by Nicole Powers (image) (image) (image) Artist / SG Member Name: Barry Quinn a.k.a. Mooliki Mission Statement: My practice and the subject of my work has changed quite a lot over the years. I've always been drawn to use natural forms, the human body, trees, textures in nature, to convey feeling... more

by Nicole Powers







Artist / SG Member Name: Barry Quinn a.k.a. Mooliki

Mission Statement: My practice and the subject of my work has changed quite a lot over the years. I've always been drawn to use natural forms, the human body, trees, textures in nature, to convey feeling and idea in an image, using these shapes to tell a personal, emotive story. But environmental and political concerns have increasingly become the driving force behind a lot of what I do. Much of it is simply trying to make sense of the world around me, the problems and challenges the world faces and understanding my own part in that. I would consider my work as a sort of visual diary of this process, that tends to take the form of character-based illustration. I place as much value on sketches and writings as I would finished paintings. My main aim, in regards how I present it to others, is to hopefully communicate some of the more visceral concepts and feeling behind an image.

I hold in high regard any form of art that can deal with genuine emotion over life's struggles and experiences and present it as something perfectly necessary and natural. There's something tremendously cathartic about that sort of acceptance of the darker side of life. Like with great children's stories, old blues and folk songs, or the best films, I appreciate the sort of art that says life is cruel, tough and unkind, and still absolutely amazing and beautiful and worth experiencing. If I get a fraction of that out of a drawing, I'm happy.



Medium: For larger pieces I would mainly use acrylic on canvas or wood. Smaller pieces would be in pen, pencil and watercolor. I work primarily on found, recycled or waste materials.

Aesthetic: Larger figure paintings like the SG portraits tend to be quite free in form with a lot of focus on the body shape and textures. I like building up textures with light layers, lots of water and scraping. It's generally a messy, expressive activity involving paint-covered hands and feet and a general lack of structured method. If I'm working on smaller format it's usually the opposite, slow, methodical work with focus on tiny detail, while maybe trying to illustrate a broader story. Lately drawing is very heavily influenced by the aesthetic surrounding folk and fairy tales, and I've always had heavy influence from both traditional and contemporary Asian art. I grew up reading comics and watching manga films, later Studio Ghibli animation and then the old Chinese watercolors. I love that mix you find in traditional Chinese and Korean art; minimal scenes but full of feeling and depth and story. I think the characters I draw would be very influenced in form by the Japanese anime/manga style.



Notable Achievements: My achievements would be pretty modest to date. I've exhibited with various groups around Dublin, where I used to live, taken part in art events at festivals and gigs, but I tend to stick to the DIY-driven, artist-run establishments. I've little formal training in art and I've never been drawn to that more academic side of the art industry. Achievements for me are when a band or musician wants to use my work for an album, or someone wants to blog about it, or someone simply wants to buy something. I'm working on an illustrated story at the minute. If I manage to get that to materialize some time next year, that'll be a pretty decent achievement.

Why We Should Care: I would always look at art as a way of people working out that stuff in our heads that we otherwise don't know how to express. Whether it's with music, visual art, performance, it's a way for a more subconscious part of our selves to say, "Hey, this is what I think is going on." I always try to give way to that sort of unabridged honesty, and whether its abstract or illustrative, my work would generally come from a very personal place. I think anyone who creates with honesty and passion is going to produce something special and unique, it's a story you’re telling, and for me that's what always makes art interesting.

I Want Me Some: You can see more of my work on my portfolio site, and buy prints via Society6 and Etsy.





***

Related Posts
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Rudy Calheiros
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Odio_One
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Syko Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. SaintKitten
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Finbarr Farmer a.k.a. Fimbis
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Gary Mike a.k.a. Guss1470
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Inks
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Dwam
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Lil Tuffy
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Jake Prendez a.k.a. Tattoo_Jake
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Zoetica Ebb
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Dylan Borgman a.k.a. Seahorse
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Vivid
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Norritt
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. ZakSmith
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Voodou
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sooaap a.k.a. S.O.A.P.
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. NerdMachine
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. JulesDoll
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Ortegart71
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Rachelle
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. AnitaKajika
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. CREATIVE80
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. James Curtis a.k.a. jimcurt99

The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Eric daStone
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Alisa Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Quakerninja
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. yOyO
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sucette
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Souci
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Bazuka
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Hezza Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Bob Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Phoenix Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Grompf
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Oro Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Mrs Misha
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sundae
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Kate Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Kaylie McDougal a.k.a. Tigermassacre
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Monroe

Laura Dern is the talented and beautiful muse of many of David Lynch’s best films. Dern has starred in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and most recently, Inland Empire. In Lynch’s three hour, shot on video opus Dern plays multiple characters all orbiting her main character of an actor who lands her first... more

Laura Dern is the talented and beautiful muse of many of David Lynch’s best films. Dern has starred in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and most recently, Inland Empire. In Lynch’s three hour, shot on video opus Dern plays multiple characters all orbiting her main character of an actor who lands her first really great part in a long time. Dern has not only supported many independent filmmakers throughout her career, she produced Alexander Payne’s first film Citizen Ruth, scored an Oscar nomination for Rambling Rose and even changed herself into a femme fatale for Novocaine. I got a chance to talk with Dern about Inland Empire from an undisclosed place in Manhattan.

Check out the official website for Inland Empire

Daniel Robert Epstein: So have you and David have kept in contact over the years?

Laura Dern: Yeah. We both got busy in different directions for a while which is part of why we didn’t work together for a period of time. But we always remain friends and keep finding each other in the course of life.

DRE: I asked David if there is a narrative in Inland Empire and he said “Yes there is.” What did you ask him about when you were shooting this?

LD: I only remember a couple of times where I really had to pinpoint him down and say “I need more.” That’s over a three year period so that’s pretty amazing considering there wasn’t a script. If I could say anything to someone who’s going to his film; I would want them to know about David before they entered the theatre. There’s nothing about David that is elitist. He hasn’t figured out the plot and is sitting back waiting for you to fail his test. He believes in the visual arts and he is a painter who’s start was about creating something on canvas and having interpretations be intuitive and completely different than anyone else’s. That’s how he created art and then cinema took off from there. David believes in the intelligence of an audience. He believes in an audience going into the experience and discovering it for themselves. He knows what it is for him but he doesn’t need it to be the same for you and I love him for that. I want people to know that because I had the same experience making it that they had watching it. I didn’t know what the plot was but I had to feel my way through it and consider behaviorally what the character is walking through in each scene as we did it because I didn’t know what was coming after or what had come before. I had no script to guide me. But David is so specific about the feeling he wants you to have. Even when he speaks in code, he gives you a word or a feeling or the mood that he wants then you can run with that for a long time. He told me at the beginning of shooting that it is about a woman in trouble. That really helped me. For me it became about many aspects of a woman going through a dismantling and maybe even a resurrection at some point. So I never saw it as these different characters and these different pieces. That’s a very exciting way to work.

DRE: Obviously you understand your interpretation of the film but do you feel that you and David were in sync?

LD: Emotionally yes. I think most of people who see it, probably could get all the same feelings from it. But even though I figured it out for me, I don’t necessarily know what the rabbits mean or what does 47 mean or am I killing myself, is the guy my husband and what is the Polish connection? Is that woman me from a past life? Is it me in an altered state and I’m finding myself? There’s so many ways people are talking to me about it and they’re all pretty fantastic ideas. So I can’t wait to see it again to figure it out more and see what it makes me feel. The first time you see it you’re watching yourself and seeing what you all did and how it came together. So it takes a couple times before you just sit and witness the movie.

DRE: Would you have done this film if it had been any other filmmaker but David?

LD: There are only a few filmmakers that I would take a three year journey with. But I would trust them because I either know them personally or because I love their work. But to have no script and to play several people takes the length of familial relationship. Also it wasn’t just me trusting him but also knowing how much he trusts me. That was an incredible gift. The greatest thing a director can learn from David is that he believes so much in his actors. That confidence and faith forces you to take risks in a much greater way.

DRE: Do you remember your first audition for David?

LD: Yeah, it was for Blue Velvet. I was 17 and I went in figuring I’d do what is always done at auditions which is sit down and be asked to read a scene. I’m sitting on a floor in the hallway when David came out of the office and said “I got to take a leak.” He ran to the bathroom and afterwards he invited me into his office with the casting director and we spoke about life for 30 minutes. I remember us discussing trees and meditation. He mentioned something about being a mediator. We talked about him growing up in the Northwest and me growing up in LA and that we lived near each other in LA when he was making Eraserhead. We never mentioned acting or movies. I don’t think he’d ever seen me in a movie but he’d been told something about me. Then he asked me to come to Bob’s Big Boy with him to meet Kyle MacLachlan for French fries.

DRE: So he really does like Bob’s Big Boy.

LD: That’s real. We went to Bob’s and he was drawing on a napkin and then he asked me to go do Blue Velvet. That was my audition process. So I should have known then that I’d end up doing Inland Empire because already it was going to be an unusual journey.

DRE: Is part of the fun of doing a David Lynch movie seeing what he does with all these disparate parts?

LD: What’s incredible is that it’s only as fun or maybe even less fun than the journey itself. David is so much fun. He wants it to be such a good time. He’s a nice man. He wants everybody to have fun which is unbelievably rare to have on a movie set. He cares deeply about this spontaneous, fun, experimental feeling. Being pushed towards bravery is a blast. He had a camera operator working with us and he needed something like a dolly shot but we had no equipment. So he put the camera operator on rollerblades. That can only be paralleled by seeing it. It’s exhilarating, it’s scary, it’s exciting and you don’t know what to expect. That’s what everyday at work was like.

DRE: David also loves Los Angeles. You grew up there and your parents are actors. Do you love Los Angeles?

LD: In some ways. I think he has more of a love of it than I but the parts of LA that I love, he loves equally. He loves old school Hollywood like Grauman's Chinese, the old Hamburger Hamlet restaurant on Beverly and places like the Beverly Hills Amusement Park. Those are things that I love too because they were my childhood and he has an appreciation for it on a whole other level and I love that about him.

DRE: Since you and David have worked together so much, do you have a shorthand on set?

LD: Yeah, we talk a lot about everything but the movie. I think he’s a believer in not over talking, just like he’s a believer in not over plotting. Everything becomes an intuitive, feeling experience and that’s the way he describes it.

DRE: Have you ever shot a movie on video before?

LD: No.

DRE: Was it a different experience?

LD: Wildly different. Nothing like shooting a 35mm movie. With a 12 hour day on a regular movie, you hope for an hour’s worth of great footage. On a 12 hour day on this movie, we’d come away with probably ten hours of great footage. We shot all the time. We’d get to work and start shooting. The Sony PD-150 is so lightweight that we were close together the entire time. It wasn’t like he was in his tented little place watching a monitor. There are certain kinds of movies that require that, but there are other kinds of movies that are about human behavior and to have your director right there with you watching what you’re doing and pushing you to try different things or go to a different place is the way it should be.

DRE: One of the last scenes has Laura [Harring] blowing a kiss and then there’s all the other actors. Do you have a shorthand with the other actors since most of you have worked with David before?

LD: Not really oddly enough. David has a different language with each person. He gets his own feeling with each person. Each experience is so unique with David. I’m friends with Naomi Watts and she and I did a movie together [We Don't Live Here Anymore] and we talked about how much we loved David and loved working with David, but it is still it’s own experience. But there are a couple of catchphrases we all know. He’s the most unique person and such a brilliant and extraordinary gift to film. I just feel really lucky to work with him.

DRE: Your two previous films with David are so beautiful and lush, do you feel like we are losing that now that David is only going to be working with video?

LD: I don’t know the answer to that because I haven’t seen that much digital video being transferred. I thought I would hate it because I love film. But what David did with the transfer process and how he transferred it and how he works with color and light and sound and mixing and matching them all together is so beautiful. The crudeness of the film that he was working with becomes its own art. I don’t know if in somebody else’s hand I would feel the same way but somehow the nastiness of it was the beauty. But David certainly feels like it’s his future and I’m sure it is the way of the future.

DRE: I love the scenes with you, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux. How was doing those?

LD: Great. That was the most like making a regular movie. The scenes with Jeremy and Harry Dean Stanton were done all together in five days. There was more crew as well. But we still were moving so fast which I think all the actors loved.

DRE: I know you’ve done like a dozen pictures with your mom including this one.

LD: Something crazy like that at this point. But there are only two where I felt like we were really working together, Rambling Rose and Wild at Heart.

DRE: Is it coincidence when the both of you are on a picture?

LD: Oh, total coincidence. Rambling Rose is the only time we actually sought out doing it together. I was involved in the movie and the director [Martha Coolidge] and my mom were very good friends because they had done another film. She really wanted my mom but mom and I also wanted to do it together. But David asked my mom to do Inland Empire without me even knowing.

DRE: I heard you might be in Jurassic Park 4.

LD: I heard that too. I don’t even know. People have asked me if I’m going to be in it so I don’t know if that means they’re writing it and my character is in it.

DRE: Would you be interested?

LD: Well if Steven [Spielberg] were there I’d always be interested because I love him.

DRE: What if he were just producing because I don’t think he’s going to direct it?

LD: You never know. I guess it depends on where they take the dinosaurs and me.

DRE: It has been almost ten years since your appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom. It had a big impact at the time but it seems like it has faded.

LD: It had an impact on people who were ready to listen. That’s the good news. But it did not have an impact on the Bush administration. So Ellen’s show didn’t make it any different. But what did excite me is that I’ve never received more fan mail for anything in my life. A lot of it was parents thanking me for being part of something that helped them to honor their children’s choices. That moved me so much. At the time, it was huge because these huge sponsors were pulling out and we were in the middle of shooting and it was becoming a huge controversy. It wasn’t just that she mentioned being gay but I was also playing a gay woman that she was coming out to and potentially coming on to. The whole thing was amazing and it seemed to be radical in this day and age, but it was at the moment. Unfortunately not quite huge enough to shift the tide of unconscious idiocy.

DRE: Did you have a big part in Year of the Dog?

LD: I don’t have a big part. It’s very much an ensemble. I had a hilarious time doing it and it was a hilarious character that I loved playing. I really wanted to do it because I think Mike White is totally brilliant. Mike is a born director. We tried to do a movie together a long time ago that he had written and that he wanted to direct. It never came to be so I wanted to support him when he finally got to direct.

DRE: Do you know what you’re doing next?

LD: I don’t. I had a small part in a movie with Russell Crowe [called Tenderness] and there’s a movie with John Travolta and James Gandolfini that’s supposed to come out called Lonely Hearts. But I don’t know when that movie’s coming even though we did about a year ago.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to do after this. I feel so liberated from doing Inland Empire that I’m like “Gosh, what do you do when you get to be three totally different people.” But I’ve been lucky enough to run the gamut so hopefully something fun will come up.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

I'll start off by saying Happy (late) Valentines Day!!!! I hope everyone had an awesome day yesterday. Me on the other hand had to work all day and deal with it all but I was able to get out and buy myself a little reward for always working on V-day. Maybe one day I'll be able to share the day... more

I'll start off by saying Happy (late) Valentines Day!!!! I hope everyone had an awesome day yesterday. Me on the other hand had to work all day and deal with it all but I was able to get out and buy myself a little reward for always working on V-day. Maybe one day I'll be able to share the day with someone special.



Other than V-day I've just been doing what I do best...
Work


Shopping


(hulk smASSh!!!! )


(this was given to me...favorite new shirt and favorite all time movie)

Dranken
(snuck a big ole jug of white russian mix into the theater)

(drunk at the local bar every Sunday....wearing my easy access leggings lol)

(found the where they keep the mystery machine just call me Daphne)

Video Games
(as cheesy as the game is I LOVE KINGDOM HEARTS ALWAYS lol)

Instagram (@wannabejubilee)





Yeah that about covers it. Oh and T-minus 9 days until I'll be moving to the big ole city



Jubilee

ps- new obsessions

Laf




Tigh




_Mermaid_

Only thing lonelier than being single on Valentines day is being a Leafs fan too. Crap game for the boys tonight. On a more positive note, friends and drinks tomorrow night.

Surprised we haven't had a sexy shoe photo thread yet. (image)

by Nicole Powers (image) (image) (image) Artist / SG Member Name: Barry Quinn a.k.a. Mooliki Mission Statement: My practice and the subject of my work has changed quite a lot over the years. I've always been drawn to use natural forms, the human body, trees, textures in nature, to convey feeling... more

by Nicole Powers







Artist / SG Member Name: Barry Quinn a.k.a. Mooliki

Mission Statement: My practice and the subject of my work has changed quite a lot over the years. I've always been drawn to use natural forms, the human body, trees, textures in nature, to convey feeling and idea in an image, using these shapes to tell a personal, emotive story. But environmental and political concerns have increasingly become the driving force behind a lot of what I do. Much of it is simply trying to make sense of the world around me, the problems and challenges the world faces and understanding my own part in that. I would consider my work as a sort of visual diary of this process, that tends to take the form of character-based illustration. I place as much value on sketches and writings as I would finished paintings. My main aim, in regards how I present it to others, is to hopefully communicate some of the more visceral concepts and feeling behind an image.

I hold in high regard any form of art that can deal with genuine emotion over life's struggles and experiences and present it as something perfectly necessary and natural. There's something tremendously cathartic about that sort of acceptance of the darker side of life. Like with great children's stories, old blues and folk songs, or the best films, I appreciate the sort of art that says life is cruel, tough and unkind, and still absolutely amazing and beautiful and worth experiencing. If I get a fraction of that out of a drawing, I'm happy.



Medium: For larger pieces I would mainly use acrylic on canvas or wood. Smaller pieces would be in pen, pencil and watercolor. I work primarily on found, recycled or waste materials.

Aesthetic: Larger figure paintings like the SG portraits tend to be quite free in form with a lot of focus on the body shape and textures. I like building up textures with light layers, lots of water and scraping. It's generally a messy, expressive activity involving paint-covered hands and feet and a general lack of structured method. If I'm working on smaller format it's usually the opposite, slow, methodical work with focus on tiny detail, while maybe trying to illustrate a broader story. Lately drawing is very heavily influenced by the aesthetic surrounding folk and fairy tales, and I've always had heavy influence from both traditional and contemporary Asian art. I grew up reading comics and watching manga films, later Studio Ghibli animation and then the old Chinese watercolors. I love that mix you find in traditional Chinese and Korean art; minimal scenes but full of feeling and depth and story. I think the characters I draw would be very influenced in form by the Japanese anime/manga style.



Notable Achievements: My achievements would be pretty modest to date. I've exhibited with various groups around Dublin, where I used to live, taken part in art events at festivals and gigs, but I tend to stick to the DIY-driven, artist-run establishments. I've little formal training in art and I've never been drawn to that more academic side of the art industry. Achievements for me are when a band or musician wants to use my work for an album, or someone wants to blog about it, or someone simply wants to buy something. I'm working on an illustrated story at the minute. If I manage to get that to materialize some time next year, that'll be a pretty decent achievement.

Why We Should Care: I would always look at art as a way of people working out that stuff in our heads that we otherwise don't know how to express. Whether it's with music, visual art, performance, it's a way for a more subconscious part of our selves to say, "Hey, this is what I think is going on." I always try to give way to that sort of unabridged honesty, and whether its abstract or illustrative, my work would generally come from a very personal place. I think anyone who creates with honesty and passion is going to produce something special and unique, it's a story you’re telling, and for me that's what always makes art interesting.

I Want Me Some: You can see more of my work on my portfolio site, and buy prints via Society6 and Etsy.





***

Related Posts
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Rudy Calheiros
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Odio_One
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Syko Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. SaintKitten
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Finbarr Farmer a.k.a. Fimbis
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Gary Mike a.k.a. Guss1470
The Art of SuicideGirls Feat. Inks
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Dwam
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Lil Tuffy
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Jake Prendez a.k.a. Tattoo_Jake
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Zoetica Ebb
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Dylan Borgman a.k.a. Seahorse
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Vivid
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Norritt
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. ZakSmith
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Voodou
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sooaap a.k.a. S.O.A.P.
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. NerdMachine
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. JulesDoll
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Ortegart71
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Rachelle
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. AnitaKajika
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. CREATIVE80
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. James Curtis a.k.a. jimcurt99

The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Eric daStone
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Alisa Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Quakerninja
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. yOyO
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sucette
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Souci
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Bazuka
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Hezza Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Bob Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Phoenix Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Grompf
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Oro Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Mrs Misha
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Sundae
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Kate Suicide
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Kaylie McDougal a.k.a. Tigermassacre
The Art of SuicideGirls feat. Monroe

Some SuicideGirls have been modeling for the site for 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years. We thought it would be fun to show you a look back and some of the SuicideGirls throughout the years. This week we bring you Phoenix! Phoenix has been a SuicideGirl since 2005 and she has 7 strikingly sexy photo sets. more

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

This week we bring you Phoenix!

Phoenix has been a SuicideGirl since 2005 and she has 7 strikingly sexy photo sets. Enjoy this gorgeous look back at the stunning Phoenix...

From her first photo set Volleyball shot in 2005 by Derek Wilson:









Phoenix is a natural beauty in Under the Slip shot by Derek Wilson in 2005:







She is soaking wet in Heat Wave shot by Lavonne in 2007:









Phoenix is stunning and beautiful in her set Figure Study shot by Lavonne in 2008:









She is full of lust and passion in her set French Quarter shot in 2009 by Lavonne:









Phoenix looks gorgeous in the natural window light in Sky Lines shot by Cherry in 2011:











She's breathtaking on the beach in her set Back to the Wild shot in 2011 by Cherry:









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

Become a member TODAY for only $4 a month (if you sign up for a year) to see all 7 nude pin-up photo sets of Phoenix - http://suicidegirls.com/join/

Lily Tomlin is a true comedy goddess. She’s been entertaining people with her wonderful cast of characters since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. In fact one of my favorite movies of hers, 9 to 5, was just released in special edition DVD. But her latest movie is special because not only does she play... more

Lily Tomlin is a true comedy goddess. She’s been entertaining people with her wonderful cast of characters since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. In fact one of my favorite movies of hers, 9 to 5, was just released in special edition DVD. But her latest movie is special because not only does she play Meryl Streep’s sister in a singing duo but it also reteams her for a fourth time with director Robert Altman. A Prairie Home Companion is a look at a fictionalized version of Garrison Keillor’s long running public radio program. It is reimagined as a song heavy variety show and the movie highlights its last night before it is shut down.

Check out the official website for A Prairie Home Companion

Daniel Robert Epstein: How was it getting to work with Robert Altman again?

Lily Tomlin: Great. Wonderful. It’s always a real opportunity and fun and blissful and we got Meryl on top of it.

DRE: The two of you obviously have a real rapport.

LT: I just absolutely love her. You can’t not love her. I don’t know what it is. She’s just so wonderful. She’s so much fun and crazy and unpretentious.

DRE: She once told me that people are nervous when they are first around her but then she disarms them with a joke.

LT: We are nervous when we see her but you just warm up with her so easily.

DRE: Did the two of you have chemistry right away?

LT: Yeah she’s so absolutely cool and delightful and fun and like a bad kid. There is this side of that just wants to misbehave and doesn’t take anything very seriously. I’m sure she takes plenty of things seriously, but she doesn’t bring that to her exchange with everybody else. She’s just playful and fun and smart and divine.

DRE: Do you and Robert keep in touch when you’re not working together?

LT: Oh yeah. I don’t see him every week or anything like that but I feel very connected to him and his wife Kathryn.

DRE: Do the two of you connect because of your comedy-improv background?

LT: No, I think originally I got in Nashville because we had the same agent. I had optioned a book for myself, called Maiden. I was still in Laugh-In in 1971 because I never dreamed I couldn’t be in movies too. I didn’t realize how hard it was to go from television to film in those days, especially if you did the kind of thing I did on Laugh-In. I had optioned this book and my partner Jane wrote the screenplay. As it turned out Bob was looking for a project for Joan Tewkesbury to direct after [writing the screenplays for] Thieves Like Us and Nashville. My agent gave him that screenplay and he was going to produce it with Joan directing. So Bob said, “well you come down to Nashville and take this part and then we’ll get to know each other and then we’ll do Maiden in the fall. Columbia had bought the screenplay and reimbursed me and we were going to do it at Columbia because Bob had just done California Split with them and they wanted him to cut six minutes out of it. They came down to the set of Nashville and he punched one of them in the nose and that guy fell in the swimming pool so we never did Maiden. I didn’t know it but Louise Fletcher was supposed to play that role of Linnea and that’s where the deaf element came in because her parents are deaf. She and I exchanged letters later because she and her husband had been in Thieves and I guess her husband had been one of the producers and they had some kind of falling out or something because Louise dropped out of Nashville.

DRE: I’m sure you’ve done long runs of theatre or a long movie shoot but you’ve never been in anything as long as your character has in Prairie Home Companion, are you able to relate to that idea of a project ending?

LT: Yeah, it’s a little like losing a lover or a death or something.

DRE: But they seem to take it very well.

LT: Well my character has probably been drinking all evening. I think that’s part of Altman or Garrison’s sensibility too. The play is sort of about mortality in general. It’s certainly a strong layer of all the content and it takes it in stride. There’s nothing you can do about it. It is just part of the flow of life and maybe that’s why they don’t angst over it. They’re sad but they go on and the girls have tried to buy a bus to get a tour going. So hope springs eternal in a sister act.

DRE: You’ve done so many projects, do you keep working so hard because of mortality?

LT: I just love to work. I do concerts all the time. I did a concert Friday night in San Jose while everybody was at the Hollywood Bowl doing a live show. Garrison was there, Meryl sang and John C. Riley was there. I couldn’t be there because I had this old date for months. It was a great date and I enjoyed it but I really wanted to be at the Bowl with all of them.

DRE: I’m sure the cast will do another concert in the future.

LT: I hope. I always beg Garrison but he always turns around and says, “Yeah.”

DRE: Have you ever had a project shut down by external forces?

LT: I don’t think I have. Well [The Incredible] Shrinking Woman was shut down because I had to go and do 9 to 5.

DRE: That’s one of my favorite films.

LT: Shrinking Woman or 9 to 5?

DRE: Both of them.

LT: We were shooting Shrinking Woman for five months because of all those special effects. I was supposed to start 9 to 5 and we just didn’t get done so the studio let us shut down for a couple months and I went and did 9 to 5 and then I came back and finished Shrinking Woman.

DRE: Tell me a good memory from The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

LT: Well a good memory? All the things I had to go through at the time. From the scene in the garbage disposal to this day the skin on the right side of my face is thinner. I have a little crease here in my eye because they had to put so much of that garbage on me and it had dye in it and I had a big allergic reaction to it. I had to put a lot of steroids on my face. It was all enflamed and peeled and I just kept doing it over and over again. Then also I rode on that darn gorilla which was all made out of fiberglass. God only knows what I have in my lungs.

DRE: I assume that’s why you never did a movie with special effects after that.

LT: Jane and I were the executive producers so I didn’t complain about it or anything. I tried to protect myself but I wanted to get the movie made. I saw fiberglass flying around in the air but I tried to wear a mask a good part of the time. Then I was to be in the lab and they put a beaker over me and stuff like that. I was 30 feet up in the air so we could do the special effects but there was guard to keep me safe. I’m supposed to be running back and forth across the table, I could have easily run off the edge and I couldn’t look down because I was supposed to be screaming.

DRE: When Jane’s credited with writing something that you are working on, do you write with her?

LT: She really writes. I’m not a writer of any kind of substance at all.

DRE: Did you understand I Heart Huckabees?

LT: Oh absolutely, that’s the kind of material that I totally understand. It’s about how we don’t know anything and how crazy being a human is and what’s really true. It’s just like in [the Broadway play] Search [for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe], what’s reality and what isn’t and how we’re all cultured and conditioned to have certain views. It depends on where you grow up, where you’re born, what era and everything else that develops your world view or even your view relating as a human. If you have a whole different acculturation, you might be extraordinarily different.

DRE: How was it working with David [O. Russell] again?

LT: I love him. I’m mad for him. To me he’s like Altman because he’s just as free but absolutely totally different. Altman’s a very different person but you always know it is going to be an adventure.

DRE: From what I read, he doesn’t seem to calm down on set.

LT: No, he doesn’t. But I’ve only been on two sets with him and he’s only made four movies. His first movie was his student film, Spanking the Monkey. Then he did Flirting with Disaster, which I did with him but he was still a new young director but he was pretty much there. Then he did Three Kings, I don’t know what happened there and then Huckabees. That was the nature of the movie like, “I’m going to find my way, I’m going to find myself.” Dustin [Hoffman] used to say it was like Jackson Pollock throwing paint at the camera. We would be doing a scene and David would be yelling through a megaphone, “Now switch lines!” and we’d switch parts which was wild. But I’m totally up for those things. I can be just as serious and constrained and I’ll try whatever comes along.

DRE: Do you still do bits with Ernestine?

LT: I do her in concert all the time. A couple years ago she did a series of commercials for an internet computer based teleconferencing company. She’s an executive now. She was dressed a little more executive, same color scheme, same jewelry; her hair was a little more groomed. But she was teaching CEOs and others how to economize and teach.

DRE: How difficult is it to stay current and gain new fans?

LT: I don’t know, that’s hard. Unless you’re on television a lot in a youth oriented vehicle, I don’t think a lot of kids get exposed to you. They might know you from some old movies like if there’s a cult following for Shrinking Woman or 9 to 5. But that’s the nature of being a performer. Kids today don’t even know who Gregory Peck is because they live in their own time. There’s always going to be leakage and people are going to know a certain project or their parents will show them something. I still have kids stop me on the street and they do the snake thing from Big Business. But when I used to open a show, kids would be in sleeping bags out in the snow though my fan base has aged with me.

DRE: Would you want to go on TV now to try to get some new fans?

LT: Sure but I can’t pander to them. It has to be organic. They’re the first ones to know if you’re authentic or not. It will either come or it won’t. If you’re on a hit show that young people watch, then people are going to know you.

DRE: Has anyone wanted to do like a new sketch comedy or variety show with you?

LT: Yeah, different things at different times. Not so much variety because I don’t think the networks have too much confidence in variety in this time. Saturday Night Live and Mad TV are anomalies. But that doesn’t mean somebody couldn’t come in with something. I’ve developed a couple of sitcoms but the story meetings are unbearable because they change things so much. Jane and I would always say, “well we’ll come up with something else.” A few years ago I had a commitment to go on air, but we could never come up with a script that we all agreed on. They always wanted to take some absolutely integral element away.

DRE: What would be an example of an integral element?

LT: Many years ago everybody on the show was going to wear a spy camera except me. I was going to make the set like my house and my office so anything that was shot at my home could be cut into the show. That was just one element of a very much larger idea. It would have been fun.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Tomorrow is "I'm single with money in my pocket day!" Wooooooo!

I know this isn't a foot fetish site, but don't you think that all models should add a couple of feet pics? Even the people in the chat room is sometimes mean to me and other foot fellas out there. And not only for the foot stuff, but they are generally mean... But, there are some nice girls... more

I know this isn't a foot fetish site, but don't you think that all models should add a couple of feet pics?

Even the people in the chat room is sometimes mean to me and other foot fellas out there. And not only for the foot stuff, but they are generally mean... But, there are some nice girls out there.

Anyway I say more foot stuff so I (and maybe a lot more people) will be happy.

by Blogbot “If I were to pick just one trend of lingerie to highlight, it would be, without question, the vintage sensation,” says SG member and lingerie expert Sauda. “High waisted knickers, longline bras, and basques are in very high demand. Retro and vintage lingerie flatters all body types;... more

by Blogbot

“If I were to pick just one trend of lingerie to highlight, it would be, without question, the vintage sensation,” says SG member and lingerie expert Sauda. “High waisted knickers, longline bras, and basques are in very high demand. Retro and vintage lingerie flatters all body types; less hour-glass figured women get a significant boost from the accentuating fit and seam details, and curvy girls are showcased just as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Sophoia Loren, and Brigitte Bardot were in their prime. ”

Here’s a selection of the best vintage style lingerie that Suicide Girls are putting on – and taking off – this season.





[Chunni in Illumi Naughty]



[Radeo in Nocturna Artificiala]



[Levee in 1932 Lincoln]



[Benten in Miss Taylor]



[GoGo in Lisbon Girl]



[Rambo in Petite Plume]



[Calamity in Within and Without]



[Luscious in Afternoon Delight]

[Bettina in Return to Black Pleather Lagoon]

Fashion Notes

“The ultra feminine styles and fabrics are reminiscent of an era of high glamour,” says Sauda. “This is underscored in the to-die-for styling of period TV shows such as Mad Men. Less revealing designs can be more flirtatious and teasing than tiny stripper thongs. The market is taking notice too. Frederick’s of Hollywood launched their ICON collection this year, which is based directly on their original designs from the 1950s. On the indie end of the spectrum, ToadLillie offer stunning examples of handcrafted lingerie.”

Are you an intimate apparel aficionado? Then join our Lingerie Addicts Group (for SG Members only).

Aside from being the owner of SG’s Lingerie Addicts and Burlesque and Vaudeville groups, Sauda is a burlesque dancer who’s also worked in the lingerie industry since 2005. She launched her own Etsy store for pasties, Suadela Intimates, this year.

Check back for more Dirty Laundry and let SuicideGirls show you the best way to (un)dress.

Dita Von Teese is one of the most beautiful and sexy women alive today. She is a SuicideGirls favorite for her breakthrough work in burlesque performance, fetish posing and being married to a music icon. Her famous figure can be found on display all over the internet and fetish magazines but now she has... more

Dita Von Teese is one of the most beautiful and sexy women alive today. She is a SuicideGirls favorite for her breakthrough work in burlesque performance, fetish posing and being married to a music icon. Her famous figure can be found on display all over the internet and fetish magazines but now she has showcased her humor and intelligence in the double sided book Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese.

Buy The Art of the Teese

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hi Dita.

Dita Von Teese: Hello, are you recording or taking notes?

DRE: Recording.

DVT: Good, I get real nervous about those people that write things down.

DRE: I’m an Internet writer. We never put anything down on paper.

DVT: Oh good. British journalists, as they like to call themselves, like to write down everything in their own words.

DRE: Yeah. You just came back from the UK, right?

DVT: I’m always really just coming back from there though. I’m on my way there on Tuesday. That’s probably where I work the most.

DRE: Why is that?

DVT: I’m more famous there. I’m in the tabloids and the newspapers on a regular basis there. Maybe that’s why. So therefore I get booked at more events. Also our dollar is weak there.

DRE: I read your last SuicideGirls interview and the book was meant to come out a while ago. Why did it get delayed?

DVT: It took a lot more time than we expected to secure all the rights to the photos. Also it’s published by Regan Books and they seem to have a high employee turnaround rate. So I went through like eight editors which made the process much longer. But I think the timing’s actually better than ever and I feel like everything has worked out the way that it should.

DRE: Why did the photos of you have to be cleared?

DVT: I don’t own all of my images. It’s important to me to retain ownership of a lot of my images that I shoot for my website especially, but we wanted to include the pictures that Ellen von Unwerth has taken and a lot of other famous photographers. We wanted to include all these photos that I did for fashion magazines and also with Playboy. I wanted to use a really broad range of photos. I didn’t want to be limited and it’s difficult sometimes to get clearance for those images. I did have to do a little bit of begging every now and then. I felt free to call people and ask them “Please, oh please, can I use that picture?” Usually the people that you have to do that with are the ones that aren’t very famous. I had the hardest time with people that weren’t high-paid, big-name photographers. The people that get finicky over their images are the ones that shouldn’t be as much.

DRE: That’s really funny.

DVT: Yeah. Somebody that took just photos of my show that I did in some small town somewhere and was really funny about letting me use the images.

DRE: You’re like “Who do you think you are?“

DVT: I try not to use that “Who do you think you are” language. But it’s a little bit like “Well, I let you photograph my show. I didn’t let anyone else shoot it. I let you shoot it.”

DRE: I saw the Asia Argento movie your husband is in.

DVT: Oh yeah. I haven’t seen that one yet actually.

DRE: It’s really painful but beautiful.

DVT: I think he lost interest in it when he found out it wasn’t a true story. We felt duped because we met J.T. Leroy and everything.

DRE: It’s almost embarrassing.

DVT: Yeah. I read the book cover to cover in one sitting and I have a hard time looking back and thinking, “Why did somebody make this up? Why make up more ugliness in the world when there’s so much already?” I don’t know why someone would write something like that for kicks.

DRE: Obviously there are two sides to your book with the fetish and burlesque. Do you look at what you do as having two sides?

DVT: Yes, I do but I feel like they’re all relative as well. It was difficult to separate the two because there are so many fetishistic elements in the burlesque side and classic nostalgic pin-up elements in the fetish side. I feel like they’re all very similar but I thought it would be interesting thing to write two stories. It’s all about the photos, but I wanted to write text in it. I wanted to explain what I think about burlesque and how I see it and why I got into it and the same thing with fetishism. I wanted people to see it in another light because you hear people talk about burlesque a lot. They talk about how it’s art and it was all beautiful and it was all good girls and that it was a kinder, gentler time but in reality it wasn’t really that way. I think people have lost sight of that because a lot of women that are performing neo burlesque now want to make sure that people think they’re not a stripper because they’re afraid of that word. I feel like people are trying to candy coat it a little bit even though in reality burlesque was a pretty risqué show in its time. They were bouncing around in G-Strings and pasties in the 30’s and I think people forget how racy it was. Also with fetishism I felt like so many people look at fetishism as being about bootlicking and hurting people and whips and chains. I want to portray an elegant fetishism. One of the things that I love is that I want to know the history about everything I’ve become involved with whether it’s fashion or hair or makeup and movies. I like knowing about how old movies were made, how things have changed and how they’re made now. I think it’s interesting to look at the past.

DRE: Do you see burlesque as a fetish as well?

DVT: Well because I started doing what I do in 1990 and everyone’s talking about the Bettie Page movie right now and it’s 16 years later. I feel like the fetishists have always gotten burlesque and understood burlesque a little bit better than the rest of the world. It takes the mainstream a long time to accept something or to even discover it. To me they’re similar because fetishists have always appreciated corset wearing and girls in girdles and women with a nostalgic, fetish look. That’s why I think that there’s a parallel with burlesque and fetishism.

DRE: I read that you never wear sweatpants, is that true?

DVT: I don’t wear sweatpants as casual wear. I have sweatpants that I sell on my site that are real cute that have my martini glass logo. I wear them over my costume to keep my legs warm when I’m getting ready for a show. But I don’t look at sweatpants as fashion. A lot of people think that’s something you should pick out as fashion but it’s not for me. I don’t really like dressing that way. If I want to be comfortable, I’ll wear a cashmere robe or a little vintage slip. I feel like you see all these girls walking around wearing UGG Boots and sweatpants which they spent a fortune on. I don’t understand why they put forth so much effort to look casual.

DRE: It sounds like you were very hands on with your book.

DVT: I wanted to be because people have done other books about me and I’ve seen the end result. I really wanted this book to be something where I could turn every page and be proud of it. I think it’s a good overview of my work over the past 16 years. I’m working on another book because I have lots of books I want to do. Eventually when I’m 70 I’ll write my scathing autobiography and dish all the dirt on everyone.

DRE: That’ll be really interesting. I can’t wait.

DVT: It’ll be awhile.

DRE: The text in your book was obviously secondary to the photos but it was still really interesting. It is almost a how-to book.

DVT: Yeah. I wanted it to be a fun, light, easy read. I think I had that instilled in my brain because they tried to make me take the text out. They said, “No one’s going to read it. They just want to look at the pictures.” I thought they might be right but I’m glad they left it in because it turns out a lot of people are enjoying it.

I had a hard time writing the book and thinking “Oh, there’s going to be people that are going to hate that I wrote this.” I had to come to terms with the fact that not everything is going to be what everyone agrees with. People aren’t always going to agree with what I have said or what I condone. A lot of women are going to say, “I don’t have time to put on red lipstick and high heels everyday.” I’m thinking, “But I’m just writing what I like and why I like it.” Whenever you try to appeal to everyone, you cannot win and you’ll never win. So I wrote it the way I wanted to write it.

DRE: Cosmo magazine is a hell of a lot worse than anything you would’ve written.

DVT: Yeah, but it’s different. When a girl’s reading Cosmo it’s different. They’re reading it as a general thing. But when someone’s reading what I wrote and the whole book is my opinion on everything, then there might be some stuff they don’t like.

DRE: When you first said there’s going to be a few people upset I thought it might be because you’re giving away all the good secrets or something like that.

DVT: No. There were some things my editor hesitated at me writing about like Chinese foot binding and things like that. They were really afraid of a few things. But I thought, “Well I’m writing about fetishism. I have to talk about all different angles of it.” I was surprised of the things they wanted me to take out, but in the end I left everything the way that I wanted it.

DRE: You wrote a list of your favorite perverts, if that was in descending order then seamed stocking fetishists are your favorites.

DVT: Yeah. I’ve met so many of these fetishists over the years and I love talking to them and hearing them describe their fetish and reading their letters to me. I really enjoy those people.

DRE: You wrote that you learn of a new fetish everyday.

DVT: Well, almost everyday. I learned of a new one the other day though.

DRE: What was it?

DVT: I have this gentleman who writes me letters about his fantasies where I wear the rarest and exotic furs in the world. He writes that I should be wearing the rarest animals and birds and enjoying their beauty. He’s really obsessed with fur and the rarer, the better.

DRE: That’s an expensive fetish.

DVT: More than that, that’s one that really upsets people too. I’m definitely not condoning that I want to go out and club a bunch of seals or something. He wrote out a script of what he’d like to see me doing, like rolling around on these exotic furs. At the end of his letter he wrote “Dita, have you ever littered? I would be so turned on at the sight of an elegantly dressed woman just throwing trash out into the green meadow.” I thought, “Wow. I’ve never heard of a littering fetish.” But he went on to describe that he would love to see a video of me throwing trash out of my car or throwing trash on the grass while I’m dressed in high heels, stockings and a beautiful dress. I don’t understand that one but I love hearing about it.

DRE: It sounds like he’s into really rich women.

DVT: Personally I would never litter. I get really upset when people litter.

DRE: You’re okay with fur but the littering is a no go.

DVT: I’m okay with some fur and I’m okay with my vintage fur. I’ve put a halt with my personal self on actively bringing new fur into my life. But that’s my choice. I’m never going to be anti-fur. Pamela Anderson wanted to rip my coat off me the other night.

DRE: Oh really?

DVT: Yeah. She was like “How can you wear that fur around me?” I was like “I’m sorry. I’ll take it off.” I threw it in the trash.

DRE: There are a lot of burlesque tours now, SuicideGirls included. Have you seen any of them?

DVT: I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the neo burlesque scene and I’ve seen some of the video of the SuicideGirls. I’ve seen a lot of authentic burlesque footage too. The only thing I’m offended by would be the media’s use of the word burlesque to describe a style. I think troupes or clubs that have girls just dancing around in fishnets and hot pants is not burlesque. Burlesque was about the striptease. I hear all these quotes coming out of people’s mouths like “We’re classy. We don’t take off our clothes.” I’m thinking “How insulting to say that Gypsy Rose Lee was a slut because she was a stripper” and she was the greatest stripper of all time. She was a mainstream star. She was as famous as any other star in that time in the 40’s. She did do a striptease and she did show some skin. When I hear people using the word burlesque to describe doing booty shake dances to a vintage song, I get a little bit offended. It’s like a red flag that they haven’t read anything about the history of burlesque.

DRE: Did you discover most of this on your own or did you have a mentor?

DVT: I started working in a strip club when I was 18 years old. By that time I was already dressing in vintage clothes and my hair was vintage style and I wore red lipstick. I was very interested in vintage-style pinup and dressing like Bettie Page. So I was already involved in this whole nostalgic, retro pinup thing. I immediately started reading about burlesque and wanting to know more about it. That’s how I developed my act. I met Dixie Evans, who runs the Exotic World Burlesque Museum that is now going to be in Vegas and some of the old time stars of burlesque. Then two years later I met my best friend Catherine D'Lish who was a burlesque performer who makes all my costumes now. After I met her, we started making big serious shows with props and more elaborate costumes. That was around 1993 and I was already on the cover of a lot of fetish magazines and I was touring the US and headlining strip clubs with my show.

DRE: I read that some people didn’t think that your shows were fetish in the beginning.

DVT: In the very beginning I did Torture Garden and the Rubber Ball and I did a Feather Fan Dance. Some people were saying, “What’s fetish about this?” The funniest part is that now ten years later, all those clubs are all-burlesque all the time. But at first I did take a little bit of a beating in the fetish community because people didn’t know why I was there and why I was performing with feather fans and rhinestones and feathers. They wanted to see latex and whips and everything. As for the SuicideGirls show, I think it’s really great that people take burlesque to another level. I don’t feel like everyone should be doing burlesque the way I do it or the way it was done in the past. But I do feel that if you’re going to perform it, don’t discount the striptease. The SuicideGirls definitely do not discount the striptease. The only way that burlesque can really evolve and survive is if people bring something new to it and make it interesting for people. I think it’s important for people to have new ideas for shows and not just be stuck in the past.

DRE: I’m no expert by far. Do you get completely naked in your shows or can you not because of the venues?

DVT: I have done shows completely nude because I did all these strip clubs when I first started headlining, but I always did it in a way where I left a little mystery. But really I only did that because people expected it of me because I was in strip clubs where the other girls were totally nude. In the past seven years or so I’ve done it with pasties and a G-string. I just did a big charity event for the LA Lakers and there were kids there. I asked the promoter if I should tone it down. They were like, “Nope. They know what they’re here to see.”

DRE: Wow. So it went over fine?

DVT: Yes it did. Everybody wants what the other venue had. They don’t want to get gypped. So they always want me to do the same show that I did at another party that they were at or something.

DRE: Have you seen the Bettie Page movie yet?

DVT: No, I haven’t but I feel like I should be getting a check any day for all the press I’ve been doing on it. I’ve been doing all these interviews and they’re showing clips of the movie and then talking to me about it. From the trailer it looks like Gretchen Mol did an amazing job. I do know that Bettie Page saw the movie and was not happy about it at all. I have lots of friends that were at the Playboy mansion when they showed the screening of it and she was basically hurling insults at the screen. But I’m glad that people will know about Bettie Page a little more than they did before. Over the past 16 years I’ve had people calling me Cleopatra and then suddenly when the E! channel did the story about Bettie Page, people were like “Oh, Bettie Page.” It’s like the normal people of the world are going to be calling probably half of the SuicideGirls Bettie Pages now. They’re all going to know who Bettie Page is. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I know how it feels.

DRE: Are you still into Bettie?

DVT: Yeah. I’ve always been into her. We instantly recognize her with the black hair and the bangs. Her image was so amazing and it was really modern for the 1950’s and I feel like it translates and can even look modern now. But to be honest though, my major influences are different. I have different people that I look to for inspiration but in the 90’s I went through a period where I was very interested in Bettie Page and everything that she did. But for what I do and my performances, I usually look to 1940’s film stars and song and dance girls. I’m people that I might not necessarily be trying to look like. For me inspiration comes from finding out what the spirit of that person was and not so much trying to mimic what they were. When I think about why I love Bettie Page, I don’t think so much about what she looks like and how she dressed, but why do we still care so much about her? She certainly wasn’t the only one that was wearing those clothes and shooting bondage photos. She was one of hundreds of girls doing that. But there was something about her that made her unique and special. Looking at why that is, is what’s more important than just looking at the aesthetic.

DRE: I was surprised to see that you’re not in [Marilyn Manson’s film] Phantasmagoria [The Visions of Lewis Carroll].

DVT: I really try to separate myself from the stuff that he does unless it’s completely and utterly appropriate. Unless there’s the perfect part in the movie for me, then I don’t think I should be in it. I want his movie to be as good as it can be so I’m not begging him to write me a part into it. If the right part is in it, then I’ll do it. But if not, then I don’t mind either way. I don’t think that just because I’m his wife, he has to find a part for me in his movie. I’ve done a few independent films and I have a few scripts that other people have written that are really exciting.

DRE: Like what?

DVT: One called The Black Dahlia Avenger, which is the true story of the Black Dahlia.

DRE: Do they have a director for that?

DVT: Yes, his name is William Eggleston III.

DRE: I guess he’s related to the photographer William Eggleston.

DVT: Yep. That’s in the works and a couple of other interesting things. I love acting but I really would be happier being known for what I do. I’d rather people know me for being a burlesque dancer and a pinup model than an actress. I don’t feel any great desire to be known as an actress. But I enjoy it when the script is right and when it’s an interesting story. I don’t really want to beat down Hollywood’s doors for a TV show or a silly movie.

DRE: Here is some British gossip I read about you, are you considering getting more plastic surgery?

DVT: No. In fact I think I read the same thing where it said something like “I want to stay hot for my husband so I get plastic surgery.” That’s silly. I basically said what I feel about plastic surgery because everybody knows that I had my breasts done. It’s no secret and why should it be a secret? It’s like the last taboo to be liberated. People have been having plastic surgery for over 100 years. They were trying to reshape people’s noses in the late 1800’s. I have about six books about beauty that were written between the 1920’s and the1930’s. They all talk about plastic surgery as an option. So I wouldn’t put people down for having plastic surgery. I don’t know why people are so afraid to admit what they’ve had done especially when it’s so obvious sometimes. I was just saying that I would not judge anyone for having plastic surgery and I would never say never. Maybe 20 years from now I might say, “Oh. Maybe a little more plastic surgery.” But I haven’t had anything else done but my breasts. I’ve been too scared to even get Botox even though I make jokes about getting it all the time.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Here's a new PIC from my shoot yesterday with David glover. :kissimage)

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (image) A is for Avatarina

by SG's Team Agony feat. Rin Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls. (image) [Rin in Voyeur] Q: Recently I’ve been dating this girl who I thought was the girl of my dreams. She drinks, plays games, is great with kids and her family,... more

by SG's Team Agony feat. Rin

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Rin in Voyeur]

Q: Recently I’ve been dating this girl who I thought was the girl of my dreams. She drinks, plays games, is great with kids and her family, and loves me, or I thought she did.

A couple of weeks ago we spent one of the best days together that we ever had, but since that day all those weeks ago she started ignoring me, dodging messages, and when she went on a trip out of the country she wouldn’t answer any of my text or calls.

When she returned she didn’t even tell me she was back. I asked her about what happened to us over the internet and she responded back in a tone that had no sympathy for me at all and sounded like I was dating Spock from Star Trek. I guess what I’m wondering is what should I do when I approach her about it online. We got into a fight and she told me that I wasn’t really long-term type but only short term. To tell the truth I’ve done everything to be there for her and now i have no clue what to do.

A: Well, to be perfectly frank, if she was really the girl of your dreams, she wouldn't have ditched out on you like that. My best guess is that things got too intense for her and she ran. Intensity can be so overwhelming!! Because she started avoiding you after one of your 'best days together' it seems likely to me that she got scared.

Saying you're "short term and not long term" seems like kind of a cop out on her part, but this girl doesn't sound like she has any interest in discussing her emotions or giving you any reasons. There's probably nothing you can do about that. It sucks, it's unfair to the emotional commitment that you put in, and it's not the way a caring person deserves to be treated. But sometimes that is just the way shit falls apart and there's nothing to be done.

My advice is to approach an online discussion not expecting anything.
She's shown you that she doesn't want to talk about what happened, and you can't force her to justify dropping you/giving you the cold shoulder. It's so shitty, but showing her that you care and you want to be there for her is unlikely to change her mind. This girl has already decided she doesn't want what you have to offer. She probably has issues with intimacy, long-term dating, or something similar, and she will only deal with that stuff on her own time.

The best thing you can do is pick up your heart, work on healing from this ordeal, and do things that make you happy. Work on being the best you that you can be, so that you when run into a dream girl who is the real deal, you will be ready to be an awesome partner to her.

Rin

***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

Will I date I myself if I use the phrase “We’re not worthy”? There is almost nothing to be said when introducing SuicideGirls to Terry Gilliam, because at this point if you don’t know who he is, I wouldn’t cry if you killed yourself. But for those who don’t have the guts to throw themselves off... more

Will I date I myself if I use the phrase “We’re not worthy”? There is almost nothing to be said when introducing SuicideGirls to Terry Gilliam, because at this point if you don’t know who he is, I wouldn’t cry if you killed yourself. But for those who don’t have the guts to throw themselves off a bridge, Gilliam is the brilliant film auteur behind such classics as Time Bandits, Brazil, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is also a founding member of the best sketch comedy troupe ever, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Gilliam’s latest film is the very heavy Tideland, the story of a young girl whose junkie parents die and leave her alone in an empty house only with her imagination.

I got a chance to interview Gilliam when he was in New York City. When we spoke of a possible Python live tour he seemed to imply that we could be seeing some new sketches.

Check out the official website for Tideland

Daniel Robert Epstein: First of all, I didn’t recognize Jeff Bridges at first. I thought that was Lemmy [of Motorhead].

Terry Gilliam: [laughs] That’s the thing, Jeff, like all the actors in my films have no vanity.

DRE: Yeah. [laughs] Well, its interesting that you say that about the vanity because this is a film that doesn’t have a lot of vanity.

TG: No.

DRE: Was that a result of the book or the budget?

TG: It’s just what it is. The book is what it is. The budget was what we needed and the actors weren’t afraid. I hate working with actors who are worried about what they look like other than the character that they should be playing. Everybody there just dove in and they were all very fearless and nobody had any qualms and off we went.

DRE: Did you know from the beginning that this film was going to be as difficult as it was?

TG: No, when I read the book I thought, “Oh this is fantastic. This will be great.” [Tideland co-writer] Tony Grison said, “Fantastic, let’s do it.” Jeremy Thomas the producer said, “Terrific, let’s go to work.” But then we couldn’t raise the money [laughs]. It seemed that some people thought it was not quite the jolly little jaunt that we thought it was [laughs].

DRE: When you first got the book, did you know that eventually you wanted to turn it into a movie?

TG: No, [Tideland author] Mitch Cullin is the one that actually sent it to me. It was sitting on a stack of books and scripts that I never look at. One day I was just frustrated or bored, I can’t remember, and I picked it up off the top of the pile and I go, “What’s this?” Started reading and said, “Hello? This is really great.” A few pages in, I was hooked. All Mitch was trying to do was get a blurb for the cover of the book. He didn’t expect to make a movie out of it [laughs]. But I said, “No, I’d love to have a go at this thing” and off we went. It was very interesting because when we were raising the money, that’s when we began to realize that it was dealing with subject matter that a lot of people found difficult. Somebody said, “Well, it’s men that control the money and men find this more disturbing than women.” I said, “What we need is a woman with a lot of money.” Ultimately that’s what happened.

DRE: In Canada.

TG: In Canada, yeah, they finally turned up.

DRE: I’ve interviewed David Cronenberg a number of times over the years. I always thought that you guys had some thematic crossover.

TG: Yeah.

DRE: I asked him if he ever puts things in his films just to tweak the audience. He said, “If I was to do any tweaking then I would be doing it to me.” But it sounds like you may feel a little differently about that.

TG: Yeah, I was intrigued and excited by everything in there but at the same time I’m not a fool. I know a lot of people are going to go “Whoa.” Here’s a little scene where the girl is preparing heroin for her father. Somebody’s going to go. Here’s a scene where the girl’s beginning to kiss a retarded 20 year old, something’s going to happen there. So I know full well what’s going to happen but all those scenes were absolutely fantastic. That’s what I liked about the book. I think they were honest. I think they were something I hadn’t seen before and I thought “Here is a child that is being treated like a child and not some romanticized, sentimentalized version of an adult’s version of childhood.” That’s what I liked about it. I was getting really tired of hearing non-stop tales of child victimization until it wasn’t even victimization after a while. There are all sorts of difficult things in life but this was just a way of selling newspapers and doing television shows. I was really getting angry. I said, “Here’s a chance to show a really tough, strong, child. What children really are. They’re designed to survive and she’s put through some very difficult situations and she comes out alive and well.”

DRE: Smelling like a rose.

TG: Exactly. I didn’t say it you did [laughs].

DRE: Just because it’s you making films, you’re never sure how much is going to be reality versus fantasy. But with Tideland there seems to be a strong delineation between reality and fantasy.

TG: Oh yeah, I think it’s clear. To me this is real and the moments when she goes into full fantasy, there’s no question that it is fantasy. But somebody the other day was saying, “So, at the end is that her imagination? Is that really happening? Is the whole film really a flashback?” I said, “No, it’s exactly what it is. It’s telling the story and when we go into fantasy it’s very clear it’s a fantasy thing.” I can’t see a single moment where you don’t know that it’s real as opposed to fantasy. She’s distorting the world. When Dell turns up I shoot it from Jeliza-Rose’s point of view so Dell is a giant. But then Dell is a real person. So Jeliza-Rose is trying to make things more interesting than they really are.

DRE: Otherwise she’d be bored.

Did you have to resist putting more fantasy?

TG: No, I was just doing the book. This is Mitch Cullin’s world and I’m just trying to translate his world honestly and that’s exactly what I did. But there are a couple of things. When she goes up the stairs and starts crawling through the trunks and all the clothes that were in there. I don’t think in the book it was an endlessly long trunk of clothes so that was me. I thought we should make this idea of this little girl amongst all of her granny’s clothes endless. That’s me expanding the book. I’m the Jeliza-Rose that’s taking Mitch dull, banal mundane world and turning it into something magical [laughs].

DRE: Brendan Fletcher who played the retarded person was just fantastic.

TG: Extraordinary performance. Absolutely wonderful. That was the first time I’ve ever cast an actor without meeting him in the flesh. He sent this tape in that he and his girlfriend put together. I said, “Fuck, this kid’s amazing! He’s got the job.” But it is very funny because in the flesh he looks like Sting.

DRE: Yeah, I’ve seen him in other films.

TG: He’s a great actor and he is also very funny and sweet. A lot of the other actors who were auditioning for the role, could bring out the humor but it wasn’t believable, it wasn’t real. I was at a film festival in Germany a few weeks ago and the guy in the front row said, “Where’d you find that kid?” I said, “He’s a wonderful actor.” He said, “You’re kidding because I work with retarded kids all the time and he’s spot on. There wasn’t one moment of falseness in that performance.” I said I’ll be glad to tell Brendan that because he’ll be very proud and pleased.

DRE: Was there anything that you asked him to do?

TG: No, I don’t direct actors like that. I sort of work with them. I encourage them to go wherever they want to go with these things. I think the one thing I did was the thing he does with his tongue. I thought that would be interesting because the audience would squirm. So that will have an affect and it’s very good because the audience is behaving exactly right. But he moves his tongue like he has a goldfish in his mouth and that scene’s stunning. There’s another moment that I did when they swim through the grass. She reaches for his hand and I said, “Let’s do that because there has got to be moments when the audience might think you’re a potential danger to her.” It’s not that you’re trying to do that, but it just gets so dark and I don’t rush away from that because it will make the audience feel, “Where is this going? Is this girl in jeopardy?” So in that sense I’m playing with the audience but there are very slight moments. I’m not pushing it. I’m not trying to make it a horror film or anything like that but in almost every one of those moments it’s only a beat, that’s it, nothing more.

DRE: There’s always festival screenings or press screenings where if someone doesn’t like the film they might walk out.

TG: Or in many cases, a lot of people don’t like the film and they walk out [laughs].

DRE: This is the first time I’ve seen this many people walk out of one of your films.

TG: I know.

DRE: I’m like, “Why don’t you sit through the whole thing and see what happens at the end?”

TG: Do you remember where they walked out? Did they all walk out at specific points?

DRE: One person walked out about a half hour into the film and then once Brendan and Jodelle started kissing more people walked out.

TG: It was getting too much for them.

DRE: Do the walkouts surprise you?

TG: No, I expected people to walk out. I said that if they didn’t I’ve failed. I don’t mind people walking out. What I mind is when reviewers walk out and then write about it.

DRE: Oh, that’s horrible.

TG: I’ve seen too much of that going on. Don’t touch it if you didn’t see the whole film, don’t write about it. But you don’t have to like it. But don’t sit there and write a piece about it and I’ve read a few unfortunately. I don’t mind people walking out. I’d say it’s the closest to Brazil of any film I’ve done in that sense and Brazil used to have huge walkouts but for very different reasons. In Tideland it’s obvious I’m getting to people and they don’t like what they’re seeing and they don’t want to confront it. They don’t want to deal with it. They just want to get out of there. That’s fair enough. I was hoping this film would actually create a lot of dialogue between people, those who don’t like it or have questions about it or are disturbed and those that love it. What I find so interesting is that those who don’t like it can’t see how anybody could like it.

DRE: Oh, I know a lot of people who have said that.

TG: And those who like it or love it can’t understand why people have a problem with it.

DRE: I can see that too. There are a lot of people that say you love it or you hate it. It’s hard for me to say that I love this film. I think the feelings I have for it are on the level of love.

TG: Good, that’s fine.

DRE: But I can’t say I love it.

TG: No, I know. But there are some, and they tend to be women, come out just beaming saying, “Yeah!” Those are the people who really love it. There’s more ambivalence than that for most people. I know I’m touching things, I’m getting to them. They can’t quite explain what it is or why they like it. There was one girl at a screening the other night that said, “The film, like so many of your films at the end I feel nauseous. But I loved it. It was a positive nauseousness. I’m in a place that I haven’t been before.” We had a thing when we were cutting it. Normally every couple weeks I get groups of people together to show the film because I’m just trying to find out, “Am I communicating what I want to communicate? Is it boring them at points? Can I tighten it?” I just don’t want to bore people too much, but they didn’t know what to say at the end of a lot of them. I said, “Here’s what, I’ll give you my email. When you’re ready to talk about it email me.” Then some people would take a week before they had got their thoughts in order. I thought, “Well, that’s great.” It’s shifted their parameters, the way they think, we jumbled up the boxes and maybe something interesting would come out of that. People are saying, “I really reconsidered the way I look at the world.” “It’s made me do this.” “It’s made me think like that.” I thought “Fuck, that’s great. I’m happy.”

DRE: Every film of yours is so packed with detail within the frame. Tideland is detailed in a different kind of way.

TG: Everything you see in there has been considered. On a simplistic level it was really about two worlds. One was the open space out there and the freedom of nature. It was big skies and grass and then the other was inside this house, which is decaying and rotting like the corpse itself. So there is that contrast and by juxtaposing those two things people come out and say “How did you shoot those exteriors? They’re so beautiful.” They’re not any different than any other exterior. They just happened to be contrasting what’s going on inside. We found the house. I added the porch on the front of it, that wonderful but weird porch, but the house was there.

DRE: Wow, I totally thought you built that house.

TG: I know. That porch was on another house about a mile away. I said, “I like that porch, let’s stick it on that place.” We did build the inside but they related to the outside. Andrew Wyeth’s paintings were very much a part of it from the beginning. When I read the book, I said, “That’s fucking Christina’s World.” Then I called Mitch Cullin and said, “Did you have a picture in mind when you made it?” He said, “Well, I had Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World in mind.” So I knew we were in good company and we looked at a lot of Wyeth’s paintings. Also my editor, Lesley Walker, is a woman. [production designer] Jasna Stefanovic is Canadian and a woman. There are a lot of women working on this film because that’s important to me when you’re doing this kind of story with a little girl. I wanted women’s takes on these things. Jasna got the job because she spent the night before we met putting all these scraps of images and photographs together. When I looked at that I said, “You’ve got it, you understand this child. You understand the world.” That’s how I work. It’s a totally collaborative little world of probably about eight or nine really critical people in the design and then we go from there.

DRE: I remember an American Cinematographer article on Twelve Monkeys where you said you’re not as super detail-oriented as you were with Time Bandits or Brazil just because you’re finding people who you collaborate with so you leapfrog over each other creatively.

TG: It’s totally like that, yes.

DRE: Has it advanced more?

TG: No, it’s just that you work with different people so you leapfrog in different ways [laughs]. But you try to find people who have the right sensibility for the project. I worked with so many new people on this one because I had to work with a Canadian crew and we just found the right people. They understood it.

DRE: Last night you introduced a screening of Time Bandits at Film Forum’s Pythonalot festival. What made you choose that film?

TG: Well, it’s 25 years since I made it.

DRE: Oh my God, now even I feel old.

TG: Yeah, I know, and I’m older. Tideland is another story about a child and their imagination, 25 years gone. Have I changed? Has the world changed? [laughs]

DRE: How does what went down The Brothers Grimm change your view of what films you’re going to do?

TG: It’s the same view I had before I started that project, not to work with the Weinsteins. I had always said I wouldn’t work with them. They came in at the point where MGM pulled out. We were in preproduction so it was out of the frying pan and into the fire. It’s not that the Weinsteins are the worst people on the planet. They are who they are and I am who I am and I know it was always going to be a bad marriage. We’re going to head butt. At the end it got interesting because we got to the point where I thought the film was done but they kept going with it. Then Jeremy Thomas managed to raise the money for Tideland so I said, “I’ve another film to make so why don’t you go away and do whatever you want with Grimm?” That was instead of fighting, which is my normal mode of operation. I realized that those guys love a fight. They’re bigger, more brutal fighters than I am so I ran away. Tideland was a great escape from all of that. “Free at last.” Then what was interesting, was that when I was editing Tideland, I got a call from the Weinsteins to finish Grimm my way. So I was editing both films at the same time. I’d won by not fighting and it was really interesting doing both films because when you’re editing you’re watching the film constantly and you learn to hate it at a certain point. You can’t make it better, you get frustrated. So we’d run down the corridor and start working on Grimm until we reach that state and then we go back and do Tideland. It was fantastic [laughs].

DRE: If there is a Monty Python tour, would you want to do short films or animations for it?

TG: There may come a point where I’m just tired of all the difficulties of getting money and making movies. When I do animation it’s just me and the computer now. About five or six years ago, there was a 35th Python reunion for the BBC. It was a crap show because we all like each other too much now. But I did one little bit of animation on my computer because now I can do everything I did before, easier. The computer has caught up with my really crude technology. I can do the same cutouts because they are easy to move around on the computer. So that’s always that fallback position if I get in trouble.

DRE: What sketches would you want to do on the tour?

TG: Ah. [laughs] You mean existing ones.

I think we ought to get the dead mother in the bag at the crematorium scene. You could burn her or you could eat her. That was one of the worst; most tasteless sketches ever written and that would be number one on my list of things to do [laughs].

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

50 years ago from today, Sylvia Plath, one of the greatest writers who ever lived, in any century, put an end to her life. Not going to moralize about her death and all that, but simply post this photo album of hers and probably post some of her brilliant readings. In honor to the Great Sylvia. Sweet,... more

50 years ago from today, Sylvia Plath, one of the greatest writers who ever lived, in any century, put an end to her life. Not going to moralize about her death and all that, but simply post this photo album of hers and probably post some of her brilliant readings. In honor to the Great Sylvia. Sweet, Soulful Sylvia, how I love thee, forever and ever ...

Sylvia Plath. Photos of her from my facebook page I collected a while ago that I am posting here. In honor of The Sweet Soul.

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

 This week we bring you Luscious!
 Luscious has been a SuicideGirl since 2007 and she has 14 strikingly sexy... more

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



This week we bring you Luscious!


Luscious has been a SuicideGirl since 2007 and she has 14 strikingly sexy photo sets. Enjoy this gorgeous look back at the stunning Luscious…



From her first photo set Industrial Strength shot by Alissa in 2007:





She shot The Clarendon with Taye in the middle of the biggest road trip of her life in 2008:





Luscious says it's 40oz to Freedom in this sexy set shot by Alissa in 2008:





She is true Heavy Metal in this awesome set shot by Alissa in 2008:





Luscious is one with the wilderness in Moribund Meadow shot by Alissa in 2008:





Her beauty is Eternal in this stunning set shot by Alissa in 2009:





She says being creepy is something that comes naturally to her in the set Creep shot by Alissa in 2009:





She celebrates Halloween in this fun set shot by Shazzy in 2009:





She teaches us to dance in Dark Mother shot by Alissa in 2009:





Luscious is an Afternoon Delight in this stunning set shot by Alissa in 2010:





She's dark and mysterious in Grime shot by Alissa in 2010:





Luscious cools down in Aquifer shot by Alissa in 2011:





She's a wild child in The Moor shot by Alissa in 2011:







Ohio SuicideGirls have a Slumber Party in this set shot by Alissa in 2011:





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

 Become a member TODAY for only $4 a month (if you sign up for a year) to see all 14 nude pin-up photo sets of Luscious - http://suicidegirls.com/join/