You can't always control the situations you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to them. This is a lesson that Runaways frontwoman, singer and rock & roll icon Cherie Currie learned the hard way. After a chance meeting with vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett and demented pop n'... more

You can't always control the situations you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to them. This is a lesson that Runaways frontwoman, singer and rock & roll icon Cherie Currie learned the hard way.

After a chance meeting with vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett and demented pop n' rock Svengali Kim Fowley (a producer whose credits at the time included the novelty hit "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa"), Currie found herself at the eye of the storm that was The Runaways at age fifteen. The year was 1975, and the male-dominated industry was keen to dismiss the fledgling Los Angeles-based all-girl quintet (which, during Currie's tenure with the group, featured Lita Ford on lead guitar, Jackie Fox on bass, and the late Sandy West on drums).

Under the guidance (or, it could be argued, misguidance) of Fowley, who was a formidable taskmaster, the girls relentlessly rehearsed until they were a beyond tight unit and a force to be reckoned with. Creatively and musically, Fowley's berating and bullying - his primary motivational tactics - paid off. Over the course of the next two very hectic years The Runaways would leave an indelible mark on the music industry, smashing the misconceptions of those who ever doubted that women could rock.

Though Jett thrived on the challenges laid down by Fowley, his abrasive divide and conquer management style took an emotional toll on the more vulnerable Currie, who had never sung before and was the product of a recently very broken home. Ultimately the band was torn apart by the festering resentment fostered by Fowley; the tragedy of The Runaways' considerable legacy being that they stopped far short of their true potential.

Post-Runaways Currie's career was like a leaf blowing in the wind, succumbing to forces beyond her influence. Fowley shaped her first unfulfilling solo album, and pressure exacted by her father turned the second into an ill-fated family affair, with Currie's unseasoned twin sister Marie sharing vocal duties - and creative input.

While recording this second album, Currie also bagged her first acting role, starring opposite Jodie Foster in a film called Foxes. Though not a huge commercial success, Foxes, Foster - and Currie - received very favorable reviews. However accomplishment in this one area was not enough to save Currie from herself. Mourning the loss of her rock & roll dreams, Currie, who had been a casual cocaine user, sought solace in drink and highs from freebase.

Her addiction killed her career and threatened to do the same to her being. After hitting rock bottom, Currie fought to get her life back on track. Having learned how to make healthier choices on her road to recovery, Currie turned addiction on its head and became a drug counselor. Continuing the healing process, she subsequently wrote a book about her experiences with The Runaways, and her journey to the edge and back. Published in 1989, Neon Angel was considered to be an instant classic in the rock biography genre.

Over two decades later, the book serves as the backbone to the highly anticipated biopic about The Runaways, which stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie. However the film is far from the final word on Currie's story. The original version of Neon Angel was published by a family-orientated company looking for a vehicle to launch a new young adult literary division. Though well received, the nature of the teen orientated book meant Currie had to skip several key chapters in her own story. As a companion to The Runaways film Currie is therefore releasing a more definitive, completely revised and re-written version of Neon Angel. In it, among other things, she talks for the first time about a childhood rape and a harrowing knifepoint kidnap ordeal that happened several years later.

Currie has taken on many roles during her dramatic and varied life - trailblazing woman of rock, actress, drug addict, drug counselor, author, chainsaw artist, wife and mother - but perhaps the most important of all is that of survivor. SuicideGirls caught up with Currie at a recent film junket for a one-on-one chat about The Runaways, redemption, and forgiveness.

Nicole Powers: So this is the end of a 21-year journey for the book.

Cherie Currie: You know it is. It really is. Wow! I never thought of it that way.

NP: It's like your baby's come of age.

CC: True. I mean you're really right. That's incredible that you would say that. I mean the first book, I have to credit Neal Shusterman for that book. I was in my mid-twenties, I still hadn't quite come to grips with a lot of things that had happened in my life, and I had a lot of fear. Neal was such a brilliant writer. I mean I gave my two cents, changed a couple of things here and there, but basically nothing. This book is a totally different thing. I just had gotten to a point in my life where I've just forgiven myself, and I have no fear. I took a lot of blame for things I didn't need to. I guess I thought I needed to be forgiven. Well those times have come and gone. Now I just want to be honest.

NP: It's interesting that you talk about forgiveness, because in a way The Runaways back in the day was a cautionary tale of what happens to a band when you let anger fester.

CC: True.

NP: And it's taken a lot of time for you to forgive yourself, never mind other people, but you seem to be much happier for it.

CC: Oh, absolutely. You know the second book was very healing for me. Not only that, I remembered things that I had pushed away or locked away. Once I just let go of that fear and just forgave myself for a lot of the things I had done, that was my prize. It was almost like someone unlocked that door and just allowed me to see things from a totally different perspective. I just accepted so many things that I just refused to accept before, that I thought I could control or change. You know we have that idea as young people that, first of all, we're invincible, and second of all, that we can manipulate and change situations. It's not true. We can't. But acceptance was the key for me with this.

NP: Specifically, what were the hardest things for you to come to terms with? And what areas did you take the blame for?

CC: Just all I put my family through, my second [post-Runaways] record with my sister Marie, what I put my sister through. I ended up candy-coating everybody else's lives as well. It didn't matter if it was family or people in the business, I mean some of these stories, I had to say, "Look, this happened, and it wasn't my fault. Not this time. It's their fucking fault! This person did this. This person, not me." It was something I needed to do. I needed to tell some of these stories that I couldn't tell in this other book.

NP: Well some of new material in the new book, such as the rape at the hands of your sister's ex-boyfriend when you were a teenager, were stories that you didn't even want to tell your mom -- never mind your readers.

CC: Yeah, I had to break that to my mom, a couple of things that she was unaware of. Because she'd left, gone to Indonesia. And, back then, good god, I don't know about you, but man I cared what people thought.

NP: Teenagers do feel that so intensely. It's one of the most freeing things to learn to get over that, to not care what others think, to be able to dance through life as if no one is watching you.

CC: Exactly. And do you know what? Your individuality comes out so much when you lose that. I'm not [saying you] don't give a damn. You just accept who you are, and you embrace who you are rather than trying to fit into somebody else's idea of who you should be.

NP: The Runaways was such a tough experience for you because you cared so much what others - Kim in particular - thought. The film is therefore an interesting study on how two people can go through similar situations, and can react and be affected by them very differently. It's something that Kristen spoke about earlier too. She said when she asked Joan how she dealt with Kim when he was verbally berating her, Joan had told her: "You'd laugh at him. You'd love the guy. He's hilarious. You aspired to be as crazy and freaky as him." Joan was able to essentially laugh the abuse off and use humor as a defense mechanism, but you were in a much more vulnerable place, so a lot of that verbal abuse got internalized with you.

CC: Well I was more insecure than Joan.

NP: That's understandable, Joan had been playing guitar for a while...

CC: I used to turn around -- and this just came to me - I used to turn around and say, "You guys can hide behind those instruments. I have nothing in front of me." But also I'd grown up with an identical twin sister who was the prettier one, the more popular one, so it was more important to me with Kim. I looked on him almost as a father figure in a way, and when he would do some of those things it would literally just crush me. You know Joan, Sandy West, they could separate themselves, but I took everything to heart. I was very vulnerable.

NP: I guess at that point Joan knew she was a kick-ass guitar player, but you'd only just started singing...

CC: Well I watched Joan go through her growth. I think the only two that were not insecure would have been Jackie [Fox] and Sandy. Sandy, she was great, she pounded those drums like nobody's business, and Lita was just angry. I don't know if those emotions that they were showing were for-real all the time or just a way to hide.

NP: I'm sure it was a front. Kids that age are rarely that secure.

CC: I really don't know. But you know I watched Joan really come into [being] a really great performer and singer/songwriter for sure. I just didn't believe in myself as much as she did. I just didn't. I really didn't think my voice was very good. Now I hear that it was very deep and very unique. But I really didn't think of myself ever as a good singer. And then I would have Lita continuously telling me how bad I was. She'd listen to Ann Wilson of Heart and turn around and say, "Why can't you sing like that?" It was rough.

NP: How bad did the infighting get?

CC: It wasn't pretty. Lita was the only one that threatened me physically. I just wasn't a fighter, really I wasn't. That very last day in the band, when she kicked the door to my dressing room, just scared me to death. But it was the emotional abuse that went on from Kim, and [the band] just started losing communication with each other. When you're a bunch of young girls, and you're just growing into an adult body, there's all these insecurities - you can't expect anything different. And you're thrown out on the road with no supervision, none, for months. I'm amazed we stuck together for as long as we did.

NP: What's your relationship with Kim like now? 'Cause obviously he's part of the film project and he's here today.

CC: Wow. It just shows that my planets seem to be aligned pretty well these days. I'd seen Kim a couple of years ago at a party. I'd always been pretty angry with him. It wasn't just because of The Runaways. After I had left The Runaways, I went on and did a record with my sister at Capitol. Kim ended up bootlegging that record and was selling it and making a lot more money than I ever did - and I had nothing to do with Kim at the time.

When I became a mom, and I saw him at the premiere for The Mayor of Sunset Strip, I approached him and I said, "You're no longer stealing from me, you're stealing from my son now so this is going to stop." I was really angry. Then when I saw him at this other event, the anger was just gone. I think I just came to grips with the fact that we all have skeletons in our closet. We all have regret. We've all done things that we wish we could have done differently, all of us. So who am I to hold that kind of animosity towards someone? I had to come to grips with my own animosity, the self-loathing for the things I had done, destroying my career, really putting my family in a horrible situation. Once I forgave myself it was real easy to forgive everyone else. The timing was great, and I do appreciate Kim for what he did, very much so. He did some pretty bad things, and he's the one that's got to live with that not me, so all in all it's good.

NP: What sticks out in your mind as the worst thing Kim did?

CC: Well the movie doesn't even touch [on it]. In my book there's one chapter called "Kim Fowley's Sex Education Class," and trust me, he doesn't look that good in 100-year old underwear let's just say...[He was] like a human praying mantis in dirty, holey underwear - not nice - not for my virgin eyes anyway.

NP: The solo photo session with the Japanese photographer was the final straw that broke The Runaways back. Can you talk about that?

CC: That was a classic Kim Fowley set up. I mean, honest to goodness, I was very protective of The Runaways. I turned down the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine two weeks before I left the band. I begged them in tears, "Please do not put me on the cover of this magazine because it'll be the end of my band." I was getting too much publicity being the frontwoman of that band. It was not something I wanted. And then Kim calls me and says, "Oh, you've got a photo session today." And then he assures me that all the other girls had a photo session as well, that they just wanted to shoot us individually. I understood that. It had happened before. I had no idea that I was the only one. Had I known that that session would have never taken place.

NP: In the book you talk about your relationship with Joan, which seemed to be incredibly positive despite the air of acrimony that surrounded the band. I wish the movie had given a greater sense of this.

CC: Well the film could only be 90 minutes long. There were so many things that had to be left out. Two years of experiences cannot be put into an hour and a half. There was a whole lot to tell in a really short amount of time, and they chose their situations in the film the way they chose them. I wish there could have been some [more] of these great moments that Joan and I had. We roomed together all the time and we saw the lights of all the cities. We'd never been away from home. But they had a story to tell in a very short amount of time.

NP: The kissing scenes between Dakota and Kristin - that's very, very hot!

CC: True.

NP: You allude to it in the book, saying the moments you shared with Joan were "some of the most satisfying moments" of your young adult life and that they "quake" you to this day. But you don't go into detail. Was it as hot in real life as it is in the film?

CC: I just think it was pretty hot in that film, don't you?

NP: Yeah, absolutely.

CC: I think it depicted it pretty well, absolutely. We had fun. We had fun and it was a blast.

NP: In the book there's a couple of other intimate relationships that you talk about. One with a "cheese ball" teenybopper pop star Kim essentially pimped you out to, and another with a "Latin singer," whom you fell in love with during The Runaways tour of Japan. That's going to prompt some interesting speculation as people try to figure out their identities.

CC: Yes. I really wanted to name names, but I couldn't.

NP: After The Runaways you starred alongside Jodie Foster in a film called Foxes, which got great notices. How did this second career as an actress come about?

CC: Well my mother was a great actress. She did a lot of movies with Roy Rogers. I was approached after doing a show by the William Morris Agency... Foxes was the second [audition] I went out on. So it just happened. Everything in my life just seems to just happen, which is good. I enjoyed it, but I just really screwed it up. I screwed it up with drugs. I don't regret any of it though, because look where I'm sitting now. I mean how could I regret any of it?


Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (IT Books / Harper Collins) by Cherie Currie with Tony O'Neill, featuring a forward by Joan Jett, is available at Amazon.com and all fine book stores. The Runaways movie hits theaters on limited release March 19, and is slated to go on wide release April 9. For more info on Cherie Currie go to CherieCurrie.com/.

Floria Sigismondi is the director of one of the most anticipated rock biopics in recent memory: The Runaways, which stars Kristen Stewart (as vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett) and Dakota Fanning (as frontwoman Cherie Currie). Known for her trademark hyper-surreal style (as seen in the music videos she’s... more

Floria Sigismondi is the director of one of the most anticipated rock biopics in recent memory: The Runaways, which stars Kristen Stewart (as vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett) and Dakota Fanning (as frontwoman Cherie Currie). Known for her trademark hyper-surreal style (as seen in the music videos she’s directed for Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, David Bowie, Christina Aguilera, and The White Stripes), the challenge for Floria with The Runaways was to create an authentic representation of the trailblazing all-girl band and the era they exploded (and imploded) in. Though a seasoned photographer and video director, this is the first time Floria has helmed a feature film project. It’s also the first time she’s worked as a writer, having taken on the formidable task of transforming Cherie’s excellent biography, Neon Angel, a definitive account of the life (and death) of the band into a screenplay. During a press day held at a Los Angeles hotel, SuicideGirls sat down with Floria to find out how she set about capturing the essence of The Runaways on film.

Nicole Powers: What attracted you to The Runaways' story?

Floria Sigismondi: One of the aspects I loved was how young the girls were and that they were girls doing things they weren't supposed to do. That kind of really calls to the rebel in me...It's interesting because they were obviously up against it all the time, being girls, playing more aggressive music, you know.

NP: When you came to the project, Cherie Currie's Neon Angel book had been optioned, but then you set about turning that book into a screenplay. How did you approach that process?

FS: I'd interviewed [Runaways manager and producer] Kim Fowley, I'd interviewed Joan and Cherie, and then some people around them in the scene. Then I'd done a lot of research finding interviews of the time. There was a lot of material actually. It just kind of reminded me how explosive they were. I started to see what was important to everybody and how they remembered it, and then tried to make that into something.

NP: You had a lot of input from Cherie through her book, and Joan, who is one of the movie's producers, but did you talk with any of the other band members?

FS: No, because the contracts and everything were in place before I came on board, so I focused on the two of them.

NP: Kim has some amazing dialog in the movie. I understand a lot of that was directly lifted from tapes that you listened to.

FS: Tapes, mostly interviews...It was quite specific, he was talking about the girls. He's just got an amazing way with words doesn't he?

NP: He certainly does. He asked me if I was a sex worker in the corridor downstairs.

FS: Yes, he asked her [indicating an assistant who was also in the room] if she knew where the heroin was, even though he doesn't do drugs. [laughs]

NP: I guess it's the way he likes to mix things up with provocative questions. Kristen was saying how when she asked Joan about how she'd react to that kind stuff, Joan told her she'd just laugh it off. But with Cherie, she just took Kim's comments very much to heart and internalized them.

FS: I think that being plucked out of her family at such a young age - both of them come from broken families...That's what I was drawn to, how different they reacted, you know. They called them salt and pepper, they were so different. Joan also comes from a broken family but her reactions to things are very different than Cherie's. Cherie's reaction to Kim, maybe looking at him as a father figure because she was plucked out of the family early on, but Joan didn't look at him as this father figure but more as a friend. So their reactions to those kind of aggressive comments or things that would come out of his mouth, they reacted completely different.

NP: That's one of the things I enjoy from the film. It's this great illustration of how people can go though the same things and can be affected by them in entirely different ways. So much of that is how you choose to let things affect you, and you really see that in the movie, how Joan let Kim's words motivate her, while Cherie allows him to hurt her.

FS: That's what [Joan and Kim] would do, they would get each other excited, where I think Cherie's perspective was from a more sensitive place.

NP: An insecure place.

FS: Yeah. Because I think her family breaking up, it really affected her deeply.

NP: Also, Cherie had only just started singing, so she was insecure, whereas Joan had been playing guitar for a lot longer.

FS: But imagine, Cherie's plucked out of this club because of what she looks likes. So how can you have confidence if you're singing for the first time?

NP: Yeah. It's completely understandable insecurity.

FS: That's what I thought was a fascinating story too, how she gets chosen to be the forefront figure of this band. It's amazing actually.

NP: How did you pick what aspects of The Runaways story to include? Obviously it's such a complicated story and you can't put everything in a movie. Were there any vignettes that you would have loved to have included but just couldn't work into the thread of the story you wanted to tell?

FS: Yeah there were. I can't remember what they were, but there were a lot. What I did is I picked moments that drew me. It was almost like making a collage. I figured out that it really was about Cherie and Joan, this parallel story. It starts as you get to meet them - as they get their identity. You realize what's important to them.

Both of them grab onto a musical icon. Joan to Suzi Quatro, she sees something in her that feels like a kindred spirit, something that she identifies with. And Cherie with Bowie. He's more androgynous, with a more way out there kind of look. Then they come together and there's this really great explosion that happens with the forming of this band. Like in any [successful] band, there's some chemistry that works. Then they come apart.

Once I found that, that it was about this relationship coming apart and the breaking-up of the band, everything kind of lined up with that and if it didn't it went out. Once I grabbed that, once I found that and thought I'm going to go on that ride, then it was easy for me to go, what do I need, and what doesn't work now because it's a sidestory.

NP: You begin the movie in a very gritty way. You depict Cherie's character as starting her period on the way to a David Bowie concert. Though Cherie talks about going to the Bowie concert in her book, and how life-changing it was for her, the whole period thing is not lifted from there. Why did you choose to open the film in such a way?

FS: Because it was about girls, and it's a coming of age story, and it's about finding your identity. It's at a time when I think women start to pay attention to their bodies, and how people react them. You're coming into a confused but exciting time in their lives. I kind of wanted to say all that, and to say it's just a girls' story.

NP: Obviously Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning are very familiar names, but the cast also includes an intriguing newcomer to acting, Riley Keough, Lisa Marie Presley's daughter (by Danny Keough) who plays Cherie's sister Marie.

FS: I think she did a phenomenal job. She hadn't acted before in anything and I had to force her to do it. I had this feeling. I saw a picture of her, and although they don't look identical, the photographer in me could see something. It was that side profile that really was similar. There was a real genuine intuition because she's not schooled. It felt very real to me. Obviously it was a gamble but I wanted to take it, and it paid off. I thought she did a great job.

NP: You just saw her photo in a magazine?

FS: Yeah. Forced her to come and meet me. I had her come by and meet Dakota in my studio in my garage. I was just playing with their faces, and playing with their hair and playing with their complexion. Because in two separate photographs you don't know what that's going to be like until you put them together. So I just got them in a room and played with them a little bit.

NP: How much did you rehearse the cast when you were getting ready to film?

FS: I didn't do too much. I really love having magic happen on the set and I didn't want it to feel too old. I found I wanted to do not so much rehearsal but just throw knowledge at them - the history, what the girls were like, and their personalities. Joan's more, "I want to keep the band together," and Cherie's more, "This doesn't feel good." Those kinds of things I fed them constantly.

I'd collected books and books, 4-inch binders, maybe ten of them. I had three years just of research. I covered a wall about the size of this room with photographs from the beginning of the script to the end of the script, and how the transformation would take place. So you can see the innocent girl going through the steps, and then Cherie Currie at the end of her rope, the wear and tear of her experience on her.

NP: Did you do a similar thing with story cards, to help clarify the arc while you were writing the script?

FS: Yeah I did do that, I did do that for a while. Seeing what went with what, what stuck and what didn't. I'm a very visual person so I would always have an image with the headline.

NP: You're known for your music videos and for your photography, so the writing was kind of a new foray for you.

FS: Yeah, it was very new. I hadn't done it before. The producers asked me if I wanted to write, [or] if I wanted to somebody else to write it. And I thought, I'll write it.

NP: So you had your own Cherie Currie moment there.

FS: I did, I had my own Cherie Currie moment. That's fantastic! There's a lot of parallels, when you really start going into things...It's funny. I did have my own Cherie Currie moment, but what it did for me is it made me really know the story. I did my own research, so once I got on the set I kind of knew these characters inside out, what motivated them. It really was just part of my homework the writing part of it.

NP: What's the next project that you're working on?

FS: I don't know. I'm kind of drawn to fiction, just something different that doesn't maybe revolve around real happenings.

NP: I can imagine making films of true stories are much harder, since there's real people, real facts and real feelings involved.

FS: Real feelings -- and they're alive. I guess that comes with the real feelings. Yes, it is difficult, because your mind thinks, "I can take care of that problem by doing this." But that's saying a lot about that person that's not necessarily [true]. So it's about trying to find that line that works with you as a creative person telling the story, and works with the real happenings. It's about trying to find the true essence. That's why I call it the true essence, it's not necessarily a biographical documentary, it's a movie.

NP: It's a movie and not a documentary, but at the same time, this is the biggest representation of their legacy, which is a huge responsibility.

FS: Yeah...It's like a puzzle, you know, you're putting things in and taking them out...Like you said, it represents other people's lives so it was definitely a fine line to dance.

NP: So now you're ready for a nice easy work of fiction.

FS: Yes!


The Runaways movie hits theaters on limited release March 19, and is slated to go on wide release April 9.

At a time when, however deliberately or consciously, we live our lives in public online, access to our privacy is the new currency of value. Just because you can keep track of your friends via Facebook, post and tag photos on MySpace, and spew out your every waking thought on Twitter - all easily and... more

At a time when, however deliberately or consciously, we live our lives in public online, access to our privacy is the new currency of value. Just because you can keep track of your friends via Facebook, post and tag photos on MySpace, and spew out your every waking thought on Twitter - all easily and for free - it's easy to assume it's a good thing. Josh Harris is a man who made a similar assumption.

Described as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of," Harris carved a high profile career out of being an instinctive World Wide Web visionary. Before the web was very worldly or wide, he founded Jupiter Research, a company which sold technology trend and impact information to corporations that barely understood what a website was. Harris then rolled the dot.com fortune he made there into Pseudo.com, a New York based Internet TV station that went live when most of America was still on dial up.

Serving as both business manager and creative director at Pseudo, which webcast multiple channels of original content, Harris reinvented himself in the frame of a digital performance artist during his tenure at the too-far-ahead of its time company. As the millennium loomed, Harris was forced out of Pseudo, and he subsequently invested a large amount of his considerable fortune ($80 million at its peak) in a series of two very controversial digital media social experiments.

The first was called Quiet, though it was anything but. For the project which was intended to mark the turn of the millennium, Harris built an ambitious - and expensive - fully wired environment, which housed 100 guests / experiment subjects 24/7 for a period of 30 days. The claustrophobic underground bunker featured pod bunks for sleeping, communal toilet and bathing facilities, a dining area, and a poorly insulated gun range where residents could blow off steam. There was also an onsite interrogation room.

Potential residents had to sell their pixilated souls in order to gain entry to Quiet. There was an intense intake program that involved an intrusive questionnaire, those that passed this initial test had to agree to subject themselves to random interrogations, among other dehumanizing things. All activity in the bunker was caught on camera and microphone, and relayed for the entertainment of Quiet's residents to their in-Pod TVs. Privacy was non-existent, and individuals were reduced to being "channels" for the entertainment of others - suffice to say the sate-or-the art society Harris had created was far from utopian.

For his next experiment / performance art piece Josh took things a step further, and took on the roles of both puppet and puppet master. He installed 30 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 high sensitivity microphones in a New York loft, and moved in with his new girlfriend, Tanya Corrin (who had previously worked with Harris as a presenter at Pseudo). The pair were the first couple to broadcast their everyday home lives live on the Internet, and viewers could post their comments in real time via the project's associated chat rooms. The stunt garnered much mainstream attention, and fed Harris' growing need for 15 minutes of fame - per day. But as life in public unfolded, and not in the way either of them had planned, Harris and Corrin realized a little too late that perhaps the most valuable thing online might be privacy. It's a lesson we all may want to take note of.

To this end, renowned film director Ondi Timoner set about assembling and editing footage she'd shot of Harris over a 10-year period. The resulting film, We Live In Public, which Timoner describes as "a cautionary tale," is both thought provoking and shocking, having a profound effect on all who open themselves up to it. The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2009, making Timoner, whose previous film Dig! was also a winner at the festival (in 2004), the only director ever to be given the honor twice.

SuicideGirls caught up with Timoner ahead of We Live In Public's March 1st DVD and VOD release. Here she gives us an exclusive retrospective tour of the Quiet bunker, and an insight into the mind of its maniacal master.

Nicole Powers: How did you first bump into Josh?

Ondi Timoner: I actually worked on Tanya, Josh's girlfriend's [Psuedo.com] show Cherry Bomb. I would shoot and edit for it. I picked up some really good cash and I was really blown away by this place. I'd never heard of anything called an Internet television network -- I mean for god's sake there wasn't even broadband, you know? I met Josh there and went to some Pseudo parties and so forth, but he doesn't really remember me from that.

NP: How did that lead to your involvement in documenting the Quiet project?

OT: When 1999 rolls around, I'm back in Los Angeles, and he called me. I picked up the phone and he says, "Hi Ondi! This is Josh Harris. I'm wondering if you're interested in documenting cultural history."

I happened to be in New York shooting a pilot for a series I was creating on music's effect of people's lives called Sound Affects for VH1. I went down [to Quiet's headquarters] in early December and they were moving scaffolding into the building right there on Broadway between Franklin and Leonard, a matter of blocks from the courthouse right near the World Trade Center.

I said, "What are you moving this metal in for?" And they said, "To build the pods." I saw another guy hanging surveillance cameras, and I said, "What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm hanging 110 surveillance cameras through the space." I thought, "I still don't know what's going on but I'm in. Somebody's got to film this thing whatever it's going to be."

NP: At any point did Josh elucidate any further about what the project was supposed to be about?

OT: I think that his intention was to push everybody's boundaries to the limit to see what they would do. I don't know that he necessarily was trying to test what would happen when the Internet had broadband. I sort of attributed that vision to him in the film. I think it was more his haphazard genius, just seeing what would happen, and seeing just how much people would give up for their opportunity of fame.

NP: When you were filming Quiet, were you actually living there?

OT: I had a pod, and I was there 20 hours of the day. Josh thought it was important for me to have a hotel room, to not lose perspective entirely. I'm not the type who would ever have checked in to the bunker in the first place. By that I mean I'm not one hundred percent a no boundaries exhibitionist. I would leave and come [back]. I was one of the few people that could do that. I always had someone there - always. There was never not a documentary camera on site, but I pretty much spent most of my waking hours there.

NP: Were you there every day for the full 30 days?

OT: Yes. Absolutely. It got to me too. It was not a pleasant place to be. I know that I have a positive moment in the film where I'm standing at the cereal bar and I'm talking about how I've been reborn, but that was very much about the cereal bar.

NP: What kind of people did subject themselves to this? Was there a common thread?

OT: Josh says it's fame, but I think it's actually our desire not to feel alone. That is important to everybody. I think that fame has been held up as this cure all. Like, if I can be famous then according to what I've seen I'll be happy. I'll be surrounded always and not alone.

In terms of the bunker, it was the "having your lives matter" moment, not being alone, not being somewhere where it wasn't the center of the universe on the millennium.

I'll answer 500 hundred questions, I'll get fingerprinted, I'll put on the uniform, I'll shower in public, I'll shit in public and do whatever else you say just to be [a part of] that in New York City. Then, whatever boundaries one may have had personally fell away under the pressure of everyone else doing it. Boundaries slipped away much like they do on the Internet. You may think that it's weird posting this private picture, and the next thing you know, a year later, you're posting all your pictures, you know?

NP: At the beginning it was all fun and games, and then life in the bunker devolved Lord of the Flies style. Was there any one incident that prompted that change?

OT: No. People just got overwhelmed. It wasn't like it got worse and worse, or that more people were pulled in for interrogations, it was just people piled on top of each other. And the noise! It was called "Quiet: We Live In Public" but it was anything but that. The noise, and light, and everybody piled on top of each other, and everybody in each other's business.

NP: I would imagine the sleep deprivation alone would send people crazy.

OT: Yeah, the sleep deprivation was freaking people out - that's true too.

NP: The buttons Joshua pushed with people, in the interrogations, it did seem that he wanted to get to the point where people would lose control.

OT: Yeah, I think he did. I think he wanted to push them to the absolute limit. He had been consulting with a CIA psychiatrist saying, "What can we do to break them."

NP: What were the worst interrogation incidents that you witnessed?

OT: I think that the girl, Elisa, who's interrogated to the point of having to go through a suicide attempt. It was actually pretty startling, very troubling in terms of the ethics behind that. She was losing it.

NP: That's where the CIA guy asks her to demonstrate the speed of the knife as it went through her flesh during her suicide attempt.

OT: Yeah, that's a little bit crazy. So is the African American dude, Chouaibou, who is interrogated about his Communist party and drug past. I mean there's stuff there could get somebody in trouble, where it's no longer really fun and games. They could hurt themselves or be arrested. You never know where that stuff's going to end up. I think at that point it's questionable how much mental control people have.

But that said, people are choosing to be there, so I understand Josh's perspective as well. So I'm not judging the ethics behind it necessarily. I don't think Josh Harris would have really cared terribly much if anything really bad happened to anybody because that's the thing that makes Josh a walking cautionary tale. Everything's a game to him, and everybody is a player in his game. He doesn't feel like it's his responsibility to look out for them.

NP: Did you question his ethics at the time? Or did you feel your job as a documentarian was just to observe and allow events to unfold?

OT: That's how I do it. I'm not a total fly on the wall because I don't think it's the best way to do it. Interloper Films is my company; I think that "interloper" means you're observing, but you're also in the group, you're in the group but taking notes...So, no, I'm not one to meddle and really push things to go where they wouldn't naturally go, but I also won't stand there when someone falls on the floor. I'll film them falling on the floor, and then I'll put the camera down and help them up. That's just how I roll.

But I've got to say with Josh, I think one of the most important moments in We Live In Public is the desensitization, the observation of how desensitized everybody became regarding what was going on there. Like that shower scene; everybody was just kind of sitting around - even I, filming it. I didn't know what was really going on, whether it was rape or not. I know the guy who was in the shower and I really don't think that that's where he is as a human - he's a very gentle human being actually - but there was just a fevered pitch to the whole thing, with the spectator sport of it.

The woman in the shower, I feel like she felt the pressure of all the eyes on her and things kind of spiraled a bit. Josh, when he says to the camera, "It's 6 in the morning and there's two people having sex in the shower and we're all sitting here watching and it's kind of like [makes a noise indicating nothing]" - that's a very important line in the film I think because that's what's going on. Things that used to be exciting and have some kind of glamour to them, or be taboo, or be shocking, or be off-limits, or violent, or whatever, they don't have the same impact anymore because there's so many images out there. We're all desensitized. I think that's an important metaphor that the bunker makes for life today online.

NP: I guess that's what people deal with when they have porn addiction issues. Because pictures and video of naked people fucking is so readily available that one can get to the point where such images no longer have any power - or the desired effect. If people subject themselves to hours of porn a day, it can cease to do the trick. Then they have to find something else that works for them - the next high.

OT: Yeah, what's the next high? It can get really crazy. But then again, we can talk about this and it's interesting to be aware of, but at the end of the day, like Josh says, what's the point of judging it? There really is no way out. It's not like we're going back. It's an evolutionary process. You just have to figure out whether or not you're going to watch the sex that's online. You've got to determine whether you're going to post that photo. You've got to determine whether you're going to be on your virtual box as you're walking down the street. That's your choice. And that's fine.

Half the time I'm walking down the street I'm typing into my Blackberry, and I probably have a very, very arguable reason to do that. But I am missing something. I'm not going to deny it...I'm somewhat sacrificing an interaction with the world around me to be inside my virtual box.

NP: Yeah. I have a couple of friends that when you're with them will spend more time staring into their Blackberry than interacting with you. They don't mean to be rude or anything, but they've lost their ability to be fully in the now with the people they're with. And I don't want to be that person, so I've actually made a deliberate choice not to have a Blackberry.

OT: Wow! Pretty impressive dude. I don't know that I wouldn't be able to function without it at this point, and I hate that. That's what I love about the movie though, that you're looking at a bunker that's 10 years ago now - exactly. You can't believe how far we've come, how much that vision has come true in terms of the Internet and our mainlining addiction to it. It only begs the question, where are we going to be in 5 years?

NP: One of the thoughts that came to me as I watched the film is how our perception of history has sped up. I mean, in the movie, the people you interview in the present that are talking about the past, they're talking about 1990 as if it were 1890. The speed of progress has really changed our perception of history. Same with the speed of social evolution. You look at the way kids interact with technology compared to the way people of our generation do, and it's very different. You talk about how you saw barriers being broken down during the Quiet experiment, but kids who have grown up with social media don't have those barriers in the first place.

OT: Yeah, the kids today, the ones that were born after the Internet existed already, those guys, they have never experienced a life offline...For them there is no definition of public and private.

NP: Going back to the film, right after the Quiet project ended, you actually cut together what you call the Bunker Cut of the movie right?

OT: Yes. We're actually going to do a new Bunker Cut for the Collector's Edition DVD. In 2000 Josh asked me if I would come to New York and do a cut of the bunker. He put me up right in the heart of Manhattan so I could breathe the same energy that I had when I was filming the bunker. I shipped all my stuff over there and moved over there. I arrived and he said change of plans, I'm sending you to an apple farm.

But anyway, I convinced him to move back to Manhattan towards the end of the cut, to finish it up, work with a music supervisor, etc. So in January I moved to a loft in Manhattan. I flew out to Sundance to raise money for Dig!, and I had given Josh a rough cut in the meanwhile. I get back a week later and I open the door to my loft and it looks really, really spacious, and I realize that Josh has absconded with all of the masters and the Avid. So I call him and I say, "Josh what's going on?" And he says, "I didn't like the way I looked." I said, "That's what a rough cut's for. We talk about that and make whatever adjustments." And he said, "No. Change of plan, it's off right now. It's just not the right time."

I knew that he was living in public with Tanya but I thought things were going well. Little did I realize, she had just left him and he was at the absolute nadir of his self-image, his mental state as you can see in the movie. He was down and out and ready to flee Manhattan, and running out of money fast. He stiffed me like twenty grand, and he left Manhattan, and I left. I went off to Africa to make a movie about a dam and was grateful to feel the dirt under my fingernails, and work on real people issues, real problems, like a dam threatening the oldest civilization in Sub-Saharan Africa. You can't get more of a contrast than that from the bunker, which was like a cyber narcissistic gun range.

I just forgot about Josh, and put as much distance [between us]. I went back to LA and finished Dig!. It took years to edit, and a few years later, in 2004 Dig! won Sundance. I got an email from Josh: "Any interest in finishing the film?" I said, "No," because I thought he was a charlatan, and less relevant than ever. He wrote me back and said, "I'll give you fifty percent ownership of the film, full creative control, and send you all the masters right away." So that's how the film was returned to me.

But I still didn't finish it. I went off and made my movie Join Us. I just didn't know how the story of Josh Harris applied still - until Facebook status updates. In 2007 I saw the first status update. It was: "I'm driving west on the freeway." I couldn't believe that someone was putting something that mundane up as a public posting. Then everybody was doing it, and suddenly I realized that the bunker was coming true for all of us. That's when I raced to finish the film. We had to go through about 5,000 hours of footage in about 8 months to get it done in time to premiere at Sundance. Since then it has been so gratifying to see just how relevant the film is to people's lives.

NP: Backing up, following the bunker experiment, the next chapter in Josh's life was him living on camera, live on the Internet with his girlfriend Tanya.

OT: To me that's a really important part of the film.

NP: That's where he gets his comeuppance. I mean there were no real consequences for Josh during the Quiet period.

OT: Exactly. He climbs into the TV set and he becomes the rat in his own experiment at this point, and the results don't turn out very well for him. He really takes the only relationship that he's ever had that was close and intimate and beaches it on 30 motion-controlled surveillance cameras and 66 invasive microphones. I mean his girlfriend who signed on to it thinking it would be fun and cool, and that they were living a fast and crazy Internet life, she ended up leaving him. She just couldn't be intimate in public. And I think that's an important lesson; the Internet, as wonderful as it is, is not an intimate medium. It's just not. If you want to keep something intimate and if you want to keep something sacred, you probably shouldn't post it.

Also the dot.com stock market crash happens during that time. Josh loses all his money while living in public. His contemporaries got to figure out what they were going to do next privately, whereas Josh is living right there on camera, losing his girlfriend, losing his money, losing basically his pride and his identity. He really had ruled Manhattan and suddenly he was kind of the laughing stock. Not to mention that fact that there was this bunch of chatter saying, "Look at this boring guy! Who does he think he is?"

NP: It was interesting to see what happened within Tanya's relationship. They stopped arguing to resolve issues, and were motivated instead by winning in the eyes of those who were observing them, who would immediately post their thoughts in the chat rooms.

OT: Exactly. It becomes about the votes of the audience, it's more of a political race. It's not about resolving the issues between them and that's really I guess ultimately what destroys the relationship.

NP: You see so much of that behavior in our reality TV stars today. They're not interested in resolving any of their issues, they're just interested in having them as means of gaining attention, and to get more people on their side. They'll play up their victimhood rather than their skills as problem solvers.

OT: Well reality TV is a whole 'nother topic, but it's not, it's related to this too. I mean the bunker doesn't just pre-figure the Internet, it really does pre-figure reality TV as well, and the way that people react and act, and it's not a pretty sight.

There are lots of really super positive results from social networking. You probably find on SuicideGirls that people of similar interests can find each other, and niche groups can self-organize, and revolutions can happen this way. This is a wonderful thing in so, so many ways. I've been discovered or contacted by people through Facebook that have become a very valuable part of not only my team at Interloper, but really dear friends. So there are all sorts of great, great, great things to come from it.

NP: Right, there's immense potential to do good, one only has to look at what happened on Twitter with Haiti. But what Josh chose to do with the technology and money at his disposal was not exactly good. Rather than choosing to create a digital utopia, he chose to create a totalitarian, militarized dystopian society.

OT: Yes. Josh Harris, he's not trying to do anything good. I like the guy but he's sort of like the Darth Vader. I joke that I'm the Luke Skywalker in regards to this film. I wanted to make the film to fire a warning shot, just to let people know to think a little deeper right at this crucial moment. We're at this tipping point where the virtual world is taking over. He would rather figure out a way that he can sell you your life back and exploit you. That's why he makes a very compelling subject, and also why the film wasn't maybe nominated for an Oscar. People hate him. Some people absolutely loathe and detest the guy. But I think he makes an incredible subject because of that.

NP: I guess it was brave that he gave you complete creative control at the point where he'd lost everything. I mean he was never going to come out smelling like roses in this movie.

OT: It certainly took a lot of guts, and to be honest with you, and to be realistic, it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't reached a point of desperation. He just wanted to make sure all the work that he had done, and all the money he'd spent to create these incredible experiences, the experiment and everything, actually came to something.

NP: So it goes back to that fundamental need we all have to matter.

OT: Yeah. He did all this and really blew his fortune on it - and his mind. If it wasn't going to come to something then that was it. I became his only hope, or his greatest hope. He even said that in Ethiopia in 2008. The cameraman said to him, "What's your plan to get out of Ethiopia?" And he just pointed at me.

NP: You filmed the afterward of the movie in Ethiopia where Josh retreated after he sold his only remaining liquid asset, his apple farm. He seemed to have very similar instincts to you when after the bunker you went off to Africa to film people with real problems and to smell the dirt under your feet.

OT: I think it was more to escape American Express. I think his reasons were: get out of Dodge, escape Amex, reinvent himself. He told Tanya something that I think is probably important, he said something to her like, "You should leave the public eye sometimes. Don't be afraid to leave the public eye because you can always come back, and come back different."

And I think he knew that his dollar would go a lot further there and that he didn't have many left. He had lived in Ethiopia when he was a child for a year with his father, his whole family. His father was in the CIA and had been based there for a year, and apparently it was the happiest year of Josh's life.

NP: Interesting, because your movie explores Josh's relationship with his mother, whom he overtly blames for much of his emotional baggage in the film, but I guess the whole cold war, CIA psychology that he implemented in the bunker came from his dad.

OT: Yeah. I think that's probably what it is. That's why he did the CIA thing, and I think that's [the reason for] his obsession with guns too. His dad used to carry a bunch of guns on him.

NP: Because there was no real reason to have a shooting range in the bunker. That seemed one of the most peculiar and bizarre things. A room for video games maybe - but a room for guns? This was supposed to be an experiment in the future and guns are part of our past.

OT: Exactly.

NP: So you rushed to get the documentary ready for Sundance. What were your expectations and what was the reaction there?

OT: I knew that we had sort of a silver bullet on our hands. I submitted the film to Sundance on Halloween of 2008, and heard within a week. I was pretty aware that they were super excited about putting it in competition, which meant it was going to be spotlighted as one of the top sixteen films of the festival...I knew that were we striking a chord and that this movie was really right on time or just ahead of it. And that's how it was. We were just swept away. We didn't have many interviews lined up going to Sundance, and by day three I was losing my voice.

But it was a depressed year in the economy, and Obama was being inaugurated literally the morning after our premiere, which was cool, but it meant that a lot of execs weren't there and no sales happened for docs at Sundance that year. So we were kind of holding the bag afterwards...We put it out ourselves in 15 theaters across the America, and different cities across the world.

Now for the DVD/VOD launch we're doing six simultaneous screenings in six different cities. Eliza Dushku [Dollhouse] is going to host in LA and Adrian Grenier [Entourage] is going to host in New York, and we're going to link the six cities together into a national conversation about living in public. During the movie Josh Harris and I are going to host a show of clips from the film and extras, and I'm going to banter with him lying on a bed in Chicago. I highly recommend watching that because I'm going to ask Josh some hard questions.

Then at 7.30 PST all the screenings will stop and all the cities will link together, and Josh and I will do a Q&A based on Twitter questions. All the venue information is going to be on WeLiveInPublicTheMovie.com or you can follow me, @OndiTimoner, on Twitter. I'll be tweeting my ass off in the next week and a half. I keep my private life pretty private but needless to say I'm not going to be retreating into obscurity this week.

NP: And it's no coincidence that Eliza Dushku is hosting the LA event, because you're actually working on your next project with her aren't you?

OT: Yeah, we're doing the story of Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith just came out with a book called Just kids about her relationship with Mapplethorpe. It was a very interesting dynamic that they had in their youth. He was a very vital artist and a cultural lightening rod that really pushed the limits.

I think that's actually very appropriate to talk about on the SuicideGirls site because the Suicide Girls push the limits of how women are perceived and what pinup art is, and what is sexy, and have effectively redefined it. Mapplethorpe obviously did that in a really "push it into the fine art world" [way]. Everything from S&M photography to some really edgy stuff that he found beautiful, he made beautiful side by side with flowers...There's I think a lot of people that wouldn't do what they're doing if it wasn't for Mapplethorpe. There were laws changed and court cases and all that kind of stuff as a result of the stir around Mapplethorpe. It's pretty interesting stuff, and that will be my first narrative film, which is pretty exciting.

NP: That's a departure for you.

OT: From documentaries, well not a complete departure because if you look at all my films they unfold over time. They're all narrative films. They're all suspense filled, that's what I like to do. That's why I started doing documentaries the way I started doing them. Nobody was really doing that at the time. I guess Hoop Dreams was just going to come out and that film followed a story over time, but essentially that was the only one. But otherwise, the films were all retrospective, like eating spinach or eating history books, too educational to be entertaining. That's why people weren't watching docs and that's why I got into documentary.

That's why I filmed Dig! over many years, and that why I filmed Join Us over years, and that's why We Live In Public I sat on because the biggest reason people go to the movies is to be entertained. If you're going to get people to really think about things, get them to feel them, you know? And the way you get them to feel them is to get them to lose themselves, to really feel what it is that they're watching. That's what I set out to do. So for me it's not really that much of a departure to do a scripted film. I was a theater studies major at Yale and worked with actors. It's just the next step in my own evolution as an artist.



To celebrate the VOD & DVD release of We Live In Public on March 1st, the documentary will be screened simultaneously in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York and Atlanta. Adrian Grenier (Entourage) will host the New York event, while Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse) hosts the screening at the Egyptian in Los Angeles. The webcast starts at 5:30 PM PST on WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com, with screenings starting at 6 PM in Los Angeles, 7 PM in Denver, 8 PM in Chicago, and 9 PM in New York and Atlanta. During these screenings, Ondi and Josh will show exclusive clips and banter wildly from a wired. Chicago pod while fielding questions via Twitter live (use the #wlip tag to send questions). Post-screening, Ondi and Josh will link up with Adrian and Eliza and all the audiences nationwide in theaters and online to have a live interactive conversation about living in public. For further details go to: WeLiveinPublicTheMovie.com.

High On Fire's press release describes their sound as "Motörhead meets Slayer," which is actually a pretty good indication of what to expect when you put on their new album, Blessed Black Wings, which opens with the roaring "Devilution" like a latter-day Ace of Spades. Produced... more

High On Fire's press release describes their sound as "Motörhead meets Slayer," which is actually a pretty good indication of what to expect when you put on their new album, Blessed Black Wings, which opens with the roaring "Devilution" like a latter-day Ace of Spades. Produced by the legendary Steve Albini, Blessed Back Wings surprises by not finding the band's sound all that changed by his presence. Albini's hand has merely brought High On Fire's powerful, passionate playing into clearer view after the deliberately muddy, stoner sound of their previous releases and singer/guitarist Matt Pike's work with his former band, Sleep:

Keith Daniels: Hello?

Matt Pike: Is Keith there?

KD: This is him.

MP: Hey Keith, this is Matt from High On Fire.

KD: Hey! How you doing?

MP: Oh, I'm alright, man. How are you?

KD: [Laughs] Not bad. I'm actually kind of nervous. You're the first metal band I've ever interviewed.

MP: Oh, that's alright. It's easy. I do this all the time.

KD: It's funny. I guess, since the election, I've been getting into heavier music. I always considered myself a peaceful guy, but now when I see a car with a Bush sticker I want to light it on fire.

MP: Yeah. Molotov it. I understand. It's funny how militance breeds militance. That was the first time I ever voted in my life, because I thought it mattered... and it still didn't matter.

KD: Yeah. I didn't think Kerry was so great, but he wasn't Bush.

MP: Anybody but. The lesser of two evils was still cooler.

KD: Are you still in Utah?

MP: We're in Nevada, but my phone seems to be doing alright.

KD: You going to stop in Reno?

MP: We're making a beeline home.

KD: A little break from after the tour?

MP: Sort of. Everybody else has a break. Basically, what I'm doing is going to Europe and then coming back, and going on tour again. I've got to do all this shit in the next couple of days real fast.

KD: But you're not going with High On Fire?

MP: No, I'm going to see my girlfriend graduate.

KD: Where from?

MP: Oxford.

KD: Dude.

MP: Yeah.

KD: Obviously, the big news on this record is that you worked with Steve Albini. Were you a fan of his work with Neurosis?

MP: Oh yeah, totally. That's what turned us onto him. I liked a bunch of the recordings he did, and so did Des. We were just tripping out. "Should we use this dude? Should we ask this dude if he wants to do it?" It turned out that he'd heard of us, and it worked out [pretty well].

KD: What did you want from him? People tend to go to him with a specific goal in mind.

MP: Yeah. I wanted it to be crisp and in your face, in the speakers, like closer up. We were talking about making it less canyon-y and boomy, and a little more realistic sounding. I don't know how to explain it. Kind of... real brilliant and ambient.

KD: So you wanted the high end to stick out a bit more.

MP: Yeah. Well, not so much the high end. Um... [Laughs] It explains itself. Do you have the two recordings?

KD: Yeah.

MP: You can hear the difference in the way things are. Not that the way it was before was bad, we were just trying something new. Taking a stab in the dark, if you will.

[KD: Billy Anderson, that you'd worked with before, worked with you on almost everything you ever did. Was it nerve-wracking working without him? Did you feel like you were missing something?

MP: Oh yeah, Billy. It was definitely different. I'd got so comfortable working with Billy for so long that... I don't know. It was nothing against Billy, either. Billy is killer, he's great at recording heavy music. It was weird doing it without Bill, but Albini made us pretty comfortable.

KD: And you actually did this record in about seven days?

MP: Ten. All the tracks took about seven days, then about three days mixing it.

KD: Did you have everything written when you went in?

MP: Oh yeah. Well, there was one song that we wrote in there.

KD: This record was the first of yours that I'd heard, and then I went backwards and listened to the others. I noticed that, on this one, you start straight out of the gate with this hardcore... one of the fastest songs on the record, "Devilution". Did you really want to kick people in the ass right from the start?

MP: Yeah, with the arrangement of it, totally. It is like that. We were just all, "Yeah, it's got to be a floodgate right off the bat."

KD: It's been three years since Surrounded By Thieves came out...

MP: Yeah, I know, which is way too long. I don't plan on going that long without releasing another one again.

KD: What happened?

MP: I don't know. We were just touring on the last one a lot, and we just kept touring and touring and didn't take any time to write.

KD: So you don't tend to write on the road.

MP: It's really hard to, because you're in a van all day. It shakes around, and there's not room -- everybody's in close quarters. I don't get a lot of time by myself, or just with Des, to think about things like that. I write a lot of lyrics, but not necessarily music itself.

KD: One of the things I like about your band, is that ever since I've started to get into heavy music, my friends have been handing me records, and a lot of them sound like I need a degree in musicology or mathematics to really appreciate them. Your record, though, has a feel that's like Motörhead, just fucking rocks.

MP: Well, yeah! We try to make it really good songwriting -- intricate to the point where musicians will enjoy it, with time changes and stuff, but being a three-piece... We're trying to make it, not necessarily simplistic, but just really good songwriting, the way it's put together.

KD: You've mentioned in interviews, back in the day when you did Jerusalem [with Sleep], that you had a bunch of charts of mathematics, and plotted it all out. With High On Fire, were you looking to be more spontaneous?

MP: To a degree, yeah. Just have some [Laughs] normality to it. It got a little overboard in Sleep.

KD: What have you been listening to on the road?

MP: Actually, nothing much. I haven't had a CD player in this U-Haul. I've been listening to the radio stations, like talk radio or something, if that.

KD: That'll poison your mind, man. Talk radio, I mean.

MP: Some of it's not. You'd be amazed. There's a bunch of weird shit that you get out in the middle of nowhere.

KD: [Laughs] You have an accent that reminds me of... an Indian, Native American, accent. Where you from?

MP: Well, I grew up in Denver, and I got shipped here, I don't know, twelve or thirteen years ago, to the Bay Area. It's been a while. I was 17. I'm 32 now.

KD: The last person I talked to with a similar accent was Dick Dale, that's what it made me think of.

MP: Well, I have a lot of friends that are Indians, so that's kind of weird. I get along with every Indian I meet. They end up being my best friends and shit.

KD: I saw some recent pictures of you, and it looks like you've got some new tattoos on your right arm, and the right side of your chest.

MP: Oh yeah, yeah. I've been having some work done. Speaking of Indians, my friend Sonyu's [sp] been tattooing me. My friend Adam did some work on me. My friend Dan did some work on me. It's just time to get some more tattoos.

KD: Have you got them filled in yet?

MP: Some of them, yeah. I have to finish this one on my ribs.

KD: What's your favorite?

MP: I don't know, I like 'em all. They all remind me of a different moment in my life. That's kind of why I get 'em.

KD: Where you were, or something specific about the art?

MP: Kind of both. Where I was at with my life, you know.

KD: My wife and I were talking yesterday about "the Devil in movies", what our favorite portrayal of the Devil in a film was. My answer was Tim Curry in Legend.

MP: Ohhh, he is a wicked [Devil]. He's killer in that; awesome. He's fucking bad looking, definitely.

KD: What would you say?

MP: I hate to say it, because Keanu Reeves was in it, but I liked Al Pacino's in... I forget the name of it.

KD: Devil's Advocate?

MP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I liked Al Pacino in that. He's fucking crazy. Then... I don't know. There's so many different ones. That's a weird one, I'll have to think about it for a while, [and then] be like, "Oh yeah!"

KD: Would you say that the Devil is literal, or metaphorical? Is there literally some force that exists, that is the Devil, or is it a side that everyone has?

MP: A side everybody has, or an evil spirit? I don't know. I don't think anybody has an answer to that.

KD: You've mentioned that you like to play practical jokes on the bands that you tour with.

MP: Oh yeah, we love doing that. We haven't been so bad. We're not as ruthless as we were at some point[s], but yeah.

KD: What's one that stands out?

MP: Oh God, there's one where we saved up all our dirty underwear, and put it all in Joey's kick-drum when his drum-head was off. There's a hole cut in it, and they couldn't figure out why the crowd was thinning every time he'd kick the drum... this wet...

KD: [Laughs] Ass.

MP: It was horrible, dude. Totally funny. Then, that same band, we were coming from Boston, going to New York, and we put "The Red Sox suck, the Mets rule" on their van. [The Red Sox and the Mets] were in the fucking [World] Series together, and they almost got ran off the road by a couple of people, and people were like fucking flippin' 'em off and starting shit with them, and they didn't know why. [Laughs] It was funny.

KD: I really like the cover art on this record, by Eric Roper, who also did the cover for The Art of Self Defense. I read an interview with him where he mentioned that he'd known you since like '91, through Buzzoven. I was wondering how you'd kept in touch all these years, and what made you go back to him for this record.

MP: Yeah, he was doing that Buzzoven cover, and we all stayed at his house. Yeah, I've known him for a long time. I just love his artwork. I think he's awesome. He's a crazy painter-illustrator.

KD: What are you thinking about when you write lyrics? Do you have any philosophy regarding them?

MP: I don't know. Tour life, the tragedy of my life, in terms of... books I've read, any sort of inspiration I can get about a theme. I just go off of... usually it has something to do with literal and metaphorical, and I kind of combine them. Like, all the fantasy, sci-fi, in it, usually it has some sort of literal meaning, too.

KD: I don't remember what song, but something I read of yours reminded me of some books I've been reading, the Illuminatus trilogy.

MP: Oh yeah, yeah. "Devilution" is kind of about that.

KD: Illuminati, conspiracy theory, and all that?

MP: Yeah, completely. Except I don't think it's just a theory. I think it's an honest world domination organization.

KD: [Phone connection ominously terminated, he calls back]

MP: I think it's self explanatory. We're running out of cocaine and oil, so where do we go? We go to the Middle East. I think it's a conspiracy of bankers, politicians, the media, it's the most powerful people in the world, that have a hold on society, and fucking run society. They control society the way they see fit. There's a few people that fall out of the category, that aren't sheep, that tend to think for themselves. So many people don't know what's going on, and can't think for themselves, because they believe everything the TV tells them. The TV-baby generation thing.

KD: What's disturbing to me is that, lately, they don't even try to hide it anymore. It's out in the open, and yet, if you told somebody, they wouldn't believe you.

MP: Oh, I know. It's completely fucking... I don't know how they're getting way with it. It's amazing.

KD: So is there any hope, or should we just hang on for the ride?

MP: I'd say "hang on for the ride". [Laughs] It's going to get worse before it gets better.

KD: But you do think it will get better at some point?

MP: Oh yeah. There'll come a point when this Earth, or God, or whatever, just cleans this fuckin' place right out. I have that feeling. I don't hope it, but then I do, at the same time, y'know? I have some pretty macabre beliefs about that.

KD: Reminds me of Deniro in Taxi Driver. "Some day a rain's going to come and wash all the scum into the gutter."

MP: Yeah, it's kind of like that.

KD: So what's next? After you get back from Europe?

MP: We do a Northwest tour. We're going up to Portland, Olympia, and Seattle. Then we head to Europe at the end of the month, and then I don't know. We have some shit up in the air that we're still negotiating.

KD: Have you even started thinking about the next record yet?

MP: I've got some riffs in the vault. Me and Des have some stuff that we haven't developed yet. Hopefully Joe can help write some more songs on this one, because [this time] it was kind of like, "Here's some songs, learn 'em dude!" So he had a real small time to write his basslines. I'm hoping he's got some extra stuff to bring to the table the next time, and can help us write and arrange this next album.

Blessed Black Wings by High On Fire is in stores now. Check HighOnFire.com for tour dates and more info.

as i have a stack of press releases for upcoming events to send, flyers to finish, and a million fucking e-mails to respond to, i figure it's a perfect time to update my sg blog. uhm, just a quickie. three points: one: it's almost tank top weather which means it is almost prime time for offending... more

as i have a stack of press releases for upcoming events to send, flyers to finish, and a million fucking e-mails to respond to, i figure it's a perfect time to update my sg blog.
uhm, just a quickie. three points:

one:
it's almost tank top weather which means it is almost prime time for offending squares with my body hair.



two:
livin the motherfucken high life with the champagne of beers. oh, beer-on-an-empty-stomach-drunk, how i've missed thee



and three:
i am really fighting the urge to do what i've done so many times in the past, drop it all and head to some deserted island...


fortunately, i have enough good things tethering me to home this time around.

xoxo

You can't always control the situations you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to them. This is a lesson that Runaways frontwoman, singer and rock & roll icon Cherie Currie learned the hard way. After a chance meeting with vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett and demented pop n'... more

You can't always control the situations you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to them. This is a lesson that Runaways frontwoman, singer and rock & roll icon Cherie Currie learned the hard way.

After a chance meeting with vocalist/guitarist Joan Jett and demented pop n' rock Svengali Kim Fowley (a producer whose credits at the time included the novelty hit "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa"), Currie found herself at the eye of the storm that was The Runaways at age fifteen. The year was 1975, and the male-dominated industry was keen to dismiss the fledgling Los Angeles-based all-girl quintet (which, during Currie's tenure with the group, featured Lita Ford on lead guitar, Jackie Fox on bass, and the late Sandy West on drums).

Under the guidance (or, it could be argued, misguidance) of Fowley, who was a formidable taskmaster, the girls relentlessly rehearsed until they were a beyond tight unit and a force to be reckoned with. Creatively and musically, Fowley's berating and bullying - his primary motivational tactics - paid off. Over the course of the next two very hectic years The Runaways would leave an indelible mark on the music industry, smashing the misconceptions of those who ever doubted that women could rock.

Though Jett thrived on the challenges laid down by Fowley, his abrasive divide and conquer management style took an emotional toll on the more vulnerable Currie, who had never sung before and was the product of a recently very broken home. Ultimately the band was torn apart by the festering resentment fostered by Fowley; the tragedy of The Runaways' considerable legacy being that they stopped far short of their true potential.

Post-Runaways Currie's career was like a leaf blowing in the wind, succumbing to forces beyond her influence. Fowley shaped her first unfulfilling solo album, and pressure exacted by her father turned the second into an ill-fated family affair, with Currie's unseasoned twin sister Marie sharing vocal duties - and creative input.

While recording this second album, Currie also bagged her first acting role, starring opposite Jodie Foster in a film called Foxes. Though not a huge commercial success, Foxes, Foster - and Currie - received very favorable reviews. However accomplishment in this one area was not enough to save Currie from herself. Mourning the loss of her rock & roll dreams, Currie, who had been a casual cocaine user, sought solace in drink and highs from freebase.

Her addiction killed her career and threatened to do the same to her being. After hitting rock bottom, Currie fought to get her life back on track. Having learned how to make healthier choices on her road to recovery, Currie turned addiction on its head and became a drug counselor. Continuing the healing process, she subsequently wrote a book about her experiences with The Runaways, and her journey to the edge and back. Published in 1989, Neon Angel was considered to be an instant classic in the rock biography genre.

Over two decades later, the book serves as the backbone to the highly anticipated biopic about The Runaways, which stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie. However the film is far from the final word on Currie's story. The original version of Neon Angel was published by a family-orientated company looking for a vehicle to launch a new young adult literary division. Though well received, the nature of the teen orientated book meant Currie had to skip several key chapters in her own story. As a companion to The Runaways film Currie is therefore releasing a more definitive, completely revised and re-written version of Neon Angel. In it, among other things, she talks for the first time about a childhood rape and a harrowing knifepoint kidnap ordeal that happened several years later.

Currie has taken on many roles during her dramatic and varied life - trailblazing woman of rock, actress, drug addict, drug counselor, author, chainsaw artist, wife and mother - but perhaps the most important of all is that of survivor. SuicideGirls caught up with Currie at a recent film junket for a one-on-one chat about The Runaways, redemption, and forgiveness.

Nicole Powers: So this is the end of a 21-year journey for the book.

Cherie Currie: You know it is. It really is. Wow! I never thought of it that way.

NP: It's like your baby's come of age.

CC: True. I mean you're really right. That's incredible that you would say that. I mean the first book, I have to credit Neal Shusterman for that book. I was in my mid-twenties, I still hadn't quite come to grips with a lot of things that had happened in my life, and I had a lot of fear. Neal was such a brilliant writer. I mean I gave my two cents, changed a couple of things here and there, but basically nothing. This book is a totally different thing. I just had gotten to a point in my life where I've just forgiven myself, and I have no fear. I took a lot of blame for things I didn't need to. I guess I thought I needed to be forgiven. Well those times have come and gone. Now I just want to be honest.

NP: It's interesting that you talk about forgiveness, because in a way The Runaways back in the day was a cautionary tale of what happens to a band when you let anger fester.

CC: True.

NP: And it's taken a lot of time for you to forgive yourself, never mind other people, but you seem to be much happier for it.

CC: Oh, absolutely. You know the second book was very healing for me. Not only that, I remembered things that I had pushed away or locked away. Once I just let go of that fear and just forgave myself for a lot of the things I had done, that was my prize. It was almost like someone unlocked that door and just allowed me to see things from a totally different perspective. I just accepted so many things that I just refused to accept before, that I thought I could control or change. You know we have that idea as young people that, first of all, we're invincible, and second of all, that we can manipulate and change situations. It's no true. We can't. But acceptance was the key for me with this.

NP: Specifically, what were the hardest things for you to come to terms with? And what areas did you take the blame for?

CC: Just all I put my family through, my second [post-Runaways] record with my sister Marie, what I put my sister through. I ended up candy-coating everybody else's lives as well. It didn't matter if it was family or people in the business, I mean some of these stories, I had to say, "Look, this happened, and it wasn't my fault. Not this time. It's their fucking fault! This person did this. This person, not me." It was something I needed to do. I needed to tell some of these stories that I couldn't tell in this other book.

NP: Well some of new material in the new book, such as the rape at the hands of your sister's ex-boyfriend when you were a teenager, were stories that you didn't even want to tell your mom -- never mind your readers.

CC: Yeah, I had to break that to my mom, a couple of things that she was unaware of. Because she'd left, gone to Indonesia. And, back then, good god, I don't know about you, but man I cared what people thought.

NP: Teenagers do feel that so intensely. It's one of the most freeing things to learn to get over that, to not care what others think, to be able to dance through life as if no one is watching you.

CC: Exactly. And do you know what? Your individuality comes out so much when you lose that. I'm not [saying you] don't give a damn. You just accept who you are, and you embrace who you are rather than trying to fit into somebody else's idea of who you should be.

NP: The Runaways was such a tough experience for you because you cared so much what others - Kim in particular - thought. The film is therefore an interesting study on how two people can go through similar situations, and can react and be affected by them very differently. It's something that Kristen spoke about earlier too. She said when she asked Joan how she dealt with Kim when he was verbally berating her, Joan had told her: "You'd laugh at him. You'd love the guy. He's hilarious. You aspired to be as crazy and freaky as him." Joan was able to essentially laugh the abuse off and use humor as a defense mechanism, but you were in a much more vulnerable place, so a lot of that verbal abuse got internalized with you.

CC: Well I was more insecure than Joan.

NP: That's understandable, Joan had been playing guitar for a while...

CC: I used to turn around -- and this just came to me - I used to turn around and say, "You guys can hide behind those instruments. I have nothing in front of me." But also I'd grown up with an identical twin sister who was the prettier one, the more popular one, so it was more important to me with Kim. I looked on him almost as a father figure in a way, and when he would do some of those things it would literally just crush me. You know Joan, Sandy West, they could separate themselves, but I took everything to heart. I was very vulnerable.

NP: I guess at that point Joan knew she was a kick-ass guitar player, but you'd only just started singing...

CC: Well I watched Joan go through her growth. I think the only two that were not insecure would have been Jackie [Fox] and Sandy. Sandy, she was great, she pounded those drums like nobody's business, and Lita was just angry. I don't know if those emotions that they were showing were for-real all the time or just a way to hide.

NP: I'm sure it was a front. Kids that age are rarely that secure.

CC: I really don't know. But you know I watched Joan really come into [being] a really great performer and singer/songwriter for sure. I just didn't believe in myself as much as she did. I just didn't. I really didn't think my voice was very good. Now I hear that it was very deep and very unique. But I really didn't think of myself ever as a good singer. And then I would have Lita continuously telling me how bad I was. She'd listen to Ann Wilson of Heart and turn around and say, "Why can't you sing like that?" It was rough.

NP: How bad did the infighting get?

CC: It wasn't pretty. Lita was the only one that threatened me physically. I just wasn't a fighter, really I wasn't. That very last day in the band, when she kicked the door to my dressing room, just scared me to death. But it was the emotional abuse that went on from Kim, and [the band] just started losing communication with each other. When you're a bunch of young girls, and you're just growing into an adult body, there's all these insecurities - you can't expect anything different. And you're thrown out on the road with no supervision, none, for months. I'm amazed we stuck together for as long as we did.

NP: What's your relationship with Kim like now? 'Cause obviously he's part of the film project and he's here today.

CC: Wow. It just show's that my planets seem to be aligned pretty well these days. I'd seen Kim a couple of years ago at a party. I'd always been pretty angry with him. It wasn't just because of The Runaways. After I had left The Runaways, I went on and did a record with my sister at Capitol. Kim ended up bootlegging that record and was selling it and making a lot more money than I ever did - and I had nothing to do with Kim at the time.

When I became a mom, and I saw him at the premiere for The Mayor of Sunset Strip, I approached him and I said, "You're no longer stealing from me, you're stealing from my son now so this is going to stop." I was really angry. Then when I saw him at this other event, the anger was just gone. I think I just came to grips with the fact that we all have skeletons in our closet. We all have regret. We've all done things that we wish we could have done differently, all of us. So who am I to hold that kind of animosity towards someone? I had to come to grips with my own animosity, the self-loathing for the things I had done, destroying my career, really putting my family in a horrible situation. Once I forgave myself it was real easy to forgive everyone else. The timing was great, and I do appreciate Kim for what he did, very much so. He did some pretty bad things, and he's the one that's got to live with that not me, so all in all it's good.

NP: What sticks out in your mind as the worst thing Kim did?

CC: Well the movie doesn't even touch [on it]. In my book there's one chapter called "Kim Fowley's Sex Education Class," and trust me, he doesn't look that good in 100-year old underwear let's just say...[He was] like a human praying mantis in dirty, holey underwear - not nice - not for my virgin eyes anyway.

NP: The solo photo session with the Japanese photographer was the final straw that broke The Runaways back. Can you talk about that?

CC: That was a classic Kim Fowley set up. I mean, honest to goodness, I was very protective of The Runaways. I turned down the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine two weeks before I left the band. I begged them in tears, "Please do not put me on the cover of this magazine because it'll be the end of my band." I was getting too much publicity being the frontwoman of that band. It was not something I wanted. And then Kim calls me and says, "Oh, you've got a photo session today." And then he assures me that all the other girls had a photo session as well, that they just wanted to shoot us individually. I understood that. It had happened before. I had no idea that I was the only one. Had I known that that session would have never taken place.

NP: In the book you talk about your relationship with Joan, which seemed to be incredibly positive despite the air of acrimony that surrounded the band. I wish the movie had given a greater sense of this.

CC: Well the film could only be 90 minutes long. There were so many things that had to be left out. Two years of experiences cannot be put into an hour and a half. There was a whole lot to tell in a really short amount of time, and they chose their situations in the film the way they chose them. I wish there could have been some [more] of these great moments that Joan and I had. We roomed together all the time and we saw the lights of all the cities. We'd never been away from home. But they had a story to tell in a very short amount of time.

NP: The kissing scenes between Dakota and Kristin - that's very, very hot!

CC: True.

NP: You allude to it in the book, saying the moments you shared with Joan were "some of the most satisfying moments" of your young adult life and that they "quake" you to this day. But you don't go into detail. Was it as hot in real life as it is in the film?

CC: I just think it was pretty hot in that film, don't you?

NP: Yeah, absolutely.

CC: I think it depicted it pretty well, absolutely. We had fun. We had fun and it was a blast.

NP: In the book there's a couple of other intimate relationships that you talk about. One with a "cheese ball" teenybopper pop star Kim essentially pimped you out to, and another with a "Latin singer," whom you fell in love with during The Runaways tour of Japan. That's going to prompt some interesting speculation as people try to figure out their identities.

CC: Yes. I really wanted to name names, but I couldn't.

NP: After The Runaways you starred alongside Jodie Foster in a film called Foxes, which got great notices. How did this second career as an actress come about?

CC: Well my mother was a great actress. She did a lot of movies with Roy Rogers. I was approached after doing a show by the William Morris Agency... Foxes was the second [audition] I went out on. So it just happened. Everything in my life just seems to just happen, which is good. I enjoyed it, but I just really screwed it up. I screwed it up with drugs. I don't regret any of it though, because look where I'm sitting now. I mean how could I regret any of it?


Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (IT Books / Harper Collins) by Cherie Currie with Tony O'Neill, featuring a forward by Joan Jett, is available at Amazon.com and all fine book stores. The Runaways movie hits theaters on limited release March 19, and is slated to go on wide release April 9. For more info on Cherie Currie go to CherieCurrie.com/.

Joe Hill seemed to come out nowhere in 2007 when his first novel "Heart-Shaped Box" was released and became a bestseller and one of the best debut horror novels in years. Like all overnight success stories, it was a long time coming, the thirty-something writer having published one short story... more

Joe Hill seemed to come out nowhere in 2007 when his first novel "Heart-Shaped Box" was released and became a bestseller and one of the best debut horror novels in years. Like all overnight success stories, it was a long time coming, the thirty-something writer having published one short story collection previously and won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy, and the Bram Stoker Award for his short fiction.

Since then, Joe Hill, a pen name he adopted to avoid comparisons with his father, Stephen King, has established his own name and reputation. He launched "Locke and Key," a comicbook series with artist Gabriel Rodriguez from IDW Publishing. Hill is currently on tour promoting his just-released novel "Horns," the story of Ig Parrish, who wakes one morning to find horns growing from his forehead and discovers that he has the power of the devil. The story twists and turns, is sad and nasty, uncomfortable and sometimes even beautiful. In short, what a good horror novel should be.


ALEX DUEBEN: I really liked Horns and I’m curious where the novel began for you. Was it this idea of character who wakes one morning with horns or where did it start?

JOE HILL: On one level, I had written a book of short stories about ghosts and I wrote a novel about a ghost and I thought, well what can I do now? Part of my game plan has always been to write about dark characters, but see if I can’t fool the reader into rooting for them anyway. You really can’t get much darker than the devil.

On another level, before Heart-Shaped Box there were four other books that I was never able to sell. One was this big nine hundred page epic fantasy novel that I worked on for three years and it was turned down everywhere. One of the elements in it was a character who had a psychic gift, whenever he met someone, he knew their ugliest secret. I couldn’t quite leave that idea alone. Later I wrote several hundred pages of another book called The Surrealist Glass that employed a similar concept. With Horns I think the reason it gelled was because I brought the devil into the story.

AD: There was a great line in the book that really struck me and I think sums up how you approach the character of the devil. “It was perhaps the devil’s oldest precept that sin could always be trusted to reveal what was most human in a person, as often for good as for ill.”

JH: I think that’s true. We have this story about a person who wakes up one morning and finds he’s growing a pair of horns. He goes out to see a doctor, see a priest, see his parents. No one can help him with his condition and all people want to do is confess their most terrible secrets. If you knew the worst about the people you loved, could you still forgive them and could you still love them? Ig is forced to face a lot of darkness over the course of the book. Ultimately I think he does come to feel that you can know what’s worst in a person, but that’s not the whole picture, and the people worth knowing are still worth knowing even when you’ve seen the ugliest parts of them.

AD: And almost everyone in the book that Ig meets think that he brutally murdered his girlfriend and so everyone believes that they know Ig’s most terrible secret.

JH: In the small town of Gideon, New Hampshire, where the story takes place, everyone has thought of Ig as the devil for a good year before he actually becomes the devil. He’s viewed as this sex murderer who escaped unpunished. Of course he’s innocent, but the perception in town is that he’s this terrible figure.

AD: There’s usually a point in horror or fantasy books where either events become smaller and more personal or they become bigger. Horns becomes more intimate.

JH: It goes inward. It goes through the first hundred pages plays like a paranoid fantasy, kind of a Hitchcock thing. Back in the day, Hitchcock was thought of as a horror director. He was the master of creating these wronged man scenarios where you have a person who is isolated. All the people he thought he could trust, he can’t trust, and all the people he thought were on his side are actually his enemies.

I wanted the beginning to play like that, but I also didn’t think that that would be enough. It was important to see how these characters first met. It was important to see the characters at their worst, but for it to have meaning, you have to know who these people were at their best. So we have this long extended flashback to Ig’s youth and we get to see him falling in love. I think that’s a satisfying arc, when we get to see a character move from innocence to experience. Maybe that’s also traditional to all stories of sin and the devil. You have to have this fall from grace.

AD: There are a lot of musical references in your books and stories. Do you listen to music while you write?

JH: Every story I’ve worked on has developed its own playlist. A short story will maybe gather two or three songs, and a novel will often have fifteen or sixteen songs that I listen to repetitively, even obsessively. I have to turn the music off when I’m writing dialogue so I can hear the voices in my head more clearly. The best thing about being a writer is you can tell people that you spend hours listening to the voices in your head and everyone smiles and goes, oh that’s so creative. If your investment banker told you that, you’d definitely find someone else to invest with.

AD: It also helps to be a published writer. Being an unpublished writer just means you’re a guy who spends time alone listening to his voices, which fits an FBI profile.

JH: (laughs) I’m laughing, but you raise a serious point. The act of sitting alone every day is intimidating, especially if you’re just starting out and you have another job and you’re writing on the side. You’re thinking to yourself, I could be out with my friends, I could be with my family. I’m not really accomplishing anything. It just feels like a crazy person thing to do, just sit there and play pretend day after day after day with no reason to really expect that there’s going to be a reward.

AD: You published the short story collection 20th Century Ghosts before Heart-Shaped Box, and you’ve continued writing a lot of short fiction. Do you know when you’re writing a short story vs when you’re writing a novel?

JH: Lately I’ve known when I’m working on a novel, but Heart-Shaped Box began as a short story. Heart-Shaped Box is the story of this burned out heavy metal musician who has a collection of disturbing artifacts, a witch’s confession and cartoons drawn by John Wayne Gacy and he hears about a woman selling a haunted suit online. He buys it and when it shows up at his house, it turns out that there is a very real and very dangerous ghost attached to it. I thought when I was writing the story that he would discover that the ghost was real too late and the thing would eat him for breakfast, but Judas refused to die on my schedule. It got to be kind of fun to see how long he could last.

AD: Did you know story behind the suit and the backstory of everything?

JH: Not really. I hung in there to see how long he could keep going. It turned out that he could keep going for about 325 pages. I don’t outline or plan stories out. Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I did. Not planning things out makes the first drafts very, very messy. I throw out anywhere from a third to half of my first draft.

AD: When you were writing Horns did know in advance how it would be structured or at least what ground the novel would cover?

JH: No. The first draft was really rancid. When the first draft was done I showed it to a handful of people, and while people liked some of the scenes, I think I was maybe the only one who felt there was a good story there. Over half of that first draft was abandoned in the process, but it’s not about whether it was easy or hard. All that maters is how the reader feels when the reader was reading it. Horns was a very hard book to write. There were a lot of setbacks. Inevitably whenever I was faced with a creative choice, I would make the wrong one, and have to go back three days later and delete fifteen pages and start again. In some ways I’m more proud of this book than of anything else I’ve ever written, just because it was difficult.

AD: Was part of difficulty the much talked about sophomore effort?

JH: Absolutely. There was another book I worked on that I got several hundred pages of that I abandoned, basically because it wasn’t any good. That was this book that I mentioned earlier, The Surrealist Glass. In some ways that was a very crude rough draft of Horns. I got into that second book mindset where I put more pressure on myself than I really needed to. It took about a year and a half to unwind and finally settle in. It was like digging a grave in the rain. The deeper you get the more the sides fall in around you. But eventually the rain stopped and it dried out and I got the hole dug. Am I going for the right metaphor here? I don’t know if I really want to make a grave the metaphor for my book.

AD: It’s the kind of metaphor a horror writer would make. On that subject, you’re labelled a horror writer but how do you think of your own work and how do you think of the genre that you work in?

JH: I think when horror fails, it’s because the people behind the movie or book forgot the most basic rule. There’s a difference between horror and just scaring people. To me, all horror is rooted in sympathy. Before you can have truly effective horror, you have to give readers a character that they give a shit about. You have to introduce them to characters that they can identify with and love and root for who have complex and authentic emotional inner lives who have regrets and made some mistakes. I always approach horror from the point of view of getting a character to write first and then introducing the awful situation.

AD: That’s interesting because what scares us or unnerves us is very different from what startles us, which is what a lot of horror attempts to do.

JH: Exactly. I think most of the torture porn stuff is just a fad. I think once you’ve watched a certain amount of horror and read a certain amount of horror, those scenes really fail to produce an effective response. You laugh at them instead of flinch. There are not separate rules for horror fiction. The same rules that apply to mainstream literature apply to horror fiction or fantasy or science fiction or whatever. There has to be a character in a situation that explores some interesting questions that mean something to people on a larger level. I think one of the reasons people turn to fiction is to explore questions that are difficult to face and explore in everyday life. Questions that would upset us and worry us and so we look at them through fiction in the same way you would handle radioactive material through a pair of lead-lined gloves.

AD: Beyond having a new novel out which is a very big deal, there’s a new issue of your comic Locke and Key coming out and you have a short story in the new zombie anthology, The New Dead.

JH: I’m pretty proud of the short story. A lot of social networking has left me cold. I’m the world’s most indifferent blogger. I like twitter because twitter is a chance to play with that underrated literary form, the one-liner. I think that Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain would have loved twitter. I wanted to see if I couldn’t do a story about it, so I did this story, "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" for Chris Golden’s anthology The New Dead. The story is about this internet obsessed teenage girl and her crunchy granola mom. The two of them are on a roadtrip together and over the course of this trip they clash with each other and they open up to one another and they share their vulnerabilities and they reach a couple emotional epiphanies together. It’s just like one of those Traveling Pants books. Then they arrive at the Circus of the Dead and zombies start eating people. (laughs)

AD: If that description doesn’t sell a few copies, I don’t know what will. As far as Locke and Key goes, we’re in the third story arc of the series, "Crown of Shadows."

JH: One of the great pleasures in my life has been to collaborate on this thing with Gabriel Rodriguez who is the artist.

AD: Who also drew the devil’s face that appears throughout Horns.

JH: Yes. I’m always sucking my friends into side projects. He stepped up with a great devil face. At one reading someone asked me if I could be anyone else for a day who would I be. I said I would want to be Gabriel Rodriguez because it would be so exciting to be able to draw like him even if only for a day.

There are two things I think writers never should have given up. Before Hemingway, every story was an illustrated story. Twain, Dickens, Doyle, Hardy, all these books when they first came out were illustrated. Post-Hemingway a feeling developed that illustration was strictly for kids books. There’s no reason that the story can’t have illustrations. When we think about for example Sherlock Holmes, part of the reason we love the character is the ingenuity of the stories but I think that part of the reason he’s an icon was Sidney Paget’s illustrations which fixed the look of the character in the public’s mind. The other thing writers never should have given up is writing episodically. These things were abandoned in modern publishing and the only place you can still find them is in comicbooks.

AD: With Locke and Key you do have an ending you’re writing towards. Is it all plotted out in your head?

JH: I think I have an end point, but I’m not writing it any differently than anything else I’ve ever written. It’s always possible it will surprise me and either end more abruptly than I expect or go on a little bit longer, but I project about 36 issues total. Right we’re up to issue 15. We’ve still got a ways. I’ve scripted ahead of where Gabe is illustrating so I’ve written twenty issues total.

AD: Anything you’d like to spill about what you have planned?

JH: I’m definitely not one to spoil anything. I haven’t titled the next arc but it might wind up being called "Six Stories." Those six issues will each be stand alones. This is something I’ve wanted to do with the series for a while.

I was a big X-Files fan, but like everyone, I thought that eventually the mythology got too big. You began to feel there would never be a satisfying answer to any of the mysteries. One of the things I’ve intentionally done with Locke and Key is never to raise a mystery

'You're only paranoid if they're not out to get you,' is an adage that's self-evidently true. With that as a given, Massive Attack mainstay 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja) has every right to feel more than a little suspicious and mistrustful, especially when it comes to matters of... more

'You're only paranoid if they're not out to get you,' is an adage that's self-evidently true. With that as a given, Massive Attack mainstay 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja) has every right to feel more than a little suspicious and mistrustful, especially when it comes to matters of internet privacy, security and surveillance.

After the FBI passed on a list of 7,300 UK credit card numbers associated with various porn sites (some legal and some of an illicit nature) to UK authorities, 3D was swept up in the excessively wide net of an indiscriminate police sting in 2003. Though allegations of any wrongdoing were unfounded, the repercussions were severe for the outspoken graffiti artist, vocalist and music producer. His home was raided, and all his computers and hard drives were confiscated for several months. To compound the situation, despite the fact that no charges directly relating to the police operation were ever filed, the furor that surrounded the investigation and baseless accusations (which were leaked and sensationally reported by a tabloid newspaper) meant that touring plans to promote Massive Attack's fourth studio album 100th Window had to be put on hold. The situation was all the more ironic considering the title of that album referred to a book that exposed the flaws in computer security and the rampant misuse of information in the internet age.

That unfortunate episode however was not the only incident that might have put 3D on the various "person of interest" lists around the world. He has been extremely open and vocal about his disapproval of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, going as far as designing and funding a series of anti-war ads which were published in the NME (with cohort Damon Albarn). Furthermore, having made several forays to the Middle East with the band, 3D has frequently voiced his concern for the plight of the Palestinian people, and in 2007 put the issue at the top of Massive Attack's political agenda with a series of sold out benefit concerts for the Hoping Foundation (an organization which aids children of the troubled state).

These distractions coupled with increasing demand from filmmakers for scores and soundtracks, meant that a new full-length Massive Attack release took a little longer than expected to manifest. However the wait - and the adversity - has paid off. Original band member Daddy G (a.k.a. Grant Marshall), who'd been absent from the project for several years, came back into the fold, and the resulting fifth studio album, Heligoland (released last month), debuted at #46 on the Billboard Top 200, giving Massive Attack their highest US chart position to date.

SuicideGirls caught up with 3D while he was in LA on a brief promotional trip ahead of Massive Attack's first North American tour in 4 years. During our phone conversation, he spoke about the new CD (which features contributions from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, and longtime Massive Attack collaborator Horace Andy, among others), and shared his thoughts on the increasingly pointless posturing of British and American party politics, the inherent dangers of our heavily surveilled states, and the futility of exporting such a culture to the Middle East.

Nicole Powers: Where are you calling in from?

3D: I'm at KCRW actually. I'm literally around the corridors making a nuisance of myself.

NP: Did you record an in-studio session there?

3D: No, we didn't actually play. We just put some tunes on and talked a lot of rubbish, you know, very, very British.

NP: Ah, talking bollocks, us Brits are very good at that.

3D: Exactly. I pride myself in my ability to talk absolute rubbish - especially live on radio.

NP: It's a gift. It's like we're all born with a PhD in bollocks in Britain aren't we?

3D: [laughs] Yeah. I've still got some education to go in the area in the field but I'm definitely applying myself to it.

NP: So I guess we should talk some bollocks about your new album shouldn't we? Especially since it was several years in the making.

3D: Yes. Absolutely. Well to be honest, it's one of those things where it's been a long time between the two albums but in fact the actual process of putting this album together probably only [took] about 7 or 8 months. There was lots of discarded material and lots of distractions, soundtrack work, Best Ofs, Meltdown [Festival], and a lot of gigs in between.

NP: There were all sorts of rumors going around as this album was being recorded, lots of reports of collaborations that people heard about but that didn't ultimately make the cut. When you finally came to figure out exactly what you were going to put on the album, in your mind was there a common thread with the tracks you chose?

3D: There wasn't a common thread really. Each track was a captured moment depending on who we were working with. I think it started to feel like it was a collection of tracks that had a relationship with each other, because of maybe the sentimentality or the sonic feel, then it started to become an album I guess. Before that point everything was just an individual moment, and there was no collective [theme or thread].

NP: Because it does have a very different feel. It's more gentle and earthier than some of your previous work.

3D: I don't know about gentle, I don't think it's got a gentleness to it. I think it's got definitely a more organic feel. It depends how you listen to it. If you play it on a certain system you'll get more aggression out of it, and if you play it in a more subdued way you'll definitely get more of the softer atmospherics. But in terms of production it's very stripped back. I was very keen on not doing what we did with 100th Window, and making the contrast between the electronic and the acoustic very obvious.

NP: When you were writing the tracks though, were you still constructing them electronically? Or were you doing things like picking up guitars to write?

3D: A bit or both, it's always a bit of both. But I think in the end in terms of the final mixes and the way we shaped it, it was about highlighting the contrast between the elements. 100th Window was very much about this amalgamation of everything joining, and eventually the process was so extreme that you couldn't tell if there was a string part if it was electronic or natural. [There were] lots of organic parts that ended up sounding very electronic. It became a whole world of different processes, and we wanted to do something a bit different because we've had that experience so we wanted to do something else.

NP: Talk about a couple of your favorite tracks from the album, and the lyrics and the meaning behind them.

3D: I think a couple of my favorite tracks are maybe "Psyche" and "Atlas Air." "Atlas Air" was very difficult. It was a track called "Marrakesh" and it had about ten different identities. We finally discarded all of them and started a new one. It was only connected to its original self by the name on the file on the computer where the files were located but it became a completely new piece of work. In the end, after lots of fucking around with tracks that weren't working, it came together quite instantly and quick.

Lyrically, because of its transformations it got quite mixed up. At one point it was a song about falling in love with an internet porn star and having this complete relationship with someone online only, nothing physical, purely electronic. Then it became a song about rendition. The two demos I did initially for it I discarded. When we constructed a new piece of music I came away from the studio and completely adlibbed the vocal but I still used the lyrics from both the demos on the same bit of paper and threw it all down in one hour. It kind of really worked even though essentially it was quite distorted.

NP: Right, they're two very disparate subjects.

3D: Yeah. Even though I was starting at the porn angle and going for the more political angle in the end, there's still a few lines that hang in there from it that totally had a different meaning. It's an interesting broken collage, which was finally finished I guess, if you ever finish anything.

And "Psyche," a track which Martina [Topley-Bird] wrote the words for, I love because it's like that flittering of the sun on your eyelids when you're driving in a car, going through light through trees. That kind of strange memory of all the summers you've ever had. It can often make you feel sort of sad and quite lost and lonely at times when it comes. But there are times when you get that flickering light, and you actually feel alright with that. The fact that everything's going by and these moments will never be repeated, but that's OK because you're enjoying it for what it is. You actually get to experience it in the present, and don't worry about the past. That song has that feel to me. It's a song about life and growing up, but it makes it feel alright, you know? It's one of those things that makes you feel alright about it all.

NP: So do you feel grown up now?

3D: [laughs] No. I've never felt grown up really to be honest. No, definitely not.

NP: One of the things I love about you guys is that you're not scared of wearing your politics on your sleeve and standing up for the stuff that you believe in. And I think that, especially in America, so many bands are scared to do that now because they're worried about the repercussions, of sacrificing radio play or TV appearances. But without that element it does mean much of the music we're fed is trivial and meaningless.

3D: We came into KCRW with that very thought in mind. The track I played at the start of the session was "Molotov Cocktail Party" by Vivi Bach, who's a Danish actress from the '60s and '70s. It's this track she did with Dietmar [Schönherr] and it was a '60s ironic song about activism...I wanted to use it as a slight statement about the fact that that whole aspect has been lost and has withered really. It's very hard to form groups or take a action because as soon as you communicate electronically they're shut down.

It's very difficult in this day and age. In Britain surveillance culture is insane - cameras everywhere, emails spied on. Since you've had a Labour left wing government in power it's actually got more and more totalitarian than it ever has been under the Tories. But I don't know if a change of government in the UK would actually change that now. I think it's endemic in the political governing system now to basically spy on the population, and to monitor and track the population, whether it's through their credit cards, their SIM cards in their phones, their GPS positions, their activities, their profiles, it's just really, really strange. It's colonizing everything I would expect to happen in the future but it probably isn't as exciting and science fiction as we thought it was going to be, just a little bit more mundane and depressing.

NP: Labour has been a bit like a wolf in sheep's clothing with regards to the Big Brother stuff. They've implemented policies that the Conservatives, had they tried to introduce them, would have never been able to have got through. With the Conservatives, people would have had their guard up for this kind of thing, but because it was warm and fuzzy Labour that introduced these measures people had their guard down. So they've actually been able to go further than the Conservatives would have been able to with regards to increasing surveillance and decreasing an individual's right to privacy. If the Conservatives had done some of the stuff Labour has got away with, the British population would have been up in arms about it.

3D: I think so, I'd agree. And I don't know without Blair if we'd have been involved with the invasion of Iraq at all. If it had of been a Tory leader, whether they'd have supported it, if that person would have had the power or the personality, or whether it was an inevitability forged in the corridors of power around the world anyway. Whether it was just going to happen, there was going to be a regime change because this was the start of a new century of change and this was just one of the areas they wanted to change. Whether, no matter which party was in power, it would have made any difference. But you're definitely right about the way Labour has been able to smuggle lots of policies and laws under the radar.

Ironically it shows how pointless electioneering party politics really is. Because if Labour had been fighting for power they would have opposed all the laws they've just implemented strictly as a matter of rote. So you think what kind of system are we in where the actual point of politics is lost. All politicians now are just electioneering, and no one actually believes in their own policies.

It's quite difficult. And I look at kids, they're so reluctant to engage in politics, students in the UK don't really have any activism left in them. They're just quite happy with convenience food and everything served up to them in a way that's as simple as possible because there's so much distraction and crap around to fill your mind with.

NP: Well it is easy to be apathetic when you don't see the fruits of change. I mean people had such great expectations for Obama but he's not really gone about trying to create change with the fervor that he campaigned for it.

3D: I was a big supporter of his from when I first saw him interviewed as a senator. I thought, wow, that guy, he looks like the next president of the United States - especially considering the two terms of office of George Bush. I thought this is definitely going to be what would be seen as an antidote. But with my limited education in American politics through West Wing and what I read, I do understand that it's almost impossible to implement a lot of the changes he [promised]. Then again, with the healthcare bill, which is being put to the vote, as was pointed out in the West Wing, that's one of the hottest potatoes in all American politics. He's gone with that, and I guess I can't argue with that. He's delivered on the promise even though he's not really helped deliver any promises in terms of legislating peace in the Middle East or shutting down Guantanamo and stopping drones from killing civilians on the Pakistani border. I think in all those cases it just initiates more people into militancy because of their own tragic loss.

The problem with that sort of thing in the UK and America is that we just don't really seriously consider the lives of other humans with an important regard. When you see [an incident] like the missile strike in Afghanistan which killed 30 civilians, if that had been in the UK, the country would go to war. That sort of action would be an act of war. For us, as far as we're concerned, it's just a sad loss of life and we shrug it off. It's the nature of the world we live in I think unfortunately.

This death by remote control thing, which is the way war is being fought...I thought when I saw with the Israeli Cast Lead Operation in Gaza last year how sterile and cynical that was in the sense that the amount of Palestinian deaths versus Israeli deaths was so grossly disproportionate that it couldn't be considered a war of any sort. And the weapons used were very modern, very automatic, very remote control, and a lot of weapons that apparently were not even meant to be in use like the phosphorus [munitions]. They call it a theater of war, it's almost used as some kind of training ground for even greater wars around the world, and those in the Gaza Strip are just stuck and endure it.

It's a shame because we've been to Israel twice and they asked us to come back this year. We said, "No," we're definitely not going to play in Israel. We've played in Beirut before, we've played in Tel Aviv before, but not while people are being strangled economically, socially, culturally, we're not going to come and play Israel. You can't PR the recent actions of your politicians out of the red by putting on cultural events. It isn't going to work. It's similar to engaging the South Africans in sport during the apartheid years. It's a crazy situation.

NP: So where are you touring to support this album?

3D: We've been everywhere. We've been all over Europe last year, Australia, New Zealand, we're coming back to the States in May, festivals, Japan.

NP: You say you're not able to tour the Middle East this time around, but are there any places you want to put on your tour itinerary because of your political agenda?

3D: When we went to the Middle East before it was between the two intifadas and it was an interesting time to engage in the process. You know, you go there, meet the people, get their side of the story. Now that would be impossible to do. We also went to Beirut and played in an amazing set of Roman ancient monuments in a place called Baalbek on the Syrian border, which was a great experience. It's just wonderful. They're very, very interesting places to be. It's very difficult though to take what we do out there. There's limitations with security. I want to go to Beirut this year but there's no way it's going to happen you know.

NP: It's interesting, I'm friends with a band from Iran, and in Iran you can't even make rock music without the threat of arrest. As adults in the West we have the luxury of either being political or not, but in the Middle East the kids that are growing up there don't have the luxury of not being political. They don't have the luxury of enjoying music for music's sake, or the simple pleasure of enjoying it in public with their fellow countrymen. In that region, if you're listening to or playing Western-style music, you're making a political statement whether you want to or not.

3D: Absolutely. It's that whole thing of why did our forefathers fight in the wars? To give us this freedom, which is now being totally eroded by their descendants. It's really a crying shame. Like I said, we have the luxury of choosing, whereas most people don't have the luxury of choice at all.

It's funny, I mean you look at the Iranian situation, and the recent upheaval after the elections. The way that [news] was shared was amazing. The fact that the rest of the world could see first hand, minute by minute what was really happening was an amazing thing. But ironically that's exactly the sort of thing that our government is trying to crack down on - on letting us have that freedom. Yet that freedom, the liberation of the internet, is expounded on as being one of the positives, helping share news and share injustice with the world. Yet if you actually look at the laws that are being passed and the attitudes of those in power, they're trying to completely control that freedom themselves in their own country. So what's the point of going to the Middle East to export our culture and agenda in the first place?

Heligoland is available online and in stores now. Massive Attack's US Tour kicks off at Terminal 5 in NYC on May 11. For full details go to: MassiveAttack.com.

Destin Pfaff came into the business of love reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the power of attraction, or the institution of marriage. (For the record he’s engaged, and the happy couple have a 7 month-old son.) It’s just that a career in sales didn't appeal, and it never really... more

Destin Pfaff came into the business of love reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the power of attraction, or the institution of marriage. (For the record he’s engaged, and the happy couple have a 7 month-old son.) It’s just that a career in sales didn't appeal, and it never really occurred to him that one could make a living -- and a good one at that -- selling access to something that most people hope to find for free, namely a soul mate.

Pfaff had actually set his heart on a screenwriting career, with horror being his first love. He had some early success in that direction, making it to the semi-finals of Screamfest LA in 2003 with a script he penned called Ripp. However fate, or more accurately Patti Stanger, intervened and his professional life took a rather unexpected turn.

Stanger is the founder of the Millionaire's Club, a Beverly Hills-based dating service for well-heeled clients who’ve yet to get lucky in love. It’s her job to see the potential in people, and she saw lots of that when she came across Pfaff. Despite his initial disinclination to commit to Stanger’s high-end matchmaking service, Pfaff turned out to be a natural in the art of pairing people off.

Pfaff’s skills in the romance department can currently be seen on Bravo’s reality series "The Millionaire Matchmaker." Now in its third season, the show follows Stanger, Pfaff and their Millionaire's Club cohorts as they set up their clients.

SuicideGirls caught up with Pfaff to find out what it takes to be a matchmaking professional, and to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the on camera love action.

SuicideGirls: Where did you grow up?

Destin Pfaff: I was born in Santa Barbara and I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. I lived there for 13 years. Then, I came back to Santa Barbara for high school and college. It was just a lot of fun. I completely enjoyed it. I DJ’d there and I had a really good time. Then, by about 24, 25, I figured I had to get my act together and moved to LA to become a writer.

SG: Oh, that's what you moved to LA for?

DP: Yeah. I came to LA to be a horror movie writer. I found my muse a little bit and I started writing. I did exactly what I needed to do.

SG: Where in LA did you move to?

DP: I moved to Hollywood -- right in the heart of Hollywood.

SG: What year was this?

DP: Eight years ago, so it would be 2002. Ball park. Guessing. The first script that I wrote, the boys over at Fangoria Magazine and [its editor] Tony Timpone, gave me a really nice boost and did a little shopping for me. [They] wrote a nice little article about it and they bought it.

Then, Alex Wright, who's been an early supporter of mine, who did a couple of Wishmaster movies as well as Styx and a few other films, helped me write my next script and gave me notes, taught me the proper structure of everything. All the while, I was working...I ran this small business in Westwood that was a unique job place. If you were an actor or a writer or a director or model, and you just needed some cash, you'd come to us. We'd throw you out there, we'd get you costume character work. We'd get you burlesque show jobs, strip-o-grams, catering jobs, bartending jobs...

SG: Odd jobs for creative people, who aren't looking for a career but who need to make some money.

DP: Basically, they have to pay rent.

SG: Did you start that business?

DP: No, I worked for a guy by the name of Michael Weiss. He was leaving for Florida, to go become a chef somewhere. And, [he asked me to] take care of [his] business. I met him, and the next day, he said, Good luck!” I said, “That's a lot of trust buddy, but all right.” It was cool. No, you know, he was great. The job was great. Really enjoyed that.

SG: Sounds like a good business.

DP: We got very busy, and it started kind of taking over my life a little bit. I was adamant that I didn't want to get stuck in a corporate environment. I was good at running people's businesses and I didn't want to do that, so I quit and I went to Tower.

SG: Tower Records?

DP: Tower Video actually, across the street from Tower Records. Got a day job. I was like, "OK, work the day job, write at night." Wrote a few screen plays, then, Tower was getting ready to go out of business...

[Then] Patty, from Millionaire's Club, she found me online on Craig's List. [She] called me up, asked me to help her get her shit together. This was supposed to be like a two-week gig just to get some things situated. Then, I was done. Then, she tried to convince me to stay. I said no, then she convinced me, and then I said yes. And years and years have passed.

SG: When was it that you first went to go work for her?

DP: About four and a half years ago. Right when the show was getting ready for pilot.

SG: She had a business before the show?

DP: Yeah, the Millionaire's Club has been in existence for almost 10 years now.

SG: Gotcha. So she was running the business, and when they decided to do the pilot she needed some extra help.

DP: It's a boutique company, and there was so much room for her to expand it a little bit more and get a further reach. Re-do her website. Her website was straight up 1992, Republican era. She was very unorganized, everything was just a mess...She had bad people helping her, and she went through a bad slough of people. I came in there to help out and she ended up teaching me how to do what she does. I just didn't know I had a knack for it, but I guess I did -- weirdest thing in the world.

SG: Tell me about your first couple of weeks working there.

DP: Well, coming from retail was a different sort of situation, but I had worked for larger personalities before...When I met her, I went and interviewed at her house, I was like, "I don't really need a job. "

SG: But, it must have seemed interesting...

DP: No.

SG: Really? You're saying that you didn't have any initial inkling that it might be an interesting business?

DP: Not even a little bit. Couldn't care less. Completely, honestly couldn't care less. It was a paycheck. When I talked to her on the phone, she did a quick five-minute phone interview with me. She was so fast, very East Coast, and just very Patty. She's right to the point.

I interviewed at her house. I didn't interview at her office. That was kind of weird. She was in a bathrobe, and, I was like, "This is just not me.” She was yelling at her assistant. I'm like, "You're yelling at somebody." Then, she offered me money and I said OK. And then a week into it...

SG: So you went to the office the next day?

DP: Yeah. Immediately. Next day I went back to her house. I actually worked out of her house with her.

SG: Gotcha. What was the first problem to tackle?

DP: It was everything. Her assistant wasn't doing things right, paperwork wasn't in order, clients weren't being serviced, the website was in disarray, her emails weren't working, her networking system was down -- everything was wrong.

SG: So you took responsibility for all of it.

DP: Yeah, the best I could. Everything that needed to get done, it was [snaps] just like that. I mean, it was a week or two's worth of work. Then she asked me to stay on as an Executive Assistant for her...She's actually a sweet pussycat, once you get past that tough exterior, and she showed that to me. She's literally my best friend. We've been best friends for four years now. I mean, we do almost everything together.

SG: So you initially had no inclination towards wanting to work in that area. Tell me about how it grew on you and how you discovered you were good at it.

DP: I was an artist guy. I was a writer, I like horror movies, that's all I really wanted to do. I was so against getting sidetracked. And, she sidetracked me -- magically! But she did it in a way that didn't take away from the writing. She gave me all the time off I needed. She wasn't overly demanding of me.

SG: If you had to go to a pitch in the middle of the day, you could go.

DP: Exactly. I had complete freedom, which was great.

SG: That is great, to have a paycheck and the ability to go do your own thing.

DP: Yeah. And then she forced me to learn what she knew. Because I was like, "I will run the business stuff, I'll help you with the website, but I don't want to deal with the clients. I don't want to deal with the girls, that's too much work." It probably took about a year...

SG: So, the whole first year, you had nothing to do with that element of the business?

DP: Nope. I was Operations Manager. That's all I was doing. I could be the figurehead, the fake lawyer so to speak, lead the basic meetings that our lawyer didn't need to do. If somebody was having a hard time with something, I would step in and figure out what the problem was.

SG: That's starting to interface with the people who you would eventually work with.

DP: I didn't mind interfacing with the clients. I just didn't want to be sucked into their lives....It was not my thing. I did sales years ago and part of this whole business, it's love, but it's the business of love. Which means, if you're in [the] business, you're in sales. In order to have a client, sell to a client, they become a part of your company so you can service them for their love needs. I didn't want to do sales. I didn't want to sell anybody anything. I was completely against it.

Essentially you’re working with them for a year. And what did I know about setting people up? I knew nothing, absolutely nothing. Again, I was so hard-headed, I didn't want to learn. Then, what happened, a nameless producer friend of mine needed help finding love. I went to Patty and said, “I've got a referral. Go ahead and take care of it." She said, "You take care of him. I'm making you take care of him. I'm going to help you and you're going to learn how to do this." And that was that.

SG: Walk me through what you do for a client. Tell me how it works.

DP: Once you're an active client of the company, our goal is to find you a match. We have a 99% success rate. Most of them find love within 3-5 dates, 3-5 girls. We're very good at what we do. It's a lot of comparison shopping, it's a lot of gut instinct. It's about knowing people's personality or kicks, watching everything that they do very carefully in the initial interview. We don't just accept any male client, or any female client into our club. We're not an escort service, and if you are coming to us like you're ordering a pizza and you want this, this, this, this, this...then, you know what, there's a reason that you're alone and you're probably going to be alone for the rest of your life. If you come with an open mind, let us do our job, we will be successful.

It's this bizarre science that's not a science. You either can do it, or you can't. There's not many people that can do it that are really good at it. Patty is really good at it. I'm really good at it. Chelsea is really good at it, and she's a completely different type of person than I am, and Rachel who works for the company as well, is very good at it. I've seen other people come and go...they just don't have it. You have to be a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist, a counselor, all wrapped into one.

SG: When you take on a client, you're not just setting them up with people, you're answering questions for them, you're talking to them on the phone.

DP: Oh, absolutely, it's a whole process. We're not a dating service. We're not Match.com. We're a matchmaking company. You're paying for our personal time and attention. And once you're in a relationship our job doesn't stop. We're actually going through the whole process with you, from the beginning, making sure that you don't screw it up half way through, you don't leave the girl, or cheat on the girl, make sure the girl doesn't blow it. It's a long tiring, yet very, very rewarding process.

SG: Got it. So the men pay to be a part of the service.

DP: We are 100% free to women. Women join free. Men do have to pay, however, we do have a non-millionaire men application a person would fill out. Women can pay if they want personal attention, otherwise we kind of throw [their info] in our database until we're ready for them.

SG: How do you find the women?

DP: When Patty started this 10 years ago, she used to work at Great Expectations. She started going out and recruiting more girls. Then word kind of got out. She got more clients and then she started getting press. Magazines started calling. She was in Marie Claire, she was in Elle. Then [women] started submitting their stuff. We didn't have to do as many recruiting sessions. Then TV started picking it up, NBC, CBS, CNBC, she was interviewed on 20/20, 60 Minutes, all these different places. So now we have complete awareness for our Millionaire's Club brand. Then the TV show just legitimized everything. We've never been sued. We have this TV show, we have a radio show, we have a huge web presence. Everyone gives us press now. We don't have to do that at all...The television show is a one hour commercial for our business...and it works better than advertising because people think that they're learning about it as opposed to being sold.

We get 100s of girls a week [when] we're not airing live, and thousands when we are. Rachel, my fiancé and our Director of Registration, she's the gatekeeper. She's in charge, but she's one person. We are very selective on who we bring in. Will we take most of the applicants in? Absolutely, but the pool of people that we would actively use is a completely different thing.

SG: So TV you feel has really changed the business, made it a lot more dynamic.

DP: TV has been a huge, huge plus for us. It's had its drawbacks, the TV show it brought out the crazies. That's a little tiring. It's actually made our jobs harder...A lot of them are fame whores. They just want to be on the television show, and it's like, you shouldn't be contacting us.

SG: Clients come to you saying, I want to do your service but only if you make sure that I'm on the show?

DP: Yes, or the conversation always comes back to the TV show. Like, "I saw this guy on the TV show that did this, and that girl on the TV show did this and I think I should be on the TV show." [I'll say,] "OK, let's not talk about that, let's focus on you right now," and then the conversation ends up right back there. The TV show is great. We're not scripted, but at the same time a more significant part of our database of clients are guys that are a lot more sincere and a lot more genuine then you see on the TV show.

SG: Right, you've got to show the most extreme cases to make it most entertaining.

DP: Of course. And, the same thing goes with the women. If you look at the girls who are on the show, porn stars and models and actresses, crazy nut jobs and everything else, if you saw our real girls, it's just not as exciting.

SG: How has being on TV changed your life outside from work?

DP: Literally daily, I get recognized, someone comes up to me, which is bizarre. Because, coming from a place where the focus of energy was behind the camera, suddenly [to] find myself in front of the camera has been neat. I love it.

SG: You like it?

DP: Yeah, it doesn't bother me at all...I appreciate the people that watch the show. I appreciate bringing a certain amount of entertainment. It's awesome. I love it.


Catch The Billionaire Matchmaker on Bravo TV. For further info go to BravoTV.com/The-Millionaire-Matchmaker.