by Damon Martin In the wake of the uprising in Egypt over the last week, the power of the internet and social networking sites has truly reached its full potential as important and necessary tools for a new kind of revolution. Seeking to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the Arab Republic... more

by Damon Martin

In the wake of the uprising in Egypt over the last week, the power of the internet and social networking sites has truly reached its full potential as important and necessary tools for a new kind of revolution.





Seeking to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the Arab Republic in tyrannical fashion for the last 30 years, protesters took to the streets in Egypt. Self organized using common threads (such as the hash-tag #Jan25) on Twitter and groups on Facebook, this is as much a social media revolution as it is a physical one.

With protestors continuing to flood the streets in Egypt, President Mubarak’s plan of attack went from accosting those involved to shutting down the forms of communication they were relying upon. In an unprecedented move for such a seemingly open and Westernized nation, the Egyptian government essentially switched off the internet, and much of the country’s telecommunications networks.



The movement hasn’t been stifled however. Aided by those in the international tech community, limited internet service has been restored in some areas, and websites such as Google have set up phone lines where people can call and leave voicemails that will automatically be tagged and placed on a common Twitter thread. Fax machines are also being used to transmit messages that are appearing on Twitter and on Facebook to help protesters organize, regroup and gain support from around the world for the Egyptian revolution.



Mubarak tried to quiet the charge by announcing that he wouldn’t seek relection, and by putting longtime confidant Omar Suleiman in place as Vice President and a possible successor to his rule. However, since Suleiman has stood alongside Mubarak for more than two decades, these hollow moves are doing little to sate those who have taken to the streets. Undermining his credibility further as a plausible replacement is the knowledge that Suleiman served as a rendition ally to the United States, allowing terror suspects to be tortured under his watchful eye.

And in a move that will likely embarrass both the Egyptian and United Staes governments, Wikileaks has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The site turned up the heat on Mubarak when it released cables that highlighted the corruption and misdeeds of his administration. Wikileaks’ deluge of no-longer secret communiques also appear to show the U.S. governments complicit and premeditated support of Suleiman as a successor – which serves as further proof of the emptiness of Mubarak’s “concessions.”



Yesterday Egyptians flooded the capital for what was intended to be a peaceful “Million Man March” to show strength in insurmountable numbers and that change wasn’t optional but an inevitability. Sadly the demonstration turned violent. As protesters lined the streets and marched towards Tahrir Square, pro-Mubarak supporters caused disruptions, with some of them riding horses and camels while brandishing whips. Heavy gunfire and molotov cocktails were launched back and forth as the protest seemingly degenerated into a pitched battle.

Many believe that those causing much of the violence during Wednesday’s protest were actually paid agents of the Mubarak government, who were sent in to cause disruption so the reigning government had cause to use force to quell the oposition. Several American journalists including CNN’s Anderson Cooper were attacked while reporting on the events in Tahrir Square, with pro-Mubarak supporters punching and assaulting members of several news organizations.



As of early Thursday morning, Egyptian officials announced over 800 people had been taken to hospital for treatment of injuries resulting from the violence. They also report that five are dead (though the actual number is likely to be higher). Protests are expected to continue, and, given the numbers involved, are unlikely to be quelled until Mubarak acquiesces.

In the 20 minutes or so since I began writing this article, more than 1,000 messages have appeared on Twitter with the #Jan25 hash tag. It seems social media has finally graduated from vapid updates to a tool for meaningful social revolution and change.

Cherie Priest is one of those writers who became an overnight success after more than a decade of hard work. She has two book series going on right now. Her new book is “Bloodshot,” an urban fantasy novel featuring an obsessive compulsive vampire thief nicknamed “Chesire Red” who has an ex-Navy... more

Cherie Priest is one of those writers who became an overnight success after more than a decade of hard work. She has two book series going on right now. Her new book is “Bloodshot,” an urban fantasy novel featuring an obsessive compulsive vampire thief nicknamed “Chesire Red” who has an ex-Navy SEAL Cuban drag queen sidekick. It’s a great, fun read with a very different take on vampires than most books offer.

For most of us, though, she is the author of “Boneshaker” and “Dreadnought,” which stand as two of the best steampunk novels. Part of a project that Priest calls “The Clockwork Century” the books stand alone but offer a very unique vision of an alternate history in which the Civil War spanned a generation and the United States looks very different. Our conversation veered from local history and the Seattle Underground tour to why zombies are the monster of our times to what makes steampunk great for ex-goths. In short, we should all hope to be as cool as Cherie Priest.


ALEX DUEBEN: You’ve been at this for a while. Are you still on pins and needles when a book comes out?

CHERIE PRIEST: Oh, totally. The running joke at Tor is that I’m an overnight success after my seventh book in ten years. (laughs) Nobody read anything of mine until Boneshaker. I sat up last night and wrote up a [blog] post and changed all my bios and updated all of my links. It feels like back to school shopping if that makes any sense. (laughs)

AD: Now Dreadnought is a sequel to Boneshaker and I don’t want to spoil how exactly. Where did the book start for you? Because opening on a nurse in a Civil war hospital in Virginia is a long way from the Seattle that Boneshaker took place in.

CP: The answer to that is actually a little bit complicated. Not really because of the narrative at all, but because of contract issues. To try to make a long story short, Boneshaker was the last book I was contracted for through MacMillan and I was acutely aware that if Boneshaker didn’t do well, then I was I probably done with MacMillan. When we had a draft of it and started sending it around, the feedback started to be really really good. Before the book came out we had Warren Ellis and Mike Mignola and a bunch of pretty heavy hitters endorse it. A few months before Boneshaker came out, Tor said we would like to talk about one more book, mostly because the feedback was so good. So I was like, yeah, one more book. And other hand, oh, only one more book. If Boneshaker doesn’t take off, what I’m looking at is an aborted series. So I decided instead of telling a direct sequel, I was going to tell another story set in the same universe, but loosely connected to it so at least it would be two independent stories and not an aborted series that never managed to find its end.

On Boneshaker, the number one piece of feedback disguised as complaint, or vice versa, was that people wanted to see more of the world outside the wall. What does the rest of the world look like? So I thought, well, I’ll show the entire rest of the country and what better way to go from the East Coast to the West Coast. It’s not a travelogue. There’s a lot going on in it. But you do get to go through the border states and see the unincorporated West. There’s some intrigue and spying and steampunk Texas rangers and undead Mexican separatists.

AD: When Boneshaker came out, you started a website and published an essay about “The clockwork century.” Had you plotted out in some detail this world the books take place in, even if it wasn’t seen?

CP: Yes and no. That was kind of the fun of it. I actually wrote Tanglefoot after Boneshaker had been written, it was just published first. That’s the novelette that went through Subterranean. It started with this vague idea to write a steampunk novel colliding with the fact that I had lived in Seattle for a couple years and I wanted to write a Seattle novel. There’s a big steampunk scene here. I think largely because there’s a big aging goth scene here, not to put too fine a point on it. (laughs) I count myself in that number. I’m not criticizing anybody.

I wanted there to be a really good reason for all of the advanced tech. I wanted to have this universe where the technology is symptomatic of the setting and it’s not gears glued on hats. So reverse-engineering from that, what drives technology more than war? And in the nineteenth century, we had this giant war. If you poke around online or in the right patent archives you can find all this stuff from around 1864 and 1865 where inventors were proposing these crazy-ass war machines. This awesome steampunk Victorian tech that they were basically trying to bribe the Union army into giving them money to develop. They ran out of war, so these machines never happened. I thought, well, let’s give them more war. Let’s make it twenty years so the tech can really catch on and spread. In what kind of universe could the Civil War have been sustainable for twenty years? The fact is that the Confederacy just didn’t have enough people. They weren’t going to win. Well, let’s say England does get involved and let’s say they break the Union naval blockade. Let’s say Texas is an independent republic because they discovered oil fifty-sixty years sooner and now have this diesel-based economy. Let’s say immigration starts drying up in New York, which it did by the end of the war because they were grabbing German and Irish and Italian immigrants and throwing them on the front lines. There were draft riots about it. This is stuff that actually did happen and give that another fifteen years and it will be even worse. So I ended up with this universe that is sitting on the very cusp of what is sustainable and I hope it’s more apparent in Dreadnought really than in Boneshaker that this war cannot possibly go on much longer. And things have started suggesting themselves. It’s been fun and really interesting.

AD: Boneshaker was this cool steampunk-zombie novel, but you really get that sense in Deadnaught that the world has been opened up very consciously and it gives a sense that the Civil War has been transformed into something bigger and longer, like what the Thirty Years War was to Europe, this endless chaotic conflict.

CP: If you have a war that’s been going on for twenty years, the people who are fighting the war at the end, are not the people who started the war. These are people who were children. Most of their fathers died in the war and now they’re fighting. Looking at wars that have run that long, it was interesting how it will bleed dry whoever is participating in it. It was a fun intellectual exercise, but I get all kinds of hate mail from people complaining about how bad my history is. It’s not bad. It’s alternate. (laughs)

AD: Seriously? They just don’t get it?

CP: Once every week or two I’ll get an email from someone in Seattle going, now this was a fun book but I hope you know that the King Street Station was not even begun until nineteen-oh-whatever. I’m like, yeah, the zombies didn’t bother you? (laughs) You were good with the zombies but you had a hard time with me moving up the train station by thirty years? Give me a break. I knew it hadn’t been built yet. I’m just playing around. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

AD: People accept the zombies without question, but the historical details bother them.

CP: Yeah, nobody’s worried about the zombies, but they are so happy to correct me on all these little points. (laughs) Really? Is that all you can find to complain about? I’m going to put that in the win column. My husband says I should have a page on the clockwork century called “Yes, I know.” Yes, I know the Civil War was not going on in 1880. Yes I know...

AD: So now that it has done well and it is a series. How long do you see this alternate history series being?

CP: There’s going to be at least two more books from Tor. I’m working on the sequel to Dreadnought which is called Ganymede. After that the one we’re tentatively going to do is Inexplicable.
I want to tell a Florida story. I’m from Florida and a lot of people figure that Florida didn’t have anything to do with the Civil War, but it actually did. It’s always strange being a native Floridian because many Floridians strongly identify as Southern but most people who are traditionally identified as Southern think they aren’t. You’re constantly fighting to be recognized as part of the losing side. (laughs) I want to do a Florida story and I have some notes on that. And I want to do a D.C. story. I want to end the war in a few books, because the war has to end.

There’s a bunch of different directions I feel like I’ve found my Discworld, if you know Terry Pratchett, where so many stories suggest themselves. It’s fun. I’ve been approached about doing things with it, like roleplaying games. For the first time in my life people are asking me if they can do fanfiction, which is something really new for me. I’m like, just don’t show it to me, don’t try sell it, knock yourself out. It feels like something infinitely expandable.

AD: It does seem to lend itself to not just many stories but many different kinds of stories.

CP: The one I’m working on now, Ganymede, I wanted to do a New Orleans story. I’m from the Gulf coast and I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans. Hunley, the submarine, was actually developed in New Orleans and was scuttled when the yankees took the city in 1862. And poor Hunley drowned in his own machine. I have the two guys who helped him develop it in real life basically continue his research so we have Hunley 4.0 and it’s called the Ganymede. Again, playing with real history and how things would have gone in real life. The yankees took the city in 1862 because it was the most important port in the hemisphere and they knew that they couldn’t let the South keep it. So they took it and they sat on it for the rest of the war. But in this universe, if Texas is allied with the Confederacy and Texas is a very powerful republic, I don’t think Texas would have let them keep it. So you end up with this situation where you have a city that is occupied by Texas because the Confederacy can’t hold it and basically nobody is happy about it. (laughs) There’s a large free black population in New Orleans that was very happy to see the Union. And there are a lot of Southerners who weren’t but now Texas has to do their dirty work for them and it’s a constant reminder of their own failure. And Texas doesn’t want to be there because they came in thinking we’re going to take care of this for a year and now it’s been nine years and they’re stuck. All this stuff you can actually do with real history and muck around with it and have a good time with it. All these things just suggest themselves, so it’s been an awful lot of fun for me.

AD: It’s such a rich period and so much steampunk tends to be British.

CP: There’s a contingent that feels that if it doesn’t happen in England, it doesn’t count. I kinda think that’s bullshit. (laughs) I reject your reality and replace it with my own. People can sit around and fight about that all day. I don’t care. I’m just having a good time and if people like it, hey, come on and play.

AD: At what point when you were working on Boneshaker did the zombies come in? You seem to like zombies.

CP: I do. I love zombies. I don’t know. The funny thing is that I get two reactions to the zombies. It’s always either, oh my god, zombies and steampunk go so well together that’s really brilliant, I can’t believe you did that. Or, oh my god, everybody does zombies with steampunk, you are so stupid. (laughs) There’s no making anybody happy with that. I’m obviously not the first person to put zombies in steampunk. I just really enjoy zombies and I wanted an ever-present threat in the city beyond the gas. I just thought it would be fun. I needed some really good reasons why people would abandon the city and wall it off and zombies just seemed like fun. Honestly, I’m rambling because I don’t have a good reason. (laughs) It sounded like a good idea at that time.

AD: You seem to like zombies, but when you use them, you play with them.

CP: Well it’s never just about zombies. In some respects, they are the monster of our time just because they can stand in for anything. They can stand in for the holocaust or nuclear apocalypse or disease or anything that destroys the grid. The thing about zombie fiction that’s so much fun in general because it’s not just descriptive, it’s prescriptive. It tells you how to survive. Everything from 28 Days Later to Romero, the stuff shows you, when the grid goes down and the shit hits the fan, how do you survive. I think as technology gets more and more away from us, in some respects, there’s this undercurrent of fear. What happens if it goes away because I rely on this so much? What do we do? How do we live?

My dad was in the army and so I lived in Texas and Colorado and spent a lot of time in the West. You find these little frontier towns where there’s horror built into just being this town of a hundred people on the edge of the desert. It’s so fragile anyway that any kind of outside anything can absolutely upend it and kill you all. If your well goes dry. If you weren’t friendly enough with the locals. If if if. This is something that tells us about ourselves and it tells us how we should behave if things go bad. And it can stand in for anything. Zombies are really interesting to me because they can’t be negotiated with. They don’t want anything. If Dracula wants something, you can negotiate with Dracula. The zombie exists only to consume. It’s not going to stop. It will only keep coming forever and ever until it gets you. Zombies are really interesting to me. Vampires promise to make you special. You’ll be really pretty and live forever and maybe be French. (laughs) Zombies strip you of everything that made you special in the first place and you’re just like everybody else.

AD: You really seemed to have a lot of fun with taking actual details and people and playing with them in different ways.

CP: It was interesting playing with people’s loyalties in the Civil war. I’m from the south and spent a total of fourteen years in Tennessee and speculating on alternate Civil War endings is something of a regional past time. (laughs) It was so much more complicated than good guys vs bad guys, especially around the border states where populations were so divided. I mean there were entire cities and counties, both North and South, that try to seceded to the other side. In East Texas and North Georgia, there was a group of people who tried to secede from the Confederacy and form their own state. You end up with this immensely complicated situation. It surprises me how few people know that Kentucky wasn’t a southern state. Everybody thinks it was, but they never seceded. They stayed with the union, but the population there was probably 51/49. It was just so intensely complicated and if it’s been going on for twenty years, it’s going to be even more intensely complicated. Just trying to mess with that and play with it.

The Robertson Hospital and all that that was a real place and Captain Sally was a real person and so it all seemed like it would fit nicely in the story. The Robertson Hospital was this total freak of nature. This old maid had lots of money and said, I’m going to run my own hospital. Robertson had fled, and so she took over his house. If you look back on it now, it’s apparent that the woman was obsessive compulsive. She insisted on everything had to be clean, all the water had to be boiled. Miraculously she had a 93% survival rate in her hospital in the course of the war. And most of the people who died, died towards the end of the war because the hospital had such a good reputation that people who were most badly injured were sent there.

AD: That’s an insanely high survival rate.

CP: For anywhere in the Nineteenth century. Much less in a war hospital. It blew people’s minds. And the funny thing was, the Confederacy said, we need to send you a commanding officer so that you can draw money from the government to run this thing. She said no. (laughs) They said, you need to have somebody so we can give you supplies. No, I’m in charge. They said you can’t be in charge, you need an officer on hand. She said, then make me an officer. She was the only female officer in the Confederacy. They made her a Captain. (laughs) These crazy interesting people who were really there. There were people in Boneshaker who were real to Seattle history for example. Playing with the real stuff in more interesting to me, in a way, even if you’re just completely rendering it unrecognizable. It’s still fun. I will occasionally get letters from school groups that have taken the underground tour from teenagers who have read Boneshaker who go, oh my god, I didn’t know that this part was real and this person was real. So take an interest in your local history. There’s some interesting stuff.

AD: So tell me, what is it you love about steampunk?

CP: I think it’s a perfect storm from a pop cultural standpoint and a social environment standpoint. I often say that steampunk has an underpinning philosophy that’s reduce, reuse and recycle. This idea that you don’t throw things away. You don’t want mass-produced stuff. You want something that you can use and then reuse and find a new use for. I’ve had people misquote me, saying that the Victorians were green. I have never said that. (laughs) I would never say that. I know better than that.

When you can cherry-pick from history, take the good and leave the bad when you can. The idea that things are artisan-made and custom-made and built to last instead of built to be disposable. That’s collided with the Maker movement, the do-it-yourself movement, which is very big on the west coast, especially in California but also further up the coast in Portland and Seattle. That’s collided with the idea of the post-millennium issues and the depletion of the planet’s resources and trying to go green and not waste so much and it’s made this zeitgeist that has made steampunk very appealing. And also I think, as I said earlier, there’s a large crossover with the goth population.

It’s partly because we’ve grown up and we have families and we have day jobs and it’s no longer acceptable to be theatrically sad, but the desire to be theatrical does not go away. So it draws these people who like to play dressup and who are also grownups and who have disposable income. It’s been interesting to watch it gel over the last few years really and I’m having a really good time with it. Like any new subculture, if we can call it that, the first wavers are people who want to decide what counts and what doesn’t. There’s a lot of, you’re doing it wrong. Well I always felt seriously there is nothing punk about allowing a group of strangers on the internet telling you how to participate in your hobby. (laughs) If you’re having fun and they’re a douche, they’re the one with the problem, not you. Just go have a good time with it. Play with it. And as that had started to overwhelm the first wavers it’s become a much more open scene a much more inviting scene and I think a much more appealing scene.

For example, last year I did Steamcon out here at SeaTac -- not quite Seattle, out where the airport is -- and the hotel was filled up and completely sold out. The fire marshall shut it down and said you can’t sell any more memberships. There were people staying in the hotel who weren’t part of the event who while it was going on came and bought memberships because they were already in the hotel and just wanted to participate. Families with little kids and old ladies who thought this was just the coolest thing they had ever seen. There’s a very participatory element. You want to participate. You want to play dressup. You want to customize your stuff. You don’t want something that everybody else has. No two steampunks ever arrive at an event wearing exactly the same thing.

AD: And that’s part of the point of course. Like you said, it’s about reusing and recycling and reinventing.

CP: Exactly. Look at how knitting has exploded over the past ten years. It’s like, I want to make my own stuff. I want to sew. I want to knit. I want to have more control over the processes that bring me the things that I use. I did an event and I was sitting next to Cory Doctorow and he was like the underpinning of this is, love the machinery, hate the factory. At the end of the day, the irony of so much of steampunk is that the stuff we’re customizing is still built by children in factories in third world nations. But it is a good faith effort to get away from that. To become less dependent on that. And it’s interesting to me to watch people who take an interest in it become more educated about the products they consume. Where was this made? What’s in it? Who produced this?

I ended up having a conversation with my mother about it. My mother has no interest in any of this, I assure you. (laughs) She was asking me about some stuff and steampunk and consumer culture and we had a civilized conversation about this and why it’s important to take note of where your money goes when you buy things especially disposable things. It’s very very interesting to me and I don’t think it’s one thing. It’s a bunch of things that have collided to make the zeitgeist happen.

AD: What’s so interesting is that we could rattle off a list of steampunk books or comics, but there’s no canon or iconic work.

CP: You’re right. Steampunk will break through the day that it has its Dracula or Lord of the Rings. Say for example you’re talking to straight laced parents about goths, you can say, you know Dracula? It’s kinda like that. Or for fantasy and D&D, you know Lord of the Rings? It’s like that. Steampunk doesn’t have that yet. It doesn’t have something that is so widely known that even somebody’s grandparent can go, oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Believe me when I’ve had to sit down with my dad a couple times and go, okay, it’s kinda like this. And he gets it now, but he was like, I just don’t get it. I’m like, okay, you know the film The Wild Wild West? It looks like that but it’s way better than that. Do you know the comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? No. Do you know the movie? Yes. Well it’s like that but way better than that. We don’t have anything good that we can point at that people are familiar with. There’s all this disclaiming. It’s like that, only it doesn’t suck. (laughs) And until we can say, it’s like that without the disclaimer, it will not have made it through to the mainstream.

AD: So to wrap thing up, I’m curious how you describe Dreadnought to people?

CP: I always boil everything down. I have a paragraph. It is a steampunk pulp adventure about a widowed Confederate nurse who is heading across the American west to find her dying father with Confederate spies, Union officers, a caboose full of mysterious corpses sealed into storage, undead Mexican separatists and a steampunk Texas ranger. (laughs) I don’t want people to go, oh, this is just a travelogue. No it’s not.

AD: It’s definitely not just a travelogue. I hope we get to read a lot more and to read the end of the war as you write it.

CP: I hope so too. It probably won’t be in anything that’s in the queue right now. Like I said we’ve got Dreadnought and then Ganymede and Inexplicable. And maybe a couple side projects with Subterranean, we’ll see. If these do well and Tor wants more books, it will end in the next batch.

AD: And then you have another book, Bloodshot.

CP: It’s a really really unrelated thing. It’s an urban fantasy. Fabulous, trashy fun. I write a lot of horror and a lot of dark stuff and I just wanted to do something lighter and kind of funny. It’s called Bloodshot and it’ll be out from Bantam in February. It’s modern and goofy fun. There’s an obsessive compulsive vampire who has a Cuban drag queen as a sidekick, who used to be a Navy Seal. (laughs) Again, I wanted to have fun. If I’m not having fun, I may as well go get a desk job.

Once you’ve made it to the height of your chosen field, what do you do next? Well according to Tool and A Perfect Circle singer Maynard Keenan, what satisfies him at this point is crushing grapes in his backyard. If that sounds like fun to you CBT fans then you’re missing the point. Keenan has figured... more

Once you’ve made it to the height of your chosen field, what do you do next? Well according to Tool and A Perfect Circle singer Maynard Keenan, what satisfies him at this point is crushing grapes in his backyard. If that sounds like fun to you CBT fans then you’re missing the point. Keenan has figured it out, he’s taken his love for wine and started his own label and vineyard and is taking some heavy risks with his next music project Puscifier.

Check out the official site for Puscifer

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

Maynard Keenan: I’m working on some Puscifer music and I’ve got the winery kicking. I’m trying to sort out some bottling dates.

DRE: What’s your wine called?

MK: I have two, Caduceus Cellars is my premium brand and then I have the more middle of the road stuff which is called Merkin Vineyards.

DRE: How did the wine thing get started?

MK: I’ve been a fan of wines since the early 90’s and it progressed to the point where I just decided to put a vineyard in my backyard, not really having any idea what I was doing or what I was going to be doing with the grapes. I met the right guy who had a plan of his own and I’ve been riding his coattails learning as I go. We released our first wines about a year and a half ago and everything has sold out. Now we’re just trying to get some more wine into bottles so we can get it up for sale.

DRE: It sounds like a lot of fun.

MK: Yes and it’s a pretty grounding experience. The music industry and Hollywood tends to be very disconnected and not really about reality. Some of the activities that go on there don’t have a lot of logic to it. You’ve got people from damaged childhoods that are emoting and running the business when they have no idea what they’re doing.

DRE: I don’t know a ton about wine but when you say started a vineyard; does that mean you hooked up with a grape that you liked or developed a grape?

MK: I had some guys come out from U.C. Davis to check out the area, check out the elevation, make some suggestions on root stock and what varietals would work in this climate. Like evaluation of temperature, soil content, elevation and all that stuff goes into them calculating what might or might not work here.

DRE: Are you finding it’s getting into people’s mouths that don’t know who you are?

MK: Yeah, I think so. I have a blog on the main page of Wine Spectator. It’s good wine, so it’s finding its way into the hands of people who appreciate wine and they’ve been reporting good things.

DRE: It must be very satisfying to walk out into the middle of your own vineyard.

MK: Absolutely and very calming.

DRE: How was touring with the Big Day Out festival in Australia?

MK: It was good. I got a chance to taste some wines down there as well, but I had the flu which sucked because I couldn’t taste anything.

DRE: So when you’re on tour you just hit all the wineries you can?

MK: Well, if you can time it right then it works out great. But it’s not always that easy. The schedule for touring is usually grueling. You can’t just take a week off in the middle of a tour to go taste wine.

DRE: Do you drink much else?

MK: I don’t normally drink a lot of wine. I’m not a huge drinker. I just really enjoy a good glass of wine with a meal and I know that I have an aptitude for it. It’s like writing music in a way. There are lots of levels and nuances to discover.

But as for the Big Day Out Festival, it gave me a chance to meet some people that I want to work on with some Puscifer music. I’ve been talking to different musicians about coming and guest appearing on some of these tracks.

DRE: So while you’re chatting with guys you just say, “I’ve got this thing going on, are you guys interested?”

MK: Yeah, absolutely. Right now I’ve got a couple tracks I’m working on with Tim Alexander from Primus and some of the guys from Audioslave, Tim [Commerford] and Brad [Wilk].

DRE: Yeah, they’re free.

MK: Also Johnny Polanski. I’ve worked with Danny Lohner on a few tracks before.

DRE: Recently I’ve gotten to talk to Les Claypool and Mike Patton who have all these different bands that they do. They both pretty much told me that they’re not even sure sometimes where the music they’re creating will go. Are you the same way?

MK: I try to wear one hat at a time. I find that’s the best way to do it. When I’m doing tours I’m doing tours. If I’m doing A Perfect Circle then I’m doing that. But Puscifer has been a little different because it is not just music. It’s actually as much a clothing line as it is a band. I’ve been talking with different manufacturers so it’s almost a brand at this point.

DRE: Was that always the intention?

MK: I think it’s just the age that we’re in. With the internet the way it is, music is now a soundtrack to some other activity. You can make a living selling songs but you make a better living playing them. If you’re not going to play them you got to figure out what else to sell and I guess that comes down to t-shirts and key chains.

DRE: How many vineyards do you have?

MK: Up in Arizona I have about three vineyards. My partner and my mentor, winemaker Eric Glomski from Page Springs Vineyards and Cellars, who I make all my wines through, has a similar amount of acreage. We bought about 60 to 65 acres together down in Tucson. We’re the largest producer of wine grapes in Arizona at the moment.

DRE: It sounds like it will be really big.

MK: It gives us options. We actually supply all the other winemakers in the state with grapes. That way I can have a huge vineyard, we can cherry pick the best grapes for our wines and then sell what’s left over to anyone else in the state. We can really make great premium wines with a choice grape rather than just being isolated with one small amount of grapes that one year might be good, one year might be bad. The average amount of cases my partner and winemaker, Eric Glomski makes is between 4000 and 5000. I do about 1200. The average winery makes hundreds of thousands of cases a year.

DRE: What was the inspiration for Puscifer?

MK: Puscifer has basically been my little baby and I just kept working on it. I was inspired by all these tunes on the radio like oldies, Motown stuff and hip-hop. Stuff that feels good. I approached Puscifer like that. I’m just trying to get stuff that I don’t have to think too much about it. It’s got a good groove. It makes you feel good and that’s where I’ve been concentrating because I have all the introspective, torturous, painfully organized and arranged music that takes years to create and cuts really deep. But Puscifer does not do that. It’s something that I want to have fun with and not worry about it being groundbreaking or changing the world.

DRE: Are you going to tour with Puscifer?

MK: Maybe I will do some stuff in small theatres someday but for now I’m not even worried about that.

DRE: Something like that has to be at least a year and a half off.

MK: Yeah but I’m not even thinking about it yet.

DRE: Have you brought in a lot of people to help you with music?

MK: Well I’ve got a guitar tech engineer and a ProTools engineer. Tim Alexander has a whole set up and we just kick it around in my home studio.

DRE: A lot of people have home studios that are just as good as some of the professional ones. I’m sure yours is.

MK: The home studios work but at the end of the day nothing sounds like analog two inch tape. So once the ideas are all organized I want to put all these tapes on two inch tape if not re-tracking them on two inch tape.

DRE: I read that the name Puscifer is taken from a Mr. Show skit you were in.

MK: Actually the band itself existed before Mr. Show. It was always a little project that I had going on. I used the name for Mr. Show because it just made sense to get it on the map. The original name of the band was called Umlaut a premiere improvisational hardcore band, it lasted about a day. It was fun but it evolved quickly into Puscifer.

DRE: When you’re doing something totally new that’s not going to be Tool or A Perfect Circle did you know that eventually you wanted to bring back Puscifer?

MK: Yeah, absolutely. That was always the intention. I just got focused on all the other things that I never really put a lot of time into really bringing it forward and I think now is the time.

DRE: So you guys have postponed the [Tool] tour because Danny hurt himself?

MK: Yeah, he pulled a muscle in his arm.

DRE: You think it will be just a couple months?

MK: Yeah because the drummer from Tool only has one arm [laughs].

I’ve been focusing most of my time on the vineyard and the winery. But because we have quite a bit of a break. it’s a perfect time to really start tracking some of these ideas I have in my head. Getting them on tape and developing some new merch ideas. I’ll be going to Hong Kong in a couple weeks to meet with some garment manufacturers and get some of the ideas together.

DRE: Is it a different visualization process while you’re coming up with a new t-shirt or something like that?

MK: Yeah, I pretty much rely on my fucking twisted sense of humor to put some of that stuff together and just have fun with it, not take it too seriously. I don’t want it to be a thing that gets so big that I have to worry about selling it. I’ve been doing really low volume stuff. I may make only 500 copies of one shirt and never make another one. Some stuff is from collaborations with Globe in Australia and I’m doing a leather jacket with Paul Frank where there will just be a few of them.

DRE: I know you’re friends with a lot of comedy guys who collect a lot of things. Are you into stuff like that?

MK: No, not really. But, yeah I have a lot of friends who collect stuff.

DRE: With such low runs, it sounds like you’re trying to make something that will become collectible.

MK: I think that we’re getting into an age where this whole conquer the world with consumerism thing, falls apart at some point. So the idea is just to create a few fun things and that way I don’t have to worry about storing it anywhere. There are a couple of them, you sell them, they’re gone, then there are the next couple other ideas and you get rid of those. I can make a living but not have to have some crazy overhead and infrastructure or some building where I’m paying rent and utilities with staff that have to put food on the table. It’s small enough that I can latch onto independents and just have fun with it.

DRE: So you don’t really have like a team of people.

MK: No, not at all. It’s basically two or three of us. Of course I have people that I go to manufacture the shirts, those are companies in and of themselves. But it is pretty much me mailing off artwork, designing shirts or jackets. I’ve also been selling targets I shoot at the range that I then autograph.

DRE: Do you have any desire for these things to become bigger?

MK: If it got bigger I would license it to somebody else and then it becomes their headache. If they can’t move them it’s their problem. But I’m making things in low quantities so we won’t end up with a huge warehouse of stuff I can’t get rid of.

DRE: What inspired the Tool album 10,000 Days?

MK: Just life in general.

DRE: There’s a track in there about your mom. Is stuff like that still just as cathartic for you?

MK: Yeah and just as difficult to talk about.

DRE: Are you into people interpreting it for themselves?

MK: Yeah pretty much, just let them run with it.

DRE: Is creating music still just as satisfying or does it just satisfy a different part?

MK: I think that when it gets to be as big as this corporation known as Tool is, some of this business stuff ends up making it more difficult to enjoy the process. That’s why I end up doing all these little things because I’m trying to make sure I’m enjoying the process. I really enjoy making and recording music, but I don’t really enjoy the business end of it. It really ends up putting a knot in your stomach.

DRE: For a while there we thought there wasn’t going to be anymore Tool.

MK: There are times you just have to get through things. Like any marriage, there are rough spots.

DRE: What brought you back to specifically wanting to do Tool?

MK: Well, we never left. You never leave any of it. You’re married to these people. It’s a relationship. Everyone that you come across in your life that you had intimate relations with are still part of you. You don’t really leave them, you just might not be standing in the same room with them all the time.

DRE: What would have to change about Tool for you to say “I don’t want to do this. I have other things to concentrate on”?

MK: If the entire world turned into something where there is no money involved. If there was no money involved it would be easy to do this but as soon as the money comes into play, everybody gets weird. It has an affect on everybody. It doesn’t matter who they are but as soon as there’s money involved people get fucking goofy. When you don’t have money to lose you don’t have to worry about somebody taking the money. All that bullshit aside I’m trying to prove that I can just make music and make my living doing that and selling shirts for fun

DRE: [laughs] Years ago a friend of mine had a Tool bootleg of this show you guys did in 1992 at a bar with about 12 people in the audience. I don’t expect you to remember.

MK: It was in Philadelphia.

DRE: That was back when the Tool albums were more stripped down, would you ever go back to a more stripped down Tool?

MK: No, because we have your attention. If you want someone’s attention you have to scream from the back of the room to be heard. Once you have everybody’s attention you have to whisper to keep it.

DRE: Do you get see much comedy anymore?

MK: Not really since I live in Arizona. The only comedy I see is when my dogs are chasing their tails around here.

DRE: [laughs] What about on TV?

MK: Well, of course Extras is just off the hook. I like My Name is Earl, Reno 911 and that kind of stuff. Also Borat and all the stuff involving Sacha Baron Cohen is true genius.

DRE: Have you gotten into the American version of The Office?

MK: Yeah. Like everybody else, I was one of those purists because I had watched all the seasons of The Office in the UK. So when the American Office started they were trying to fit the formula and do exactly what the UK version had done. Now I’m so glad they’ve abandoned that formula and gone down their own path. It’s an incredible show.

DRE: It’s gotten really good. I love it.

MK: Yeah, it’s painful. It’s like watching Curb Your Enthusiasm where you almost have to watch it from across the room.

DRE: It gives me backaches [laughs].

MK: Yeah it does.

DRE: I know that you’ve like appeared in little things here and there but did you ever get involved in much comedy?

MK: The problem with me being involved in comedy is that I’m not funny. So if I’m in a comedy I have to be in a scene or a sketch with somebody that’s actually funny and then I can play the straight man. But without anybody actually funny in the scene then I’m just a dork trying to be funny and not doing it. Having said that I am working on some short films with a friend of mine who’s a writer, which we would show on Puscifer tour. I’m working with Ford [Englerth] and Jeffrey [Brooks] from Red Rock Entertainment Development. They are in a similar format to Mr. Show or Tom Waits when he did his live album Big Time.

DRE: So you are writing and directing them?

MK: I’m one of the guys that has 16 ideas every minute and then tries to scratch them all down. I write down characters and little scenarios and then I hand them off to Jeffrey. He hands them off to a guy who’s actually funny and can write. He finishes them up until they are up to the 90 percent margin then I nudge them that final few percent that really gives them their shape.

DRE: I read you are going to be on the Bonnaroo Festival with The Police.
You must have been a Police fan.

MK: Absolutely, I was a huge Police fan. Zenyatta Mondatta was a good album.

DRE: Do you ever get star struck around people like The Police?

MK: Not so much around The Police. If I was around Gene Hackman or [Robert] De Niro or Morgan Freeman, my knees would probably give out. Those people are just pure artists and are channels for that amazing talent and energy.

DRE: You didn’t mention any musicians.

MK: That’s just too close to home. The people who I would freak out to meet are dead. If Hendrix walked into the room I would piss myself because he’s dead. “Dude you smell like you’re rotting.”

DRE: [laughs] There was a SuicideGirl who just debuted who has a big tattoo of you on her back.

MK: Illyria.

DRE: What’s it like to see that?

MK: Real creepy.

DRE: [laughs] You must have met plenty of people that have stuff like that though.

MK: I usually make them sign a waiver so they can’t sue me when they can’t get a job. “I couldn’t get a job at a bank and it’s your fault.” “Fuck you buddy, you signed the waiver.”

DRE: For some reason I don’t expect such beautiful girls to have giant portraits of men on their back.

MK: My guess is that she passed out at a party and somebody did it when she wasn’t looking. She probably doesn’t look at her back in a mirror very often so she didn’t notice. It was probably supposed to be a portrait of Christina Aguilera but whoever did it made it so ugly that they pretended it was me.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

by Blogbot (video) Subway trains come fitted with the perfect poles for dancing – and an inbuilt audience – so it’s almost churlish not to make use of the facilities at hand. The girls in the video above take busking to a whole new level on New York’s underground, though the financial reward... more

by Blogbot





Subway trains come fitted with the perfect poles for dancing – and an inbuilt audience – so it’s almost churlish not to make use of the facilities at hand.

The girls in the video above take busking to a whole new level on New York’s underground, though the financial reward for this performance was far greater than the meagre tips they earned. Shot back in 2007, the video won a $10,000 prize from the now defunct Darejunkies.com/.

The site may be no more, but we feel its legacy of taking pole dancing to the people should live on – though perhaps the lap dancing which can be seen around 1:13 and 2:34 may be taking things a little too far (purely from a practical point of view, since sweaty seat issues could be rather unpleasant for subsequent commuters).

Anyhow, anyone up for a spot of flashmob pole dancing on LACMTA’s Red Line? The only downside we can see – as evdienced by this video – is that more than a few people may purposely miss getting off at their stop.

Italian folklore once told that the only cure for a tarantula spider bite was to dance the most frenzied, inspired dance of your life or you would surely die a result of its hallucinogenic venom. Those bitten danced as if possessed, losing themselves in the feverish mandolin music played by villagers,... more

Italian folklore once told that the only cure for a tarantula spider bite was to dance the most frenzied, inspired dance of your life or you would surely die a result of its hallucinogenic venom. Those bitten danced as if possessed, losing themselves in the feverish mandolin music played by villagers, and so the ritualistic Tarantella dance came to be. Another story suggests the dance began as therapy for disaffected female sexuality. Women who were perpetually numb from the complacencies of day-to-day life would fall into a bizarre trance, for which sexualized, hysterical dancing was the only remedy. Once she found the right moves, she was saved.

These stories are, for most, just stories. But for Gogol Bordello, there’s more to be found in the psychology of dance mania than just another tall tale. The band’s current release SUPER TARANTA! (SideOneDummy Records) bolsters its status as one of the most vibrant and fearless acts on the scene. Known for whirlwind live performances, Gogol Bordello is all consuming with its rabble-rousing, gypsy punk aesthetic and sound. “With SUPER TARANTA! Gogol Bordello is going to conquer the world,” says frontman Eugene Hutz, “Everything on the album is taken to the next level. It’s more direct, more abstract, more focused, with more dark humor. The dub parts are deeper; the fast parts are faster, it’s pure orgasmo hysteria.”

SuicideGirls caught up with the Romani raconteur before a recent San Francisco sound check to chat about chaos, red wine and the super theories about super everything…

Erin Broadley: I bet there’s no such thing as a relaxed sound check for Gogol. Is it hard to get everybody organized with nine people in the band?

Eugene Hutz: Actually, you would be surprised with how professional the band is.

EB: You know, one thing that struck me about seeing your band live is that Gogol Bordello is truly the embodiment of chaos theory. Like, there’s a harmony and order to the erraticism.

EH: It has to be. Plus, we had quite a bit of experience before we became like that. I mean, we’ve been through whole stages of complete chaos where nobody would ever turn up. There were just too many people to get on the same page. We would be very successful to get them in the same book. Now, we still can’t believe it but we actually go through these professional operations quite impressively for everyone around. [Laughs]

EB: Right, it’s like a self-sustaining life force, there’s no stopping it once you hit the stage.

EH: Yeah, it definitely comes from being such a big group.

EB: In an interview you did shortly after Everything is Illuminated, you said about the film, “Humor is an engine of survival.” I agree and would assume that humor plays a big role in your music performance and songwriting.

EH: Yeah, I actually quoted Charlie Chaplin on that.

EB: Oh, really?

EH: Yeah, he was my big guru.

EB: That’s awesome.

EH: Yeah, he was the only American artist that was constantly shown on Soviet television. He was a Commie sympathizer so they couldn’t stop playing him. I mean, of course he’s fantastic, so.

EB: He was amazing in his simplicity, wasn’t he? So many actors today are just big productions, but Charlie Chaplin was so powerful considering how simple his method was.

EH: Yeah, but the less production the wilder the actual creativity there is. It makes up for all the rest. Similarly, the more fucking gear and the more production the band has, the more they suck, usually.

EB: When it comes to humor, can you discuss further the role that humor has played in your life? Like, especially when you were younger moving from refugee camp to refugee camp after the Chernobyl disaster?

EH: It’s not only [me]; our whole culture is built on that.

EB: On humor?

EH: Yeah, because Eastern Europe is so rowdy and fun loving and celebrative but if you go there you will not see any of that right away. I mean, it’s the people’s psychology that learned to come over the top of that gruesomeness -- the only way to elevate, to rise above it, is through humor. I have friends who survive alone on their linguistic skills and all the sparkling energy of inverting information in numerous humorous ways.

EB: I read that you and your friends used to pass the time by making jokes with words and phrases.

EH: Yeah, because there is simply not a whole lot else to do in Eastern Europe.

EB: Well, there’s making music.

EH: Yes, that but as far as embodying any broad dreams and stuff like that, you’re pretty much fucked. Chernobyl actually brought it out in people to a great amount in the middle of the panic and the major scare of everything, because you know, being told that you’re in the extreme danger zone without being able to smell it or taste it…

EB: I imagine it’s complete hysteria.

EH: It’s quite frightening. But every Ukrainian citizen already knew that red wine is actually a product that helps to escort Strontium out of the body. Which is one of the more dangerous radioactive elements. Before you knew it everybody was talking about, “Yeah, we’re going to be chasing a lot of Strontium out of the body. Everybody let’s chase some Strontium out!”

EB: [Laughs] We’re doing it for our health!

EH: The whole fucking key was chasing the Strontium out, you know, with double enthusiasm. It was like all this dangerous information was quickly inverted into anecdotes.

EB: That’s a pretty intense situation to grow up in.

EH: I know. We were like, “What the fuck is this? I mean, is this for real?” You know what I mean? When September 11th [happened], I watched the buildings fall down from my roof. And for people there, the way they were feeling it was exactly how we felt when Chernobyl happened. They were just completely stupefied and shocked by something like that. How can this possibly happen? That was exactly the same as how we felt.

EB: Right. I was watching the trailer for The Pied Piper of Hutzovina documentary that you did. I was really struck by the point that you bring up about the talent that goes to waste of with these people that will never have the access to instruments or funds to pursue playing music.

EH: Yeah, it’s going to kill you to see that.

EB: It’s just really heartbreaking.

EH: It’s going to kill you if you see them in the real setting. I go there all the time and I bring more and more of my own field recordings and video recordings and when I show it to people here very often they get tears in their eyes because they can’t believe how far from being heard all that talent is.

EB: Is there any progress at all when it comes to opening up avenues for art and music over there?

EH: There are numerous projects that are happening for that to come together, you know, and there always were. But we’re still pretty far from having a solid Romani name established as a positive force. People are still living in the fucking cave-age as far as knowledge of what Romani culture is. In the meantime, the government makes sure that newspapers breed hate toward gypsies because their advantage is to have a scapegoat to blame in the country. That is why when we went and played Live Earth with Madonna, it was just, like, for two weeks with all the gypsies from Russian Ukraine, Canada, the States, France, just freaking out that it came through so positively. It was such a positive setting. Plus they were just like, “Man, I can’t believe you got Madonna to sing in Romani. What the fuck? Only you could do it.”

EB: Well, if anybody can do it, it’s you. Come on, that’s no small feat. I’m sure she’s fascinating. She’s quite a character herself.

EH: Oh, it’s been truly fun to work with her. I was ready to work with her straight off the bat. Her personal style of working with people is just actually so spontaneous. She’s great.

EB: Well, in regards to popular culture, your music is kind of deviant. I mean, if culture dictates what is and what isn’t okay and decides who is and who isn’t a great artist, then your music and everything it represents strikes me as a slap in the face to that very mode of thought.

EH: Exactly. In Russian there is an expression, a common expression, “It doesn’t fit into any one gate.” It’s like any fucking gate it goes in, it warps the mother-fucking gate.

EB: [Laughs]

EH: You know, it’s too fucking gypsy for everybody else.

EB: It’s either too gypsy or not gypsy enough.

EH: It’s not gypsy enough for the purists. Fuck all of that. I’m making music I like. If you don’t like it, switch the mother-fucking channel. What’s the problem? I’m pretty happy with all I’ve accomplished, especially that all the real Romani activists got on our side before we even got any recognition. The whole idea of gypsy punk actually came not from me. It was actually two gypsy girls who came to see our show who were like, “Well, what the fuck, since this sounds like this, you might as well call it like that because if you really think about it we don’t really have anything that calls our name in a worldwide kind of level, except for Gypsy Kings.” I was like, “I think you’re right.”

EB: In a clip from Pied Piper one guy is a purist and takes your CD out from the CD player.

EH: Yeah, actually at this point that guy is a friend of mine. But that’s one of the reactions that I experienced before. Nothing was ever smooth for me, for sure. He was like, “What do you mean you call it gypsy punk?” I was like, “Well, what the fuck you want me to call it? That’s what gypsies call it.”

EB: [Laughs]

EH: You know what I mean?

EB: Yeah. It named itself.

EH: Exactly. I mean, what are you going to call it?

EB: This album is your re-imagining of the Tarantella ritual music from Italy, in a way. You’ve talked before about a painting you saw of a woman whose demons were being exorcised by a violinist…particularly that the sexual nature of hysteria and the near obscenity of the painting reminded you of qualities in your band.

EH: [Laughs] Yeah, absolutely.

EB: No, I love it. I wanted to talk about the provocative and sexual nature of hysteria, which is something that in a live environment with the crowd happens at every show. Where do you think that comes from?

EH: Repression, perhaps. Sometimes also painful shyness, I believe.

EB: [Laughs]

EH: I suffered from painful shyness in the past, as hard as it is to believe. I literally would never want to be young again in those years. Fuck no, no fucking way. I think to bring it out of our people and liberate them from that limiter…anthropologically speaking, it exists in almost every culture in different shapes. That’s what shamans do. That’s the reason Christianity spread so quickly through Russia because people were starving for some kind of a spiritual ceremony that could give them an experience of beauty, some kind of harmonious beauty. So they sent everyone around to find that new [thing] and people from the Byzantine Empire returned and said, “We saw it, it’s like this. Everybody goes into this mother fucking joint, gets in there, lights up five thousand candles among most beautiful paintings, get down on their knees and start fucking rocking.” People said, “Wow, that sounds fucking great. How come we don’t do that? Let’s do that.” That was basically one of the most driving forces behind that spreading back then. Same thing with rock and roll -- most of it is basically based on the church ceremony. I mean, it’s no secret.

EB: A concert is like a weird mass.

EH: Yeah, it’s no secret that Little Richard and all the [guys] who really made rock and roll what it is, like James Brown, looked at all the tricks in the church from the preacher. It’s almost funny; all the churches were so against rock and roll because they were jealous that such a major competition had arrived beating them at their own game. So is tarantella.

EB: Even more so, there’s also a sexual force behind confrontation and revolution and I think that’s something that definitely informs your music as well.

EH: Absolutely, I just wouldn’t even know what else to do.

EB: [Laughs] In another interview you talked about how the role of an artist in modern society is slowly dying out. How do you stay optimistic and motivated when faced with that idea of artistic disillusionment?

EH: Well, I think the optimistic part I simply get from my family. The whole gypsy bloodline is very much cultivated with survival skills for hundreds of years, already. So, in a lot of ways, being influenced by that culture is what set me off to think in unusual, philosophical ways about modern times. It’s very interesting but, for example, in gypsy language in Ukraine the word for “today,” “yesterday” and “tomorrow” are the same word. The immediacy is what guides and is the guiding force. That’s not to say it’s a mindless, “live now” [type of thing].

EB: Yeah, that’s not to say don’t think about the results of your actions.

EH: Yeah, exactly it’s a lot more about actually just being with the times.

EB: And being fully present right at the moment.

EH: Absolutely, this moment is more precious than you think. This idea is recurrent in many philosophies -- the key is not to be ahead of time or to be retro. The key is to be with the mother-fucking times. That’s where the shit is, that’s where it’s happening. I never wanted to be in a band that, 20 years later, is going to be recognized. Fuck that. I want to be with the fucking times. I wanted to bring a radical change for this time. I don’t want to influence change 60 years from now when I’m already gone. I want to get my kicks and everything I deserve for it now.

EB: You want to see the effects, feel the effects. Like you were saying, that immediacy that’s part of what keeps refueling the music.

EH: Exactly, and that’s what Gogol Bordello basically has mastered -- this very immediacy driven thing. The music is so immediate. That’s why what you see on stage is life itself happening. There is a tremendous strive for perfection in the band. Everyone is a fucking perfectionist but there is also a special kind of hate for perfection at the same time. It’s like on the record we strive for perfection and then live we just want to fuck it up.

EB: What’s with this “New Rebel Intelligence” concept of yours?

EH: Well, you know, it’s completely underdeveloped.

EB: [Laughs]

EH: It’s pretty interesting how a lot of things collide at this point for me. It’s just me and my Dad -- we always have this ongoing thing about quantum physics and astrophysics. It’s been our big family hobby forever.

EB: Well, good, then you know exactly what I was talking about when I compared what Gogol does to chaos theory.

EH: Of course. That’s what I do when I go visit my family -- get trashed and talk about the various theories of everything, the super theory of super everything. You know, straight from the table.

EB: That’s amazing. My father is a chemist, so growing up I had father-bonding experiences similar to yours.

EH: Yeah, so you know! I’m always talking with all of that. One day I was visiting with my father and he said, “I found this theory it’s called integrated theory of intelligence. It seems basically like what you were talking about,” because I was trying to kind of outline my own understanding of things. And I read it and I was like, “Well, fucking hell, pretty much.” It’s an idea that just as there is time and space and energy and matter and intelligence and consciousness is just as much a solid ingredient in the universe and it’s running solidly throughout everything just like all the rest. It’s running through the rocks and your brains and your bones and the water and everything. There is a consciousness and intelligence in everything. So it seems like all the most widespread religions are all like in the primordial schools of thought about all these things. Yeah, but it’s about time we put some mind to it. Evolution is not over, here comes a new chapter, let’s fucking get this thing, let’s understand it. What the fucking fuck?

Gogol Bordello is on tour now and plays the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles October 25. For more information go to www.gogolbordello.com and www.myspace.com/gogolbordello

by Blogbot (image) (image) Igby & Fred (pictured with their mistress Pilot Suicide) INTO: Cuddles, licking, popcorn, belly rubs, Zoe (our pug girlfriend). NOT INTO: Boys and getting our ears cleaned. MAKES US HAPPPY: Funny smells, sunbathing, floating in the pool. MAKES US SAD: Snow on our little... more

by Blogbot







Igby & Fred (pictured with their mistress Pilot Suicide)

• INTO: Cuddles, licking, popcorn, belly rubs, Zoe (our pug girlfriend).


• NOT INTO: Boys and getting our ears cleaned.


• MAKES US HAPPPY: Funny smells, sunbathing, floating in the pool.


• MAKES US SAD: Snow on our little feetsies.


• HOBBIES: Hanging out in the kitchen, making blanket nests, chewing.


• 5 THINGS WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Sweaters, chicken wrapped banana treats, running, kisses, squeaky toys.


• VICES: Chewing on socks, digging up buried treasure.


• WE SPEND MOST OF OUR FREE TIME: Lounging, listening for weird sounds, barking at the mailman.

Get to know Igby & Fred’s mistress, Pilot Suicide, over at SuicideGirls.com!

Backstage rendezvous typically start with a song or a coy smile. This one started with a potato chip. Turbonegro frontman Hank von Helvete threw a potato chip at me, so I thought. With a smack of his lips and a wink, Hank assured me it was accidental and that he meant no harm; he was just channeling his... more

Backstage rendezvous typically start with a song or a coy smile. This one started with a potato chip. Turbonegro frontman Hank von Helvete threw a potato chip at me, so I thought. With a smack of his lips and a wink, Hank assured me it was accidental and that he meant no harm; he was just channeling his aggression. “When we were younger we used to trash the backstage rooms,” he said. “But we realize now that we have to pay for the damages… It’s not fun to throw a TV out of the window if you kill a man.”

A ravenous performer and self-proclaimed oral sex master, Hank von Helvete was bound to leave an impression. It just so happened, in my case, to involve fried potato. Sitting in a backstage storage closet, we munched on snacks and smoked cigarettes while musing about the finer things in life like socialist rebellion and multiple orgasms. Moreover, we talked about the trappings of the rock star construct, when offstage and onstage personas collide and there become worse casualties than a ruined hotel or a smashed TV. Rock and roll is vice and in many ways, without laws. It is ruled by lusty transgressors and riddled with crime, the worst crime being dullness. Lucky for us, the Scandinavian rockers in Turbonegro are anything but dull.

Formed in Oslo, Norway in the late ‘80s, Turbonegro has spent the past twentysomething years redefining DIY rock grandeur. Like a hot, weeknight shag on the whiskey-soaked pool table of your local dive bar, Turbonegro has an unrivaled yet strangely underrated presence. The band’s omnipresent Turbojugend fan base -- both intimidating and charming -- is one of the largest and most loyal in recent history, for good reason; Turbonegro is fearless and its music voracious. Complete with offbeat, sexually charged theatrics and a live show just short of madness, the band’s music is like a bar brawl you can (and want) to dance to.

SuicideGirls caught up with Hank in Los Angeles on the tail end of the band’s tour supporting Retox, its newest album, in stores now...

Erin Broadley: So how are you?

Hank von Helvete: Oh, great. We’ve been cruising coast to coast and our shows have turned out to be quite cool. You know – wicked, nasty, hot shows.

EB: That’s what it’s about. Now, Turbonegro has been around since the late ‘80s and you guys are known for your showmanship. But generally it seems that post-80s, rock has been less about theatrics and showmanship and more about an understated sense of importance.

HVH: Well, that [started with] with grunge. If you look at it in context -- and you have to have big glasses for this -- the reaction toward the glam scene was actually appropriate, I think. It became too silly after a while.

EB:: Right, the hair got too big.

HVH:: Yeah, Twisted Sister and Poison… it went from being funny and theatrical and sexy and cool into being just clownish and ridiculous. It just became some weird science fiction theme movie. It became like Plan Nine from Outer Space. That reaction was good to bring back some manhood in rock. But then again, it went so far that it became rock and roll to be suicidal and depressed and being an introvert. Suddenly being a rock star was not cool anymore and being a fan of a band wasn’t cool anymore. A DJ was the new rock star.

EB:: Like, the more you pretended not to give a fuck, the cooler you were?

HVH: Yeah, and then suddenly people just turned their back to rock and roll because there’s nothing magic to hang on to. The magic is gone and, with Turbonegro, we kind of brought that back. In the mid-90s, Germans hated us for dressing up on stage, acting out, showing our ass, being politically incorrect, obnoxious and just having fun bringing dangerous humor on stage. People didn’t like that at all; they left the venues when we played in the early ‘90s. But, after a while, it was bound to happen that the thing we created became cool. We were part of creating it to bring the rock star back… to bring fandom back. Rock and roll is about making it easier for pissed off, lost teenagers to go to school on Monday morning… to have something magic, something to dream about. It’s not supposed to kill the kids; it’s supposed to give them life.

EB: Taking the band’s attention grabbing theatrics into account, how do you find the balance to make sure your music is recognized as equally important?

HVH: We have always been quite confident in our own music and we would never, ever dress up to hide that we were. Without the [music] platform, we wouldn’t be able to create an image anyway. The image really is based upon the music… We’ve always taken great pride in having good sounds and good looks. [Laughs] When I take off my mask, I generally cry back stage.

EB: [Laughs] You feel naked.

HVH: Yeah, I feel very lonely and vulnerable because of the lack of Suicide Girls.

EB: [Laughs]

HVH: They should come downstairs and give themselves to us.

EB: I have a quote here from Happy Tom where he says, “Most rock 'n' roll bands start as a riot but end up as a parody. We started up as a parody but ended up as a revolution."

HVH: Yeah. We always have been a bit sarcastic about things. People think that we use irony, but we always use bare sarcasm. If you take one step outside yourself, with this band you will see that what we’re doing is not very conforming, even in rock and roll terms. We are Norwegian, that’s one thing. We don’t look the typical rock stars. We don’t act like typical rock stars.

EB: You’re not divas.

HVH: Well, we are but we cannot [compete with] California sexiness… that standard… bulky bodies and six packs. We don’t sport six packs; we sport kegs.

EB: [Laughs]

HVH: [Laughs] And still we end up being one of the more powerful rock and roll statements in the scene and that is probably why Tom felt that we started out a parody and survived to be…

EB: … Like a big middle finger.

HVH: Yeah, because everything we do is quite the opposite of what any other band does. We’re not pretentious. We feel that we are sexy but we know that we are not in the mind-frame of what sexy rock stars would be. Still, we act as if we are the hottest things to ever happen to planet Earth. We bring a little relief to the kids, to the audience, to see that all these fucked up northern European bodies can act out in a way that turns into sexiness.

EB: There are a lot of distorted images out there.

HVH: Yeah… I show a body that appreciates life that’s not being at the gym. If you deny yourself the pleasures in life [then] how the fuck can you expect to be good in bed? People see that I appreciate a good bottle of wine and good food. Chicks love that because they see that this guy, when he’s in bed, he’s not having sex with himself, he’s having sex with a girl and giving her multiple orgasms… such a lover of life, you know?

EB: [Laughs] Well, now your female fans that are going to read this interview and come knocking on your door.

HVH: Well, I’m actually an oral sex master.

EB: [Laughs] I think that should be part of a singer’s job description: oral sex master.

HVH: With a lot of girls -- young girls, teenage girls -- their men idols are real handsome, fit guys, but when they go to bed with them they realize they just have the mirror so they can watch themselves, you know… the American Psycho image. Guys who use every day of their life making their own body look beautiful just want to please themselves.

EB: Instead of all those hours spent in the gym, they should be honing their oral sex skills.

HVH: Yeah. And a hairy belly is a perfect pillow for a 19-year-old.

EB: [Laughs] Obviously Turbonegro has a healthy sense of humor. You take what you do seriously, but not so much yourselves. How does humor factor in to the band, especially with all the shit you’ve been through?

HVH: There’s a saying in Norway. It rhymes in Norwegian but the message is that, “He who sees only joke in jokes and seriousness in seriousness has misunderstood both.” If you don’t see the joke in seriousness and the seriousness in a joke, then you haven’t understood anything in the world. And, of course, we are suburban northern European fuck ups from a very cold and dark country.

EB: You need a sense of humor to survive those winters.

HVH: Yeah, we call it gallows humor… The funny stuff you say when you’re being executed. You know, as you walk up to the gallows you will always find something funny to think about.

EB: Like if the executioner’s shoe’s untied or something? [Laughs]

HVH: Yeah… this wasn’t my first choice of necktie… I’m shocked over this chair.

EB: [Laughs] I need a better chair to be executed in.

HVH: Yeah, stuff like that taints our whole view of life… dark humor, going to hell with a grin on your face. Also, the roads are always paved with good intentions… so if you’re a bit more honest about your intentions, you’ll see that if you’re on your way to hell anyway you can do it with a smile and end up going to heaven.

EB: You guys have been through dark times but pulled through. Over the course of 20 years and with all the changes, how has the band kept from getting disillusioned?

HVH: Oh, 30 years ago we would have been multimillionaires with this band, with this greatness… because competition wasn’t that hard and people bought records. That’s not the point for us, anyway. We just wanted to hang out and play and just see how far we can take this train. It is a miracle in Norwegian standards that six fuck ups from the darkest area of the darkest country in the world can be able to tour the United States of America and sell out shows in Hollywood.

EB: Is it hard to readjust to life back home after a long tour?

HVH: Yeah, well, no. Actually, it keeps us mentally healthy. We’re rock stars here in Hollywood but we’re not that big of rock stars either. We’re like an underground phenomenon and when we get back home we’re just normal. Norway is a very down to earth country… In Norway we look upon Americans and actually envy their ability to take great pleasure in being special. Because in Norway, you’re not supposed to be special -- you are supposed to be like everybody else. If you are special, then you have to hide that fact and be very humble all the time. I personally envy Americans who, if they do something special [or] do something great, they can take the pleasure and say aloud that they are special. Generally in America, success is looked upon as a positive thing for a human being, you know. In Norway it’s kind of taboo to have success. Our families have always been like, “Well, it’s okay that your band is doing great… but aren’t you going to get a job soon?” So, that’s weird. But then again, that keeps the fighting spirit alive. We’re like, “Fuck them. We’ll show them.”

EB: Well, you guys have an exceedingly loyal fan base. Offstage, have you found yourself in situations where fans expect your frontman persona to carry over into all aspects of your life?

HVH: Well, of course. All fans are potential stalkers. All fans love a person they don’t know. And to love a person you don’t know, you have to make up what this person is all about because you don’t know them and then you kind of get all these expectations of all that. A lot of fans don’t get the fact that when I go off stage, I take off my makeup and I take off my costumes and I don’t put bottles up my ass and I don’t kiss boys, just to prove that I think gay is fun.

EB: What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about the band?

HVH: Well, it’s always about the gay thing. They think that since we have the gay humor we should have that all the time and always be flirting with gayness all the time, just for fun. The impression that we are taking part of that party culture is actually wrong. Go on, have fun, but don’t be disappointed if we are not always ready to take part in frolics like that.

EB: Right. There is a difference between an onstage persona and an offstage persona.

HVH: Yeah. Alice Cooper said that the very minute he realized that when he was off stage he must stop being Alice Cooper and just be Vince, that was when he saved his own life. Because there was a time when he was Alice Cooper all the time because people expected him to be and he started to expect himself to be. He became this self-destructive madman with a high party factor going all the time. Then he became an alcoholic, and then he began having mental problems. He became consumed by his own character.

Success can happen to you or you can choose success. If it just happens to you, you will not be mentally prepared to deal with it. We were unfortunate to have to put the band on hold for some years so I could deal with my heroin addiction and, in retrospect, that was actually a blessing, you know, because when the question of a comeback came up I was able to choose [this career] on my own terms.


For more on the band check out www.turbonegro.com

by Blogbot Scott Ian, the driving force behind Anthrax (and SG’s Food Coma columnist), has a lot of situations going on right now, so we thought it high time we checked in with him. Just before Christmas he released a new album, Ironiclast, with The Damned Things, a supergroup he formed with Rob Caggiano... more

by Blogbot

Scott Ian, the driving force behind Anthrax (and SG’s Food Coma columnist), has a lot of situations going on right now, so we thought it high time we checked in with him. Just before Christmas he released a new album, Ironiclast, with The Damned Things, a supergroup he formed with Rob Caggiano (of Anthrax), Keith Buckley (of Every Time I Die) and Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley (of Fall Out Boy). The band are currently on the road with the Jägermeister Music Tour (which also features Buckcherry and Hellyeah) and are also doing a select few headlining dates.

In addition, Anthrax, alongside Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica, are scheduled to bring The Big 4 Tour, which made some major noise in Europe in 2010, to America. The four monster metal bands will be taking over the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, CA the weekend after Coachella for the first ever Stateside Big 4 Festival (to be held on Saturday April 23rd).

We hit Ian up via email to find out more.



[Above: The Damned Things - We've Got A Situation Here]


SuicideGirls: How did the Damned Things project come about? And what’s the response been like?

Scott Ian: Joe Trohman and I met about 5 years ago through a mutual friend and we hit it off. Out of that we started writing songs together and eventually decided the material was good enough to commit our time and energy to. From there it just kept growing, Andy Hurley on drums, Keith Buckley singing, Rob Caggiano on guitar and Josh Newton on bass. We recorded the record last year and it (Ironiclast) came out in December of 2010. So far the response has been great. We’re currently out on the Jagermeister Music Tour in the U.S. having a blast.

SG: What’s the latest with Anthrax? And how are you balancing your workload between the two bands?

SI: We’re heading into the studio to re-record 3 songs for our almost finished record. Once those are re-recorded, Joey Belladonna will start recording all the vocals. We hope to finish the record in the next couple of months and release it later this year. Balancing the workload hasn’t been too difficult. Schedules have been working out to make it easy.

SG: Tell us about the Big 4 Tour.

SI: We were asked early last year if we wanted to be a part of it and of course we said yes. We did the seven shows in Europe, which were all incredible. The show in Bulgaria was recorded/filmed, and the DVD from that is already double platinum! I’m really excited about having the opportunity to do more shows with the Big 4. Getting to share the stage with such great bands and great friends is pretty much as good as it gets.

SG: The Big 4 Festival date in Indio is being dubbed The Metal Coachella. Is it likely to be an annual event?

SI: I don’t know if it will be an annual event. It should be! There are Metal festivals like this in Europe all the time. It’s about time the U.S. has them as well.

SG: It’s being described as a metal extravaganza – what can fans expect?

SI: Fans can expect the best show they’ve ever seen.

SG: Any other situations your fans should know about?

SI: Sure. I’m writing my second comic for DC, The Demon. Hope to have it out in the fall. Check me out on Twitter [@Scott_Ian] for all the latest and greatest.

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make punk rock. OK, it doesn’t at all, but when Alkaline Trio’s front man and guitarist, the beloved and enigmatic Matt Skiba, found himself at a personal and professional crossroads he did what any true rocker worth his salt would do: he went back to... more

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make punk rock. OK, it doesn’t at all, but when Alkaline Trio’s front man and guitarist, the beloved and enigmatic Matt Skiba, found himself at a personal and professional crossroads he did what any true rocker worth his salt would do: he went back to his roots, which were in this case, the melodic punk that cemented Alkaline Trio into the skull-tattooed hearts of their devotees.
While preparing for his current tour and his new album’s release this February, Skiba took a moment to chat with SuicideGirls about making the record, and the benefits of drinking beer at the movies.
This Addiction, the new record from Alkaline Trio, arrives in stores February 23rd. Check out ThisAddiction.org for all the updates.


Auren Suicide: Hey Matt!
Matt Skiba: Hi, how ya doing, Lauren?
AS: I’m awesome, how are you?
MS: I’m doing well.
AS: What are you doing?
MS: I am watching [the 2009 Lars Von Trier film] Antichrist, drinking a Perrier and anxiously awaiting a phone call.
AS: Good. From me, I hope?
MS: Yes! Your call.
AS: Excellent. Well then I’m glad I’m not taking you away from a better phone call.
MS: No! Of course not!
AS: Are you in California right now?
MS: Yeah, I’m in Los Angeles.
AS: You’ve lived here for what, five years now?
MS: Actually it’s closer to seven. I was up in the [San Francisco] bay area for a few years but I’ve been down in Los Angeles for almost seven years now, I think.
AS: So it’s been good, right?
MS: Not bad! I never thought I’d say I live in L.A., but I really dig it now.
AS: Why? Because it has a bad reputation?
MS: Not only because it gets a bad rap. I’ve stayed here a lot, I’d come down here and record and work. I didn’t know very many people and that’s one thing that’s key to L.A. I’m a bit of a loner anyway, but after awhile you want to go and have some fun and don’t really know where to go or who to go with. But in living down here I’ve made a small handful of really good friends and I’ve had friends move out here from San Francisco and Chicago, so it’s home now. And the weather’s always nice, there are oceans, there are mountains. There’s everything. And a lot of my work is in Los Angeles so that makes it a lot easier.
AS: Are you still surfing?
MS: Yes.
AS: In Malibu?
MS: In Malibu. All over the place. Wherever there are waves I go.
AS: So you live here, but you went back to Chicago to make This Addiction.
MS: Yes.
AS: There’s been a lot of talk about how this record is a return to your musical roots. What was the impetus to go home to Chicago and explore a different sound from your last few records?
MS: It was an organic thing. We funded the recording ourselves. We’ve always had complete creative control, but there are times when, especially with a major label, things have to be OK’d. We never had to fight with anyone over it, but there is still that outside influence. It’s been a long time since we’ve done exactly what we wanted to do without radio in mind and without anything, quote unquote, working. When we were on tour we started to play a lot of the old stuff and some of the old ideas inspired some new ideas. So it just sort of happened. There was never a finite moment where we decided we’re going to make [Alkaline Trio’s first studio album] Goddamnit part two. There was just a time when we slowly started to realize that we were making a punk rock record which I don’t think we had done in a little while. It was really fun. We went back and recorded with the guy that did the first three records. It definitely brought us back to our roots.
AS: Alkaline Trio has been through so many record labels. Now that you have your own imprint on Epitaph—Heart and Skull—what’s it like to actually be your own boss? 
MS: It’s good [laughs]. I mean, we’ve never gotten ourselves into a position that we didn’t want to be in. There have been times, bumps in the road, but nothing major to speak of. We’ve been very fortunate. We did a lot of label-jumping. Right when we started with labels is when the industry took a nosedive and things started changing really fast. And so we just had to go with it and not really worry about it, and just keep growing up. We’ve never really had too much stress related to outside opinions or anything we’ve always been allowed to make our own decisions and we’ve always been supported in those decisions. Whether that is creatively or business-wise. But it is a good feeling to have something that is ours and have it be a partnership with people that we’re so fond of. Being with Epitaph is perfect for us. And having our imprint, we’ll see what happens with that, but it is a new chapter. So it’s not a relief or anything. It’s just something exciting and new. When we were writing we had no label ideas in mind. We just knew that we were going to try and put it out ourselves.
AS: Right, so it’s a fresh start, this record.
MS: It is. We presented Epitaph with the finished product. And that’s what sealed the deal.
AS: I know you’re a big book guy. Is there anything in particular you were reading during this album process that stuck with you?
MS: Usually I’m reading a bunch of different things. There was a book I highly recommend called Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA [by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara]. There are people who will argue that Dark Mission is a fictional book. But it is a non-fiction book. It was written by two scientists who were with the NASA organization for over 40 years. They exposed some pretty sobering evidence about the mysteries of the universe. For me, I find that pretty exciting. The mysteries of the universe, I don’t think they’ll remain mysteries forever. But I think that there are a lot of things, if people knew, would be terrified. Myself, I find it exhilarating. The New York Times called it, I think, ‘one of the most dangerous books ever written.’ It’s pretty profound.
AS: Really?
MS: Yeah. I was reading Dark Mission and that led to me reading a lot about secret Nazi technology that NASA ended up using. There were Nazi scientists that were pardoned and cleared of their war crimes, brought over here to build rockets for NASA, which was originally a weapons program. I’m going off on a tangent, but there’s nothing about space men or mystery machines in this book. There is just actual proof. I’ll let people find it out for themselves because if I were to just say it they’d be like, ‘no way—that’s not true.’ But it is. So yeah, Dark Mission, that was my main read, from the Feral House publishing company, who also put out the SuicideGirls book!
AS: Yes! So, your inspirational reads were Dark Mission, followed closely by our lovely SuicideGirls pinup book. I agree that the mysteries of the universe will be answered but the scary thing is, those answers just lead to more questions and even harder puzzles to solve. It’s an endless cycle.
MS: When you have mathematical measurements and they’re broken down into laymen’s terms you’re like, ‘wow.’ I was interested in reading this stuff at first because I was skeptical. But I love it. I’ve read the book like three times to try and wrap my head around the concepts. I’m entirely convinced.
AS: I get frustrated when I try to read that stuff.
MS: No way, this stuff is easy. People that have a lot of faith in religion…well, if religion is really making you happy then don’t read this book. I’ll put it that way [laughs].  
AS: Religion makes a lot of people pretty miserable.
MS: Religion has a lot to do with family and upbringing and I respect people with different faiths. My grandmother was Catholic. And she really believed it and I was very close with her and I respect people’s beliefs. I have friends who consider themselves Christians. I think it’s all a universal language all based on the same concepts. It all means the same thing. Science and religion can be synonymous if people are open-minded.
AS: Science is a religion, because science gives you answers.
MS: Yeah. It’s about fact. My religion is the truth. Without the questions and the mysteries that we have life would be boring.
AS: Are you painting these days? 
MS: I haven’t been. I’ve been moving. I just moved into a new house a few weeks ago so I’m waiting to get everything set up. We’ve been really busy with band stuff so I haven’t had the time to paint. But it’s definitely something I love to do when I have the time. And I’ll continue to do more of it.
AS: On your art MySpace page you have a postcard piece up. It looks like it has something to do with Kurt Cobain? It seems like it’s in his writing and its signed ‘Kurdt.’
MS: It’s a replica of a postcard that Kurt wrote to a friend of mine and she kept it. He wrote it to her and it’s exactly what it looked like. The stamp is Buffalo Bill, everything on there is the same. I just projected the actual postcard onto the canvas and traced the handwriting so it’s exactly what the postcard looked like. That’s how he actually spelled his name, with the ‘d.’ You know, whenever Kurt Cobain would sign autographs he would ask people what their name was and he would just write down their name. He was a pretty funny, groovy guy and I have friends who were pretty good friends with. They were all, you know, doing a lot of drugs together, but they spent a lot of good years with him and have a lot of his personal belongings. I thought that postcard was pretty amazing.
AS: Did you ever meet him? Did you ever see Nirvana live?
MS: I never met him, no. I did see Nirvana live though. I liked Nirvana when [their first album, 1989’s] Bleach came out and I was super excited when [1991’s] Nevermind came out, which is a great record. I felt like one of my favorite bands was taking over the world. There were people who were bummed, of course, but for me it’s great when great bands get big. You know? The world needs good music. And Nirvana stayed totally true to themselves. They kept cranking out great music.
AS: I agree! You know, a lot of people are like ‘In Utero, whatever,’ but it’s my favorite, I think it’s a perfect record.
MS: In Utero is my favorite Nirvana record. I love it. Steve Albini, man!
AS: So do the other guys in Alkaline Trio live in Chicago?
MS: [Drummer] Derek [Grant] lives in Chicago again but he was living in Indiana for Awhile. [Bassist and vocalist] Dan [Andriano] lives down in Florida with his wife and daughter.
AS: How do you guys come together to form a cohesive album when you’re not together?
MS: Well we were on tour most of the time we were writing this record so we actually were together the whole time during the writing process. We wrote the record intentionally while we were on the road. I would write a song one night and then the next day at sound check we would run through it. It came together pretty quickly, we were all on the same page. They are fun songs to play and they were fun songs to write. But this was different. In the last couple of years, we did a lot of it digitally. I could send you an MP3 in the next minute.
AS: So you just said that this was a fun album to play and write but a lot of the themes are pretty angst-y and heartbroken.  
MS: Yeah, I was pretty angst-y and heartbroken when I wrote all of those songs. And I think that has a lot to do with the tone of the record because I hadn’t been in that sort of mind frame for a while. I think a lot of people feel angry and heartbroken about whatever it is they might be going through—politics, relationships, friendships, a cat dying—whatever the case may be. And I had some things go on in my life that just brought me back to that very drunk, very angry and sad young man that I was ten years ago. I never went completely off the deep end but I had some dark times and therefore there is some darkness. Not spooky dark, just sad and angry shit.
AS:The title track, This Addiction, points out that love and addiction are the same things. You can be addicted to love or your relationship just like you can be addicted to heroin. What’s worse for you? Taking drugs or getting out of a bad relationship?
MS: Taking drugs you usually feel pretty good! Not to be pro-drug guy or anything but I will say I’m not anti-drug. I don’t do anything and everything, I pick my poison, but I also think that you need to moderate and you also need to handle your shit. I’m a kid 99% of the time, but there are also times, like now, where you gotta man up and have it together. I think even when you’re partying you should have it together. Losing someone, having someone die on you, having someone leave you, is a terrible process. I had a good friend of mine pass away, just as my marriage started to fall apart. Death and divorce are very similar feelings. One almost worse because it’s out of your control. One almost as worse because it is in your control. It depends on the person. You can’t compare grief. But whenever I’m confronted with some opposing force I always try and use it to my advantage. I never let it bring me down too deep.
AS: Well I’m sorry to hear that.
MS: I’m good. I’m good now!
AS: Good! Recently SuicideGirls put up an interview with Dita Von Teese…
MS: Nice, I’m a fan, she’s a sexy lady!
AS: She is a sexy lady! Anyway, in the interview she kind of gave her recipe for getting over a breakup. So do you have one? Since you’re all good now?
MS: I think drinking beer in the movies by yourself a lot is good. I think doing fun, spontaneous things is good. Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself take your new freedom and run with it. Go explore. Have fun. It’s hard to get out of bed sometimes, but you have to understand that there’s going to be a light at the end of the tunnel and rather than walking towards it you should start running towards. Enjoy your life while you have it. So alcohol at the movies, solo, is a good one. That worked good for me. I was there a lot. Beer bottles clanking and stuff. I have a couple of really good friends that were there for me when I was having a rough time. I was on tour and my band mates were always there to yank me out of my bunk and force me to gallivant with them. We were all going through weird things at a certain time and we were all there for each other. You just gotta find yourself again, on your own. I love spending time by myself. I never yell at myself, I never get mad at myself if I’m late. Well, if I miss the previews I might be a little pissed [laughs] but if you can learn to love being solo again, that’s the key. And I think moving on as quickly as you can is good, but definitely not jumping into something else real quick. Have fun and hang out with people but also hang out with yourself. With beer. At the movies.  
AS: Did you make any resolutions for 2010?
MS: No! I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m going to do more of everything. If something’s affecting me negatively I just stop then and there. I don’t wait for the New Year to stop. But 2010 is going to be a good one. It’s going to be a party.
AS: Amen! Good luck on tour and congratulations on the record. Thanks so, so much for talking to SuicideGirls. Have a great day.
MS: Thanks, love!
Alkaline Trio’s seventh studio album, This Addiction comes out February 23rd on Epitaph Records/Heart & Skull. A full U.S. tour with indie rockers Cursive begins on February 16th. Check Alkaline Trio’s official MySpace for dates.

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

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

Check out the official website for Al Franken: God Spoke

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

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

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

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

DRE: Yeah, the Newsweek party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DRE: It’s all short term.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DRE: Old stuff?

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

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

Al: Wesley Clark is half Jewish.

DRE: Oh good! Great I’m in!

If you had a tattoo, what would it be?

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

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Crispin Hellion Glover is, in many ways, a man that embodies the Renaissance ideal. There is an intensity that fuels his life and his work; one that some may view as somewhat strange, but others realize as truly impassioned. He is an author, actor, director, and, though he doesn't consider himself... more

Crispin Hellion Glover is, in many ways, a man that embodies the Renaissance ideal. There is an intensity that fuels his life and his work; one that some may view as somewhat strange, but others realize as truly impassioned. He is an author, actor, director, and, though he doesn't consider himself a musician, a recording artist. He is the misfit auteur with a fascination for the macabre who first impressed mainstream audiences with his breakout role as Back to the Future's George McFly, though it wasn't until the release of his directorial debut What Is It? (2005) that audiences got their first real look into Glover's mind and his penchant for films that go beyond the realm of good and evil.

The first in a trilogy, Glover once described What Is It? as, "The adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, and is tormented by a hubristic, racist inner psyche." SuicideGirls' own Daniel Robert Epstein called the film, "Weird, different, frustrating, bizarre and even brilliant; but it’s so far from the mainstream that it almost overlaps and becomes mainstream again."

The second film in Glover's trilogy, It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, made its world premiere at 2007's Sundance Film Festival, dizzying audiences with its bold and fresh treatment of what might otherwise be considered taboo subject matter. Written by and starring Steven C. Stewart, a man afflicted with Cerebral Palsy, the film follows Stewart's character as he moves in and out of relationships with women, despite his handicap, and indulges his fetish for long hair before ultimately murdering them by strangulation. But rather than lose touch with Stewart's screenplay in the trappings of a crime drama, Glover explores the film as a graphic, genre-style fantasy that he likens to "a television murder mystery movie from the '70s."

During his US tour of It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, SuicideGirls caught up with Glover to chat about creative financing, working with Steven C. Stewart, and the importance of choosing one's words carefully.

For more information and your chance to catch a screening of It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, check out Glover's official website here.

Erin Broadley: Hey, how are you?

Crispin Hellion Glover: Good, good. Everything’s terribly hectic, but that’s good. There’s been a lot of press interest for the film. I really am proud of the film and excited to show it to people so I am glad.

EB: So, this film is the second in a trilogy. How did you fund this film? Do you think that, in terms of creative financing, the nature of what you might call pro culture dictates how we have to finance the projects that we really want to do as filmmakers and artists?

CG: The money that I made from the first Charlie’s Angel’s film went straight into making this film, Everything Is Fine. I think what’s happening in corporately funded filmmaking is that, no matter who funds the film, they are the person who is going to have the final say on what is in the content. Rarely will somebody fund a film without wanting to have a particular element in it. So, if the filmmaker does not fund the film, it’s usual that there is some kind of concession in it. And sometimes that’s okay, there certainly have been good films made with that consideration, but I find that within the last 20 or 30 years in the corporately funded and corporately distributed film entities, it’s become the norm that anything that can possibly make the audience uncomfortable in any way whatsoever is necessarily excised, or the film will not be funded or distributed.

EB: Right, and you’ve said before that those uncomfortable feelings, those moments, are when an audience is really having an interaction with the film.

CG: Where questions start to happen. It’s when an audience member sits back and looks up at the screen and asks themselves, “Is it right what I’m watching? Is it wrong what I’m watching? Should the filmmaker have done this? What is it? What is it that’s taboo in the culture? What does it mean that this taboo has been excised from the most important form of communication in the culture?” I think that is a bad thing. It is those moments when the audience is questioning these very things that they are having an educational experience. For that to be ubiquitously excised from the most important form of communication in the culture ends up stupefying the culture. And one can feel that that’s happened. It’s very important for sociological studies to be able to determine what the taboo of the culture is. One can understand the culture much more readily when they understand what the taboo of the culture is. When it’s kind of made murky it’s a little bit harder to disseminate the information.

EB: Would you agree that it’s more important for art and for film these days to pose questions, rather than offer answers?

CG: Yeah. The problem is that there are dictations in the way that films are made that do not let audience members think. The way I’ve really been talking about the films that I’m interested in making right now are films that go beyond the realm of that which is considered good and evil. Wherein if there is something that would be considered a bad thing, an evil thing, within a corporately funded and distributed film, in the structure of the film it must necessarily be pointed to as an evil thing so that the audiences understand that the filmmakers feel that’s how it is. [It must be] dictated to the audience that that thing is a bad thing and there’s no other way to think about it. Whereas, in a film that goes beyond the realm of that which is considered good and evil, this so-called “evil thing” may very well exist within the structure of the film but the filmmaker may not necessarily point [it out], an audience member may sit and think about it themselves, as opposed to being dictated to. Then that’s educational. For the most part is not happening in corporately funded and distributed films at this time.

EB: Yeah, it seems like a lot of corporately funded and distributed film makes decisions on a very fear-based level when it comes to their audience. I never think somebody should underestimate the intelligence of their audience to be able to come up with their own interpretations or decisions about good or evil, or what something means, whether it’s taboo or not.

CG: Yeah. Right. I don’t even necessarily think it’s a fear of that but a concern about is what is going to be salable, not to audiences, but in terms of foreign market sales, to the people who are buying things en masse. It’s not a concept of what the audience will be dealing with but what is easy to sell to particular business markets. It’s not even a concept about people actually enjoying or getting something out of the film, it’s more about what is readily salable to particular market areas. It’s very apparent when I go on tour with a film there is a huge amount of audience interest in unusual subject matter and thoughtful subject matter. In fact, on some level I’m kind of quite grateful for the fact that such a large gap has come to exist so as an entrepreneur I can come and fill that gap. It’s unfortunate, in terms of an audience member myself, not being able to find content that is genuinely thoughtful and interesting.

EB: In your last interview with SuicideGirls you opened up by talking about the phrase “counter-culturalism”.

CG: Right. I’ve stopped using that phrase. That’s why I started using “films that go beyond the realm of good and evil”. The reason I stopped using it, it's slang. I mean on some level people understand what it is that I’m referring to. Specifically it had to do with the counter-culture that the media spoke about, using that term, in the late '60s to early '70s. That counter-culture has stopped being represented in the media. At that point in time corporate entities were able to point to that group and say, “This is where we can sell this more esoteric fare to.” That’s very specifically why I was using that term but why I’ve stopped using that term is because counter-culture is almost an oxymoron. Culture is anybody that’s a human being or the byproduct of human beings so how can there really be a counter to it? It’s just a matter of words that could be misinterpreted. So I’ve stopped using that.

EB: I like people who choose their words carefully. You’re right -- so many words get used incorrectly and there are so many misconceptions that happen.

CG: Yeah. I’m finding there is less misconception when I am describing it as films that go beyond the realm of that which is considered good and evil. It’s a bit longer but more specific.

EB: The work you create is very all encompassing. You’re a writer, you’re an actor, you’re a director, and you’ve made music. Have you found your role as a director any more fulfilling than certain other of those pursuits?

CG: Yeah. I definitely like making my own films the best, there’s no question about it. I still enjoy doing all of the other things that I do. But making my own films, that is my favorite.

EB: How did you meet Steven C. Stewart?

CG: It’s a long story about Steven C. Stewart. When I was 19, which would be 1983, I was working on a film at AFI called The Orkly Kid, which was a good movie. It’s a movie I’m still proud of. The filmmaker, the director and writer of that film was from Salt Lake City, Utah. He was friends with another Salt Lake City filmmaker named Larry Roberts who had done a documentary on Steven C. Stewart. He was born with a severe case of Cerebral Palsy and he had been locked in a nursing home when he was in his early 20s when his mother died and he couldn’t get out for approximately 10 years. The people who attended him there derisively would call him MR, a mental retard, which wasn’t a nice thing to say to anybody. He was of normal intelligence.

I have to see the documentary again. It’s been many years since I saw it, but I believe that the documentary Larry made about helped get Steve out of the nursing home and then he lived the rest of his life in an assisted living place, which I went and saw. It was a nice place. Once someone sees the film, almost everything is shot on sets. Steven C. Stewart’s screenplay was written in genre style, like a television murder mystery movie from the ‘70s. It had a naïve element to it and yet very detailed sexual elements and a lot of fantasy elements having to do with women’s hair. It’s a fascinating story. When he got out of the nursing home he told Larry about this screenplay that he wanted to make into a movie. Larry was involved in certain other things but he knew of a filmmaker that was making interesting, unusual films and he told Steve he should meet with that filmmaker. Also, Trent and Larry, not too long after I had worked on The Orkly Kid, they showed me some of David Brother’s movies and it was right around the time that I wanted to start making my own films from some of my books. I thought he was very creative and would be good to work with, so we started making The Backwards Swing, which, actually, is next thing I want to edit together now. That was in 1986 and that’s when David showed me the screenplay for Everything Is Fine. As soon as I read it, I knew that this was a movie that I had to produce.

EB: I think it’s interesting that you came across this script before you had written you had written What Is It?.

CG: That’s correct... they were not related to each other at all. What Is It? was written originally to be a short film to promote yet a different screenplay, which will ultimately be part three of the trilogy of films. Two screenwriters from Arizona had contacted me and wanted to direct me in a movie that they had written a screenplay for. They made an offer to my agent, which they really shouldn’t have done because they didn’t have any money.

EB: [Laughs]

CG: It was right about the time that I decided the first filmmaker that I’d work with would be myself and I stuck with that. I talked to them about it and they said they wanted to hear what my concepts were. So they came out and met with me, and the main thing was that the characters in the film to be played by actors with Down Syndrome. They set about rewriting the screenplay and then David Lynch agreed to executive produce it for me to direct. I went to one of the large corporate entities in Los Angeles and after a number of meetings and discussions they said that they were concerned about funding a film where the majority of characters were played by actors with Down Syndrome. So it was deemed that I should write a short film to promote that this was a viable idea. That short film that I wrote was What Is It?. I could see that with more work I could make it into a feature film, so that’s what I did. I took that footage and figured a way to change the antagonism within it and make it into a different film. I put myself in the film as the central antagonist, or a personification of the antagonism. I knew that the screenplay, It Is Fine!, could serve as a sequel to what would now be a feature film. Then I started thinking that there were certain themes and elements that were related to the Steven C. Stewart screenplay in certain ways.

EB: Right, there were certain elements there that you could tie together and connect.

CG: Yes, and I realized that if I put Steve into part one with myself then his could be a sequel to What Is It? and it would help commercially with his film and be an interesting way of working all of these things together.

EB: Well, with his screenplay, how much were you involved in kind of bringing that to form on the screen? How much were you working together hands on?

CG: David Brothers and I were very concerned with making certain that a naïve element comes through. The strength of the film is that there is a very strong, cathartic, emotional resonance with the Steven C. Stewart character, and that it was very apparent this was in his screenplay. This was the most important thing to get through. Steve would have let us do anything we wanted to the screenplay. He wouldn’t have any thoughts or concerns or worry but David and I wanted to make sure that there were certain elements that just came through. We wanted to have a genuine respect for the naïveté with which the screenplay was written and not to interfere with it, in terms of funding. Margit Carstensen plays one of the main characters in it and, really, the emotional crux had to do with the relationship having to do with her character and the daughter character. There’s another element that it goes into with other women and everything having to do with long hair and women cutting their hair. It’s really a fascinating thing.

The things that were incredibly detailed and important with Steve’s script were the dialogue, how he described the hair and how he described the graphic sexuality of it. Another element that was important, there’s a lot of sexuality in the film. In the original screenplay there was even more graphic sexuality. I wasn’t against bringing graphic sexuality into the film for any kind of moral reason but I was concerned about being able to find a certain caliber of actors that was comfortable with as much sexuality as there was. There was an element that he had written in very specifically that was graphic in nature in the sexuality. So it was important to have some of that. When one watches the film, I’m very pleased with it. I said it before even before finishing it and I still feel like this -- I do feel like it will be the best film of the trilogy, and that isn’t to say I’m not trying to dismiss the other films, I’m incredibly proud of What Is It?, and I want to make all kinds of films. But no matter what, this film will be the best film I’ll have anything to do with in my whole career.

EB: There’s something about this one.

CG: There’s something about it, and it has to do with Steven C. Stewart and his particular story. What Is It? is my intellectual reaction to the restraints that have happened within corporately funded film and distributed film within the last 30 years, and that’s a valuable thing to be dealing with but Steve’s story is about his reaction to a very specific set of circumstances. Some of it has to do with the fact that he has Cerebral Palsy but even more than that it really has to do with this particularity that he has about hair.

EB: Right, and how he interacts with the world because of it.

CG: That is at least as important, and what’s even more important is that this film is not a documentary, this is a documentation of this particular person living out this particular fantasy. That is a very unusual thing and I do not know of another film that has happened in. I would have genuinely felt I had done a bad thing if I had not gotten this film completed or done if Steve had died. You know, he did die within a month after we finished shooting. Cerebral Palsy is not degenerative but he, one of his lungs had collapsed in the year 2000 and that’s why, when I, I knew that with the money I made from the first Charlie’s Angel’s film I could put it straight into making this movie and that’s exactly what happened.

EB: I’m assuming that it was important for you as well to have him not only behind the screenplay, but also involved in the film and every aspect while you were making it.

CG: There was no way that the film could have been made without him. If Steve had died and the screenplay would exist -- theoretically you would hire another man who had Cerebral Palsy or, if it was done in the standard kind of corporately funded and distributed film situation, an actor that didn’t have Cerebral Palsy that played somebody that had Cerebral Palsy -- it would just be nothing. As far as I’m concerned, even if it was a man who had Cerebral Palsy playing this role of a man who had a hair fetish, again it was important that it was a documentation of this man living this particular fantasy out. Something that’s interesting about the movie that I’ll never know is exactly what Steve’s reality was with this whole thing. It’s something David Brothers and I will talk about a lot, “What did Steve feel about all of this?” We talked to Steve about it. We said, “You know, people will think this is strange.” Steve said, “Oh yeah, I know.” He definitely had the mindset of somebody that was a bit of a prankster.

EB: Yeah [laughs].

CG: Which is something I could relate to and I like that about him. At the same time, if you ask specifics about it, I don’t know how analytical he would have been. Sometimes David feels like maybe the only thing that Steve wanted to do was to have the attention and the experience of doing this. I tend toward feeling like that’s not just what it was. Within a month after we finished shooting the film, Steve died. I had gotten a telephone call one morning after we finished shooting and basically Steve asked David and I permission to take himself off of life support. One of his lungs had collapsed again and he would have had to get an operation and wouldn’t have been able to go back to the assisted living place he had lived in. He would have had to go back to the nursing home and he did not want to ever do that again. That was, of course, a very sad day and a heavy responsibility to indeed say to Steve that yes, indeed we did have enough footage and he could do what he needed to do. I had contemplated beforehand how I would feel about [the fact] that Steve may die. He could have died right in the middle of when we were making the film but I also knew that he wouldn’t because he was a very strong-minded individual.

EB: He had rewritten the screenplay a few times, correct?

CG: The basic crux was there. What he would tend toward adding would be more scenes of sex with women having to do with hair and then there’s a great deal of violence in there as well. He’s not a nice guy in the movie. He wanted himself to be the bad guy.

EB: Many people who have seen the film also note how charming he is, though.

CG: Oh yeah, he was.

EB: I don’t necessarily think they’re mutually exclusive; you can be a bad guy and be a total charmer.

CG: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what he is in the movie. It’s a funny thing. [Laughs]

EB: [Laughs] To touch back on some of the darker undertones of the film, was there a certain beauty you wanted to bring out in the graphic qualities?

CG: Well, it’s very apparent that there’s an emotional connection that’s going on in the kind of violence that there is in the movie. If he had just written a standard autobiography, it would not have had anywhere near the emotional truth and interest that comes through by just the fact that he’s using truthful elements of his psyche within a genre structure. That, and yet he could have made a complete fantasy movie where he wasn’t in a wheelchair or he didn’t have a hair fetish. In the movie the women like him and they’re sexually attracted to him and they have sex with him and they love him, in fact. But he still ends up being very violent and killing many of them.

EB: Do you think it’s important for people to see the first one before the second?

CG: Well, my business plan is that I will always play the first film first in any city that I go to. Then, when I come back a second time, I’ll play the second film for a majority of the run but I’ll always let another showing of What Is It? be there so people can see it as well. Everything Is Fine does completely work as a film on its own. It does not have to have a prequel or sequel but I don’t wish to dismiss the importance of What Is It? as well. What Is It? is almost a thesis going into the realms of these taboo subject matters. Everything Is Fine does have taboo subject matter mainly having to do with the graphic sexuality involved. But I just, I feel that films I’d like to go into are going into territory that is not typically dealt with in the manner that I want to deal with it and I feel like What Is It? addresses all those elements and opens the doors. Like I said, it’s a thesis saying its time to be able to just explore all these things without being so concerned about whether it’s a taboo or not. Beyond the realm of that which is considered good and evil -- I certainly feel that the Steven C. Stewart film is. I’ll be touring both of these films for many years to come.

For more information go to crispinglover.com

I first heard of Terry Zwigoff in the autobiographical stories of Harvey Pekar that were drawn by R. Crumb. I knew he was very into artwork, music and comic books. But I, like many others, didn't really get into him until he directed the documentary, Crumb, in the early 90's. Even though the... more

I first heard of Terry Zwigoff in the autobiographical stories of Harvey Pekar that were drawn by R. Crumb. I knew he was very into artwork, music and comic books. But I, like many others, didn't really get into him until he directed the documentary, Crumb, in the early 90's. Even though the brilliance of Zwigoff rolled off of that work we didn't get to see another film of his until the narrative Ghost World was released. That film was an adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel. Both Clowes and Zwigoff were nominated for Best Screenplay by the Academy Awards and now they've teamed up again for Art School Confidential.

Check out the official site for Art School Confidential

Daniel Robert Epstein: Are you surprised to find someone like Daniel Clowes that you connect with so well since he's 15 years younger than you?

Terry Zwigoff: It's hard for me to find anybody of any age that I connect with well. I had that experience with Robert Crumb. We bonded very quickly and became friends. I had the same experience with Dan. Both happened to be from the underground cartoonist background. I could tell from reading Dan's and Robert Crumb's comics that we'd hit it off. We have such strong ties to humor with a similar sensibility and worldview. You think that about a lot of people. When I met Woody Allen, I thought, "Oh yeah I'm going to hit it off with him." But that didn't happen. John Malkovich had a great Woody Allen story. Malkovich keeps to himself on set and is very quiet. He told me that he was doing Shadows and Fog with Woody. At some point during shooting an actor pestered the director for advice, he wanted Woody to give him advice or direction. I guess Woody Allen doesn't talk much to actors. Near the end of the film Woody Allen came up to Malkovich and went, "Are there any other actors like you?" and John said, "What do you mean? Good actors?" He said, "No, actors that don't bother the director and instead of just behave." He really wanted names. I sometimes ask actors the same question because I want to work with those people too. Steve Buscemi is one of those few actors who you always want to work with because he's so easy to work with and so helpful. A lot of actors are temperamental, very difficult and very skittish. That's why they're good actors, too sometimes. Weird breed, I guess.

DRE: Do you do well with actors?

TZ: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. To quote Charles Crumb "Some people like me and some don't." Some actors feel very insecure and they want the director to be their daddy and their psychiatrist and their best friend and to bully them. You just have to take different approaches with them all. I'm not so good at some of the approaches. I like to be pretty honest and direct with the actors. If I don't know what the fuck is going on in the scene, I tell them, "Look, I'm lost" or something. They don't like to hear that.

DRE: They like everything to be perfect.

TZ: They at least like you to have this front, which if you talk to any director alive, there are places in the film where they didn't have any idea what was going on. They just hope it works out. Sometimes I find myself in the situation where I like to draw upon the actor for help. I like to try to collaborate and come up with a solution. It's not always that apparent to me at the start of the scene. Even if it is, I try to keep that opinion to myself and see what they come up with themselves. It might be better than my idea.

DRE: Do you consider this the definitive cut of Art School Confidential?

TZ: Yeah, it's pretty much what I wanted. We went through a number of cuts of the film, screened them and got feedback. It's tough because your first impulse as a director is that anything the audience laughs at, leave in. Anything that they don't laugh at, cut out. Dan Clowes' work has stuff in it that you only find funny or interesting after you think about it. In fact, a lot of films he works on seem to hold up a lot better over time. You can see it a second or third time and get something out of it that you didn't the first time. In the script for Bad Santa, there was so much stuff where it was obvious to me what the intention was, where the jokes were, how a line was supposed to be spoken. Dan's stuff is much more subtle, nuanced, enigmatic, much more esoteric.

DRE: Besides Daniel's involvement in your work, do you see yourself as an auteur?

TZ: I don't subscribe to it as much as a lot of people. I think film is such a collaborative work. The writer has so much to do with the script then there's the director, the actors, the editor, the composer, the producers. As the director, you have the final say so that the individual vision that comes out of it is your responsibility. It's hard to say that I am the sole author of this work. Part of the thing I enjoy about is the collaboration and that's part of the thing I hate about it.

DRE: I was just talking to Daniel in there and he was saying how important the words that he wrote are to him. Is it difficult to cut Dan's work or is that just the way it has to be?

TZ: On the set, I try to get them to say the lines correctly. I call on the script supervisor and it's part of their job to tell you, "Hey they missed a wordd. They substituted a word with this." To make sure you're aware of it. Sometimes they catch it, sometimes they don't. A lot of the time, they don't and you discover it in the editing room. Usually it's not a big deal but when it's a big deal, you notice it. In the editing room, it's hard. It was hard to have Dan come into editing, occasionally he'd stick his nose in. He says at times it's just a different thing that he had in mind that he would have done it differently than I would have done it. But he waits and he sees what I do and generally he's okay with it. I always try to have a big variety of performances. If we have time for improvisation I want to get a couple of takes of that as well.

DRE: Was there much improvisation in Art School Confidential?

TZ: Absolutely. It depends on the actors. Some actors are really good at it. Malkovich was really terrific with it. You can never quite predict whom it's going to be good with and who it isn't. Certain directors like Christopher Guest manage to assemble the greatest actors in the world. I try to get whatever material I can for the editing room so I have choices. That's why it takes me a long time in the editing room. Oftentimes, my editor will sit there and cut me 26 versions of the same scenes with just subtle differences. I cannot sit there. By take 25 I've lost focus. Cut your three best versions and let me see those.

DRE: I told my wife when we were preparing for the wedding that I didn't want to see everything, I want to see the final three things.

TZ: That's right. The editor is trying to be very deferential to the director but at a certain point, he has to just do it.

DRE: What's your opinion of modern art school?

TZ: I don't know anything about it. My concern was to make sure that I gave a somewhat truthful representation of it on screen. I've never been to art school, which is tough as a documentary filmmaker, but then again I've never strangled anybody either. It's not like you have to do it to be able to shoot it in a scene. It helps to have people around you who you can fall back on, you can say, "Well, what do you think, is there something wrong here, with the overall picture?" Dan would say, "Well, that guy wouldn't be drawing with charcoal in this scene, everybody would have to draw in pencil" or whatever.

DRE: What the undercover cop was creating in Art School Confidential was basically outsider art, do you like artwork like that?

TZ: I came across a few things that I bought from this place in Pasadena that uses artist therapy for mentally disturbed adults. All their stuff is for sale. There's a place similar to it in San Francisco, but all the hipsters have discovered it. So you can never find anything good there. People go in there everyday and grab the good things.

DRE: It's like that here in New York too.

TZ: But this place was sort of an untapped gold mine. The art director went there and brought me photographs of a bunch of the paintings. I said, "Oh, man. That one looks like Henry Darger painted it. How much is that one?" "40 bucks." "Okay, got to have that." They have some interesting art there.

DRE: Your first films were documentaries. When you started doing narratives, was it that much of a shift for you?

TZ: Yeah, it's a tough shift. There's some stuff that overlaps. Certain things you learn in the editing room, what you're going to need for cutaways, action shots, the mechanics of things that once they sink in and become second nature, your job gets a lot easier. Then you get to focus on things that are really important in directing and not that mechanical stuff like continuity and eyeline. That's stuff that the script supervisor can cover you for anyway. A lot of it is a whole other art form.

DRE: Have you become a much more relaxed filmmaker?

TZ: Yeah, it gets easier as you get on. It also depends on the film, the situation, the actors, how much time you have to shoot, but in general I say that it gets easier as you go. Some directors' first film is amazing, but other directors like me, eh. But by the time I make my tenth film, I'd like to think I'll know what I'm doing.

DRE: I read an interview with you from internet where you said you feel like a failure and a fraud.

TZ: I read some of that stuff on the internet and so much of it is so inaccurate, patently false and filled with half-truths. I was reading the trivia for Bad Santa on the IMDB and it said that Larry David was my first choice for the part played by Billy Bob [Thornton]. That's completely false. I love Larry David, I love Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But he was never at all a candidate for that. Then you can't get rid of them and they stick with you.

DRE: I just got the Crumb DVD, how was doing the commentary on that?

TZ: It was really painful. To keep it fresh, I thought I wouldn't look at the film and that as the scenes came up I would just talk about them. I wound up doing this commentary where Roger Ebert led the discussion and any time something interesting did come into my head he would start to talk and ask me something else. Eventually I may do another commentary by myself. I wasn't quite prepared and I felt tongue-tied and inarticulate doing it. It certainly was not at the caliber of the stuff Peter Bogdanovich does where he's so eloquent on his DVDs. He's quite a speaker.

DRE: How do you look back on Crumb now?

TZ: I always thought that was a good film. I never had any doubt, I was very confident even when it was being rejected. Every film festival we entered in rejected it.

DRE: What is the new documentary you are working on?

TZ: It's called The Moe Family. It's mostly about Tau Moe. He was a Hawaiian singer who recorded in the late 20's. He made some records with his three uncles while on tour with a French woman promoter, Madame Riviere. They went to the Far East, stopped in Japan and recorded four songs for Columbia. They are all very rare records and very intense. They're as good as any great blues record you hear from the 20's. The guy was an intense singer and songwriter.

DRE: Did you make it before he passed away?

TZ: I shot all the footage before he died. I just haven't had the money or the time to edit it. It's been sitting around for about eight years.

DRE: Are you still into collecting things?

TZ: Less now than I used to be. I still collect records, but I'm not quite as driven to do it. I'm very happy with the records I have. I have plenty. It seems like the price of records is so insane these days that if I do have any money, I'd rather buy a piece of furniture or a piece of artwork. You can always get CDs. It's not quite the same experience but it's close. That's something that is reflected by the ending to Art School Confidential where he's separated by that pane of glass from that kiss. You're there but not quite.

DRE: How was it having such a big mainstream hit with Bad Santa?

TZ: I liked the film but I liked my version better. I thought my film was much more moving and just as funny if not funnier. When I got that script, I could see it was going to be a big hit if it was marketed in a certain way. First thing you need to have a chance of making a successful commercial film is a concept you can get across in a ten second TV ad. With Bad Santa you can do that. With Art School Confidential or Ghost World, it's sort of tough. I do remember one of the Weinsteins telling me that if Miramax had released Ghost World, they could have cut a trailer for that thing and made 50 million dollars. I don't doubt it.

DRE: How long ago did you do your directors cut of Bad Santa?

TZ: I did it when it became clear that they were going to go with a different cut for the theatrical version. I asked Bob Weinstein if he would preserve my cut, and at least put it on DVD and he agreed to do it. In fact they put up a lot of money to do it right. But then they sold their company to Disney, so Disney owns it now. I went to them and asked if they would put it out and they kindly agreed to do so.

DRE: Did you see Badder Santa?

TZ: I did. It's uneven. All the scenes in there didn't quite work out for me. It works on a certain level where there are scenes in there I like and other scenes I don't like. The whole thing doesn't quite have this consistency to it. My cut is a character study of Billy's character. It generally makes his character arc and his relationship with that boy much more truthful and ultimately much more human. The audiences in the test screening wanted Santa to be nicer to the little boy. But that wouldn't make any sense. I always thought of Billy's character as a W.C. Fields character. He has to put up with this pest. Eventually when Billy has affection for him, it is earned. Therefore it just seems more truthful and more emotional to me.

DRE: I know you've known Harvey Pekar a long time, what'd you think of American Splendor?

TZ: It was a good film. But I thought the guy that played Robert Crumb acted really bad. That was the only weakness I really saw in that film. There were moments I liked more than others, but I say that about most films.

DRE: Are you writing the next thing you're doing?

TZ: Yeah, Jerry Stahl and I are writing an adaptation of Laurent Graff's book Happy Days for Johnny Depp.

DRE: Had you known of Jerry before?

TZ: Yeah, he came up and introduced himself to me at the Ghost World premiere years ago. I really liked him. He really sincerely loved Crumb and Ghost World. I spent a long time talking to him and we kept in touch over the years. He sent me the things he was working on like the novels Perv: a Love Story and Plainclothes Naked. Then just recently I was reading Permanent Midnight on a plane and it was such a great book. I called him up and left this long message on his answering machine last night to that effect. I realized I left him a backhanded insult of a compliment. "It was so much better than your other books." [laughs]

DRE: How did you and Jerry come together to do the adaptation?

TZ: Johnny and I share the same agent. She called one day and said, "Johnny wants to meet with you about this book. He wants you to turn it into a film for him." I don't consider myself a writer but I liked the book though I knew it would be a tough one to adapt. I said that I would meet with him but that I wasn't sure if I wanted to write it. I really liked him at the meeting, which surprised me; I don't like most celebrities or movie stars. I told him my concerns and he said, "Well, have you ever heard of this writer, Jerry Stahl." Since then we've been doing it through phone and email since he lives in LA and I live in San Francisco.

DRE: Have you ever heard of SuicideGirls?

TZ: I have heard of SuicideGirls. Is it a website?

DRE: It's like Playboy for punks.

TZ: Playboy for punks, really? Is it done by only women?

DRE: Mostly women.

TZ: It's got nudity on it?

DRE: Yeah, beautiful girls.

TZ: I'll check it out. I've heard of it but I'd just get lost in it. I would end up wasting all day puttering around on the internet.

DRE: They're softcore pictures.

TZ: Now you've lost me.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck