Lita Ford is one of the few women who've made a dent in the male-dominated world of heavy metal. She first rocked our world in the late 70's as the lead guitarist of the groundbreaking jailbait rock band The Runaways. Despite being just 17 at the time of joining, her skills were accomplished... more

Lita Ford is one of the few women who've made a dent in the male-dominated world of heavy metal. She first rocked our world in the late 70's as the lead guitarist of the groundbreaking jailbait rock band The Runaways. Despite being just 17 at the time of joining, her skills were accomplished beyond her years and helped the all-girl band win the respect of peers such as The Ramones with whom they toured.

After the band's premature demise following much documented inter-band acrimony, Lita, who had wanted to steer the group into heavier territory, embarked on a solo career. She toured with metal heavyweights such as Black Sabbath, Anthrax, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden, and released a total of six albums between 1983 and 1995. Her most successful, Lita, released in 1988, went platinum and spawned the Top 10 single "Close My Eyes Forever," a power-ballad duet recorded with Ozzy Osbourne. Lita was never able to repeat this success however, and each of her three subsequent records sold less than the last. After marrying Jim Gillette of the extreme hair metal band Nitro, Lita put her recording career on hold and thrust herself into the role of wife and then mother (the couple have two sons, Rocco, 8, and James, 12).

Returning to the public eye after a hiatus of close to 15-years, Lita's seventh solo album, Wicked Wonderland (released October 6), is the first of three Lita-related projects hitting stores in quick succession. Having sealed her reputation as the self-styled Queen of Metal two decades back, Lita has been immortalized as Queen Lita in Brütal Legend, a music-based Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 adventure. The game, which stars Jack Black and features metal legends Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, and Lemmy Kilmister, is unleashed on "Rocktober" 13. To complete the hat-trick, a new comic will turn Lita and her family into zombie-fighting superheroes. Written by 14-year old comics prodigy Jake Tinsley (Night Owl) and illustrated by Manga artist, Jason Dube, The Gillettes: Family Business, will be published next month.

With so much to look forward to, Lita chooses not to look back. However, the release of a Runaways biopic next year may force her to. Produced with the co-operation of former-bandmates Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, the project stars Kristen Stewart (as Joan) and Dakota Fanning (as Cherie) -- and the relatively unknown Scout Taylor-Compton (as Lita). The much-anticipated film is already reopening still tender old wounds as it threatens to air dirty laundry Lita would rather was left in the basket. On the plus side, it promises to expose the Runaways' music to a new generation and cement their legacy as the band that showed women how to rock.

SuicideGirls caught up with Lita by phone during a break from rehearsals as she prepares to embark on a tour with prog metal heads Queensrÿche later this month.

Andrea Larrabee: Wicked Wonderland is your first album since 1995's Black. Where have you been and what have you been up to in the intervening years?

Lita Ford: We have been living in the Caribbean. I got pregnant with my first child and I really just wanted to focus on being a good mom, which is very different for me. I'm used to guitars, I'm used to things with strings attached not little babies. And when god blessed me with my first kid I was like, "Holy Shit! What do I do with this? I've never held one of these!" I never had sisters that had kids. I didn't know what to do. I was really in the dark and so I just really wanted to concentrate on learning how to be a good mom and a good safe place to be is in the Caribbean on a deserted island. There's not much that can hurt you out there -- except the crabs.

AL: Right, you moved out there after 9/11.

LF: We did, yeah. 9/11 really freaked us out. We were talking about moving anyway and then 9/11 hit and that was the topper, and we just bailed.

AL: You seem to have this amazing existence, a semi-survivalist lifestyle. I understand that you built your own house and that you grow and catch your own food, and you've home-schooled your children.

LF: Yep, that's true. We started with nothing. I mean there literally is nothing on this island. There's no grocery store, there's no Federal Express, there's no Pizza Hut, you can't find anything on this island...So it was nice to be out there. It felt safe to be out there...When the sun comes up we get up, when the sun goes down we pretty much go to bed because there's nothing. We're pretty self-sufficient on the island.

AL: It sounds like it's been a process of getting back in touch with your primal instincts - not only to survive but as a mother.

LF: That's true. That's very true, and it's really good to know, for your children, especially in case anything severe should happen, I think our kids would be one of the survivors. It's just stuff that people just take for granted these days. Say, for instance, a box of peanut butter cereal; You can't get it out there so when you do come back into the United States you go down the cereal isle in the grocery store and you're screaming "YES! THEY GOT PEANUT BUTTER CEREAL MAN!" And the kids are like, "ALRIGHT MOM! GET SIX BOXES." And everybody's looking at me like I'm out of my friggin' mind. What's wrong with that girl? Hasn't she ever seen peanut butter cereal before? We not lately, no, I haven't. So you do take things for granted.

AL: I would also imagine you're stocking up on piles of soft toilet paper.

LF: Oh everything, yeah, we do. There's a place called Rock-It Cargo that ships out into the Caribbean, and you can load containers and stuff and just buy whatever you want to buy, I mean right down to cars, trucks, anything like that, You just ship it out, ship it on over. So we do stock up on food and clothes and toys and dildos...

AL: Dildos by the container load! [laughs]

LF: Absolutely. [laughs] That's funny.

AL: It sounds like an idyllic life. What on earth made you want to return to music?

LF: We're in the United States now because we rehearse in Florida but we still live there. Our home is sitting there waiting for us.

AL: But the music industry can be a very toxic place. It must have been relaxing not to have that in your life.

LF: It is. It's very different. When we retired from the music industry, we really didn't know when we were going to return. My husband got himself into developing this island along with his partners and made excellent money doing that, and it freed me up so I could focus on being a good mom and trying to raise our kids.

AL: So your husband's been developing the island for tourism?

LF: You know what, let me put him on and I'll let him explain. Here's Jim.

Jim Gillette: We're tag-teaming you. We're going to wear you down.

AL: Lita mentioned you were developing the island. I just wondered in what respect?

JG: Well what didn't we do there? We buy big chunks of land and then we make them into lots for houses. We put in roads, put in sidewalks, we put in canals, put in bridges, ports. We've kind of done it all.

AL: So you're developing your own community, your own town -- Gillette Town?

JG: You couldn't get away with that in the States, but you can do that in the Caribbean.

AL: So you and Lita get to be king and queen of you own Caribbean island?

JG: Yeah, pretty much. It's pretty cool. It was tough for her to get me to come out of the old coconut palm.

AL: Well I was reading that there was a family vote to decide if Lita should go back to music?

JG: Not really a vote. I'm fine. I always knew that we were going to end up doing this again. Lita was just waiting 'til the boys were ready. She's an excellent mom. I don't think that many people would think that, I mean she looks like a Suicide Girl right?

AL: Hell yeah! She's one of the originals.

JG: But you know what I mean. She probably helped pave the way for sites like SuicideGirls.

AL: Absolutely.

JG: I mean she's got seven tattoos.

AL: What's your favorite?

JG: The one that says "My Husband" right above her ass, so when she's bent over I can look at it. It's pretty nice. [laughs] That's my ass.

AL: Fair enough. I can appreciate why that might be your favorite.

JG: Nah, you know what? That was my favorite, but now she's got the Gillette family logo on her left arm. I have the same basic thing on my back only mine's the size of a truck 'cause it covers my whole back. And she's got this kind of cool cross with a skull on her right arm that has our wedding anniversary on it in roman numerals -- that's on the album -- so that's pretty cool.

AL: In keeping with the Caribbean theme, I understand there's some proverbial sunken treasure over there in the form of album that you guys recorded but never released.

JG: Oh boy! We were not in the Caribbean when that happened. That was about thirteen years ago because Lita was actually pregnant with our first boy James. You want to talk about a funny sight? [laughs] This music was as heavy as hell and we'd be in rehearsals and she's got these goddamned pink pig slippers on and her belly's sticking out and she's playing these Metallica type riffs with her guitar sticking up at an angle because her belly's in the way - that was amazing! It was some good stuff. We may let it out one day. I don't know if we'll actually put it out or just put it on a website or something and let people check it out for free.

AL: It's a shame YouTube wasn't around then. I'd have loved to have seen a pregnant Lita rockin' it in her pink fuzzy pig slippers.

JG: I'm kind of weird, but it made me horny. Her little pregnant fat belly sticking out, her pink slippers, playing [sings heavy guitar riff]. It was very strange.

AL: I understand there was quite a sexual undercurrent to this album too? What was the inspiration behind the music you did together?

LF: The music we did together isn't something that we had planned. It's not like we had 15 years worth of music sitting around. It was literally a spur of the moment idea and we really didn't know where we were going with it until we started going. It's pretty much about us, about our family, about our sex life, our love life, our hate life, pleasure, pain...

JG: ...Bondage.

LF: It's about us, our own personal wicked wonderland.

JG: Yeah, our marriage is very, very, very - did I say very? - sexual. We have a belief: Great, adventurous, crazy sex every single day, keeps the divorce lawyer away.

AL: So when you were writing the album together what was the process?

JG: We'd come into my office and crack open a bottle of champagne and literally kind of compare notes from the last night's sexual escapades.

AL: Do you care to share an example of that in a song?

JG: "Push." Whenever she's ready to pop she says, "Push." We literally tuned the "push, push" into a song. It's kind of the way she does it in the chorus and it's called "Push."

AL: Lita, I understand one of your favorite tracks on Wicked Wonderland is "Sacred."

LF: Jim wrote that song for me and I adore the song. It's close to me, it's close to my heart.

AL: So who wrote most of the lyrics on Wicked Wonderland?

JG: Most of the lyrics I wrote, and she would sit there and say, "I didn't say that." And I'd say, "Bullshit, you said it last night." It's kind of weird, because we didn't mean, in the beginning, for it to be so personal. We just started writing and it was very sexual. It was about us, it was about our experiences together. After about two songs we kind of thought, "Gee, should we do this? Should we be this open and let everyone into our bedrooms like this?" People, they know exactly what we do now. And we thought, "You know what? Let's do it. Because it's real, it's from the heart. This is what we're feeling, this is what we're writing, so let's just go with it."

AL: You seem like a very open family anyway. I mean you have The Gillettes: Family Business comic which is based on your family.

LF: Yeah. My kids get to beat up zombies and be superheroes. It's pretty cool.

AL: So it's seems like you're not afraid to share your family and personal life with the world.

JG: That's just happened with all this. I mean for a while there we weren't even on the planet. I mean we were gone -- nobody knew where we were. We could have told you where we were and you couldn't have found us, it's that remote where we are. We just kind of decided, coming back, it kind of started with the lyrics honestly. It was like this is who we are, this is what we're about, this is what we dig and this is where our heart is, so lets just go for it. And doing that we decided if we can let people into our bedroom and know what kind of frickin dildos we use, know that I like to go down on my wife's toes, all this weird fetish stuff, if we're going to talk about that why not let them see our kids. After that it's kind of wide open. The gloves are off at that point you know.

AL: I'm seeing a reality TV show - The Osbournes meets Survivor.

JG: We've been approached a few times for reality TV.

AL: And you're not tempted?

JG: We're tempted but we want to control it. We're the management company, we're the record company for this. We wrote the songs with a friend. We produced the album with a friend. We're not going to let somebody take six weeks worth of filming and make it look like whatever they want it to look like -- they're notorious for that. We want control of the editing. If we do a reality show we want it to be what a reality show is supposed to be, to really show the real picture. We're not going to let me and Lita get into an argument and let them run that every goddamned week, you know? Out of six weeks of filming we argued once so they try and make it look like we're at each other's throats every day. We're not going to do that. We're not going that way. They can do that with other people.

LF: Yeah. So far we have been offered a few things and we're just not, actually I'm not ready for it yet. Of course if a deal comes across that we absolutely can't refuse, have to have, of course, you know, we're going to jump on it. But, as of now, we have the comic book, we have the Xbox game, we've got this wonderful album coming out, we haven't even made a video yet. We've just got so much going on, so many irons in the fire, so to speak, that we don't need it right now. I think in time, when it's the right time and place, the right offer comes around, of course we're going to dive on it.

JG: We've got a very different family. If you see us we're very strange. You know what Lita looks like, I'm 280 pounds, covered in tattoos. I've got a Mohawk, our kids have Mohawks, our kids have been learning to kill people since they were 2-years old.

AL: You're all into martial arts which makes the manga comic very fitting.

JG: Yeah, well the kids grew up with the Gracie family and the Valente family who created the UFC. I was a sparing partner with Royce Gracie -- he's a UFC legend. We've got videos of our kids doing triangle chokes and arm bars when they were two years old.

AL: Talking of kicking ass, Lita's featured in the Brütal Legend game as Queen Lita, and you're a martial arts family, so she's probably one of the few characters in the cast that can kick ass as hard in real life as in the game.

LF: Oh, absolutely. There's no doubt about that man. You don't want to tangle with these guys. Holy crap! They're really good. My 8-year old could literally put a grown man to sleep.

AL: What do you love about your Brütal Legend character?

LF: Oh she's very sexy and she gets to ride a beast. I am an animal lover, so she gets to ride her own beast, which I think is just awesome. I'm the only one in the game that has a pet.

AL: And you have a Wicked Wonderland track, "Betrayal," in Brütal Legend?

LF: Correct. That track was written specifically for the game. It didn't start being that way, but it turned out they were looking for material for the game and Jim through that up and said, "Hey! What about this one? Check this out." And they fell in love with it. We changed the lyrics and made the lyrics fit the game. It fits the game perfectly so it really worked out well.

AL: And now you're embarking on a tour with Queensrÿche?

JG: We're excited about that.

LF: That is bad to the bones. I mean how blessed: The Queen and Queensrÿche.

AL: And that's going to be a family affair again?

JG: Oh yeah. You get one Gillette, you get four of us.

AL: So what do you and the boys do on stage?

JG: I do a lot of singing and the boys stand behind me and run out and throw balloons at the crowd or squirt the crowd or bring bottled water or just come out and start rocking out. It's pretty cool.

LF: If you've heard the whole album in its entirety you'll hear Jim a lot on the album. He sings a lot of the background vocals, and does a lot with the production. He's just a huge part of this. I just couldn't imagine doing it without him.

AL: How would you describe the live show?

LF: We get on stage and we jam our asses off for as long as they'll allow it.

AL: I kind of feel sad for the girls that rock today. The way the music industry presents them, it's all very safe, pre-packaged and contrived. You're of a generation that actually got to rock -- and be seen to rock -- for real. It feels like the truly wild days of rock & roll are behind us. Do you feel like that at all?

LF: Not with me. I do understand what you're saying. I think the generation of kids these days is even more wild than our generation, or my generation, I just think it hasn't been brought out yet. Everything is all flowers and sunshine, and it's those kind of people that watch that stuff that I think are really dying for the vampire side of things. With me, I don't do flowers and sunshine. I don't even wear pink on stage. If I did I'd probably throw up. But I think if anybody's going to crack that ice, I think it's going to be me. So that's a good question. Maybe that's why I'm back for that reason.

AL: You're back and very much in control. The album's coming out on your own record label and you manage yourself. Obviously The Runaways were managed by Kim Fowley, and as a solo artist you were managed by Sharon Osbourne at one point. Both are notorious figures -- for very different reasons -- but what have you learnt from them that you've been able to take forward into your career now?

LF: Well Sharon is the one that I really have a lot of respect for. She's a wonderful business woman and she's taught me how to deal with people. There's certain people you want to stay in touch with, there's certain ways of handling somebody, because you're really in it for the long haul. It's not a one-night stand. It's a lifetime commitment. Sharon treats people with class and dignity, and if she doesn't like someone she's tell them flat out, "Go fuck yourself," and that's it, she's gone, you'll never see her again. She's been a good help and somebody to follow as far as that sort of thing goes. She's a class act definitely.

AL: So are the two of you still in touch?

LF: No. Not so much anymore. I'm off in the Caribbean and she's, I believe, living in California, so we don't speak too much anymore. I don't speak to anybody too much anymore actually. We live a very private life when we are home, and when we're out on the road, you know, all hell breaks lose. But when we're home, we stay to ourselves.

AL: You were quoted recently in Rolling Stone as saying you have nothing to do with the upcoming Runaways film. Has anything been done to rectify that situation? Has there been any outreach to you?

LF: There has been, but I didn't like it. I really don't care for Joan's management. I have a real problem with working with them. I don't want to work with them. I don't have to work with them. They insist on using me in this film. That's their business I suppose. I tried to take out the pieces that I absolutely despised and that's it.

I'm a public figure, so it's pretty hard for me to say no, you can't use me on that. They're going to do it anyway, and it's the law, as disgusting as that sounds. Like Angelina Joile is in The [National] Enquirer every five minutes. She has no say, she's like a piece of meat, she's a public figure, and so am I.

If they have respect for you, and hopefully they will enough that they'll listen to my requests and please take that piece out. And they did. Thank god they at least did that, and offered me a ridiculously low amount of money, which wasn't even worth accepting. I just thought this is just a joke. The only reason they're using me is to hopefully sell more tickets to their theater, and that's it, which I could really care less. If I were to do my version of The Runaways movie it would be about the music.

AL: Would you want to produce a documentary or book so that you're able to present your side of the story?

LF: Not yet. I'm really not interested in it. I've got bigger and better things going on right now. One of my old girlfriends who was the main producer on [Runaways documentary] Edgeplay, she wants to do a biography on Lita. I told her I thought that would be great and if anybody does it, you would be the person I would choose to do it. The problem is, I only have half of it. I don't have the ending. There's no ending.


For further information on all things Lita Ford go to litaxx.tv/lita/.

“Every citizen of this country should be talking about politics,” Richard Kelly says during our interview, and indeed it’s the failure of a contended suburban couple to pay attention to the political headwinds around them that leads to trouble in his latest mind-bending opus, The Box. Like the director’s... more

“Every citizen of this country should be talking about politics,” Richard Kelly says during our interview, and indeed it’s the failure of a contended suburban couple to pay attention to the political headwinds around them that leads to trouble in his latest mind-bending opus, The Box. Like the director’s two previous films, Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, The Box is a surrealist meditation on how we internalize political violence; it acutely examines the way we absorb and reflect back the government-sponsored harm that is done in our names and broadcast to us through the news media. As you might expect from Kelly, the film is also a feast of intriguing, half-explained imagery that’s intended to inspire debate rather than tie everything up with a neat little bow. Why, for example, do several characters suffer from nosebleeds throughout the film? What to make of the sequence in which Cameron Diaz dances solo to mournful 70s rock? And what’s with the constantly recurring imagery of unnatural, gelatinous water? Asking Kelly any of these questions directly would probably only elicit a satisfied giggle.

That said, there is a strong narrative thread in The Box, which was probably a condition placed on its reported $30 million budget, and any Kelly neophyte can easily follow along with the diehard fans. The story follows patriotic government worker Arthur (James Marsden) and his professor wife Norma (Cameron Diaz) as they try to decide what to do after Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a stranger with an unexplained facial deformity, shows up on their doorstep offering a simple proposition: he promises to hand them a briefcase filled with one million dollars in cash if they will only push the red button atop a little wooden box that he brings with him. The catch, as he gently explains, is that pressing the button will cause someone in the world whom they don’t know to die. Richard Kelly called up SuicideGirls earlier this week from his Manhattan hotel room to discuss The Box and how it fits into his evolving career.



Ryan Stewart: This is your most blatantly political film to date, as I see it. It touches on a lot of interesting themes concerning the power of the American system to exert force over and influence its citizens, or even confuse them into compliance. Do you see yourself as a political filmmaker?

Richard Kelly: I think so. I do think I’m political in the sense that I love movies that aren’t afraid to stir the pot and rattle the cage, and I also love movies that are not afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves. That’s what makes cinema the greatest art form that we have. You know, there are those who criticize the limousine liberals who love to talk about politics all the time, but I think every American should be talking about politics. Every citizen of this country should be talking about politics and the state of the world. It’s our right to do that, and I think that pretty much any film I ever make is going to have some measure of political content in it. I would guess that even if I were to make a mainstream romantic comedy there would probably be some of that in there.


RS: It’s interesting that you say film is our greatest art form since you’re known for expanding on your screen stories with a lot of supplemental material, whether it’s elaborate websites or graphic novels or other things.

RK: Well, film is certainly enough, but at the same time I love it so much that I want to be able to go into it further with those companions. It’s like a Cliff’s Notes thing, you know? I almost wish that I could go and see the Coen brothers film A Serious Man, and then go to a website that had a translation of all the Hebrew or Yiddish elements in the film. As a goy, I didn’t understand it because I don’t speak or read the language, but I’m still fascinated by it. So, yeah, I do love supplemental material, but also I did realize in hindsight with Southland Tales that maybe I had relied on it a little too heavily. I was naïve to think that everyone was going to go out and be able to read a graphic novel prequel that is essential to understanding the story. [laughs] That’s foolish me. I should have realized that, well, no, only a very few people are going to be able to seek that out, because it would require them to make the effort, you know? And then there’s also the fact that it’s not even going to be instantly available to them.

RS: But that supplemental experience is still a big part of your storytelling. You’ve put a lot of effort into building some web activities for your new film.

RK: Yeah, I tried to do some of it for The Box. There’s a website called YouAreTheExperiment.com, which is a companion to the official movie website, TheBoxMovie.com, and it has these kind of prequel videos. We put together what is sort of a nine minute prequel to the film, and it features the score by Win Butler, Regine Chassagne, and Owen Pallett. Those were very fun for me to direct. We had all of this additional footage that we had shot at NASA, and I had wanted to use it somehow. That’s the kind of thing that I try to do for the really hardcore fans, who really love to geek out over stuff like that, the different websites and stuff. But at the same time, I am being careful to try and not have the film’s narrative rely too much upon those things.

RS: I noticed that sitcoms are sort of omnipresent throughout The Box. We keep seeing various show on in the background throughout the film. What was the point of including those?

RK: The sitcoms were sort of a way of reminding the audience of the absurdity of life. There is a fundamental absurdity to the premise of this film that I think is quite wonderful, for me at least. It’s a very mischievous thing, the idea of a movie about pushing a button, and I wanted to remind people that there is going to be a dark, twisted sense of humor running throughout the course of this entire film. Those sitcoms were a good way of reminding you of that because they are all fairly ridiculous. But I love those shows! I love What’s Happening!!And I love Alice, but they really are absurd. And you know, speaking of absurdity, there’s a monologue in the film by Frank Langella’s character where he says “Your home is a box, you work in a box, your car is a box, and you’re going to spend eternity decomposing in a box.” To which the guy at the NSA, of all places, responds: “It’s quite depressing when you think of it like that!” Then Langella’s character says “Well, then don’t think of it like that, it’s just a temporary state of being.” You know, it’s why Sartre is one of the great French existentialists. They call it theater of the absurd, and I think in a way all of my films that I’ve made feel like they are part of the theater of the absurd. That’s just the theater that I prefer to operate in.

RS: Specifically, when What’s Happening!! flashed on the screen during my screening a lot of the critics giggled. They’ve come to expect that when watching a Richard Kelly film they’ll be asking themselves “What’s happening?” at least once or twice. But you like it that way, right?

RK: I think so. You know, the Coen brothers are, like, my favorite filmmakers ever. I think that the last three films that they’ve made have almost solidified them in my mind as the most important filmmakers working today, and in their new film A Serious Man they have this line, “Accept the mystery.” That’s actually one of the huge themes of the hero of that film, but it’s also sort of their way of saying to the audience “Listen…” [laughs] You know? They’re snickering a little bit. I feel like they are in the back of the theater snickering, as if they were the really smart kids in class who think that it’s all kind of a joke. They just love to put these puzzles out into the world. So, in a way, the use of What’s Happening!! was intentional. [laughs] I’m glad that people do get a chuckle out of that because it happens right before you meet Arlington Steward and the movie starts to take off.

RS: Was it part of your job as director to keep things simple on the set? It’s hard to imagine that you spent a lot of time sitting around discussing Sartre with Cameron Diaz.

RK: We kind of did, in a way! There was actually a lot of philosophical discussion because of the way Norma and Arthur have to thoroughly vet and debate the offer of the button unit. That was the fundamental spine of the short story, and so we had to do that as filmmakers. What we were trying to do was illustrate what’s hopefully a very realistic portrayal of what would happen if this offer were really presented. Then it takes a journey into the world of magic and the supernatural. So, we had these constant discussions, like, okay, how would they really do this? We were tweaking the dialogue and the delivery of each line to make sure that Arthur and Norma were charting the course properly, in a way that will hopefully allow the audience to identify with them as well as sympathize with them.

RS: Were you mortified when Cameron spilled some of the film’s secrets during the Comic-Con panel for the film? There was a lot of talk about that at the time.

RK: I don’t think that she necessarily spoiled the movie at all. If anything, people just weren’t aware that the movie does involve the Viking Mars Project, but I don’t feel like she spoiled the ending at all, because I think the ending has a much greater secret or a much bigger twist to it than what she said. If anything, I felt like it was a bit of a hubbub over something that wasn’t ultimately important. But it is interesting how people want to make sure that they go into a movie sometimes not knowing anything about it. What I hope to do in this case is to reassure people. I mean, listen, there is so much in this movie to chew on and there are so many twists and turns and surprises that they are going to get with the ending that haven’t been spoiled, I don’t think.

RS: You mentioned lessons from Southland Tales earlier. Is it very important that this film do well in order for you to keep making Richard Kelly films as we know them?

RK: Absolutely. I obviously need a hit, a theatrical hit. I hope to keep working inside the studio system, and with my new script I’m actually working very hard to make sure that it’s as commercial and as mainstream as it can possibly be. But at the same time, Donnie Darko was a huge hit on DVD and it’s a movie that, when it first came out, a lot of people said “This is a mess, it’s unreleasable, it doesn’t make any sense.” Well, it clearly started to make a lot of sense to a lot of people, and that’s something that I’m trying to hold onto, that formula, because I think it’s exciting. Also, I think that’s maybe what people want from me. At the same time, though, I need to stay viable and I hope to stay within the studio system, so I do need to reach a broader audience and part of that is trying to make my stories a bit more accessible. I hope The Box will function that way for people. While there is mystery and intrigue and the movie does leave you with your head spinning, I hope it’s also something that people are able to access and understand.

RS: We’re almost approaching the tenth anniversary of Donnie Darko, and I know that it’s going to be appearing near the top of many critics’ Best of the Decade lists. How do you account for its enduring appeal?

RK: I think it’s the ideas and it’s also the complexity. That would be my answer to that question. It’s something that people can continue to discuss and debate for a long, long time. And it asks a lot of the big questions about our existence, about science and religion, and these are the fundamental questions that everyone asks, every human being on the planet. And if it hopefully speaks to a younger audience – maybe a disenfranchised part of that younger audience that feels alienated -- well, there’s no shortage of t hose people on the planet, you know? There is a lot of alienation out there and it gives me a lot of hope that people can kind of feel unified by it, by the movie. They feel like it sort of drew them together into a discussion, and that’s sort of the purpose of art in my mind, you know? So, I am inspired by it and if anything that’s what makes me try to hold onto that formula. If that formula does indeed exist, and it’s complex and full of ideas, then I just need to make sure that the formula can reach a wide audience so that I can keep on doing this for a living, and I won’t have to go and get a job at Denny’s.



The Box opens in theaters everywhere today.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a hilarious new film starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey. Unfortunately, the true story it's based on is no laughing matter, especially if you happen to be a de-bleated goat housed in the U.S. Army's top secret Goat Lab or a guest... more

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a hilarious new film starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey. Unfortunately, the true story it's based on is no laughing matter, especially if you happen to be a de-bleated goat housed in the U.S. Army's top secret Goat Lab or a guest of our government at Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

The screenplay for the movie is woven around cold, hard -- and quite frankly bizarre -- facts uncovered by British author, journalist and documentarian Jon Ronson during his investigation into the U.S. Army's all too real paranormal activities, which he chronicled in a book first published in 2005. Though fictionalized, the script features whole chunks of dialog lifted directly from actual interviews Ronson conducted for the book with high ranking army officials and those who were trained by them as psychic spies.

Major General Albert Stubblebine III, who in the early '80s headed up the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, a joint Army and N.S.A. clearing house responsible for gathering and disseminating intelligence, was one of the military's highest ranking proponents of supernatural techniques. Stubblebine was eventually forced out, but his dream of creating a superpowered army to defend the world's greatest superpower lived on thanks to the work of a Lieutenant Colonel called Jim Channon.

Disillusioned by what he'd seen and experienced in Vietnam, Channon had wanted to find a better, less lethal way of engaging in war. In 1977 he persuaded the Pentagon to fund a two year fact finding mission. During this time he visited numerous establishments that claimed to offer methods for enhancing human potential (including one in Big Sur that did this with naked hot tub encounter sessions). Upon his return, Channon wrote a blueprint for the next generation of soldier, or "warrior monks" as he called them, in a document entitled The First Earth Battalion Operations Manual.

The report detailed his ideas for the military application of a variety of new age techniques including telepathy, remote viewing, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, and the use of music and subliminal sounds to alter mood. Channon's hippified vision of how to go about war, which included the use of special "sparkly eye" greetings to disarm the enemy, was intended to create positive change. However many of the more tangible mind-bending techniques that Channon outlined were ultimately subverted by the military and used for torture and psychological warfare.

One of the army's more laughable attempts at co-opting Channon's ideas for darker purposes was their program to create telepathic assassins. The soldiers selected to hone their psychic powers in this way practiced their skills on a top secret herd of goats based at Fort Bragg that had been de-bleated to avoid rousing the suspicions of the local branch of the ASPCA. Though killing with a stare proved to be a somewhat challenging task, legend has it that a man named Guy Savelli did actually down a goat. But when Ronson caught up with Savelli, a civilian who was initially contracted by Special Forces to teach the mind over body martial art Kun Tao, the only proof of his skills he was able to offer was a somewhat dubious DIY hamster snuff video.

However, images leaked from inside Abu Ghraib and news reports of the interrogation tactics used there and at Guantánamo Bay indicate that other psi op methods, originally presented in a far different light by the likes of Stubblebine and Channon, have caused very real harm and even death. And it's not just the enemy that's a casualty of their use, which has caused a crisis of consciousness at home that has over-shadowed the Bush presidency and threatens even that of Obama's.

SuicideGirls caught up with Ronson by phone to find out more.

Nicole Powers: In your previous book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, you covered a wide range of wack jobs of various religious and political persuasions. British fruitloops seem to be mostly confined to disseminating their ideas by standing on boxes and shouting at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, but what's so scary about American nutcases is that some of them are actually high up in the military and government and are running one of the country's two major political parties. How would you compare and contrast nutters on either side of the Atlantic?

JR: I remember asking this CIA guy called Ray Hyman why there's so much nuttiness within the highest places of the CIA and military intelligence in America, and his answer to me was, "Because people are basically nuts, which means you're going to get a lot of nuttiness outside of the CIA and a lot of nuttiness inside the CIA." And that's the conclusion I've come to, that we're just mad, and our madness is what rules the world.

NP: But there's something about America and crackpots that means they can rise higher in the ranks of power.

JR: That is odd isn't it? That it happens in such high places in America. And it's true, in Goats I had a look to see if I could see anything like that happening in the British military and I couldn't at all. The only place I found that level of extreme out of the box thinking was in the American military.

What's really interesting is there's a bit in the book where General Stubblebine has tried and failed to walk through this wall, and has had all these spoon bending parties, and his fellow chiefs of staff get really worried about him and want to force him out. But it turns out they're not worried about him because they think he's irrational and they're rationalists, which is what I would have assumed, they're trying to force him out because they're all fundamentalist Christians and he has possibly been infiltrated by Satan. That was kind of the moral battle that was playing out at the top of the United States Intelligence Service - like wizards throwing thunderbolts at each other. And that's uniquely American I think.

NP: The prevalence of religion does add to the nuttiness out here.

JR: Yeah. It certainly does. Because when we get deeply religious people in positions of political power in [the U.K.] they tend to underplay it. For instance there's that famous line of Alistair Campbell's. [Campbell held the equivalent post to that of the White House's Press Secretary at No. 10 Downing Street from 1997 to 2003 and was Tony Blair's spokesperson.] When Tony Blair was asked if he prayed with George Bush, Alistair Campbell's answer was, "We don't do religion," whereas in America you really do do religion. So it did make me laugh that that was the intellectual battle going on at that moment in American military history: Is General Stubblebine Satanic? Rather than has he just gone crazy?

NP: In your book you portray the army as an organization still recovering from Vietnam, with much of the top brass suffering from PTSD. And you allude to a level of self-selection in today's voluntary army when you talk about how past research done at the end of World War II concluded that only around 15 to 20 percent of American infantry men shot to kill during battle, and that 98 percent of those that did were deeply traumatized by it and the remaining 2 percent were classified as "aggressive psychopathic personalities."

JR: Absolutely.

NP: There really is this sense that the lunatics have taken over the asylum, which also happens to be the most well armed institution in the world. It's a little worrying.

JR: Well, yes. That statistic by the way brings up a really interesting sub-point, which is what the American military tried to do is try and create psychopathy in ordinary people. That's the reason why American soldiers, and soldiers all over the world, are better at killing now than they were during the Second World War -- their trainers have taught them how to be psychopathic. They're not actual psychopaths, because I think you're born a psychopath, but they train to dehumanize somebody so they become psychopathic militaries.

But you don't just find it in the military; I think you find it in the medical services [with] doctors. It's almost like good psychopaths. Brain surgeons are very good at thinking of the people they're operating on as just slabs of meat, and it actually makes them better doctors. I think that's kind of interesting. It's sort of a positive point in a way.

NP: What's also incredible about your book is the number of dots it connects. You go from The Branch Davidian siege at Waco, to the Heaven's Gate suicide pact in San Diego, to the 9/11 hijackers, to torture tactics used at Abu Ghraib. Even though The First Earth Batallion was such a small unit, it's had a massive reach and an inordinate level of influence even after it's demise.

JR: Yes, I think so. Certainly what the First Earth Battalion stands for, and the idea that the way ideas permeate throughout the military is in this way. I mean I'm not saying that what happened to the Branch Davidians at Waco was [brought about by] First Battalion ideas, but I think what definitely is the case is, you can see this historically with America, whenever they've got the opportunity, they've got a bunch of people surrounded, what they do is treat those people like guinea pigs. The Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidians at Waco, and then the prisoners at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib were treated like guinea pigs and I think that's inexcusable.

The kind of interrogation techniques that were being employed at those places were esoteric experimental techniques. I think there is something fascinating and chilling about that mentality. It's like we've got a bunch of people surrounded, let's try out all the crazy shit that's been floating about in think tanks for years. It's extraordinary really.

NP: As you speculate in your book, do you actually believe that Gitmo was just "Experimental Lab Mark 1" for the army's Psi Ops - essentially an extension of Project ARTICHOKE which tested out new torture techniques on "expendables" back in 1950s.

JR: I really believe that. I think one contribution that my book has is to look at the military in this way. I agree. I think Abu Ghraib [was used in this way] too. I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the Abu Ghraib photographs. I don't think what you are witnessing in those Abu Ghraib photographs is just random hick cruelty, which is basically what people would like us to believe. I think there was something a lot more organized and a lot more thought out going on there.

NP: If those Lynndie England photos were Psi Ops "products" that were meant for viewing by Iraqi POWs / enemy combatants only, if they were staged for propaganda purposes it certainly explains Obama's subsequent behavior and why he's refused to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.

JR: And indeed, I think I'm right in saying, release all the material as well. Aren't there a huge number of extra photographs that still haven't been seen? [Obama] said he was going to show them, and then he didn't.

NP: Reading that chapter in your book made Obama's actions make sense for the first time.

JR: Yes, I think so.

NP: One of the things that people have latched onto in the book is how the army used the music of Barney and Friends for torture. Music from Metallica, Avril Lavigne, Celine Dion, and an unnamed all-girl Fleetwood Mac covers band also made the cut and has been used for nefarious purposes. You allude to the fact that this information may have been deliberately brought to light, perhaps to take the focus of less palatable techniques such as waterboarding.

JR: Yes. I really believe that to be the case. I think what happened was Psi Ops saw an opportunity. I don't think you need to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that is true. Just today by coincidence I saw that original Newsweek article that first broke the Barney story back in 2003. I think that Psi Ops could see that Newsweek wanted it to be a funny story, the idea of musical torture, and they just jumped on it as a possibility because when you've got a funny, slapstick story about torture that's so enjoyable nobody's going to want to try and find a darker story about torture.

I think Psi Ops seized on that opportunity and did a bit of psi ops on all of us. Everybody thought the Barney story was funny at the time, and it was only when Abu Ghraib happened a few months later -- I think there was about six months between the Barney story coming out and the Abu Ghraib story coming out -- and for those six months American Psi Ops had completely won. Torture was funny and poor old groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were trying to convince people that actually torture wasn't quite as funny as everybody thought it was. But then nobody wanted to hear that because everybody wanted to have a good laugh.

It was only when you were confronted with the full horror of the Abu Ghraib photographs that the torture stopped being funny. It was a brilliant Psi Ops success that they had there, and the movie does go into that. There's a nice, sort of dark ending which reflects that.

NP: Do you get a sense that you've hit the bottom of the rabbit hole, or, to shamelessly mix metaphors, that you've only hit the tip of the iceberg with this book? I mean in one chapter an army guy even talks about how units showed up at Abu Ghraib that even he didn't know existed. I mean what's a clandestine, all-Mormon unit from Utah doing at Abu Ghraib for god's sake?

JR: [laughs] There were Brits there as well. Absolutely.

I think what I did in the book, I definitely got further. I mean the tip of the iceberg was the psychic spies, that was declassified in 1995, and I think I did manage to go further down the iceberg. Undoubtedly most of the stuff in this book is stuff that hadn't been revealed before, the goat staring, all that kind of stuff. But what I don't know is what's happened since I finished writing the book in 2003/2004. I assume there's a whole bunch of stuff still going on. I've no doubt that there is.

NP: With all the publicity surrounding the book and film, have more people crawled out of the woodwork to talk? Have you discovered anything else relating to this subject since?

JR: Nothing major. I've had a few people say to me they saw this stuff going on and I got it right, but I haven't had any fabulous new chapters come my way. If I'm being completely honest, a few people in the past week or two have emailed me to say "you don't know how far this goes, it goes a lot further than this," but I haven't got back to them, partly because I've been unbelievably busy promoting the movie, and partly because I'm always slightly worried when I get emails like that that the people are just nuts. I've been burnt a few times getting back to somebody and just finding out that they're mentally ill and it's nothing to do with reality. But I've kept the emails so I might go back to them.

NP: In your book there's speculation that the First Earth Battalion was the more public of perhaps two psychic units, and that it was disbanded so the military could accurately state that it had ceased the psychic activities of the First Earth Battalion while secretly pursuing similar ideas with another more covert unit. Do you think that's the case?

JR: I don't think that's true. I think that was a psychic who thought that being a secret psychic spy for the U.S. military must be so cool, and then he becomes one and realizes that it's not that cool, it's a bit crap. So he starts thinking, "Well we must be the crap psychics and there's really brilliant psychics somewhere else." That's human nature.

It's a bit like, I went to Puerto Rico to watch them filming the movie, and I think it's going to be the most exciting thing in the whole world. In fact, it's just hard work. It's just people working. So I'm thinking there must be another movie set somewhere else where they're all being fed grapes by virgins. There's probably no film set in the world where that happens. If that's happening anywhere it's happening in the SuicideGirls's offices.

NP: Did you actually pick up any new abilities, any sparkly eye or invisibility techniques from all the experts you interviewed for the book.

JR: None. Absolutely none. I tried staring at my cat Monty and it didn't fall over.

NP: Well I'm kind of glad about that.

JR: So am I because I really like my cat. I was really dancing with danger actually -- or I would have been had there been any possibility that anybody could kill anything with a stare.

NP: And you can reassure readers that no hamsters were killed in the making of this book?

JR: I can absolutely assure you because the hamster death video that I saw definitely culminates with the hamster getting up and brushing itself down. Your readers needn't worry about that.

NP: Our Animal Rights group will be reassured by that I'm sure.



Photo: Jon Ronson, pictured right, on the set of The Men Who Stare At Goats in search of virgins to feed him grapes.

The Men Who Stare At Goats movie opens in theaters nationwide this Friday, November 6. The book, The Men Who Stare At Goats, is available from Amazon.com and all fine booksellers. For more information on Jon Ronson go to JonRonson.com.

Advertorial/Competition: Get Intimate With Spread On Us "This is getting really uncomfortable," says Spread star Ashton Kutcher after watching his character get fucked in a leather chair during commentary embedded in the special features of the DVD version the film. Indeed Kutcher complains... more

Advertorial/Competition: Get Intimate With Spread On Us



"This is getting really uncomfortable," says Spread star Ashton Kutcher after watching his character get fucked in a leather chair during commentary embedded in the special features of the DVD version the film. Indeed Kutcher complains that acting in the film often caused him intense discomfort -- "agony" even -- brought on by frequent and severe bouts of vasocongestion in his nether regions (a condition more commonly referred to as blue balls).

Those who watched the film in theaters earlier this year may empathize as the film features some of the hottest sex scenes seen in a mainstream film in recent years. Thus, as Kutcher waited until the cameras stopped rolling to work out frustrations brought on by the day's acting off set with his wife Demi Moore, many cinemagoers had similarly uncomfortable commutes home. Needless to say, Spread is likely to do considerably better when it's released on DVD and Blu-Ray on Nov 10th than it did at the box office, for this is a film best experienced in the private confines of your own home (preferably with relief close at hand if you catch our drift).

In Spread, Kutcher plays Nikki a charming freeloader who hopes to get ahead by getting head -- and servicing the needs of his wealthy female companions. Co-star Anne Heche is perhaps the film's biggest surprise however. She plays Samantha, one of Nikki's well-heeled marks. It's without doubt the Sappho-esque actresses' most erotic role to date. "I've gone further in this movie than I have ever before," says Heche, before adding, "Why didn't I do this when I was 22?"

The actress and mother of two, who hit forty in May of this year, confronts the no holes barred (pun intended) sex scenes with a refreshing honesty. Though the action is often graphic, Heche's toned body shows scant evidence of the two children it bore, and the numerous encounters with Kutcher's character are both hyper-erotic and hyper-real.

Samantha may accuse Nikki of being "nothing but six inches and a pretty face," but it's his mastery of the art of the pick-up that gives the Hollywood player -- and therefore the film -- an edge. Indeed, in the aforementioned commentary, Kutcher fesses up to being a student of The Game, journalist Neill Strauss' infamous seduction bible (which spawned the VH1 reality show The Pick-Up Artist).

Throughout the film, Kutcher's character schools us on the basics of The Game: "There is only one pick up line -- Hi, what's your name? -- everything else is cheese." Player-centric tips such as "Never show her you're impressed -- it lowers your market value" and "You want to give them a good fucking, but not too good -- leave a little room for the relationship to grow" keep the dialog sharp and heighten the irony when the master player ultimately gets outplayed.

Visually, the third character in the plot is Samantha's sleek and stunning, glass-walled Hollywood Hills home -- Nikki's Spread du jour -- which serves as the film's sensual playground. However, for drama's sake, emotionally, the love triangle is completed by newcomer Margarita Levieva's character, Heather, who brings unexpected chaos to Nikki's highly controlled world.

Though Spread is an erotic comedy caper that celebrates all that is wrong with Los Angeles -- a metropolis that idolizes the beautiful and superficial -- Kutcher, unlike his character, is wise enough to keep his baser Hollywood instincts in check. "I've played the game enough to know it doesn't end well," says Kutcher, who married his smokin' hot older women in 2005. "The only way to win is through true passion and love*."



WIN SPREAD TO GO

SuicideGirls has teamed up with Anchor Bay Films for a special competition so you can get intimate with Spread in the privacy of your own home. Winners will receive one of three copies of Spread on either Blu-Ray or DVD (your choice).

Answer the following question to enter:

Which lady would you prefer to be your sugar momma -- Anne Heche or Margarita Levieva?

(See pics at: www.flickr.com/photos/spreadthemovie)

Send entries via email to spread@suicidegirls.com. Please remember to include the following information:

1. Name
2. Address
3. Date of Birth
4. Preferred format (Blu-Ray or DVD)

Contest closes on November 23, 2009 at midnight PST. Winners will be notified by email on or before November 27. No purchase necessary. Must be18 years or older to enter.

For more information on Spread and the DVD/Blu-Ray release go to Spread-themovie.com.



Footnote:
* The only disclaimer being that Nikki's trademark "rollover sleeping smile" has apparently worked well for Kutcher off screen too, enabling him to avoid getting out of bed to take out the trash on more than one occasion when asked by his wife.

Flight of the Conchords fans know that Wednesday is business time. In their song “Business Time,” Jemaine Clement sings that Wednesday is his weekly love making night, so it’s business time. It follows then that for an interview with Clement on a Wednesday, it is also business time. “I suppose... more

Flight of the Conchords fans know that Wednesday is business time. In their song “Business Time,” Jemaine Clement sings that Wednesday is his weekly love making night, so it’s business time. It follows then that for an interview with Clement on a Wednesday, it is also business time. “I suppose so, according to my own rules,” he said in a roundtable interview with a group of reporters.

His Flight of the Conchords character might not be much of a stretch. In person, unscripted, Clement carried himself and spoke the same way as his folk singing counterpart. He sat stiffly upright with hands folded and shoulders tight, and spoke in stunted fragments.

He didn’t get any more relaxed in a private, one on one interview either, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. That awkwardness makes sincere, innocent comedy in his songs with bandmate Bret McKenzie and their TV show on HBO. It also works for his new movie, Gentlemen Broncos.

Broncos casts Clement as sci-fi author Ronald Chevalier. Chevalier was a big shot with his Cyborg Harpies books but these days he resorts to plagiarizing work from kids at his writer’s camp. The film from Napoleon Dynamite writer/director Jared Hess combines his quirky real world characters with their bizarre sci-fi creations. Fans of the fictional Ronald Chevalier can find out more about him on the official website the filmmakers set up.

The Conchords also have a new album out, “I Told You I Was Freaky” which includes songs like “Sugarlumps,” about their male organs, and “Hurt Feelings,” a sensitive hardcore wrap. This interview contains a lot of inside jokes about Conchords songs so if anything sounds strange, listen to their music to find out what we’re talking about.

Suicide Girls: Did your hair grow out to Ronald Chevalier length or was that a wig?

Jemaine Clement: That was my own hair. I just sit there and someone does it but it take a lot of hairspray and a lot of back combing. Usually you do a screen test or a costume test before you start and at first I got there, the makeup artist was local. They try and hire local people as much as they can and she didn’t have a brush. Firstly, she wouldn’t look at the photo. I had a photo of a guy. I had all these different ideas which I went over with Jared. There were different ideas but I wanted this really big poofy one. I showed her and she said, “Okay.” She was doing it without a brush. She didn’t have a comb, she didn’t have a brush, with her fingers trying to do it and she wouldn’t look at it either. I remember like, “No, it’s not like that. You’re not looking at it.” “No, I saw it.” She got fired for a different reason. She insulted one of the actresses apparently on the same day. She got fired. If you’re a hair stylist, you’ve got to at least have a comb.

SG: Is Chevalier’s wardrobe comfortable?

JC: Well, it’s mostly comfortable but the jeans were very, very high so they could get uncomfortable at times.

SG: With the Chevalier websites providing more Chevalier beyond the movie, how long will you continue playing Chevalier?

JC: Well, I don’t really continue doing it. I did a thing in Austin and I think I might introduce the film tonight as Chevalier but it’s not really my character. It’s Jared and Jerusha [Hess]’s character so I can’t take it and have his own life without them.

SG: Are there musicians as pretentious as Chevalier is as an author?

JC: I’m sure there are. I’m sure there are.

SG: That you’ve encountered?

JC: Yeah, I knew that you were getting at that. Well, I started off doing theater and by that I mean putting on ridiculous shows with my friends with very little money. I meet people all the time that are just awful, just awful and just opinions of solid steel, just unchangeable.

SG: Have you been looking to have a career outside the Flight of the Conchords?

JC: We kind of started the Conchords as something else to do while we were doing other jobs, so it was more the other way around. The Flight of the Conchords was just an outlet for something fun to do.

SG: Well, you’ve been in several movies now. Are you more famous than Bret?

JC: I don't know. Bret’s got a different interest really to me. He mostly does music. We split up and I usually go and do comedy and he goes and plays gigs. He started a massive ukulele band. Almost every member plays ukulele and they do covers. They’re really successful in New Zealand. They travel around and he’s also in this reggae band which is one of New Zealand’s biggest bands actually. They play these big gigs and he plays with them too. So that’s what he does. He had a solo album and he’s probably writing some more music.

SG: I will have to check out his solo album.

JC: Yeah, check it out. It’s not a comedy album though. It’s dance. It’s about dancing.

SG: My favorite Conchords song is “Mutha’uckas” because I also have too many mutha’ucka’s ‘uckin’ with my shi’.

JC: Yeah, who doesn’t?

SG: What can we do about all these mutha’uckas ‘uckin’ with our shi’?

JC: ‘Uck them up.

SG: Well, that’s simple.

JC: Yeah, that’s all I can say.

SG: It was also great how you covered every era of David Bowie, including Labyrinth. Were you a big Labyrinth fan?

JC: Yeah, I was actually. I remember when that movie came out in my town. The line was right around the block. Even the line to the movie was exciting. It was just the biggest line you’d ever seen. At that time, it was probably one of the biggest groups of people I’d ever seen all together, were lining up for Labyrinth.

SG: Were all movies like that in New Zealand?

JC: No, I don't know why. I guess because of Bowie. I guess there was a lot of hype around that movie.

SG: Is “Sugarlumps” your answer to Fergie’s humps?

JC: Yeah, and Kelis’s milkshake and a few other things. I thought it was time men objectified themselves.

SG: What was the idea behind a sensitive rap about hurt feelings?

JC: Usually the ideas for the song come first so a song about hurt feelings. Because our characters in the show think of themselves as rappers even though they’re pretty far from it, they’re pretty serious about rap.

SG: Have you ever recorded a proper version of “Who Likes to Rock the Party?”

JC: No, but I remember the first time that we did it live. I mean, the first time was all right but then the next time we did it, we used to do it like this: One of us would go, “Mmph, kjj, oof, who like to rock the party, kshh, who likes to rock the party?” We were trying to do a dance tune but with no instruments. We just bombed, but we brought it back to life for the show.

SG: When is the robot uprising?

JC: Yeah, it’s late. It’s late. It’s nine years late. Robots are surprisingly badly organized.

SG: Do your love songs actually woo women?

JC: Once someone came up to me and told me that she had sex listening to our live album and she thanked me. So I don't know, I guess.

SG: I’m wondering if I tell a woman she could be a waitress or a part time model, would that work?

JC: Try it. I’d love to know.

SG: Do you start with really good music and then think of words, or do you start with funny words and then add music to make it work?

JC: I think we’ve done every approach that you can do. Even more than that, sometimes we think of a character and we think of a song as a character. Say, like the song we did, “Bus Driver Song,” it’s about this bus driver who was driving around the country. That’s not in the show so it’s not as well known. Yeah, sometimes it’s a tune. Definitely when we first started it was always the tune. We’d make up words and sometimes they were funny and we’d try and add more jokes and stuff. So it definitely began like that but usually now it starts with the idea of the song.

SG: Why does so much music take itself so seriously?

JC: Man, once I was doing this interview in Ireland and it was quite bad because it was over the phone, like on a cell phone. We were playing some sh*tty gig and we were trying to promote it. There was a serious musician on the show so the DJ was asking me, talking about funny music, “So you do funny songs?” And then the serious musician was really offended. He hadn’t heard any of our stuff but he’s like, “Why are you hiding behind [humor]? Do you not have emotions?” Really accusatory. I don't know why they’re like that. Also, a lot of our songs actually do come from serious things. Some of our breakup songs have come from breakups. We just think of it like that. We play in comedy clubs so we’ll talk about real breakups but we’ll disguise it. I don’t even know if I could do that myself, actually go and put my heart out there.

SG: In a way, you can relate more to the real emotions of funny songs. “I’m Not Crying” is really about pretending you’re not sad.

JC: There’s so much interpretation open to music anyway. A lot of people think Leonard Cohen is the most depressing singer but he’s one of my favorite singers. No, my favorite singer I’ll say, and I find a lot of his lines really hilarious and clever and funny. But other people don’t connect to them like that.

SG: Is there style the Conchords haven’t done yet? There’s been rock, techno, hip hop


JC: Well, for all the talk of folk, we hardly ever do folk. So maybe it’s time to do some folk. Bret, when he does his own music, it’s as I said dance music so he loves high production and stuff like that, always adding instruments. If I was more in charge, because Bret’s more in charge of that side of it, if I was more in charge it would be more like a folk album.

SG: “If You’re Into It” is folk, right?

JC: I guess so, in the instrumentation anyway.

SG: You’ve said you don’t want to do a third season of the HBO show because of the high demand to write scripts, write music and perform them both. But, hasn’t the show allowed your music to thrive more than it ever would have without that exposure?

JC: Yeah, definitely. Yup, but I mean, usually we used to write one show a year maybe. I’m talking about a live show so it was like an hour’s worth of songs. It would take about a month, but it’s quite hard to do and then we’d play those songs for years along with other songs that we developed. If we had a whole lot of new songs ready that we loved, then we might go and make a show or a movie or something.

SG: Did the show inspire the songs or did the songs inspire plots for the show?

JC: Mostly in the first season we had the songs first, so sometimes we’d think of a storyline to incorporate the song like the Bowie one. We had the Bowie song so we thought of a storyline to incorporate Bowie. But still, we would just write storylines and see if we could fit [the songs] in. Sometimes they worked really well, just coincidentally, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they seemed very forced. Hopefully people laughed at that.

SG: It’s a musical. You don’t care what the reason is for breaking into song.

JC: That’s right, you don’t care. We care, but who knows? Perhaps we take it too seriously ourselves.

SG: What happened to the R in your name?

JC: When my mom had me, she was 17 and it was in the mid ‘70s at the height of Jackson 5 fever. I think she may have even been to a Jackson 5 concert sometime before she knew she was pregnant with me. So I was kind of named after Jermaine Jackson and my parents didn’t want me to be called Jerm in school, so they took the R out. In New Zealand you don’t really say your Rs.

SG: That is really thoughtful of them. Most parents don’t have that foresight.

JC: I think you do think about that. I think most people do think about it but they were so young, they were just out of school and stuff.

SG: Can I be the second Flight of the Conchords fan?

JC: Yep, sign up.

SG: Is the sincerity of some of your ridiculous lines an important part of the humor?

JC: Yeah, yeah, that’s the fun part about doing it as well. It’s hard not to ham it up. It’s hard to resist.

SG: You often end up being the response guy in the song. Is that a role you take on purpose?

JC: Yeah, well, “If You’re Into It,” I wrote that one so I gave myself all the jokes. I definitely did that one on purpose, gave myself all the funny lines.  

Gentlemen Broncos is now playing and “I Told You I Was Freaky” is available in stores and online now.

An interview with Edward Norton is rare. He usually does not discuss his acting work in the press. Universal may have forced him on a couple talk shows to promote The Incredible Hulk but the only other projects he’s made Hollywood rounds for were The Painted Veil and, oddly, Death to Smoochy. Norton... more

An interview with Edward Norton is rare. He usually does not discuss his acting work in the press. Universal may have forced him on a couple talk shows to promote The Incredible Hulk but the only other projects he’s made Hollywood rounds for were The Painted Veil and, oddly, Death to Smoochy.

Norton engaged the press again to discuss the documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. Norton produced the chronicle of Obama’s historic election, from the beginnings of his candidacy to his win on November fourth. HBO will air it beginning November 3.

Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams could not have had the foresight to know the documentary would culminate in a win. The project started as just a profile of a historic candidacy. Norton actually thought it would take six years for his presidential campaign to succeed.

“Our initial presentation of it was just that he represented a generational shift in national politics,” Norton told the press conference. “We thought there was value in documenting his experiences as he entered the political fray. We didn’t set out to make a campaign film but I think at a certain point, it became clear to us that it was a document of how this momentous piece of history was achieved from a certain perspective.”

Once the Obama campaign picked up momentum, Norton and the filmmakers knew they were at the forefront of capturing history in the making. Whatever Obama is able to achieve in the next four years, and no matter what he cannot, Norton feels the film captures the important moment.

“I don't think anything will ever diminish the significance of the achievement of his election,” Norton continued. “I think sometimes you have to take the broad lens with a piece of work like this and say that maybe it’s a noble and fine ambition for it to be just a good document of how a certain moment transpired so that people can look back on it. Whatever the ultimate review of his presidency, people can say this moment was a singular moment in American history and here’s at least one document of how it was experienced, how it transpired, how it came to fruition.”

After the press conference, Norton hung around to chat with a group of reporters a little bit more about the documentary. Those expecting gruff, intense resistance were instead treated to a lively open discussion about politics and filmmaking. Perhaps those were the skills required to secure the filmmakers access to Obama’s campaign.

“In the beginning it was [Robert] Gibbs, who was his press secretary as a senator,” Norton said in one more press conference anecdote. “When it became a campaign, there was a whole new level of hurdle to clear because [David] Axelrod and [David] Plouffe were completely negative on the idea. Axelrod in particular was vehemently opposed to anything because he’s very savvy and probably rightly didn’t think that they needed to make themselves vulnerable to that. I was calling him on the phone trying to, I don’t want to say spin it, but explain it, rationalize it as in some sense what it became, saying this is not something that has an intention to affect the outcome. We just want to document this.”

With that background, Norton continued the discussion in the hallway of the Langham hotel in Pasadena, CA. Any passersby would be hard pressed to figure out a group of reporters were interviewing a movie star. It looked more like a friendly leader, in casual blue jeans and plain white shirt, holding court amongst friends.

Question: How would you articulate the importance of this election? Was it just that he is the first African president?

Edward Norton: Just? Just the first African American president? That’s a little reductive. You don’t think that’s one of the three or five biggest moments in American political history?

Q: Obviously it is. What I meant was is there more to his importance than that? Would you care to expand?

EN: Well, I think it’s pretty self-evident. I think that the election of the first African American president is pretty simply put. I think it speaks for itself as a seminal moment in American history.

Q: What was the highlight of the project for you?

EN: That’s a good question. I think there were certain moments in it, at each of the moments when we realized that in fact he was actually going to achieve the next rung. When it became clear that he was going to become the candidate, if you had started where we started and known him at the moment, it just was thrilling. It was thrilling in a selfish sense because I just couldn’t believe that we were as intimately inside the process of watching this take place. So each time he achieved the next rung I think we all kind of felt almost head spun by it and it felt like a great privilege to have covered it somehow.

Q: Did you get new respect for American democracy through this experience?

EN: I did actually, yeah. I think it’s one of my favorite things. Actually, a lot of people have said to me about the film that they understood the Iowa caucus for the first time watching the film which I feel like that in itself is a minor achievement because I think that whole section of the film about Iowa is a great portrait of American democracy in all of its wonderful messiness.

Q: How much were you out on the campaign trail with the filmmakers?

EN: It’s hard to explain. Not that much. I was kind of more like wrangling access.

Q: How instrumental were you in convincing Obama to let you in?

EN: Pretty directly from the get go. We went down and saw him. He was very gracious and I actually think he had a lot to do with us being allowed to stay in the mix when the campaign started. At one point I said to him, “If this kicks off, there will be a lot of people around you who will tell you to push us out.” And I said, “Please don’t let them do it.” I think he had a very direct role in pushing back on his own campaign heads and saying, “I think we should let this continue.”

Q: Were there any moments where he said, “No, not now?”

EN: Well, there’s one in the film. If you see the film, when he’s getting his haircut.

Q: How do you feel about what he’s accomplished in his first year in office, with the stimulus, closing Guantanamo, his mortgage crisis plans?

EN: I wouldn’t say that our film has anything to do with that. The film is a document of I think the process of his campaign and his movement achieving the White House. I think there’s really nothing about it that’s in any way a comment on anything after that.

Q: As an environmental activist, what do you think of his environmental policies?

EN: I mean, I have a lot of personal opinions but I don't think they’re really germane to the film per se and our releasing of it. I’m not really here to comment on Obama’s successes or failures.

Q: What are you doing personally for environmental causes?

EN: I mean, I work on a lot of different things along those lines. That’s something I think I’ve, in a pretty demonstrative way been an advocate for environmental [initiatives.]

Q: What’s the most pressing issue right now?

EN: I think that’s a complex question. I think certainly you could argue that carbon loading in the atmosphere is kind of the biggest macro problem but collapsed fisheries, anything. There are an awful lot and they’re pretty interlinked.

Q: Do you plan to follow the documentary with another one on Obama?

EN: No, no, not in particular. The documentary will come out on DVD and stuff but I don't know that there’s a sequel to that in particular. We don’t have a plan to cover his second bid for the presidency or anything like that. This was an experience that was kind of lightning in a bottle. It snowballed and we happened to be there to catch it. I think it was a pretty unique opportunity. I don’t expect to have an opportunity like that too many times.

Q: This year is the 10th anniversary of Fight Club. How do you reflect on that important film?

EN: I mean, all of us who were involved in it love that film and I think the best films are the ones that form their own relationship with an audience over time, that kind of escape the vicissitudes of critical and box office reaction in the short term and find their own way to their audience over time. I think that film certainly feels like one of those ones that rippled out from pure person to person and became what it became more through people’s relationship with it than through any kind of intermediary like a critic or anything like that.

By The People: The Election of Barack Obama premiers Tuesday, Nov. 3rd on HBO.