by Aaron Colter Hope you liked last week's column about graffiti, it was probably the best post since the one about pirates. I was going to write something really great this week, I swear. But, drinks were had, songs were sung, and I have a stack of photo booth prints I can't shown anyone. Fuck. more

by Aaron Colter

Hope you liked last week's column about graffiti, it was probably the best post since the one about pirates. I was going to write something really great this week, I swear. But, drinks were had, songs were sung, and I have a stack of photo booth prints I can't shown anyone. Fuck.

So, you're going to have to settle for some music recommendations and that's about it.



Buke And Gass

The duo is currently on tour with tUnE-YarDs, the lucky devils, and were pretty impressive when playing in Portland. To be honest, at first I thought, "Great. Another cute Brooklyn hipster who plays odd instruments. Just what the world needs."

But, after a couple songs the pair had one me won over, and I was happy to purchase the full-length from Arone and Aron. Arone Dyer is downright adorable, Aron probably too if you're into dudes, so the band has an easy time breaking hearts on stage and cultivating crushes when off. Don't get me wrong, sex appeal is almost essential if you're going to be successful in the music business, but I feel like it hurts Buke And Gass in someways.

There's great potential in their sound, but some songs seem to blend together and don't feel teased-out enough to be truly powerful. Others, however, are fantastic. Perhaps the band hasn't needed to work through shitty sets, flat crowds, and rejected songs because stupid hipsters like me accept them too quickly due to the prettiness.

Hopefully the two musicians will continue creating; there's genuine moments that hint of brilliance in a few of their songs - they just need to keep mining for them.

***



Thao & Mirah

Thao Nguyen is absolutely the best vocalist kicking around the Northwest music scene. Mirah, also a Portland hang-about, is probably not really from this realm, or at the very least a hybrid spirit born of fog and magic. When I saw both ladies were coming together for a new album, my expectation for the music was greater than that of Wild Flag's impending release. Then I saw Merrill Garbus of tUnE-YarDs produced. Oh Shit.

The album is delicious ear candy. Not as rocking at Thao's work with The Get Down Stay Down, or Mirah's solo efforts, the sound is somewhere in between. The influence of Merril Garbus is apparent, making the whole thing feel like a funky Fiest album.

***

Portugal. The Man



Atlantic Records is planning to release a brand new Portugal. The Man album in July. If you want to hear a handful of songs from the upcoming album, along with the entire footage from the teaser videos the group has been posting on YouTube, get to one of the band's shows coming through on tour.

Like My Morning Jacket, the true talent of Portugal. The Man is best seen live. The band rocks harder, changes up old material, and general kicks-ass in a way that blends the best of The Flaming Lips, Revolver era Beatles, and old school Lynyrd Skynyrd - if they were from Alaska instead of The South.

If you can't make it to one of the concerts, you can still download a short studio-session from Daytrotter.

***



Marrow of the Spirit

The latest album from Agalloch was actually released late last year, but I'm only now able to wade through its black tar of sound since the sun has started to shine. The latest from Agalloch is a beautifully dense metal epic that puts listeners on the edge of tears before vocalist NAME begins to suck the very essence from anyone within earshot. Seriously, if you listen to Marrow of the Spirit in its entirety, you will give up the ghost to the Evil One, and your body will become but a husk for the bile of the world, while your immortal soul toils in the ceaseless darkness where all is the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

***

If you have something that you think I might like that others might like too, please email youmightlike [at] gmail [dot] com.

What I’m reading: The Playwright, Collected Fictions, The Economist

What I’m listening to: (The bands listed above.)

What I’m drinking: Mighty Arrow, Duvel, Wilco Tango Foxtrot

by SG's Team Agony feat. Smythe and Aadie Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls. (image) [Smythe in There Is A Light] Q: I'm 18 and a female. I'm lesbian and I'm extremely shy. In the town I live there aren't... more

by SG's Team Agony feat. Smythe and Aadie

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Smythe in There Is A Light]

Q: I'm 18 and a female. I'm lesbian and I'm extremely shy. In the town I live there aren't many lesbians or anything like that. My problem is, I don't know how to find out whether a girl I like is lesbian, or even how to find lesbians anywhere around here. How can you tell (without making a complete ass out of myself) whether a girl is lesbian? And if I finally work up the courage to go to a lesbian bar in a different city, how do you approach other lesbians?



A: I would say there are probably more ladies who love ladies in your town than first meets the eye. Contrary to conservative belief, there is no way to tell if someone walking down the street is a lesbian. Best bet on how to figure out if you're hanging out with a girl who likes girls is to ask what type of people she's attracted to. She may have only dated guys, but that doesn't mean she's ruled out ladies.

Have you tried online dating? It could help with getting into a bigger dating pool and ease your nerves a bit, as you'd be able to establish a potential partner’s orientation and chat to them before meeting face to face. If you decide to go the bar route, maybe bring a friend with you to keep you grounded. Sometimes it's easier to talk to other people when it's not one-on-one.

It might also be worth looking into whether there are gay and lesbian groups in your community or adjacent communities? They often have social get-togethers, and it's a good way to meet people without it being as charged of a situation as a bar can be.

Finally, try and remember that people are people. It's totally harder to do once you've got your eye on someone, but you've got to put yourself out there at some point!

Smythe
Xoxox

***


[Aadie in Time Out]

Q: I'm 16 years old. I've been dating this guy for about a year and a half. He is two years older than me, and he's absolutely wonderful. The problem is he moved halfway across the country about seven months ago. I was fine at first since we talk on the phone a lot. But when I was not talking to him, I would feel alone. And now he's gone off to basic training for the military, and his life is moving away from mine.

Since then I’ve slipped into a deep depression that we cannot seem to find the cause of. I have a theory; I believe it is because I feel like a bird locked in a cage. Sure, he's the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, but he's so far away and it's hard for me to deal with. On top of that, I feel like I'm wasting my teenage years on this romance that seems hopeless. For the longest time he was the only person in my eyes, but that has changed. I've met other people, guys and girls alike, that I feel emotional connections with on a romantic level.

I just wonder if it's the right thing to stay with him? Or if I should end it with him like I've been thinking about and move on with my life?

A: I do not want to make your decision for you, but I will offer my best insight. You are a 16-year old girl, and this 'apple of your eye' has moved half way across the country. His career is clearly a priority for him at this juncture (which is no bad thing), and now you’re sitting at home in a funk! You need to go out, you need to grow, you need to enjoy your own life. Mr 'Right' is more of a Mr 'Right Now' if you ask me.

Your boyfriend may be sweet and wonderful, and, when you’re together he may make you happy, but honey, this is not a fair relationship for either of you. If you spend all your time waiting for the boy that left for military training to come home to you, you’ll miss out on so much, and all this time will have been lost to you. Who even knows if he’ll be the same boy that left you when he returns.

You’re only 16! He's special, but there will be way more special people in your life to come, and you’ll miss out on all of them if you continue to stay at home in this state of depression.

The fact that you've been thinking about ending your relationship only shows that you do in fact really know what’s best for you. You are not wrong in thinking that at all. I believe you’re showing a great deal of maturity. You already know what is actually the healthiest choice for yourself - and even for him.

Ultimately, any break you decide to take could turn out to be temporary - if it’s meant to be, you'll get together again later. But it’s not right for now, and at the very least, if you agree to take an amicable break, neither of you will miss out on other opportunities and adventures life may bring.

Good Luck Hun!

Aadie

***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

The first (and best) cello-based rock band, Rasputina, formed over twenty years ago in Brooklyn, New York. Based around founding auteur Melora Creager, the band has seen many members come and go over the years and had more drummers than Spın̈al Tap, but has maintained a consistent vision throughout. more

The first (and best) cello-based rock band, Rasputina, formed over twenty years ago in Brooklyn, New York. Based around founding auteur Melora Creager, the band has seen many members come and go over the years and had more drummers than Spın̈al Tap, but has maintained a consistent vision throughout. Their songs focus on Creager’s obsessions: historical oddities, fantastical theories, and the strength of women. The whole is tied together with her handmade aesthetic into an artistically unified production: from their album art to their stage performances (called ‘recitals’) to their music. Rasputina’s most recent album is Great American Gingerbread, a collection of demos and other rarities. Melora and I spoke recently about her songwriting method, her proudest moment, and how she keeps Rasputina fresh after two decades in the music business.

Keith Daniels: What made this the right time to put out a rarities collection?

Melora Creager: I had the idea a long time ago. I picked all the material, got it mixed, reworked some things, and then I forgot about it for a while because I was touring a lot, probably. It’s been a decent amount of time since the last proper album came out, so it seems right.

KD: Most of the songs on this are from the last ten years or so. How many more of these collections could you put out?

MC: I would say at least one other really good group [of songs]. I’m excited about that because my earliest demos are on four-track cassettes. I haven’t heard them in decades, really. I got a four-track machine and cleaned them out recently and found all this strange old stuff. It was really interesting to hear how I learned how to write songs because I was just beginning on those tapes.

KD: What did you learn? In what way has your method changed?

MC: I think when I first started I was so excited to have a pickup on my cello that I always recorded direct, so it was a really awful, grating cello sound [laughs] with a lot of effects. It sounds like a keyboard. I’ve learned a lot about recording. You can hear the passage of time. At some point I figured out how it sounds good to mic the cello and lots of other things.

KD: My favorite thing about Rasputina is that you have a complete aesthetic. It’s not just the music and the costumes -- everything you do is integrated. Has that developed over time, or was that always the idea?

MC: That was always the idea, probably because I come from an art school background. So it’s like a project or an assignment. I majored in photography, so it’s like a living photograph with sound and something that I would set up with characters. I’m glad I had that idea that day twenty years ago.

KD: In a column you wrote last year you said “my naivete’ was a huge help in the beginning.” What were you naive’ about, and how did it help?

MC: I was never tempted to play a guitar even though that’s pretty much what all bands were made of back then. I never thought what I was doing was strange or didn’t have a chance. I was even kind of pissed off when I first started doing press because all everyone wanted to talk about was, “The cellos! The cellos!” I was like, “What’s the big deal?” I didn’t think it was that interesting. I was just playing what I knew. It all seemed obvious to me. I thought everyone knew about the subjects that I wrote about, but people don’t necessarily know about all those historical characters and situations.

KD: In the beginning of Rasputina you were on Columbia. You were getting lots of attention not just for your music but for your connections to Nirvana, to Nine Inch Nails, to Marilyn Manson. Was there ever a moment when you thought you might make it big in the traditional sense?

MC: Yeah, for sure. That time in the ‘90s there were all these bands in New York City that we played with or hung out with -- all those bars like Brownies full of bands -- and everyone expected to get signed. It was a time when big labels just signed everything, because of Nirvana. So yeah, I thought I was on the road to fame. I never cared about the riches. [Laughs]

KD: You also said in that column that you think of Rasputina as subversive. What is the establishment that you would like to subvert?

MC: Oooh, that sounds very interesting. I wonder what I meant! [Laughs] I would say pop music; pop meaning popular. I mean, we’re not that popular. I guess the artistic and political ideas that I’m presenting as normal.

KD: Such as?

MC: The role of women characters in my songs. They’re always overcoming adversity. To be very feminine, but strong. People often ask me, “How can you have funny and sad, both those emotions in the same song?” I think human beings are that way. Musicians limit themselves in so many ways because [they’re] trying to be popular.

KD: One of the most interesting songs on this record is “On My Knees”, the soundtrack to the short you were in about Hannah Cullwick. What appealed to you about that story?

MC: I thought it was really interesting how she just reveled in her low position. She was really into getting dirty. She was really into how physically strong she was. Those things weren’t popular at the time.

KD: Rasputina has always been very much your show. What are the advantages and disadvantages of trying to do it yourself?

MC: It’s a huge challenge to work with other people, but that is something that I always wanted to do. The live band, playing with a group, I always wanted to do that, but to make that happen is hard because these relationships aren’t meant to last that long. When I’m writing songs and often in recording, my brain is just firing off and I’m totally on the right-brain. That’s not an interactive thing; that’s just me. It’s like making a painting or something, just expressing stuff that’s coming out of the subconscious. That doesn’t really involve other people.

KD: What advice would you give to somebody who was just going in to the entertainment industry?

MC: I don’t think anyone would want my advice. [Laughs] I can give them advice on how to express themselves and get a lot of satisfaction out of doing that, but as far as the entertainment industry goes, I think all the luck I’ve had is kind of fluke-y. The business has changed so much that I don’t know what people do or how they start out and get noticed.

KD: When you’re up onstage and you’re looking out at the first couple of rows, what are you thinking about?

MC: This is something that I learned with Nirvana. Pat Smear, who was a guitarist with them, said, “Whatever you do, don’t look at the people. They’ll blow your mind and you’ll not be able to play.” I said, “OK. I won’t. I won’t look at ‘em.” It’s true. Even at my own, much smaller shows it’s just too distracting. I’ll see people, I’ll see personalities, and I’ll get off track. You can make a mistake, so I don’t look at individuals, but I am interacting. I’m feeling the audience as a whole. I’m able to multitask to a sick level. Already I’m playing the cello and singing, and I’ll catch myself thinking about a lot of other things: listening to what the other musicians are doing, we’ll talk about it later so I’m trying to remember all that. Sometimes I marvel that I’m there, “I can’t believe I’m doing this and that people are listening!” Sometimes I’ll catch myself thinking about unrelated things. [Laughs]

KD: I really like the song “Coraline”on here that you did for the Neil Gaiman tribute. What’s your relationship to that book?

MC: I have a close relationship to it. I haven’t read anything else by him or seen his work so much, but I read that to my daughter Hollis when she was pretty little, six or something. I never heard it said aloud, I just read it to her, and then when the movie came out later [I found out] it’s actually [pronounced] “Coraline”. I thought it was [pronounced] “Coraleen”. I’d set all my rhyme schemes in the song to “Coraleen”. How embarassing!

KD: Oh, I wasn’t even talking about that. It’s all up to interpretation anyway.

MC: Well that’s good to hear. [Laughs] We loved that book. We played a game called “The Mother’s Hand” where I’d shriek, “the Mother’s hand!,” and make it crawl on Hollis, because there’s a disembodied hand in that book. It was very fun for her.

KD: Did that character [Coraline] speak to you on any deeper level?

MC: No. I didn’t feel that connected to it myself. It was more through my daughter.

KD: Neil has said that in his experience with that book that children are much braver than adults.

MC: Yeah, I totally agree with that. The spirit and the feel of being a child is really important to keep alive in me for my work.

KD: What have you learned from the way that your children experience the world?

MC: There’s a lot of that courage that you talk about, and an ability to go back and forth between fantasy and reality without a problem. Which is a cool aspect.

KD: What was your first favorite book?

MC: I liked The Phantom Tollbooth a lot. It’s a classic -- a modern classic. When they would go into a third world I would find that scary, but I would get off on it too.

KD: Your oldest daughter goes to a Waldorf school, correct? Have you read much about Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy? [Mangles the pronunciation] Anthroposophy?

MC: Anthroposophy? [Laughs] I haven’t read his books. People at the school are into it at all different levels. Some people [just] think of it as a very picturesque private school, and some people are really deep into it. I might not agree with all the deeper stuff. He was making a lot of this stuff up in a different time; there were different needs. How nutty it is appeals to me. School is such drudgery. They’re making people all the same, like a factory. This Waldorf school, which was actually invented for factory worker’s kids, is pretty crazy. I like it.

KD: One of your musical inspirations is Nina Hagen. Do you ever wish you could get out from behind the cello and be that sort of physically expressive?

MC: I don’t think how about how much I wish I could. I think about how much I can’t. I’m, by nature, pretty shy. I don’t know why I forced myself to do this for my life’s work. [Laughs] I do think about... I don’t think I could ever even stand there without my cello. [Laughs] It’s very protective, and I’ve done it so long that it’s a real part of me.

KD: Like a shield in front of you, almost?

MC: Yeah! If I ever did... like, a dance move, or something with my legs, that would be so rad! [Laughs]

KD: I was reading your notes on here about each individual track. I noticed on one that you said a producer had warned you not to ‘chase the demo’. What does it mean to ‘chase the demo’?

MC: That’s kindof the story of the first part of my recording career, up to now. I’ve had different producers who didn’t want to recreate the demo, but there’s a lot of magic in my demos! Maybe they just wanted to make it their own or get their own footprint on it, but how recording is now with computers and Pro Tools and Garage Band, demos are the finished product.

KD: So it means that there’s something special about the demo, but no matter how many times you re-record it, it never recaptures it?

MC: Yeah.

KD: When I was a kid my music teachers always separated what they called “serious music” and “popular music”. Do you make that distinction?

MC: I don’t, because I take everything equally. I listen to a lot of modern classical music on the radio, and I just love that. That’s very influential [for me] for sounds and harmony styles, but I don’t know the names of the composers, just like I don’t know the names of all the David Bowie songs I love. I know that classical is very... they keep themselves separate. They don’t know, don’t care about what I do.

KD: Would you like to some more scoring work? What are some of your favorite film scores?

MC: Yeah, I think I would. Michael Nyman is one of my favorite composers. He’s one of the modern classical composers I’m talking about. He did, I think, all of Peter Greenaway’s movies, and the music for The Piano. I am presently collaborating with my good friend Joseph Bishara. He was the music director for Repo the Genetic Opera, a movie that I also played in. Joe does lots of horror scores. Currently out is Insidious, in which he also plays the lead demon! He sent me a bunch of Halloween snapshots from the 1920s and ‘30s. They are very weird pictures. I made a story out of them, we wrote songs to them together, and we're recording it next week. We hope to have it released for Halloween 2011.

KD: After 20 years of Rasputina, what are you most proud of? Is there anything you feel you have yet to accomplish?

MC: I might be the most proud of the Sister Kinderhook album, because it seems like finally, after all these years, I made what I meant to [make]. Often an album is like, “Oh, that’s not what I meant to do. That’s not what was in my head,” somehow it got diluted, or switched around. But [Sister Kinderhook] is really what I intended, and I’m really proud of it. I would like to do more visually related things. I guess you’d call it a video.

KD: What do you have in mind?

MC: It’s hard to express. I keep a notebook of all these ideas. I’m not going to tell you now! [Laughs] I met a fabulous painter, also named Melora. Melora Kuhn. She does these cool historical portraits with disasters going on in the background. We recently brainstormed on what 'Melora' project we could do. That project has just begun, but is ripe with possibility. Something like a film of her painting my portrait while I'm playing the cello, both of us costumed.

KD: How do you combat the tendency of any long-running institution toward routine and stagnation?

MC: I think, because the people in the band do change, they contribute different attitudes and different energy. As time has gone on those people have gotten younger and younger. That definitely helps me.

KD: So you take these fresh young things and drain them of their essence to stay young. [Laughs]

MC: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah.

KD: Are you planning on recording a new studio album this year?

MC: I’m writing now. I will be writing through the summer before we tour. But it takes time to come to fruition. I would say next year. Next week in Joshua Tree I'm recording a Robert Johnson song for a charity that gives blankets to homeless people.

KD: Are you going to announce any summer dates?

MC: I just gave a first draft of the tour to my email list yesterday.

Find out more at Rasputina’s official website.

Despite the success of the Twilight franchise, real vampire movies are alive and well. I found out as much in November 2009, when, on behalf of SuicideGirls I took a drive up to Woodstock, NY, to visit the set of Stake Land, a low-budget horror film that eschews sparkly, boy-band vamps in favor of the... more

Despite the success of the Twilight franchise, real vampire movies are alive and well. I found out as much in November 2009, when, on behalf of SuicideGirls I took a drive up to Woodstock, NY, to visit the set of Stake Land, a low-budget horror film that eschews sparkly, boy-band vamps in favor of the more traditional, animalistic bloodsuckers we all know and love. Writer/director Jim Mickle, who made the rounds a few years ago with his much talked-about indie-horror film Mulberry Street, is the brain behind the project, a road movie that takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America, years after a war between vampires and humans has left the entire continent in ruins and relegated survivors to a medieval existence, living hand-to-mouth and traveling together in tightly-formed, armed brigades.
Arriving at the set around lunchtime on one of the last days of shooting, I was quickly shown around to that day’s outdoor location, situated at the mouth of quaint covered bridge and surrounded by rolling hills and forests. Despite the film’s severe budget constraints, a heroic attempt was obviously being made by all to create a tone to match the epic feel of the script, which takes place over a number of years and essentially charts the decline of an entire civilization into vampire-induced chaos. Each of the actors and extras were appropriately grimy and dirty, wearing what looked like Salvation Army castoff clothes and sporting a variety of down-and-dirty weapons. As I hunkered down behind the camera to watch, a scene was rehearsed and performed several times in which the survivors are ushered through the checkpoint.
Taking part in the scene were lead actors Danielle Harris (Rob Zombie’s Halloween, H2) who plays Belle, a young, pregnant mother-figure to the group, Connor Paolo (Gossip Girl, Alexander) who plays Martin, a young boy coming of age in this barren wasteland, Nick Damici (Mulberry Street, The Black Donnellys) who plays the wizened warrior that instructs young Martin in the ways of vampire hunting, and who is also a co-writer of the film and a long-time collaborator of Jim Mickle’s, and Sean Nelson, who plays Willie, an Army grunt who has found a home with the survivors. After watching the scene be filmed to the director’s satisfaction, the cast members were brought over as a group to take a break and have a chat about how they got involved in the project and exactly what kind of post-apocalyptic vampire movie they’re attempting to make. Here is a transcription of our talk:


Ryan Stewart: So Nick, you helped write this film?

Nick Damici: Yeah, basically, we’ve been working on it for eight or ten years. We have a system where I do the hands-on and then he [Jim Mickle] comes in and does the edits, and we talk it out. We do that about 500 times until we have a script.

Danielle Harris: I’ve heard that Jim mellows out Nick’s writing.

Nick: [laughs] Yeah, he dulls me down.

RS: What kind of vampires are we dealing with in this film?

Nick: The feral, ferocious kind. In the script we say “We just call them vamps because they drink blood,” but we’re not really following classic folklore.

RS: Can you walk us through the basic idea of the story?

Nick: A vampire plague has collapsed the world, basically. America has fallen, the government’s gone, and it’s sort of an apocalyptic time. There’s this guy who hunts vampires and he saves this kid and the kid becomes his protégé, in a sense, and he’s trying to get the kid to Canada where everybody says it’s safe. We don’t know if it’s safe, though, it’s a journey and they pick up other people along the way, like Belle, which is Danielle’s part, and Sean, who plays Willie. You’ve also got Kelly McGillis as a nun. It’s a family movie!

RS: Is it mostly practical effects in the film, or are you using CG?

Nick: There’s probably going to be a little bit of CG.

Connor Paolo: There’s a little bit of green screen, plus some practical stuff. We’re doing all our own stunts.

Nick: We’ve had a few special effects, but nothing super-major, just a few tricks. You should see some of Jim’s tests; for the last year I’ve been getting one of him stabbing Adam in the eye with a pencil.

RS: Danielle, what can you say about your character?

Danielle: Belle is a free spirit, Suzie Homemaker-type trying to round up this rowdy group of boys. She’s sort of the nurturing caretaker and also an odd man out amongst these burly men. She’s making a home and trying to keep the peace and be positive. She’s also pregnant as they continue on the trek, which was interesting – I hadn’t gotten to do that yet in my career. [points to her stomach] Just a little bump right now!

RS: So it’s going to expand?

Danielle: Oh, yeah. The movie is kind of about finding a family out what’s left.

RS: The film has been described as an epic. Does that sound right to you?

Danielle: Yeah, I’ve worked on supposedly epic, $100 million dollar features that looked like crap, but from what I’ve seen so far this is looking really amazing. We’ve got two red cameras shooting at all times, which is awesome. Jim is covering the crap out of the film, and the reason I wanted to do it was because I saw Mulberry Streetand what they were able to do for that amount of money, and I did think “God, this one will be epic.” It really looks unbelievable from what I’ve seen so far.

Nick: And this is a genre flick too, so it’s not that different from Mulberry Street, structurally, except its all outdoors instead of indoors. Mulberry Street was like shooting a submarine movie, we were shooting in my apartment with 500 people.

RS: Is that a real gun in your waist?

Nick: [laughs] No. I would not put a real gun near my special parts!

RS: Are you doubling as producer on this one too?

Nick: Nope. I write and I act and otherwise, I keep my mouth shut.

Danielle: Liar.

Nick: Well, unless I have a strong opinion!

RS: Sean, what can you tell us about your character?

Sean Nelson: Willie is a military guy that they pick up, and he’s really trying to get back home to his family. He’s trying to find his way and he’s lucky to get picked up by these guys, they save his life. That’s basically the gist of my character.

Nick: He also hates Christmas.

Sean: [laughs] He hates fuckin’ Christmas.

RS: The movie takes place at Christmas time?

Nick: No, but we kill a Santa Claus.

Sean: A vampire Santa gets the shit kicked out of him.

RS: What are some of the stunts you guys have done on the film so far?

Nick: It’s mostly roughhousing kind of stunts. Running, jumping, some fight stuff. We’ve had some stunt guys come in for big scenes, we’ve done some choreography and some rope work, but otherwise it’s just, you know, act like you’re killing each other.

RS: Is there a big villain?

Danielle: Oh yeah, there are lots of villains, one in particular.

Nick: Michael Cerveris. He’s on fire, terrific. He’s done a lot of television work and some big movies. He just did that Cirque Du Freak movie.

RS: You shot some of this movie and then took a hiatus before coming back, right?

Nick: Yeah, that was kind of a part of our original plan. In order to get the epic feel we wanted to watch the characters age a bit, and when I started out the first two weeks I had dyed my hair and now I’ve let the grey grow back in. There’s a big feel of time going by, people’s hair getting longer. Martin, if you look at him the first two weeks he looks like he’s twelve years old and now he shows up and I’m saying “Hey, look, he grew up!”

Connor: That was a big part of the hiatus, not only getting the summer-to-winter thing, since this film takes place over two years, but also because it’s ultimately Martin’s coming of age story. He kind of narrates the whole thing in retrospect of his time with Mister and becoming the man he was born to be.

RS: What are you shooting here today?

Nick: We’ve got to cross through this town to get to the next spot, so they’re disarming us at the border of the town. This is at the top of the third act.

RS: Are there any big emotional scenes you have to do?

Danielle: Oh, yeah.

Nick: The movie has a lot of heart. Kelly McGillis has been stupendous. A really good actress, nice to work with.

RS: Did she tell you any Top Gun stories?

Nick: Yeah, but I can’t repeat them! You’ll have to ask her yourself.

Connor: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

RS: Is there any comedy in this film, or is it all dire?

Nick: There’s a few laughs, I’m sure.

Danielle: I don’t know if comedy is the right word, but there are some lighter moments.

Nick: There are a few tension-breaking moments before we return to the blood and gore.

RS: Connor, how did you find time in your Gossip Girl schedule to do this?

Connor: I just took it, I wanted to do it. The great thing about my show is that we have so many storylines going it’s easy for them to take one character out for a week or two. This leg of the film is only about two and a half weeks, so that’s really only two episodes. It wasn’t a big deal, we gave them enough notice.

RS: You’re doing webisodes for this film, I heard?

Danielle: Yes! I had great luck with Fear Clinic, which I did with FearNet, with Robert Englund, and they’ve been talking with me about directing some stuff for them and finding webisodes to do. I couldn’t really find anything that I wanted to do, and I was talking to Jim and Nick a bit about it, and then I went on hiatus and came back and got a call and now we’re gonna do it. And I think it’s a good idea because we kind of get thrown into Stake Land rather quickly and it’s a nice way of letting the audience see all of the characters’ back stories. I’m directing Sean, Willie’s story. I told him today that he has a 4:00am call time tomorrow!

Nick: It also takes place in a swamp.

Sean: And might involve some nudity.

Danielle: [laughs] So, yeah, I’m excited about it. I think it’s a really great idea. They’re short, about five minutes, just little snippets to kind of get an idea. It’s our job to get you emotionally invested in the characters in that amount of time. And all the directors are very different, so it’s nice to see the different filmmakers’ styles.

Connor: Mister and Martin are very committed to not hearing anything about the history of the people they meet, and we don’t talk about where everyone is from, so any chance in the film of finding out about a character’s origins we quickly kind of shut down.

Nick: The thing about our scripts is that when we’re done with the first draft we go back and take out all the exposition. You don’t really have to know who anybody is or where they come from. If the audience isn’t in, then you didn’t do it right anyway

RS: So when are the webisodes are going to air?

Danielle: I think I’ll have some of it up – you know, I’ve got this video camera and I’ve got my website, the HorrorGal website that I’m doing, so I’m gonna grab my camera and shoot a lot of my directing assignment tomorrow. I couldn’t shoot any of me when we actually shot Belle’s story, because it would have given away sort of the end of the short, so I couldn’t really bring the camera around, but I’ll put the making of that on after you see the webisode.

RS: Is this going to lead to more directing for you in the future?

Danielle: I hope so. I’ve been reading scripts for the last year and a half, and it’s hard to find a really great script. I’m on the hunt for that first, debut film, but I haven’t really found it yet.

RS: You could direct Halloween 3D, if the Weinsteins haven’t found someone already..

Danielle: Oh, God no. I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t put that in there, please. Omit that! But yeah, I’m done. Four Halloweens is enough. But I don’t know, I’ll probably come back in flashbacks, though.

RS: Sean, how did you get cast in this?

Sean: There was a meeting, and I met with Jim Mickle. I wasn’t familiar with his work and I still haven’t seen Mulberry Street, but I heard it was great from these guys.

Nick: Of course we said it was great, we made it.

Sean: [laughs] And I believe it! Also, I’ve never been in a horror film. I kind of persuaded Mickle to let me be a part of it.

Nick: I told him “That kid? Hire that motherfucker now!”

RS: Do you guys plan to take this film onto the festival circuit?

Nick: I gotta be honest, I don’t know. MPI is basically running the marketing of it and I don’t want to answer for them.

RS: How’s MPI treating you?

Nick: They’ve been great, lot of support. It’s a tough shoot in that we’re really being ambitious and they’ve gone out on a limb to trust us.

RS: Is “Stake Land” an actual place in the film, or is it more like a state of mind?

Nick: It’s more like what the world has turned into. When he first introduces Martin to the world of killing vampires, Mister basically says “Welcome to Stake Land, kid.” Then he lets the vampire attack the kid, so it’s like ‘Live or die, buddy!’

RS: Mulberry Street had a big political subtext – what about this film?

Nick: Well, it’s kind of about ‘If society failed, what would happen next?’ Or ‘What would it take for us to really fall back to feudal times?’ We go through these different eras, and we have, like a Great Depression scene: normalcy, middle-America hanging in there in tough times and being hopeful.

Connor: We’re pushed almost back to witch hunt times.

Nick: Yeah, and there’s a Western feel to it. It’s very Civil War-ish, in its costumes and stuff.

RS: You guys watch dailies with the Red Cam? How do you watch your footage?

Nick: We get a lot of playback as we shoot.

Danielle: I don’t watch dailies.

Connor: But you could watch it on a laptop.

Nick: Yeah, we can. Patrick has it all down, if we want to see something, and Jim is very generous about that stuff. If we need to see something, he’ll let us.

Danielle: I’d go crazy if I had to watch myself every day.

Connor: Some actors do like that, but it’s harder for other actors. You don’t want to see the mistakes you’re making. If you start worrying about the way your hair looks or something…

Nick: You find yourself directing yourself.

Danielle: Yeah. Let Jim do that.

RS: How is Jim handling his second feature so far?

Danielle: He’s really difficult to work with!

Connor: A total asshole.

Nick: Yeah, he threw cold water on me! No, he’s been great.

Danielle: [laughs] Yeah, he’s great. There’s a big canvas too, I mean look at where we’re filming.

Connor: The locals in this area kind of have to be involved, too, because we’re using different areas and we’ve got scenes where we need 50 people in the background, which is a lot to take on.

Danielle: Everyone here is really excited to be part of it, including the ‘townsfolk,’ for lack of a better word, as well as the crew.

Nick: The other night we had a guy playing a bouncer in a saloon scene and then we went to get a drink and he was sitting in there, and he goes “Oh God, here come the vampires!”

RS: As far as shooting goes, do you have to move too fast for comfort, at this budget level?

Danielle: No, it’s actually moving nice and steady. We’re racing the sun a lot, but yeah, ten or eleven hour work days. We have two cameras and our DP is great and the crew’s great, and everything is set. We just rock and roll. You know, I’ve done a lot of movies at this budget and I’ve seen a lot of disaster, and you’re always worried about things when you’re filming and freezing, but we’re really not aware of working with a crew of this size because it doesn’t feel like it.

Nick: Our biggest problem is having a temperamental, 40 year-old car that Adam and I towed up here ourselves. That was a lot of fun.

RS: Do you hope there will be more Stake Lands after this one?

Nick: If I had my way. I just want this one to be good enough, but if that opportunity comes we’re ready for it.

RS: What’s up next for you and Jim?

Nick: We’re trying to raise money right now for one called Cold in July, based on a Joe Lansdale novel. We’re trying to pull a cast together, and I don’t know how solid it is, but it’s looking pretty good and hopefully by summer we’ll be onto that one. This one will be being edited then. And I’d like to just keep going – I’m getting old!

RS: What about you, Danielle? Is 2010 booked up?

Danielle: You know, in this genre you never know what’s actually going to end up making it or not making it. Right now, there are three things that have come my way and I’m just hoping that one of them works out. We don’t get cell reception up here so I haven’t been able to do any business or anything, we’re just focused on this. But I’m waiting to see and hoping there might be a film, or maybe a franchise in my future.

RS: And you shot the remake of Night of the Living Deadalready?

Danielle: Yeah, it was just voice work, it’s CGI-3D. Simon West is producing it. It’s a really cool, interesting idea. To come back as an iconic character like Annie in Halloween and now to be Barbara in Night of the Living Dead is pretty awesome. I kind of decided after the last Halloween that I was only going to do movies this year, and I keep saying this for press because I want to stick to my word, I’m only going to do genre things that I haven’t done before. This was the first vampire script I’ve done, and trust me I’ve read a lot – it’s kind of the wave of the moment – and this was the vampire movie that I wanted to do. And Night of the Living Dead was the zombie movie that I wanted to do. So, I’m being a little bit pickier and I’m also kind of done with being the victim for a while. And I’m not doing any of the CGI part of Night of the Living Dead, and I’m not even sure if it’s going to look like me. It might be a cross between me and the original Barbara. But the script is very heavy, I was actually surprised at how intense it was. It’s about the origins, it’s a prequel that takes place in New York City and it’s insane. It’s mostly scenes with Mos Def and I, and I’ve still never met him – it’s just voices.
With that, the Stake Land cast was gathered back up by the assistant director to go do some more filming and I was left to mull around the set some more, talking to crew members about the demands of getting that day’s shooting in the can and watching them set up for a second location down the road in a local bar, where they would be joined later that evening by the film’s legendary producer, Larry Fessenden, and the other star of the film, Kelly McGillis, making her return to feature filmmaking after a multi-year hiatus.
After a long meal break it was time to tackle a nighttime schedule, during which multiple quick, indoor scenes would be filmed. These night scenes included, in order of least-to-most interesting: a snippet of a rowdy get-together in a tavern where lots of local humans have gathered; a set-up in a cramped attic space where our survivors watch through their window as the military fires guns outside and someone gets snagged by a random bullet; and an intimate musical performance by Danielle Harris’s Belle, who sings a lonesome, bluegrass-style song about the damage the vampires have wrought. It’s not every day you get to watch a live performance of a vampire-inspired country music song!
During the down period before the intensely-paced night shooting began (remember, this is an indie film where every second counts) I got a chance to sit down with both director Jim Mickle and producer Larry Fessenden, where we discussed the origins of this project and the plans for its release by independent financiers Dark Sky Films in 2010, as well as plans for potential sequels. A long-time staple of the independent film world, Fessenden has a longer credits sheet than most Hollywood veterans and is an industry maverick who prides himself on working successfully outside of the system; he was able to give me some insight into how a low-budget genre film like this gets set up and financed in the current economic environment, as well as his thoughts on the benefits and negatives of making movies outside of the Hollywood system. Here is a transcript of our talk:


RS: Larry, you’re the intermediary between Jim and Dark Sky Films on this project?

Larry Fessenden: Yeah, Dark Sky offered a slate of three movies over the course of a year, and I knew I wanted to work with Mickle. Long before I was on Mulberry Street I met Jim and he pitched me a sort of vampire picture, and I saw his shorts, and was totally into working with him. That didn’t quite work out and he went to make I]Mulberry Street and when this idea for the slate came up with Dark Sky, I went straight to Jim.

RS: So, did you have the idea for Stake Land before the deal came about?

Jim Mickle: Well, we were working on Cold in July for a while, and it was kind of frustrating because it was hard to find funding, and hard to get actors attached, and it was kind of a frustrating two years. This originally started off as an idea to do webisodes, to do something cheap – basically to do Mulberry again, but [the concern was] could lightning really strike twice and we’d get a great film out of it? So, we went the other way and built the story around the webisodes. Nick wrote a little ten minute scene, which is the opening scene in the movie now, and that was episode one and then we branched off from there. It’s kind of an episodic story, and when Larry came along with the slate we tried to adapt to that. The original idea was just kind of folding them all together, and it didn’t quite work, but we kept finessing it. At some point Nick just got the bug, took all the characters and completely reworked the setting, gave it this weird, post-apocalyptic, political feel. I think it was written right around the time of the election, so there’s that. The economy was all over the news and that sort of became the backdrop, along with the swine flu.

RS: What else can you say about the atmosphere of the film?

Larry: Well, we do have plenty of gore! You can count on Mickle for that.

Jim: We kind of want to go for, like, a western with this one. Mulberry was all about being in this one-bedroom apartment, but in this we travel from Virginia to Canada We broke it up into two chunks, and shot the first half in August and it was gold and green, and now it’s all blue and dark and gray. Nick’s beard has grown out and the kid’s hair has grown out. So I would say the atmosphere is very stark, empty, barren and depressing. And in the midst of that there’s a kind of coming-of-age story with a kid.

Larry: There are also so many great interiors that we found upstate, and once you’re inside you see people who have sort of hunkered down and made their own little world. It’s got a lot of texture, even more so than, I think, maybe The Road which I think will be relentlessly bleak and grey. This sort of shows how people do continue to survive and live in the world even when they’re fortressed against the vamps, which are outside roaming the place.

RS: There are lots of post-apocalyptic movies out right now.

Jim: Yeah, we’re all inspired by the same shit – it’s on the news.

RS: Are you reinventing the wheel with the vampires, or going traditional?

Jim: We’re just trying to make them gross, scary creatures. I was ripping on Twilight for a while and I’d never actually saw it. Then I went and watched it and it was more neutered than I even expected. So yeah, we’re definitely trying to make them scary and brutal. We’re gonna have mangled breasts and intestines hanging out. We’re going for scary monsters, not talking and dating.

Larry: It feels like we’re making a zombie movie, but really they’re just hungry.

RS: Do we see any vampire transformations?

Jim: We see some, there’s a little bit of post-bite, and transforming a little bit. It’s not like zombies, where they instantly pop back up. We’ve really worked on it at different stages, there’s a whole mythology behind it. They get to a point where you can only kill them a certain way and Nick has names for them and he keeps notebooks on them, you should check out his notebooks. So yeah, there are newbies and there are the ones that are really far gone, missing limbs and that kind of stuff.

Larry: It would make a good coffee table book.

RS: Are you using a lot of CG effects?

Jim: I do some after-effects, some animation and compositing. I think the CG stuff that will be in there will be more helping shots, painting out things that we don’t want to see, removing wires because we did some stunts with wires, and that kind of stuff. So, there may be some CG, but we’re not doing CG creatures or anything like that.

RS: What kind of stunts are you working on?

Jim: Tomorrow night we’re going to shoot a big one out in the street, we have quite a few people on for that one. We shot the opening scene, which had quite a bit – that’s where we had a bit of wire work. Nick and Connor have been great with that, and even Kelly is running through cornfields and falling down. So, yeah, there’s quite a bit of action in it, but you forget because it’s spread out. It’s a lot like Mulberry where you have these big scenes and then the quiet, character scenes, only on a grander scale.

RS: Larry, what’s your specific role on set? Are you a traditional producer here?

Larry: Well, I’m basically an idea guy. In this case, Adam Folk, who’s been a partner with Mickle, those guys do the hard work. They come in and do the SAG contracts and the schedules and stuff, but I take the role of being an advocate for the artist, making sure they get as close to what they want as possible. And on this slate, I talk with the money guys. I like to think outside of the box, and nurture a lot of different talents out there. My role is to set these things up and to fight for the vision. We go in and do some story stuff, depending on the project, each one requires different things. I just love the genre, there are so many different flavors. If I had the freedom to make my own films all the time, which I don’t, I would probably never make Stake Land. So, I get to be part of that and part of a movie about a chef that goes crazy. So, it’s an incredible privilege.

RS: What impact do you have on the screenplay?

Larry: We hang out, and we work on it together sometimes. In the case of Nick, who’s probably written 600 pages for this, it’s a matter of going in and saying ‘Do you think we have the best possible story for it?’ We know we have several sequels in us, it’s just a matter of honing it. And then I have to go to Dark Sky and say ‘This is the one, this is the way it’s gonna go.’ We started with about nine or ten pitches, different movies, different directors, and so there is a bit of negotiation involved in landing us on the projects we land on – that’s the kind of thing I’m involved in, while my guys in the field are focused on getting every day to happen.

RS: Larry, is your energy going towards The Orphanage project these days?

Larry: No, that was two years of waiting. Working on the script with Guillermo del Toro was a very exciting experience, but then I got into a casting miasma and that’s where the thing is. I think they’re going to do it another way, actually, so I think I’m out of it. Hopefully, they’ll still use my script, but I’m not sure I’m directing it. That’s Hollywood for ya!

RS: Do you have your next directorial project lined up?

Larry: I have, like, three movies that I want to do that are, ironically, at this level. The Orphanage got my foot in the door with studios and with managers and agents, but I don’t really trust that it works and I’m a little wary. I’ve seen Ti West get involved, he made Cabin Fever and then came running home to Daddy to work with Glass Eye Pix again. And honestly, my aesthetic is to be a bit of a badass and work outside of the system and see if we can scam em’ and make our own way. We all love a lot of different Hollywood movies and we presumably all want to work with a lot of money, but there’s so much trade-off for that. I continue to stick to this aesthetic of a band of outsiders trying to make movies. I’ve produced five movies since I’ve been dicking around with The Orphanage.

RS: Is there budget pressure with this Dark Sky slate?

Larry: I guarantee the budgets with them, and that’s my cross to bear. We’ve got a lot of producers on this Derek Curl works very closely with Dark Sky, keeping them informed of our progress. But the fact is, we can’t go over. So, I ride Mickle and then it goes like that. We actually had to cut a day from this whole second half.

Jim: The day that you’re seeing now was supposed to be two days.

Larry: [laughs] And still he has time for you guys!

RS: Is that part of the learning process, when you’re forced to lose a day?

Jim: Yeah, we find creative ways and Larry was really good about it. He could have just said “Cut a day and that’s it,” but we had a couple of conversations about creative ways to solve it. You learn creative ways to solve problems, and that was the whole way we worked on Mulberry: ‘We can’t do this, so what’s the alternative?’ And it was good that this came along when it did, because we definitely trimmed the fat.

Larry: It helped us hone an approach to the filmmaking, which is what I love, when you’re constantly challenged. Winter has shorter daylight hours – just simple things like that, where you’re like, fuck, we have even less time than we had before! Even if it’s a case where we have to shift something in the film towards night, because that’s the reality. Also, when you’re dealing with all these communities you have to be respectful, while at the same time milking them for everything they’ve got. It’s all part of our rock n’ roll aesthetic, which is distinct from Hollywood, where they just buy everything they need. With this, you have to be a little more stealthy, a little more light on your feet.



Stake Land is in select theaters now.

this was in another thread, and it got me thinking: RagleGumm said: (image) (image) But also (especially in the eyes): (image) (image) i've always thought that fractal looks a lot like natalie wood - an actress from the 60-70's, was in rebel without a cause, gypsy, the great race, etc. but i... more

this was in another thread, and it got me thinking:

RagleGumm said:




But also (especially in the eyes):




i've always thought that fractal looks a lot like natalie wood - an actress from the 60-70's, was in rebel without a cause, gypsy, the great race, etc. but i definitely see the resemblance above.

anyways, anyone else notice resemblances between any of the girls and particular celebrities?

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/.

by Blogbot (image) [“If your Momy’s acting strange and going through some kind of change...”] Even for adults, it might be hard to figure out if a loved one is turning into some kind of crazed monster, or just going through something Jeanie Linders might write a musical about. The issue would... more

by Blogbot


[“If your Momy’s acting strange and going through some kind of change...”]

Even for adults, it might be hard to figure out if a loved one is turning into some kind of crazed monster, or just going through something Jeanie Linders might write a musical about. The issue would be compounded were a parent to get bitten by the zombie bug before their offspring were old enough to understand the facts of life and the undead.

Fortunately Matt Mogk, the Founder & Head Researcher of the Zombie Research Society, has written an invaluable educational guide to help prepare children for the coming plague. That's Not Your Mommy Anymore is a beautifully illustrated and fun to read book which helps kids spot the early warning signs of zombism.

The essential resource is intended as an educational tool for use by parents, social workers, counselors, and educators. The book will hits stores imminently to coincide with Mother’s Day and Zombie Awareness Month. Are your kids prepared for the apocalypse?



That's Not Your Mommy Anymore ($8 / Ulysses Press), available in paperback and Kindle formats.

(image) by Sash Suicide (image) (image) Dr. West (pictured with his mistress Patton Suicide) INTO: Reanimation, tuna, practicing my ninja climbing skills, milk rings, sleeping inside of hoodies, expanding my Halloween cat army, ice cream. NOT INTO: Thunderstorms, other cats challenging my doctor skills. more

by Sash Suicide







Dr. West (pictured with his mistress Patton Suicide)

• INTO: Reanimation, tuna, practicing my ninja climbing skills, milk rings, sleeping inside of hoodies, expanding my Halloween cat army, ice cream.


• NOT INTO: Thunderstorms, other cats challenging my doctor skills.


• MAKES ME HAPPY: Cuddles, bath time, sweaters, knocking cups over.


• MAKES ME SAD: Mom leaving for work.


• HOBBIES: Sharing mom's food, naps, excessive stretching.


• 5 THINGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT: Tuna, a flossin' wardrobe, naptime, twisty-ties, hiding spots to lurk in.


• VICES: Jumping on the counter while mom is cooking, pawing her chest when her alarm clock goes off, leaving the sink turned on.


• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Lounging on speakers and napping.

Photography: Alissa Brunelli

Get to know Dr. West's mistress, Patton Suicide, over at SuicideGirls.com!

The new Jackass feature film is spectacularly shitty - in an awesomely gross kind of way. And because it's shot in 3D, the excrement literally comes flying right at you, giving the MTV-rooted franchise the opportunity to connect with its audience in a whole new, and yet familiarly meaningless way. more

The new Jackass feature film is spectacularly shitty - in an awesomely gross kind of way. And because it's shot in 3D, the excrement literally comes flying right at you, giving the MTV-rooted franchise the opportunity to connect with its audience in a whole new, and yet familiarly meaningless way.

I don't mean that disrespectfully - it's just that it's important not to overthink things when it comes to Jackass's intentionally lowbrow brand of entertainment. Creators Johnny Knoxville, Spike Jonze and Jeff Tremaine, and cast members Steve-O, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius and Dave England have been doing silly stunts for shits and giggles - and increasingly large amounts of cash - for a decade now, and the interplay between the beloved faces is as important as the feces and flying dildos. It's this timeless male bonding, which appears evident and genuine on screen, that's perhaps the key to Jackass's popularity, longevity and charm. As Steve-o succinctly puts it, "The chemistry definitely makes it work."

SuicideGirls spoke with professional pranksters Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O by phone this past weekend about the secrets of Jackass 3-D's undeniable allure.

Nicole Powers: I noticed that Jackass 3-D has got over 2 million followers on Facebook.

Johnny Knoxville: Oh, that's good.

NP: SuicideGirls have got just under 1 million and you guys have got 2 million, which means twice as many people want to see you guys naked.

JK: That's just filthy. That's just absolutely filthy.

NP: You should be very proud.

JK: Yeah. We're bringing male nudity back.

NP: This movie, it's kind of homoerotic. Kind of like 300 - but not.

JK: Kind of? Don't you mean a lot?

NP: Well, I think more people get hurt in this movie.

JK: Yeah, we do take our lumps.

NP: How are you currently feeling?

JK: I'm recovered pretty good from shooting. We stopped shooting back in early August, so I'm pretty much healed up.

NP: What was the worst injury that you sustained during shooting?

JK: On this one I had a concussion, whiplash, dislocated shoulder, stitches in my hand and I had my molar knocked out by a dildo bazooka.

NP: I was watching Letterman, and I saw you point to where your tooth got knocked out. It was really far back. I mean, I understand how a front tooth might get knocked out by a flying dildo, but how do you explain a tooth that far back?

JK: I'll tell you how I explain it. Spike had them load an air cannon with all these dildos and turned it up full blast and put it four feet from me.

NP: I just figured it might be some off camera dildo action that was really responsible for that.

JK: No. It was in the last bit where the bowl of dicks blew up in my face and they had some from the side come in and take me out. I was shocked at how hard they hit me. I was disappointed, but I wasn't surprised. Actually I wasn't disappointed. I think it's funny.

NP: I mean this in the nicest possibly way, but this is probably your shittiest movie yet isn't it?

JK: Not really. It's probably our movie with the least amount of disgusting stuff in it.

NP: But there's a lot of actual shit quantity wise?

JK: Well, in the two scenes where there is poo poo, there is a lot. But other than that, it's our least disgusting film.

NP: I was trying to figure out; how do you prepare for the poop volcano stunt? That was pretty impressive projectile poop.

JK: Oh, the Poocano.

NP: Yeah, the Poocano. Even with my worst case of stomach flu, I've never achieved that level of projectability.

JK: He ate a lot of awful, awful, awful stuff. Like, he knows the stuff that makes him really...He's a professional, first of all.

NP: A professional pooper.

JK: Yeah, he is a professional pooper. No one else can poop or Dave England gets mad. He ate a bunch of horrible stuff and right before we shot, [Chris] Pontius stuck an enema in him and they said, "And rolling!"

NP: How do you come up with the ideas for these stunts?

JK: I usually write my ideas in the morning. I just sit at home and think of bad stuff to do to me and my friends, and then I'll write it down. Or sometimes I'll draw really crude drawings, a stick figure drawing of something bad. Then, Jeff and I, we've shared an office for 10 years, we just go back and forth telling each other ideas, trading drawings and giggling.

NP: This is a theatrical release with an "R" rating. What restrictions did you experience when you were figuring out what you could include in the movie?

JK: We had more cock in it, but we had to take some of the cock out to get an R rating.

NP: How did you decide what cock to leave in and what cock to take out?

JK: Well, I don't like taking any cock out. But you turn in the first pass of the movie to the MPA and they're like, "No, this is NC-17." They don't tell you specifically what's wrong, they'll just mention bit titles. So you're like, "Oh, well, what didn't they like? All they gave us was, "Cut the cock back a little on this scene," and then you keep trimming down and trimming down until they say yes.

NP: Sounds painful. I guess that means there's a lot of spare material for the DVD extras.

JK: Well we shot two movies worth of material and we have too much for a DVD extra, so we're coming out with a whole new DVD in January. 3.5 will be all of the great stuff that didn't make it.

NP: What's your favorite?

JK: There's a bit called "Incredible Nut Shots." You know online they have montages of great basketball shots people make? We did the same thing but with the nuts in place of the basketball. I did one nut shot off a Ferris wheel into a trampoline back into England's nuts. That one took about 9 hours. We did one off the Fourth Street Bridge into my nuts, which took 13 hours over 3 days to get. We did 30 nut shots, so imagine all the hours we spent just trying to hit each other in the nuts.

NP: I would imagine it's not particularly fun when you have to do retakes.

JK: Well, if you get hit in the nuts, if you get the shot, then you've got it. But if it's coming from 5 or 6 stories high and it hits you in the knee or the leg - that sucks because the basketball is going super fast then.

NP: There are nut shots a plenty in this movie. What cracks me up is when you're all standing around watching the guy that's going to get nutted - the nuttee so to speak - you all kind of cover your own nuts in sympathy. You'll be in the background cracking up and all your hands are sympathetically over your crotches even though yours may not be in peril in that particular shot.

JK: No, no, no. That's not sympathetic. That is protective. Just because the guy over there rolling around just got hit, that doesn't mean that you're not going to be targeted in two seconds.

NP: Is it a reflex action in day to day life at this point?

JK: Yeah. If I'm around anyone, I always cover my nuts.

NP: Are you covering them now?

JK: I was. [laughs] But for a completely different reason. Just joking.

NP: One of the most pleasant things about the movie is watching the camaraderie between all of the Jackass crew.

JK: Yeah. We give each other complete hell but we do love each other. Cast and crew, we've been together 10 years. I know it hurts sometimes, but we love it.

NP: When you stop, are you going to miss the pain? On some level, you've got to get a kick out of it.

JK: No, I don't really care about the pain. I don't miss it or really look forward to it. It's just part of it. I'm pretty indifferent to it.

NP: Can you imagine a career beyond pain and getting nutted?

JK: Getting nutted [laughs]. That sounds so nice with your accent.

NP: Anything sounds proper when someone from England says it.

JK: I know. It sounds great.

NP: What's next for you beyond the nut shots? I understand you've got some more serious movies planned for 2010/2011.

JK: Well, we released a couple of documentaries in 2010. Dickhouse TV did one, The Birth of Big Air, the documentary on Matt Hoffman, and Tribeca Films picked that up. We did another one on a crazy hillbilly family from West Virginia called The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. Tribeca picked that one up too, so we're pretty psyched on both of those documentaries. I'm looking to start doing movies again and I'm looking at scripts right now.


***


Nicole Powers: I'm told we've got 10 minutes. Since there's no time for small talk, I'm going to launch straight into the shit shake (a.k.a. the "Poo Cocktail Supreme" - Steve-O's homage to Knoxville's original "Poo Cocktail" from Season 1, Episode 1). What were you thinking?

Steve-O: I don't know. I was just thinking that everyone had great footage and it was time for me to do something awesome. I really wanted to give it my best, you know. I didn't expect it to be pleasant. I expected it to be great and I think that's kind of how it turned out.

NP: I'm just sort of going through the logistics of that in my mind. How did you collect the poo?

SO: There's some weird business that collects dog poo. It was all dog poo.

NP: Oh, right. I was thinking that if that was cast and crew poo, from people you knew, that would be really weird.

SO: Yeah. I don't know. They weren't supposed to have human poo in there, but I'm pretty sure that some cast and crew felt like integrity was more important than rules, so I understand that it was dog poo and human poo.

NP: I'm sure Knoxville sneaked one in there.

SO: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

NP: How did you clean up after that?

SO: I jumped into a filthy lake. I showered later on that night I guess.

NP: What other stunts did you feel particularly pushed the bar for you personally?

SO: I don't know. Pushing the bar isn't really what it's all about. It's just doing stuff that's funny. If we're all laughing then that's how we know something is good. The purpose is to have a good time and laugh. We certainly did that. You've seen the movie yourself?

NP: I certainly have. Well, I saw about 90 percent of the movie. I must admit, there was about 10 percent that I couldn't watch.

SO: Right on. Everyone seems to really enjoy it.

NP: I was groaning and laughing at the same time.

SO: Yeah, that's about right...Are you from England?

NP: Yes. You grew up in England too right?

SO: I went to the American School in St. John's Wood. All four years in high school.

NP: A terribly civilized area. How did you go from St. John's Wood to shit shakes?

SO: I don't know. That's a good question. I'm not really sure.

NP: You're two years sober now - congratulations on that.

SO: Thank you.

NP: How has your outlook changed since you've been sober?

SO: I'd like to make a living being silly for as long as I can get away with it. That's got nothing to do with sobriety. I certainly didn't get sober because I had a problem of stapling my balls to my leg.

NP: Stapling your scrotum to your leg must work for you on some level beyond the paycheck.

SO: Yeah. I don't know. I always wanted to get a reaction.

NP: Well you got a reaction from the Louisiana police department. Didn't you get arrested?

SO: Yeah. I sure did. There's been a lot of celebrities that got arrested for felony obscenity and none of them got convicted.

NP: Your case was ultimately settled, wasn't it?

SO: Yeah. I felt like that one put me in the ranks with some real American heroes like Larry Flynt and Jim Morrison and Lenny Bruce.

NP: Well, congratulations on that. Talking of being in good company, I understand you're also a vegan now.

SO: That's right. I love being vegan.

NP: Why vegan as opposed to vegetarian?

SO: I don't know. It's so much healthier and just better in general for everything. As far as a compassionate lifestyle and [it being] healthy for me, for the planet and all the life on it, vegan is really the best way to go. It helps me a lot. I really believe that I'm doing something good for me and for everyone else every time I eat, you know.

NP: What else do you do to stay fit?

SO: I have two little dogs that I rescued and they keep me busy.

NP: Awe. What kind of dogs?

SO: One's a Chiweenie, a Chihuahua and Dachshund mix. And the other one is an American Eskimo mix. I'm just so in love with them. It's awesome. They definitely keep me active.

NP: I was noticing in the movie you had the disclaimer at the end that said some of the stunts were monitored by the Humane Society, and in the stunts that were monitored no animals were harmed.

SO: Yeah, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that. When we started filming the movie, I felt pretty conflicted about working with animals. I was really aware that it's sort of inconsistent with my lifestyle right now, to do stuff with animals.

I remember it was like the first week or two of filming, and we did that bit in that pen with the ram. My job was to play a trumpet and to have this ram charge with its horns into my nuts. My instincts kicked in and I kept reaching down with my hand, blocking this ram. Nothing that would hurt the ram, but reaching down...the ram was running into my hand.

That was in February. That was over 7 months ago, and my hand has still not healed. The tendons got so messed up. My hand should've probably fully recovered, but it hasn't. I feel like my hand's going to be messed up for the rest of my life.

Every time I shake someone's hand and they're some kind of a macho man dude - like they have something to prove with their strong handshake - it hurts like hell and injures my hand more. I don't think my hand is ever going to get better and I have that as a permanent reminder not to be cruel to animals. You are never going to see me mess with animals again. I don't know - I can't say never to anything. But today, it's not my intention to do anything with animals.

NP: It's funny that you mentioned that scene because that's the only scene that I felt that the animal might be in distress - just because the sound of the trumpet could have been painful.

SO: Yeah, I had permanent consequences from that - and I'm glad. Karma got me on that one. But, anyways, I've got to wrap it up...I do really appreciate you asking about being vegan, you know. That's something I really believe in. And being vegan, I can tell you, has benefited every single area of my life. It's a majorly big deal to me and I really appreciate you asking that.

by Blogbot (image) As we mentioned yesterday, the much-anticipated SuicideGirls comic is hot off the press, and is available now from the SG store. Catch a glimpse of artist Cameron Stewart's kick ass illustrations in this very special preview of the first few pages.... (image) (image) (image) (image)... more

by Blogbot



As we mentioned yesterday, the much-anticipated SuicideGirls comic is hot off the press, and is available now from the SG store. Catch a glimpse of artist Cameron Stewart's kick ass illustrations in this very special preview of the first few pages....

(image) by Shotgun Suicide (feat. Epiic, Setsuka and Porcellana) Shotgun Suicide gets down and dirty with Epiic, Setsuka and Porcellana to show you the correct way to unscrew nuts, take off rubbers, and put the (disc) brakes on your ride. (video) Music: “I Do My Best” by Bo Peep and “Ideal Cosmos”... more

by Shotgun Suicide (feat. Epiic, Setsuka and Porcellana)

Shotgun Suicide gets down and dirty with Epiic, Setsuka and Porcellana to show you the correct way to unscrew nuts, take off rubbers, and put the (disc) brakes on your ride.



Music: “I Do My Best” by Bo Peep and “Ideal Cosmos” by Tokyo Pinsalocks courtesy of Conspiracymfx.com/.

Special thanks to Doug and Ben.



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