We don't need a movie to tell us something's wrong with the economy. Almost everyone has been touched by a bad mortgage or unsound investment these days. At least a movie can provide answers to how we got here, and hopefully a solution to the problem. Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore's... more

We don't need a movie to tell us something's wrong with the economy. Almost everyone has been touched by a bad mortgage or unsound investment these days. At least a movie can provide answers to how we got here, and hopefully a solution to the problem.

Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore's explanation. The film chronicles Wall Street corruption, mortgage scams and, fortunately, effective protests that are resulting in real change. On DVD and Blu Ray, Capitalism is loaded with extras where the film's experts more fully explain the economic concepts and how people are coping.

This complex situation involves many more questions still. As someone who researched and documented it, Michael Moore can help. He's also adept at explaining things in clear and plain English, not like that doublespeak that keeps people in the dark.

Even as only a voice on the telephone, Michael Moore projects comfort. We are not alone. There are others who support us, and some with the means to educate and empower people to make things better.

Suicide Girls: I knew the idea of interest only loans sounded stupid, but even I let the bank talk me into one anyway. At what point do we have to take responsibility for making bad decisions ourselves?

Michael Moore: You're not responsible when you're fooled.

SG: Thank you. That's actually a comforting way to look at it.

MM: No, seriously. Fred, I'm going to send you 100 free copies of my DVD. You can give them to your friends and family and the people you know.

SG: Really?

MM: Are you fucking kidding me? I'm not going to send you [anything]. I don't have any DVDs to send you, but you see? You believed me.

SG: I get it. It's easy to be fooled.

MM: I would rather that you be a trusting person than a cynical suspicious person and I think that's how you would rather live your life too. I've felt this way my whole life, that when somebody lies to me, I've never felt like I'm the idiot. I feel like wow, Mike, you're a pretty decent guy who you placed your trust in that person and they're the ones who committed the immoral act of lying to you. You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you did the right thing.

SG: The film articulates why capitalism doesn't work. What is it about America that we wont't give up on these failed systems?

MM: I know, and you know what? 400 years from now, maybe 100 years from now, historians are going to look at us and they're going to think we're crazy. They're going to go, "Look at these people. They just kept doing the same dumb thing over and over again and they had the power in their hands with democracy. One person, one vote. Even though the one percent owned 95% of the wealth, the other 99 percent had the vote. Yet they didn't use the vote to stop all this greed and all this destruction." We're going to look crazy.

SG: Well, there are contingents who do a very good job convincing the very people they're screwing over to support their policy.

MM: Absolutely. It never ceases to amaze me why, and I'm not a big pro-Democratic Party guy because I've got a lot of problems with them, but I've never understood why working class and poor people vote for Republicans, the party of the wealthy man. They think that the party of the wealthy man is going to help them. They're not going to get anything but a crumb off the table.

SG: I guess you and I can't find an answer to that.

MM: No, it has baffled me and when I do come to an answer, I'll make a movie about it.

SG: Even after all the Wall Street fiascos, they're still pressuring us to invest. Don't worry, I wasn't going to do that before, let alone now, but what are sound things to do with our money?

MM: Number one, don't ever buy a share of stock. I have never owned a share of stock personally. I have never bought one.

SG: It just sounds like a corrupt principal.

MM: It is. Well, it is and here's what's corrupt about it. Number one, you know it's a casino. You know when you walk into a casino, you're not walking out of there a winner. You're going to win for a little bit maybe to create the illusion of winning. What also is wrong with it is that you and I, Fred, we should be earning our money through our sweat or our ideas, not trying to make money off our money. My advice to any working person is if you do have any extra money, and I don't know how you would in this climate and these days, but if you do, I'll just tell you what I do and what I've always done. I remember the grandparents saying, "If you're able to buy your own home, you should put that into your own home." Don't pay more than you should for it but that's always been a good place. It's been bad now for people because they got hoodwinked. Like the guy says in my movie, the FBI even says that at least 70-80% of all this mortgage fraud is fraud committed by the bank, not by the people taking out the loan. The other thing I'd do if I have any extra money is I'll buy a savings bond or a treasury bill or something that the U.S. Government is selling.

SG: In the bonus features, Chris Hedges addresses the very real problem that people just aren't working hard anymore. Is there any way to teach this generation a good work ethic again?

MM: [Heavy sigh and long pause] Wow, that's an intense question. I know the answer and I don't want to say it.

SG: Uh-oh. That sounds so dire.

MM: You know what I mean.

SG: I call it the My Super Sweet 16 generation. People just want to get whatever they want without working for it.

MM: Right, that is the culture, isn't it? Well, the baby boomers that were supposed to create a better world, it's their children that are in that spot. I am one of those baby boomers and I wonder just how much we've screwed things up.

SG: I hope there's more light at the end of the tunnel for some other topics. How could health care fail again?

MM: It fails because the Democrats have a failure of their own will. They don't have the guts to stand up for what they believe in. Let me tell you something, if the Republicans were in charge and they had that many votes in Congress, they'd just jam it right through. They wouldn't give a damn but Democrats, I know what they're doing. They're trying to take the higher road but really, they're being bought and paid for by the same pharmaceutical and health insurance companies the Republicans are bought and paid for, so let's just be honest about it.

SG: How can we get anything done when every minor critic gets to kill any potential plan to fix things?

MM: Right, well, that's because the Democrats won't stand up. One guy can shut down the whole Senate now.

SG: Can't someone just say, "If you're in the health business, you have to cover everything. That's your business gamble."

MM: But then they wouldn't make any money.

SG: Exactly! If you want to be in the health business, you risk not making money.

MM: That's why there should be no profit making companies at the table when it comes to deciding on health care. You have to remove profit from it. You wouldn't turn our water department over to a profit making company. That would be crazy. We should be treating health care the same way. You don't expect the fire department to turn a profit. It's a necessary service. So is a doctor when you get sick. For crying out loud.

SG: Is the elephant in the room that it costs $100,000 for a life saving procedure, that's not a feasible procedure?

MM: That's one of the problems here is that there's so much profit involved, that's why we spend over $7,000 a year on the average American and their health care and the Canadians spend about $3500. They don't allow profit to enter in as much as we do here.

SG: So it doesn't' actually cost that much for these cutting edge procedures?

MM: No, it's a markup. Just like when you go in the store, everything there has been marked up at least 50% from what it actually cost.

SG: The way they sold that fear of socialism, are people happy enough when they can't see their doctor that they'll stick by that program?

MM: It's very easy to scare people and to use fear when you have an ignorant population. Fred, you have 40 million functional illiterates in this country, adults who cannot read and write above the fourth grade level. We have a level of ignorance and stupidity that is so incredible and when you keep people in the dark and you keep them stupid, it's easy to scare them. It's like a five-year-old. We're a nation of five-year-olds, five-year-olds afraid of the boogeyman in the closet. Cry, "Mommy, daddy, come here. There's a monster in the closet."

SG: Well, they sure did a great job ruining education.

MM: Yeah, that's part of it though, making sure you have a shitty education system enforces the level of ignorance.

SG: Hedges also brings up overpopulation, which is an important problem not being discussed. Is there a humane way to control or reduce our numbers?

MM: Well, yes. All the studies show that the more education a person has, the better their income in terms of being able to not live with the fear of doing without, the lower the birthrates. So when we make a more economically just world for people, and an educated world and especially women being educated throughout the world, when that happens you'll see the birthrate go down to something that's reasonable and won't kill the planet. I'll tell you right now, this planet cannot sustain nine billion people on it.

SG: This might not even be one of your pet issues, but What will it take to universally pass gay marriage?

MM: What it will take is for every gay and lesbian individual in this country to bravely come out of the closet, tell their families and their friends that they're gay and all they want in life is what everybody else wants. You know what? This is where the human part of this comes in because unless you're Dick Cheney, you really do want what's best for your child. You don't want your child discriminated against. You don't want your child living an unhappy life. I think that the advances that have been made to this point with gay rights has been because enough gay people have been brave enough to come out. So the more that that happens, the more that everybody realizes that there's someone gay someone in their family or extended family, it's very hard to hate when that thing you're supposed to hate is very close to you.

SG: Can that get through the fear? Homophobes are so scared of this, they don't even remember that people used to be afraid to let women vote or abolish slavery, but we changed that and it turned out okay.

MM: And we'll change this too. This too will get better.

Capitalism: A Love Story is available on DVD and Blu Ray on March 9.

Carlos Slim Helu might be the new richest man in the world, but he's still got a long way to go before he's the most famous. Donald Trump has been been the go-to name for wealth since he emerged on the business scene. Even when his real estate deals and Trump Corporation struggled, the name... more

Carlos Slim Helu might be the new richest man in the world, but he's still got a long way to go before he's the most famous. Donald Trump has been been the go-to name for wealth since he emerged on the business scene. Even when his real estate deals and Trump Corporation struggled, the name Trump still meant money, thanks largely to Trump's public presence giving seminars and writing best seller books on finance.

Calling his TV show The Celebrity Apprentice might be redundant. No one they can get to compete in Donald Trump's boardroom is as famous as Donald himself. However, instead of seeking a new employee for his company, as Trump did in the original Apprentice, he now lets celebrities compete, with the prize going to the charity of their choice. There are many reality shows that stage conflicts between famous egos, but only Trump's actually puts them to work.

The third season of Celebrity Apprentice features stars of all different sorts: rock stars like Bret Michaels, athletes like Darryl Strawberry and Bill Goldberg, even politicians like disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Really, who wouldn't want to see The Donald yell at Blago? That's classic television right there.

Trump has always been good for media copy himself. A few years ago, he masterfully used the media to feud with Rosie O'Donnell, then of The View. Calling her a slob sold headlines, and then people would read his defense of a Miss America winner's nude photo controversy, and his TV show which happened to be airing. In a conference call with journalists, Trump was still "on." He'd dish about the stars, the economy or his family. Considering how much an hour of Trump's time must be worth, this could be the most valuable interview in media history.

Q: With your business instincts, can you tell off the bat who is going to do well on the show and who isn't?

Donald Trump: Well, that's always to me the most interesting question because I like to think of myself as being okay with people but so often I'll say, "This one's going to be a star." Let's say Bret [Michaels]. "He's going to be a star, he's going to be great." Then he turns out to be a dud. I'm not saying that happened, and frankly it didn't happen, but you never really know. Oftentimes you'll see somebody and you'll say, "Oh, this person's going to do great." Especially with a celebrity because you've known these celebrities at least through reading about them for so many years. A lot of times you're really disappointed and a lot of times somebody that you don't think of so highly turns out to be a star. So it's very, very tough. You don't know what happens with pressure and the heat of battle. So I'll have a preconceived notion yes, always. A lot of time that turns out to be not necessarily correct.

Q: What do you think of a guy like Rod Blagojevich when he comes onto a reality show? Shouldn't he be focused on this case of selling the Illinois senate seat, whether he proves himself innocent or not?

DT: It took a lot of courage first of all, before we get to the show it took a lot of courage under the pressure that he's under for him to even do the show. I've known people over the years where they've had problems like he's got and they go into a corner and they shoot themselves, or they go into a corner and they just hide. Here's a guy doing a major, major television show for two hours prime time. I won't say how long he lasts or if he lasts but he did a very good job. The amazing thing is this is going on pretty much at the same time as his trial. It's a very interesting situation I'll tell you. So many of the questions, in all fairness to all of the other contestants who are in many ways some really bigger names, so many of the questions really revolve around the governor and what was he like and everything else. People are very interested and the fact that his trial is going to be going on almost at the same time is very interesting and very compelling to watch.

Q: Well, because some people think he shouldn't be on TV right now.

DT: Even the government, the government wasn't thrilled with that whole thing. He really displayed great courage in doing the show and as far as a player is concerned, highly competitive, worked very hard. You wouldn't know this guy was a governor or an ex-governor. He really worked very hard and I think he does a very good job.

Q: Did you get any joy having him in the board room and laying into him?

DT: Yeah, I think you deal with different people differently. I deal with Goldberg differently than I deal with the governor. Like Joan Rivers last time, I dealt with her much differently than some of the other contestants. Certainly if you look at Dennis Rodman and Joan, you deal with people differently and you have to be able to have that ability because frankly, you deal with some people in a certain fashion and you have to know how to deal and other people in a totally different fashion. I do deal with people differently.

Q: Do you ever feel bad about firing someone or is it just part of business?

DT: I always feel bad. No, not always. Not everybody do I like. Sometimes I don't like people and it doesn't bother me. The hard ones are when you really like somebody, really respect somebody and they make a mistake. Like as an example, Scott Hamilton. How can you not like Scott Hamilton from the last season? I had to let Scott go and I'm a great fan of Scott. He won Olympic gold medals, he's a great champion and everything else. He understood he made a mistake on the show and I really had no choice, and I felt very badly about that because I consider him to be just a great person and I still do, but I have to do what's right. There are many other examples. I fire people that win gold medals, great champions, everything else. It's not easy. People say oh, well it comes easy for me. It doesn't. It's never fun. It's a lot easier when I don't like somebody or when they're really, really bad. Then it becomes much easier.

Q: Do you have any regrets when you look at the old tapes of your show?

DT: Well, I've had a couple. I'll give you an example. I'll get in a lot of trouble when I say this but who cares? Trouble is my business. When I kept Melissa last season, it was between Melissa and this beautiful girl named Claudia Jordan. I kept Melissa. I said after I did that, "Oh, why did I do that?" Then it turned out Melissa was an unbelievable character later on in the show. It could have been either one of the two and I really questioned my decision for a while afterwards. I mean, I've questioned it a number of times but in the end it works out. It's sort of interesting, because then Melissa came up with that total fit where she went totally crazy and it was carried all over the world. I mean, that fit was one of the great classics. Claudia would have never had anything like that. She would have said thank you very much and left. Melissa went crazy and that fit, as you remember I'm sure, was one of the great things in television for that season. Had I gotten rid of her a few shows earlier, we wouldn't have seen that. So a lot of times I'll question but in the end it works out.

Q: How are your children doing in business since they've been on The Apprentice?

DT: Well, I'm getting a lot of credit on the children and Ivanka will be back and Don will be back. We're also having some other people joining us, Erin Burnett from CNBC and some others. We have some great people on the show but Ivanka, everybody's asking about Ivanka. So many people have said, "Will she be back? Will she be back?" And the answer is yes, she will back on the show. I do get a lot of credit. They're very good kids. They went to very good schools. They were great students at the best schools. I couldn't wait to get them on the show. Now when you get into 9 and 10, that's pretty amazing in your world of television. It's not my world, it's your world because I just entered it a few years ago. It's hard to believe. While it's not that many year, still you start hitting number nine and number 10 and that's a lot of success in that sense. People are all asking about Ivanka and she will be back on the show absolutely, and even playing a bigger role than she did.

Q: After all these seasons, how do you keep the "You're fired" catch phrase alive and fresh?

DT: Well, it turned out to be a good phrase. You know it was a fluke. I don't know if anyone knows the story but the first show, I was a little exasperated with one of the contestants and I used the line, "You're fired." When Mark Burnett and I agreed to do the show we didn't have that. We thought we'd say, "Get the hell out of here" or do something. It was sort of a fluke that it happened and it's hard to really even envision that but it was "You're fired." All of a sudden, America went crazy over the show. It happens to be a great catchword. As you know, TV Guide actually did a poll. After "Here's Johnny" and one other great, it was number three on the top 100 phrases of television history. So that was a pretty big honor. I didn't realize that but it's been an amazing thing and an amazing phrase. It just seems to work. For some reason, it was used on the first show and it startled people and it really caught on and it's just been an amazing thing to watch. It really has been quite good.

Q: NBC has been suffering as a business. As a businessman, what do you think NBC has to do to get back into the ratings game?

DT: Well, [NBC Universal Television Entertainment chairman] Jeff Gaspin, I know him and as you know he's new to the role and I think he's going to do a spectacular job at NBC. I mean, they need more shows like The Apprentice. Not necessarily from a reality standpoint but they need shows that capture the imagination. Frankly, certain shows that are on should be changed because they get some pretty good reviews but they don't get people watching. Ultimately, the people watching is going to be very important. It's nice to get both. We've sort of had both. We've had the Emmy nominations. We've had a lot of good accolades and that's always nice but ultimately you have to have people watch. I think that NBC's going to really do well. I understand their current leadership, I know their leadership and I think they're winners. So I think they'll turn it around.

Q: How has your business survived with all the economic downturn we've experienced in the last few years?

DT: We've really done well. I was lucky that during these last few years, I haven't been crazy, maybe because of The Apprentice. It kept me busy enough that I didn't buy lots of real estate. We're in a very strong cash position and I'm now buying a lot of real estate. I just bought a tremendous project in Washington, in the Washington area on the Potomac River and it's phenomenal. 850 acres of land that I've been after for years and I got it. I've done numerous other things over the last year or so, but frankly I haven't been doing it as much. I don't know, maybe I can attribute that to The Apprentice. Maybe because I've been busy with [these] characters, [they] kept me out of trouble because I've been too busy to invest in lots of bad deals. Anything that bought two years ago or 2 1/2 years ago is in trouble today. So we've done really well, we're very, very strong. The company's the strongest it's ever been and we're on a big acquisition binge. I'll let you know if that works out because I'll talk to you in five years about it, right? Who knows but it seems to be the right time to buy.

Q: Was it just luck then that you were too distracted to get involved in bad deals?

DT: I don't know if it's luck or instinct or both, but there's always luck involved in things. Luck is involved in life. You're born a certain way. You're born in a certain location, you're born in a country. There's always luck. Some people disagree that there's no such thing as luck. Well, I'll take them on any time you want but certain things happened that were very positive for me over the last few years in terms of business and the business is the best it's ever been for me.

Q: How long do you see The Apprentice continuing to go for?

DT: A friend of mine, great friend of mine who's in the television business said, "You don't give up television. Television gives you up." Now you know what that means, right? It's a very interesting expression. So remember the expression, you don't give up television. Television gives you up, and they haven't given me up. At some point they probably will. By the way, I hosted Saturday Night Live so I have to tell this because I thought it was great and Lorne Michaels, I think is terrific. I said, "You know, Lorne. It won't always be like this. Some day, the ratings won't be good and NBC will call me and they'll say the show is cancelled." And he says, "No, Donald, you're wrong. They won't even bother to call you." I thought that was great. I sat there and said, "That's genius." I shouldn't be telling on Lorne but he did make that [statement]. It's a tough business. It's tough but it's very simple. In real estate, you have lots of different components. You have financial, you have location, you have lots of different components. In television it's very simple. If you get good ratings, they keep you going and if you don't, it's not a pretty picture. So it's very interesting. We're getting very good ratings and they like us and all of that but I thought the Lorne Michaels story, which I've never told before, I thought that was an interesting story.

The Celebrity Apprentice airs Sundays at 9 on NBC.

Jamie Delano didn’t invent the character John Constantine, but the writer who launched the ongoing series Hellblazer took the Alan Moore created character and gave the trenchcoat wearing British magician his background and really defined the character in a way that every writer of the character in comics... more

Jamie Delano didn’t invent the character John Constantine, but the writer who launched the ongoing series Hellblazer took the Alan Moore created character and gave the trenchcoat wearing British magician his background and really defined the character in a way that every writer of the character in comics and film has since been building from.

Delano has gone on to write a number of other projects for Vertigo, miniseries (“Ghostdancing,” “2020 Visions”), ongoing series (“Outlaw Nation”) and one shots (the brilliant “Hell Eternal”) in addition to recent work from publishers like Avatar Press (the science fiction thriller “Narcopolis,” and the pirate adventure “Rawbone”).

Delano’s new project is a return to John Constantine with the graphic novel “Hellblazer: Pandemonium.” Illustrated by British artist Jock (“The Losers”) the book was originally written for the twentieth anniversary of Vertigo, but instead comes out this year, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Constantine’s first appearance as a supporting character in "The Saga of the Swamp Thing," created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben. Delano was kind enough to talk with us via e-mail about the new graphic novel and what it is that keeps him returning to write the character John Constantine.


ALEX DUEBEN: What was it that made you interested in working on Hellblazer in the first place so many years ago?

JAMIE DELANO: I guess I'd have to say that it was primarily the desire to stop driving taxis and become a professional writer. Lucky for me, DC Comics' coincidental desire to develop Moore's intriguing character, John Constantine, by featuring him in an ongoing series made this possible. I probably would have accepted an offer to write anything back then, but it is hard to imagine that I could have "connected" so satisfactorily with any other established character. Writing Hellblazer allowed me to engage with the contemporary social and political trends that absorbed me, wearing the trench coat of a smart-mouthed, hard-boiled British "occult detective" through the medium of genre fiction. I kind of enjoyed that voice.

AD: One thing I've always wondered, where did the title Hellblazer come from? It doesn’t seem to mean or relate to anything.

JD: I've wondered that from time to time, too. It's a while ago, but as I recall my first suggestion was Hellraiser -- but Clive Barker beat us to it. Ultimately, the nascent series was DCs' baby to name, Hellblazer their editorial pick. What it means, I have no idea -- but I guess it fit.

AD: The series later became much more interested in Christianity, heaven and hell, but you were interested in a broad range of magic and mythologies, which you've also utilized in other works like Ghostdancing and Shadowman. Does the idea of the devil and hell just seem dull compared with the other possibilities or what is it that drives this?

JD: Gods, demons, angels, devils, power-beings-all are imaginary avatars for the dramatisation of human emotion in the world of J. Delano. But in the reality of John Constantine -- as I animate it -- these entities are real and potent. It is their simplistic supernatural contest -- Good versus Evil, Heaven versus Hell -- that Constantine struggles perpetually to finesse to the relief or advantage of us, the humans-in-the-street whose status as mere "collateral damage" in these "eternal wars" he refuses to accept.

AD: When you wrote the book it was more about horror and it was more political and internal in a way that made it unique among comics and even compared to other Hellblazer writers. Were there other books or writers that inspired this approach?

JD: I have always enjoyed the best of the tradition that uses the accessibility of genre fiction -- detective, horror, sci-fi, fantasy -- to explore the reality and potential of the human condition by visiting its imaginary extremes while resisting "literary pretension". My inspiration is thus manifold: William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard to Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson to pick an arbitrary range.

AD: Now that you're run has been collected into trades, have you gone back and looked at them? How do you think they hold up?

JD: I haven't re-read all the old stories comprehensively--just dipped in here and there. But when I have overcome my reluctance to revisit the past I'll admit I've been reassured that, although there are many awkward moments, immaturities of craft, etcetera, overall the work is generally less embarrassing than I might have feared--though I usually can't remember writing a word of it.

AD: So what is Hellblazer: Pandemonium?

JD: Hellblazer: Pandemonium is a graphic novel originally commissioned to commemorate the 20th anniversary of issue one of the continuing DC Vertigo series in which I initiated the development of John Constantine - Alan Moore's flippant working-class British magician introduced in The Saga of the Swamp Thing -- into the more psychologically complex and layered character animated and further revealed by many fine writers since. Exigencies of the publishing process have resulted in Hellblazer: Pandemonium marking the 25th anniversary of Moore's original creation, instead--but the story remains the same.

Casting around for a theme that might juxtapose a little of Constantine's "then" and "now", it occurred to me that one of his early, and enduring, antagonists was a "demon" named Nergal, whose original inspiration I had pillaged from the ancient Assyrian pantheon. Assyria... Mesopotamia... Iraq: the link from past to present was unavoidable. Like it or not (and he doesn't), it became inevitable that Constantine was going have to go to Iraq, wrestle -- in his own insouciant, cynical fashion -- with  some of the moral ambiguities and their brutal, bloody consequences that characterise the "war on terror".

In traditional slippery fashion, Constantine (just about) avoids being engulfed by the quagmire of horror while indulging a dubious passion for an Iraqi double-agent and enjoying a recklessly crazed game of "poker" with some denizens of the Assyrian Underworld-before making it home by the skin of his teeth with his integrity only slightly tainted.

Despite its context, I hope that -- viewed through Constantine's uniquely skewed perspective -- the story treats with a reality of devastating human tragedy with some sincerity and compassion, while keeping an essential (albeit pretty black) sense of humour about it. Others may judge the success, or otherwise, of that endeavour.

AD: How did you end up working with Jock and what did you enjoy abut the collaboration?

JD: Our marriage was editorially arranged. Although I had met Jock, coincidentally, a few months earlier, I was (shamefully) unfamiliar with his work when Pandemonium was suggested-but as soon as the first pages began to appear it was apparent the match was well-made. Jock obviously "got" both Constantine and the story we were involving him in. His deft and economical, subtly but evocatively coloured -- almost expressionistic -- style was not necessarily the imagery that was running in my head as I wrote the script, but when I saw it, I was more than confident that the book would not just be words and pictures but a synergy, greater than the sum of its parts-which is what a good comic collaboration should be.

AD: As you mentioned the book has been in the works for a few years. Do you think the timing will affect how people read the book?

JD: I don't see that it should. The media/political focus may have moved to other theatres of despair--but the "issues" with which the story engages remain pretty raw and current.

AD: You've revisited Constantine before, such as The Horrorist miniseries that you did with David Lloyd. What brought you back this time and what do you find so fascinating about the character?

JD: As many who have shrugged on that old trench coat to take a squint at the world through the "laughing magician's" jaundiced eye would probably attest, John Constantine is a dangerous addiction. While a permanent alliance with Constantine's bleak struggles might prove terminally corrosive to an aging writer, the occasional desire for the weird passions of youth may be sporadically indulged with only minor risk to body or soul-and it's good to stay in touch with old friends...

AD: In your work there's really a sense of just how thin the veneer of civilization is and how tenuous it is. How much of that is your own worldview and how much is simply exploiting an idea for the purposes of a good story?

JD: On a bad day I might suggest that Humanity perpetually skates the thin ice of "civilisation", while cold things with teeth writhe in the dark deep below. The ice constantly cracks and re-freezes: we're lucky when we're not amongst those who go down -- but it's only a matter of time. On a good day I might suggest something else -- but good days are in short supply.

AD: Fair enough. I wanted to talk about another series you did, Outlaw Nation, which in some ways felt in like a sequel to a Vertigo miniseries you did in the 1990s, Ghostdancing in that it's set in the Southwest, builds on myths and stories and it's as much about the mythology and the idea of the United States as it is about the characters. Was any of that what you were actually thinking at the time?

JD: Yeah, kinda, I guess. We all have our pre-occupations, and the US was one of mine for a while-but Outlaw Nation cured me of that folly.

AD: One of the central themes in Outlaw Nation is about the Johnson family, this group of honorable thieves and criminals, and the William Burroughs line about how everybody is either a Johnson or a shit. I get the sense from your work that you’re sympathetic to that idea but it makes you nervous because you think that's too simplistic.

JD: Johnson or Shit is a seductive idea--but when it boils down it's a kind of pragmatic, lazy "cop" philosophy that, disregarding the mitigating possibilities of individual redemption, resorts to arbitrary judgment. As such it leaves me uneasy. Most of us are mostly Johnsons most of the time--but we're all Shits, now and then.

AD: What were your plans for Outlaw Nation if you had a chance to write it for a years rather than rush to wrap it up in a few issues?

JD: Oh...it was going to ramble self-indulgently around visiting various outlaw archetypes -- fictional or real -- while its protagonist haplessly attempted to reconcile the myth and reality of America and catch up with its furiously evolving 21st century culture... with an evaluation of the potential for good or ill of interfering scribblers of pulp fiction-or something. A preposterous ambition, clearly doomed-but still a lot of fun to attempt.

AD: Any plans to do more with it or collaborate again with artist Goran Sudzuka?

JD: There are themes still in there that interest me, but I doubt any return to Outlaw Nation is viable. I'd certainly work with Goran again though, if the opportunity arose.

AD: Do you prefer short works like say Hell Eternal or longer runs on books where you're juggling a lot over a long period of time?

JD: Both have their attractions, but overall I'd say I prefer the discipline of the shorter, self-contained work. I'm inevitably frustrated by the necessity to conform to a rigid page-count when often it feels as if three or four more would ease the story beneficially, but the focus on story-telling thus demanded is definitely advantageous. With an ongoing series it can be easy to succumb to laziness, extend scenes unnecessarily, put off resolving an awkward plot-thread for another month, etcetera...

AD: What's in store for the future. I know you’re working a few different comics companies, besides Vertigo there’s Desperado and Avatar. And I don't think I've ever actually asked a comics writer this before, but will we ever see a prose novel from you?

JD: It is my enduring ambition to write a prose "novel" and I will-as soon as I can define for myself what form such a thing might take. I continue to fool around with the odd film-oriented project, waste time if not money playing low-stakes poker online, generally subsiding into late middle-age, dragged down by the relentless multiplication of grandchildren. On the comics front, there are signs my largely fallow period is ending, with a new idea recently germinating-but it's way too frail a creature to give a name to yet.

'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.

(image) SuicideGirls caught up with artist Camille Rose Garcia at the opening of Down The Rabbit Hole, an exhibition of the original art from her latest project, a reimagining of the illustrations that accompany the text of Lewis Carroll's classic children's book, Alice's Adventures in... more

SuicideGirls caught up with artist Camille Rose Garcia at the opening of Down The Rabbit Hole, an exhibition of the original art from her latest project, a reimagining of the illustrations that accompany the text of Lewis Carroll's classic children's book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Though the March Hare, the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse were unable to attend the party at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles on Saturday night in person, Hollywood funnyman Robin Williams did make a somewhat unexpected appearance. Curiouser and curiouser, it transpired that Williams, who was kind enough to pose for the photo with Garcia above, is a huge fan of SuicideGirls. "We love the SuicideGirls," said an enthusiastic Williams, before posing for the snap.

Earlier, we'd spoken with Garcia for an in-depth Q&A which can be found in our interview section. After talking about the visual vocabulary and inspirations behind her Alice illustrations, our conversation turned to a core SG topic: body art. Below is an outtake from this interview in which Garcia talks about her own tattoos and her art as it appears on other people's body parts.

Nicole Powers: I notice on your website you encourage people to use your art as inspiration for their tattoos. All you ask is that people send in snaps for your tattoo gallery. What kind of photos have people sent in?

Camille Rose Garcia: I've seen a lot of really great ones. It's pretty cool seeing other people's interpretations. I think some of it maybe is the scale thing. Like I made this painting one time that I think was about three feet by six feet and [a woman] had it tattooed on the back of her calf - the whole painting. I thought, "Wow, that's amazing that it even looks good." But it did. It looked really cool.

One guy got both full sleeves of a mixture of my work, and I thought, "That's really cool. That's really dedicated." It's always really exciting and fun to see what people come up with because they'll mix the pieces up and rearrange them, which is sort of like a William Burroughs cut-up style.

NP: Tell me about your body art.

CRG: I need to get some more because I don't have nearly as much as one would think I would have.

NP: Who gets to do art on an artist?

CRG: That's the thing. I have one that I got, and I guess the guy was so nervous because he knew of my work and what I did. So he was nervous, and then I'd sit there and be like, "Oh, maybe I don't want that much color," like micromanaging everything about the color. Next time I just have to let someone do what they're going to do and not even look. I'll probably have a shoulder piece done so I can't watch. This was on my arm so I could site there and watch, which is not a good idea.

NP: If you're allowing someone to put their art on your body, then you have to surrender at some point to their vision.

CRG: That's why I don't have that much yet. Because that's the difficult part. They'd have to be an artist that I admire I guess to have it done.

NP: Do you have any ideas of what you'd like next?

CRG: Well my first idea was that I'd like I wanted to have both of my arms be all different birds, kind of thematically all from nature. But now I've been re-watching some of the old cartoons that I really like, the early Max Fleischer, Betty Boop, Koko the Clown. I was thinking maybe a montage of some of my early inspirations from when I was a kid, but I don't know how those would work together. This is the problem too. I sort of like over-think the whole theme of the whole project.

NP: Over-conceptualize?

CRG: Yes. I over-conceptualize how it will all work together.

NP: You need to just get drunk and throw a dart at a tattoo shop wall and go with a design picked that way.

CRG: I know. That's what I need to do, somewhere really bad like New Jersey. I'll get a Tasmanian Devil.

NP: An exercise in deconceptualization.

CRG: Yes, releasing the control.


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, featuring the illustrations of Camille Rose Garcia, is available from Amazon.com and all fine bookstores. For more info go to CamilleRoseGarcia.com/

We don't need a movie to tell us something's wrong with the economy. Almost everyone has been touched by a bad mortgage or unsound investment these days. At least a movie can provide answers to how we got here, and hopefully a solution to the problem. Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore[/ur]'s... more

We don't need a movie to tell us something's wrong with the economy. Almost everyone has been touched by a bad mortgage or unsound investment these days. At least a movie can provide answers to how we got here, and hopefully a solution to the problem.

Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore[/ur]'s explanation. The film chronicles Wall Street corruption, mortgage scams and, fortunately, effective protests that are resulting in real change. On DVD and Blu Ray, Capitalism is loaded with extras where the film's experts more fully explain the economic concepts and how people are coping.

This complex situation involves many more questions still. As someone who researched and documented it, Michael Moore can help. He's also adept at explaining things in clear and plain English, not like that doublespeak that keeps people in the dark.

Even as only a voice on the telephone, Michael Moore projects comfort. We are not alone. There are others who support us, and some with the means to educate and empower people to make things better.

Suicide Girls: I knew the idea of interest only loans sounded stupid, but even I let the bank talk me into one anyway. At what point do we have to take responsibility for making bad decisions ourselves?

Michael Moore: You're not responsible when you're fooled.

SG: Thank you. That's actually a comforting way to look at it.

MM: No, seriously. Fred, I'm going to send you 100 free copies of my DVD. You can give them to your friends and family and the people you know.

SG: Really?

MM: Are you fucking kidding me? I'm not going to send you [anything]. I don't have any DVDs to send you, but you see? You believed me.

SG: I get it. It's easy to be fooled.

MM: I would rather that you be a trusting person than a cynical suspicious person and I think that's how you would rather live your life too. I've felt this way my whole life, that when somebody lies to me, I've never felt like I'm the idiot. I feel like wow, Mike, you're a pretty decent guy who you placed your trust in that person and they're the ones who committed the immoral act of lying to you. You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you did the right thing.

SG: The film articulates why capitalism doesn't work. What is it about America that we wont't give up on these failed systems?

MM: I know, and you know what? 400 years from now, maybe 100 years from now, historians are going to look at us and they're going to think we're crazy. They're going to go, "Look at these people. They just kept doing the same dumb thing over and over again and they had the power in their hands with democracy. One person, one vote. Even though the one percent owned 95% of the wealth, the other 99 percent had the vote. Yet they didn't use the vote to stop all this greed and all this destruction." We're going to look crazy.

SG: Well, there are contingents who do a very good job convincing the very people they're screwing over to support their policy.

MM: Absolutely. It never ceases to amaze me why, and I'm not a big pro-Democratic Party guy because I've got a lot of problems with them, but I've never understood why working class and poor people vote for Republicans, the party of the wealthy man. They think that the party of the wealthy man is going to help them. They're not going to get anything but a crumb off the table.

SG: I guess you and I can't find an answer to that.

MM: No, it has baffled me and when I do come to an answer, I'll make a movie about it.

SG: Even after all the Wall Street fiascos, they're still pressuring us to invest. Don't worry, I wasn't going to do that before, let alone now, but what are sound things to do with our money?

MM: Number one, don't ever buy a share of stock. I have never owned a share of stock personally. I have never bought one.

SG: It just sounds like a corrupt principal.

MM: It is. Well, it is and here's what's corrupt about it. Number one, you know it's a casino. You know when you walk into a casino, you're not walking out of there a winner. You're going to win for a little bit maybe to create the illusion of winning. What also is wrong with it is that you and I, Fred, we should be earning our money through our sweat or our ideas, not trying to make money off our money. My advice to any working person is if you do have any extra money, and I don't know how you would in this climate and these days, but if you do, I'll just tell you what I do and what I've always done. I remember the grandparents saying, "If you're able to buy your own home, you should put that into your own home." Don't pay more than you should for it but that's always been a good place. It's been bad now for people because they got hoodwinked. Like the guy says in my movie, the FBI even says that at least 70-80% of all this mortgage fraud is fraud committed by the bank, not by the people taking out the loan. The other thing I'd do if I have any extra money is I'll buy a savings bond or a treasury bill or something that the U.S. Government is selling.

SG: In the bonus features, Chris Hedges addresses the very real problem that people just aren't working hard anymore. Is there any way to teach this generation a good work ethic again?

MM: [Heavy sigh and long pause] Wow, that's an intense question. I know the answer and I don't want to say it.

SG: Uh-oh. That sounds so dire.

MM: You know what I mean.

SG: I call it the My Super Sweet 16 generation. People just want to get whatever they want without working for it.

MM: Right, that is the culture, isn't it? Well, the baby boomers that were supposed to create a better world, it's their children that are in that spot. I am one of those baby boomers and I wonder just how much we've screwed things up.

SG: I hope there's more light at the end of the tunnel for some other topics. How could health care fail again?

MM: It fails because the Democrats have a failure of their own will. They don't have the guts to stand up for what they believe in. Let me tell you something, if the Republicans were in charge and they had that many votes in Congress, they'd just jam it right through. They wouldn't give a damn but Democrats, I know what they're doing. They're trying to take the higher road but really, they're being bought and paid for by the same pharmaceutical and health insurance companies the Republicans are bought and paid for, so let's just be honest about it.

SG: How can we get anything done when every minor critic gets to kill any potential plan to fix things?

MM: Right, well, that's because the Democrats won't stand up. One guy can shut down the whole Senate now.

SG: Can't someone just say, "If you're in the health business, you have to cover everything. That's your business gamble."

MM: But then they wouldn't make any money.

SG: Exactly! If you want to be in the health business, you risk not making money.

MM: That's why there should be no profit making companies at the table when it comes to deciding on health care. You have to remove profit from it. You wouldn't turn our water department over to a profit making company. That would be crazy. We should be treating health care the same way. You don't expect the fire department to turn a profit. It's a necessary service. So is a doctor when you get sick. For crying out loud.

SG: Is the elephant in the room that it costs $100,000 for a life saving procedure, that's not a feasible procedure?

MM: That's one of the problems here is that there's so much profit involved, that's why we spend over $7,000 a year on the average American and their health care and the Canadians spend about $3500. They don't allow profit to enter in as much as we do here.

SG: So it doesn't' actually cost that much for these cutting edge procedures?

MM: No, it's a markup. Just like when you go in the store, everything there has been marked up at least 50% from what it actually cost.

SG: The way they sold that fear of socialism, are people happy enough when they can't see their doctor that they'll stick by that program?

MM: It's very easy to scare people and to use fear when you have an ignorant population. Fred, you have 40 million functional illiterates in this country, adults who cannot read and write above the fourth grade level. We have a level of ignorance and stupidity that is so incredible and when you keep people in the dark and you keep them stupid, it's easy to scare them. It's like a five-year-old. We're a nation of five-year-olds, five-year-olds afraid of the boogeyman in the closet. Cry, "Mommy, daddy, come here. There's a monster in the closet."

SG: Well, they sure did a great job ruining education.

MM: Yeah, that's part of it though, making sure you have a shitty education system enforces the level of ignorance.

SG: Hedges also brings up overpopulation, which is an important problem not being discussed. Is there a humane way to control or reduce our numbers?

MM: Well, yes. All the studies show that the more education a person has, the better their income in terms of being able to not live with the fear of doing without, the lower the birthrates. So when we make a more economically just world for people, and an educated world and especially women being educated throughout the world, when that happens you'll see the birthrate go down to something that's reasonable and won't kill the planet. I'll tell you right now, this planet cannot sustain nine billion people on it.

SG: This might not even be one of your pet issues, but What will it take to universally pass gay marriage?

MM: What it will take is for every gay and lesbian individual in this country to bravely come out of the closet, tell their families and their friends that they're gay and all they want in life is what everybody else wants. You know what? This is where the human part of this comes in because unless you're Dick Cheney, you really do want what's best for your child. You don't want your child discriminated against. You don't want your child living an unhappy life. I think that the advances that have been made to this point with gay rights has been because enough gay people have been brave enough to come out. So the more that that happens, the more that everybody realizes that there's someone gay someone in their family or extended family, it's very hard to hate when that thing you're supposed to hate is very close to you.

SG: Can that get through the fear? Homophobes are so scared of this, they don't even remember that people used to be afraid to let women vote or abolish slavery, but we changed that and it turned out okay.

MM: And we'll change this too. This too will get better.

Capitalism: A Love Story is available on DVD and Blu Ray on March 9.

At the time much of the footage for the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ was being shot, its director, Anders Østergaard, wasn’t even in the same hemisphere. Wanting to open a window on the closed country of Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar), the Danish-based filmmaker struck up a groundbreaking remote collaboration with a network of underground citizen reporters, who risked torture, imprisonment and death as they shot then smuggled footage beyond the military dictatorship’s closely guarded borders.

The documentary was originally intended to be a half hour short, profiling a 27-year old video journalist (or VJ) known as Joshua who worked behind Burma’s barbed-wire veil of silence and against the strict media embargo enforced by its military government (which came to power after a coup in 1962). Using a pseudonym to protect his identity, Joshua coordinated illicit on-the-ground coverage for the Democratic Voice of Burma, a non-profit news organization based in Norway. However, when Burma’s ruling junta abruptly ceased subsidies on fuel, which caused the price to skyrocket, destabilizing an economy that was already among the world’s poorest, Joshua and Østergaard’s project took on a far greater significance.

Thousands of the country’s Buddhist monks took to the streets in the latter part of 2007, leading what developed into widespread protests against the intransigent regime. Armed with their wits and hand held video cameras, Joshua and his crew of VJs documented the saffron uprising and the Burmese government’s brutal retaliation to it from the front lines. It was the first time in a generation that the people had dared challenge their leaders, but this was very different to the last uprising in 1988. Footage captured by Joshua and his team was beamed around the world. Vivid images of soldiers viciously beating monks in the street in broad daylight were broadcast via all the major new networks, putting Burma – albeit briefly – at the top of the United Nation’s political agenda. With no room for deniability, Burma’s military leaders were shamed into making concessions. And then the world’s attention moved on.

Fast-forward to 2010, with promises broken and hard fought concessions reneged on, it might be easy for Joshua and his fellow Burmese citizens to feel despondent. However, with Burma VJ, a documentary that combines original footage with dramatic recreations, Joshua and Østergaard hope to raise awareness for the ongoing plight of the Burmese people. At the start of this month their cause was given a massive boost with an Academy Award nomination for their film in the category for Best Documentary feature.

SuicideGirls caught up with Østergaard, a Danish filmmaker who was previously best known for Tintin and Me (a 2003 documentary about comics writer and artist Hergé). Over coffee we talked about Burma VJ's dramatic journey from the impoverished streets of Burma to Hollywood’s glittering Kodak Theater, and what the film’s Oscar nomination means for a new generation of citizen journalists and for those fighting oppression around the globe.

Nicole Powers: How did this group of underground reporters come to your attention? Did you discover them while visiting Burma?

Anders Østergaard: I was coming totally from the outside. There was a Danish producer who kept talking about Burma, that we should do something about it years ago. I had practically no clue about the country, to my embarrassment, but I was also intrigued by the fact I knew so little. Which has an actual explanation; the country's been closed for 50 years almost.

Out of that simple curiosity we started discussing how to go about it. We realized if we went in ourselves in the traditional way it would end up being a film about the crew itself somehow. Because it would be about all the difficulties, the people we couldn't film and the places we couldn't go.

We were looking for some other approach. Realizing that there were people inside, citizen reporters making their own stories was extremely intriguing because they could go places I could never go. And their own story, of course, would tell us a lot about life in Burma.

NP: So you did this project without ever having to go to Burma?

AØ: I never went - well later on I did. As we prepared for the film we approached the Democratic Voice of Burma, the people who organize it in Oslo. They sent us to Bangkok to meet several reporters who came out for camera training. That's where I found Joshua, the protagonist in the film. But that was well before the uprising. The idea was to base the film on their footage, on their experience, and their point of view. To work with them as subjects who are looking at the world. On the narration [we'd planned that they'd] explain how they perceive the world, the country as they shot it. That was the nature of the original project and then it developed into a major political thing because of the uprising.

NP: So these citizen journalists would upload footage and send it to you via the internet?

AØ: Basically, yeah.

NP: Did you then call them and debrief them as you went along.

AØ: No. As a matter of fact I left them pretty much to themselves at the time of the uprising. There was no way I could interfere. They were too busy and under too much pressure safety-wise, security-wise, so I couldn't interfere with their work at the time. I just sat waiting until the whole thing had settled and then we collected their footage and put together a film.

NP: The film features the footage that was shown by news organizations such as the BBC around the globe. Did you assist in getting that footage to the various news outlets?

AØ: No. I didn't have a direct role as an activist or partisan as such. They were such skillful people at what they were doing that I didn't have to do that. I could basically just sit back and wait for the material to turn up some months later. It was quite deliberate in retrospect, [given] the chaos of the time. It was a good thing for the film that we didn't rush about and get in the way.

NP: Or put them in danger.

AØ: Which we would have done if we'd have stayed at the safe house where Joshua was based in the film. We would have jeopardized his safety.

NP: This hands off style of documentary making, that alone is quite revolutionary.

AØ: Maybe so. It's an alliance if you like between what they do and what I do, and that's how we perceived it all the way through.

NP: And it was someone in Oslo that put you in touch with Joshua?

AØ: Yes, the editors at the Democratic Voice of Burma. That is where they're based.

NP: As the uprising was going on, what were your personal thoughts?

AØ: Well I was following the mood swings, if you like. It seemed to be very optimistic, a very hopeful thing at the beginning. We were [hoping] like everybody else that they would get something out of this, that this would lead to some change, which it didn't of course. We were just going through everything they were going through, the hope and the despair.

NP: You get the feeling from the film that they were so busy capturing footage that there was little time for them to react to what was happening at the time.

AØ: Oh no, they were certainly distraught about what they were witnessing. It was just as emotional for them as anyone else that was there. But I don't think they had that much time to discuss it at the time. I think somehow the film turned out to be a little bit of therapy for them because they had a chance to live out all the things that they were going through emotionally in the dialog.

The thread of the film is actually all these cell phone conversations, that's actually what builds the dramatic structure of the film. That was reenacted by the protagonists half a year later. It was based on the conversations they would have had at the time but were obviously not recorded, they didn't have the resources. And it was also a safety issue too, to record stuff like that. So that was self-constructed I would say. I just asked them to quite simply ad-lib: "You're on this and that date and this is the situation, you're calling each other, what are you saying?" They had an amazing ability to go back to those situations and those feeling they had at the time.

NP: But there are some moments when there's genuine panic in their voices, when they're on their phones on camera at the time,.

AØ: There are bits of authentic original [cell phone conversation] footage also.

NP: Like when Joshua has to hide his camera in a bag, and all you see is a virtually black screen, but you can still hear him talking on the phone.

AØ: There are several situations like that, authentic bits which inspired us to extend the cell phone element into a full dramatic structure. So some of the [cell phone audio] moments are very real and from the moment it happened.

NP: Can you talk about how they were actually getting the footage out of the country?

AØ: The [military government] soon realized that it was major problem for them, that [the citizen journalists] were uploading material on the internet. Then [the military government] closed it down, so [the citizen journalists] had to resort to satellite uploads. There were lots of people trying to report and communicate with the outside world, but only these guys had the resources like the satellite phones to actually keep the whole thing alive.

NP: Was that kind of equipment getting air-dropped in?

AØ: I can't go into details about how they got it installed, but they had it in place.

NP: Once you got hold of the footage and started putting the film together, did you meet up with Joshua and the other reporters again?

AØ: Yes, I met with all of them -- well not all of them but a bunch of them -- about half a year later in Thailand. That's where we sat down and relived the whole thing in cell phone conversations or the reenacted scenes in the safe house where Joshua is running about trying to keep track of his colleagues. All that stuff was done later on.

NP: When the footage reached the outside world, it did bring about some change, but obviously ultimately not as much as they'd hoped. The United Nations did get involved, but nothing really has been resolved.

AØ: Well there are many levels to it, because for the country it was a tragedy, but for what they were doing it was a huge breakthrough. It was a triumph that they were able to live up to the occasion, to supply the world with footage. I mean you're talking about twelve people with no formal journalistic education, no resources at all -- they would move about on buses or just on their bare feet. Just the logistics of being in the right place at the right time, and getting the material delivered, and getting it uploaded, and getting it to the outside world was a massive achievement given the circumstances. So for them, these young guys, it was a triumph, a victory that they were able to do that.

NP: I guess the victory was twofold. It was amazing that the demonstrators were even able to openly protest in the streets because that was the first time that had happened in a generation, and then to be able record it and show it to the world so there's no level of deniability...

AØ: Exactly. Even for the country it was very hopeful in a way. For example they were quite worried about the next generation, the 20-somethings; Would they have forgotten all about politics because they didn't experience the last uprising in '88? They only knew the regime's reality. There was a general worry that the whole tradition of '88 would be totally forgotten. This was to prove that they can be politicized as well, that they will also understand that this is worth pursuing.

NP: That's interesting, that idea of multiple generations who have only known life under a dictatorship, who have never experienced first hand the freedoms that they're missing.

AØ: Sure. But it does suggest that the need for freedom to express yourself and all those things are so instinctive that anyone will pick it up at some point sooner or later. That's at least the notion I get out of this.

NP: These reporters come from a generation who had been powerless. Just the act of defiance, of recording the events must have been empowering.

AØ: Absolutely, and I think that's how it felt for them. They really could do something, even if they couldn't change the regime, they could make a difference. They could tell the generals if they kill people we will put you on TV. And there's lots of assessments that that actually made a difference, that that brought the death toll down from what it would have been. Compare, in '88 there were thousands of people killed, but the fact that this was televised so thoroughly might have made the whole thing less violent than it would have been otherwise.

NP: I guess we'll never know how many people were saved by the citizen reporters' actions, but it's a profound thought.

AØ: It's legitimate speculation.

NP: Have you heard much from the members of Joshua's reporting network since?

AØ: We've been constantly in touch with Joshua [who now lives in exile in Thailand]. He's actually been traveling with the film. Because he was in exile he was able to come along. We've been here, and we've been to Canada with him, and he keeps us updated. Out of the original group, three have gone to prison. One has actually been released not more than two months ago. But then, on the other hand, somebody who worked later on, on another thing, has just got 20-years so they're still being very heavily pursued. It's maybe even more difficult than it was before to do what they've been doing.

NP: Has Joshua spoken to the press in person? Do you still have to keep his identity secret?

AØ: Yes, we have to go about that all the time, he can't make public appearances as such. We have to make interviews without his face shown, we had to go through all those precautions.

NP: So what's next for Joshua and for you.

AØ: Well Joshua is quite simply rebuilding the network, with his role in the organization to recruit new people. They've managed to get 80 new reporters, which is quite impressive considering the risks that these people are going to take.

NP: I understand when Joshua first picked up his camera, his original goal was just to document everyday life in Burma; He had no idea that he'd be shooting, and making, history.

AØ: No, he couldn't imagine how far it could be taken...I think he was always aware that what he was doing was a political thing, it's just that he didn't realize that it could have the effect it could, that it could have the impact that it could. I guess that's what he learned -- his colleagues as well -- that this is really a political factor. And the awareness of what media means, of what documentation means, that fact they could put the issue on the world agenda in a whole different way because we have this footage to explain what's going on. Suddenly Burma is a tangible thing. It wasn't before. It was quite abstract, something you had to try to imagine, now you can see what it's all about.

NP: And Joshua has also inspired a wave of activist citizen journalists around the world.

AØ: Yes. That's the good news.

NP: So what's been happening with this documentary?

AØ: It's been traveling for a year now. It's been all over the place. We've been very busy trying to take a grass roots approach to distribution to have screenings everywhere possible. We sent the DVDs to anybody for free who would have some kind of serious purpose with it, be it a university screening in Malaysia, or a Burma committee in Sweden, or even private people who are just keen to show it to their neighbors. We've had hundreds and hundreds of screenings in this way, and we very much believe in that kind of approach.

NP: If people reading this want to arrange a screening, how do they go about it?

AØ: They should just get in touch with the Magic Hour Films company in Copenhagen who will send them a DVD.

NP: How are you funding that?

AØ: Well, it is an expense, but on the other hand sending a DVD is a relatively cheap thing to do which has promotional value. Seen from our perspective, it seems to be worthwhile to do that...It's intriguing that you can reach people so cheaply these days, that you can think about distribution in a new way.

And we didn't have a dilemma between the political interests and the commercial interests. That would have been unbearable, to go make this film and then try to be restrictive about the rights, denying its natural life as a political statement. Of course we've been looking at ways of combining this and making that best of both interests.

NP: You have some big new regarding the Academy Award nomination. When did you first hear about it?

AØ: Oh, the very second [the list] was released. I was calling in to the production company office to follow the whole thing live. We had Danish television there and it was a big deal -- just the prospect of a nomination.

NP: What does this mean for the film? Obviously even the nomination will bring more attention to Burma VJ?

AØ: It'll prolong the lifespan of the film. A documentary often dies out in the course of a year, something like that. This will bring it a second life, bring it to new audiences who may be wary of the documentary genre. The Oscar [nomination] may communicate that this is a film that works as a movie, and will entertain and involve you. But what is interesting is the aspect of how it boosts morale inside the country.

NP: I was going to bring that up. I mean this is a huge deal for Burma, for Joshua and for citizen journalism in general.

AØ: Absolutely. The Burmese people, that's what they're telling me all the time. The film, obviously you can't see it on state television, but it's out there on the black market, it's going from hand to hand. It's being copied and lots of people have seen it -- everybody is following this. For them it's a big deal to have their country involved in an Oscar nomination. It has so many emotional aspects because they are so damn scared of being forgotten by the rest of the world.

NP: I assume you've spoken with Joshua since the announcement. What was his reaction?

AØ: He's so excited, of course, as everybody else. I think he tries to stay cool in a sense that he wants to look after his day-to-day business and not get too involved in the glamour. But he is excited, clearly excited. That's the wonderful thing about this project, that we are all on the same side. I don't need to have a guilt trip about being here because I know it means something to the people involved.

NP: Will Joshua be able to make it out for the ceremony?

AØ: Possibly not. He has endless visa and passport problems. That's not so easy. It's not something we can count on unfortunately. But since he's in Thailand, he will at least follow us minute by minute.

NP: Well I'll keep everything crossed for you, and just wanted to say congratulations.

AØ: Thank you very much.


Go to BurmaVJMovie.com for more info on the film and for details of upcoming screenings.