FT: What was Edgar's direction?

JS: Edgar said he saw Gideon as passive-aggressive. Well, to me that’s a tricky thing to play because there are some passive-aggressive people where you can tell they are passive-aggressive instantly, and then there are other passive-aggressive people where you don’t realize it until it's too late. I asked Edgar about that. "How overt do you want his douchey-ness?"  I hate to say it. It was tricky, because it’s not like you're going to meet him and go, "Oh, he’s a great guy. Obviously you know he’s got to fill this role of the seventh evil ex. He’s got to be that, but where do you want it?" He came up with this great thing which was kind of like 10 is evil Satan, one is just a great person, a wonderfully sweet guy with really no evil at all and then we would do different takes of different levels of it just so he had it. Then in the editing room he could kind of put them together. Although I don’t like to watch myself, one thing I can see that Edgar did was take one take where I’m a real cocksucker asshole and another where I’m sincerely nice and it makes Gideon seem unstable, which I like.

FT: What was the average number you ended up at? Were you more of an 8 or a 2?

JS: I would think I was more like a six, six or seven.

FT: Was it difficult being a musician in a movie with music and not actually drawing on that talent at all?

JS: Did I want to run in there and play in the scenes?

FT: Did you ever have that impulse watching everyone else having a good time?

JS: Totally! I’m glad that I wasn’t because it’s very hard, as you’ll find with any musician, to just make them stop playing. Alison Pill was sitting at the drum set for so many hours and I was like, "That is the exact person who should be behind that drum set for 12 hours." If I had a guitar in my hand it would be so distracting. Anytime there was an instrument around, it’s not like you want to show off. It's fun. You want to get your hands on them. It's fun. It’s hard to be around instruments and not play them.

FT: There was a big Scott Pilgrim experience at Comic-Con. What was it like to be amongst your fans, and be there without your publicists and manager and just be in the middle?

JS: I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that. When I was in my band, you play and then you take your instruments off stage and then go hang out in the bar and drink with everybody. It never seemed like there was much of a difference. I just went and got a bunch of shirts made and people were like, "Can I take your picture?"  I think it’s a different thing for someone like Robert Pattinson because I heard people will try to grab him and really try to hold him and rips his clothes. I’ve never experienced anything like that, except at home.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World opens August 13.

In 1988 when Guns N' Roses debut album, Appetite For Destruction, topped the Billboard 200 chart and the band's seminal single "Sweet Child O' Mine" did the same on Billboard's Hot 100, being a member of the hard rocking Los Angeles band should have been a dream come true. more

In 1988 when Guns N' Roses debut album, Appetite For Destruction, topped the Billboard 200 chart and the band's seminal single "Sweet Child O' Mine" did the same on Billboard's Hot 100, being a member of the hard rocking Los Angeles band should have been a dream come true. But for the band's drummer, Steven Adler, his fantasy reality was already turning into a nightmare. Guns N' Roses muse, "Mr. Brownstone," a.k.a. heroin had moved in, and by 1990 it had robbed Adler of his career, health and wealth.

But the seeds of Adler's destruction were sown long before Guns N' Roses was born. A quintessential problem child, Adler was thrown out of his home by his mom and step-dad when he was just 11-years old. Lack of proper parental supervision aided and abetted his underage activities at the clubs that gave him his music education. It also facilitated sexual abuse at age 14 - something Adler was unable to deal with or verbalize for the next three decades.

Having served his apprenticeship on the Sunset Strip, Adler and his childhood friend Slash hooked up with Axl Rose in 1985. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and bassist Duff McKagan completed what is now considered the classic Guns N' Roses lineup. Under the stewardship of manager Vicki Hamilton, Guns N' Roses signed a marquee deal with Geffen Records, which was also home to the band's idols Aerosmith.

With the release of their first studio album, Guns N' Roses transcended the record sales of their heroes. Appetite For Destruction went on to become the best-selling debut album of all-time worldwide, selling over 28 million copies around the globe. The quintet followed up with G N' R Lies in 1988. It would be the last complete Guns N' Roses album Adler would perform on. He was conspicuous by his absence during Guns N' Roses' 1989 American Music Awards performance (for which Don Henley subbed). A disastrous appearance at Farm Aid the following year would prove to be Adler's last with the band. He recorded one final track, "Civil War," which was included on Guns N' Roses' fourth studio album Use Your Illusion II (which was released as a companion their third, Use Your Illusion I in 1991).

Adler was fired by his Guns N' Roses' bandmates in 1990. With the absence of a reason to get up in the morning, his substance abuse spiraled. Adler's life was punctuated by a series of car crashes, accidental ODs, and suicide attempts. In 1996 one such incident led to a stay in hospital during which Adler slipped into a coma. He awoke to find one side of his face paralyzed due to a suspected stroke, which resulted in a permanent speech impediment. However, unfazed by his near-death experience, Adler continued on his path of destruction.

Adler credits Dr. Drew Pinsky with changing the direction of his life. He appeared on the second season of VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Though he's succumbed to several, perhaps inevitable, relapses - most notably while appearing on the Celebrity Rehab spin-off series Sober House - Adler nevertheless is proud of his progress.

In order to move forward, Adler has spent a lot of time coming to terms with his past, which he has chronicled in a new memoir entitled My Appetite For Destruction: Sex & Drugs & Guns N' Roses. In the book, Adler is upfront about the part he played in his own downfall, but also makes it clear when and how he thinks those around him may have given him an added push. SuicideGirls called up Adler to find out more.

Nicole Powers: Congratulations on the book. It's a riveting read.

Steven Adler: You read it then?

NP: Absolutely. Cover to cover.

SA: I thank you for enjoying it. You know, I show that I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I wasn't out to bash anybody or hurt anybody's feelings. All the people that I talk about, I love them. I'm so thankful that they're a part of my life, [they're] just wonderful people. I was doing interviews this weekend and a lot of people have been asking me, "If you had an opportunity, you know, to put Axl in his place..." And there's no place to put Axl. The only place I want to put Axl is in my arms and give him a hug. He's been so generous and loving to me.

You see the whole thing with me was for twenty years I wasted my life, blaming them, blaming Slash and Duff and Izzy and Axl - especially Slash since we go back so far and have such a history together. I blamed them and the whole thing was I shouldn't be blaming them. I thought they let me down. But you know what? It wasn't them who let me down - I was the one who let them down.

I'm the one that got too messed up on drugs. I'm the one who took it too far. They didn't put a needle in my arm, you know, unless I asked them to. I did it. And doing this, I want to show all the underdogs in the world that you can get out of a bad situation, and you can survive and you can succeed. My life has been a rollercoaster but I accept all the consequences.

When I first started working with Dr. Drew, he wanted me to do the season before the season that I did. And I talked to them and I said, "No, I'm not ready. I'm not through beating myself up." So a year went by and he called me up again and he gave me another opportunity, and I felt different about things. But I said to him, "Doc, if I don't talk with Slash, I don't think I can do this to the best of my ability."

So he hooked up a meeting with me and Slash - no cameras, nothing. It was just me and him - actually Jerry Cantrell was there too. He was like the mediator, but he didn't say a word. But once I got in a room with Slash I got to apologize to him, and tell him how I'm sorry I blamed him for all my downfalls and things, you know, all the bad things that happened to me. Then he apologized to me for not sticking up for me more. I mean, at the time I was thinking, man, Rick Allen [of Def Leppard] lost his arm and they didn't kick him out of that band. But he wasn't all messed up on drugs. He just got back on his feet.

NP: It really shows that addiction can be a worse handicap than any physical one. When you don't have your mind, you don't have anything.

SA: You have nothing. I was on the top of the world...I lost everything because of drugs but that doesn't mean I can't get everything back, and that's what I'm doing now. I've got a great new band, Adler's Appetite, and we have a new single, "It's Good To Be Alive." I'm touring now. It just shows, me giving a little effort to take care of myself, I can do anything again.

NP: The last time we saw you was on VH1's Sober House when you'd very much relapsed. How did you get back from that?

SA: Well, as you recall, I got arrested on the show. I went back the next day and they showed me the film of how I looked and acted. I was devastated. It crushed me that I looked so terrible and that I was such an asshole. And it's all because of the drugs. It made me see. I think everybody who has somebody in their lives that has a problem with drugs or alcohol, they should videotape them and show it to them the next day. I guarantee you'll change your mind on what you're doing with your life. I was devastated. I don't want to ever look like that again.

NP: Did that give you a new perspective on how you must have appeared to the other members of Guns N' Roses back in the day?

SA: Exactly. Exactly. Working with Dr. Drew I learned so much about myself and about life. It's been nothing but a pleasure and an honor having him in my life. Also, in recovery there are relapses. I relapsed a couple of times in the last two or three years. The last time I relapsed was five months ago. I had to start all over again five months ago.

Out of all the drugs that I've done in my life, I never did that OxyContin stuff. And I was at the wrong place accidentally at the wrong time and somebody gave me a couple of those, and then three weeks later my wife shows me a picture of me passed out in the hallway of the house. I saw that and it reminded me, it brought me right back to Sober House. I called Dr. Drew and Slash up and I said, "I got myself into this predicament and I need some help. Can you do something for me?" He said, "When can you go into detox?" And I said, "Right now!" And see me, just showing an effort to take care of myself, I have everybody backing me.

NP: You have a good team around you these days?

SA: Yes. But you know why I have a good team? Because they're seeing that I care and that I'm trying. You know, if I put in one percent of the effort [I put] into getting and doing the drugs [into my career], Donald Trump would be working for me. It's such a waste of life.

NP: What prompted you to write the book?

SA: Well, I hail Dr. Drew, because he has opened my eyes to things. What I wanted to do with this book, I wrote [about] everything in my life that bothered me and hurt me, and when I get off tour in two months I'm going to build a bonfire and I'll take the book and I'm going to throw it in the fire and I'm going to leave the past behind. Maybe in fifteen years from now I'll write a new book. Maybe I'll have a crazy interesting life again. But for now, I want to keep that in the past. I can't change the past. And with the band, we're brothers. We're always going to be brothers. And what do brothers do? They fight with each other.

NP: You hurt the people closest to you.

SA: You might not like each other all the time, but you're always going to love each other. And what the five of us have, no one - not even Axl and his lawyers - can take away. We have something special, and if we got into a room together again I would hug all those guys and tell them how much I love them. I'm hoping that Slash and Axl and Duff and Izzy read this book, but I want especially Axl to read it because I want him to see, maybe it'll open his eyes to what a special thing we do have. More than anything I would love to do something with those guys because I feel like I want to finish what I started with them. We could be bigger than ever.

NP: The Guns N' Roses legacy shouldn't end with Chinese Democracy.

SA: That's not Guns N' Roses. He should have called that W, dash, A, dash, R. W-Axl-Rose, W-A-R. I think it would have worked out much better for him. Because Guns N' Roses is five guys. The last song I recorded was "Civil War" and tell me if I'm wrong, but I know I'm not, after that song it's a completely different band.

NP: Right.

SA: It is so hard to find four or five people that you can get in one room and everybody has the same feeling, the same direction, the same love, the same desire. Where everybody knows what everybody is going to do before they're going to do it. That's what makes something special. There's millions of great musicians, millions of bands, but there's only those rare few that are special. There the Pink Floyds, there's the Led Zeppelins, there's the Queens, the Aerosmiths, Guns N' Roses.

NP: That's the tragedy of it. When four or five guys get in a room and something special happens it often happens when they're so young, and it seems so easy - because when it's right it is easy - and they don't realize what they had until they don't have it anymore.

SA: Exactly, and that's the shame of life - but that's life. I try to learn from others, but being on drugs you can't learn nothing. It's such a haze and a fog, and reality's gone. There's no reality. But I wish I'd have known then what I know now.

NP: When did you last see Axl?

SA: About three years ago in Las Vegas. He was doing a show there so I wanted to come and maybe, hopefully try to get to see him. So I went to the show. It was at the Hard Rock. I walk in and a hundred people realized I was there and came and wanted autographs. So Axl's manager, he comes over and says, "I don't want Axl to get upset. I think maybe you should leave." I said, "No problem. Tell Axl that I love him, and that I miss him, and that he looks great."

So I go back home, I'm opening my door and my phone's ringing. I answer and it's [Axl's manager]. He says, "Stevie, I'm so sorry. Come back. Axl wants to talk to you." So we hung out 'til six in the morning drinking a three thousand dollar bottle of tequila. We talked and we apologized, we made amends with each other. It was great. Nobody blamed anybody.

NP: But it seems like it's time for another meeting because a lot has happened since then. You've been through Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, and you've written the book, so you've made a huge mental progression in those three years.

SA: I've grown. I've grown so much and matured so much in the last three years. And maybe it wasn't time for us to get back together then, but now is now, then is then. And yes, you are right, we are way overdue. If I could trick the four other guys to just get them in one room, I know we would never separate again.

NP: And Chinese Democracy must have been a humbling experience, so I would imagine that Axl is in a very different place now than he was three years ago.

SA: Well I hope so. Because if that was my record that I took fourteen years to make and it didn't do anything, I would be real devastated. And like I say, I really want him to read my book. I mean, did you realize what a special thing we have?

NP: You know, I did. Ironically, when I first got to LA, my first landlady was your old manager, Vicki Hamilton.

SA: Oh, no way! I love Vicki. Man, I was so upset and hurt that the guys did that to her. And the reason they did it to her was because - well it was Alan Niven [the personal band manager assigned by Geffen] - but the guys in the band were all, "Well she's a girl. She can't do the same thing a guy can do." I was like, "That's bullshit. That's bullshit." Look at Sharon Osbourne. I mean they're rare, but [Vicki's] the one that got us the record deal. How could you say that she can't do stuff for us, when she's the one that got us the record deal? And a great record deal. Not just a here's a couple of hundred bucks record deal, a you guys can have a career if you want record deal. I think it was a shame.

NP: I wonder if your career would have been different if she'd continued to have been involved. Because she wasn't one of the sycophantic guys, she was a mother type, and she would have told you how it was and bitch-slapped you for getting into shit you shouldn't have been getting into.

SA: Exactly. I believe that too, I believe that too. I wish the best for her, I want the best for her and I love her very much. I'm so thankful that she was a part of my life.

I just want to make sure, because I'm on the inside looking out and you're on the outside looking in, what did you get out of the book?

NP: Well everyone buys into the rock & roll dream, but your story is a rock & roll nightmare. Obviously you guys had this wonderful moment, when Guns N' Roses was Guns N' Roses, but for the five years of light you've had 20 years of darkness. It's a book that everyone needs to read before they join a band - or before they destroy a band.

SA: Or themselves and their careers. Thank you. I'm glad you got that out of it. I achieved my goal.

NP: You wrote the book with Lawrence J. Spagnola. How long did it take and how did you work together?

SA: Not long at all. We had probably ten meetings. I would have him meet me, we'd go for lunch and we'd talk just like me and you.

NP: I would imagine they were long lunches.

SA: No, no. I'm a pretty simple kind of guy. I just laid it all out.

NP: Was anyone else involved? Did Lawrence talk to any friends or members of your family?

SA: Well my friend Steve Sprite, somebody who I've known for twenty-five years, a wonderful gentleman [was involved]. One rare person who never took anything from me, or wanted anything from me. He was my friend. He was there to help me. He was with me through so many experiences, through so many rehabs and jails and car accidents. He wasn't doing drugs with me, he was kind of just there watching because he cared about me...So he has a lot of the memories that reminded me of those times, so I can remember them and tell them how I saw them. Or during those times when I was passed out on the street and had no idea what was going on...he was there to remind me.

NP: What's the reaction been from the people featured in the book?

SA: I haven't heard nothing from anybody.

NP: That's surprising.

SA: It's still early. It's only been out for four days. But I'm really happy that you took the time to talk to me and you got what you got out of the book. I feel like I accomplished what I wanted to do.

NP: I know that you've been doing motivational work with some of Dr. Drew's patients, but I also think that you should do that with kids who are wanting to start bands.

SA: Well actually that's in the making right now. I did a book signing in New York the other day and a principle from a school came down and brought his daughter...He came up to me and he said, "I would love for you to come down to the school and talk to the kids." And I said, "I would love to." That was an honor that he thought I could help somebody. And that's also what recovery is about, helping other people - it helps me.

NP: Because addiction is a very selfish disease.

SA: Yep.

NP: I think it's so important that as part of the recovery process people reach out and help others, and realize that there are a lot of people that are a lot worse off.

SA: Than I am. Oh yeah. But you don't think that because you're in your own little world. You're the most unhappiest person and nobody is born unhappier than you. But like at the beginning of the book where I talk about the sexual abuse when I was a young teenager...

NP: I was going to ask you about that. You kind of just brushed through it in the book. It must have been such a devastating thing for you to have carried with you. You didn't even bring it up on Celebrity Rehab, which is very telling, because it's often not what you say but what you don't say.

SA: Because I wasn't capable to say it out loud yet when I was doing that show. My home base is doing Celebrity Rehab, starting that. Then I grew, and the more I gave myself time to rest my body and to feed myself. I gained thirty pounds doing that show. I was that skinny and that beat up. You can't take thirty-five years of drug and alcohol abuse and think your body is going to be cured in a week. That's why when I got arrested, much as I hated that girl for doing it, it was the best thing that happened to me. Because I had to stay in rehab or I was going to go to jail for a year. And I've been to jail, and it ain't a good place. I wouldn't want to go back.

I was forced to have my body rest, and eat and let my brain and my body heal. The body is very powerful. I tried to kill myself many times and it is difficult to kill yourself. It's easier to cripple yourself. I got a stroke out of it - it's hard to kill yourself. But all your body needs to heal is rest and food, and that's all rehab really is. Don't get me wrong, it's easier said than done. When you're all whacked out on the drugs and you go into some place, you don't want to be there. The whole thing with recovery is you've just got to give yourself time. Anybody who reads this who has a problem, just go to rehab. Just go in and do detox. Just give yourself a chance. Go in, sleep, that's all you have to do. Sleep and eat and listen to a few wise words of wisdom.

NP: It's kind of like having the mom you didn't have as a kid. Having someone to cook you dinners, make sure you sleep and give you some tough love and wisdom.

SA: Yes. That's all positive stuff right there. Because when I was doing drugs, and I know I can't speak for everyone, I always have to speak for myself, but you don't eat. When I was doing coke I ate Ding Dongs, tacos, crap, candy, soda. You don't eat vegetables and pasta and chicken or steak, you eat crap. Like I said, I gained thirty pounds in four weeks. Now I'm finally at the weight I'm supposed to be. I am still healing. It takes time. Thirty-five years of beating yourself up, it takes time to heal.

NP: Much of your recovery process in Celebrity Rehab was about learning to deal with your relationship with your mother. Where are you at with that right now?

SA: I love my mother and I love my family. I took care of them and supported them, but right now I have to focus on me. I have to take care of myself. Then maybe in the future we can get together and have a relationship. But I'm forty-five years old and I need to get my stuff together.

NP: Towards the end of the book you say, "Right now I hate the fucking bitch. I am furious with the way she's treated me, but that's another chapter - maybe a whole other book."

SA: Well I've grown since then. I've grown up mentally and spiritually since then. I've had a wonderful life. There's been some dark times but I've brought it on myself. Nobody brought it onto me. Everything that happens in anybody's life, you have to blame yourself. You have to praise yourself for the good things that you did, and you've got to blame yourself for the bad things that you did.

I don't blame that older teenager or that older guy who sexually abused me, but like you say, you didn't hear me talk about it on the show because I wasn't ready to. But I've grown since then. I thought if I said those words out loud - that I was sexually abused by two older guys - that I would feel worse than I felt and that people would think bad of me. But it's the complete opposite. Once I said it out loud, working with Dr. Drew and Dr. [Charles] Sophy and talking about it, and talking with people who had the same experience, I realized I'm not the only one. Just saying the words out loud to somebody was such a relief to get it out of my system. Now it's in my past. I'm moving on. I told you, that book of mine is going to light a fire. I got a new chapter in my life to deal with, and I'm thankful for what I had.


My Appetite for Destruction (IT Books / Harper Collins) is available from Amazon.com and all fine bookstores. Order your copy before October 27, 2010 via the Alder's Appetite website and get a free download of the band's new single "Alive." Adler's Appetite is currently on tour. Visit Steve Adler's MySpace and Facebook for more info.

You may not recognize his name, but as the man who figured out how to make online adult entertainment pay, Chris Mallick has had a profound effect on our world. "Third-party billing" is not exactly a sexy phrase, but the concept Mallick masterminded revolutionized the way the invisible masses... more

You may not recognize his name, but as the man who figured out how to make online adult entertainment pay, Chris Mallick has had a profound effect on our world. "Third-party billing" is not exactly a sexy phrase, but the concept Mallick masterminded revolutionized the way the invisible masses achieved satisfaction, and gave e-commerce its kick-start.

A rarity in the world of pornography, Mallick didn't focus his attention on making or marketing sexual images, it was a few lines of computer code that excited him more. This revolutionary source code allowed users to pay for stuff – any kind of stuff – remotely via the World Wide Web. Naturally, like many technological breakthroughs, its potential was first exploited by the triple-x rated business community. Mallick’s company made its millions by taking a tiny cut of each credit card transaction he facilitated in an industry that would eventually generate fifty-seven billion dollars per year globally. Essentially Mallick and his fellow third-party billers were the ultimate middle men.

Having made “more money than anyone ever imagined,” Mallick got out of the business he’d helped invent while he was ahead and now works in Hollywood as a producer. Initially he’d hoped to turn his stranger than fiction experiences working in the backend of the adult entertainment industry into an HBO television series. After teaming up with screenwriter Andy Weiss (of Punk’d), the project morphed into what is now a major motion picture released by Paramount Pictures.

Luke Wilson plays Jack Harris, a character closely based on Mallick in Middle Men, an action packed, smartly written comic caper Mallick claims is eighty-percent based in truth. Given that on screen his story involves the Russian mafia, accidental murder, an affair with a 23-year old porn star, FBI agents, terrorists, and the bribery of an elected official, it’s intriguing to speculate exactly which twenty percent is purely fictional.

SuicideGirls called up Mallick and got some surprising answers from the internet pioneer.

Nicole Powers: The film carries the caveat that it's "inspired by a true story" and that story is yours. How much of the film is fictionalized?

Chris Mallick: About eighty percent of the film is pretty accurate, and based on events that actually happened in my life during that period of time. Luke Wilson's character, Jack Harris, is the most closely based in reality in terms of things that actually happened. The other characters in the film, for the most part, are composites of other people, people I've had experiences with in business over the years. A good bit of the comedy and the entertaining things that you're seeing in the film are from the minds of George Gallo and Andy Weiss, the co-writers. So we say about eighty percent of the movie is true and we think it's more fun for the audiences to figure out what twenty percent they don't necessarily believe.

NP: Well my take on it, having watched the film, is that you can't make that shit up. Knowing that truth is often stranger than fiction, I'm prepared to believe that the more bizarre events are probably based in truth.

CM: I think your instincts are correct. I say that all the time, you can't make this shit up. Because life is more interesting than fiction, and people do things that are so off the wall and so over the top that many times those are the things that really are more true. So yes, I agree with that assessment and I thinks it's fair to say that with this film. A lot of this shit you just can't make up. Obviously names have been changed and there's composites of characters so it doesn't zero in on any specific individual.

NP: Given that a lot of the humor was injected for entertainment purposes, I can imagine that your real life experiences were a lot more stressful and a lot less fun than what was portrayed in the film.

CM: Yeah. I'm 51, and it was probably, for me, the most stressful six-year period of my life. I'd been in business all my life, and while this was a business at its core, and I operated it as a business from 9 to 5, it's the afterhours and the entertainment that you have to do to entertain clients of that nature, and the trade shows that you go to and the conventions where a lot of insanity ensues.

NP: Talk a little about the inception of your business, how you came across the people who wrote the code and how you saw its potential way beyond what they had ever thought of.

CM: Well my career at that time was of a spin doctor or a sort of fixer of companies that had potential. I guess the common thread though all of them was they had a basic good business but they weren't necessarily the guys to operate a business of that size. I would come into companies, particularly start-ups, and arrange proper accounting and tracking and compliance depending on what the industry was. This was no different, with the exception of there was a tremendous industry out there, I mean maybe the second oldest industry in the world, people interested in seeing images depicting sex and nudity and things. To me it was a no-brainer market place. It was like ice in the desert, people are just going to buy it. And people wanted to buy it, the problem was no one could actually figure out how to pay for it.

When I got there, as you see in the film, the guys have come up with this, they've started a business, and they basically in their real life story just needed a little help organizing their business and getting things straightened out. A lot of problems are borne out of any business that starts up in a field where there's not an instruction manual. This business did not come with a set of instructions. There was no right, wrong or proper way to do things with this exact industry because it was brand new.

The idea from me was, people go to adult bookstores, they go to adult movies. When I was a kid in New York, you would see all these guys sneaking into the peep shows in Times Square. You know these people are going out of their home and doing it. Now imagine you can get anything you want in your home and avoid the embarrassment of running into a neighbor, or anyone on the street seeing you, or dealing with a sales clerk as you're buying a piece of content or an object or something of that nature. So the market was already there in my mind and this was a way to monetize that. But it was never in my mind limited to adult entertainment. Anything that anyone would sell eventually, in my mind, would be online, as we take for granted now. You buy your airline tickets, your books, your magazine subscriptions, clothing, anything you can imagine is now online, and the reason we're able to do that is because a group of people came up with a code that allows you to put your credit card number in a machine remotely. It was a no-brainer in terms of a business opportunity.

NP: So is that code patented and used by the likes of Amazon.com now?

CM: Everyone uses the base of that code. It was never patented.

NP: Ouch.

CM: Yes. Guys back then when the internet was brand new, these were academics and they all believed in the open source community. The code base was put out there for people to improve upon, and many people improved upon it. It became widely used and widely known under the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. If you have someone out there who is a would-be competitor and they come up with a better way to handle a certain portion of a transaction in the backend, you want to let them do that because it does bring about a greater robustness in the software. So that's what happened with this, and people have taken that base code and have improved upon it for years and years.

At the end of the day, like in many industries, the adult entertainment world provides the capital and the fuel for that sort of development. I mean you arguably would not have had video or VHS tapes. As you saw in the movie Boogie Nights, they went from film to video to DVD as a direct investment of time and technology by the adult entertainment community, and you see that in a lot of things. It provides a lot of capital. Although nobody wants to admit it, it spurs a lot of growth.

NP: So the Amazon.coms of this world directly benefited from the breakthroughs brought about by the porn industry.

CM: Yes, I think that's fair to say. Most e-commerce companies out there benefited from the development of that code.

NP: So since you didn't have the patent on the code, you developed a billing company so consumers could be billed by a company they trusted for content they paid for from some random website of a specialist nature in Croatia of questionable origins.

CM: Yes, correct. Because there were no borders we could market all over the world. The key was it's very analogous to the telephone industry. When the telephone industry was emerging, every town in the country, every village, every hamlet, had their own phone company. Then, eventually, it consolidated and consolidated to the point where 15 or 20 years ago there were two main carriers. It's the same thing that happened in internet billing for third-party billers. Everyone said, "Oh it's a gold rush." They loaded up their wagons with their shovels and they traveled out West. Many of them weren't able to find the gold, they weren't able to operate because they were just a bit behind the curve. At one time I think we had 50 competitors. When I left we had one. So it came full circle, as many industries do, where you don't need a lot of vendors fulfilling that role, you just need the ones that are incredibly sophisticated - especially in terms of fraud prevention and data encryption security, and things of that nature.

NP: In the movie, the company was called 24/7. What was your company called in real life?

CM: It was Paycom Billing Services.

NP: And I guess it was about having a brand people trusted in the same way that Amazon does billing for third party sites today.

CM: Yes, exactly. You build the brand based on success and based on competitive issues such as pricing, speed with which you take a transaction. You know when Amazon first started, when you first tried to buy books they would say congratulations you've bought a book. Then the next day or two days later you could get an email from them saying sorry your credit card didn't go through. I think that the most innovative invention, besides figuring out a way to take a credit card online, is the aspect of real-time credit card billing, which means you know right then and there that the sale is approved.

It's sort of like how years ago you could take your Visa or Master Charge, as it was called at the time, into a grocery store and they'd put it through a zip-zap machine and if it was under $30 they didn't have to call the bank for approval. Same thing was true on the internet. You just assumed everything went through and then later on, days later, you'd find out that it wasn't approved. Well that's OK if you're delivering something. If you're shipping something you can wait those days. But if you're giving immediately available content, once they've watched that you can't really take it back. There's no return or stopping the shipping. So that reality of the economics required a real-time billing application, which was what these guys really did well. So the evolution of it within just a short period of time did things for companies like Amazon. It allowed them to ship that same day instead of having to wait several days to ship knowing that their credit card transactions had been approved.

NP: In the movie, before you came on board the code guys had found some partners with some extremely nefarious connections. Was that the case?

CM: You know, the nefarious characters, at least the importance of them in the film is very exaggerated. There were groups of people at that time, and still, mostly Eastern European, that are, and were, trying to get a hold on the business. But it was really more from a content side than from a billing side.

NP: So they were content providers that you would have to sign up in order to own the market.

CM: Yes, that's pretty true. You know in dealing with webmasters, which is what our clients were called, these were the people that produced the content to sell it and managed their own websites, you don't really know. I mean we did our due diligence in terms of who owned the company, but, at the end of the day, if they're producing legal content that was acceptable within our standards - some content was legal and not acceptable within our standards - you would sign them up as a client. But it was never, "Hey, you're going to bill for us and do it for free or we're going to break your legs." It was never that sort of a thing.

We had clients from all over the world that had all sorts of content. Some we signed and subsequently terminated, some we signed and had longstanding relationships with based on our reputation, but there were clients that I would say in another world or another life you'd probably never run across, but they were out there for sure.

NP: One of the more bizarre incidents in the movie was the subplot where you end up helping US intelligence track down terrorists. Was that story true?

CM: Yeah. The actual story about that is right after 9/11, CNN put up a list of the bombers that had gone down in the planes, and I took that information and wrote it down on a piece of paper and said to my partner, "Let's run these names through our database." He said, "You're crazy, but I'll do it anyway," and we sure as hell came up with a hit on one of these guys.

Through looking at his billing records, he paid with an electronic check, it turned out the check was written on a bank from San Diego. We called the FBI, they found the bank, and there was an apartment in San Diego where his statements went. They go to San Diego and kick the door in. All of this happens in the matter of about two hours. Inside they found a phone bill, it was for a cell phone that was still being used in Chicago, someone in the Hyatt Hotel in Downtown Chicago. The FBI went there - they televised most of it on CNN - and surrounded the hotel, went up to the floor, kicked the door in, used concussion grenades and things of that nature, and arrested this guy who turned out to be one of the bombers in Chicago who did not get on a plane. That helped them I think with additional information as time went by.

The movie zeroed more in on a character specific story, but in fact there was a website that the guy frequented, and it fits very well with the entire theme of the movie. I really think that at its core, besides being a tale of redemption and a guy trying to go home, it's also about the concept of hypocrisy, that everyone at some level is a hypocrite. Luke Wilson's wife is raising hell about the business he's in, but in the meantime she's wearing 30 carats worth of diamonds in her ears, driving a Jag convertible and spending her life shopping like crazy. Even while criticizing what he does, she's still enjoying the fruits of his labor. And I thought it was interesting that terrorists that were purportedly blowing up planes and killing innocent Americans and people from all over the world while they're talking about the depravity of America are sitting in an apartment in San Diego eating pizza and watching porn before they try to board a plane and kill a lot of people. So it fits very well with that hypocritical theme.

NP: Another point you bring up in the movie is how America loves its family values, and how household brands have to be seen as very sparkly clean, but that every name brand hotel virtually is making a huge amount of money by delivering porn directly to their hotel rooms - and they were doing that long before you guys were in business.

CM: Yes, absolutely, and I've used that analogy that James Caan used in rationalizing to Luke Wilson in the film. I've used that almost on a daily basis to people in my personal life or people that would question the integrity or the competence of what we were doing. I said exactly what you see in the film. Is Barron Hilton a pornographer? Is Steve Wynn a pornographer?

If you go to the grocery story and buy a package of Twinkies, and you pay for it and you go home and you eat it and die of a heart attack, did the grocery store kill you? Or did your choices? Where does the harm really come from?

Somebody's going to sell it. It's a transaction for us. We were being as responsible as we could to make sure we had the proper content, but that's about far as we could go. You sell to people all day and all night, and never once in six years did somebody say, "Man I love your company. It's a great service. I see you're company name on my credit card bill every month." Not once - and I know a lot of people. So again, you've got that hypocritical sort of stance.

NP: And despite the fact that no one would admit to using your service, the numbers your company turned over spoke volumes. Can you give me some numbers that would illustrate your company's growth?

CM: Well, I would say, without being very specific, well over a billion dollars in transactions over a year.

NP: When did you start out?

CM: '95 I think there was a kernel of an idea, but there wasn't really a business until late '96, early '97, and then I came in.

NP: And what was your growth like early on?

CM: It grew tenfold in the first year, the second year tenfold again. And I'm talking about numbers now in terms of money that was billed. We billed way more than that, but nine out of every ten transactions that we attempted were turned down by the credit card companies, [because] people didn't have credit or some problem with the card or the internet at the time. So the real sales that we made grew exponentially over a two or three year period, then started to level out. Now over the last three or four years - I've been out of it for six - but the last three or four years the numbers were back down to the original first/second year numbers because there's so much free content and nobody buys it.

NP: What prompted you to get out of the business?

CM: A sincere desire to have my family back, to spend more time with my family, and to get out of the craziness of that world and of that industry. I'd done it for six years, day and night, eighteen, twenty hours a day, and it was just exhausting. It was a personal lifestyle choice.

NP: I notice on IMDB that you have an upcoming project called Exxxit: Life after Porn. What's that about?

CM: It's a documentary examining the lives of about eighteen former adult film stars, male and female, very famous people in that industry. How they got into this business, how they were successful, and what's happened to them since fame has left them, and in what directions their life has changed. It's quite an interesting and emotional tale of what happens to people. It's not what you might imagine, that they all end up in ruination. I think their lives are very interesting.

NP: In the movie, your fictional wife has issues with what you did, which was one of the factors that makes your character want to get out. In real life, where do things stand now?

CM: I'm unfortunately divorced at this point. A couple of years after it was over with I went through a divorce. I'm very good friends with my ex-wife. We have four children together, we raise our children together...We can't be a couple, but we can be a family, and that's sort of where I am with that.

NP: Given that you ultimately lost your wife, and your family to some extent too, knowing what you know now, would you still do it all over again?

CM: You know, I always love answering questions like that because there's almost not a good answer. I'm a big believer in the butterfly effect. I think that whatever happens was supposed to happen, and it influences other things. I haven't lost my family, I lost my marriage. I lost a relationship with a women that I love very much, and it wasn't as a direct result of this business. There's other things that go on, just like any other family, that cause divorce. Divorce is a prevalent thing in our society unfortunately. My relationship in terms of being a family and a father and close to my children is unchanged and never fell apart.

Do I wish I hadn't got a divorce? Yes. Do I think had I not been in the business I would have gone through a divorce? I think I probably would have gone through a divorce regardless unfortunately. So I wouldn't change anything in the past because I believe it would change things for me in my present and I'm very, very happy. I've been very fortunate in my business career and I have a great life. I'm doing something, producing films, that I have a true passion for. I'm 51-years old and I find myself having the best time of my life professionally and personally. So no, I wouldn't change anything, but I do wish I had not gone through a divorce. But I don't attribute my business to causing the divorce. It definitely strained the marriage during a portion and undermined certain elements of the relationship, but I have to say I wouldn't change anything because I'm happy where I am now.


Middle Men is in theaters now. For more information go to: MiddleMenMovie.com/.