Classic Set of the Day:


GoGo - The Fortified School



GOGO, a school girl who can pack a punch, and knows how to use a semi-automatic. Her deadliest weapon though is her looks. This girl is not only tough, she is one of the most breathtaking women on the planet.

by Jensen Yumz. So quite a while back I saw these cheeseburger cupcakes on Food Network or some shit like that, and kind of fell in love. They are good because you can make them as homemade or, um, not homemade, as you’d like. If you use all store bought stuff, people are still going to say “holy... more

by Jensen

Yumz. So quite a while back I saw these cheeseburger cupcakes on Food Network or some shit like that, and kind of fell in love. They are good because you can make them as homemade or, um, not homemade, as you’d like. If you use all store bought stuff, people are still going to say “holy balls, these cupcakes look like cheeseburgers!” and if you make it all homemade, people are going to say “holy balls, these cupcakes taste amazing and look like cheeseburgers!” so either way you’re good. For this, I’m using all store bough box mixes and such, but if you’re in a Susie Homemaker mood, definitely make them from scratch :].



What You’ll Need

• Yellow cake mix + whatever it calls for (usually eggs and butter or oil)


• Cream cheese or other white canned frosting


• Fudge cookie dough or chocolate chip cookie dough + brown food coloring


• Sugar sprinkles (the kind that looks like kosher salt, only is sugar.)


• Cooking spray


• Yellow and red (or yellow and orange) food coloring


• Cupcake pan


• Mixer

1. Preheat your oven and bake your cookies. If you are using chocolate chip cookie dough, mix in a few drops of brown food coloring. This is going to be the “meat” of your cheeseburger, and we want our meat to be nice and brown. After LIGHTLY spraying the cupcake pan with cooking spray, spoon about a tablespoon of cookie dough into each cubby (we’re baking the cookies in the cupcake pan rather than on a baking sheet so they come out exactly the right size). It’s a little harder to tell if your cookies are done with the brown food coloring mixed in, so watch them carefully! If your frosting is in the fridge, take it out and let it warm up a bit.



2. After your cookies have cooled, set them aside. Follow the directions on making your cake mix, and then bake them up like any other cupcake. Just read the fracking box. And then marvel at your sexy buns.



3. Start mixing yellow and red, or yellow and orange, food coloring into your frosting. The goal here is to get it the same artificial color as American cheese. You know, that sickly orange yellow color. Really work that stuff in and stir it around all nice like.



4. Now, start putting together your cheeseburger. First, cut your cupcake in half. Put a very small dollop of “cheese” on the bottom piece; this is just to hold everything together. Next, throw your meat in the mix. After that, smother your meat in cheese. Top it off with the rest of your bun.

5. Next, we need to put your “sesame seeds” (aka sugar sprinkles) on the bun. A bun isn’t a bun without some seed on it. To get the seeds to stick, run a finger under water and run it on top of the bun until it’s a little moist. You can use two fingers if you want this to go faster. Then sprinkle on as many seeds as your heart desires.



6. Finny!

Woo, cheeseburger cupcakes ftw :]. Have a good week, pretties.

Jen Wang first surfaced crafting short comics that appeared online and in the Flight anthologies, but her debut graphic novel Koko Be Good is the first work of hers that most people will have encountered. It’s a beautifully illustrated book that centers around three characters, each of whom is tackling... more

Jen Wang first surfaced crafting short comics that appeared online and in the Flight anthologies, but her debut graphic novel Koko Be Good is the first work of hers that most people will have encountered. It’s a beautifully illustrated book that centers around three characters, each of whom is tackling in their own way, what it means to be “good.”

Wang, who graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Sociology, has spent the past few years toiling at a variety of jobs while working on her book. It’s entirely possible to dislike her for her youth (she's still only 26), her loose expressionistic linework, and the delicate watercolors she uses so adeptly. The book, though, is very definitely good.


ALEX DUEBEN: Koko be Good was originally a short comic about two characters, Koko and Jonathan, who meet at a bus stop. What were the circumstances behind the short version and where did this idea come from?

JEN WANG: The short comic happened very quickly. Around 2004 I was in my second year of college and going through a lot of changes in my life. Things were happening with the relationships in my life, I switched majors from an art to social science, the war in Iraq was on my mind, as was the Presidential election. I was spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of person I wanted to be, and at the time I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue art anymore. Ironically, I needed an outlet to express my angst and one day the character Koko came to mind. I quickly jotted down the script over breakfast and started drawing right away.

AD: Why did you decide to expand the story into a full-length book?

JW: Well, during the process of drawing the short comic I kept thinking how easy the character was to work with. She really was a manifestation of my inner thoughts, and I wasn't done figuring myself out yet. I wanted to explore the themes in the short comic further, but I needed more time and distance to digest what was happening in my life. When I graduated college I felt ready.

AD: Koko feels very similar in the two stories but Jonathan is very different and looks very different. He really becomes a very different character in the book.

JW: That was one of the things I wanted to change in the full-length version. There aren't a ton of characters but I wanted each one to have a story of their own and feel distinct. Koko is such a strong, aggressive, character, you needed someone to act as her straight man. Someone the audience can relate to.

AD: One of the things people will notice about the book is that it features this very loose expressionistic style and I'm curious how you developed this style and who inspired you in this direction.

JW: My style is really influenced by animation, in particular ones that involve a lot of "acting" and expression by the artists to move the story along. So that's always been a part of the way I draw. But while working on Koko I was also looking at a lot of European cartoonists like Gipi, Joann Sfar, and Nicolas de Crecy who have extremely loose, expressionistic styles. I loved how elegant, yet raw everything looked. I really wanted to capture that in the art of the comic.

AD: Now the book is all yours. Besides writing and drawing the book you lettered and colored it. Why did you want to do it all?

JW: First off, a minor correction about the lettering: I didn't do it! Initially that was the plan, but toward the end I was tired of inking and ended up getting John Martz (also a great cartoonist) to make a font based on my handwriting instead. I think it looks amazing! As for wanting to do it all, I think the easy answer is I'm a bit of a control freak. And I wanted everything to reflect the personal nature of the story in every aspect of the art. It has to feel like the blood, sweat, and tears of one person for it to feel truly intimate.

AD: What was the technical process of drawing the book and how you worked?

JW: I penciled the book on 9"x12" bristol paper. I scanned the pages in, printed them out on light blue ink, and inked on top of that with ballpoint pen. You can still see a lot of the blue ink in there. Then I watercolored on top of the inks. In retrospect I should've inked on top of the bristol because I didn't end up messing up the inks as much as I thought. People have responded positively to the blue ghost lines, but I think it would've looked nice without it too.

AD: What was your thinking behind the coloring. Why did you think the book needed a limited palate and was there a comic or painting or another work that had the same kind of feeling you were going for?

JW: I needed a coloring method that I could do quickly and effectively, and watercolors were that for me. I was hesitant to do a full color book because I don't like the way color can dictate too much in the story. A limited palate allowed me to add depth to the artwork without overpowering overpowering everything else. It also took less time, so all in all it was the logical choice on all accounts.

AD: How did you end up getting published by First Second Books?

JW: We had been on each other's radars for a while. A few years before they'd asked me if I was interested in illustrating one of several comic scripts they had. At the time I was still in school so I declined. So a while later when Koko was ready they were a natural publisher to turn to. They're one of the few graphic novel publishers out there right now that really take risks with their artists, so it was great to end up with them.

AD: Now the major thrust of the book is that Koko wants to be "good" which is something that I think many of us can relate to, and I'm curious about what you thought of as her arc and where she starts and where she ends.

JW: In the beginning, like most of us, Koko's idea of "good" is all about action. It's through her attempts that she starts to realize her heart isn't in the right place. It's not natural for her, and that's when she really has to confront for the first time who she really is. It's a sad day to realize you may never be that admirable, heroic person you thought you could be. On the other hand having that new sense of self-awareness allows her to empathize with other people (i.e. connecting with Faron). So in the end she doesn't end up where she'd hoped, but she's a little wiser, and a little more self-aware.

AD: To what degree is Koko you and the story autobiographical, because it does feel very personal?

JW: Oh it's definitely personal for me. None of the characters represent me completely, but they all reflect aspects of me. Koko obviously comes closest because her story is mine. Like her, I've struggled with trying to be a better person and wanting to change who I am. None of the events in the book are literally autobiographical, but it feels more truthful to me than any actual autobio comics I've ever done.

AD: So what's next for you?

JW: Writing with what I hope will be my next book! Fingers crossed!

Classic Set of the Day:

Maia -
Ballerina



Maia is a beautiful goth ballerina in this stunning classic set.

xoxo
-missy

Interviews are not exactly something The Cult's Billy Duffy enjoys doing. This is something the iconic guitarist reiterates several times in different ways during the course of our 40-minute conversation. However, after remaining mostly silent during his band's recent Love Live Tour - celebrating... more

Interviews are not exactly something The Cult's Billy Duffy enjoys doing. This is something the iconic guitarist reiterates several times in different ways during the course of our 40-minute conversation. However, after remaining mostly silent during his band's recent Love Live Tour - celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Love album which carried the seminal single "She Sells Sanctuary" - Duffy is biting the proverbial bullet to promote new material.

Working outside of the label system and embracing new technology, The Cult have released two self-styled "capsules" - which are essentially mini downloadable mixed-media packages. The latest, Capsule 2: New Blood Deep Cuts, offers two new tracks, "Embers" and "Until The Light Takes Us," alongside live versions of classic songs, and an exclusive video performance of "Black Angel."

We caught up with Duffy while he was in Detroit on the penultimate stop of a 19-date US Tour to find out more.

NP: How's the tour been going for you?

BD: Oh, it's been going. It's been a life enriching experience as always.

NP:[laughs] A life enriching experience is a very layered response - do tell.

BD: Yes it is. All my responses are very layered, very ambiguous.

NP: It's very ambiguous, what's that about?

BD: You know, it's very difficult, when you're in the middle of a tour. I mean it is what it is. It's great and it's horrible and it's a bunch of different stuff. I'm certainly used to it. There's a degree of institutionalization to it, and there's sort of a rigid flexibility to it.

NP: And a rhythm to it.

BD: Yeah, to a degree. [It's] a lot like prison life. Or like maybe being in the army, a lot of hurry up and wait.

NP: Have you ever been to prison or in the army?

BD: No. How actually the majority of people experience rock & roll tours is from books and videos and stuff. I have my same experiences of the army and the prison. So that's how I view it coming from an outsiders point of view, but I could still see some sort of connection.

NP: You have this capsule release coming out. Explain a little bit about that. It's kind of confusing, but kind of cool at the same time.

BD: It's not really confusing. Tell me what confuses you about it and maybe I can respond to that.

NP: Well once I went on the website it all made sense, but, before that, I was like, a capsule? Are you selling some kind of time capsule that you have to bury in the ground?

BD: It's the word see. You're very attached to the word. It's just a word. Break it down, I mean why is a table called a table? Why isn't a table called a chair? I mean, we all just decided a table was called a table, and we all agree in every language in the world a table is a table. The capsule could be anything. But it's just simply a collection of different songs. But, it's funny if you break it down. I'm getting a little philosophical because I've been in a tour bus for about 2 days.

NP: Have you been answering the big questions about life, the universe, and everything on the tour bus then?

BD: No. No, that's Ian [Astbury]'s job.

NP: Has he come up with any answers?

BD: Ian, he's still looking. I think he's actually out looking right now.

NP: Which is why you're on the phone doing the interview.

BD: No, he's doing some. He does many more interviews than us. We just decided to embrace doing interviews. Last time we went out on the road we did that Love Tour. The general consensus was that we didn't want to do any interviews because it was sort of a nostalgic thing. It was good nostalgia. I used to say nostalgia with a lower case "n." It's something that we wanted to do, it's not something we had to do. But, by the same token, we didn't want to overtly publicize it. We didn't do any interviews. We had no photographers at the gates. We wanted to keep it kind of for the fans.

NP: Right.

BD: It was a fan driven thing, and it was really successful. We did great attendances with no record company, no nothing. We weren't really selling anything. It was just kind of a really great celebration of a band. But this time around, with some new music out there, we thought we'd spread the good word.

NP: I was just at the El Rey for Gary Newman's Pleasure Principle Tour. He toured his Pleasure Principle album in the same way that you did with Love, and had similar reservations. It was something that he had been resisting, but then he actually found that he quite enjoyed it.

BD: Well, you hold on to a lot of beliefs. We all hold on to a lot of beliefs about rights and wrongs, and what's the right thing to do. I think as time passes generally in life as a person, let alone as a musician or creative person, you sometimes maybe allow yourself to let go of some of those rigidly held beliefs just to see what's it like, and sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised. I think that's what happened with The Cult and The Love Tour.

It was something that I proposed to Ian when he was singing with The Doors. I ran into him in LA and I actually just said we should play the Love album at the Albert Hall. That's all I said. Everything started with that really. It was one of the best things I've done this decade really - apart from having a kid. I really enjoyed the whole thing of doing the Albert Hall. It meant a lot to me, and it was kind of fun.

I mean, I saw Gary do that. I saw him do his show. It was pretty cool. I saw him do that in Glasgow maybe, a couple years back. He was doing some tour, playing an album for sure. He was great. A guy like him, people go and see it and they say, "Oh yeah, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan - yes, there is a connection."

NP: Gary was also talking about how, as time passes, he has come to be more proud of his work then he was at the time it was actually released.

BD: That's the classic creative person's dilemma, and also a British thing where you down play your own worth. You have very low actual feelings of your own worth.

NP: But also, you can only Monday morning quarterback after the fact. For example, I was driving around town three days ago and I was listening to Jack FM, and they played "She Sells Sanctuary" back to back with "Sweet Child O' Mine." I'm like, fuck, those songs sound so similar, and I was reading your bio and I realized why; because a relatively unknown Guns N' Roses actually toured with you guys. But only in retrospect do you get a sense of the progression of music.

BD: Except that they'd probably written it before they toured with us. But I'm sure they heard "She Sells Sanctuary." They were all pretty turned on guys. But when they toured with us, they'd already released Appetite for Destruction, and it had only sold 50,000 copies. It subsequently went on to sell a hundred and something million. But at the time they toured with us, it was in '87, we were promoting Electric.

I mean there's an element of truth and there's an element of cross-pollination there, which is natural and organic between musicians and has always happened. You're obviously bright and have read rock history; Rock & roll, R & B, country, blue grass - it all blends, and ideas get borrowed, stolen, developed and moved on. And similarly, we came to make what for us was quite a departure from "She Sells Sanctuary." We were promoting the Electric album, which was a completely different sound. We were produced by Rick Rubin. It was really stripped down, kind of AC/DC-ish. It was a complete departure. And those guys had arrived where they were at doing Appetite for Destruction. I mean that album was done, "Welcome to the Jungle" was released.

NP: But I think "She Sells Sanctuary" came out in '85 and Appetite for Destruction was released in '87.

BD: Yeah. But it was recorded in '86. We'd never met them. They had a buzz on them. Ian tried to get me to go see them in London. They did two nights at the Marquee Club. They were sold out and I actually couldn't get in. They just wouldn't let me in, the typical London thing. I remember, it was like a real buzz on them, and that was before they toured with us.

Ian was the guy that found them. Ian uses the phrase cultural savant. We could sense a return to blues/organic rock. Suddenly people were whispering Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, and finally the vacuum created by punk, enough time had passed that people were daring to mention the unmentionable, and that kind of blew up a little bit. Rock got massive again for about 5 or 6 years until grunge really. I mean, Guns N' Roses got bigger than The Stones almost.

NP: What were you borrowing from to develop your sound?

BD: I would cite early '70s blues, rock and glam: Thin Lizzy, Sweet, Slade, that type of music. I liked Free and Bad Company, and all sorts of stuff. Even Aerosmith I liked, very early Aerosmith, the '70s shit. I liked all that stuff and then punk happened...

When punk happened, that really caught my attention. I had to leave high school when punk happened, so situationally I was plonked right in the middle of unemployment and punk gigs. I grew up in Manchester, and I was going to concerts between '75 and '79 in Manchester, so that had a profound influence on me in terms of being a wannabe high school guitarist. Suddenly that put me in a situation where I thought I could actually really do this.

NP: I understand Morrissey was in one of your early bands.

BD: It was like a fledgling thing. Me and Morrissey were introduced through a little network of music fans in Manchester who were inclined towards American style music: The New York Dolls, Iggy and The Stooges, the MC5, Patty Smith, Television, Talking Heads, The Ramones...There was a lot of us that really related to that kind of musical scene, and we kind of met through that.

You can imagine it wasn't a massive scene in Manchester in those days. It really was just coincidence that I aspired to be a guitar tech for a band called The Nosebleeds, who were from my local area in South Manchester. It was basically the same council estate, and two bands came out of there. One was Slaughter and The Dogs, and one was Ed Banger and The Nosebleeds.

I was hustling to get a gig as a roadie. As a 15 year old, I was an obsessive on music. Ed Banger and The Nosebleeds split up and they were just left with a bass player and a drummer. The singer, Eddie, fucked off. I don't know what he did. The guitar player was Vini Reilly, who [went on to form] The Durutti Column. Tony Wilson, he found this guy. He'd put him on at The Factory and nobody would show up. Because he was like a long-haired hippy guy who wanted to be Steve Hillage, but he found himself in a punk band. He was the guitar player that I replaced.

The audition was in the bass player's mom's council house in Wittenshaw...They said, "Right, you got the job. Do you know any singers?" I was kind of shocked, because I really wanted to be their roadie. I got the gig, and I just said, I know this guy I've been going to gigs with. We used to watch Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, pretty much any band that was not like long-haired horrible progressive rock we'd go and see. But, anyways, it was Morrissey - Steven, as he was called in those days. He was wanting to be a singer.

We did a couple of gigs, and nothing came of it really. We didn't get a deal. Six months passed and we did this thing and it just wasn't quite right. I ended up getting an offer to join another band and go to London. There was actually wages involved, and being the careerist little fucker that I was, I jumped on that and moved to London. And Morrissey ended up meeting up with a bunch of other guys - Johnny Marr, who I knew from my high school band. He was kind of around. Andy Rourke went to my high school, and The Smiths came a couple of years after that...That's kind of how the connection with Morrissey was. Johnny Marr's still a good friend of mine.

NP: It's interesting that the two of you have that connection, because obviously you and Johnny Marr are probably two of the most iconic guitarists of the last 20 or 30 years.

BD: Yeah, it's funny that we came from a very, very small gene pool. We're kind of like little guitar heroes to different sections to the musical community. But I guess that's what everybody wanted to be in those days...

I remember Johnny coming with Andy Rourke, and it might have been the drummer. They came to Sheffield to watch a band I was in called Theatre of Hate. That was who I was in before The Cult. I remember Johnny came over and said that he was doing a band with Morrissey, which was cool. It worked out well for them.

NP: Well The Cult didn't work out so bad for you either.

BD: Exactly. I think they'd call that a win-win in America wouldn't they?

NP: I think they would...

For so long, part of the band experience was that you wanted to get signed, you wanted to have a major deal. But now, since artists are able to sell directly to their fans via their websites and social networks, having a record label is not necessarily something that's required anymore. Have you found it liberating to be free of the label system?

BD: It's definitely experimental. I wouldn't say that we completely disabused of the idea that there's some benefits to having a global structure in place that can help promote your stuff...We just didn't find the right kind of record deal because basically the music business is sort of trying to save itself before it eats itself...We made a decision not to engage in a record deal, of which there was several offered. None of them really spoke to us. Also, I don't necessarily know whether we as a band, or as individuals, were willing, at that point, to engage in the amount of publicity and promotion required once you sign on the dotted line.

NP: You've self-released two capsules to date, are there more planned?

BD: We are going to get back to LA and do some new music. We've got a couple of new songs. We've got a lot of new ideas. But we've got a couple of new songs that have gone from like the ideas to the actual almost a Cult song. They're coming down the factory production line...

We'll have to see. It really depends on what's being offered to us, and real boring, horrible stuff like what we're willing to spend to record them, and who with and when. Maybe we won't do Capsule 3. Maybe we'll go back to doing a concept album. I don't know. You've got to keep ducking and weaving, you know what I mean?

NP: You're going to be ducking and weaving in Europe next aren't you?

BD: We're doing the UK, and a couple of gigs in Belgium and Holland. It's really a British tour with a couple of Euro dates thrown on the arse end of it.

NP: Well have fun in Blighty.

BD: I can't wait. January in Britain.

NP: Yeah, you did pick the best time of year to go - not. You're in Detroit in winter and you're going to be in Leeds in January.

BD: Yes. Leeds. It will be fun. We'll have a good time. I don't have a problem with that. I'm kind of joking. We went into it with our eyes open. It's a cool tour. We've got Masters of Reality for those people that like that kind of stuff, and then we've got a young band that Ian's found called Romance, who are opening. So we've got a nice bill. It'll be all right. As long as we've got tea and biscuits in the hotel room, I'll be happy.

NP: I should let you go, but thanks so much for spending time on the phone.

BD: I enjoyed it. Actually a very enjoyable chat...I understand the functionality of doing interviews, you know, with WXPZ The Rock and [puts on exaggerated radio voice] "you're talking to Bear and we're going to put some Cult on after we play Leonard Skynard and a little bit of Sound Garden."

NP: You can't knock "Sweet Home Alabama."

BD: Well, you can try knocking it. It won't do you any good.

NP: It's kind of awesome, there's no denying it.

BD: Yeah. It's one of them riffs you can whistle and that's what I do, you know.

NP: A riff you can whistle. That's all you can ask for.

BD: Well, you can ask for a lot of things, but when it's The Cult, that's one of the things you'll get.

Classic Set of the Day:


Tegan - Under The Hood



Today's classic set was nominated by our facebook fan David Gonzalez He will get a 3 month subscription for having his classic set chosen as classic set of the day.

He Says:

I love the set you did with the bitchen! camaro in your first dvd

If you are interested in nominating a set as classic set of the day, e-mail: classic@suicidegirls.com

- a link to the set
- why you think the set should be classic set of the day
- your full name
- your e-mail address
- SuicideGirls member name
- Date of Birth classic@suicidegirls.com

xoxo
-missy

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film that defies explanation, and one’s ability to suspend disbelief. Indeed the plot would be utterly ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s true. It started out life as a simple documentary about street art as seen through the lens of Thierry Guetta, a... more

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film that defies explanation, and one’s ability to suspend disbelief. Indeed the plot would be utterly ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s true.

It started out life as a simple documentary about street art as seen through the lens of Thierry Guetta, a French national living in Los Angeles. Thanks to a family connection, and his infectious and perpetuity ebullient personality, Guetta gained unparalleled access to the major players in the scene, who are a notoriously secretive and hard to track down bunch by necessity due to the predominantly illicit nature of their work. Guetta’s extreme enthusiasm for the form, and his zealous pursuit of its practitioners, ultimately led him to the scene’s holy grail, Banksy, an elusive British street art superstar.

After Guetta proved his worth as a location scout in LA, Banksy - whose real identity is shrouded in mystery - inexplicably agreed to participate in his documentary film project (or more accurately didn't object when he started rolling tape). Guetta proceeded to shoot hundreds of hours of footage, over a period that spanned several years. With no sign of the finished product in sight however, Banksy eventually suggested Guetta work on a first cut. It was only at this point that a major stumbling block became apparent – the fact that Guetta actually had no clue how to make a film, "I didn't know if I believed he was a filmmaker or a mental patient with a camera," said Banksy of Life Remote Control, the manic film Guetta subsequently produced. In an attempt to salvage the situation, Banksy decided to take control of the project - and of Guetta’s vast library of unlogged videotape. Banksy in turn, encouraged the camera man turned friend to make some art of his own, as he exchanged roles and became the filmmaker.

It was at this point that events took an unlikely and unanticipated course. Banksy recruited producer Jaimie D'Cruz, who then brought editor Chris King onboard. Together they began the process of assessing Guetta’s raw material to see if it was even possible to assemble it into some kind of meaningful narrative. As they viewed it they began to realize that the effusive Frenchman was ultimately the star of his own footage. Guetta meanwhile had taken Banksy’s edict a little more seriously than had been intended, and started work on an art show of epic proportions.

A crew was dispatched to LA to film Guetta as he mounted his assault on the art world under the moniker Mr. Brainwash. Having rented the extremely spacious old CBS building, Columbia Square, on Sunset Blvd., Guetta set about filling it ahead of his June 18, 2008 debut. As with his filmmaking endeavor, Guetta didn’t let his lack of prior personal experience hold him back from jumping in with two feet (neither did a broken leg).

Much to the surprise of everyone – including Banksy – the event proved to be an undeniable success. Thousands flocked to the opening night (which featured Shepard Fairey on the decks), and by the end of the first week Guetta had sold close to $1 million worth of his Mr. Brainwash “art.”

Guetta was a bona fide overnight sensation, but was he a bona fide artist? As Mr. Brainwash’s career took flight, Banksy, D'Cruz and King shifted the focus of the street art documentary, turning the lens on its original documentarian. Though the resulting film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, can’t possibly provide a definitive answer regarding Guetta’s authenticity as an artist, it poses the underlying question, and many more with it, in an incredibly smart and entertaining way. However, following initial screenings at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals, and the documentary’s cinematic release in April of this year, this ambiguity and the unlikely events chronicled have led some to accuse the filmmakers of staging an elaborate hoax.

Banksy’s reputation as a prankster has also confounded the situation, but, with his blessing, filmmakers D'Cruz and King are keen to set the record straight. While in town for the International Documentary Awards, SuicideGirls caught up with the duo at a brunch spot on Robertson Blvd. Though Exit Through the Gift Shop was passed over (in favor of Waste Land) at that particular ceremony, the film has won a prestigious Grierson Award, and is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and shortlisted for Oscar nomination.

Nicole Powers: So congratulations, I understand you're nominated for an Oscar nomination, so to speak. When did you find out about that?

Chris King: About two weeks ago…There was a lot of shouting and hollering and jumping around. It's very exciting.

Jaimie D'Cruz: And now we've got a real nerve wracking [couple of months]. We have to wait until January 25th to find out the nominations, and that's quite a long time.

NP: But you can just enjoy being shortlisted?

CK: Yeah, of course, we're going to enjoy that. Because it started with such humble beginnings, this film.

NP: How did you guys get involved?

JDC: I got a call from Banksy, who I briefly met ten years earlier, saying can you help make a film. I went to meet him and he told me the idea, which was so ridiculous I couldn't believe he was serious.

NP: What was Banksy's original pitch?

JDC: His pitch was, I want to make a film about this amazing French guy who's been making a film about me. It just sounded ridiculous and nonsensical. Obviously I was really excited to get a call from him, because when I first met him he wasn't known at all, and by that point he'd become world famous.

NP: In what context did you first meet him?

JDC: I used to run a little underground magazine. Part of my job was to know about people doing interesting shit in the underground.

NP: What magazine?

JDC: It was called Touch. It was a black music magazine, but we used to do a lot of graffiti and street culture stuff. I had had a lot of kids working for me, [and one of them told me about] this guy called Banksy who'd been doing some really interesting stuff. We tracked him down and I hung out with him for a couple of nights. He was an impressive young [man], quite clearly ambitious, but a deeply secretive person even then.

NP: Even then?

JDC: Even then. Meeting him even in 1998 or 9, whenever it was, it was like meeting a CIA mole or something. I thought he was really nice and interesting, he was doing some great stuff, and then I never heard from him again. Obviously I monitored [his activities] like the rest of the world. I kept seeing him in other magazines, then in the newspapers.

What happened was he said let's make a film about this guy Thierry [Guetta]. I was quite skeptical, but was willing to explore. Of course I was excited that he wanted to make a film, because everyone was trying to make a film with Banksy. And they don't even get a "no." There's no answer. You can't even ask the question. So being approached by him was really exciting and potentially very interesting.

What we did was we looked at some tapes that [Banksy] already had. He didn't really have much at that stage, but he arranged for me to meet Thierry and he also showed me - which was a key thing - the DVD of Life Remote Control.

Life Remote Control is the film that in our film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, we refer to that Thierry made. It's an absolutely astonishing feature length bit of torture.

NP: You show clips of it in your film, and even those clips are torturous to watch.

JDC: People assume we cut it to look like that, but that is what it looks like. So basically, I said, "It sounds like a bit of a mad idea - who the fuck's this guy Thierry?" He just said, "Take this DVD home and watch it, and then I think you'll see what I mean."

NP: And it didn't put you off?

JDC: No, I was sold then. I was like, who made this? Who is the person?

So I met Thierry, called up Chris who is an editor. We'd both worked for the same company on and off for years. Chris has got a really good reputation as a very inventive and creative editor, and I thought that's clearly what we need. So me and Chris got hold of some of Thierry's tapes and started watching them.

Initially it was like jumping off a cliff into a sea of nonsense. We didn't have hundreds and hundreds of hours at that point, we had enough to know that this was going to be potentially quite interesting. And that's really how the film started.

The other thing that happened at the same time was that I knew that Thierry was going to do his own art show. That was the idea - Thierry was going to do his own art show while we made [the film].

NP: So you came on board in essence half way through the movie when it shifts gears.

JDC: Exactly, yeah. I knew he was going to do an art show, but I didn't know about the scale of it. As far as I knew, Thierry hadn't done anything ever before [by way of] an art show, so I just thought it was a bit of a strange idea, but [that] it might be interesting.

Also, we didn't have a plan that this would end up being a theatrically released documentary feature. [We thought] maybe we'll get a DVD out of it, maybe it'll go on YouTube.

CK: Sometimes [Banksy] has videos playing in the back of his exhibitions, we thought it might be that. I think we both just thought it's different, and it's an opportunity to work with an artist who's got funky ideas about things.

NP: To what degree did Thierry's art show snowball because of the documentary process?

JDC: Not really at all. I don't think the process of us making the film was the thing that made Thierry's show extraordinary. But it's probably also true to say that Thierry wouldn't have done an art show unless Banksy had suggested to him to go and do an art show.

CK: Thierry, as you see in the film, was absolutely enraptured by his relationship with Banksy. He couldn't believe that this man that he'd been idolizing for so long had let him in and they'd become friends. He was in awe of him.

NP: It was like this command from God: Go forth and do an art show.

CK: Banksy probably didn't quite grasp how deep it was with Thierry...At that stage, Banksy and other people in the street art world have been expecting Thierry to deliver a film which actually tells a story. Clearly Life Remote Control wasn't that, and [Banksy] was a little crest fallen. So I think initially he sat and mused for a while. He wanted to see if those rushes actually contained enough footage to make a more conventional kind of street art history. Because [Thierry] was with all the major players, so surely there was going to be enough stuff in there to do that.

We initially sat down in February or March of 2008 and had a look through this first suitcase full of tapes. They were all unmarked, had nothing written on them, [and we had] no idea about who anybody was on any of them either really. We didn't have any idea of the order of them, the chronology of it or anything. We had in our mind the idea that we were going to try and turn this into a street art documentary, but it was clear that we weren't going to be able to do that because of the way Thierry shot it.

He was great at climbing up on roofs with all these guys. When we found this stuff, it was all kind of visceral, exciting stuff, but he never took any shots of the actual work. At the end of it he never stood back and got a nice steady, locked on shot of the piece. So obviously it was going to be very difficult to make a film where we looked at the art.

But in the process of looking through all this stuff and working it out, you know Thierry's in his own footage quite a lot. He'd put the camera up on a wall and then he'd be wandering around and he'd be having conversations with the artists. It's not the conventional way of filming things. We would just be laughing at him, because he's just so funny - he's a bit like Jacques Tati...We thought, this guy's great, and we began to see why Banksy thought it'd be worth investing time in it.

Then there was another tape somewhere where he was driving back from a hit with an artist and there was a conversation going on in the back of a truck or in the back of the van. The camera, as always, was just left running on the back seat, filming the floor or something, but the sound was recording. There was a conversation going on which was, "So Thierry, how do you get into doing all this stuff?" And he began to tell this yarn, which was [puts on French accent], "Well my cousin was Space Invader in Paris and through him I met these other guys..." And he basically tells the story that you see in the film about how he got into it.

We started to see that this was a really amazing story arc that led to the illusive Banksy. That's when our initial skepticism about this began to soften and we realized that Banksy wasn't quite as bonkers as we had thought he had been in the first place. He's one step ahead of most people. Then we just sorted waded in. At the same time we had had heard that Thierry was putting on a little show of some sort over in LA.

NP: A little show.

CK: We thought we better get a local crew to just go and film a little bit of Thierry's preparation for this show, to see what happens there. [We had] no idea that it was going to anything like it turned out to be. It was dutifully covering that base. Then reports came back that it was all going pear shaped, and it was a really huge thing, and he had got this enormous space. So then Jaimie jumps on a plane and came over here, and started filming. That's when the true majesty of Thierry's ambition became clear to everybody.

NP: Was that when you first got face to face with Thierry?

JDC: I had met him briefly in London, only three or four weeks before the show opened, when he told me that he was doing the show. So I had met him and fallen in love with him as a character. I just thought, this guy is just genius. He said he was doing a show, and he also said he was very worried and scared because he hadn't made any art yet. There was a great quote, he kept saying [puts on French accent], "I can only go up. For me, I am at ze bottom, and now I can only go up." I didn't even know what he meant, [but discovered] basically all it means is that Thierry is just a relentless optimist. He just sees everything in life as full of potential and full of beauty and possibility in a really unusual very instinctive way.

NP: With a thought process like that, if you're successful, you're a genius, and if you're not, you're delusional.

JDC: Exactly. I think that was when I first thought this is Chance the Gardner from Being There, the Peter Sellers' film, which is basically about an idiot savant, who, through his innocent pronouncements about the world, is interpreted by the world as a crazed genius. Thierry had this kind of extraordinarily [quality]. For example, when he called his show Life is Beautiful, he literally means life is beautiful. There is no irony or cynicism, or post-modern comment on the state of the world. He just means [puts on French accent], "Life is beautiful. You wake up, you love your wife, your children, ze sun is shinning - why not be happy?" That's literally what he means. All the art critics would be, "That's a very clever comment on our cynical society." And actually it's not - it's just because life is beautiful.

CK: Yes, he is completely un-cynical.

JDC: Going back to the storyline, I went out to LA, saw what was going on, realized that this was [something special]. We'd had a couple of indications, phone calls coming back to London saying, "Oh, you're never going to believe what's going on." He broke his leg for example...All of it was kind of great story points from a filmmaking point of view. But it wasn't until a couple hours before the show opened that I realized this is actually going to be a huge sensation. Because I assumed it was going to be a bit of a disaster with no one there and no art on the walls.

NP: But then the LA Weekly made Thierry's show their cover story. How did that happen?

JDC: I think they'd heard that Thierry was doing something that was going to be really interesting and really big. They'd somehow got wind of it. There was a bit of talk that this guy had been hanging out with Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Invader, so I guess there was a kind of suspicion that something might happen.

CK: Well he inveigled little quotes out of his mentors, for want of a better word, and then really used them...

NP: Because Thierry didn't let the fact that he couldn't make art get in the way of putting on an art show, there was some intriguing speculation...

JDC: Hang on a minute, you say Thierry couldn't make art, but that's actually quite a judgmental position to take. Because what does it mean to make art? I'm not going to answer that question, I'm just going to push it out there.

NP: Well that's one of those questions that your film brings up. A lot of people ask what is art? This film almost begs the question is art a joke.

JDC: I know that Thierry would never in a million years - it's just not in his makeup, it's not in his DNA - try to punk everyone by making crap art and selling it for lots of money. He wouldn't understand that concept. He just makes art.

NP: He did sub-contract some of it though.

JDC: Yeah, but so does Damien Hirst. The factory system is an ancient venerated system that goes back to The Renaissance. There's nothing new in that. When I'm put on the spot with this question, for me, I think being an artist means having something to say. If you've got something to say, you can get monkeys to make it if you want - if they're conveying your message...My question would be: what is Thierry saying with his art?

NP: There was some speculation that some of the art was done by Banksy.

JDC: That's not true. Categorically, Banksy didn't make any of the art in Thierry's show. Quite the opposite. I hesitate to speak for Banksy, but I can be pretty certain in saying that he wouldn't have wanted to. Because for Banksy, I think the motivation was [that he thinks] everyone should make art. Banksy's whole thing has been about taking art away from the galleries and the dealers and the curators, and seeing as a populist form. So the idea that he would make the art for someone else would just be an anathema.

CK: Thierry had been making posters and dabbling in street art, so [Banksy] was obviously curious to see what Thierry was going to come up with. But I'm sure he imagined that it was going to be in a little space somewhere, in a lock-up or a little gallery - one room with a few examples on the wall. I don't think anybody, particularly Banksy, realized that Thierry was going to take it and run so far and so high with it all. But from Thierry's point of view I'm sure, having spent all that time with the kind of major players who had put on huge shows, when it came to that point where Banksy casually suggested that he go and do this little show, Thierry just sort of regurgitated all that stuff that he'd absorbed over a decade of hanging out with these guys.

NP: He's had the best education anyone could have.

CK: Exactly.

NP: No one had had that kind of experience, hanging out with...

CK: ...With everybody. Even the artists haven't necessarily hung out as closely as he had. I think it all just poured out in a completely unfiltered, unmediated way. He just followed his instincts.

I think that you do get a split with the way people view it. One of the other questions that comes up quite often is, all those 5,000 people who turned up at his show, a certain way of viewing the film is that they're mugs. They go to see this work, and because you've seen the process of how that art was [created], and the ramshackle chaotic nature of the show, and the fact that the people had to put Thierry's work on the walls for him, and the other elves so-to-speak were creating his bits and pieces - because of that, those people were duped. But I'm sure that if any of us had turned up that night and been in that queue and gone in and seen it, we'd have probably had a very nice evening, and seen some interesting bits and pieces - some of it funny, some not.

So the question of prior knowledge about artists and their process, and how you view the art, is another one that came up as we were making the film. It is a pertinent thing, particularly when you see Shepard, Banksy and Invader, who all have very clear motivations about why they're making art, clear intentions about where it's going to go and what it's going to mean and what they want to say. In knowing that, you view their work in a particular way. With Thierry, you're not quite sure what that motivation or intention is, and perhaps Thierry wouldn't be able to answer that question either.

JDC: One of the shrewder observations that Banksy makes in the film is that Andy Warhol was genuinely interesting because he took the banal and the every day and he turned meaningless objects into art. Then he says, "But then Terry really made them meaningless."

I think that Thierry, in a slightly outsider artist, unknowing, instinctive way, has done something genuinely quite interesting for art collectors and for the art establishment. It moves the game on, doesn't it? How many times can you paint an every object and say that's art. It has to go somewhere, and Thierry, in a very odd way, has done something quite interesting.

NP: It's almost like the artist is the everyday object.

CK: If you think about a lot of the conceptual artists...all the [Young British Artists], they had a thing of using their life stories as conceptual art. And if you look at Thierry's life, it's like an art piece in itself. The whole thing of going around for years, obsessively filming and putting things in boxes and never watching it, it does feel like some kind of situationist art thing that he was doing, but he just wouldn't be self-aware enough to realize that you know.

NP: He's a walking installation.

CK: And I think that Banksy, Shepard and Invader's reaction to Thierry's success, they're a bit ambivalent about it. Because on the one hand, this is the most democratic of art forms, anyone should be able to have a go. It requires nothing more than a spray can and a wall. At the same time, Thierry's success seemed to signify the very thing that actually Banksy in particular had hoped that Thierry would kind of puncture, which is the commercialization of it. It was inadvertent, but nevertheless, he somehow felt that Thierry was not exactly personally responsible for it, but was definitely part of adding to that feeling of it being commercialized.

I know that Banksy hoped that his film would be the leveler at a time when it was getting out of hand, and the galleries and the collectors were suddenly buying work. Banksy probably feared that the soul was going to get sucked out of this very democratic movement by money, in the same way that it did for the graffiti scene in New York in the '80s. Yet Thierry obviously manifestly failed to do that with his film because it was just very strange and unwatchable. But then inadvertently through his art show, he actually, I feel, contributed to the further commodification of art, hence, I think, Banksy's decision to call the film Exit Through the Gift Shop, which is obviously a big comment on that. But through it all, Banksy is still very fond of Thierry. I think everybody is.

NP: Have you met up with him recently?

CK: I haven't seen him since we finished the film, because he's so busy. He's had a huge exhibition in New York.

JDC: He doesn't have time for us anymore.

CK: He's a really major artist now. In fact we had a screening in West Hollywood last night, and, because he only lives in Hollywood, we had hoped he would be able to come along afterwards for a Q&A. But he said [puts on French accent], "I'm too busy. I'm in Miami at ze Basel Art Fair. I cannot come for your little film." I mean he's sold work to Silvio Berlusconi and numerous collectors, and he's had major exhibitions in New York and in Paris, so he's an art star. He does love the film - we know that. He may have slightly more ambivalent feelings now that he is a major art star, and his perspective of himself may have changed somewhat, but you know...

NP: When you got around to editing and putting the film together, how much input did Banksy have in the process?

JDC: Banksy was incredibly involved in the whole process, from the original conception to the absolute detail of every part right at the very end...We were in the cutting room for a year with Chris, and then another six months after that. It was a very long, but always collaborative process.

Banksy had to leave us alone for a bit while we cut his interviews into the piece, because as a contributor he couldn't be deciding what bits of his own interview went into the [film]. So he gave us space. Also Banksy's a busy guy. He's got other projects going on, so he'd go missing to New Orleans to do the Katrina stuff, he did an animatronics pet store in New York, he's always off doing weird little missions.

NP: You must have had lots of amazing footage that you just couldn't weave into the film.

JDC: There's some great things. For example with Barely Legal there's some really hilarious stuff where all these big celebs turn up...Thierry's camera is literally about an inch from Keanu Reeves, Jude Law, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's face. Of course, we thought that's got to be in the film. But I think Banksy didn't want us to have it just full of celebrities, so we reigned back on that a bit...Ultimately we had to cut it down to a manageable narrative.

CK: Banksy was very, very clear on this; that this wasn't just going to be a film for street artists. When we knew it was a film, it was clearly going to be something that would have a wider appeal. Thierry was the conduit by which a mainstream audience and a not necessarily aware audience would be able to learn about street art. His enthusiasm as he first gets into this world is very infectious. We realized that Thierry was the way to draw a crowd that maybe didn't know about street art into this world. If you digressed too far from the narrative, and went into in-depth potted histories of these artists, it just slowed it down. Thierry's story, the fact that it is the story of a man and a relationship, is what gives the film it's momentum and it makes it very easy for everyone to understand.

NP: It's going to be interesting if you do win the Oscar, because it'll put this underground art form in the glare of a very bright spotlight, and that changes intrinsically the nature of it.

JDC: Yes, but it's presented honestly as a movement, if you want to call it that, which is sort of altruistic. Not always, a lot of the people are just there out of the usual graffiti ego and vanity. They're writing their names in big letters on walls because they want to get known. But overall, you're seeing why people did it, that it was an underground thing that was about filling public spaces and walls, the different motivations that street artists had. So even if it did get anywhere near the Oscars, I think that it's a true, honest and proper representation of what the scene actually was about, and not just a mainstream view of it.

NP: It’s interesting to see how attitudes to street art are changing. In England, the local authorities would see a bit of graffiti and white wash over it as a matter of course. But now they actually have to assess the art first. I know there's been some cases where local governments have realized they've white washed over a Banksy piece, and they've actually had to bring high end art experts in to restore it.

JDC: The lines get completely blurred by that, and I think that's a very interesting theme. Again that's not a theme that we really dwell on in the film, but the concept that street art would be stolen and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars to bankers - that's something that sounds like someone's worse nightmare. Particularly for a street artist because, A, they didn't do it to be sold, and B, they're not even selling it.

When you read about those stories where people are demolishing walls and restoring them - that's theft. But I think that kind of chaos that the street art world descended into, of it all becoming about money and headlines about street artists making fortunes, I think that's one of the motivations for Banksy to want to make a film, which is actually just to show that this is a very honest and simple art form motivated by passion and the need to answer back. As Chris said, there is a conflict there, which is actually it can be very selfish because you're writing your name in huge letters on somebody else's property...

NP: Well it started out as tagging, but became about something else.

JDC: Basically I think the initial motivator for street art is say hello, here I am, I'm here, I exist. Here's my name, here's my voice, recognize me.

NP: Does it upset you when people speculate that the film is a mockumentary or some kind of hoax?

CK: It was funny, [at the Berlin Film Festival Banksy] said, "Everything in this film is true apart from the bits where we lie." Because after Sundance, there'd been immediate speculation that Thierry was played by Sash Baron Cohen and the whole film was directed subversively by Spike Jonze, and it was all made up and a big hoax. For a while we all thought that was quite funny, but it went on for so long. It was a bit disappointing when it became basically accepted as fact, that it was all just a silly hoax. I felt it was a shame that the whole thing was going to be dismissed like that really - because we knew it was true.

JDC: The fact that it provokes intriguing debate is great, and we welcome that. But when it's actually on the record that this is a mockumentary, that it is a hoax, that's not acceptable really. I don't think you can state that as fact, because we're stating it as a clear fact that it's a true documentary. I mean it is a crazy film, and it does stretch your credulity. That's why the film has power because it's an absolutely fucking crazy story. But the fact that it's crazy doesn't mean it's not true. There's been so much speculation about it, and I think that it's good for them to ask the question, and now we are able to answer that question. It pisses me off when you read in serious newspapers that the film is a mockumentary. That's not true.

CK: And it's done in a fairly kind of dismissive way, which is why we certainly felt that we needed to come out and answer that properly and set the record straight. It's just lazy journalism I think. Because film critics - I'll be wary about what I say here - but they aren't necessarily investigative journalists. They'll go and watch the film and have a reaction, and they may be aware of what's going on in the blogosphere or online. They may feel that they don't necessarily want to put their reputations on the line by saying it's real if they're suddenly noticing activity online which is saying that it might be a hoax. They don't want to get egg on their face.

NP: They don't want to feel that they've been hoodwinked.

JDC: There's a very obvious irony here, which is because some journalists have been terrified that they would look stupid by believing the film and therefore would have been hoodwinked by Blanksy, by going the other way, they've actually been hoodwinked into believing it's a hoax.

We never intended to do that. But journalists who claim that it's a hoax, they're the ones that are going to look stupid in the long run because actually the film is true. Also I think the filmmaking, anyone's whose made a film would look at that and go, you just can't make that shit up. If we were clever enough to make that up, we should be here in Hollywood full time working on blockbusters. It's fantastical. It defies belief that the thing's been made up, so the simplest explanation is the truth. It's real.

CK: It's a classic example of reality being stranger than fiction definitely. And I personally think it is better that it's a true story. I mean we still get it a bit, but hopefully it's died down. I think the fact that we now have been nominated and honored by very prestigious documentary institutions should have actually put that to bed. We'll see - hopefully it has.


Exit Through the Gift Shop is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on December 14.

Classic Set of the Day:


Akemi - Shelved



Akemi is the coolest gamer girl ever. This British cutie is a photographer and Harry Potter fan. See the whole set she described as:

“The golden sun filters into your warm orange room, just emptied by the boy you once loved.

Alone, but surrounded, I have your eyes upon me. Like a broken doll, I crave your attention and want your love...

Will you come and pick me up??
Or shall I stay here forever... Shelved!”

For some of us, Felicia Day will always be Penny from “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along-Blog,” but that isn’t because she’s resting on her laurels. She’s an actor who starred in the recent Syfy channel movie “Red,” guest starred in the “Epitaph One” and “Epitaph Two” episodes of “Dollhouse”... more

For some of us, Felicia Day will always be Penny from “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along-Blog,” but that isn’t because she’s resting on her laurels. She’s an actor who starred in the recent Syfy channel movie “Red,” guest starred in the “Epitaph One” and “Epitaph Two” episodes of “Dollhouse” and will be appearing in the second half of the current season of “Eureka” on the Syfy channel in 2011. She also voiced a character in the recently released video game “Fallout: New Vegas.”

Felicia is also the writer and star of the webseries “The Guild,” which finished its fourth season earlier this year. The series centers around “The Knights of Good,” a guild of players obsessed with a World of Warcraft-like game who meet in real life for the first time in the initial season. Over the course of four seasons, the characters have grown deeper and the world has expanded. And the show has become funnier, managing to successfully straddle the line between character-based and situation-based humor so that even those who aren’t as obsessive about video games will be able to laugh at almost every joke.

This month the DVD collecting the fourth season goes on sale with a number of extras including the Bollywood-style music video “Game On” in addition to the trade paperback of the first run of comics and a new comic written by Felicia and her co-star Jeff Lewis, focusing on Lewis’ character Vork.


ALEX DUEBEN: I remember looking at extras on one of the DVD’s and you mentioned that you have really bad writers block.

FELICIA DAY: I do. Unfortunately it still plagues me a lot. I have a little bit of a perfectionist syndrome going on. (laughs) The number one thing you have to know when you’re writing is that you’re not going to write perfect the first time, but you want it to be perfect, so sometimes that gets a little out of control.

AD: Do you spend a lot of time just thinking about it and not putting it on paper?

FD: Yeah. Or I just feel like I can’t put it down unless that’s the way it should be performed. (laughs) It’s always challenging. You don’t want to repeat yourself. You want to outdo yourself. Sometimes there’s external pressures like thinking about how people are going to receive something, how it’s going to come out of somebody’s mouth. All these things that have nothing to do with the writing can get in the way.

AD: Has it gotten easier over time?

FD: Not particularly. I mean, it has gotten easier in that you have deadlines and you have to meet them, but the longer you live with characters, the more you feel like you need to challenge yourself. You can’t rehash what you’ve already done before. You always want to present something that’s a little bit different than what anybody has seen. It almost gets harder to be reinventing the characters in a way and not be predictable.

AD: That’s a good lead in to talk about The Guild comics.

FD: I definitely take a different approach with the comics.

AD: Have you gotten used to writing for comics?

FD: The learning curve for that was pretty high. I mean I’ve read comics, but writing it was a completely different challenge. Not only being the writer, but being the director and adding the visual elements, was definitely different from what I’ve been used to in screenplays. You put down words for a screenplay and then the director is the one to bring it to life. I didn’t even know this signing up. That it was the writer’s job to work with the artist, but really it comes to the writer to be as specific as possible as to what we visually want to see in the panels. That was the biggest challenge. Figuring out how to tell a story and let it flow and be able to surprise myself while I’m writing.

I don’t know how other people work. Writing it as a screenplay and then going back and figuring out what can fit in the panels turned out to be a much better process for me. Now I’m doing five issues with Dark Horse that feature each of the other Guild characters and that’s been a lot easier process. I’m also co-writing several of them with other people, which has also been a learning curve, but fun. I’m able to be a little bit more surprised about these characters that I’ve lived with for over three years now.

AD: What is it like co-writing these issues? I know that you’re writing the first one with Jeff Lewis.

FD: Yeah I’m doing the first one with Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork, and I’m doing the last one with Sandeep Parikh, who plays Zaboo. That’s fun because the origin of The Guild is them playing those characters. We were doing improv together and I wrote those characters specifically for them. I thought they were the funniest guys I ever knew so when I sat down to write The Guild[/I, I tried to feature those two parts so that they could play them. And they’re writers themselves. Jeff does a lot of writing. He’s actually more of a writer than an actor. Sandeep writes The Legend of Neil, which is his webseries.

Also the actors always come in with different ideas about the characters. It was a fun process with Jeff, doing the Vork character in a way that I hadn’t thought about before. The same thing with Sandeep when we started working on that issue. I did Tink by myself when I was doing Eureka in Vancouver and the one I’m working on now, Bladezz, I’m co-writing with Sean Becker who’s the director and editor of Seasons 2, 3, and 4 of The Guild. That’s really fun because he’s a huge comic book fan and he’s a director so he comes at it from a more visual standpoint.

AD: You make The Guild on essentially a barebones budget, so there’s a certain practicality to your thinking when you write the episodes, but in comics none of that matters.

FD: The Guild is so dialogue based because, you’re right, we can only shoot in our houses, basically. (laughs) We have to keep it to a bare minimum. We tend to keep our locations as small as we can and as few as we can each season, so it’s much more dialogue heavy and joke heavy. With the comics you can open up the whole world. You can go anywhere you want. You can have people do fantastic things and the production value, in a sense, is whatever your imagination is limited to. The real estate, as far as how much dialogue you can put in, is something I’ve constantly been struggling with. I’ll get notes back from the editor Scott Allie and he’ll be like, you have to cut three words from this bubble. (laughs) I’m like, no! It’s such a challenge. I can write dialogue all day, but being able to be precise and concise is a challenge. When I wrote season four after doing the comics, I found that it made me a lot more cogent of the fact that I needed to be a little more sparse with my dialogue. I think the jokes sometimes hit better if you’re more concise.

AD: So are you in the midst of writing season five now?

FD: We haven’t gotten picked up for Season five. I have ideas floating around, so as soon as we get that pickup, I’ll start writing. I’m in the middle of writing the comics. Then I have two other webseries that I’m working on that’s still unannounced. It’s been fun to design other characters, but it’s actually making me more excited to go back to season five of The Guild. At the end of season four, they’re all maybe going to a convention. Or there’s a convention involved somehow. (laughs) That’ll be fun to delve into. And at the same time I just finished doing eight episodes of Eureka, so it’s been quite a juggle the last couple months to be doing so many awesome things. I’m just thankful that I’m doing what I really love every day and I’m excited about all the things I’m working on.

AD: Where do you see web content going? There’s more being done, but it really continues to feel hermetically sealed away from Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment field in many ways.

FD: It’s totally different. It’s almost like Sundance when independent films just came to the forefront. When they were smaller and it wasn’t so cast-dependent and there wasn’t big money involved. I think that trajectory can be pretty comparable but independent films even now are pretty separate from mainstream Hollywood films. Some of them have such big casts and become Oscar contenders, but if you look at ten years ago even, there was a huge separation between independent film and the mainstream. I think that’s going to be a similar situation for web video. We don’t have budgets to be able to make episodes every single week. That would require a huge crew and a writing staff and constant production facilities. It’s a scale that you can’t do, but at the same time, we’re moving to a world where people are unplugging their cable.

I think we’re becoming an on demand society and the place where people interact with their content is online. People aren’t just consuming, they want to consumer and share. That’s definitely a testament to where content is going. I love working in the venue that I do and I want to keep pushing web content to be more accepted. The viewers are there, it’s just that the money and the support and the production are not there yet. There’s some great really funny indie things, but people are doing them in their house or doing them on a very low budget scale, so you don’t have the production value, you don’t have the scale, you don’t have the consistency in content that you do in the big Hollywood machine. But those are millions of dollars an episode. It’s two different worlds.

It’s not where anybody would want it to be. We’re slowly but surely getting there. I am most gratified that I’m part of that, rather than just jumping back into the machine even though I make a lot more money there. I’m hopefully inspiring other people to do what I’m doing.

AD: Many people have talked about you in terms of being a breakout star, but has The Guild and Dr. Horrible translated into producers, casting directors, other people who know you and want to work with you?

FD: To be honest with you, I’ve been so out of the machine in a sense. I think all the roles that I’ve gotten in the past two years have been [because] people who are writers, who know who I am, have written me parts. I don’t know if casting directors would necessarily watch the web for talent. I think that producers and writers are looking to the web. Production is very precarious. Even in L.A., production is moving to Canada and out of state. There are some weaknesses in the armor of Hollywood and the smart people are looking to the web to see what’s going on there. That’s what I’m encountering. Writers and producers are familiar with my work and that seems to be the way I’m going to work as an actor or collaborate with people in the future. Rather than going through a casting director and getting approved by the network.

Like you said, it’s two different parallel worlds, and until the money is there, until the power is there, it’s not going to get the mainstream attention. I don’t care about that. I’m just honored that on a show like Eureka, the show runner and the writers see what I’m doing on the web, think it’s funny and wrote a part for me. That’s a much cooler way to get a part than just knocking on doors and trying to make my hair look pretty so I can be one of ten girls to pick from.

AD: Can you say anything about Eureka other than you’re on eight episodes?

FD: I don’t when it’s going to air, but I play a really quirky scientist named Holly Martin. She comes to Eureka on a secret project and immediately has a lot of clashing of wills with Fargo. Wil Wheaton is also part of that relationship triangle. It was such a fun time. I actually miss the time on set because we had such fun just hanging around. It’s such a nice set and such a welcoming cast and crew. I can’t wait for people to see the episodes. I think they’ll be really, really funny.

AD: You made a comment in an interview that you always lived online. And that phrasing was interesting because I think for some people social media and lot of other recent innovations are strange and awkward but for other people, they feel very natural.

FD: I might be one of those first or second generation of people who have grown up more wired to people who I don’t know than in real life. I think that kids nowadays I don’t know if they will really understand how cable works (laughs) or just not knowing where everyone is at all times. My parents are very tech savvy and that’s how I became tech savvy. My family’s always been a little more tech savvy and on the cutting edge, but the scale and quickness with which people’s social interactions have changed is just is phenomenal. I hope I don’t get left behind, but if you’re raised with an ipad that you can touch and move things around with and you can press a button and watch whatever show you want, that’s a different life perspective you’ve grown up with. It’s going to change how they invent things for future generations and it’s happening very very quickly. I’ve always been online. I was on dial-up before people were on the internet with prodigy and compuserve trying to get King’s Quest clues. (laughs) To me, that was always a cool way to connect with people. I might have been one of the first, but I think it’s definitely going to define all of our future generations.

AD: In Microsoft, you really seem to have found a perfect partner for The Guild, in that they’re not demanding any rights or changes to what or how you work.

FD: It was definitely a dream come true. All the people who offered to buy the show before that were traditional studios. Yeah, it would be awesome to work with you, you’re really fancy, but how are you going to get me millions of people who haven’t already seen the show on youtube? They can’t offer that. The fact that Microsoft was able to feature us on their portals and get millions of people watching the show, was really the deciding factor. The fact that I was able to retain the rights to the show is an absolute dream come true. Sprint has also been a partner. It’s definitely rare. That’s my goal in the next year or so. To prove that you can do that again. There’s some really great shows out there like Riese, but there still hasn’t been that one to have as many views as a cable show.

AD: With everything going on, do you have time to game much anymore?

FD: Oh yeah. I just finished Fallout: New Vegas last night. (laughs) I played with my own character, which was creepy, but whatever. I was a good character. And that was really fun. I’m really excited about the new WoW changes. I haven’t been able to play in months, and to see they’re totally reinventing their game but being friendly to the people who know the game. I think they’ve done it in a really smart way and I can’t wait to play that. I don’t watch enough TV and I really need to write more, but if I have three hours, I definitely want to be gaming.

Classic Set of the Day:


Malloreigh - Sin City




Malloreigh is a film noir femme fatale. She has been a SuicideGirl since 2004 and it is hard to imagine the site without her. She recently started contributing her Mischievous Vegan column to the SuicideGirls Blog. Her ode to Sin City is a classic.

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

by Blogbot

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

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





[Chunni in Illumi Naughty]



[Radeo in Nocturna Artificiala]



[Levee in 1932 Lincoln]



[Benten in Miss Taylor]



[GoGo in Lisbon Girl]



[Rambo in Petite Plume]



[Calamity in Within and Without]



[Luscious in Afternoon Delight]

[Bettina in Return to Black Pleather Lagoon]

Fashion Notes

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

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

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

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

“Donny doesn’t give a fuck,” is how Eli Roth sums up the bloody-minded motivations of his character in Quentin Tarantino’s delirious new WWII film, Inglourious Basterds. A Boston-bred Jewish kid turned soldier who is fully aware of the existence and breadth of the Holocaust as it’s occurring, and... more

“Donny doesn’t give a fuck,” is how Eli Roth sums up the bloody-minded motivations of his character in Quentin Tarantino’s delirious new WWII film, Inglourious Basterds. A Boston-bred Jewish kid turned soldier who is fully aware of the existence and breadth of the Holocaust as it’s occurring, and is motivated by inconsolable rage towards Nazis as a result, Donny is one of many carefully-sculpted, subtly modernized characters in a film that is itself a counterfactual kaleidoscope, cut loose from the moorings of history and propelled solely by the emotional impulses of its makers. Donny’s blind, seething anger – and the justice he dispenses with a baseball bat – are the secret weapons of the Basterds, an unlikely platoon of Jewish-American soldiers dropped into Nazi-occupied France by the Allies to act as a roving insurgency, capturing and mutilating Nazi stragglers in order to unnerve the German high command. At least, that’s their mission until they become tasked with something even grander a top-secret assignment to target the Nazi leadership, which is personally shepherded by a cigar-chomping Winston Churchill.

Among other things, Inglourious Basterds is ultraviolent, which makes it not utterly new terrain for Roth, who is a long-time friend of Tarantino, as well as the writer/director of the horror smash Hostel and its criminally-underrated sequel, Hostel: Part II. Time and again, Roth’s work has examined the notion of pleasure as a counterpoint to pain, putting a microscope to characters who secretly relish the opportunity to cause suffering in others, and with Basterds he deepens that examination considerably. Few would doubt the righteousness of Donny’s cause, yet this is a soldier for whom revenge has seemingly become indistinguishable from bloodlust; for whom torture and execution are a personal reward, to the point that it’s impossible to imagine him existing within the confines of a real army, or even a more traditional war film. Roth recently called up SuicideGirls to discuss the real-life implications of playing a man consumed with a desire to take Nazi hides, as well as Nation’s Pride, Inglourious Basterds faux Nazi propaganda film-within-a-film that bears his directorial stamp.


Eli Roth: So you do the interviews for SuicideGirls now?

Ryan Stewart: Some of them, yeah.

ER: I remember talking to Daniel Robert Epstein a couple of times, before he passed away.

RS: He was the man. Nobody did it better.

ER: I know. He was a good dude, you’ve got some big shoes to fill. But I’m looking forward to talking to you. I really love the site. I always thought the film interviews, in particular, on the site were really, really fantastic.

RS: Well, you’re talking to a guy who saw Hostel: Part IIfour times in the theater, so I think we’ll get along fine.

ER: I love it, thank you. You’re the one!

RS: Yep. I made my contribution to whatever the box-office was.

ER: It did well. It did better than people think it did. It did well enough for them to make a number three, let’s put it that way. It’s running on cable now, so a lot of people who missed it in the theaters are finally catching it. Also, there was a thing in Entertainment Weekly this week where they listed the twenty greatest horror films of the past twenty years and Hostel: Part IIwas on there. I thought that was nice.

RS: I remember thinking that Lauren German, in particular, deserved a lot more positive attention than she got. She really knocked that role out of the park.

ER: Lauren German is a kind of unsung hero of film. She’s done a lot of indie movies and I wanted Hostel II to blow her up. I think people who see her really do respond to her. She’s a superb, superb actor and I was lucky to work with her. She was really great.

RS: You’re probably starting to become an expert on shooting in Europe.

ER: My third movie in Europe! And my second fake trailer, fake movie. I’ve made three movies in Europe and two fake movies in Europe – Thanksgiving and Nation’s Pride. I love shooting in Europe. I really had incredible experiences on both Hostel movies, and it was a very similar type of crew, a similar method of working, with the German crews in Berlin. It was great, I loved it, and it was very strange for me to be there as an actor. I remember my first crew production meeting as the splinter unit director on Nation’s Pride, and my first instinct was to answer every question, so it was a little strange to sit there next to Quentin while he went around the room with people. But yeah, I loved shooting over there. I like getting out of my element. I like getting outside my comfort zone and going to a new country and exploring a new city and learning a new language and making new friends. I’d love to shoot in every country in the world, make a movie in every different country.

RS: Did you outline Nation’s Pride as a feature? Was it all Quentin’s conception?

ER: Well, what happened was that Quentin had the story in the script. You know, Zoller in the tower firing at the American soldiers. And he had the location picked. And he had some very specific moments, like the Bo Svenson line and the “Who wants to send a message to Germany!” I think there were three specific moments that Quentin wanted to shoot. It was all Quentin’s idea, he just said “I need battle footage,” so he thought maybe just some guys firing and Zoller firing back. And I just gave him two hundred shots in five and a half minutes. In the script Zoller picks a guy apart, so I specifically shot two squibs in the shoulder and him shooting at a guy’s knees. I also flew my brother Gabriel to Berlin and he was my second-unit director, cause I had all these sequences that I wanted to do. We shot piles of bodies getting higher and higher, guys running and falling over walls and being thrown out of buildings. I really wanted it to feel like a war epic. And I came up with this bit of Zoller carving the swastika and Quentin loved it. It was all about the swastika: the swastika and the bullets, Zoller turning and you see the swastika on his helmet, then we showed bullets covering the swastika and there’s been a passage of time and he uncovers it and the power of the swastika gives him the power to continue fighting. [laughs] It was a very interesting experiment for me, pushing myself that hard both as an actor and as a director, and also filming that kind of subject mater. Tonally, it was very different for me. I loved shooting in black and white, I loved shooting that kind of 1940s hammy acting, but I didn’t want it to be a joke. I wanted it to look like an authentic propaganda film. Quentin was ecstatic – he said “Eli, if I had done this it would have been like eight shots, and you did two hundred shots!” That was like a thank you to him, for everything he’s done for me.

RS: Was it emotionally difficult for you, getting those shots? Or all business?

ER: Yeah, it was all business. I mean, I didn’t want it to be a watered-down propaganda movie. The purpose of the film, Nation’s Pride, was for it to be shown in the context of Hitler enjoying it, so I knew the more authentic it was, the more self-aggrandizing it was, the more ridiculous it would make Hitler and Goebbels look. So, I wasn’t making it in order to make the greatest Nazi movie every made, I was making a movie that would show just how ridiculous and self-aggrandizing those buffoons were. They just look like apes when they are sitting and laughing at that stuff and enjoying it. So, sadly, it was all too accurate – a lot of people thought it was an actual propaganda film. They didn’t even realize that I had shot that footage, and I took that as a very high compliment. But no, it was actually much more difficult to film the acting scenes. The directing I love, I get more and more excited as I’m getting my shots, and when I tackle a subject matter I dive into it fully, so that by the time I’m shooting I’ve already gotten over anything that I might be uncomfortable with long before. But when I was shooting that scene where I beat Rachtman to death – beat his head in with a baseball bat – I put on forty pounds of muscle for the part. I went into that character. I said, if I’m gonna do this, if I’m gonna be on screen next to Brad Pitt, I’ve got to dive in like Peter Sellers or Robert De Niro. I had to become the role, and I had always wanted to do that, but I never had a reason to.

Writing and directing is my passion, but when Quentin put this opportunity in front of me, I knew right away that I would have to prove to everyone that there was a very specific reason why Quentin cast me and no one else in that part, and that it had nothing to do with us being friends, and that it wasn’t because we’ve made movies together. It was because he wanted a Jewish guy from Boston, he wanted a guy who could bring intensity, and he felt that I had a talent for acting that I had never mined or pushed myself to fully realize. And now this was a reason to do it. I also knew that I had to win over everyone instantly when I came out of that cave, and it wasn’t just about me putting on muscle, you had to see the look in this guy’s eyes. You had to look in his eyes and see in his face the pain and the anguish and the murderous rage. You had to know that he is going to beat every Nazi to death that he comes across. To do that, I had to dredge up the most painful experiences of my life. And I found that after shooting, even though the scene was fake, the things that I was thinking of were so real that I was just devastated. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But I made myself do it repeatedly, day after day, so it was really intense. The acting was a much more intense experience than the directing. With directing, I get physically tired, but I push that aside because I know I’m getting my pieces and the film is gonna work great. But with acting, you are in your head, in your zone, in all of these moments, and then at the end of the day it doesn’t just go away. You can’t just turn it off.

RS: I would think that creating a backstory for Donny would be unnecessary for you. He seems like such a force of nature – a vessel fueled by your own emotions.

ER: You’re wrong, because you can’t do that without the backstory. You can’t just come out and say “This is who I am, and I’m mad!” You have to know that there is a backstory, and that he feels like a real guy. The fact that he feels like a real guy to you means that there is a backstory. Everybody in the film has a backstory. That was the first thing Quentin said to me, he said “This isn’t Death Proof,” which is just a character of a guy who is just showing up and joking around and trying to pick up a girl in a bar and it’s not that much of a character. There was no backstory for that guy, he was just friends with the other guy. This, Quentin said, was to be a 360 degree character, and it’s not just going to be lifting weights to prepare for the part, I’d have to know this guy like I know my best friend. I’d have to know who his parents are, his brothers, his sisters, everything about him, his entire life story. When we got to Berlin, everyone sat around and the first thing we did was to talk about who we are, where we were, and we just talked about everything – in character. There were some people who couldn’t keep up and they were fucking gone the next day. It was a military operation. If you couldn’t keep up, you were out. And there were scenes that we filmed of Donny in Boston cutting hair, and I trained to cut hair for the role. There was a scene that was cut – if Quentin shoots his prequel he’s gonna use it – and producer Pilar Savone, her father owns Umberto salons in Beverly Hills, and Umberto trained me to cut hair! So, I was willing to cut hair for the part – I was that serious about it. Everything has to feel real and full to you, even if it’s never discussed and never explained. You know who Donny is, you know how he relates to the script, you know how the other guys relate to him. And yes, he’s in it for that moment, but he has to make an impact. There’s a reason why Floyd pops in True Romance and why Christopher Walken pops in Pulp Fiction, and it’s not just because they got the funny lines. There’s a full character there with a life and a backstory. Once you see them, you remember them they’re real people. Quentin demanded that everyone create a 360 degree character. Quentin knows and you as an actor know where they’ve been before the war, during the war, after the war, and if they’re killed what they would have gone on to do. That’s what separates Quentin from everyone else, he thinks of the movie to that level of detail. And even if there are scenes in your pocket that are never seen, it’s all stuff that contributes to making it feel real.

RS: The scene where you confront Rachtman, the captured Nazi, is unnerving because he’s so righteous. He’s convinced that of the two of you, he’s the good and noble character.

ER: We discussed it in the rehearsal period, and that’s what made the scene interesting. I think Donny doesn’t give a fuck either way. He’s seen that before. This is a guy that’s already beaten so many Nazis to death, and he’s seen them terrified, and he’s seen them try to act brave, but what made Rachtman an interesting character was that Quentin shows us that the guy has dignity. He’s gonna die a brave war hero. I think Quentin does a wonderful job there of creating someone who is very real and human and does not see himself as the bad guy. But I think that, for Donny, this doesn’t phase him at all. He just doesn’t give a fuck. He’s seen everything in the book and he’s not intimidated by anybody. He’s gonna fucking pummel them. They can act as brave as they want, he doesn’t give a shit. He’s going to demolish them. His job, when he comes out of that cave, is to terrify the other guys that are alive. That’s what Donny is there for, because we need information out of them. So, this guy knows that he’s dead and he wants to die with dignity – fine. Donny’s gonna make it entertaining either way. But that’s what I thought made it great, that little encounter between the two of them right before he smashes them with a bat. That made it really, really interesting. We had a wonderful time doing that scene.

RS: Quentin has expressed admiration in the past for some films of the period, mountain films and other stuff. What’s your position on those German directors?

ER: Mixed emotions. There are some amazing, amazing films of that period, but the directors that were Nazis, I don’t watch their movies on principle. I think Riefenstahl was a good filmmaker. You watch her films and they are well-made films, but there are so many other directors whose films I’d rather watch! [laughs] Most of the directors from that world at the time fled Europe for Hollywood. They fled the Nazis. So, yeah, those filmmakers [who stayed behind in Germany] disgust me. I want to kill them. If I saw Nazi filmmakers today, I would kill them. That’s how I feel about them, to be honest. I don’t want to dignify their work, based on what they did. But then you have to draw a line – it’s like, are you going to do that with every artist and every filmmaker? But the Holocaust is such a personal thing to me. Many distant relatives of mine were murdered in it, and anyone who contributed to that, I want to see them killed.

RS: Some have compared the last act of this film to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s obviously a much lighter entertainment, but both films evoke a sense of almost divine retribution.

ER: Well, the end of this movie is a cathartic ending, but at a certain point when you see the Nazis burning, their uniforms burn off. There’s a point in that fire sequence where it’s not enjoyable anymore and that’s a good thing. People should feel a bit uncomfortable and suddenly recognize that these are human beings that are being torched in that scene. And it’s not God coming down and doing it. It’s human beings doing it. The Nazis effectively built an oven with their own propaganda. They built their own inferno. So, I feel like it’s a much more complex and a much different film than Raiders of the Lost Ark. The purpose of Raiders is to have you cheering at the end of it, but with Inglourious Basterds it’s a kind of reserved cheer. The purpose wasn’t for us to get a bigger cheer than Raiders, I think this is a different movie trying to achieve different things. People feel good about the ending, but it’s not to the point that the theater erupts in joy. The scene goes on long enough that we say, wait a minute, these are people too. The fact that you are affected by it shows that you’re in touch with your human side.


Inglourious Basterds opens in theaters everywhere today.

I've been enjoying SG for a week or so now, and have a few suggestions that could make the experience even cooler: * LAST VISITOR - a list on your profile page that tells you the last 10 visitors you had. * PRIVATE MESSAGE BOX - so that you can leave messages for people, without them having to... more

I've been enjoying SG for a week or so now, and have a few suggestions that could make the experience even cooler:

* LAST VISITOR - a list on your profile page that tells you the last 10 visitors you had.


* PRIVATE MESSAGE BOX - so that you can leave messages for people, without them having to go to email to pick it up.

...that's about it from me. Keep up the amazing work all those involved.

[Edited on Apr 29, 2004 by hoisin]

Since Michael Pitt first made his big splash in films like Bully and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, many journalists have been calling him the next big thing in acting. With performances in The Dreamers and Wonderland he may just be proving them right. Now he is a playing a Kurt Cobain like rock star in Gus... more

Since Michael Pitt first made his big splash in films like Bully and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, many journalists have been calling him the next big thing in acting. With performances in The Dreamers and Wonderland he may just be proving them right.

Now he is a playing a Kurt Cobain like rock star in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days.

Check out the official site for Last Days

Daniel Robert Epstein: When did you become involved in “Last Days?” Director Gus Van Sant was saying you have been involved for years.

Michael Pitt: Maybe three years ago. Originally, Gus [Van Sant] had a couple of other people in mind. He was in between projects. He always has like five or six ideas he’s always talking about, and then he just mentioned this one day. I got really animated and was like, “You have to make this film,” and he was like, “I was actually thinking about you as the main character.” I really didn’t believe him at the time. I thought he was cool, but I thought he was a little misguided, because I was a big fan and I had lot of respect for him

DRE: Do you remember where you were when Kurt Cobain killed himself?

MP: I do, but I wasn’t a fan then. When I was younger, I really didn’t see the change, or impact, that he had. All I saw was that everyone was a fan by that point, and I naturally gravitated away from that.

DRE: What albums or songs attracted you to them?

MP: It was Bleach and Incesticide. I’m actually not that good with song names, but for me, the most impressive album is Incesticide and all the B sides. That album is amazing. For me, that album is what’s going to keep it alive, as opposed to Nevermind. Nevermind was a big success, but those other albums were when their success wasn’t as big. For me, [Incesticide] is what’s going to keep it going.

DRE: Did you study a lot of footage of Kurt Cobain for the role?

MP: I had [already] seen everything, but then I revisited things. I was able to look at some personal footage.

DRE: Did you connect to the experience of being in a band while creating the character of Blake?

MP: I think musicians are all different. We weren’t doing remakes of concerts and [explaining] how they came up with certain riffs, which is all just fucking hearsay. It was more about the last 3 days of his life. Definitely, his success and profession was a factor, but I was thinking more about his life, his wife, and his child.

DRE: Do you have mixed feelings about success?

MP: I think success is subjective. It sounds cliché, but success is your friends, your family, what you do, and if you’re happy when you wake up.

DRE: What kind of strategy, if any, do you have for choosing each role?
MP: There’s a bit of strategy that goes from one character to the next. It’s about changing perception, but I really just do things that interest me.

DRE: Being a musician, did you have any input as far as the music for “Last Days?”

MP: I didn’t really write the music for the film. Well, the last song “From Death to Birth” was a song I wrote a long time ago. Any reservation I had about doing this film was based on me being a fan [of Cobain] and dealing with that. Another big factor was my own music, and I didn’t want it to appear that I was trying to benefit [from] a song that I wrote. So, basically, the concept I came up with was that if I make music on the film, it will be improvised and it will be what happens that day. That is what I did, like in the first song. In the last scene we did about 7 or 8 takes, and each take I made up a song. It was something that said: This is a musician, he’s playing a song but there’s no confusion. And then Gus, in the last take, said, “Play that song,” and then I think Thurston [Moore the film’s music coordinator] suggested that we put that song in. I trust Gus and I trust Thurston.

DRE: Was Van Sant very rigid with the script or did he give you freedom?

MP: The whole film was improvised. The shoot was seventeen days. There was a map, no dialogue, and there are a lot of the scenes that are in the movie that weren’t written. I like working like that. Even when there is a script, I try and do that, but you can’t always do that. [For me], it’s the first time where it has been the whole thing. If you’re going to do a film like that, as a director, it can be so fucking great. You have to seriously trust the people you’re working with and make sure you can still make your vision with everyone’s input, which is amazing because he [Van Sant] just does it. Sometimes its eerie, because it doesn’t even matter what you do. Some directors have very strong egos and they say, “No, don’t put the cup there, put it here.” And Gus is like, “Put the cup wherever you want. You can put it across the room.”

DRE: How did you meet Aaron Woodley and get to do “Rhinoceros Eyes”?

MP: That film came to me. To be honest, it was the only original thing that I got. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I don’t care. I have issues with that film, because, at one point, they didn’t hand over total control to Aaron. You decide to do a film with someone, and that’s who you want to do a film with. It was the first feature for him, so it probably upsets him less because he got to make his movie.

DRE: What was it like working with Bernardo Bertolucci in “The Dreamers?”

MP: It was intense. It was a lot of things. Here was this director that is revered, and I’m starring in it. I was in Europe, alone for three months, and I was the only American. I feel like the relationship between actor and director is maybe different in Europe, but that’s probably not true. There was this thing where it was like: You’re the actor and I’m the director. At first, me and Bertolucci were very much going head to head. Part of it was because he wasn’t used to me trying to be so involved, and part of it was me not knowing how to present things. But once we got that figured that out, it was amazing. I would get an idea and I would scream it in the middle of the shoot. I remember thinking this was a good idea, and then Bertolucci would stand up and look around and say, “Does anyone care to have this movie directed by Michael Pitt?” It was completely humiliating and I realized that you don’t yell out on set, you talk in private and you explain what you don’t like. I think when actors give their input, it can be very ego-driven and directors are scared of that. He saw it wasn’t about my ego, and more about the film and about making him look good and doing a good job for him.

DRE: Would you have done this film if it was a strict biographical account of Kurt Cobain?

MP: I don’t know, to tell you the truth. The hard thing is that I really respect Gus. It’s just my opinion, but I think he’s the most important American director we have. He takes the most risks. He’s just pure to me. So it’s this weird thing where maybe I would have done it. But I also respect him enough that, if I didn’t feel like I could do it, I wouldn’t say, “Yea I can do it” and just reap the benefits.

DRE: What are you planning on doing next? I hear that you are going to work with Steve Buscemi?

MP: That’s not a go yet. Right now I’m just working on my music mostly. We recorded last summer, and right now we’re trying to figure out how to release it. I think we’re going to go an independent route, so it’s going to be a longer process. I play guitar and sing.

DRE: Do you have a preference between music and acting?

MP: The day someone put money in my hand for a job, I bought a guitar and figured it out. I was like 18 or 19, which is pretty late. I was always a fan of music. The acting, I don’t know really how it happened. I was the only thing I though I could do well, and I was fascinated as a kid. I would just watch movies all day long, and then I moved to New York and just went for it.

DRE: You started out in the theater. Are you ever going to go back to it?

MP: I think I should. First job was “The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek.”

DRE: Do you have good memories working with director Larry Clark in “Bully?”

MP: That was the first time I think I felt at home. I didn’t have to pretend. No one was going to judge, and no one’s going to think I’m a freak. I can just work. For “Bully,” they wouldn’t really see me, because I wasn’t on the list. So I went to Larry’s house, and I was like, “Read me, Read me.” That was the part that I could get, and I was lucky to get that.. The part was actually smaller on the page, but he just let me riff

DRE: Do you want to direct?

MP: Yes, I want to direct. I have like three projects in mind, but I think I’ve been out of it too long to direct a theater piece.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Classic Set of the Day:


Alexis - Turtles



Alexis' sets are always inspired. She is stuck in a Gulliver fantasy land where her toys attack her, and often remove her clothing She has done sets with her Wesley Crusher action figure, TMNT, her perpetual savior PeeWee Herman, and SImpsons. Check out Alexis page to enter her twisted Swift nightmare.

by Jensen Yummmm. This recipe is inspired by an SG member that told me about his yummy ice cream variation with lavender, another member blogging about pumpkin pot pie (see what I did there?), and an, um, interesting graduation present I received from a friend. If you aren’t really into cooking with... more

by Jensen

Yummmm. This recipe is inspired by an SG member that told me about his yummy ice cream variation with lavender, another member blogging about pumpkin pot pie (see what I did there?), and an, um, interesting graduation present I received from a friend. If you aren’t really into cooking with medicinal substances and/or don’t have a valid prescription from your doctor, then you can definitely tweak the recipe to suit your needs :]. And if you guys need a refresher on ice cream making, here is a video on how easy it is to make (with nothing more hi tech than two ziplock bags and a few hunks of ice to do the chillin’):







What You’ll Need

• About 1 1/2 cups whole milk or half-and-half


• 2 tablespoons peanut butter


• 2 tablespoons sugar


• An empty tea bag (you can just cut the top off one, empty the contents, and staple it shut


• A little over a teaspoon of decent herb


• About 8 tablespoons of salt


• A gallon sized ziplock bag and an quart sized ziplock bag


• A double broiler pot, or just a small pot and a larger one


• Two cups of ice

1. Fill your larger pot with a few cups of water. Put enough water so that it goes about half way up your smaller pan, when placed inside of it. Turn the stove on low.



2. Put 1 1/2 cups of whole milk or half and half into the small pot. Half and half will probably produce stronger ice cream. I guess it just depends on if you want to chillax for the evening or if you want to be spicoli. Put about one teaspoon of greenery, or a little bit more, into an empty tea bag, then staple it shut.

3. Let your teabag hang out in the milk, over very low heat, for 1 to 2 hours. Again, it just depends on how delicious/therapeutic you would like your ice cream to be. Stir it every once in a while.



4. After your milk is all loaded up with reparative goodies, turn the heat off and add two tablespoons of both sugar and peanut butter. It will probably look pretty chunky and gross. Put that in the fridge or freezer until it is chilly.

5. Take the teabag out and pour the mixture into a quart sized plastic bag. In a gallon sized bag, add two cups of ice and 6-8 tablespoons of salt. Put the small bag inside of the large bag.



6. Put on an oven mitt and shake the shit out of those bags. Until, you know, it looks like ice cream.



7. Cut one of the corners of the small bag and squeeze the contents into a bowl. Eat. Enjoy. And have a dang nice night.

by Blogbot (video) Radeo Suicide hopes to escape from Frogger and the Bat Cave – with a little help from her friends Alissa and Frolic. What are your resolutions for 2011? (Leave them in the comments section below.) more

by Blogbot



Radeo Suicide hopes to escape from Frogger and the Bat Cave – with a little help from her friends Alissa and Frolic.

What are your resolutions for 2011?

(Leave them in the comments section below.)

Chloe Sevigny got a headstart on being a rebel. Her first film was the controversial Kids by Larry Clark. Since then she’s upped the controversial aspect of acting by being in films like Gummo, American Psycho, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Boys Don’t Cry. Now she’s in the new Woody Allen... more

Chloe Sevigny got a headstart on being a rebel. Her first film was the controversial Kids by Larry Clark. Since then she’s upped the controversial aspect of acting by being in films like Gummo, American Psycho, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Boys Don’t Cry.

Now she’s in the new Woody Allen movie, Melinda and Melinda. The film is split up into two parts the comedy and the tragedy. As usual Sevigny appears in the tragedy portion as a woman who is disenchanted with her marriage and starts an affair with someone else’s boyfriend.

Check out the official website for Melinda and Melinda

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hilary Swank pulled it off again at the Oscars.

Chloe Sevigny: She did. It's a great to get awarded.

DRE: Are you next?

CS: Oh, I don't know. I hope one day I'll be back there. We all have our own path.

DRE: How did this part in Melinda and Melinda come to you?

CS: I'd met with Woody on two other films before this, I read for him one time and obviously didn't get the parts. Then I got a call from my agent saying, “Woody's got a part for you but he wants to see you again. So you have to go up to his place and meet with him.” So I went in and it was very brief. He sat me in this chair under this light and said, “I just wanted to have a look at you.” That was it and then he offered me the part.

DRE: Was the experience different from what you expected?

CS: I'd heard that he didn't say anything to you at all and that you're really left out on your own but he was actually a lot more vocal. He gave us a lot more direction than I expected. He would give you more direction if he wasn't happy with something or if he didn't believe in something you were saying. He definitely encouraged a bit of improvisation and making the words into your own.

DRE: Is doing a Woody Allen film something you can check off your list as a New York actor?

CS: Yeah I think every New York actor wants to and dreams about being in a Woody Allen film. When I first started acting I made a list of all the directors that I wanted to work with and he was at the top. So I'm very pleased about having this experience.

DRE: Who else was on that list?

CS: Oh, there were many, and I've gotten to work with some of them. I think that Lars Von Trier was on the list and I've worked with him and also Jim Jarmusch and I've worked with him. So there've been a few.

DRE: How would you compare the directing styles of Lars and Woody?

CS: Lars is very personal and he gets in your business and there's a lot of chit chatting and Woody is very much just like a working experience. You go to work, do your job and you leave. Lars is a lot more joking around and teasing you and stuff like that. It’s two very different environments and plus working on the two films that I worked on with Lars, Dogville and Manderlay, we were on a soundstage. So we're all kind of stuck in there together which added to the sort of strangeness.

DRE: With the two parts to this movie it seems like the comedy has Jews in it and the tragedy part is WASPS.

CS: I didn't realize that. You're right. I definitely saw her more as a WASPY sort of woman. She came from a really good family, went to an all girl school, and then she doesn't really have to work. She has family money, but works as a teacher to keep herself busy. And I think that it also comes out in her relationships. She's in this really unhappy relationship yet she stays in it for fear of what other people will think of her, disappointing her family and that seems like kind of a waspish trait.

DRE: Is your real New York apartment as big as the one in the movie?

CS: Half as big.

DRE: Did you know much about the comic elements of the movie?

CS: Yes because I got to read the entire script.

DRE: Why did he do that?

CS: I guess he likes me. They said, “You can come in and read the script and decide whether or not you want to make the movie.”

DRE: Did you have a choice between the comedy and the drama?

CS: No he had me in mind for the drama unfortunately.

DRE: Why unfortunately?

CS: I think that it's more fun to do the comedy. I love his dramas but I think that his comedies are strong too.

DRE: Was there much difference between shooting Dogville and Manderlay?

CS: It felt like penance, like real torture because at least on Dogville, we had body doubles to do the real torture work such as when you're just walking around or when you were in the far background. When they're shooting a scene in the foreground, they'd have your body double which was a very strange experience going to lunch because we'd all be in our outfits with our hair and then you'd sit down and there would be a table next to you with everyone looking exactly like everyone else. It was very strange. But on Manderlay they didn't have body doubles. So I had to do a lot of the tedious work of lying in the background or pretending to work in the background for hours on end. It was really an exercise in discipline.

DRE: Lars cut the donkey slaughter scene; do you think he should have kept it?

CS: The donkey was very old and very ill and was going to be slaughtered anyhow. It wasn't like he got a young donkey. The donkey was on his last legs, but I think that it would cause a lot of unnecessary brouhaha. One of the actors actually left because he was very upset that he was going to sacrifice the donkey for film.

DRE: Nicole Kidman had some words to say about working with Lars. Would you work with him again?

CS: I would because I think that his focus is mainly on the leading ladies and she was a leading lady. In Manderlay I was supporting Bryce Dallas Howard and when you're a supporting character you don't get as much of the intensity of Lars. You get to just do your thing in the background. He still likes to get your goat now and again, but it's not as hard on you.

DRE: Was it by choice you avoided doing a lot of Hollywood movies?

CS: I think that in the beginning of my career that was something that I was striving for. I only wanted to do intense movies or do movies that I thought were changing the face of cinema or something. I was a real idealist especially because at that time my boyfriend was Harmony Korine. He can be very influential as he was on me and also I didn't go to the movies that often. I watched a lot of movies at home, a lot of old movies so I didn't really see a lot of commercials films and I think that I was just being young and idealistic.

Now I realize that there are movies for everyone obviously and there's room enough for everything. I love to go and watch Spider-Man or something and just be wildly entertained for two hours so I would love to be in a film like that. I just have to sort of find that crossover somehow. I've been offered parts in romantic comedies as the friend to the star and things like that. I just didn't think that was right for me at the time. I think that I'm kind of holding out and waiting for the right crossover project. I think that you're also afraid that you're not going to be forgiven. Although actors can do terrible movies, walk away and then win Oscars.

DRE: That’s happened.

CS: Yeah. Look at The Core.

DRE: What superpower would you like have?

CS: Superpower? Oh my God, I don't know. Superpower, there's so many. I guess I'd really like to be able to fly. That’s not very creative.

DRE: They’re looking for someone to play Supergirl.

CS: Are they? I don't think that people really think of me as athletic, but in fact I'm very athletic actually. I'm quite fit.

DRE: How do you think The Brown Bunny will be perceived years from now?

CS: I've always been in films that were sort of controversial or pushing the limits of what you can and can't say or do on film. I hope that it will take some sort of place in history. I feel like we’re in such conservative times and it's just atrocious. It's funny too because Vincent Gallo and I are two of the most conservative people I know and for us to make this movie, is very odd.

DRE: Has Thom Fitzgerlad’s Three Needles been distributed yet?

CS: I don't think so. I've been waiting for that film to come out. It's my favorite role since the character of Lana in Boys Don't Cry. I'm really proud of the performance and really excited about it. I can't wait to see the film and I don't know what's going on.

DRE: Who do you play?

CS: I play a Novice working in South Africa at a mission. It deals with the AIDS epidemic which I think is an epidemic that people aren't focusing on much anymore. It would be good to kind of get it back into the spotlight. Our film is very interesting because my portion, at least, takes place in South Africa and I think that a lot of people aren't aware of things that are happening with the disease in South Africa .Some men think that you'll be cured of the disease by having sex with a virgin. I mean, that's something that they believe in. They don't rape virgins as you and I think of a virgin, like teen girls, they rape children. So it's very eye opening and disturbing. So we'll see.

DRE: The final Star Wars film is coming out this year, were you ever a big fan?

CS: Yeah. I was Princess Leia for Halloween probably when I was like six or seven. I remember the photographs. I don't remember the time. I had the buns and the white gown. My brother was a Storm Trooper.

DRE: He should have been Luke Skywalker.

CS: I know, but I don't think the outfit was as cool.

DRE: What’s the next thing you are working on?

CS: I'm actually about to do a TV show for HBO. I'm doing one of their Sunday night dramas. It's called Big Love and it's about Mormons. I play a polygamist in the modern day. It's a family drama, but there are three wives.

DRE: Who do you play?

CS: I'm the middle wife and I grew up in a community on a compound. My father, a prophet, is played by the great Harry Dean Stanton. So I think that I have a bit of an ego trip going on where I'm a princess and my father is a prophet and I'm kind of stuck in the middle of these two wives which I think is difficult, sort of like being the middle child. I overspend, am kind of bratty and a really bad mother because I'm used to all the other wives taking care of the kids. It's really the juiciest part.

Tom Hanks is producing it and there are two writers. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of them before, but I think that it's going to be like Six Feet Under. Jeanne Tripplehorn is the older wife and Ginnifer Goodwin is the younger wife and Bill Paxton is the husband.

DRE: Mainstream Mormons don’t really like the fundamentalists. Are you expecting any backlash?

CS: The Latter Day Saints try and sweep that under the carpet as much as they can. It gives them such a bad name but still the production company said, “Oh, we're going to go shoot in Salt Lake.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?' But we'll see. “

DRE: When does that start shooting?

CS: At the end of the month. We already shot the pilot episode. The show will come out in September.

DRE: How did doing all that leave you feeling about marriage as an institution?

CS: I mean, I still believe in the institution of marriage, and I'd love to get married. I think doing it in a church and stuff is a little old fashioned. But I think that way that celebrities treat marriage is equally as disgusting. There's just divorce all the time and I don't know. I'm not going to talk about it.

I hope to get married sooner rather than later and have children and all the rest of that. But I don't know, I guess I'll take it as it comes.

DRE: Where you do you fall in the question of whether life is a comedy or a tragedy?

CS: I think that until the past few years I definitely thought of it as a tragedy and was a fairly depressed teenager. I was a disaffected youth but now I'm trying to sort of take things a little more light.

DRE: Would you like to do a broad comedy?

CS: I'd like to do sort of a Coen Brothers or Alexander Payne style comedy, something like that.

DRE: What are your favorite DVDs?

CS: I don't own many. I don't get any of them for free. I do own Masculine Feminine., Streetwise and Over the Edge.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck