Transforming a beloved book into a film is always a huge risk. Alice Sebold's tale of tragedy, loss, and renewal is such a novel and Peter Jackson is the brave filmmaker who volunteered for the job. The task was even more challenging since the book doesn't conform to any standard structure. more

Transforming a beloved book into a film is always a huge risk. Alice Sebold's tale of tragedy, loss, and renewal is such a novel and Peter Jackson is the brave filmmaker who volunteered for the job.

The task was even more challenging since the book doesn't conform to any standard structure. The story is told from the point of view of Susie Salmon, a teenage girl who is brutally raped and murdered at the outset. Despite coming to such a violent and ugly end, as Susie watches her family from a place beyond death, she sees beauty in the connections and new beginnings the demise of her earthly body creates. It's this juxtaposition, that Sebold somehow made work on paper, which created such a strong reaction in readers. Many took great comfort in the author's vision of the afterlife, though Sebold wrote it from an agnostic perspective, which caused the devout to complain about her seemingly godless (and judgment-less) heaven. Others rejoiced in her ability to subvert the darkness of humanity, and in her capacity for finding light where there should be nothing but night.

There was therefore a difficult balancing act that was intrinsic to the success of the movie. The book was criticized by some for being too saccharin, yet if Jackson departed too far from its strangely uplifting tone he risked alienating its large and loyal following. Conversely, graphically depicting the rape and murder of a teen could easily be perceived as being gratuitous on screen, yet acknowledging that such a cruel and tragic event had happened was essential to the core of the piece.

Jackson worked on the screenplay with Lord of The Rings collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh (who's also his partner in life). Though the psychedelic dream/afterlife sequences allowed the team to draw on their familiar fantasy filmmaking background, the gritty, true-to-life segments, set in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 1970s, have overtones from Jackson's earlier work - namely Heavenly Creatures (a period movie released in '94 that Jackson co-wrote with Walsh, which explored the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder).

Thus the movie will not necessarily appeal to Jackson's Lord of The Rings film fans, nor will it sit well with all who loved Sebold's book. Jackson is prepared for a mixed reaction however. Here he talks about The Lovely Bones' journey to the big screen, and his reasons for making the choices he did.

Question: What were the challenges adapting the book for the film?

Peter Jackson: In my mind there's no such thing as a perfect adaptation of a book. The master work is the book. Alice Sebold's novel is The Lovely Bones. That is the work that has got everything in it, every character, every sub-plot, and that's the way that you should experience the story in its most pure form.

A film adaptation of any book - especially The Lovely Bones in this example - is only ever going to be a souvenir. It's going to be an impression of aspects of the book. To me, to adapt a book is not a question of producing a carbon copy of the book - it's impossible. To include everything the film would be five or six hours long. It's a personal impression.

Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and myself - the three of us wrote the screenplay. We read the book, we responded to aspects of the book, especially the emotional themes and the comforting value of the book, and things it had to say about the afterlife, that aspect of it, which is very personal to anybody...Our adaptation is very much elements of the book restructured following our instincts and our taste. So, to me, no adaptation can ever be perfect. It's impossible. You don't make a movie for the fans of the book. You just can't do that.

Q: One of the major changes you made from the book is that the book featured a rape and murder. I'm sure you had artistic reasons for choosing to eliminate the rape. Could you share your thought process?

PJ: They're artistic, they're moral reasons, they're practical reasons. There's a variety of reasons which I should talk about. The film is about a teenager and her experiences of what happens; she's murdered, she goes into an afterlife experience, or in-between. We wanted to make a film that teenagers could watch. Fran and I have a daughter who's very similar to Susie's age, and we wanted Katie to be able to see this film. There's a lot of positive aspects to this film and it's not something I wanted to shield our daughter from, and so it was important for us to not go into R-rated territory at all.

Also, I never regarded the movie as being a film about a murder, and yet, if we shot any aspect of that particular sequence in anyway it would stigmatize the film. Movies are such a powerful medium...and to show a 14-year old girl being murdered in any way, no matter how briefly, it would completely swing the balance. And it would frankly make it a film that I wouldn't want to watch. I would have no interest in seeing that depicted on film. I would not want to see the film, and every movie that I make is a film I want to see.

I make movies that I know I would enjoy seeing in the cinema, and it would not be one of them. So the movie that we did make, we wanted it to become something that was almost like a mystery, a crime mystery of what happens when you're in this world of the subconscious, the world of the afterlife. Susie has to deal with the mystery of what happened to her and there's a positive aspect to it in the sense that she's immortal. It's saying that there is no such thing as death. All of those aspects and themes were what interested us, not the murder.

I've shot some pretty extreme things in my time with Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles, and Braindead, and there's a certain style and a sense of humor that I believe you can do to get away with it. But to do anything that depicted violence towards especially a young person in a way that was serious, to me, I would have no interest in filming it at all. It would be repulsive. So there was a variety of reasons, but we felt very determined from the beginning that the film should be PG-13 because it was important.

Q: Yes, actually showing the rape and murder would be completely superfluous to the story as you've told it.

PJ: I mean how much murder and killing do you need to see to be satisfied? How much to make somebody happy?

One of the things we did which is different to the novel in the way we restructured the screenplay is we have her fleeing from her murder. We really liked that aspect of the way the story was told. At the point where her spirit becomes disconnected from her body, she's running. She's running across that field, she's running into the street, she's running home, and Susie doesn't know what has happened to her.

She's literally confused and now she finds this out in the in-between, which is essentially the world of dreams, of subconscious, of this confused state, and she has to start to put the pieces together like a mystery. So that really dictated very strongly that, even for all the other reasons, seeing any sort of murder was not something we wanted to do because of the way we restructured the story, so that she herself is confused and has to put the pieces of the puzzle together as the story goes on.

Q: After doing four of the most epic fantasy films probably ever pulled off, what drew you to The Lovely Bones. You have a lot of digital effects in this film, which you utilize in your depiction of the supernatural, but it's a really intimate story. What appealed to you about this?

PJ: The only thing as a filmmaker that I am scared of, or fear, is repetition. I have no interest at all in doing the same thing over and over again. That's not to say that I wouldn't do another fantasy film or I wouldn't do another splatter film one day, or another film with puppets, but it would be different.

Certainly it's great to have a break, and it's great to turn you mind to something different, and The Lovely Bones is a challenge...Things are immediately much more interesting and enjoyable if they're difficult. It you're attempting to do something, or if you decide you're going to take on a project for the next year or two years, if it's easy and familiar - I shouldn't say easy actually, that's the wrong word - but if it's familiar and it's treading the same ground that you've gone before it's immediately going to be less interesting than taking on something that has new demands and a fresh challenge.

The Lovely Bones is a wonderful puzzle. It's a terrific book that affects you emotionally. The book doesn't have a structure that immediately makes the film obvious. In your mind the book affects you on an emotional level not on a story level as such. You delve into it, and as a filmmaker you figure out a way in which you can tell the story on film. As I said at the very beginning, it's not necessarily the perfect way or the way that other people would do it. You take 20 different filmmakers and give them a book like this - any book really - and you'll have 20 completely different films, which is interesting. So the idea of certainly doing something that was a challenging new topic was absolutely of great interest to us.

Q: Brian Eno did the score. What qualities from him did you want to augment what you were doing on screen?

PJ: Brian Eno was a wonderful surprise for us, a delightful surprise that happened. Interestingly enough, we had made a decision earlier on that we would possibly have no soundtrack composer on the movie. We thought that it would be interesting to do what Martin Scorsese does...have a soundtrack that was composed of songs of that period, and choose songs especially that would be suitable for particular sequences in the film. When we were compiling a list of songs as we were writing the script, we would write them into the screenplay. We'd actually identify the names of songs in the script that we thought would be appropriate. There was two or three of Brian Eno's existing tracks that made it onto our list. "Baby's On Fire" was one that we always thought would be great to accompany the scene where Mark goes into the cornfield with the baseball bat. There was an instrumental that he did called "The Big Ship" which was another beautiful piece of music that we had planned on using, in addition to a lot of other pieces by other composers.

So we got to the point, pretty much at the beginning of postproduction, where we had to start to ask permission to use these tracks. We contacted Brian and explained what we were doing and could we use these couple of songs of his, and he asked us about the film. He rushed out and grabbed the book to read it, he was curious, and he said to us, "Have you got a composer to do the soundtrack?" We said, "Well, no, not really. We think maybe we might not use one." And he said he would be really interested in doing it if we wanted to go that way. He sort of volunteered, which was amazing because to us, we never even thought to ask him because he's done a couple of movies, but it's not something that he really devotes much of his time to.

He was great to work with and [it was] an incredibly different experience because we're used to working with composers who take a final edit of the movie and they compose music to exactly the cut of the film that you give them. To the final actual seconds and frames, it's all perfectly lined up. Brian didn't want to see the rough cut of the film. He didn't want to read the script. He wanted to see conceptual art, he wanted to see imagery, he wanted to be inspired by emotion, he wanted to see photographs of the set, and then he started to compose. We were just communicating with him over iChat. We were in New Zealand and he was in the U.K., and he started to send us these long pieces of music. Beautiful, instrumental, emotional sort of pieces which might be seven or eight minutes long and would have all sorts of interesting shapes to them. He just basically said that we should edit these pieces of music as we saw fit, and combine them and blend them, and that's how he worked. It was a completely different way to how we've ever worked with a composer before, but for this particular movie, both the sound and the style of working really ended up suiting the film.

Q: Can you talk about how justice was carried out in the film, and how the film's message affected the ending - particularly Susie's decision between the boy and the box.

PJ: Ahh. Well that was one of things that we loved about the climax. The fact that she has this moment through the use of Ruth, who is a girl with genuine psychic ability. Susie finds that she has a few seconds back on earth again, a few seconds when she's inhabiting a body rather than being this sort of free spirit as it were. And in those few seconds she could decide to say, "Call the police. That guy out the window is the man who murdered me. You'll find my body inside that safe. Quickly, get to a phone and call the cops."

In terms of the very end, what I like about what happens to Mr. Harvey is that it confirms I think a hope that we all have that even if the police or the legal authorities don't ultimately do their work that there's a form of natural justice that happens. That was very much the concept behind what happens to Mr. Harvey.

Q: Susie's limbo world, how did you find the right look and texture for it on screen.

PJ: Well, the key thing to us was just the concept that it wasn't a physical place. We were not saying that when you die, you're going to go into this afterlife, and in this movie we're going to show you what that afterlife is like. That's not what we attempted to do. We wanted to base it on Susie's subconscious. So at the point that she is no longer anchored to earth through her body...her mind is in the world of dreams. At night she dreams, as we all do, but now that she no longer has a living body, she's permanently in this world of the subconscious, which is essentially a dream world. And so a lot of the imagery that we used - everything's a metaphor in a dream world. Everything means something else. But it's not a literal thing. So we used image systems that the audience are not really supposed to obviously understand...but as scriptwriters we put it into our screenplay, and the overall impression that it creates hopefully gives the audience the idea of what is happening.

People say when you dream about a house, that a house really represents a person, when you analyze dreams. So the house that she imagines that she sees in that empty field with the lighthouse sticking out of it, that house represents Mr. Harvey. She's using the metaphor of the house to represent the killer. And, as we said earlier, she flees from her own murder so she doesn't know where her body is and the only person that does is Mr. Harvey. Mr. Harvey himself keeps a souvenir, a charm bracelet. He throws most of the charm bracelet away because of the evidence, but he rips off one charm, which happens to be the house, and that house is Susie, using the same image system. So he's now keeping control of Susie. It's her fear of Mr. Harvey that he still has over her that prevents her from leaving this world of the in-between. I mean, she's trying to get to heaven but she's stuck. So the concept of her finding out the answers to these questions of where her body is, she has to confront the man who killed her, and she does that symbolically by going through the door of that house. And in doing so, she enters his subconscious. So I love the idea that she goes in there, she sees his previous victims, which are images that only he has in his mind, so now her subconscious is entering Harvey's subconscious.

And we used things like the flower, the blooming flower. That flower is really Susie and her life force. It's withered and it's dead as far as her father sees, this flower, but then it blooms in his hand when she's trying to communicate with him...He imagines in his mind's eye that flower blooming.

The gazebo was representing unfulfilled love. That first date that she was going to have with Ray, he said, "Meet me in the shopping mall by the gazebo." So that gazebo represents the date that she never had. She sees him in the distance in the in-between and she tries to run there but she can't run because the ground turns to water and mush, which is a very common dream image that we all have, that we're trying to get to a place and the ground is turning to syrup or glue and we can't make it there.

So everything that we did in that in-between world, and again this is all working on the basis of the subconscious, it's not supposed to be particularly clear, but it was designed as a way of working within the metaphor and image system of dreams. We liked the idea that in those sequences we were inside Susie's subconscious and it wasn't a physical place that we were showing.

Q: Despite your explanation about the subconscious, I think most people's observation is that it's Susie looking on at her family from the afterlife. As a non-believer I've always considered the afterlife a copout, a religious concoction to get people to behave in a certain way for some reward. I'm wondering in terms of putting the script together and trying to understand how people interpret this, what did you discover about the need that people have to believe in the idea of souls living on.

PJ: Well, it's an interesting question and it's one that I think everyone has obviously their own points of view about it...Certainly what we felt very strongly with the movie is that we didn't want to make a film that cast judgment on people's religious beliefs because that wasn't at all the motivation for making the movie. We didn't create the in-between being Susie's subconscious for that reason. To us it wasn't about her existing in a world that had some form of religious control around it. It was literally, she is disconnected from her body for that period and she is in this weird hallucinogenic state.

What we do in the movie is...there's that scene in the end with the field...There's a golden light there, which is supposed to be wide heaven, as Susie calls it, and as Alice Sebold called it, and that's a golden light. I shot that in a deliberately clichéd recognizable way that people get the idea that heaven is there. That is indeed the goal, which Susie has, to get out of this weird, trapped place that she is [in] and to actually move on; That golden light represents where she and everyone else moves on to. The idea is that you can put whatever you choose into that golden light and if you are religious, then obviously that's what you put in there. If you're not religious, you can imagine something else. And if you don't believe there's anything there at all, then probably it's not the movie you should go see.

I personally think that, all religious things to one side, which is a completely different topic, I do think that there is some energy that we have inside us. I have experienced a couple of people that have been very close to me dying and I have been there, and I've held their hand. There is a feeling that when somebody passes on, that they leave. There's a sense of departure that's very, very strong. It's so strong that it has made me believe in the fact that there is a form of energy inside us that continues to survive after death. Science, physics, tells us that energy cannot be destroyed so it has to go somewhere. It doesn't evaporate.

The Lovely Bones opens in cinemas nationwide on Friday Jan 15.

In Wonderful World, Matthew Broderick's character Ben Singer may think he's fighting "the man," the soulless god of faceless corporations, but in reality he's his own worst enemy. With his folk music career behind him, having lost his family and his copywriting job, he may be... more

In Wonderful World, Matthew Broderick's character Ben Singer may think he's fighting "the man," the soulless god of faceless corporations, but in reality he's his own worst enemy. With his folk music career behind him, having lost his family and his copywriting job, he may be down on his luck, but it's his inability to see the light at the end of the tunnel, even when it's shining right in his eyes, that renders him impotent and leaves him without hope.

Written and directed by Broderick's longtime friend Josh Goldin, Wonderful World is a low budget film on very limited release. Its small price tag however belies its true value. With fully realized characters, a quietly powerful plot, and a solid ensemble cast, the full-of-heart film features one of Broderick's most nuanced performances to date.

SuicdeGirls met up with Broderick in a non-descript room at West Hollywood's Standard Hotel, which had been converted into an ad hoc press suite for the day, to talk about this very special movie.

Nicole Powers: You've been doing a lot of press to support the film. I know Josh Goldin is your friend, but your keenness to talk about this film seems to go way beyond that.

Matthew Broderick: I really do like it. Also, because these movies have very little budget for actual advertising, I think it falls on us more to promote them. But I really like the movie, and Josh, we've been friends for 20 years., so it's my pleasure to promote it. It's nice to promote something that you like.

NP: The movie really captures the hopelessness and lack of power that people are feeling right now. Everyone who works for "the man" is expected to give absolute loyalty, but these days there's no expectation that it will be reciprocated. In all the years I've been in America, I've never sensed such a colossal cloud of melancholy hanging over the nation. And with your character, more than "the man," it's that overwhelming sense of melancholy that he's fighting to overcome.

MB: Yeah, I think he is fighting his own melancholy basically. Although he's right about things, he doesn't like positive thinking, which I can sympathize with. But he's also had a lot of things happen that have put him in this mood. He's just been through a divorce, his daughter's at an age when she's separating from him I guess, he's low on money, and his album didn't do very well, so he's had a few blows as the movie begins. I guess in a way it's about him getting his life going again.

NP: In the press notes Josh Goldin talks about how he "wanted to create a movie about a man who saw only the negative side of things." Ben Singer is not a bad man, he's a nice guy whose life is adversely affected by his negative outlook. Much of what you get back from the world is so often based on what you project into it. Obviously you have quite an abundant life, which bodes well for what you're consciously or unconsciously projecting, but did exploring the character of Ben Singer have an affect on how you view your own demeanor?

MB: I don't know. I've thought about that. I'm not so sure how much you can control how you see things. I almost have a feeling that's a genetic thing, whether you see glasses as half empty or half full, or however you want to put it. I try to see things as accurately if possible. I don't want to pretend things are better than they are just because I think that'll make things better. I've never really believed that. But that said, I guess, if you're just hopeless that's very unattractive in a way, and probably will bring hopeless things to you.

I thought of it more when I was doing it as just the story of what's happening between those people. I didn't think about these big themes. I guess I am aware. I try to be positive. I know when I'm working I always try to look at the bright side of things because as soon as you work with people who think everything is doom and gloom it can bring the whole group down. So I definitely try not to be one of those.

NP: It only takes one negatron in the mix to sap everyone's energy.

MB: Well I try not to be a negatron. But, at the same time, if you get so worried about that you might avoid problems or not identify things that need fixing. So I don't want to just always think I've got to like everything because then you'd be in danger of being a crazy person I suppose.

NP: This movie is unusually subtle. There are no Hollywood devices, heavy symbolism or cheesy emotional cues that tell you what you should be thinking. It's actually quite a refreshing mental process, to discover how you feel about something rather than to have your emotion buttons pushed on cue. Did that quality immediately jump off the page when you first read the script? Or was it something that became apparent over the course of production?

MB: Both. It's always difficult to read something and know how it's going to feel when it's done. Knowing Josh so well, it feels like him. That's kind of how he is. He's kind of quiet, but also very, very funny. I think it's funny too. I don't think it's a dismal movie. It's oddly hopeful, at least by the end. The quietness, that's Josh's personality, and his humor. He doesn't hit you over the head with things. It's his style.

NP: So when he tells jokes they creep up on you, and you'll catch them few beats later.

MB: Yes, exactly, or as you're walking home.

NP: And continuing with the gentle tone of the film, in the end nothing dramatic happens, but we see how a slight shift in your character's outlook has a beneficial effect on his life - and those around him. So many movies champion impractical grand gestures, but in this movie, we see how even a small shift, something we can all do, has a beneficial effect.

MB: Yeah. That's well put. I agree with you. That's nice.

Josh has also written millions of screenplays, big studio things. He's rewritten them, so he's constantly having to make things work out better than he thinks the story [should]. He always has to manufacture things. I don't want to spoil it but

NP: The movie deals with the issue of immigration, again in a very subtle way. Ben, who is essentially a nice guy, throws the issue of immigration in his girlfriend Khadi's face. But its another example of how Ben's negative attitude ultimately hurts himself far more than it hurts anyone else. To extrapolate that, do you think perhaps America's increasingly negative attitude towards immigrants is ultimately having an adverse affect on its own citizens?

MB: Probably, yeah. That seems to have been pushed off a bit. I remember last year [it was more of an issue]. We seem to have other problems now that we're obsessing over on the news.

I'm not an expert on the issue, but the idea of building some kind of wall along the border with Mexico, I just think it's such as awful symbol in a way. It sounds like Berlin or something. My grandparents were immigrants and as a New Yorker, I guess, immigration is just all around, and always good.

NP: In the movie Ben feels powerless and, with a failed music career., inconsequential. One of the basic reasons people seek fame, is to be someone that "matters." You came from a theatrical family, and I know you're very much in love with your craft, but having experienced both the extreme positive and extreme negative aspects of fame, what would you say about our culture of fame, and those that crave it without any respect for the process?

MB: They're just a different group than what I was a part of. I mean I suppose everybody sort of wants to be famous. I wouldn't deny that. But really, I loved acting from a pretty young age. Fame is more of a side effect. I mean there are a lot of good things about it, good tables and money and things. But it also can be really lousy.

Also, there was no reality TV when I started. Now there are people who get famous just for being odd - and really famous, like super famous. And I watch those show too.

NP: Which ones?

MB: I mean, I watch some of them. I watch Top Chef. I guess that's not so bad because at least they're cooking something. And my wife [Sarah Jessica Parker] will watch anything to do with buying or selling a house or remodeling a house. It hypnotizes her, so those are on a lot.

NP: Have you had to remodel you wife's closet to pimp it out Sex And The City style to compete with her on screen one?

MB: No, no. We don't have room. We have a pretty big house but we don't have that much closet space.

NP: 'Cause people must have big closet expectations walking into your house after seeing the SATC movie.

MB: For my wife, they do. But all of her professional life is separate. Those clothes are kept under a mountain in Yucca, or something. I don't know where they go. But her closet at home is pretty small actually, for what you would think.

NP: Like Ferris Bueller, Wonderful World is a real feel-good, life-affirming movie. What movies and music give you that feeling?

MB: I just saw Christmas in July, a Preston Sturges movie that I love. It makes me so happy. Louis Armstrong makes me happy. I can't think of anything else.

NP: Wonderful World is a rare film, it's as much a bromance as it is a chick flick, since it explores not only Ben's relationship with Khadi but also his relationship with her brother Ibu. I know in my house we kind of keep score. If I drag my hubby to a chick flick that means he's owed a man movie. Do you have any similar system for ensuring domestic bliss where choice of movies and TV is concerned?

MB: We don't go to the movies that much to tell you the truth. We watch them at home. But, yeah, we do have that. We have that battle over space on the TiVo. Like all the real estate shows, and then there's sports shows of mine, and I'm constantly taping old movies. So you watch which one is about to be deleted because of space, and how much space each member of the couple gets on the DVR. That's our battle.

NP: So your domestic situation would be improved by a bigger hard drive.

MB: Yes it would. [laughs]

One of the most reliable Hollywood directors working today is also one of the most modest. New Zealand-born Martin Campbell has been quietly plugging away at the big-budget filmmaking game for decades, churning out a steady stream of high-octane dramas like the mountain climbing thriller Vertical Limit... more

One of the most reliable Hollywood directors working today is also one of the most modest. New Zealand-born Martin Campbell has been quietly plugging away at the big-budget filmmaking game for decades, churning out a steady stream of high-octane dramas like the mountain climbing thriller Vertical Limit and the Angelina Jolie-starring Beyond Borders as well as Sony’s two rebranded Zorro films starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. His primary affiliation, however, is with a certain British spy who sports a license to kill. After Timothy Dalton’s underwhelming two-film stint as James Bond in the late 80s, which resulted in a six year hiatus for the character, Campbell was brought in to retool the series with a new actor, Pierce Brosnan, and a new, 90s sensibility; the result was Golden Eye, a box-office smash and critical success.
Ten years later, when the Brosnan series began to peter out, it was no surprise that the Bond producers turned to Campbell once again to helm a total series reboot. Campbell’s second Bond film, Casino Royale, is considered among the best in the forty eight year-old franchise’s history and its runaway success pushed Campbell to the forefront of journeyman directors. After next tinkering with the idea of remaking Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, Campbell solidified two new projects: the mega-budget superhero film The Green Lantern, which is filming now, and an adaptation of the British crime series Edge of Darkness, with Mel Gibson in the role of a Boston detective seeking vengeance for his murdered daughter. Campbell recently called up SuicideGirls to talk about working with Mad Mel and action cinema today.


Ryan Stewart: Looks like you can’t escape the James Bond news cycle. It’s heating up again right now, just as you’re going out to do press for this film.

Martin Campbell: [laughs] I know, I just read something about Sam Mendes doing the next one. People do ask me about it still, during interviews and things like that, but I guess the cycle always goes on with Bond, doesn’t it?

RS: Have the Broccolis done justice to your vision of the series reboot, you think? Everyone considers Casino Royale to be near the top of the Bond canon.

MC: Well, look, I don’t really know what my vision was, I just simply did it the way I felt it should be done. I was very disappointed by Quantum of Solace, but to be honest I’m sure it was a very difficult thing to follow, Casino Royale. That one had an emotional story, and it was also the origin story, so there was a lot to work with. Any subsequent film is, of course, not going to have that, and the new characters that were introduced couldn’t really hope to have a meaningful sort of relationship with Bond after what happened to him in Casino Royale, you know? So, in fairness, they did sort of have their hands tied.

RS: I’m sure you had a lot of options after Casino Royale’s release, since it did so well. What made you choose as your next project a film with an element of controversy, namely the Mel Gibson tirade? Were you hesitant at all about working with him?

MC: No, absolutely not. We did talk about it, obviously. Of course we did, but we just very quickly dismissed it. We were actually crossing our fingers that we would get Mel, simply because he was the best actor for the part. What it says in the film’s press notes is absolutely true, that there was no one else ever considered for the part.

RS: Would you say you’re pretty adept at dealing with actors who have demons?

MC: Well, I like to work very closely with actors both during rehearsal and on the set, and I’ve yet to meet an actor who doesn’t have demons. I mean, really, there’s no doubt about that. I think every actor I’ve ever worked with has demons, and if they didn’t they wouldn’t be actors. But I can say that in Mel’s case there was no sign of it on the set. He was very professional, he was always there right on time, and once we would start with the day’s shooting he never even left the set, which I found extraordinary. He would just wait there in his chair until it was time to get on with it. I could honestly put my hand on my heart and say it was one of the best working experiences I’ve ever had. Also, we did rehearse, we did plenty of rehearsal. William Monahan and I worked together with him on the script, and he was just locked into it from day one. He was right there with us.

RS: There’s an interesting shot at the beginning of the film where the camera fixes on Mel from behind, with his rapidly thinning hair sort of on display for us to notice. I take it he’s not one for vanity about his looks these days?

MC: Absolutely not. Not Mel, let me tell you. In fact, he almost wanted that, you know? He had no reservations at all about wanting to be that man, that character. There really is no vanity in Mel, I can tell you that.

RS: It struck me as being kind of self-deprecating. There’s another scene where Mel is captured by the bad guys and taken to an abandoned factory, where he’s strapped down as if he’s going to be tortured – and then he just gets loose and walks away. Was that an inside joke, because Mel loves being tortured in his movies?

MC: [laughs] No! I don’t think that ever, ever came across our minds. It’s very nice of you to offer that up, but I’d have to say no is the answer to that question!

RS: Mel certainly identifies more as a director than as an actor these days. Was he pretty comfortable with taking off his director’s cap this time around, or was he eager to be involved behind the scenes as well?

MC: No, he actually came up to me once we started shooting, after he had accepted the role, and said “Look, I’m just the actor here, nothing more. I’m not directing, I’m not producing, I’m just the actor.” And that was how he remained throughout the whole shoot.

RS: I know from your work that you’re very much into car chases and big practical effects, and now you’ve worked with Mel Gibson -- any talk of taking the reins on a new Lethal Weapon film?

MC: We never talked about that. I’m sure they would try to get Mel in for another Lethal Weapon film, but I actually doubt that they’ll ever really do another one. I think he’s probably gone past that. I suppose you never know, though, right?

RS: Those are definitely my kind of action films, though – the ones that have lots of car chases and gunfire, as opposed to CGI robots punching each other. Today’s superhero films have very little about them that’s visceral.

MC: Oh, I agree with you, and one of the things in The Green Lantern that we’re doing is that when people get hit -- and Green Lantern gets hit in this – it hurts. In most superhero movies, they never are hurt. What you see in those movies is someone getting blasted a hundred yards into a brick wall and then they turn and shake their head and just go right back into the action. None of them ever seem to suffer because of it. That’s something where, I hope with The Green Lantern we’ll be able to make it slightly more real than it’s possibly been in some of the other superhero movies.

RS: When you first signed onto Edge of Darkness, did you feel it incumbent upon you to go through William Monahan’s script and look for places to ramp up the action beats? I imagine it was more intimate, more small-scale before you got involved.

MC: You know, the film gives the impression of a lot of action, but there really isn’t a lot of action. The way I wanted it to be was that half the time the action happens and the other half the action is denied, so that the action happens at the least expected times. Because that’s how it happens with action in real life, a lot of times – suddenly, something will just happen at a moment when you’re not prepared for it. It just sort of shockingly comes out of nowhere. That was sort of the principle that I applied for this. Audiences today have become conditioned to know when a big action scene is coming, you know? They’ll prepare themselves for it, and they’ve gotten used to movies having a certain rhythm to them, so they’ll know when to expect it and when not to, so I just always like to play against that.

RS: Did you find that doing a more intimate piece like this one was in your comfort zone? No franchise pressure to worry about?

MC: You know, I’m actually very happy doing an intimate drama. I love being able to do one every now and then. I still plan things out really carefully, and I have a very tight set. I always know what the day’s work is, and the actors do, and I’ve thought it all out. So it’s usually a pretty disciplined set, really.

RS: Another thing I noticed is that there’s very little humor in this film, even though that’s sort of your signature of late. The Zorro films and the Bond films are all about mixing up the action with a lot of light, throwaway moments. This movie is grim!

MC: [laughs] Well, yeah, when your daughter gets cut in half with a shotgun that doesn’t allow for an awful lot of jokes and humor! And remember that I also shot the series, Edge of Darkness, way back in the 80s, so this was definitely something that I was familiar with, and I was very familiar with the main character. I was very much on board with all of that since I’d been through it before, although we did have to change a lot of things, given that twenty-five years has elapsed between the series and the movie. You know, movies are like anything else, all sorts of different things come across your desk. For example, at the moment I’m of course doing The Green Lantern, and I’ve never done a superhero movie before, and I’ve also never been involved with what I would call a heavily digital film, but this time I am because I’ve never done it before.

It’s the same thing as when I did Vertical Limit – I did that film because I’d never climbed a mountain before, and it was just very interesting for me to actually go out and do that. With Edge of Darkness, I obviously had some familiarity from the series, but more importantly I was just interested in the emotional take on the story. It’s about grief and about loss and about corruption. It’s also about a father finding out that his daughter was involved in all sorts of goings on that he had no clue she was involved in. There were a lot of things in it that I thought made it a thinking man’s thriller, as opposed to something more straight down the line.

RS: My take on the film is that it’s about middle-aged cops and criminals not wanting to be manipulated by their respective systems anymore. They’ve involved themselves in complex skullduggery for a long time, and they’ve started to realize that no one wins in the long run.

MC: Well, there’s a scene in the film where Mel’s character opens the door to his best friend and he already knows that his best friend is there to betray him. I don’t know if you remember this scene, but then they go to the kitchen and the guy just admits that he’s sold out. Then Mel says his thing about life and what you’re expected to do in life and what’s expected of a good cop, and that’s what sums up his character. He’s a character whose moral compass points due north and he never deviates from that. My feeling was always that once his daughter died, he somehow knew right then where he would end up at the end of this thing.


Edge of Darkness opens in theaters everywhere this Friday.

You may not be able to afford the fancy cigars that Chi McBride enjoys, but if you sit close enough to him, you can get a nice contact buzz. His Opus X Fuente smelled so good, second hand smoke side effects be damned. That's how Chi McBride roles at the Fox winter party. The Television Critics Association... more

You may not be able to afford the fancy cigars that Chi McBride enjoys, but if you sit close enough to him, you can get a nice contact buzz. His Opus X Fuente smelled so good, second hand smoke side effects be damned. That's how Chi McBride roles at the Fox winter party.

The Television Critics Association press tour is for the stars to discuss their new shows with reporters, but McBride sequestered himself in a cabana at Pasadena's Villa Sorriso restaurant, chilling with his smokes and champagne.

The new show that features McBride's talents is Human Target. Loosely based on the DC comic book, Mark Valley plays Christopher Chance, a private bodyguard who gets himself into new dangerous situations every week. Grudgingly along for the ride, his partner Winston (McBride). Jackie Earle Haley also stars as Guerrero, the third arm of the trio.

Winston may complain about getting stuck on a fiery plane with Chance, but McBride is having a blast. He gets to play action hero, trading blows with terrorists or running scams to fish out the moles. McBride may best be known to fans from the short-lived Pushing Daisies, or his long run on the popular Boston Public.

Suicide Girls: Did you guys establish a group dynamic right away?

Chi Mcbride: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's very exciting. You know what's really great about the show is that we've managed to do something that people always question you about at the pilot, which is okay, yeah, the pilot's pretty good but are you going to be able to keep it up? Yeah, sure. We've got half the budget and half the time. Of course we're going to be doing better episodes. But you know what? Funny enough, we've managed to do it and I actually like "Rewind" even better than the pilot. I think it really sets a tone for the series. We find that now it's so labor intensive but we've got a good crew. I've been surprised but we've been able to pull it off for a budget that we have to stay within, but like [executive producer] McG says, it's not just the action sequences that make the show. We've got a really good relationship. You can see that between these guys and you can see that we're a team so the excitement kind of continues to build between the action setups.

SG: Will we see more of the routines that Chance and Winston have in their background?

CM: Yeah, we've got a few like that. We've got the Uncle Dan, the Aunt Millie. We've got a lot of different ones that we use for losers or for case strategy and what have you. I really have a good time with these guys. All these guys are real pros and we've all got the same attitude about ourselves and about show business. We come to work so we have a good time but we're there to work. We get a lot done because a lot depends on it. People spent a lot of money.

SG: Were you excited to get into the action with some fight scenes?

CM: Yeah, you know what? I've always wanted to do action but I've just never been in a situation where I've had the opportunity to do the action, which is a business where people only let you do what they think you can do. When this came along and the guys wanted to talk about doing it, that's one of the things that I said, that I wanted to be more involved physically, that I wanted Winston to have an attitude that I don't really want to do this, because he was ex-law enforcement. So just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. So that's the attitude that he has and I think that's going to be a good thing for the character.

SG: Obviously there will be a lot of action packed episodes. Will there be some that are more intellectual or humorous without such a big set piece?

CM: Yeah, but we're a very specific show and that's part of our M.O. to have a good set piece and all that. I think that you'll see that more often than not but there are some very cerebral things that'll be going on in terms of especially character development, seeing where these guys came from, what makes them tick, what experiences in their past led them down a road that inexorably led to us finding each other is going to be some of the things that are going to be mined continually.

SG: Is it a tough show to do at this scale?

CM: It's just a pleasure to come to work with people who don't take themselves seriously but take their job seriously and are ready to work and contribute to the story and to the shooting to make the day go faster and make the day go smoother. It's great to work with these guys.

SG: Is Mark Valley the strong, silent type?

CM: He's a good dude, man. Mark is a guy who does 95% of the heavy lifting on the show and he doesn't complain. He's always got something that's swollen or hurt or bruised. He just does his job. He's a good guy, man. He's a real professional. I would like for a lot of young actors to work with a guy like Mark so they can really show you how it's done in this business. Like I say, he leads by example. There's no room for any of us, for anybody to act like a prima donna because our star's not one. We're all not prima donnas to begin with but he's doing all the heavy lifting. You really have to think twice before you complain about long hours or whatever with this guy really putting forth all this effort to get in shape, stay in shape, do all these stunts and the acting, learn the different languages. It's a lot, man. He's got a lot on his plate and I really appreciate him for it.

SG: Who were your action heroes growing up?

CM: Willis. I was already grown up but that's what's missing from the landscape of entertainment. Where's Willis? Where's Schwarzenegger? Where's Stallone? Where's Van Damme? We don't have those guys out there anymore.

SG: Some of them are back.

CM: Yeah, but you know what I mean? The next generation of that. You just don't see that in the movies anymore.

SG: We were supposed to with Vin Diesel.

CM: You know, Diesel was really on his way and then whatever turns his career took were whatever they took but that's what I think is needed and I think that what's great about Willis, and I've done a couple of things with him, he's another guy that's like that. He just does his job and he's got a lot on his plate. He does all the heavy lifting and it's his name above the title and the marquee and he leads by example. Willis is a really good dude too.

SG: The new thing was regular guys who don't look like heroes. Did that work?

CM: I just don't know. I just know that I miss those real popcorn movies, those movies that you really look forward to. You can't tell me that you can find people that weren't really waiting on the edge of their seat for the second Die Hard. We were waiting for that. When Schwarzenegger did Terminator, you were waiting for the follow-up to that. The movies that Stallone did, Cliffhanger and Cobra, those movies like Demolition Man, all those movies. That's what's missing, man, those movies where you were happy to plunk down your how many ever bucks and go and take the ride. That's what we're doing on TV now.

SG: We were waiting for the new Bourne movies.

CM: Yeah, that's about the only thing. I think that Matt Damon is a wildly talented actor who I think is really underrated and I think he's, to be honest, the best actor of his generation. He doesn't get the accolades and credit for it but he's a hell of an actor. That Bourne series is great.

SG: He has an Oscar for writing.

CM: Well yeah, but you don't hear much about how great an actor he is. You look at Syriana, you look at Oceans Eleven and you look at the Bourne series, this guy is very talented and he can really act.

SG: Were you a big comic book fan?

CM: Yeah, I was a big Marvel and DC guy. I liked to read Batman and I was into Spider-Man and I was into Superman and The Hulk. I liked the crossovers every now and then that they would have. I just enjoyed comics. I really was a big Jack Kirby freak because when I wanted to learn how to draw, that's what I used, the comics. Everybody wanted to draw like Jack Kirby. That was a big part of my growing up.

SG: What do you think of the news of a Spidey reboot?

CM: I wonder if Cameron's going to do it because he wanted to do it at first. He wanted to do it a long time ago. He'd kill it. It wouldn't be like that third one, ugh. Ooh.

SG: I actually like Spider-Man 3 if you want to get into it.

CM: You did?

SG: To me it's about what happens when you get successful and you neglect your relationships.

CM: But that whole scene of him walking down the street like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

SG: I loved that evil Peter Parker is still just a big dork.

CM: Okay, well maybe if you're looking into it and analyzing it that deeply, then yeah, okay, I'll buy a ticket. I really love Thomas Haden Church though. I really liked the whole Sandman thing. That I dug, and the second one I really liked a lot too. All that Green Goblin stuff, man, flying skate or flying surfboard and all that stuff was pretty awesome.

SG: Did comic book die hards give you shit for reading both Marvel and DC?

CM: No, when I was growing up they were just happy you were buying comics. Comic book store is not exactly, at least when I was growing up, it wasn't the road to financial independence. So I'm sure that the guys in my neighborhoods were just happy to see you come in.

SG: You've been honest about the fate of Pushing Daisies, saying it wasn't as beloved as the press say, or it would still be on the air. How gratifying is it that the fan base is so passionate and looking forward to a comic book.

CM: Well, you know what? We had a very loyal base of fans. We had people that really dug the show so I'm happy for them and I'm happy in a way for me as well because I loved playing Emerson. What was great about Emerson is that it was so well written. Whenever a thought would pop in my head, I could pretty much say whatever I wanted and Bryan [Fuller] and I were so on the same page. Bryan and I and Peter Ocko and I were really on the same page about who the character was. So it made it a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed working with the writers. I especially enjoyed working with Kristin [Chenoweth]. So it's good that it's going to live on in some form.

Human Target premiered Sunday, Jan. 17 on FOX and then airs Wednesday nights this spring, at 9PM on Jan 20 and at 8PM from the 27th on.

Berkeley Breathed is one of the most unique cartoonists of recent decades. Bloom County is one of the comic strips that helped to make newspapers interesting again and helped define and popularize topical political humor throughout the 1980’s and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Breathed also started... more

Berkeley Breathed is one of the most unique cartoonists of recent decades. Bloom County is one of the comic strips that helped to make newspapers interesting again and helped define and popularize topical political humor throughout the 1980’s and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Breathed also started a new trend, ending his strip on his own terms in 1989. Since then he’s made two Sunday strips for newspapers, Outland which ran from 1989-1995 and Opus which ran from 2003-2008.

Breathed has also written and illustrated a number of picture books for kids of all ages including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was made into an animated special, Goodnight Opus and Mars Needs Moms which is currently being made into a movie. Breathed has been trying to get an Opus movie made at multiple companies over he years but to no avail.

This year is a banner year for Breathed and his fans. Bloom County is being reprinted in a series of gorgeous hardcover editions from IDW Press, the first volume of which is out now with the second scheduled for release in April. Besides two years of strips, the book also contains annotations, early comics from when Breathed was a student at the University of Texas and other extra material including many strips that have never been reprinted before.

Breathed’s first novel Flawed Dogs, which is ostensibly for young adults, is out now as well. The book which manages to balance the dark and disturbing with the outlandish and hilarious is a love story between a dog and a human. Breathed was kind enough to take time to talk about his past, present and future projects, animal rights and the “bullshit expectations of fraudulent beauty.”


ALEX DUEBEN: As a fan of your work who wasn’t reading Bloom County at the beginning, I was amazed to see how very different the early strips are from what it became, but at the same time the sensibility is there. You may not have known the subject or found the characters and their voice but it is undeniably you. The grandfather pretending to be Alexander Haig and so many little gags are what we would come to think of as Bloom County. When you read through the strips, do you see yourself in them or do they feel like the work of someone else?

BERKELEY BREATHED: I don’t remember drawing a single one – they were all done in a fog of sleeplessness and deadline panic in the wee hours of the morning. So yes, absolutely, it is an experience in creative dissonance when I read these things. I can’t imagine that I had anything to do with them. People I trust assure me that I did.

AD: Given that you don’t remember creating them, I have to ask, when you read them now, do you enjoy them? Do you think they hold up?

BB: An impossible question to ask an artist or writer-- whether they enjoy their own creations. I'd love to know if Spielberg could ever enjoy one of his movies once enough time is past. I certainly don't read my own work. But I DO enjoy reading it to my or other kids... and seeing them respond.

Does Bloom County hold up? Oh, much of it no. Far too timely to the times it was created. But I was surprised to find myself laughing at strips I hadn't seen for 25 years and reading as new again... usually not the ones mentioning Michael Dukakis or Ronald Reagan. Which goes to answer the first part of your question I suppose.

AD: You wrote in one of the annotations that editors had no idea what to do with all the pop culture references you used in the strip. Was it really that jarring and confusing?

BB: It was because it had simply never been done before. Hard to imagine now, I know, as awash as we are in the vomitious wave of pop culture snark that is the web.

But this was 1982. A daring comic was still Garfield eating lasagna.

AD: I wanted to ask about that time because you, Gary Larson and Bill Watterson are often mentioned together as voices who emerged on the comics page and then left the comics page on your own terms. Did the three of you know each other or ever have a drink together?

BB: Ha! Comic artists are renowned for being loners. I ran into Gary occasionally because we lived in the same town… but we had NOTHING in common. Or Bill. Watterson and I shared a large number of letters with very caustic drawings at the bottom of each, as we struggled with copyright battles with our syndicates… but we would have had little to talk about over a beer. I tried going to one session of the National Cartoonist’s Society. Perfectly ridiculous affair. I can talk film with people. I simply could not muster up any cartoon small talk.

AD: The first Bloom County book is out now. The others are in production. Are there any plans to reprint Outland and Opus once the Bloom County collections come to an end?

BB: Oh, the publishers of the new collection would love that you asked that question. We’ll see.

AD: I know that I’m not the only reader who wants to know. Have we seen the last of Opus?

BB: Lives on only in our hearts, I’m afraid. I like closure in all my stories. He has one.

AD: Broken hearted. I’m now going to switch gears. Your work in more recent years, the picture books and now your novel Flawed Dogs, has been aimed at younger readers, or an all-ages audience. What made you shift and what do you enjoy about writing for this audience?

BB: I'm not a natural cartoonist. At all. But I am passionate about a good original story.  A picture book is a very efficient way to tell a very basic, visual story. That pretty much defines the audience as children: the medium is the demographic. I found myself writing stories for the young.   

Which is not bad: kids understand and respond to story in ways adults do not. I had the best moment with my 6 year old boy yet when we both wept like idiots when Marley died in that ridiculous dog movie. And the filmmakers really hadn't given us reason to even love the damn dog. But it was the first time my son reacted to a fictional character and his disbelief was wholly lifted -- the holy grail for any writer. I want to deliver that. Who knows why. But it's why I write stories now and not cartoons.

AD: I’ve read that Flawed Dogs started when you read about Michael Vick. What was it that compelled you to come up with this story and how did it end up as a prose novel?

BB: It was a photo in the New York Times of one of his brutalized dogs experiencing its first love from a human in a Utah dog shelter. He sat in the snow, folding his head, eyes closed, below the warmth of the woman’s chin. He had turned back into a dog while he had every reason to have been only a monster. That was my story. Too long and too brutal for a child’s picture book. So time to find out if I could write a short novel.

AD: The book sounds madcap and it is, but it’s also very brutal. Was it hard deciding what to include, what to describe and just how far you could go?

BB: Not hard. I’ve been doing it by instinct as a cartoonist for years. But I did have to be careful to walk a very fine line. I “pan away” at the moments that are simply too much. But I think I leave enough idea of the horror to linger in the mind of the reader. And yes, it is funny on purpose—the humor leavens the horror… and balances it into a digestible whole. At least I hope so.

AD: There are two really amazing images, both as written and drawn that I think really define the book. One is Sam the Lion and Heidy dancing, which however I describe it, won’t do it justice. Where did this idea come from?

BB: From whence does the stuff from my id come? You're asking the wrong guy.  I will admit that it suddenly occurs to me -- years later-- that I must have been referencing images and books from my past when I look at one of my illustrations. An image will pop into my mind in illustrating a moment in a story... and its all I can do to try to use my very limited drawing skills to make it appear remotely close to what's in my head. To see it actually approach the initial mental image is about as close to the exuberance of good sex as I can get without the actual sex. Puts masturbation to shame.

AD: The other great image is the dogs in the pound. Where did you come up with the idea for them to watch Lassie Come Home[/I[?

BB: Wouldn’t that have been the favorite film of any unwanted, dog shelter wretch? We project our own dreams and hopes onto the characters in a film. They would want to be Lassie—beautiful, ageless and forever desired.

AD: I couldn’t help but think about how few good pet stories there are. Usually animals just end up anthropomorphized. Other than Lassie and Flawed Dogs, do you have any favorites?

BB: I wanted to tell a love story between a human and a dog… but from the dog’s perspective. And to keep it real, I couldn’t have the dogs behaving like people… which is what happens in most dog movies of course. When we set this up as a film, I will be all over everyone that we keep these dogs, dogs. We may hear them speak, but their hopes and dreams stray no further than those of my pit bull sitting below my legs as I type this: to be loved by us.

AD: There’s a great line describing the people looking to adopt dogs as “just as varied and imperfect and splendidly flawed as the dogs were.” You placed the dog shows on the same spectrum of abuse and neglect that we exhibit towards animals. Was this one of your targets from the beginning?

BB: I could have written the same story about f*cking beauty pageants. Whether dogs or women, we have applied a bizarre set of physical expectations on the things we want. This is both cruel to those that don’t measure up… and corrosive to our culture. How fitting that I’m talking to Suicide Girls regarding bullshit expectations of fraudulent beauty. I feel right at home with your beautifully diverse comeliness.

AD: How did you first become interested in and involved with animal rights and animal adoption?

BB: Married into it, I’m afraid. I did quickly have a Come To Jesus moment when I received a postcard mailer from the Doris Day Animal Fund… featuring a photo of a beagle puppy laying in the back of a metal cage in a research lab, a perfectly square patch of skin raw and bleeding from where they’d burned it to test new ointments or bandages or god knows what. I’d never felt ashamed as a human before. We’d betrayed the one animal who goes to bed at night and probably only dreams of us. I’m still angry. Listen, you asked.

AD: Patrick McDonnell who does the strip Mutts put out a book the other year, Shelter Stories, which was done with the Humane Society. Is there any chance of a Bloom County/Mutts team-up for animal adoption?

BB: Who knows? He’s still on the page, though. I’ve moved my efforts to the movie screen, hopefully. I like sliding my messages under the door when nobody is looking.

AD: Fair enough. I know you’re focusing on film right now. Mars Needs Moms is coming out next year. Could you tell us a little about that and what else you’re working on?

BB: Working to get Flawed Dogs onto the screen—always a challenge. Disney is bringing Mars Needs Moms out in about 19 months. And I’m writing the next project, which I look forward to talking about in about one year!

Until then, may I say SuicideGirls Rule.

Available now, Flawed Dogs

Go here for more Berkeley Breathed information.

Like them or not, you can't deny that Editors have achieved a rare combination of critical and commercial success. Their debut album, The Back Room, went platinum and earned the band a 2006 Mercury Prize nomination. They followed that with 2007's An End Has a Start, which hit #1 in the UK and... more

Like them or not, you can't deny that Editors have achieved a rare combination of critical and commercial success. Their debut album, The Back Room, went platinum and earned the band a 2006 Mercury Prize nomination. They followed that with 2007's An End Has a Start, which hit #1 in the UK and landed Editors on the US charts for the first time.

Now Editors are back with In This Light and On This Evening, a strong third record that might just help them conquer America. They've changed things up quite a bit, dropping their trademark guitar sound and putting synths front and center. Editors also brought on legendary producer Mark "Flood" Ellis‚ (known for his work with Depeche Mode, U2 and many other huge acts) and the result is something very different, yet still immediately recognizable as an Editors album.

Bassist Russell Leetch talked to SuicideGirls about the new record.

Russell Leetch: Hello, Jay, how are you?

Jay Hathaway: I'm good. I wish they'd put your album on the hold music, instead of whatever I was just listening to.

RL: Was it shit? There's a lot of shit at Sony, they've got some terrible acts.

JH: [laughs]

RL: I can't vouch for all acts on the label. [laughs]

JH: Before I ask you any serious questions ... I was just reading your Wikipedia page. Are you still growing a beard? What's the deal with that?

RL: [laughs] You know, the problem with Wikipedia is that your friends can edit it, and they can put stupid shit in place of what's supposed to be there. It becomes very miscellaneous. I can't actually grow a beard. Maybe on my 30th birthday I'll have a beard. I don't know.

JH: Cool, cool. So, you're living in New York now, right?

RL: Yeah.

JH: I've heard a lot about how the new album was influenced by London. Did New York have an influence on it as well?

RL: I went out to more smaller shows, and got back into watching bands and being excited about music again. For a while, because we've been a band for quite some time, and we've played so much, I just got a little bit tired of certain things. Being there, I felt quite refreshed. I guess it did rub off on us in some ways.

JH: Is your outlook on the future as dark as this album might suggest?

RL: I don't know what it suggests, really. All kinds of things come through. At the end of Bricks and Mortar, there's a nice sentiment of "I hope life's good with you." I think if you go into a city at nighttime, any city, you're bound to see a lot of the things that are touched upon. It can be such a hedonistic, good experience, but then you can come out of a bar and witness some really horrible violence. It kind of feels threatening, but also good at the same time. It's the same everywhere.

JH: There are a lot of references in your lyrics to guns and God. What's the story behind that?

RL: All of us are atheists, we just don't think there's anything really there ... how could there be so many problems? The modern world relies a lot on people going on about religions to justify wars. How does that work? I think that's troubling to a lot of people in our generation.

JH: So, you all had to sing on this album ...

RL: Yeah, on the backing vocals. Flood [Producer Mark "Flood" Ellis] made us! He was like, "So, Tom does all the backing vocals?" and we were like, "Well, yeah, 'cause he can sing the best." He said, "Well, you all sing in tune, and it'll sound like someone else's voice. That's what you want for the backing vocals." When we started singing, we'd be laughing and going "We are really bad at this!" But the Boxer vocals are from all four of us, and they sound quite nice and eerie. It was opening us up to the fact that being a bit shit can be to your advantage.

JH: It's not going to sound like everything else, at least.

RL: There was a lot of freedom with that kind of thing on the record. It's quite a different Editors record from the first two. I really like the sonics of it. I think it's got a really nice, warm tone. It's quite an inviting record, I think.

JH: And then the really big change was that you used so many more synths. It seems like the dance music side of Editors came out a lot more obviously on this record ...

RL: I think that's exactly right. Everyone's going "Oh my God, you just suddenly got synthesizers." Well, no. They're on both of the previous records, but they're as backgrounds, rather than at the forefront. Having a riff on a keyboard is quite different from having it on a guitar, but it was just more fun writing on the synthesizers. We've always loved 808s and 909s and drum machines generally. We're much bigger fans of New Order than of Joy Division, by a long way.

JH: That says a lot right there. So, you end up getting remixed a lot more, too, since you're going in that direction ...

RL: Yeah, remixes can be really good. The Tiesto one for us has been pretty big across Europe. It's been a big dance hit. It's kind of cool that your band can get integrated into the dance world and people might discover you that way. I quite like that.

JH: Have you heard your songs in a club yet?

RL: Yeah! We were in club in Paris (this was a couple of years ago) the Sebastian remix that happened for us got played. I just thought that the production on it was absolutely immense. He did a really good job.

JH: Do you miss playing bass, though?

RL: Not at all. It's nice to roam about and play different instruments and stuff. I grew up playing the piano, so that's my main instrument. I just play bass in the band, really. That's kind of fun, just being more varied.

JH: So you guys already had the musical expertise to play all the synth parts for the album?

RL: We knew what oscillators and waveforms were, so we kind of understand what synthesis is. And we like a certain type of synth. We like something with a bit of grit. Something with a bit of power. There's a lot of modern synth music which can be a little bit wet. We wanted it all to be kind of played on, like analog synths. Still to be a band. Kind of how people saw it in the '70s, when these things were invented and people started making bands out of them, especially the Krautrock influence. Something like Neu! That's a big part of this record for us.

JH: Are you planning on directing any more videos?

RL: Oh! I didn't direct that Bones video. I compiled a load of footage that was off a video camera, that's the best explanation for it. I wouldn't class that as directing, it wasn't good enough.

JH: Well, are you going to have another go at doing some video stuff? Did you enjoy doing that?

RL: I didn't really enjoy it, no. We just got asked to make a video diary of what we were seeing each day. Sometimes it's a little bit tiresome. Like, today, all we're doing is playing cards. It's like, "That could be a music video for 4 minutes, but it'd be a bit rubbish. Find something a little bit more inventive." We've got Arni & Kinski, who did the video for Smokers, doing our new video for You Don't Know Love, which I'm really excited about seeing. Some videos, I really love, and others I really don't like. For example, the Papillon video, I'm not a fan of it. Some of our fans are, some aren't. But when someone does a video, we pass it over to the director and they can have their artistic license.

JH: Did the other guys in the band like it?

RL: [laughs] Uh, the majority didn't, actually, for that one.

JH: Interesting ...

RL: Well, it became too late in the day for us to get a video that we would all like. It got to the release date without a video, so some favors had to be pulled in. Things like that happen. People liked it. That's cool. It's just funny how sometimes people take it that it's us, that we've decided the video. We try to have as much control over it, but sometimes it's just not our idea.

JH: What was it like working with Flood?

RL: It was fun. It was really good. I think everyone would have an idea or a preconception of what he's going to be like. He's a very ordinary, nice guy, who speaks a very straight-talking, non-highbrow kind of talk. He's made some amazing records, from Nick Cave to Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, U2. You'd imagine that someone that's got a big repertoire to be a bit of an arsehole, but he just wasn't. He joined Editors very well, and we're looking forward to working with him again pretty soon.

JH: Since a lot of people know Flood for his work with U2 ... how do you guys feel about U2?

RL: I guess some of us like them and others don't. They've never been one of my favorite bands. I'd leave that to R.E.M. or Radiohead or Spiritualized. I've never been into getting all of their albums and listening through. I'd go and watch the 360 Tour, it'd be a fun night out. As a band, I don't know ... they're just there, aren't they? They've been around a long time.

JH: Do you guys ever want to be the biggest band in the world? Like U2, but cooler, or something?

RL: I think if you want to be absolutely massive, you definitely lose cool. I don't think you can be like ... I don't know who's done that well. Maybe R.E.M. a few years ago? They were still pretty cool when they were huge. It's hard to do. We're not cool enough in some people's books anyway.

JH: What's the biggest rock star moment you guys have had? Ever smashed any hotel rooms?

RL: No, I think it's stupid when people trash hotel rooms. There's cleaners who have to clean, and yeah, you can pay some money, but that's pretty scummy, I think. If you're going to be extravagant, I think it's best to go to really nice restaurants and blow some money on some really nice wine and food. Do it that way, rather than being a dickhead. If anything, we'll go and spend a large amount of money on some fine dining.

JH: What was living in Birmingham like?

RL: I think the equivalent in the US is Pittsburgh. There's not that much there. It's a post-industrial city. It's a bit a grey. There's not a lot going on. It doesn't invite people to go and visit it, that's for sure.

JH: That's fair. It's sort of a post-industrial album, in a way ...

RL: I think we've definitely always had that vibe, and I guess that stems from where we're from. The big grey canvas of concrete definitely rings true. We definitely weren't brought up in the country, that's for sure.

JH: What were you guys like in school?

RL: We were all good, I think. We were just regular kind of guys. Not too mischievous, but not like the brightest bunch. [laughs] Got on with people. Grade C students. Maybe Bs, actually. Good Bs.

JH: Since this is for SuicideGirls, I feel like I should ask: does anyone in Editors have tattoos?

RL: Yeah, Chris does. Chris has got three roses on his arm.

In This Light and On This Evening is out on iTunes now, and in stores January 2010.

There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their... more

There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their current tour gave the lie to that. Even with several members of the band having passed sixty years old and the rest closing in quick, DEVO rocks like no other band on Planet Earth.

It’s easy to forget today just what a revelation DEVO’s first album was when it came out. For a lot of people in those days, seeing the band on Saturday Night Live on October 14th 1978 (Fred Willard was the host!) was akin to the previous generation seeing The Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. DEVO’s appearance probably launched a thousand bands that night. It literally gave me a reason to live. The soul-less imitation of “rock and roll” we were force fed in the Ohio suburbs in those days was pretty much Muzak with a beat. Then along came DEVO and nothing was ever the same again.

In 1980 they even cracked the mainstream with their top ten hit Whip It. But just a few short years later their career took several wrong turns, including co-writing a song with would-be Reagan-assassin John Hinkley Jr. and signing with a label they likened to the Titanic the way every band on it sank without a trace.

In 1995, though, a funny thing happened. Girl U Want, an obscure album track from the same LP that had produced Whip It was featured in the movie Tank Girl and all of a sudden the kids wanted to know about DEVO. The band once again donned their trademark yellow industrial waste clean-up suits (originally purchased at the MF Murdock Janitorial Supply Company in Akron, Ohio) and showed them what de-evolution was all about. For the past 14 years DEVO have been playing shows consisting mainly of their earliest material.

But now something new is on the horizon. Their first and third albums are at long last available in re-mastered versions and DEVO is on the road promoting these with a series of two-night stands across America playing the first LP in its entirety on the first night and the third LP the following evening. But what’s even more exciting DEVO is recording their first album of new material since 1990’s Smooth Noodle Maps. The results are set to come out some time next year with an even more extensive tour.

I spoke to DEVO’s front man and fellow Akron-ite Mark Mothersbaugh about all this stuff and about getting spit on by John Lennon.

Brad Warner: I’m about ten years younger than you and I grew up near Akron in Wadsworth, Ohio…

Mark Mothersbaugh: Oh! Where are you now?

BW: Right now I’m in St. Paul. But I live in Santa Monica.

MM: You made it out at least!

BW: Seeing you guys on Saturday Night Live in 1978 was a big deal for me. I’d already started playing guitar at the time. But I thought rock music was over. I thought I was working in a dead art form. And DEVO was something that was cool again. It really meant a lot to me.

MM: Well thank you.

BW: So I’m pretty excited that you guys are doing a tour and you’re reissuing the first album and Freedom of Choice. Is that right?

MM: Affirmative. They’ll probably reissue more of the catalogue. Those are just two that are linked up with some shows we’re gonna do.

BW: That’s cool. That first album I actually wore out. It got to where the record sounded like shit because I’d played it so many times. So what’s different about this new version? Is it re-mastered?

MM: Now that it’s almost absurd to put out records, they have some little extras that come with it. I think even the regular one’s gonna be yellow vinyl and red vinyl. They’re very high quality vinyl compared to what they used to make records out of in the old days. So they’re definitely collector’s discs. And the packages are enhanced. On some of them you can get different versions of it, DVD footage and stuff like that. (NOTE: The CD reissue of the first album contains a bonus live recording of the entire album played at London’s HMV Forum in May, 2009. The CD reissue of Freedom of Choice adds the contents of the DEVO-Live EP originally released in 1980 shortly after the LP. You can also order an Ultra Devo-luxe edition from their website that contains both re-mastered CDs, plus 2 bonus DVDs and a colored vinyl single.)

BW: Sounds great. So why are you doing this now?

MM: I think for DEVO we’ve decided that we’re shocked that no one came along to take our place. So we have to go back out there and start talking about de-evolution again and remind people what’s really wrong on planet Earth. So early next year there will be new music coming out. But for the uninitiated and those who were somewhere else when it happened we’re putting out some of the essential listening material to help bring them up to speed. And we’re doing shows to accompany the releases in a number of cities around the US. We’re literally doing album one on the first night starting on side one track one of the vinyl. Almost like you’re hearing live vinyl. We’ll play through the first side of the album and we’ll flip over and play the second side of the album.

BW: Cool!

MM: And the next night we do the same thing with Freedom of Choice. If you would’ve asked me a year ago if that sounds like I good idea I would’ve said that doesn’t sound like a great live show. What changed my mind was last May we played All Tomorrow’s Parties in London at the Forum and we did album one. I just thought, we never put them in this order and that vinyl was supposed to be act one and act two of a listening experience. It doesn’t have the same build as a live show. It’s something different.

BW: Right.

MM: I thought this is gonna have weird energy to it. But it was really great! It’s not a new concept. All Tomorrow’s Parties started a long time ago. And a lot of people are doing their albums live.

BW: Yeah, I saw Brian Wilson do Pet Sounds live.

MM: There’s a lot of people doing that. Now I finally understand it. I had never thought about it. But once I heard us do it I could think of a couple dozen bands I’d love to hear do their first album live. It made me think of when DEVO played Inland Invasion a few years ago. And Billy Idol came out and he played "White Wedding" and "Rebel Yell" and everybody was going crazy. Then he said, “Now here’s my new album!” And everybody’s kinda like… the wind went out of the sails. And the audience was kind of polite. Then after about 40 minutes of that he played "Dancing With Myself" and everybody went crazy again.

BW: That’s gotta be a weird experience, though. Cuz for you or for him it’s like this is what you did 20 years ago and it must not seem that relevant. But if the audience is into it…

MM: Yeah. But there are some things about doing that that are interesting. We play every year, though. The last 13 years we’ve done festivals, a lot of European and Asian shows, Australian shows, and a lot in the US. We played Lalapalooza a few times back like ten years ago. We’d do like three weeks a year, four weeks a year at the most and then that was it.

BW: And this time you’re putting it back together.

MM: Yeah. But there is an element where you’re going, I remember the first time we put on these yellow suits. I proudly felt like I was a McDonald’s cheeseburger in that yellow plastic box. And now 30 or 35 years later, I still feel like a McDonald’s cheeseburger. But now maybe it’s like a double patty cheeseburger!

BW: I was gonna ask you about that. Cuz it kind of surprised me. I was living in Japan in 1996 and I read about you guys putting on the yellow suits again and that was the last thing I ever expected to see DEVO do. But on the other hand it sort of made sense. Cuz you guys were never anti-commercial as such. You were trying to do it your own way.

MM: In defense of that, there aren’t any other bands that come to mind that all wear plastic yellow suits unless they’re DEVO tribute bands.

BW: That’s true!

MM: Everybody wears blue jeans. That’s the uniform of the last 50 years. People wear it and they don’t even know they’re wearing a uniform, but they are. That is the uniform. I think our yellow suits, when people call ‘em a uniform it makes me smile. Because at least ours was creative. We created it ourselves as opposed to just buying into Levi’s ads. DEVO wasn’t really about being sexy. We weren’t really anti-style. But style meant something totally different to us.

BW: Sure. That’s pretty evident.

MM: We wanted to look like a machine. We wanted to look like a team. At the time it was like Kenny Rogers…

BW: I remember! God, that was awful. Talk about denim uniforms!

MM: Or it was like Elton John and his band, or Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. We wanted to look like parts of a machine on stage. We were more influenced by Agit Prop from Germany and Europe in the late 20s and 30s and Bauhaus, geometric shapes and the Italian Futurists and the Russian Suprematists. We were interested in pure art. And the yellow suits always felt to us like we were art. We thought we were in some ways much less commercial than anybody else because of that.

BW: Yeah. It’s funny that it became commercial. That’s interesting to me. You did "Whip It" and all of a sudden everybody was into it. But there was always that problem of did the mass audience really get it. Or did it even matter if they got it? There was that whole thing about "Whip It" being taken as sexual innuendo and all that.

MM: It’s only fitting that that would be the song that was most remembered in the United States and had the most airwave success. But that’s OK. People by nature don’t come to art or music to get educated or to get vitamins. They’re there cuz they’re trying to escape from the world. But DEVO managed to sneak in some vitamin-enriched information as a side feature and that was kinda good. Some people probably never got it and never would get it. But there were always those kids out there who wanted to know what it means. You might’ve been a fan of some band like that when you were a kid. Where you look at the album cover for every bit of information you can get. You’re looking for every clue. The posturing in the photographs, the type that’s picked for the title of the band and the album. All that stuff is really important to you at a certain age. It was to us too. We designed our own album covers and designed our own merchandise and costumes and stage shows. We totally understood the importance of all the areas of the aesthetic. It wasn’t just about sonic music or just trying to get on the radio. It was a lot bigger.

BW: The most brilliant piece of DEVO merchandise I saw at that shop Wacko in Los Feliz, the DEVO doll with the interchangeable heads.

MM: The company that did those, I wasn’t really into the style that they were doing the artwork in. I had plenty of arguments about it. But the big blow was that they weren’t doing a set of five. Because that’s what DEVO is. It’s a set of five guys. We went around in circles. And finally I said, we’re allowed to have accessories, right? They said, yeah. So I said I want it to have five heads so pole can change the heads on the dolls. A true DEVO fan would take the hit and buy five of them.

BW: Talking about other bands, I’m sure you must know Polysics from Japan.

MM: Yeah. We played with the last time we were over there.

BW: What do you think of them? They’re so DEVO.

MM: They are! And they do some of our stuff better than we do it. It kind of freaks me out. And their fans love it. I don’t know what their fans think of DEVO. They’re so into Polysics maybe they don’t even know. And they’re a great band live.

BW: Oh yeah. I like them a lot. One other thing I wanted to ask you about because I’m from Akron. You guys did a show at the Akron Civic Theater last November in support of the Obama campaign. How was that to go back there? I know Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders was there and The Black Keys played too.

MM: That was appropriately unpleasant and also had a lot of pleasant moments too. Of course there were members of my family who were really upset that DEVO was supporting Obama, which I could not believe. I said, you guys are in the most most depressed butt fucked part of the country. Why would you be against getting rid of blood-suckers? They could not see it.

BW: I know. I never understood how Ohio people could support the very forces that were oppressing them.

MM: But it works. On the other hand we played at a place we hadn’t played in, in 30 years. It was almost 30 years to the day of the last time we played at the Akron Civic Thetare. And we wrote a lot of our early songs in less than a mile radius from that building. So it was kind of interesting to be back there. And Chrissy, who was kind of freaky on the phone before then, when we got to the show she was a total pro. It was really pleasant to work with her. And The Black Keys, I’ve always liked them. It was my wife’s idea. She said why don’t we do something for Obama. She was worried because Ohio was a swing state in the last two votes before that and had gone Republican at the last minute. So we went back there to say, come on exert your freedom of choice. And I think that that’s what won Obama the campaign, the DEVO concert.

BW: It probably was.

MM: Well if you want to be honest about it, probably not. But it was kinda nice to play there. The energy was really good. Everybody was really great. Akron-ites were excited that we were playing there again.

BW: Yeah, you were rejected there at the time and then you come back and everybody thinks it’s great.

MM: That’s fairly common. Bands have to leave their hometowns to get discovered. Especially if you’re doing original material. There was no appreciation at all for that back in the Seventies. We would lie and say we were a Top Forty band so we could get a gig. We’d be up there going, “Here’s another song by Aerosmith. It’s called… Jocko Homo!” At that point there’d be some out of work factory guy who was bummed out anyway, some Vietnam vet who came back and the factories are all closed he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life. He’d slam his beer down and go, “That’s it! You callin’ me a monkey you mother fucker?” We’d once again get paid to quit, beat up, chased out or a combination of the three.

BW: That’s amazing. Cuz I’m friends with a guy I think you know, Rod Firestone from the Rubber City Rebels.

MM: Oh yeah! God, that’s a name from the past! We spent a lot of time with Rod during the formative years. He was instrumental in DEVO having a home base in Akron cuz he had a club that he opened and he allowed DEVO to play there. Then, of course, we ended up bringing Pere Ubu down there too. That was like the cultural island in an otherwise really dark, culture-less factory town.

BW: He always likes telling stories about The Crypt (a bar that originally catered to workers at the nearby Goodyear factory which Rod Firestone and his band-mate Buzz Clic transformed into Akron’s first punk rock club).

MM: It was a cool club. I was the soundman for a while for his band.

BW: Yeah, he told me you were the soundman for the Rubber City Rebels! They still play a few times a year. I met them when they did a tour of Japan. I was reading about you in David Giffels’ book about DEVO. Do you like that book, or is that a touchy subject?

MM: We weren’t part of it. We weren’t interviewed for it. It’s got a lot of misinformation in it. My feeling about that is, whatever. There was this one guy who was tangentially connected to us for a while who got involved. And it’s definitely the story of DEVO from the point of view of this guy who didn’t get to be part of the band.

BW: The story I wanted to ask you about from that book isn’t one of those stories. It’s in there about John Lennon coming up to you…

MM: That’s true.

BW: I wanted to hear that story.

MM: When we started going to New York we turned into a phenomenon. Which was pretty cool. Every time we whether it was CBGBs or Max’s Kansas City after the first show that we played it was a mob scene. It was always packed. In New York at the time it was customary for people that were celebrities to be able to call Max’s or CBGB’s or the other clubs and say, this is Mick Jagger and I’d like to bring Charlie Watts and Keith Richards to the DEVO show tonight and Bianca my wife and a couple friends. And they’d go, OK and put them on the guest list. But then they’d charge that against DEVO’s part of the take.

BW: (laughs) That’s awful!

MM: So every night we played in New York we’d have people like Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, all the filmmakers, all the actresses, all the people in bands. There’d be Frank Zappa’s band or whoever was in town. Brian Eno, Robert Fripp. They all showed up on our guest list. But that just meant we’d have to beg for gas money to drive back in our Econoline that held all the equipment and held the band. We didn’t have any place to stay. We’d have to crash inside the van.

BW: That’s like a twelve-hour drive back to Akron from New York. I’ve done that.

MM: Something like that. I don’t remember how long it was back to Akron. But I remember one night we were sitting outside of Max’s and we’d just played a set. I was waiting for everybody to leave so I could go in and finish unloading our equipment and drive back to Akron. I was in the passenger seat. And I looked around and it’s John Lennon and Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople. They’re really drunk and they come out and John Lennon stuck his head in the car. And he got up about six inches from my face and started singing “Uncontrollable Urge” really loud. He obviously understood that the “yeah yeah yeah” part was a permutation of what he’d done. And the opening of the song, I don’t know if you ever paid attention, but it goes like dah-dah-duh-DAH, dah-dah-duh-DAH.

BW: Oh yeah! Like "I Want to Hold Your Hand"!

MM: Yeah. I took it right off "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Then the “yeah yeah yeahs” come in. So he knew it was a mutation of him. And he sang it for me right there with alcohol stinking spittle right into my face. I was in shock and about as high as you can get for the rest of the night. I couldn’t believe it.

BW: That’s amazing.

MM: And him and Ian, they just kinda put their arms around each other and started wobbling down the street singing the song all the way down Park Avenue or whatever street that was.

BW: I’m really looking forward to the tour and the new album. What’s the new stuff like?

MM: It sounds like DEVO, that’s for sure. Some of it sounds like it’s early, some of it sounds like the third or fourth album. And some of it is like the later stuff with more electronics. But lyrically it’s the same as what we always did. If it has anything to do with love it’s usually kind of absurdist. Other than that, without lecturing, we talk about the issue of de-evolution and things falling apart.

BW: Are you bringing the guitars back then?

MM: Yeah there’s some really good guitar stuff. One of the things I insisted Bob 1 (lead guitarist and Mark’s younger brother) do was I told him he had to play a lead that outdoes Smart Patrol. I told him this has got to be his new signature solo. So we’ll see if other people think of it that way.

BW: I’m looking forward to it and to the tour. Good luck!

MM: And thank you, SuicideGirls!