In a board that won't get swamped... (image) Rigel

It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky... more

It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot off Third Street in L.A.’s Fairfax District, an 11-year-old Marc Canter caught his fellow classmate, Saul Hudson (aka, an 11-year-old Slash of Guns N’ Roses), suspiciously eyeballing Canter's mini-bike parked outside. “In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know.” Slash laughs. “It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how [Marc and I] met and we’ve been friends ever since.”

By high school, Slash was into guitars and Marc was taking pictures of local rock bands. With a few candid photographs of his best friend, Marc Canter unknowingly began to document the rise of the greatest rock band of its time: Guns N’ Roses. Over twenty years in the making, Marc’s new book, Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction, is a collection of exclusive interviews, rare photographs and original memorabilia including show flyers, magazine articles, ticket stubs, set lists, and hand-scrawled song lyrics. From the band’s first gig at the Troubadour in 1985, to signing with Geffen Records, to being dubbed “The Most Dangerous Band in the World,” Marc Canter was there, up close and personal, camera and tape recorder in hand. The result is a comprehensive account of the band’s early days, as well as a portrait of Marc and Slash’s friendship, still strong to this day.

“My goal here,” Marc says, “is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

SuicideGirls met up with both Slash and Marc Canter at legendary rock and roll hangout Canter’s Deli, in the heart of Hollywood, to chat about Reckless Road and the stories behind the photographs. Even more, we got them both in front of the camera for their first-ever, joint video exclusive.

Reckless Road is in stores and available online now.

Watch Part One and Part Two of the video interviews.


Erin Broadley: So, Reckless Road is a fascinating book.

Slash: It’s great. It’s probably the best rock and roll coffee table book I’ve ever seen.

EB: Slash, the story goes that in 1976 you and Marc became friends when you tried to steal his bike?

Slash: [Laughs] Was it 1976? I guess, yeah [laughs]. I didn’t actually steal it; I was checking it out. It was a mini-bike, and it was outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Third Street… he was inside and saw this kid suspiciously checking out his bike and decided to intervene before something happened.

EB: [Laughs] Little kids protect their bikes, man. It’s their livelihood. It’s all they’ve got.

Marc Canter: They call it a mini-bike but really it’s a motorbike. We went to Third Street School but I didn’t know his name; I just knew his face. So I had this motorbike and was parked at KFC and I’m in there, buying whatever, he was walking home, saw it and was thinking about stealing it. He looked inside to see who it might belong to or if anyone was looking and then he saw me and thought, “Oh, I know him from school.” So he went in and instead of stealing it, asked if he could ride it. We became friends from that point on and pretty much never looked back.

Slash: In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know. It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how we met and we’ve been friends ever since. After Marc and I hooked up in fifth grade, we were friends for a while though junior high school. Then somewhere in junior high school I took off and moved into deeper East Hollywood and I didn’t see him for a while. At some point in high school we reconnected and he’d turned into this mega rock fan, which I had too, but he was really serious. He had his cameras and shit and he would sneak them into concerts… his favorite band was Aerosmith. He used to buy all kind of photos. Aerosmith was one of the major bands that I was a fan of when I started playing guitar and they definitely influenced what direction I went. So we had that new thing in common. I had started playing guitar at that point, and he just started taking pictures of everything because that was his way, you know [laughs]. It’s funny because I look at the book now and all those pictures that he was taking all the time, as far as I was concerned he was just casually taking pictures of everything. I didn’t expect it to be something later on. I never would have imagined that him being around all the time just taking 35 mm pictures would amount to this documentation later.

EB: Right. There’s a part in the book where, Slash, you say that the first thing you did as soon as you could put three chords together was start a band. And Adam Greenberg said it was almost like going to a rock and roll school. What was the creative climate like in L.A. as teens, learning how to play music?

Slash: I was pretty much an outcast in school and as a musician I was an outcast… When I first picked guitar up it was during the summer time so I spent that summer learning how to play and I think by the next semester I started looking for musicians. At that time, Van Halen had come out so there were a lot of musicians in junior high. That’s where it all started. I met Ron Schneider and Adam Greenberg and that was probably the third throw-together band I had, but it was the first one that started playing keg parties and, you know, terrorizing people’s houses...

EB: Playing the senior citizens’ center.

Slash: Yeah, [laughs] all these bar mitzvahs. It was a cover band that could never find a singer. Which is, like, the story of my life. Still is, to this day.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: It wasn’t a big, heavy-duty, rock and roll scene in high school. There were a few musicians I was friends with. I went to four high schools, so every one I went to had its little clique of Eddie Van Halen wannabes [laughs]. Marc was hanging out, keeping tabs on the whole thing. Marc was also the first guy, when Guns N’ Roses first started, before Guns N’ Roses was even a nightmare, Marc was probably the only person interested in what I was really doing, [laughs] for the most part.

EB: Duff said that Marc was a pillar of stability for the band. How so?

Slash: When Duff and I first met, we met at Canter’s Deli. I used to work there and Marc would always help me out. I always had a job but if I was in between jobs, I would work at Canter’s. He was financially stable and I wasn’t [laughs]… he was just a really good, loyal friend. I still, to this day, don’t have many loyal friends. So when Guns first started, he instantly took the job of marketing and doing all the promotion. We all did it but I was real fanatic about it, I never slept. [Laughs]

EBidn’t you get fired from the Fairfax newsstand for conducting band business on their hours?

Slash: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s where I used to sell tickets… to customers at work. People would come in and I’d sell Troubadour tickets.

MC: I used to feed the band. Not three meals a day, not every day, but when they were hungry they knew they could come to me and I could get them a pastrami sandwich or whatever was needed. And why not? They’re my friends. I would drive them places, I had a car, I had gas -- they didn’t. I’d buy them guitar strings, whatever they needed, little things… I was paying for some of the band magazine ads that were coming out. First we started with quarter page ads and they were like $288. It wasn’t a big deal. Then after two of those, we went to full page and it got to be a little bit more expensive. But, at that time, I knew that would work for the record company people, like, “What’s going on here? This band keeps selling out these Troubadour gigs and they’ve got full-page ads. It’s not just some flunky, fly by night band.”

Then they found someone to help them with the demo tape but that person gave out in the middle and didn’t put any more money in, so they needed a couple hundred bucks to get it out of hock. I did what I could. I didn’t do everything but I helped because they’d do the same for me if they were in my situation. I lived at home, I had a good job, I didn’t have any expenses and pretty much, if they did work, they had to support themselves. I always knew Slash would make it as a guitar player, even if he was just a guitar teacher, because there was such a talent there. His playing was very seductive; you’d feel goose bumps when he’d play because he just hit those certain notes.

EB: Slash, when you first hooked up with Axl, Marc wrote that you guys had an amazing chemistry and I think that this really comes through in a lot of these early photographs. What were those early days like when you and Axl first entered into each other’s lives?

Slash: When we first hooked up, it was pretty uneventful, the first time we met actually I answered an ad that Izzy and Axl had in the paper looking for a guitar player. I went down there to where they were staying, which were some little guest room off of a house above Sunset. It was real dark, it was one room, they had like a bed that took up 75 percent of it, a TV that took up another 10 percent, and there was like 15 percent walking space.

EB: [Laughs] Just a path.

Slash: [Laughs] Right. Axl was on the phone and Izzy was the one I did all the talking with. I’d already met Izzy because he had come into my music store looking for copies of this picture of Aerosmith that I drew for Marc. He showed up at my work one day… this little, scraggy Johnny Thunders comes walking in and he’s looking for Saul Hudson, right? That’s how we met and he played me a tape of his band later that night. It was really ratty, with a tiny voice in the background screaming at the top of its lungs. But it was in key so I was interested. He told me the name of the band was Hollywood Rose… so later on I answer this ad and it turns out to be Izzy and this guy Axl. The whole time I was there, Axl never got off the phone. Axl was in Mark Twain mode, Twain wreck, which was when he starts talking, ‘cause he won’t stop.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: That was our first meeting. Nothing came of out of that. Nothing happened. Then I was another time when I was actually seeing my dad. I didn’t see my dad that often but one time we hung out and we went down to Harry’s Barbeque and I looked over and there was Axl and he was talking to this chick and, again, he was doing all the talking and she was just sitting there. That went on for the whole time I was there [laughs] so I didn’t approach him and that was that. At some point we all hooked up when Axl approached me about playing with Hollywood Rose, which I thought was a pretty good idea at the time. Axl picked me but never talked to Izzy about it so I came along one day not knowing that there was any of this drama going on. I walk into this rehearsal studio called the Fortress in Hollywood… this grungy little room and Izzy was there and, because Axl had made this decision without Izzy’s input, Izzy quit. So Steve Darrow and Steve Adler came in and we put a band together with the four of us. That was the beginning of me and Axl’s real relationship… it started with the Hollywood Rose band.

EB: So it was chemistry but was it a volatile chemistry?

Slash: Well, yeah, that’s what I’m getting at [laughs].

EB:Some people think volatile chemistry fuels creativity.

Slash: I don’t think volatility fuels anything. I don’t agree with people who think you need that controversy to make music. It’s not really conducive to writing songs. If you have chemistry, you don’t need all that other shit [laughs]. Anyhow, but it started off cool and I liked Axl… he came and stayed at my house but then the yin and yang of Axl’s personality started to present itself. One minute he was really, really cool and somebody that I liked a lot. You could spend almost two days with him like that. Then the smallest little thing would turn around and change his personality completely. I’m pretty even keeled; nothing really phases me. I’m probably like that to the extent that some people don’t understand how I can be so fuckin’ blasé about things [laughs]. So we had a real contrast going on, but the music was cool. When we had a good time, we had a great fucking time. But when it was bad, I couldn’t understand the origins of some of these issues and why they would be blown out of proportion to the extent that they were. To him, it meant everything. But to me, I could just never understand it.

So this band lasted for a little while. We did a bunch of gigs. Marc documented those gigs. They’re in the book. Finally, we had this one gig where Axl got into a fight with somebody in the front row at the Troubadour and at that point I’d already been through another thing with him jumping out of my car one night. It was just tedious. The good times were good but the tedious times were really trying. So at this particular gig, when he got into this fight with this guy, and the gig wasn’t going as well, I thought it was pointless. After that show I was like, “You know what? I don’t have time for this.” [Laughs] So I was in a couple bands during that period. I was very ambitious but, at the same time, there was a limit to what I would and wouldn’t do to get by in this business. I wouldn’t do a lot of conformist sell out kind of stuff.

When Duff came into town, we met at Canter’s. Steven, my girlfriend, Steven’s girlfriend, a bottle of vodka… Duff comes in and we went up to the men’s room and hung out up there and drank the bottle of vodka and formed a little unity. We wanted to start a band with the three of us but, once again, we couldn’t find a singer. That went on for like a month and finally that split up and Duff had, ironically enough, just moved into this cheap little apartment right across the street from Izzy’s apartment. So those guys met and the next thing you know, Duff ended up joining their band, which I think had become Guns N’ Roses at that point. They had Duff, Izzy, Axl, Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner who was the other drummer from L.A. Guns. I was working at Tower Video at the time and Axl and I sort of had a certain amount of animosity going on which was slowly but surely fading. Axl came into my work one day and goes, “Do you want to play with me and Izzy?” As much as I was really unsure about dealing with Axl again, I really liked Izzy and I liked Duff, obviously, so it seemed like maybe it’d be a cool idea. I went and jammed with Izzy one night and he had the song called “Don’t Cry” and we put the guitars together and that’s really what started it.

At that point Duff came in with this idea of doing a Pacific Coast tour and going up to Seattle. He put all the gigs together from his experiences with a punk rock band up there in the Pacific North West and so I said, “Sure, let’s do this.” Rob Gardner chickened out; he didn’t want to take this perilous, fucking road trip with no real exact future in it. So we called Steve Adler and he came down and we rehearsed one night and that was basically it. We set off on that tour and our car broke down, fuckin’ 100 miles out of L.A. so we ended up hitchhiking all the way to Seattle. That’s really what cemented the band. The chemistry just on a human level between the five of us… just as guys who stick to their guns with what it is they want to do. That trip really had a lot to do with it.

EB: There’s something special to these Guns N’ Roses photographs. Band photos today are so heavily retouched and photoshopped together. There’s something about how raw these photos are that really captures the band’s gritty nature. Like the Reckless Road cover…

MC: The cover is them, the day they came back from their “Hell Tour” in Seattle. They had a gig booked at the Troubadour on June 6, 1985… it was on a Thursday night, and there was something really special there. But it wasn’t enough to solidify the band. Then a day or two after that, they went on that Seattle tour. The car broke down, they ate onions in the field, they hitchhiked…

EB:That’s where the real camaraderie formed.

MC: They had each other’s backs after that. When they came back to Los Angeles they wanted to do a photo shoot to make flyers for the next gigs that they had. They booked a bunch of gigs and said, “Let’s go fuck up L.A. We can do it now. If we lived through this we can do anything.” So if you look at the look on their face, they’re a gang. This is a gang now.

EB: They had their road warrior experience and now they’re ready to take it to the streets.

MC: Yeah. If you fucked with one of them, the other one would jump on your back and kill you. It was like they were a gang. And they started writing songs; each gig they came up with a new song, pretty much. And it was a great song. Just boom, after boom... There were no what they’d call “dead songs”... No fillers or throw always; every song they wrote was perfect. In fact the leads for the songs, the first time they ever played them are the same leads that you hear on the record. It was pretty much self-produced in that way because it worked. There was something special there. But anyway, back to the photos, yeah, my friend Jack Lue started taking pictures before I did and he would sneak his camera into concerts. Jack always did that and what happened was, to be honest with you, Eddie Van Halen was going to play at the Roxy and Jack Lue couldn’t make that gig so he gave me his camera, showed me how to use it and said, “Take pictures.” So I took pictures and I had fun and when I got them back, I was freaked like, “Whoa, these are really cool.”

From that point on I started taking pictures at every concert we went to. That was in 1982. Right around that same time was when Slash was playing gigs everywhere. And now that I knew how to shoot, and I saw that it works, of course I was going to shoot him. I was already tape-recording his shows. Now I had a tape, and photos and the flyer. So I just kind of kept everything because I saw something that was special. If you don’t tape-record it then it’s just gone. After awhile we met Axl and then it was like, wait a minute, now there’s not only Axl, there’s Izzy, Steven and Duff… there’s like five Jedis working together. It wasn’t just Slash anymore. Now it was just like all of them together made a chemistry. Now, I was not only documenting Slash, but I was documenting...

EB: All these other big personalities as well.

MC: Right. And it just became so much fun. I used to get butterflies in my stomach before the gigs. I wasn’t going to be surprised; I knew what I was going to see. But it was just so exciting. So here I am taking pictures and I'm hearing “Rocket Queen” for the first time. It’s one thing when you do some covers and a couple of originals but all of a sudden you start writing these new ones that are just really, really, good songs. You’re taking pictures going, “What am I hearing?” Then you get home and you listen to the tape and you go to that song and you hear it two or three times and you’re like, “Wow, we have a Led Zeppelin here.” They could do no wrong. It all worked! The vocals, the melodies, the lead guitar, the drums – it was the first attempt and it didn’t even need tweaking, it was there. Every now and then you’d hear a song for the first time and Axl, the next time they’d play it, would change a couple lyrics, or some of the lyrics weren’t completed. The first time they played “My Michele” there were some verses simply missing. They went without vocals. But, other than that, pretty much, they knew what they wanted.

EB: In Reckless Road, Marc, you write, “My goal here is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

MC: It’s interesting, I’ve met some people that when I told them that I did this book they take a look at it and they’re the least likely Guns N’ Roses fans just because they’re into different kinds of music like jazz or whatever, but they respect what’s there. They’re glad it’s there to be documented and to watch history in the making. It’s the making of one of the greatest records ever made. I’ve met a couple people that really, not that they hate the band, they just don’t like that kind of music at all. But they can appreciate that it’s been documented. Like at Canter’s, a lot of the employees got books and they have never even heard of Guns N’ Roses. Some of the older waitresses, they’re 65-years-old and how could they possibly know what this is? But because I'm involved in it, they’re interested in it. I have a book all of a sudden and they want to read it. So they take it home to read it and they’re sucked into it and can’t stop.

EB: The band is as seductive in this book as the band was on stage. The book also states, “Launching a successful rock band in the ‘80s required three ingredients: a dream, some talent, and die hard ambition.” Were those really the three most important things back then?

Slash: Well, because of the climate of what was going on in Hollywood at the time, which was really excessive, commercial glam-metal kind of deal, everybody was getting signed. Motley Crue had already gotten big and famous and Ratt was coming out and then there were all these fuckin’ offshoots of that, cruising up and down Sunset Boulevard. We were sort of like the ugly ducklings of that whole thing. We didn’t fit in with any of it. We were the black sheep and we enjoyed that; we loved the fact that we were the scary band out of the bunch. We hated the rest of them and we provided a kind of entertainment that was very seedy. If you asked us if we were extremely talented, [laughs] I don’t think we would have looked at it that way. Really, when it comes down to it, I’d say blind ambition, desire, and the integrity and the passion for the music was probably the most important thing. There was a lot of integrity in the band and there was a lot of really focused passion for what every individual did… everything about the songs was really driven from the heart.

Looking back, there was definitely something unique going on which turned out to be a lot bigger than what most of our peers were doing. We were a gang of five that was a force to contend with. We were a 24/7 experience. We lived with each other and were together all that time. Everything we went through, which was a lot, we did together and that’s what strengthened that bond. It was really important as to what the band sounded like… it was a collaborative effort, every single song. Then we became very successful at that time but we were this vagabond bunch of drunken gypsies that sort of stuck together. But we were still pretty naïve really in a lot of ways.

MC: You want to hear the funny part to that? Jason Porath actually wrote that part in the book. And, in the manuscript I have, the third thing was “Slash” [laughs]. He actually wrote the word “Slash” but he changed it on his own before the book came out because he though it was a little bit too much Slash serving. Plus, the rest of the band had plenty of talent so he changed the word to "talent". The truth is, Izzy would be the backbone of a lot of those songs but Slash tweaked those songs… if Slash weren’t there, who knows? Slash would put the funky punch into it. Like “My Michele,” he added those four little jerky parts to change the song. Plus, you already know what he could do in the studio with his leads. Even if he had nothing to do with writing the song -- like “November Rain,” that was Axl’s song -- Slash comes in and puts the leads in that just rip you to pieces. So, he wasn’t far off when he put “and Slash.” It’s a good ingredient to have in the mix [laughs]. Slash will always call me after a gig and I’ll always tell him what I thought of it, good or bad, and he always gets exactly the truth out of me. He’s always very modest about it. Whenever I say, “That was great, that was great,” he’s very modest about what his talent is. He never wants to reveal how good he really is. After doing the Use Your Illusion tour for two years and playing big stadiums, there’s a certain amount that goes to your head that puts you in a rock star mode and on a pedestal. But as far as the actual talent, they were always modest about it.

EB: Another part in Reckless Road states, “The eventual merging of the Appetite lineup of Guns N’ Roses can be more easily attributed to chaos theory than a straight forward chronology.”

MC: Yeah, that’s pretty much the way it went down. There was no loyalty. Like Vicky Hamilton says in the book, they were trying on band members like clothes. You hung around people that were into the same music you liked and you jammed together. You found a garage and you jammed in that garage and if it worked, great. If it didn’t work then you moved on. Eventually, these five musicians found each other and, on top of finding each other, they went on that little road trip to Seattle which made them a little bit closer. At the same time, they knew they were the best at what they did. And the music industry sucked; there was nothing going on. Motley Crue was really the only band left and that wasn’t enough to make a whole scene. There was really nothing going on and Guns N’ Roses just came by and changed everything, putting the f-word on the record… it was really ballsy [at the time] and a lot of it has to be credited to Tom Zutaut for allowing them to do that because Axl was at the point where he was going to change the lyrics. Tom said, “No, leave it alone.”

MTV had a lot to do with it. The band had sold like 200,000 records underground and it was kinda dying out and MTV wouldn’t play the video. David Geffen pulled a favor and called in an executive at MTV and they said, “No, we can’t do it because we don’t want to lose our commercials because they’re known as drug addicts and they look like they’re going to rape my daughter” … that kind of thing. They didn’t want bad press out of it. So, they played the video on a Sunday night at like six in the morning Eastern Time and the switchboard blew up. Then, that next week, they got put right into Top 10 rotation for “Welcome to the Jungle” and from that point on they started selling records, like 200,000 a week. So, they went a whole year before the record even went to number one. Appetite For Destruction wasn’t just one song; the whole record is good. That’s why it’s going to stand the test of time. And another reason why is because its so raw and natural. And another reason why is because they were living on the streets. It’s the fact that you’re getting the raw energy and it wasn’t tampered with. What they wrote was ready to go.

EB: On a personal note about your friendship, it says in the book that in 1985 Axl asked Marc to talk to you, Slash, about not getting drunk before a show. Was it unfair of him to put Marc in that kind of position as a mediator?

Slash: Yeah…

EB: Or was he just the only one you would listen to?

Slash: Well, no I think there’s been many times that Axl has reached out to different people like my mom or my dad or girlfriend or Marc or something like that. But nobody wants to try and tell me what to do so it is very uncomfortable.

EB: No one wants to be the middleman between you and Axl!

Slash: Yeah, it’s never worked. If somebody like Marc or my dad actually does approach me just to sort of follow through with carrying the message, it’s done very delicately [laughs]. It’s not really effective [laughs]. That’s funny though.

EB: What do you think has enabled you and Marc to stay friends after so many years of chaos?

Slash: Well, because the chaos never had anything to do with Marc so our relationship has always been intact. He never really had to deal with the out of control me… he never put himself in that place. He never was judgmental; he was real objective. That always made me feel like he never crossed that line with me and so I’ve always had a respect for him and I would never rub him the wrong way because of that mutual respect. I never did anything to take advantage of him or make him overly uncomfortable or expose him to the darker stuff that was going on behind the scenes. He was never forced to be around that. So we’ve always had that mutual thing for each other.

EB: That’s once in a lifetime, man.

Slash: Yeah. And to this day, if he calls me, he can ask me for anything. He called me this morning all freaking out trying to get all this stuff done. I said, “Marc, don’t worry about it.” [Laughs]

MC: The thing about me, any friends that I’ve made over the years, I still have. If they need something, I’m there. And if I need something, they’re there. I’m a good person to be friends with because I'm an easygoing guy. Slash has always kept in touch. The friendship has always been there.

Video Exclusive Part One:

Video Exclusive Part Two:



Go to RecklessRoad.com for more information.

by Blogbot A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups. (image) [Delia Suicide in Cute Socks] This week Delia tells us why the Rose Garden is such a beautiful place to visit. Members: 196 [Private: For SGs Only] / Comments: 3,675 WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: Rose Garden is a great place for... more

by Blogbot

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.


[Delia Suicide in Cute Socks]

This week Delia tells us why the Rose Garden is such a beautiful place to visit.

Members: 196 [Private: For SGs Only] / Comments: 3,675

WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: Rose Garden is a great place for SGs to discuss their mental illnesses without fear of judgment . The girls are extremely supportive. We have all had different experiences with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc., and there is always someone within the group who has an encouraging word. It's a great place for like-minded girls to speak freely about things that they normally would not talk about in their blogs or on the message boards.



DISCUSSION TIP: One of the most important things to be aware of is that group members can easily be triggered by posts, so it's always advisable to add a trigger warning or a disclaimer if something could make a member uncomfortable. There is a lot of sensitive material posted, and we all trust that any member would never betray the confidence of the group.



MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: The "Say Anything" thread is a great place for the girls to vent out their frustrations in a hold-nothing-back fashion. There is also a thread dedicated to three positive things that happened during the day, to remind us to find joy in the little things and not focus so much on the negative aspects of life.



BEST RANDOM QUOTE: "I never promised you a rose garden..."



WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: It's an SG-only group for girls who deal with mental illnesses including, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and schizophrenia. Ladies who would like to join should message Anarchie at the same time as applying and briefly explain why you’d like to join.



***
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Hollywood nearly killed Tank Girl. Dodgy movies have a way of doing that to people. Tank Girl's creators, writer Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett, would be the first to say the 1995 big screen incarnation of the cult comic strip character, which they had zero control over, wasn't all that... more

Hollywood nearly killed Tank Girl. Dodgy movies have a way of doing that to people. Tank Girl's creators, writer Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett, would be the first to say the 1995 big screen incarnation of the cult comic strip character, which they had zero control over, wasn't all that it should have been. Indeed they might even say it was a "shit sandwich" (well, actually, Martin did). Fortunately, Tank Girl's superhuman, and her fuck you spirit would never allow a bunch of scummy film execs and industry cheese weasels to have the last word. Down but not out, after a hiatus of over a decade, she put her Tank Boots back on, and kicked, screamed and farted her way back from near oblivion, with a little help from Martin.

In the process of documenting Tank Girl's past for a best-of book called The Cream of Tank Girl (out October 2008), Martin found a renewed passion for his foul-mouthed, mutant kangaroo-humping friend. Original draftsman Jamie Hewlett may have moved on to pastures new with Damon Albarn and their virtual Gorillaz band, but Tank Girl has found new pen pals to roughhouse with.

With a slew of fresh Tank Girl adventures already in print, in the bag, and on the horizon, Martin and his badly behaved progeny are smashing ("Sleesh! Plock! Glump!") their way into one of their most prolific periods ever. We sat down for a long distance chat with Martin, and took a gander at what the future holds for Tank Girl.

Alan Martin: Where are you calling from?

Nicole Powers: Los Angeles.

AM: What accent is that? It doesn't sound very American.

NP: No, you've got me there, I'm actually from Sheffield.

AM: Are you? That's just down the road from me then.

NP: So where are you right now?

AM: Well not just down the road, I live in Berwick-Upon-Tweed just on the border with Scotland.

NP: That's along way from where Tank Girl started in Worthing.

AM: It is, yes, thankfully.

NP: How did you end up there?

AM: My wife started a business with her mother running a shop, so we now live here and started our family here, a long way from Worthing. It couldn't be further in fact without going into Scotland.

NP: So are we going to see Tank Girl painting her face blue and going all Braveheart on us?

AM: [laughs] That's a good idea actually. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, we could take it in that direction.

NP: When you created Tank Girl some twenty years ago, what was the original concept? What did you have in mind?

AM: Nothing really. It was just a hotchpotch of ideas, of things that we liked. There was no real formula to it. Everything that went in just had to tick the cool boxes, you know. Did it look good? Did it sound good? Did it taste good? If it did, then it was OK to go in our comic. So pretty much everything that we were into, the style of clothes we were wearing, and all our friends were wearing, whatever band we were into. And as far as formulating story lines or plots, it just never happened. There was no high-brow construction. It was just what do we like? Brilliant, we'll put it in. That was as far as it went.

NP: You mention the clothes, and I have to say out of any comic book character Tank Girl has the coolest wardrobe.

AM: Yeah, well that's all entirely down to Jamie. I just dress like a tramp basically.

NP: If we opened up your closet doors what would we see?

AM: Mould. [laughs] Mildew and mould. No, I'm not that bad really, but Jamie is a real clothes horse, he really loves his clothes. He always did, even when he didn't have much money he was very, in a way, sharply dressed by going to charity shops and thrift shops, if that's possible. But he always had a very idiosyncratic style that was all his own, so that completely carried through to the comics. But the gang that we were all in, we all dressed very similarly in the current styles that were around, we all had leather jackets etc., etc.. So that all filtered through into the original Tank Girl, and then, as time went on, hippy influences came in as crusty and grunge reared its head and everything mutated slowly right the way through to Brit pop, when it all just went down the pan.

NP: That was one of the things that shocked me with the Tank Girl book, I never realized that she had a psychedelic, flower-powered, hippy-dippy period. What was that about?

AM: [laughs] I think it was a lot to do with us smoking too much pot really, and watching Easy Rider whilst we were drawing comics. There was definitely a few months where we were getting very stoned and watching Easy Rider or Woodstock the movie or whatever else was made in that era, you know, anything with Jack Nicholson in from the mid-sixties, so that all just filtered through, and then the same as all the original influences, they just sort of disappeared as we moved onto something else with our limited attention span.

NP: She has changed over the years. I guess if she was in her mid-twenties in 1988 that would put her in her mid-forties come 2008.

AM: Yes. Well, I guess the only mention I ever made of her age in the comic was at the beginning of one of the early strips when she says, "I'm 23," and that was when I was 23. So, yes, she'd be exactly the same age as me, and I was 22 ten it all started and I'm 42 now on her 20th anniversary. You don't need to be a mathematician to work that one out, but yes, she would be in her forties.

NP: Would she be wearing sensible shoes by now do you think?

AM: Some of the time, some of the time with her tongue firmly in her cheek. We did actually, when Ashley Wood, the artist who did the comeback series last year, The Gifting, he did the initial publicity poster for it and he drew her looking like a librarian. The picture came through to me and it was just a complete shock. I looked at it and went, "Oh my god. That is truly upsetting because everyone is going to say, 'why isn't she dressed like a punk anymore.'"

Then I thought about it and I remembered a line form the beginning of Darling with Julie Christie. In the movie she [talks] about not rebelling being the new rebellion, and so I wrote a blog about that and put it out, and the backlash was phenomenal. People were so upset. They thought that Tank Girl had changed into this sort of normal working girl, a nine-to-fiver dressed in middle class clothing, and we were almost lynched for it. Absolutely no one had a sense of humor about her. I was sat there going, "this is great," because it got us so much more publicity than if we'd just drawn her wearing what she was wearing when everyone last saw her.

NP: You really know how to ruin people's days.

AM: I know, but originally, like I say in The Cream of Tank Girl, that was what happened first time around, we were always battling other people's preconceived ideas of what she was. If anyone came up to us and went, "Brilliant, she's so much like me," we'd look at the and go, "Right, we're going to make her so much not like you the next time she comes in a comic." So we just kicked back against everything that tried to assimilate her, that tried to claim her or dominate her.

And it worked again with Ashley. I don't know whether he was actually thinking that, or whether he just doodled away and that's what came out but, yes, the backlash had started even before the comic came out. I was just laughing because, you know, it's a comic character, people need to get a bit of perspective really.

NP: Obviously Tank Girl had her Hollywood period. I always knew Tank Girl was going to go Hollywood because she had really white teeth. She was destined to go there. And I was watching the film last night, and what struck me was I couldn't understand what Gwen Stefani was doing running around in a tank. Lori Petty has the Gwen Stefani look, voice and...

AM: Or perhaps the other way around.

NP: I think so, I think so.

AM: Which came first, yeah. Yes, well, you know, people have their influences, however perverse they might be.

NP: In interviews you talk about how you would have liked to put Grange Hill and Benny Hill references into the Tank Girl script...

AM: Well, we were never actually really allowed to touch anything to do with that film. It was actually written into our contract that we weren't to have anything to do with it, but they did sort of wave the script in front of us. I think that quote came from Jamie, and I think it was a bit of artistic license there, but we did want to include references to the stuff that was in the original comic, but, obviously, ninety percent of it would have been lost on a worldwide audience because it was purely Brit stuff. The children's TV shows that we referenced, and the seventies pop bands, would have been lost on an American or even Australian [audience], so yeah, any idea like that we put forward to them was vetoed instantly, and so we soon thought that we wouldn't bother so...

NP: You say that, but since the success of shows like The Office, Ali G, and Little Britain, which is now in the USA, American's have become a lot more tolerant of us Brits twittering on about shit that means nothing to them, and they kind of get a kick out of it on some level, so do you think if it had been written today, you'd have been able to get away with a lot more?

AM: I still don't know. They focus grouped it in front of sixteen year olds. I think with The Office, and stuff like that, you'll get a more high-brow audience, even though it's quite a daft show it will be more lenient. But with your average MTV crowd, probably they'd look at it and go, "sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. This is absolute nonsense, I can't understand it," and they'd maybe be less tolerant of it. But, that said, I didn't think that was the audience we should have been aiming for. It shouldn't have been MTV, it should have been a much more cult film, it should have been much lower budget, and it should have had me writing it.

NP: Would you go for it again if you had the opportunity to do it right?

AM: We don't own the rights. MGM own the rights. We sold the rights. "In perpetuity" I think it says on the contract. MGM/UA own the rights, but I think it's actually been sold on to Sony. Anyway, whoever's got it probably doesn't even know they've got it, and I think the idea of doing another movie might be like throwing good money after bad, but you never know, you never know. I never thought I'd write the comic again -- that happened.

NP: What inspired you to revisit Tank Girl?

AM: What happened was, about seven years ago, Titan, the U.K. publishers, came to us and they said, "we'd like to have a bash at reissuing the Tank Girl stuff," because...there was obviously interest still out there. They said they'd like to reissue all of the original books. I wrote introductions for them and for one of them, because it was a bit of a thin book, I wrote a fake script supposedly that hadn't been used back in the early nineties, just to fill a few pages. It was an unused script with no images or anything, and I wrote it in about a day, and I just sat there and thought, "Well, that was easy." Then I looked at it and thought, "Well, actually I think that's quite good as far as Tank Girl scripts go."

So I suggested to them that we generate some new stuff, and then I started writing some more prosaic stuff rather than scripts, just short stories etc., and that formed the basis of my novel in inverted commas, Armadillo, which came out earlier this year. From then on it all just sort of spiralled. After that I wrote The Gifting, the series, and then punted that around looking for artists, and eventually came up with Ashley Wood, and it all grew from there.

NP: And now you have Rufus Dayglo doing some of the art.

AM: Rufus is pretty much doing all of it now. He's a comic drawing machine, and my savior.

NP: So how did you bump into him?

AM: Well actually, when I first wrote the Armadillo book, I was having trouble getting it published, so I published it myself and sold it on eBay. I was just printing to order. People would order it from me, I'd print it off on my home printer and just package it up and send it out. I sent it out around the world, to Japan and America and Kuala Lumpur, and various places, and Rufus in London, being an avid Tank Girl fan from back in the day, and also a comic art dealer, so he's always looking for stuff like that, he bought a copy off of me. Then he just got in touch with me, and he said, "This is great, what else are you doing?"

I told him that I'd written some comic scripts, and he said, "Well, why don't you do it with Ashley Wood, 'cause Ashley's a big Tank Girl fan." So he actually put me in touch with Ashley. At the time Rufus was working for an animation studio, but eventually he just ended up being the artist. It just seemed so natural. Ashley brought him in to do some layouts on the first comics, and from that we could just see that he had the sense of humor, and he had the style, and it all worked very well. We haven't looked back really. Rufus is just doing so much, he just has so much output. He's a very fast artist, he does two pages a day, so I'm having trouble keeping up with him because I don't write that fast.

NP: Stylistically what do you think Rufus brings to the page?

AM: I mean it's a whole different Tank Girl from what Jamie used to do, but Rufus is like an original punk. He knows loads of punks, not just punks on the street, he knows lots of actual punk bands etc.. He was very good friends with Dee Dee Ramone, who's going to be making an appearance in one of our comics actually, in Skidmarks.

He's a spikey-haired chap. His arms are covered in tattoos of Mick McMahon's Judge Dredd, and you just need to look at him and you know he's got style that is just sort of oozing out of his pores. In the same way Jamie had his particular style, you can tell instantly just by looking at him. He's a very impressive look, and he brings that to it, and his own peculiar sense of humor etc.. He brings the full kit. Everything I need, and also empathy with my scripts and my sense of humor.

NP: What can we expect in the future from you guys?

AM: Well at the moment we're just concentrating solely on standard comics. We're doing a strip in the U.K. in Judge Dredd Magazine, which is called Skidmarks. That's just eight pages a month, but that will be put into comics which will be come out as a mini series which will come out next year. That will be available in the States. Then that will come out in a graphic novel.

Next year we're doing another series with IDW, who did the stuff with Ashley Wood for us, called The Royal Escape. That's scheduled for around late spring I think. Also, we've got a whole new series that we're doing with Titan called Bad Wind Rising, which will be lots of little stories. So really, just a complete blitz on comics.

Also, it's taken a long time to manifest, but with original 200 AD artist Mick McMahon, were doing a six part comic called Carioca which is a whole complete departure from what Tank Girl usually looks like, and usually sounds like. It's a strange hybrid, but all very interesting stuff.

NP: Does Tank Girl appear in all these strips?

AM: It's all Tank Girl. Everything I said, it's all Tank Girl, that's what she's up to until, pretty much Christmas 2009, and maybe a bit beyond that.

NP: You have this book, The Cream of Tank Girl, coming out. Was that a trip to put together? Because you've got early sketches and bits torn off someone's jacket. How was it pulling all that stuff together? Was it all organized? Or did you have to rip the house apart?

AM: Well at lot of it was in my mom's loft, a lot of it was in Jamie's plan chest, and the rest of it was on eBay. I spent about a year just gathering magazines. I had a few copies of Deadline, where it was all originally produced from back in the day, but I've now got a full set of them. I had to get all that together, and I had to rifle through my mum's loft and rescue bits and bobs that were just buried in trunks from 20 years ago. Jamie's stuff as well, I had to go through his archive, if you can call it that, and scan all that in.

It was a labor of love. It took about a year and a half, even though it doesn't look like it, just to actually get enough stuff that was of good enough quality to make a book and then sit down and make notes on all of that, and chronologicalize it. It was a work.

NP: In that process of rediscovering your own life, what did you discover that you'd forgotten you knew, or forgotten you felt, or forgotten you did?

AM: I don't know if I'd forgotten any of it to be honest. I think because I'd spent so long not writing, and doing jobs that I didn't want to do, I dwelt on the stuff that I did love to do, and those memories maybe sort of became larger than life. I don't think any of it was buried in my memory, it all came to the fore very easily.

NP: Did the process of looking back bring back the enthusiasm? Because right now you're probably going through one of your most prolific periods ever.

AM: Yes, I was a lazy sod back in the day. I really didn't do a lot for my bread and butter. Yes, it did, it definitely rekindled my love for the character. Because the last thing that we did, the movie, not that we did it, but it just left such a bad taste in our mouths. We didn't even discuss it, we just knew we had to leave it behind, so that rekindled my enthusiasm, but also becoming a father has made me pull my finger out.

NP: How many children?

AM: I've just got one at the moment, just a little two-year old. A little boy, Rufus.

NP: It's going to be interesting as a dad, because obviously Tank Girl was quite a controversial character, with a potty mouth and some interesting sexual peccadilloes. At what point would you want your son reading this?

AM: It's funny...my nephew had an argument with this kid at school. He said, "My uncle writes Tank Girl." And this other kid, who'd obviously never even heard of Tank Girl, said, "Yeah, well so does mine." He had this big argument with him over whose dad actually wrote Tank Girl. So he told me that, and I though I could just give him a copy of Tank Girl and like sign it and he could take it along.

Then I thought, no, all of this has got swearing in it. So the last series has no swearing in it. Visions of Booga, it has a "bastard" here and a "bitch" there, but it doesn't have any F-words or C-words. So I'd given him the whole collection of that and he's sort of proudly taken it to school to show his mate and say, "Look, there you go." And we name checked him on one of the pages as well, just to really sort of rub it in. So I'll probably show my son that one first to break him in, then wait until he's eighteen and say, "Look, this is what it's really about."

NP: Do you think that's going to influence you as you're doing the Tank Girl stuff moving forward? Are you going to make it more PG-13?

AM: I don't really think about it to be honest. I know that so many people are going to be reading it as well that he just has to join the fray really.

NP: At least he'll learn some decent swear words reading your stuff.

AM: Exactly. He's going to go to school, he's going to learn how to swear, he's going to learn dirty jokes and read pornography behind the bike sheds and do everything that everyone else has done, so really I'm not in denial that a fifteen-year old boy might actually come into contact with some of the nastiness of the world. I'm just hopeful that he'll have my sense of humor about it all.

NP: And swear well.

AM: Well, yes, that's the dream isn't it. You can always hope. [laughs]

NP: So one of the other things I noticed about the book is that it's got a lot of bloody pirates in there. It's a good job I'm partial to pirates post-Johnny Depp. What's that about?

AM: Well there's only two strips. Really, that book, it isn't just Tank Girl, it was all about everything that me and Jamie did in that time, but the majority of it was Tank Girl. We slipped in everything else that were collaborations that we did, like the Ginsberg, Stipe & Kerouac strip that went into ID Magazine, and various other ideas that went nowhere like The 16s, and good pictures. It was just trying to compile everything that was mine and Jamie's collectively because it just hasn't been seen in a long time. The main thrust of it is that Jamie has a lot of people who are very interested in his art, and there's nowhere to see that stuff, how it all manifested, how it all evolved. So I thought it would be an interesting anthropological exercise to put all that in -- plus it fills up the pages.

NP: Are you and Jamie likely to do anything in the future?

AM: Well, Jamie's main collaborations are with Damon and his music now, so probably not, but never say never. He's just off on a different trajectory at the moment. I know he doesn't want to draw comics, but I'm very much into writing comics, so I wouldn't say anything in the near future, but who knows.

NP: Is he cool about you carrying on with Tank Girl?

AM: Absolutely, he's really supportive. He just let me go wild with it. Said get in there and do whatever you want with it really. I think as far as he's concerned he's sort of washed his hands of Tank Girl. Unless somebody actually came along and said, "Right Jamie, do an animated movie of Tank Girl, here's a hundred million," I doubt whether he'd have any interest in it, and he might not even then.

NP: But it still smacks of a generous spirit doesn't it?

AM: It does, yes. He's been very generous indeed, just letting me run wild with it. I can't imagine many other people doing that, but, because Tank Girl was always such a free-for-all in the first place it would be difficult for him to try keep a tight rein on it, or just say no completely. The spirit of Tank Girl runs like a wild horse. It's untamable. I don't think anyone could try and nail it down.

NP: Did Jamie have anything to say about the return of Tank Girl when she was dressed like a librarian?

AM: He laughed at it all basically. That's one of my criteria, my goals with everything I do. My target audience is Jamie. I'm always thinking, "Will Jamie like it? Will Jamie think it's funny?" Usually I keep on a sort of even keel because that keeps her where she always was, because that's how we always used to work. He was thinking, "Will Alan like this?" We were both sniggering at it together. So when I write, I'm always thinking of my old mates and various Tank Girl fans, and predominantly Jamie. Will he think it's funny? And now Rufus as well, because Rufus has to sit there and draw the damn stuff.

The other thing that Rufus loves is the fact that I'm always a little bit behind with my scripts, so he never knows what's going to happen in the next episode. Whereas with a regular job he would get a synopsis, he would get all the scripts up front, he'd read the whole lot, and he's be bored before he was half-way through the first episode. But the stuff we're doing at the moment, he says he loves it because each month he just does not know what's coming next. It's like reading a comic, but very slowly because he's drawing it.

NP: It's funny you say that you get things in late, because I went to the new website and it said, "Coming Summer 2008," and yet it's autumn.

AM: We did have it up by mid-September I think, which is late summer. It's up now though. It's full-fledged now. It hasn't got the animation and stuff that we're planning to do on it but it's definitely there. So go and have a look, because it's blossoming into a nice site.




Thanks to the rather wonderful Rufus Dayglo for the exclusive Tank Girl illustration. Love n' pencils right back at ya!

Alan and Rufus will be doing an exclusive page a month of Tankie for Suicide Girls. The first installment will run November 2. Check back the first Sunday of each month for more.

Dita Von Teese is one of the most beautiful and sexy women alive today. She is a SuicideGirls favorite for her breakthrough work in burlesque performance, fetish posing and being married to a music icon. Her famous figure can be found on display all over the internet and fetish magazines but now she has... more

Dita Von Teese is one of the most beautiful and sexy women alive today. She is a SuicideGirls favorite for her breakthrough work in burlesque performance, fetish posing and being married to a music icon. Her famous figure can be found on display all over the internet and fetish magazines but now she has showcased her humor and intelligence in the double sided book Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese.

Buy The Art of the Teese

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hi Dita.

Dita Von Teese: Hello, are you recording or taking notes?

DRE: Recording.

DVT: Good, I get real nervous about those people that write things down.

DRE: I’m an Internet writer. We never put anything down on paper.

DVT: Oh good. British journalists, as they like to call themselves, like to write down everything in their own words.

DRE: Yeah. You just came back from the UK, right?

DVT: I’m always really just coming back from there though. I’m on my way there on Tuesday. That’s probably where I work the most.

DRE: Why is that?

DVT: I’m more famous there. I’m in the tabloids and the newspapers on a regular basis there. Maybe that’s why. So therefore I get booked at more events. Also our dollar is weak there.

DRE: I read your last SuicideGirls interview and the book was meant to come out a while ago. Why did it get delayed?

DVT: It took a lot more time than we expected to secure all the rights to the photos. Also it’s published by Regan Books and they seem to have a high employee turnaround rate. So I went through like eight editors which made the process much longer. But I think the timing’s actually better than ever and I feel like everything has worked out the way that it should.

DRE: Why did the photos of you have to be cleared?

DVT: I don’t own all of my images. It’s important to me to retain ownership of a lot of my images that I shoot for my website especially, but we wanted to include the pictures that Ellen von Unwerth has taken and a lot of other famous photographers. We wanted to include all these photos that I did for fashion magazines and also with Playboy. I wanted to use a really broad range of photos. I didn’t want to be limited and it’s difficult sometimes to get clearance for those images. I did have to do a little bit of begging every now and then. I felt free to call people and ask them “Please, oh please, can I use that picture?” Usually the people that you have to do that with are the ones that aren’t very famous. I had the hardest time with people that weren’t high-paid, big-name photographers. The people that get finicky over their images are the ones that shouldn’t be as much.

DRE: That’s really funny.

DVT: Yeah. Somebody that took just photos of my show that I did in some small town somewhere and was really funny about letting me use the images.

DRE: You’re like “Who do you think you are?“

DVT: I try not to use that “Who do you think you are” language. But it’s a little bit like “Well, I let you photograph my show. I didn’t let anyone else shoot it. I let you shoot it.”

DRE: I saw the Asia Argento movie your husband is in.

DVT: Oh yeah. I haven’t seen that one yet actually.

DRE: It’s really painful but beautiful.

DVT: I think he lost interest in it when he found out it wasn’t a true story. We felt duped because we met J.T. Leroy and everything.

DRE: It’s almost embarrassing.

DVT: Yeah. I read the book cover to cover in one sitting and I have a hard time looking back and thinking, “Why did somebody make this up? Why make up more ugliness in the world when there’s so much already?” I don’t know why someone would write something like that for kicks.

DRE: Obviously there are two sides to your book with the fetish and burlesque. Do you look at what you do as having two sides?

DVT: Yes, I do but I feel like they’re all relative as well. It was difficult to separate the two because there are so many fetishistic elements in the burlesque side and classic nostalgic pin-up elements in the fetish side. I feel like they’re all very similar but I thought it would be interesting thing to write two stories. It’s all about the photos, but I wanted to write text in it. I wanted to explain what I think about burlesque and how I see it and why I got into it and the same thing with fetishism. I wanted people to see it in another light because you hear people talk about burlesque a lot. They talk about how it’s art and it was all beautiful and it was all good girls and that it was a kinder, gentler time but in reality it wasn’t really that way. I think people have lost sight of that because a lot of women that are performing neo burlesque now want to make sure that people think they’re not a stripper because they’re afraid of that word. I feel like people are trying to candy coat it a little bit even though in reality burlesque was a pretty risqué show in its time. They were bouncing around in G-Strings and pasties in the 30’s and I think people forget how racy it was. Also with fetishism I felt like so many people look at fetishism as being about bootlicking and hurting people and whips and chains. I want to portray an elegant fetishism. One of the things that I love is that I want to know the history about everything I’ve become involved with whether it’s fashion or hair or makeup and movies. I like knowing about how old movies were made, how things have changed and how they’re made now. I think it’s interesting to look at the past.

DRE: Do you see burlesque as a fetish as well?

DVT: Well because I started doing what I do in 1990 and everyone’s talking about the Bettie Page movie right now and it’s 16 years later. I feel like the fetishists have always gotten burlesque and understood burlesque a little bit better than the rest of the world. It takes the mainstream a long time to accept something or to even discover it. To me they’re similar because fetishists have always appreciated corset wearing and girls in girdles and women with a nostalgic, fetish look. That’s why I think that there’s a parallel with burlesque and fetishism.

DRE: I read that you never wear sweatpants, is that true?

DVT: I don’t wear sweatpants as casual wear. I have sweatpants that I sell on my site that are real cute that have my martini glass logo. I wear them over my costume to keep my legs warm when I’m getting ready for a show. But I don’t look at sweatpants as fashion. A lot of people think that’s something you should pick out as fashion but it’s not for me. I don’t really like dressing that way. If I want to be comfortable, I’ll wear a cashmere robe or a little vintage slip. I feel like you see all these girls walking around wearing UGG Boots and sweatpants which they spent a fortune on. I don’t understand why they put forth so much effort to look casual.

DRE: It sounds like you were very hands on with your book.

DVT: I wanted to be because people have done other books about me and I’ve seen the end result. I really wanted this book to be something where I could turn every page and be proud of it. I think it’s a good overview of my work over the past 16 years. I’m working on another book because I have lots of books I want to do. Eventually when I’m 70 I’ll write my scathing autobiography and dish all the dirt on everyone.

DRE: That’ll be really interesting. I can’t wait.

DVT: It’ll be awhile.

DRE: The text in your book was obviously secondary to the photos but it was still really interesting. It is almost a how-to book.

DVT: Yeah. I wanted it to be a fun, light, easy read. I think I had that instilled in my brain because they tried to make me take the text out. They said, “No one’s going to read it. They just want to look at the pictures.” I thought they might be right but I’m glad they left it in because it turns out a lot of people are enjoying it.

I had a hard time writing the book and thinking “Oh, there’s going to be people that are going to hate that I wrote this.” I had to come to terms with the fact that not everything is going to be what everyone agrees with. People aren’t always going to agree with what I have said or what I condone. A lot of women are going to say, “I don’t have time to put on red lipstick and high heels everyday.” I’m thinking, “But I’m just writing what I like and why I like it.” Whenever you try to appeal to everyone, you cannot win and you’ll never win. So I wrote it the way I wanted to write it.

DRE: Cosmo magazine is a hell of a lot worse than anything you would’ve written.

DVT: Yeah, but it’s different. When a girl’s reading Cosmo it’s different. They’re reading it as a general thing. But when someone’s reading what I wrote and the whole book is my opinion on everything, then there might be some stuff they don’t like.

DRE: When you first said there’s going to be a few people upset I thought it might be because you’re giving away all the good secrets or something like that.

DVT: No. There were some things my editor hesitated at me writing about like Chinese foot binding and things like that. They were really afraid of a few things. But I thought, “Well I’m writing about fetishism. I have to talk about all different angles of it.” I was surprised of the things they wanted me to take out, but in the end I left everything the way that I wanted it.

DRE: You wrote a list of your favorite perverts, if that was in descending order then seamed stocking fetishists are your favorites.

DVT: Yeah. I’ve met so many of these fetishists over the years and I love talking to them and hearing them describe their fetish and reading their letters to me. I really enjoy those people.

DRE: You wrote that you learn of a new fetish everyday.

DVT: Well, almost everyday. I learned of a new one the other day though.

DRE: What was it?

DVT: I have this gentleman who writes me letters about his fantasies where I wear the rarest and exotic furs in the world. He writes that I should be wearing the rarest animals and birds and enjoying their beauty. He’s really obsessed with fur and the rarer, the better.

DRE: That’s an expensive fetish.

DVT: More than that, that’s one that really upsets people too. I’m definitely not condoning that I want to go out and club a bunch of seals or something. He wrote out a script of what he’d like to see me doing, like rolling around on these exotic furs. At the end of his letter he wrote “Dita, have you ever littered? I would be so turned on at the sight of an elegantly dressed woman just throwing trash out into the green meadow.” I thought, “Wow. I’ve never heard of a littering fetish.” But he went on to describe that he would love to see a video of me throwing trash out of my car or throwing trash on the grass while I’m dressed in high heels, stockings and a beautiful dress. I don’t understand that one but I love hearing about it.

DRE: It sounds like he’s into really rich women.

DVT: Personally I would never litter. I get really upset when people litter.

DRE: You’re okay with fur but the littering is a no go.

DVT: I’m okay with some fur and I’m okay with my vintage fur. I’ve put a halt with my personal self on actively bringing new fur into my life. But that’s my choice. I’m never going to be anti-fur. Pamela Anderson wanted to rip my coat off me the other night.

DRE: Oh really?

DVT: Yeah. She was like “How can you wear that fur around me?” I was like “I’m sorry. I’ll take it off.” I threw it in the trash.

DRE: There are a lot of burlesque tours now, SuicideGirls included. Have you seen any of them?

DVT: I feel like I’ve seen a lot of the neo burlesque scene and I’ve seen some of the video of the SuicideGirls. I’ve seen a lot of authentic burlesque footage too. The only thing I’m offended by would be the media’s use of the word burlesque to describe a style. I think troupes or clubs that have girls just dancing around in fishnets and hot pants is not burlesque. Burlesque was about the striptease. I hear all these quotes coming out of people’s mouths like “We’re classy. We don’t take off our clothes.” I’m thinking “How insulting to say that Gypsy Rose Lee was a slut because she was a stripper” and she was the greatest stripper of all time. She was a mainstream star. She was as famous as any other star in that time in the 40’s. She did do a striptease and she did show some skin. When I hear people using the word burlesque to describe doing booty shake dances to a vintage song, I get a little bit offended. It’s like a red flag that they haven’t read anything about the history of burlesque.

DRE: Did you discover most of this on your own or did you have a mentor?

DVT: I started working in a strip club when I was 18 years old. By that time I was already dressing in vintage clothes and my hair was vintage style and I wore red lipstick. I was very interested in vintage-style pinup and dressing like Bettie Page. So I was already involved in this whole nostalgic, retro pinup thing. I immediately started reading about burlesque and wanting to know more about it. That’s how I developed my act. I met Dixie Evans, who runs the Exotic World Burlesque Museum that is now going to be in Vegas and some of the old time stars of burlesque. Then two years later I met my best friend Catherine D'Lish who was a burlesque performer who makes all my costumes now. After I met her, we started making big serious shows with props and more elaborate costumes. That was around 1993 and I was already on the cover of a lot of fetish magazines and I was touring the US and headlining strip clubs with my show.

DRE: I read that some people didn’t think that your shows were fetish in the beginning.

DVT: In the very beginning I did Torture Garden and the Rubber Ball and I did a Feather Fan Dance. Some people were saying, “What’s fetish about this?” The funniest part is that now ten years later, all those clubs are all-burlesque all the time. But at first I did take a little bit of a beating in the fetish community because people didn’t know why I was there and why I was performing with feather fans and rhinestones and feathers. They wanted to see latex and whips and everything. As for the SuicideGirls show, I think it’s really great that people take burlesque to another level. I don’t feel like everyone should be doing burlesque the way I do it or the way it was done in the past. But I do feel that if you’re going to perform it, don’t discount the striptease. The SuicideGirls definitely do not discount the striptease. The only way that burlesque can really evolve and survive is if people bring something new to it and make it interesting for people. I think it’s important for people to have new ideas for shows and not just be stuck in the past.

DRE: I’m no expert by far. Do you get completely naked in your shows or can you not because of the venues?

DVT: I have done shows completely nude because I did all these strip clubs when I first started headlining, but I always did it in a way where I left a little mystery. But really I only did that because people expected it of me because I was in strip clubs where the other girls were totally nude. In the past seven years or so I’ve done it with pasties and a G-string. I just did a big charity event for the LA Lakers and there were kids there. I asked the promoter if I should tone it down. They were like, “Nope. They know what they’re here to see.”

DRE: Wow. So it went over fine?

DVT: Yes it did. Everybody wants what the other venue had. They don’t want to get gypped. So they always want me to do the same show that I did at another party that they were at or something.

DRE: Have you seen the Bettie Page movie yet?

DVT: No, I haven’t but I feel like I should be getting a check any day for all the press I’ve been doing on it. I’ve been doing all these interviews and they’re showing clips of the movie and then talking to me about it. From the trailer it looks like Gretchen Mol did an amazing job. I do know that Bettie Page saw the movie and was not happy about it at all. I have lots of friends that were at the Playboy mansion when they showed the screening of it and she was basically hurling insults at the screen. But I’m glad that people will know about Bettie Page a little more than they did before. Over the past 16 years I’ve had people calling me Cleopatra and then suddenly when the E! channel did the story about Bettie Page, people were like “Oh, Bettie Page.” It’s like the normal people of the world are going to be calling probably half of the SuicideGirls Bettie Pages now. They’re all going to know who Bettie Page is. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I know how it feels.

DRE: Are you still into Bettie?

DVT: Yeah. I’ve always been into her. We instantly recognize her with the black hair and the bangs. Her image was so amazing and it was really modern for the 1950’s and I feel like it translates and can even look modern now. But to be honest though, my major influences are different. I have different people that I look to for inspiration but in the 90’s I went through a period where I was very interested in Bettie Page and everything that she did. But for what I do and my performances, I usually look to 1940’s film stars and song and dance girls. I’m people that I might not necessarily be trying to look like. For me inspiration comes from finding out what the spirit of that person was and not so much trying to mimic what they were. When I think about why I love Bettie Page, I don’t think so much about what she looks like and how she dressed, but why do we still care so much about her? She certainly wasn’t the only one that was wearing those clothes and shooting bondage photos. She was one of hundreds of girls doing that. But there was something about her that made her unique and special. Looking at why that is, is what’s more important than just looking at the aesthetic.

DRE: I was surprised to see that you’re not in [Marilyn Manson’s film] Phantasmagoria [The Visions of Lewis Carroll].

DVT: I really try to separate myself from the stuff that he does unless it’s completely and utterly appropriate. Unless there’s the perfect part in the movie for me, then I don’t think I should be in it. I want his movie to be as good as it can be so I’m not begging him to write me a part into it. If the right part is in it, then I’ll do it. But if not, then I don’t mind either way. I don’t think that just because I’m his wife, he has to find a part for me in his movie. I’ve done a few independent films and I have a few scripts that other people have written that are really exciting.

DRE: Like what?

DVT: One called The Black Dahlia Avenger, which is the true story of the Black Dahlia.

DRE: Do they have a director for that?

DVT: Yes, his name is William Eggleston III.

DRE: I guess he’s related to the photographer William Eggleston.

DVT: Yep. That’s in the works and a couple of other interesting things. I love acting but I really would be happier being known for what I do. I’d rather people know me for being a burlesque dancer and a pinup model than an actress. I don’t feel any great desire to be known as an actress. But I enjoy it when the script is right and when it’s an interesting story. I don’t really want to beat down Hollywood’s doors for a TV show or a silly movie.

DRE: Here is some British gossip I read about you, are you considering getting more plastic surgery?

DVT: No. In fact I think I read the same thing where it said something like “I want to stay hot for my husband so I get plastic surgery.” That’s silly. I basically said what I feel about plastic surgery because everybody knows that I had my breasts done. It’s no secret and why should it be a secret? It’s like the last taboo to be liberated. People have been having plastic surgery for over 100 years. They were trying to reshape people’s noses in the late 1800’s. I have about six books about beauty that were written between the 1920’s and the1930’s. They all talk about plastic surgery as an option. So I wouldn’t put people down for having plastic surgery. I don’t know why people are so afraid to admit what they’ve had done especially when it’s so obvious sometimes. I was just saying that I would not judge anyone for having plastic surgery and I would never say never. Maybe 20 years from now I might say, “Oh. Maybe a little more plastic surgery.” But I haven’t had anything else done but my breasts. I’ve been too scared to even get Botox even though I make jokes about getting it all the time.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Hollywood nearly killed Tank Girl. Dodgy movies have a way of doing that to people. Tank Girl's creators, writer Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett, would be the first to say the 1995 big screen incarnation of the cult comic strip character, which they had zero control over, wasn't all that... more

Hollywood nearly killed Tank Girl. Dodgy movies have a way of doing that to people. Tank Girl's creators, writer Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett, would be the first to say the 1995 big screen incarnation of the cult comic strip character, which they had zero control over, wasn't all that it should have been. Indeed they might even say it was a "shit sandwich" (well, actually, Martin did). Fortunately, Tank Girl's superhuman, and her fuck you spirit would never allow a bunch of scummy film execs and industry cheese weasels to have the last word. Down but not out, after a hiatus of over a decade, she put her Tank Boots back on, and kicked, screamed and farted her way back from near oblivion, with a little help from Martin.

In the process of documenting Tank Girl's past for a best-of book called The Cream of Tank Girl (out October 2008), Martin found a renewed passion for his foul-mouthed, mutant kangaroo-humping friend. Original draftsman Jamie Hewlett may have moved on to pastures new with Damon Albarn and their virtual Gorillaz band, but Tank Girl has found new pen pals to roughhouse with.

With a slew of fresh Tank Girl adventures already in print, in the bag, and on the horizon, Martin and his badly behaved progeny are smashing ("Sleesh! Plock! Glump!") their way into one of their most prolific periods ever. We sat down for a long distance chat with Martin, and took a gander at what the future holds for Tank Girl.

Alan Martin: Where are you calling from?

Nicole Powers: Los Angeles.

AM: What accent is that? It doesn't sound very American.

NP: No, you've got me there, I'm actually from Sheffield.

AM: Are you? That's just down the road from me then.

NP: So where are you right now?

AM: Well not just down the road, I live in Berwick-Upon-Tweed just on the border with Scotland.

NP: That's along way from where Tank Girl started in Worthing.

AM: It is, yes, thankfully.

NP: How did you end up there?

AM: My wife started a business with her mother running a shop, so we now live here and started our family here, a long way from Worthing. It couldn't be further in fact without going into Scotland.

NP: So are we going to see Tank Girl painting her face blue and going all Braveheart on us?

AM: [laughs] That's a good idea actually. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, we could take it in that direction.

NP: When you created Tank Girl some twenty years ago, what was the original concept? What did you have in mind?

AM: Nothing really. It was just a hotchpotch of ideas, of things that we liked. There was no real formula to it. Everything that went in just had to tick the cool boxes, you know. Did it look good? Did it sound good? Did it taste good? If it did, then it was OK to go in our comic. So pretty much everything that we were into, the style of clothes we were wearing, and all our friends were wearing, whatever band we were into. And as far as formulating story lines or plots, it just never happened. There was no high-brow construction. It was just what do we like? Brilliant, we'll put it in. That was as far as it went.

NP: You mention the clothes, and I have to say out of any comic book character Tank Girl has the coolest wardrobe.

AM: Yeah, well that's all entirely down to Jamie. I just dress like a tramp basically.

NP: If we opened up your closet doors what would we see?

AM: Mould. [laughs] Mildew and mould. No, I'm not that bad really, but Jamie is a real clothes horse, he really loves his clothes. He always did, even when he didn't have much money he was very, in a way, sharply dressed by going to charity shops and thrift shops, if that's possible. But he always had a very idiosyncratic style that was all his own, so that completely carried through to the comics. But the gang that we were all in, we all dressed very similarly in the current styles that were around, we all had leather jackets etc., etc.. So that all filtered through into the original Tank Girl, and then, as time went on, hippy influences came in as crusty and grunge reared its head and everything mutated slowly right the way through to Brit pop, when it all just went down the pan.

NP: That was one of the things that shocked me with the Tank Girl book, I never realized that she had a psychedelic, flower-powered, hippy-dippy period. What was that about?

AM: [laughs] I think it was a lot to do with us smoking too much pot really, and watching Easy Rider whilst we were drawing comics. There was definitely a few months where we were getting very stoned and watching Easy Rider or Woodstock the movie or whatever else was made in that era, you know, anything with Jack Nicholson in from the mid-sixties, so that all just filtered through, and then the same as all the original influences, they just sort of disappeared as we moved onto something else with our limited attention span.

NP: She has changed over the years. I guess if she was in her mid-twenties in 1988 that would put her in her mid-forties come 2008.

AM: Yes. Well, I guess the only mention I ever made of her age in the comic was at the beginning of one of the early strips when she says, "I'm 23," and that was when I was 23. So, yes, she'd be exactly the same age as me, and I was 22 ten it all started and I'm 42 now on her 20th anniversary. You don't need to be a mathematician to work that one out, but yes, she would be in her forties.

NP: Would she be wearing sensible shoes by now do you think?

AM: Some of the time, some of the time with her tongue firmly in her cheek. We did actually, when Ashley Wood, the artist who did the comeback series last year, The Gifting, he did the initial publicity poster for it and he drew her looking like a librarian. The picture came through to me and it was just a complete shock. I looked at it and went, "Oh my god. That is truly upsetting because everyone is going to say, 'why isn't she dressed like a punk anymore.'"

Then I thought about it and I remembered a line form the beginning of Darling with Julie Christie. In the movie she [talks] about not rebelling being the new rebellion, and so I wrote a blog about that and put it out, and the backlash was phenomenal. People were so upset. They thought that Tank Girl had changed into this sort of normal working girl, a nine-to-fiver dressed in middle class clothing, and we were almost lynched for it. Absolutely no one had a sense of humor about her. I was sat there going, "this is great," because it got us so much more publicity than if we'd just drawn her wearing what she was wearing when everyone last saw her.

NP: You really know how to ruin people's days.

AM: I know, but originally, like I say in The Cream of Tank Girl, that was what happened first time around, we were always battling other people's preconceived ideas of what she was. If anyone came up to us and went, "Brilliant, she's so much like me," we'd look at the and go, "Right, we're going to make her so much not like you the next time she comes in a comic." So we just kicked back against everything that tried to assimilate her, that tried to claim her or dominate her.

And it worked again with Ashley. I don't know whether he was actually thinking that, or whether he just doodled away and that's what came out but, yes, the backlash had started even before the comic came out. I was just laughing because, you know, it's a comic character, people need to get a bit of perspective really.

NP: Obviously Tank Girl had her Hollywood period. I always knew Tank Girl was going to go Hollywood because she had really white teeth. She was destined to go there. And I was watching the film last night, and what struck me was I couldn't understand what Gwen Stefani was doing running around in a tank. Lori Petty has the Gwen Stefani look, voice and...

AM: Or perhaps the other way around.

NP: I think so, I think so.

AM: Which came first, yeah. Yes, well, you know, people have their influences, however perverse they might be.

NP: In interviews you talk about how you would have liked to put Grange Hill and Benny Hill references into the Tank Girl script...

AM: Well, we were never actually really allowed to touch anything to do with that film. It was actually written into our contract that we weren't to have anything to do with it, but they did sort of wave the script in front of us. I think that quote came from Jamie, and I think it was a bit of artistic license there, but we did want to include references to the stuff that was in the original comic, but, obviously, ninety percent of it would have been lost on a worldwide audience because it was purely Brit stuff. The children's TV shows that we referenced, and the seventies pop bands, would have been lost on an American or even Australian [audience], so yeah, any idea like that we put forward to them was vetoed instantly, and so we soon thought that we wouldn't bother so...

NP: You say that, but since the success of shows like The Office, Ali G, and Little Britain, which is now in the USA, American's have become a lot more tolerant of us Brits twittering on about shit that means nothing to them, and they kind of get a kick out of it on some level, so do you think if it had been written today, you'd have been able to get away with a lot more?

AM: I still don't know. They focus grouped it in front of sixteen year olds. I think with The Office, and stuff like that, you'll get a more high-brow audience, even though it's quite a daft show it will be more lenient. But with your average MTV crowd, probably they'd look at it and go, "sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. This is absolute nonsense, I can't understand it," and they'd maybe be less tolerant of it. But, that said, I didn't think that was the audience we should have been aiming for. It shouldn't have been MTV, it should have been a much more cult film, it should have been much lower budget, and it should have had me writing it.

NP: Would you go for it again if you had the opportunity to do it right?

AM: We don't own the rights. MGM own the rights. We sold the rights. "In perpetuity" I think it says on the contract. MGM/UA own the rights, but I think it's actually been sold on to Sony. Anyway, whoever's got it probably doesn't even know they've got it, and I think the idea of doing another movie might be like throwing good money after bad, but you never know, you never know. I never thought I'd write the comic again -- that happened.

NP: What inspired you to revisit Tank Girl?

AM: What happened was, about seven years ago, Titan, the U.K. publishers, came to us and they said, "we'd like to have a bash at reissuing the Tank Girl stuff," because...there was obviously interest still out there. They said they'd like to reissue all of the original books. I wrote introductions for them and for one of them, because it was a bit of a thin book, I wrote a fake script supposedly that hadn't been used back in the early nineties, just to fill a few pages. It was an unused script with no images or anything, and I wrote it in about a day, and I just sat there and thought, "Well, that was easy." Then I looked at it and thought, "Well, actually I think that's quite good as far as Tank Girl scripts go."

So I suggested to them that we generate some new stuff, and then I started writing some more prosaic stuff rather than scripts, just short stories etc., and that formed the basis of my novel in inverted commas, Armadillo, which came out earlier this year. From then on it all just sort of spiralled. After that I wrote The Gifting, the series, and then punted that around looking for artists, and eventually came up with Ashley Wood, and it all grew from there.

NP: And now you have Rufus Dayglo doing some of the art.

AM: Rufus is pretty much doing all of it now. He's a comic drawing machine, and my savior.

NP: So how did you bump into him?

AM: Well actually, when I first wrote the Armadillo book, I was having trouble getting it published, so I published it myself and sold it on eBay. I was just printing to order. People would order it from me, I'd print it off on my home printer and just package it up and send it out. I sent it out around the world, to Japan and America and Kuala Lumpur, and various places, and Rufus in London, being an avid Tank Girl fan from back in the day, and also a comic art dealer, so he's always looking for stuff like that, he bought a copy off of me. Then he just got in touch with me, and he said, "This is great, what else are you doing?"

I told him that I'd written some comic scripts, and he said, "Well, why don't you do it with Ashley Wood, 'cause Ashley's a big Tank Girl fan." So he actually put me in touch with Ashley. At the time Rufus was working for an animation studio, but eventually he just ended up being the artist. It just seemed so natural. Ashley brought him in to do some layouts on the first comics, and from that we could just see that he had the sense of humor, and he had the style, and it all worked very well. We haven't looked back really. Rufus is just doing so much, he just has so much output. He's a very fast artist, he does two pages a day, so I'm having trouble keeping up with him because I don't write that fast.

NP: Stylistically what do you think Rufus brings to the page?

AM: I mean it's a whole different Tank Girl from what Jamie used to do, but Rufus is like an original punk. He knows loads of punks, not just punks on the street, he knows lots of actual punk bands etc.. He was very good friends with Dee Dee Ramone, who's going to be making an appearance in one of our comics actually, in Skidmarks.

He's a spikey-haired chap. His arms are covered in tattoos of Mick McMahon's Judge Dredd, and you just need to look at him and you know he's got style that is just sort of oozing out of his pores. In the same way Jamie had his particular style, you can tell instantly just by looking at him. He's a very impressive look, and he brings that to it, and his own peculiar sense of humor etc.. He brings the full kit. Everything I need, and also empathy with my scripts and my sense of humor.

NP: What can we expect in the future from you guys?

AM: Well at the moment we're just concentrating solely on standard comics. We're doing a strip in the U.K. in Judge Dredd Magazine, which is called Skidmarks. That's just eight pages a month, but that will be put into comics which will be come out as a mini series which will come out next year. That will be available in the States. Then that will come out in a graphic novel.

Next year we're doing another series with IDW, who did the stuff with Ashley Wood for us, called The Royal Escape. That's scheduled for around late spring I think. Also, we've got a whole new series that we're doing with Titan called Bad Wind Rising, which will be lots of little stories. So really, just a complete blitz on comics.

Also, it's taken a long time to manifest, but with original 200 AD artist Mick McMahon, were doing a six part comic called Carioca which is a whole complete departure from what Tank Girl usually looks like, and usually sounds like. It's a strange hybrid, but all very interesting stuff.

NP: Does Tank Girl appear in all these strips?

AM: It's all Tank Girl. Everything I said, it's all Tank Girl, that's what she's up to until, pretty much Christmas 2009, and maybe a bit beyond that.

NP: You have this book, The Cream of Tank Girl, coming out. Was that a trip to put together? Because you've got early sketches and bits torn off someone's jacket. How was it pulling all that stuff together? Was it all organized? Or did you have to rip the house apart?

AM: Well at lot of it was in my mom's loft, a lot of it was in Jamie's plan chest, and the rest of it was on eBay. I spent about a year just gathering magazines. I had a few copies of Deadline, where it was all originally produced from back in the day, but I've now got a full set of them. I had to get all that together, and I had to rifle through my mum's loft and rescue bits and bobs that were just buried in trunks from 20 years ago. Jamie's stuff as well, I had to go through his archive, if you can call it that, and scan all that in.

It was a labor of love. It took about a year and a half, even though it doesn't look like it, just to actually get enough stuff that was of good enough quality to make a book and then sit down and make notes on all of that, and chronologicalize it. It was a work.

NP: In that process of rediscovering your own life, what did you discover that you'd forgotten you knew, or forgotten you felt, or forgotten you did?

AM: I don't know if I'd forgotten any of it to be honest. I think because I'd spent so long not writing, and doing jobs that I didn't want to do, I dwelt on the stuff that I did love to do, and those memories maybe sort of became larger than life. I don't think any of it was buried in my memory, it all came to the fore very easily.

NP: Did the process of looking back bring back the enthusiasm? Because right now you're probably going through one of your most prolific periods ever.

AM: Yes, I was a lazy sod back in the day. I really didn't do a lot for my bread and butter. Yes, it did, it definitely rekindled my love for the character. Because the last thing that we did, the movie, not that we did it, but it just left such a bad taste in our mouths. We didn't even discuss it, we just knew we had to leave it behind, so that rekindled my enthusiasm, but also becoming a father has made me pull my finger out.

NP: How many children?

AM: I've just got one at the moment, just a little two-year old. A little boy, Rufus.

NP: It's going to be interesting as a dad, because obviously Tank Girl was quite a controversial character, with a potty mouth and some interesting sexual peccadilloes. At what point would you want your son reading this?

AM: It's funny...my nephew had an argument with this kid at school. He said, "My uncle writes Tank Girl." And this other kid, who'd obviously never even heard of Tank Girl, said, "Yeah, well so does mine." He had this big argument with him over whose dad actually wrote Tank Girl. So he told me that, and I though I could just give him a copy of Tank Girl and like sign it and he could take it along.

Then I thought, no, all of this has got swearing in it. So the last series has no swearing in it. Visions of Booga, it has a "bastard" here and a "bitch" there, but it doesn't have any F-words or C-words. So I'd given him the whole collection of that and he's sort of proudly taken it to school to show his mate and say, "Look, there you go." And we name checked him on one of the pages as well, just to really sort of rub it in. So I'll probably show my son that one first to break him in, then wait until he's eighteen and say, "Look, this is what it's really about."

NP: Do you think that's going to influence you as you're doing the Tank Girl stuff moving forward? Are you going to make it more PG-13?

AM: I don't really think about it to be honest. I know that so many people are going to be reading it as well that he just has to join the fray really.

NP: At least he'll learn some decent swear words reading your stuff.

AM: Exactly. He's going to go to school, he's going to learn how to swear, he's going to learn dirty jokes and read pornography behind the bike sheds and do everything that everyone else has done, so really I'm not in denial that a fifteen-year old boy might actually come into contact with some of the nastiness of the world. I'm just hopeful that he'll have my sense of humor about it all.

NP: And swear well.

AM: Well, yes, that's the dream isn't it. You can always hope. [laughs]

NP: So one of the other things I noticed about the book is that it's got a lot of bloody pirates in there. It's a good job I'm partial to pirates post-Johnny Depp. What's that about?

AM: Well there's only two strips. Really, that book, it isn't just Tank Girl, it was all about everything that me and Jamie did in that time, but the majority of it was Tank Girl. We slipped in everything else that were collaborations that we did, like the Ginsberg, Stipe & Kerouac strip that went into ID Magazine, and various other ideas that went nowhere like The 16s, and good pictures. It was just trying to compile everything that was mine and Jamie's collectively because it just hasn't been seen in a long time. The main thrust of it is that Jamie has a lot of people who are very interested in his art, and there's nowhere to see that stuff, how it all manifested, how it all evolved. So I thought it would be an interesting anthropological exercise to put all that in -- plus it fills up the pages.

NP: Are you and Jamie likely to do anything in the future?

AM: Well, Jamie's main collaborations are with Damon and his music now, so probably not, but never say never. He's just off on a different trajectory at the moment. I know he doesn't want to draw comics, but I'm very much into writing comics, so I wouldn't say anything in the near future, but who knows.

NP: Is he cool about you carrying on with Tank Girl?

AM: Absolutely, he's really supportive. He just let me go wild with it. Said get in there and do whatever you want with it really. I think as far as he's concerned he's sort of washed his hands of Tank Girl. Unless somebody actually came along and said, "Right Jamie, do an animated movie of Tank Girl, here's a hundred million," I doubt whether he'd have any interest in it, and he might not even then.

NP: But it still smacks of a generous spirit doesn't it?

AM: It does, yes. He's been very generous indeed, just letting me run wild with it. I can't imagine many other people doing that, but, because Tank Girl was always such a free-for-all in the first place it would be difficult for him to try keep a tight rein on it, or just say no completely. The spirit of Tank Girl runs like a wild horse. It's untamable. I don't think anyone could try and nail it down.

NP: Did Jamie have anything to say about the return of Tank Girl when she was dressed like a librarian?

AM: He laughed at it all basically. That's one of my criteria, my goals with everything I do. My target audience is Jamie. I'm always thinking, "Will Jamie like it? Will Jamie think it's funny?" Usually I keep on a sort of even keel because that keeps her where she always was, because that's how we always used to work. He was thinking, "Will Alan like this?" We were both sniggering at it together. So when I write, I'm always thinking of my old mates and various Tank Girl fans, and predominantly Jamie. Will he think it's funny? And now Rufus as well, because Rufus has to sit there and draw the damn stuff.

The other thing that Rufus loves is the fact that I'm always a little bit behind with my scripts, so he never knows what's going to happen in the next episode. Whereas with a regular job he would get a synopsis, he would get all the scripts up front, he'd read the whole lot, and he's be bored before he was half-way through the first episode. But the stuff we're doing at the moment, he says he loves it because each month he just does not know what's coming next. It's like reading a comic, but very slowly because he's drawing it.

NP: It's funny you say that you get things in late, because I went to the new website and it said, "Coming Summer 2008," and yet it's autumn.

AM: We did have it up by mid-September I think, which is late summer. It's up now though. It's full-fledged now. It hasn't got the animation and stuff that we're planning to do on it but it's definitely there. So go and have a look, because it's blossoming into a nice site.




Thanks to the rather wonderful Rufus Dayglo for the exclusive Tank Girl illustration. Love n' pencils right back at ya!

Alan and Rufus will be doing an exclusive page a month of Tankie for Suicide Girls. The first installment will run November 2. Check back the first Sunday of each month for more.

A.J. Focht Last weekend was New York Comic Con 2012. Out of all of the news announced, the most exciting might have been that Agent Coulson is not dead, and will be returning for the S.H.I.E.L.D television series. It wasn’t just the TV show that was mentioned; Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) had a few select... more

A.J. Focht

Last weekend was New York Comic Con 2012. Out of all of the news announced, the most exciting might have been that Agent Coulson is not dead, and will be returning for the S.H.I.E.L.D television series. It wasn’t just the TV show that was mentioned; Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) had a few select words for the crowd:

Marvel is taking full advantage of its social media with their new campaign for Iron Man 3. They are ready to release the first sneak peak for the movie, but only after the fans “power up Iron Mans core” by likingthe movie’s Facebook page. If you want to see the Iron Man 3 preview a little sooner and approve of this type of social media marketing, make sure you toss them a ‘like’. Iron man 3 is set to release in theaters on May 3, 2013.

The official synopsis for Thor: The Dark World has been released. It promises that in the aftermath of Thor and The Avengers, Thor will traverse the cosmos and the Nine Realms in an attempt to restore order. His battle against an ancient army will bring him back to Earth and reconnect him with Jane Foster. The end of the synopsis says Thor will have to sacrifice everything to save us all. This could mean many things including that he will die or lose his powers and become Donald Blake. Thor: The Dark World hits theaters on November 8, 2013.

The Marvel cinematic universe has just grown to include everyone’s favorite blind superhero. The rights to Daredevil have reverted from FOX back to Marvel. The chances of Marvel rebooting the Daredevil movie into the new Marvel universe are high. Most of the film rights to Marvel’s mainstay superheroes are still owned by other companies so Disney and Marvel are likely to jump on this franchise, especially since the newest run of Daredevil has gained quite a following.

New photos from the set of The Wolverine have been released. They give first looks at the film’s villains. Svetlana Khodchenkova is pictured in her role as Viper. There are also shots of Will Yun Lee who will be playing Silver Samurai in the film. The Wolverine opens in theaters on July 26, 2013.

Another official synopsis has been released, this one for Kick-Ass 2. The antics of Kick-Ass and Hit Girl have stirred a new wave of masked heroes led by Colonel Stars and Stripes, who is played by Jim Carrey. Red Mist seeks revenge and is reborn as the first world’s first super villain, Mother Fucker. When he assembles his own evil league and starts killing masked heroes, only Kick-Ass and Hit Girl can save them. Kick-Ass 2 releases in theaters on June 28, 2013.

The first footage from the Evil Dead remake was screened at NYCC. It inspired a certain sense of déjà vu as we return to the infamous cabin in the woods. A group of kids enter the cabin and a boy in the group comes across the infamous Necronomicon. More clips were shown as well, including someone starting a chainsaw and the return of the raping tree. Evil Dead releases on April 12, 2013.

The Walking Dead has returned with a record breaking premiere. The Season 3 opener had 10.9 million viewers and it was the highest rated episode in the series’ history. The episode now holds the record for biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history. Check back next week for our preview of the new Walking Dead Magazine.

by Laurelin (image) There are few things in life I love and hate more than the glow and vibrating of a cell phone when you’re expecting something big. I use the term “big” loosely; 9 times out of 10 I’ve just said something to a guy and I’m not sure what he’s going to say: minutes crawl... more

by Laurelin

There are few things in life I love and hate more than the glow and vibrating of a cell phone when you’re expecting something big. I use the term “big” loosely; 9 times out of 10 I’ve just said something to a guy and I’m not sure what he’s going to say: minutes crawl by like hours and then (as though I had been holding my breath the whole time) there it is, the reassuring buzz and glow. When that buzz is never returned however, we enter the moments where you become acutely aware you had been holding your breath, and you make that conscious decision to slowly exhale or simply pass out.

I remember one relationship in particular; one where when I woke up one morning he was just… gone. He had left me, I knew it, but when something so drastic happens you don’t just process it and know to move on. Your world is rocked, your foundation shaken to the core and everything you trusted – especially yourself – is betrayed. A year went by and everyday seemed the same, but in reality, a year is a year, and I suppose I was healing.

I remember I was at a party and I wasn’t even thinking about him. I was in a tube top that kept falling down and I stepped outside to the front step where no one inside would see me so I could tug it up. Mid tug my cell phone buzzed, and in the darkness of that October night I saw his name glowing. I literally felt my heart stop and I put my hand out to steady myself against the front door. I answered the call, and what happened after that is now insignificant and trite, but I will never forget that feeling; the wind knocked out of me with just a small glow in the dark.

Fast forward to now and I’m realizing that once again, I have made a mistake and started to let someone in, when really they had no business in my life in the first place. This isn’t a time stopping event, probably not even worth writing about, but I know I am and I probably will again. His texts, now few and far between, still managed to ruin my dinner when I looked down over a plate of crab rangoon and saw his name glowing in the gloom. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry and I wanted to dunk my iPhone into the giant bowl of duck sauce.

Earlier that day it had been a text from a married ex. “Saw this and thought of you,” he had said, sending a photo of a CD that played our song. Another one had stopped by the bar the night before and hugged me. “I’m sorry, I’m an ass and I didn’t call you on your birthday,” he said. “It’s okay,” I mumbled. “I didn’t call you on yours either.” He tells me to call him sometime, and I say I will although I know I won’t because I deleted his phone number when I was finally able to delete him from my life. I don’t expect to hear from him anytime soon.

I realize that I’m drifting off into my egg drop soup and I snap back to reality, tucking my cell phone into my purse and deciding to not look at it for the next hour. Suddenly it buzzes and I glance down just one last time. My defeated face turns into a bright grin, my cheeks turning red and my friends start to giggle and ask to see pictures when I show them who it is. Those boys… they know just the right moment to pop up and say hi. I make a conscious decision to leave my phone out of the duck sauce after all.

***



Laurelin is running the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure for breast cancer research and awareness on Saturday, October 20th; every donation counts and is greatly appreciated.



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Before punk and new wave erupted in New York City in the late '70s, female pop singers were like carefully crafted charms dangled from a bracelet; they were chanteuses whose sexuality was packaged as the ultimate pop commodity. When the tokenism of '60s rock finally gave way to the rebel yell... more

Before punk and new wave erupted in New York City in the late '70s, female pop singers were like carefully crafted charms dangled from a bracelet; they were chanteuses whose sexuality was packaged as the ultimate pop commodity. When the tokenism of '60s rock finally gave way to the rebel yell of late '70s and early '80s punk, female singers pushed a brazen, me-first attitude and redefined tough-girl with a heart of gold, or in Debbie Harry's case, the romantic she is, a heart of glass. And though some said she was too beautiful for punk, Debbie Harry was more than just somebody’s darling.

Harry remembers always wanting to write music. "I got so much out of listening to other people’s music," she says, "that the idea of making my own was just irresistible." After high school in the early '60s she landed in New York City and worked odd jobs as a secretary and even a Playboy Bunny before settling into her role as singer for the band The Wind in the Willows, a folk rock ensemble very true to the era. But it wasn't until she abandoned folk for an edgier collaboration with guitarist and lover Chris Stein, that Harry came into her own and began perfecting the Blondie persona we know today and have been captivated by for years. It’s is a complicated and unaffected beauty, what she once described as "that age-old tantalizing persona of innocence and sexuality."

With the pieces in place, it didn't take long for Blondie to make a name for itself. New Wave by genre, punk rock in attitude, the band quickly became associated with the burgeoning CBGB’s scene. Blondie had this ultra-cool, somewhat nonchalant blue-collar decadence about it that made the band irresistible. New York knew it and it wasn’t long before the rest of the world caught on. After the release of Blondie's debut "Parallel Lines" in 1976 and its hit single "Heart of Glass", the band was catapulted to success and Debbie Harry's impact was already becoming that of legend.

However influential, it is 30 years since she first stepped into the limelight with Blondie and the last thing Debbie Harry wants is to be considered a token of yesterday. While many of her punk peers have faded into obscurity or become over-glorified icons of their former selves, she continues to write music and push new ground. With the release of “Necessary Evil”, her sixth solo album and first in over a decade, Debbie Harry proves that she’s still got what it takes. Out now, the album is some of her more original work to date, a collection of songs that string together like snapshots from the eyes of a woman who has loved, lost, and loved again, and doesn’t regret a damn thing.

SuicideGirls caught up with her for an afternoon chat…

Erin Broadley: Hello. How are you?

Debbie Harry: Hello. I’m good. How are you?

EB: Very busy [laughs].

DH: Oh, I know!

EB: How has the reception been so far to Necessary Evil?

DH: It’s good. It’s going crazy, really. I’ve been talking to so many people. I’m surprised, actually, that so many people are interested, but it’s great. I’m feeling very encouraged.

EB: Good! You’ve said that the music you’ve been listening to these days is much more left of center and that was something you really wanted to bring out in this album. Do you think you succeeded, perhaps compared to your previous solo releases?

DH: Well, I think I was more involved with actually writing the music on this one than the others. I was much more deeply involved in the creation of the songs from A to Z, really. Since I was working with two other people, it was such a small group. Usually with Blondie, working with six people and a producer, it’s a lot of heads, a lot of opinions and styles and stuff to make it to one thing. This was sort of a lot simpler, a little bit more basic, really.

EB: Fewer cooks in the kitchen?

DH: Yeah, yeah.

EB: One thing you said was that you wanted to get away from your cute girl sound and get a bit more aggressive and darker with your vocals. I think this album really plays up your devilish sense of humor. Why was that a choice you decided to make this time around?

DH: Well, it just seemed very natural to me … a very comfortable place to be. I just sort of followed my [instincts].

EB: A lot of the focus on you has always involved your groundbreaking role as a woman running a rock band in the ‘70s. Your partner Chris Stein once said that, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the male rock establishment was really sexist and you got knocked around heavily. Are there any particular recollections from that period that stand out? Do you think it’s much different now?

DH: Well yeah, I do. To some degree, there’s a lot more girls and women actually doing stuff in the industry and in many industries, for that matter. Things have really changed in that respect. [When it coms to] selling sexuality, compared to what goes on today it looked like I was selling shoes or
something!

EB: [Laughs]

DH: I was doing hardly anything compared to the stuff that is revealed today. You know, so I feel like I’m sort of behind the times when it comes to that.

EB: Right. You once said that it was the age-old persona of innocence mixed with sexuality that really worked for you – that mysterious combination. Do you think that seductive mystery of innocence is even possible anymore with the way the media exploits female sexuality? It seems more fleeting than ever.

DH: Yeah, I think you’re right. I would imagine it would be very difficult to sort of make that happen today in a big way. It’s a much more sophisticated world. Even with very, very young performers it’s [like that]. I mean, just take for example those baby beauty pageants.

EB: Oh, man [laughs].

DH: That exemplifies it in a nutshell.

EB: Those are creepy, huh?

DH: I know it’s just weird.

EB: Yeah. Well, earlier this year you were part of Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors tour. It was hilarious because the other day my friend told me about a dream she had where you and Cyndi Lauper collaborated on a duet.

DH: Ah [laughs]. I haven’t spoken to her but I sort of got the idea that she wanted to make [the True Colors tour] a regular event, which I think is dynamite. As far as us doing a duet, I totally would love it. I think she’s such a mad woman, you know, she’s done some great songs. I think it would be quite something if we did that. Shirley Manson and I once started to record a song together but we never actually finished it.

EB: Yeah, she seems like a real blast to work with.

DH: She’s so good. She’s so talented.

EB: At this point in your career, is it nice not to have that pressure that younger musicians face in between albums to put something out right away once they wrap a record? Do you find it more creatively rewarding to embrace other art forms in your down time and let an album evolve naturally?

DH: Sure, that’s kind of an ideal situation. I think we are all driven by our own demons or compulsions, as it were. I’m probably somewhat of a driven person; I really want to keep working. You know, I would really, really like to do another Blondie CD. That would be my next sort of “conquering Everest” type of thing [laughs]. It’s just something that I’d like to do. I don’t have any kind of schedule or any approximate idea when or if, but it’s something that I would like to do.

EB: Yeah, sometimes as an artist it’s like you feel like you have all this time on your hands and then, simultaneously, you feel there’s just not enough time to fit it all in.

DH: Yeah, touring takes up a lot of time. It really does. You know, I really don’t want to stop playing, I think that playing live is one of the most important things.

EB: I read that growing up you felt too anchored and craved the life of a gypsy.

DH: [Sighs] Yeah. [Laughs]

EB: Do you think that roaming gypsy quality of touring was part of what seduced you into the music world?

DH: Maybe. It made it seem romantic and alluring but I think it was really the music that made me want to do it. I got so much out of listening to other people’s music that the idea of making my own was just irresistible.

EB: Right, being in a band can either satiate someone’s restless nature or it can encourage it even more.

DH: Yeah, yeah, I know. We talked about this on the tour bus, about how you have to be sort of cut out for it. I’ve worked with musicians that really don’t like touring; they don’t like being on the road. It makes them really nervous and uptight and everything. But most of us just really get into the groove; we really like being footloose, you know. It’s really true.

EB: In September, at the Vodaphone Live Music Awards in London, you presented Iggy Pop with a lifetime achievement award.

DH: Yeah.

EB: In another interview, when asked about maintaining relationships with your peers from early punk scene, you said, “Well I’ve been to a lot of funerals.”

DH: [Laughs] I’ve made some terrible comments.

EB: [Laughs] What was that like, presenting Iggy with that award? How have your relationships with your peers changed over the years?

DH: Well, one of the sad things about getting on with your life and your career is that you get really separated from these people and you don’t see them very often. It really takes an effort to stay in touch with them because you’re all working and, as you say, traveling a lot. You know, I hadn’t seen Iggy for a long time so I was really happy to present him with that award, even though he wasn’t there [laughs]. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be there though.

EB: Yeah, he’s been touring like crazy for the past year with the Stooges.

DH: Yeah, why would he not want to keep playing? He’s so incredible. I mean, you work your whole life to be able to do something great. Why should you stop? He’s just so great. I mean, that voice and that body … forget it.

EB: [Laughs]

DH: Those songs … he writes great songs.

EB: That’s how people still feel about you, with or without Blondie. It’s the same as what you said about Iggy, “Why stop? It’s a blessing that I’m still able to make music for a living and that I still want to.”

DH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I totally feel that way.

EB: Another thing you did this year was interview Tamara Coniff, the editor and publisher of Billboard, as part of New York University’s “CEOs in the Arts Speaker Series.” What was that experience like, to be the one conducting an interview and turning the tables in a way, after so many years at their editorial discretion?

DH: Right. Well, I don’t know if I exactly interviewed her but she is a very dynamic, well-organized person and she spoke wonderfully. She was talking to an audience of people who wanted to get into journalism and get into the field of publishing. They were really hanging on every word, believe me, it was quite something. I think
more than anything we were just taking questions from the audience. She’s got really smart, vibrant ideas and the energy to pull it off, you know. I think people are really attracted to that kind of force.

EB: That’s something that you can relate to [laughs].

DH: Yeah, definitely.

EB:You’re also an actress. You just wrapped a film called Elegy that has a great cast--Dennis Hopper, Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz. What kind of character do you play?

DH: Yeah. I play Dennis Hopper’s character’s wife. I have kind of a small part but
it’s a very dramatic scene [that takes place on] Dennis’ deathbed, actually. I play his estranged wife of many years. So it’s a very sad, very moving scene.

EB: Sounds intense.

DH: Yeah, I’ve never played a death scene before. It was really something.

EB: All the funerals in the world can’t prepare you for something like that.

DH: [Laughs] No, not really. It was a really good experience for me to have to work like that. Being around such powerful actors, I mean, they were all just so down to business, they were just focused on their jobs, very nice off camera, very relaxed, very civil, and couldn’t have been nicer. No “I am the star” kind of treatment; nothing like that. Just really great people and then on camera, click, to work, focused like crazy. It was totally professional and a really great experience for me.

EB: With acting and performing in general, is it a challenge to be able to turn it on and off without losing your head?

DH: You know, it’s a process and I think that you sort of get used to doing that. Not all scenes are complete, bust out, dramatic deep scenes. A lot is kind of normal and you’re just tying the links of those emotional moments together. It’s not like
you’re going full tilt all the time, every single day. There is that spread – you make a map about how you’re going to work your emotions and how you’re going to spend your energy, so to speak.

EB: Right. Well, in the ‘70s with Blondie you said that, above all, you thought of yourself as an actress playing a rock singer.

DH: Yeah, unfortunately.

EB: Why so?

DH: [Laughs] I feel like that so much it’s ridiculous. I know that I’m actually singing and stuff like that but I somehow feel that, more than that, I’m spreading a kind of an emotional feeling. I feel like I tell stories to music. And you know, my singing has improved but I’m not a natural singer. I’m not naturally an incredible great singer, but I get by. My best thing is that I’m really able to tell a story and make emotion come to life.

EB: There’s been talk about a biopic about you and Blondie but I know that you’ve really come to dislike traditional biopics. What do you think it takes to truly capture an artist’s life on celluloid?

DH: I don’t know, I really don’t know. I think the things that I object to about portraying musicians or music in films, they sort of whitewash things a little bit too much. I think that really everybody really knows -- well, maybe not everybody -- but a lot of people really know what’s going on and these sort of depictions, these cleaned up versions of people’s lives, it’s just kind of boring and stupid.

EB: Do you have plans for New Year’s. I know you always prefer to work on New Year's.

DH: Yeah, we don’t have a booking right now, but maybe something will turn up. It’s either that or find a good party.

EB: That’s always the hard part about New Year’s because you always end up not having
fun because you party hop and you keep waiting for something.

DH: Yeah, you’ve got to choose something anyway, to settle into it, you know, you’re right because party hopping can be a complete drag.

EB: Yeah, you know, all of a sudden it’s 4 AM and you haven’t had your New Year’s kiss and you’re drunk in your party dress and you didn’t have any fun [laughs].

DH: Oh God.

EB: [Laughs]

DH: [Laughs]

EB: Now, you took the photos for this album yourself, correct?

DH: Yeah.

EB: You do a bit of painting as well. Have photography and painting been a big passion of yours?

DH: I think I’ve always been interested in painting although I haven’t done it regularly in a long time. Every once in a while I’ll have a minute or two or get the urge. Photography is kind of a new thing.

EB: They’re amazing photographs, the self-portraits.

DH: Yeah, I lived with a photographer for almost 15 years so I think I must have picked something up. He was always talking about F-stops and speed. With a digital camera it’s kind of simple, you know, I didn’t have a huge budget but I wanted to spend the money as much on the music as I could. So I took the picture [laughs].

EB: On another note, I read that you went topless bungee jumping in New Zealand.

DH: Oh, that was years ago.

EB: Was it? You said you probably wouldn’t do it again, that it was not necessarily the sanest thing you’ve ever done.

DH: No [laughs] but it was the end of a really long tour. We all just hopped into this van and went down to the bay. You know, they had a huge crane hanging out over the bay and all the guys were going to go. I just wanted to watch but then, I don’t know, I just sort of said, “Oh hell.”

EB: Why the decision to go topless? I mean, you’re a brave woman.

DH: I figured if I was going to go I should just be prepared.

EB: Just go all out.

DH: I figured, if I’m going to die I might as well go big. I probably didn’t whip my top off until the very last minute.

EB: Any other crazy hijinks you’ve gotten into lately?

DH: No, not really, not too crazy lately. I mean, I guess I’m so used to crazy that it doesn’t seem crazy anymore.

EB: Right, crazy becomes the norm then you’re an artist.

DH: Yeah. I guess the most sort of funny thing I did recently was rent a bike and ride around London for a while right along side of the road.That was pretty recklessI guess.

EB: How long did you ride for?

DH: A couple hours.

EB: [Laughs] You crazy, crazy, lady.

DH: It is kind of nutty, believe me.

Look for Debbie Harry on tour for the remainder of the year. For more information go to www.deborahharry.com

by ChrisSick Good news, everybody! I get to keep my job as SuicideGirls' resident screaming partisan ax-grinder. In my last post, I predicted that: It was pitch-perfect timing, and showed great rhetorical skills to bring up the line in a non-accusatory way, surely pleasing the base — who are... more

by ChrisSick

Good news, everybody!

I get to keep my job as SuicideGirls' resident screaming partisan ax-grinder. In my last post, I predicted that:

At absolute worst, the President fought Gov. Romney to a fairly bloody draw on stage tonight. At times, it looked like it might get literally bloody as both men interrupted frequently, spoke over each other, accused the other of lying, and moved quickly towards each other across the open stage to make aggressive rhetorical challenges. On numerous occasions the debate was less like a boxing metaphor and more like an actual match.

I, being the reasonable, informed, voting citizen that I am, kept shouting, “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!” until the neighbors called the police.

For openly-partisan hacks like me, there aren't typically many moments in a tightly-fought debate that you can easily point to and say, “See that? That's where my guy won.” But when the audience applauded after Obama corrected Romney over his characterization of Libya, it was one such moment.

The big takeaway is that Obama did what he had to do: he showed up. He stopped the damage from the Denver debate cold, and built on the good work Crazy Uncle Joe did last week against Paul Ryan. I don't want to harp on about what Obama accomplished and leave readers with the impression that Romney didn't do a fine job in his role.

Gov. Romney continued to look Presidential, and will, of course, continue to benefit from being on stage with the President. As opposed to how he spent most of the last decade, as one of many lunatics on stage being cheered on by rednecks for suggesting that we let people without health insurance die. Oh, did you forget about that?

As it turns out, the President did not. He did all but straight-up ask Romney which Romney would be debating tonight. There were frequent references to positions that Romney has changed, with Obama going back into the far past of the end of summer to remind voters of Romney's serial flip-flopping.

And if you spent the last debate anxiously lifting a shot glass full of tequila to your lips, only to be disappointed when no one brought up Romney's 47% line, Obama finally snuck it in during his closing remarks:

It was pitch-perfect timing, and showed great rhetorical skills to bring up the line in a non-accusatory way, surely pleasing the base — who are always looking to see blood drawn — and the more strategic supporters who worry about the President going all-in on class warfare/populist rhetoric. He managed to avoid either extreme yet worked the line, and did it when Romney would have no chance to respond or defend.

Romney, for his part, was at his best when highlighting Obama’s failure to live up to his own promises and when he listed the negative characteristics of the current economy. Mitt loves many things, but he particularly loves lists of how bad Obama is doing. And it was a good moment for him, proceeded directly by him bumbling through foreign policy, getting smacked by Obama. And the moderator. And the audience.

That was the turning point.

When Mitt Romney went after the President on Libya, Obama flipped the switch. He stopped being candidate Obama, and stepped into being President Obama. He answered strong and forcefully, called Romney out on a lie, and wielded the power and dignity of his office. That's a hard stance for any opponent to attack, but even harder when your aim is to go as low as possible. Romney called the President a liar, and was instantly corrected by Obama, then Crowley, and then the audience, who responded with the aforementioned nominally prohibited applause. Within minutes, Democrats were trending #RomneyExposed on Twitter.

Mitt didn't really get his grove back after that.

Early polling from CBS News has Obama winning by 7 points, 37% to Romney's 30%, with 33% undecided. It will not be hard — with a third of respondents unsure — for Republicans to spin this as a close tie. Which is the best you can hope for if you're a Democrat looking for proof your guy won.

The bigger question is what will this do to the polls. There's clear evidence that the substantial bounce Romney had gotten from his win in Denver was already starting to flatten out before tonight's debate. In part, the President can thank his Veep for that, in part a bounce generally remains a bounce, and requires work to build on it, something neither campaign could devote much energy to with all their time focused on the next debate.

Polling being what polling is, we won't know the effect of the debate until week's end, and before we even have time to catch our breath, we've got the final Presidential debate scheduled for next Monday. In the meantime, Democrats are already seizing on any and all good news they can find, so they're pointing people to the shift towards Obama on Intrade. Which is also good news for me, since I don't just write about elections, I bet heavily on them.

There's twenty days left before we go to vote, and I'm taking any and all action I can get my hands on people. Line forms to the left, have your money at the ready.

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Alex Borstein named the DVD of her standup Drop Dead Gorgeous in a Down-to-Earth Bombshell Sort of Way with a nod and a wink, but I think she’s very sexy, straight up. Borstein first got noticed with her array of characters on Madtv but she developed a strong cult following with her voice work and writing... more

Alex Borstein named the DVD of her standup Drop Dead Gorgeous in a Down-to-Earth Bombshell Sort of Way with a nod and a wink, but I think she’s very sexy, straight up. Borstein first got noticed with her array of characters on Madtv but she developed a strong cult following with her voice work and writing on one of the best televisions shows ever, Family Guy. Borstein’s main role on the show is Lois, the matriarch of the Griffin family. At first Lois was just a foil for Peter Griffin’s insane antics but soon Lois developed some very interesting quirks of her own, shepherded along by Borstein who has written some of Lois’ best moments.

But Drop Dead Gorgeous is another side to Borstein, one that is totally and completely filthy when liberated from television’s rigid standards and practices. Borstein speaks freely about her cunt, the impossible ideals that Hollywood insists upon and performs of series of amazing impressions from Renée Zellweger to Charlize Theron in Monster.

Buy the DVD of Drop Dead Gorgeous

Daniel Robert Epstein: I just saw the new Renée Zellweger movie yesterday and thanks to you I couldn’t stop picturing your impression of her.

Alex Borstein: What new movie is she in?

DRE: Miss Potter about Beatrix Potter.

Alex: Good Lord.

DRE: It was good, though [laughs].

Alex: She drives me a little nuts, I can’t help it.

DRE: It seems like a few people at Family Guy have it in for her. You guys are always making fun of her.

Alex: It’s fun to make fun of everyone, that’s our motto.

DRE: Why so much on Renée Zellweger not that I have any special love for her?

Alex: I think that her voice and “I’m going to gain five pounds to play a fat lady,” annoyed everybody. Then watching her chew the scenery in Cold Mountain. My husband said that the way she gained the weight for Bridget Jones was by chewing the scenery in Cold Mountain.

DRE: Have you always been able to imitate her?

Alex: Yeah. I always say some of the best impersonations come from people that somehow permeate your head. For some reason you get stuck on them whether you like them or hate them. There’s just something about them that’s very listenable or watchable and then you start emulating it and all of a sudden you’ve got an impersonation.

DRE: Did you ever do her on Madtv?

Alex: I didn’t. A lot of the time on Madtv we were relegated to doing people that they thought we visually most looked like. That was probably one of the weaknesses. They were very in love with the makeup and hair department. They would sometimes prefer to spend five hours with prosthetics and have someone look exactly like someone as opposed to, “Is this the best possible sketch we could do for this?”

DRE: What’s always funny about stuff like that is, do they really think people are going to believe you are those people?

Alex: Right we’re not trying to cash one of their checks at the bank. We just want to make some comedy. Sometimes I wouldn’t get to do a lot of those people. Being short and pudgy, they would never think of me first to play someone like Renée Zellweger.

DRE: I thought that Drop Dead Gorgeous would be pretty dirty but it was certainly a lot dirtier than I ever imagined.

Alex: Yeah, it’s definitely a filthy little show. I can’t help it, I have a bit of a potty mouth.

DRE: I know you were in comedy troupes but were you ever a standup comedian?

Alex: The first time I ever did standup I was 16 at a little club in southern California. My parents had to be there because I was under 21. I did standup there for the first time and then a couple more times. Then I abandoned it. In college at San Francisco State I revisited it a few times and I did this little comedy competition and Certs breath mints sponsored it. The people who were the celebrity sponsors were The Kids in the Hall so I was very excited.

DRE: That’s pretty cool.

Alex: That was really cool. I did not win but Margaret Cho did. But what’s funny is that she didn’t really go to our school. I think she signed up for an extension class just so she could be a ringer in the competition.

DRE: That’s so funny.

Alex: Yeah, then I abandoned it and got more into sketch with some people in college. Standup is just very lonely particularly if you’re a woman. If you go to those clubs, none of those guys really want to talk to you or hang out with you or think you’re funny.

DRE: My best friend is a woman and she’s one of the funniest people I know. We’ve had many conversations about whether women are funny in general. She agreed that women might not be as funny simply because the world doesn’t allow women to be funny, for the most part

Alex: I think so. That’s part of it. Most women see it as, either you’re going to be beautiful and attractive and have the male gaze upon you and attract lots of men or you’re going to be funny and be one of the guys. The world doesn’t like to allow for both. There are some people that cross over. Look at Lucille Ball. She was such a huge phenomenon because she was wildly attractive, really funny and accessible at all angles. Somehow she was able to make it work.

DRE: I hope you’re not thinking I’m a big misogynist now.

Alex: Oh no, it’s absolutely true. I often wonder that if I was a guy and had done the same amount of work that I’ve done could I be at the level of a Will Ferrell or Jack Black or Dane Cook. It could be the fact that I’m a woman has kept me back or maybe I’m just not funny.

DRE: [laughs] No, that’s definitely not true.

Alex: I think my career would be really different if I was a guy, but then again maybe I would blend into the crowd too much because there are so many men. Maybe I stand out more being a woman. We’ll never know because I don’t have a cock.

DRE: [laughs] Do you find that people in Hollywood are still surprised when a woman is funny?

Alex: Yes. I was in Montreal hosting the comedy festival there and you definitely get guys going, “Hey, you’re really funny.” I think it really still surprises people and all of a sudden they look at you with new eyes like, “Wait a minute, she’s not just a woman, she’s a funny woman.”

DRE: I read that you and your husband basically put together Drop Dead Gorgeous by yourselves.

Alex: Yeah, we did. It was really a fun thing to do together. We’ve always tried to work together. We both were members of Acme Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.

DRE: Wasn’t [Family Guy writer/producer] Steve Callaghan was part of that too?

Alex: That’s right. Also Adam Carolla and Will Ferrell did some stuff occasionally with Scott Wainio who was a writer on SNL. Then my husband and I tried writing together and we almost stabbed each other in the fucking face with pencils. It was not a good thing for us to write together. So this seemed like a really cool opportunity where we could work together and do something creative and have fun. He’s a director so he knows a lot about cinematography so it was a neat opportunity for him to shoot it. We just wanted to see if it’s possible to move outside of the system because most of your options are to sell your special to HBO or Comedy Central. Then they own it and that’s the end of it. They have the right to edit it how they want and even to air it or not. I just didn’t want to do that. I was at the point in my career where I had visibility from Madtv, movies and Family Guy so I didn’t need to get my name out there, which most comics do when they do a special like that. I don’t really need to have my name bandied about Comedy Central every five minutes. I don’t need the money up front. It’s been a really fun experiment and so far, knock on wood, very successful.

DRE: So it’s been selling pretty good?

Alex: It’s been slow, but it’s been steady. There has been zero publicity. FOX figured, and they’re probably right, that all we really need to do is put something Family Guy related on this and have it on the shelves next to Family Guy and put a flier in the Family Guy DVD and that should take care of all the sales. So far the DVD has been very successful. It hasn’t had the normal decay of sales after the first week. The first week of a DVD’s release is usually pretty much all it’s going to sell but this DVD is different. It’s one of those titles where it’s been slow, steady and growing.

But also we’re doing this tour to Apple stores all over the country doing something called Made on a Mac Presentation since the special was edited on Final Cut Pro. We basically tell the story of how we made it. I started touring this in 2002 and then we shot it in 2004 and it has taken this long for it to hit the streets. So it’s a fun and interesting story and it’s also really informative for people who are trying to take back some control from Hollywood and make their own projects and be very self-sufficient. A lot of people are doing that now like that sitcom on FX called It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

DRE: Everyone says that’s really good but I haven’t watched it yet.

Alex: To be honest I’ve only seen a couple. But those people got together and made their own pilot presentation. They just were like, “Fuck it. We’re sick of waiting for a break and waiting for this giant machine to notice us.” So they just went ahead and did it. Another friend of ours did it with a show called Sons and Daughters that was on ABC.

Made on a Mac Presentation is like a take back the night thing to show how you can take control of your own career.

DRE: Did you have to give up any rights when FOX agreed to put it out?

Alex: No, I was going to distribute it on my own last year. I was going to release it in February as a birthday present to myself [laughs]. I was spending some time with the people from FOX in Montreal. One of the people at home entertainment was like, “Oh my God, you should bring that in. You should talk to us about it. Maybe we can release it. Maybe we can do it as something that goes along with Family Guy.” I thought, “That’s not a bad idea.” So I pitched them in January and they said yes pretty quickly. I do have all the ownership of the whole piece. They get a percentage for distributing it but this way I managed to really hold onto a lot of it, which is rare. The downside is that maybe if they had a bigger chunk of it they would work harder at publicizing it. But I prefer a slow and steady tortoise to a hare that may not finish the race.

DRE: Was anyone offended by your act when you took it on the road?

Alex: Not really. I’ve never really had any negative response from anyone about my standup because most people coming to see me know what they’re in for. Also I’m pretty careful about where I perform. For instance, we have a house right near downtown Seattle. They had the Seattle International Comedy Competition recently and they asked me to be a judge at one of the finals and my husband to be a judge at one of the other finals. They had five nights of finals and they asked me to perform. I knew it wasn’t going to work in this small community where there are only 10,000 people and I have to see all of them at the market the next day. I think it is important to know your venue and know your audience.

DRE: I loved the bits in Drop Dead Gorgeous where you read the breakdowns of character descriptions. Are you still sent stuff like that?

Alex: For the most part I get 98 percent less auditions than someone that could fit any of those descriptions. A lot of the times I hear nothing about it because they don’t call if it’s something that I’m not right for. But sometimes you’ll lose faith and you’ll be like “Let me see. Let me take a look at the breakdowns” and it is so dismal. But I’m developing some TV stuff for myself and writing a feature and you find yourself falling into the same traps. You find yourself saying, “Oh maybe they’ll have this girlfriend,” and then you’ll find yourself not really developing the girlfriend character so much. You just know she’s going to be cute and that’s all that matters. It’s like, “Wait a minute, now I’m just as bad as the enemy.” It’s easy to see why it happens because it’s shorthand, laziness and it’s easier than spending the time developing a real human person.

DRE: You seem about as pop culture savvy as anyone but is it still difficult to keep up with Seth MacFarlane?

Alex: Yeah, it is. But Seth’s pop culture knowledge is very retro. Seth doesn’t own a computer and he doesn’t really watch television. Everything that Seth knows has already happened.

DRE: I knew he didn’t have email. But I didn’t know he didn’t have a computer.

Alex: He has one at work but he doesn’t have one at home and he doesn’t want one. He doesn’t understand MySpace and he despises most new music.

DRE: It is so strange because he is certainly at the right age to be into newer stuff.

Alex: He’s in his early 30’s but he’s just got an old soul. He’s got that Rat Pack soul but the great thing about that writer’s room is that we have 15 writers and everyone brings something different. We’ve got ages ranging from like 27 to 55 so you’ve got all these different references. There is such a cool mixed bag of people bringing in bizarro references. I certainly don’t have my hands on the pulse in terms of the pop culture. My husband and I just went to the Billboard Music Awards in Vegas a couple days ago and half of the people nominated we were like, “Who? What?” Someone named Chris Brown won everything. Never heard of him.

DRE: I don’t know who he is either.

Alex: But you certainly can’t help but know about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or Gwen Stefani or Fergie.

DRE: How is a decision made to include something like the Tim Curry character from Legend in a Family Guy bit?

Alex: We all sit around a big table together and people bark pitches. It is as though you’re at a party with cocktails and frankly sometimes cocktails are involved. I remember one of the episodes that I wrote was called Deep Throat. Peter and Lois created a folk group and Brian is going after Mayor West in a Watergate parody. In the script we had Mayor West sitting in a hotel room watching TV. I wrote that he was just watching cartoons. Then the only other female writer, Cherry [Chevapravatdumrong], had him commenting that he was watching a cartoon called Jem. I didn’t know what Jem was but everyone else cracked up and I was like, “Ok, put that in. It’s weird and interesting.” That’s pretty much how it goes. If a lot of the people in the room respond or even if it’s just one person responding in a huge way, they’ll go for it.

DRE: How did you end up joining the Family Guy writing staff?

Alex: When I first started I started just doing voices. I was doing Lois and everything grew. I would start doing more voices and then I would ad-lib a lot. When Seth created the show he was 25 years old. I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend and the only women he knew were his mom and his sister. So he had absolutely no idea what he was doing and he will admit that in a heartbeat, like, “Ok what do girls wear? They wear hats. Ok, Meg will have a hat.” That’s pretty much how he decided things so it was freeing for them when I’d come in to do voices and I would change things to make it a little more like something a female character might say. One of the executive producers, Chris Sheridan, said, “Would you ever write for us?” At that time I was writing for myself on Madtv and before that I had written for cartoons like Casper and Pinky and the Brain. I told them that I would love to do it but that it is just a matter of schedule because I was working for Madtv at the same time. So what we did is that I started working at Family Guy on the summer hiatus from Madtv. Then when Madtv went back to shooting, I would just come into Family Guy as a writer on the days we didn’t shoot. I was getting to split my time all over the place and I learned so much. Madtv and Family Guy together really was comedy boot camp.

DRE: Seth has obviously changed his look since he first started Family Guy. He lost the glasses, got some cool looking hair and my wife said he’s hot now.

Alex: He thinks he is. I don’t want to crush any dreams, he usually does wear glasses but when he goes out for events he takes them off to be cool. But he’s still wildly insecure and has absolutely no idea who he is and he doesn’t understand even an iota of the opposite sex like most of the writers on television. But he started at 25 and now he’s edging on 35 so he’s a very different person.

DRE: Especially when you have money to buy nice clothes.

Alex: Exactly and he has people to tell him what to wear now. People that can say, “You know what? What if you could wear this vintage t-shirt and your button down shirt open?”

DRE: I asked [Family Guy writer/producer/voice actor] Mike Henry what offends him and he said that he doesn’t like stuff about kids like the Cancer boy character from Family Guy. What offends you?

Alex: Oh nothing, really. See, that’s what happens. All of a sudden when people have kids they change their tune about what offends them. It’s very interesting.

DRE: I get worried about that too. I don’t get offended very easily and I don’t want that to ever change.

Alex: It’s very interesting how it will change a person but I don’t think it’s definitive. They have a kid and for the first two years of the kid’s life they’re not cool with any of those jokes anymore then maybe after a few years they start to mellow.

But not much offends me. I’ve always been heavy and I’ve always thought that a lot of fat jokes were hilarious. I’m a Jew and I think Jew jokes are hilarious. I laugh the hardest at a lot of our Holocaust stuff on the show. I was just raised with laughing in the face of everything.

DRE: What about Mel Gibson?

Alex: I find him to be an idiot. He clearly is anti-Semitic to some degree but I think a lot of people forget that one of the things about living in this country is that you’re allowed to be anti-Semitic, you’re allowed to hate Jews, you’re allowed to hate white people and you’re allowed to hate black people. It may not be politically correct and cool but if the Nazis can march in Skokie then Mel Gibson has every right to say Jews are whatever. We don’t have to like it, I certainly won’t go to his movies and I don’t want to support him as an artist. Not that I was that interested in his work anyway. But I think people forget that there’s a difference between being like-minded and having the freedom to say what you want.

DRE: You’re right. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that he is allowed to say whatever the hell he wants.

Alex: Yeah, everyone forgets that just because you shouldn’t say something doesn’t mean you can’t. I think he’s a moron especially if you’re a public figure and you want to sell tickets so because of that I think he’s an idiot. But for me it only solidifies the fact that anyone would have to be stupid to be anti-Semitic or racist.

DRE: What’s your favorite Lois storyline that’s been on Family Guy?

Alex: We have an episode that is coming up that I wrote called; It Takes a Village Idiot and I Married One. Lois runs for mayor of Quahog and wins. It stemmed from another one woman show I was working on called Women and Jews: Why We'll Never Be President. I was in this headspace where I felt that a woman will never be president. So this storyline came out of that. I had these fantasies about a woman president that would be fair and there’d be no corruption. That’s a bunch of bullshit fantasy. In the episode Lois gets just as bitten by the corruption bug as anyone. We liked what happened so much in the episode that we wrote a book that’s going to come out in April to coincide with the episode.

DRE: Cool! Did you work with any of the other writers on it?

Alex: Yeah, Cherry and I wrote it together. We always laugh at these memoirs people release. It always makes us laugh when anybody assumes the rest of the world cares to read about their lives. We took a look at It Takes a Village, My Living History, Ann Coulter’s Godless and blah, blah, blah. We had this idea to write a book that looks at Lois’s time in office and the book has Lois pontificating her views and telling her story. What’s fun about it is that it has chapters by all the characters in the show where they chime in on her time in office and how they think she did. Of course it has a lot of rambling tangents with a lot of poop jokes.

DRE: Are you guys planning on responding within the show to what South Park did about Family Guy?

Alex: I don’t know. I’m not sure where everyone is on that. I just know that none of us really cared; we were just excited to be mentioned [laughs]. It is that excitement of, “I murdered a person, now I’m famous.” I think Seth was annoyed but I think Seth just gets that way. It’s almost like someone took a swipe at his child. I think we have made some slams back but I don’t know if they made it into the final draft of any of the scripts. We are able to do that because in the nine month process that it takes to make an episode, when we get right toward the end where it’s going to air we do last minute rewrites so we have the opportunity to change things. For instance if we have a Britney and K-Fed marriage joke, when that comes up now it will no longer going to be appropriate so we’ll have a last minute opportunity to alter it or to replace it completely but we would have to use the existing animation. Sometimes that’s how we can slip things in that are very timely because we have that last minute pull cord where we can slip something in.

DRE: Are you still working on the cartoon Angry Little Girls?

Alex: I worked on Angry Little Girls for a little while but not anymore. There was just too much going on. I’m doing some other live action TV development so I helped develop Angry Little Girls and even did an outline. Then at that stage, unfortunately I was like, “Uh-oh, I’m not going to be able to do all of this.”

DRE: Is it still going to air?

Alex: I think so. I think someone else is picking up where I left off and going to be developing it through completion.

DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?

Alex: My husband told me that he knows what SuicideGirls is but I know very little.

DRE: The fact that your husband knows is good enough.

Alex: But that reminds me I would really like to have Lois do a totally nude layout for Playboy.

DRE: [laughs] That’d be great. Do you remember when Jessica Rabbit did one for Penthouse?

Alex: She did? Well I think Seth enjoys Playboy more than Penthouse.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck