CARSON CITY, NEVADA — Dennis Hof is America’s Pimpmaster General. In the course of five years he’s captivated America by inviting us to get a peek inside his Bunny Ranch brothel thanks to HBO’s Cathouse, directed by Patti Kaplan, America’s most influential filmmaker. In order to promote the fresh batch of episodes now airing, The Party Favors was given a chance to phone up Dennis Hof, Brooke Taylor and Bunny Love’s luxurious hotel suite in Manhattan.
Dennis gave me his history of the show. “It started out in 2002 as an hour documentary under the America Undercvover umbrella . It was their highest rated non-fiction show. They said ‘Oh my god, let’s do it again.’ So in 2003, the same thing. Then in 2005 we came out with the 11 week series that blew the door off all the series numbers. Last night I was with the guys from The Sopranos that do the radio show “The Wise Guys.” They said, ‘Your show equals or beats us OnDemand every week.’ Now what we’re doing is what (HBO) is calling the second season, I’m calling it the fourth. I don’t know who’s right. All I know is they’ve been shooting it for five years.
“You have a documentary, but you also have a soap opera. You got me splitting up with Sunset (Thomas), Me hooking up with the twins. And now me being with Brooke. You have Air Force Amy leaving in a huff. Now she’s coming back. You have all this craziness going on in there and it’s a business that’s operating. And it’s a bit of a porn movie. It’s everything.”
Dennis knows exactly what he’s doing in allowing the cameras to probe his life and business.
“My goal in this is twofold. Number one is promotion for my business. I am the P.T. Barnum of Booty. This what I do to promote my business. And number two: Legalization is the right thing to do. It eliminates all the exploitation. The right wingers like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity will convince you that all working girls are underaged, ethnic, short shorts, crackpipe with a black pimp down the street. They teach you that all prostitutes have diseases and are drug addicts. Why else would they work?”
Prior to Cathouse, HBO had aired Hookers at the Point, a series of documentaries by Brent Owens about street walkers. It validated the opinions of the right wingers about “the game” as it was calling in Pimps Up, Ho’s Down.
“Here we come along,” Dennis said. “Oh wait a minute; look at these girls. They’re educated. They’re having fun. I told Sean Hannity on camera that these girls aren’t working for you at Fox News for 30 years to get a gold watch. They’re going to retire in five years with a million dollar stock portfolio and never work another day. The show changes the stigma. We invited America into our house. And they love our house.
“When I do a conservative radio show, 8 out of 10 people will call in and say “Dennis has got it right.” We’ve got to control this. I look at myself as a guy who is single handedly cleansing this vice. Look at the dirty gangsters during prohibition. Now look at Seagrams and Budweisers. Thirty years ago when I moved to Nevada, it was the dirty little secret of America. The gaming was a dirty secret. Now it’s everywhere. The biggest gaming in the world is the California lotto.
“My vision, my dream is to close up half the Starbucks in America and make mini-Bunny Ranch Expresses out of them. Stop by for a little tension release. Starbucks has everybody amped up on caffeine. I want to bring ’em down a notch. A guy can come out of his office, go to the Bunny Ranch Express and fifteen minutes he’s back in his office and it’s not so bad of a day for him.”
Dennis has seen a lot of changes in the industry in the years since he bought the Bunny Ranch. In the first episode of the new season, Brooke Taylor calls her mother after her first party with a paying client. Did the women called back to home to share the good news when he first started?
Dennis said, “No. Absolutely not. Fifteen years ago when I got there, these girls wouldn’t tell anybody they were working girls. All that has changed. It’s cool to be a Bunny Ranch Girl. (Brooke) called her mom. I’ve gotten to know her mom. Her mom went on the Dr. Keith Ablow show with her and talked about how when they were at Toys ‘R Us when (Brooke) told her she was going to be a hooker.
“It’s a different world now. I was a very edgy guy 15 years ago. I was a wild cowboy from Carson City Nevada. Now with the internet, (you hear about) all this craziness with dogs, goats and 12 year olds. And you have the predator series on (Dateline) NBC. You’ve got Bill Clinton trying to prove to the world that a blow job isn’t sex. I’m a pretty straight guy, now. I’m a Boy Scout, now. With the sanitizing of this business, has come better girls and better customers. Girls are proud to be here. Guys are proud to say they are customers. It’s gotten bigger and better.
While some subjects of reality shows control what makes it to the air (Gene Simmons & Hugh Hefner), Dennis isn’t overriding Patti Kaplan’s directorial decisions.
“I don’t see everything that’s on there until the finished product,” Dennis declared. “I don’t look at the dailies. I don’t care to. Whatever it is, it is. I don’t give HBO any parameters except to have fun. If something goes on that’s crazy or negative, then it goes on. I don’t try to control the content in any way shape or form. I don’t think it’s the fair thing to do for my public. You don’t want to make a fluff piece where everything is fine. Did I feel good about Air Force Amy freaking out that time and loading up all her shit? No. I didn’t like it at all. But that’s what happened. She got herself worked up. She’d been drinking. She’s an alcoholic and was back drinking. But now she’s back. The sex business is positive. There’s a lot of high energy. I don’t like negative stuff. But I don’t control it.”
Dennis enjoyed seeing the first episode of this season since it does feature his new main lady, Brooke getting her start.
Dennis gushed, “That was her first party at the Ranch that we videoed. That was amazing because she looked like a pro pornstar to me. I had to take her to the bedroom and fuck her after watching that.”
Of course the ultimate highlight of the first episode was the introduction of Tiffany, a new Bunny Ranch employee who had a strange attitude toward working as a hooker.
“The first show was kinda weird with Tiffany saying, I’m not going to line up. I’m not going to suck a cock. I can’t wait to find out what this dumb bitch does in the second show,” Dennis said.
Bunny Love at one point had to finish up one of Tiffany’s customers since she refused to give a half and half. Bunny was taken back by the newbie’s career attitude. “It was an interesting personal choice,” Bunny said. “Some girls decide not to do anal. Some girls don’t like to do blow jobs.”
Dennis chimed in, “Can you believe that?”
Brooke had an even closer encounter with Tiffany when they shared a threesome party. Tiffany however decided that while the customer paid for the attention of two women – only Brooke was going to play. Tiffany reluctantly dropped her top and barely touched the guy on the arms.
“Tiffany is a trip,” Brooke said. “I asked Dennis, did she come in just for HBO? I thought she was completely obnoxious.” Brooke didn’t enjoy sharing a client with Tiffany in the party. “She didn’t do anything. From what the producer told me, she acted like the (client) wanted her more. He did not care about her.”
Brooke is proof of how Patti Kaplan is the most influential director in America. A few years ago, she was merely a fan of the show. She had a nice job in a nice town in middle America. She decided to step through screen and be a part of the action.
“How I found out about the Bunny Ranch was from watching Cathouse,” Brooke said. “I met Carla from the last series, when she came back to the Ranch. It was like meeting a celebrity. I’m like, do you know how many times I’ve masturbated to you? I could quote all her lines. I was a fan of the show so it was really exciting to be a part of it. To hopefully be an inspiration to other girls like they were to me.”
While many women get into the business, few have their early days documented. How did Brooke feel knowing that millions of Americans would be following her progress via HBO? “I’m type of person that if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it full force. And that’s how I took it doing the Cathouse series. That’s why I told my family that I might as well be honest and go full force with it. Balls out, so to speak.”
The episodes were shot nearly a year ago. What does Brooke think when she sees herself arrive at the airport ready to embrace her new career? “I was completely green,” Brooke confessed. “I watched the first episode and I see how wide-eyed and innocent I was. Doing the sex scene, I was really nervous beforehand. But once I went in there, you don’t see the cameras. I had had sex before numerous times, so it took over and I just had fun with it.”
Along with embracing the career, the series documents her becoming Dennis’ new girlfriend. She had never been in an open relationship, but as they approach their first anniversary, she seems very comfortable with the dynamic. “Yeah. I view people’s sexuality as an individual not as a couple. I completely understand men’s urges and desires. If they didn’t have those urges and desires, I wouldn’t be in business. Having been in this business, it helps me to have a relationship like I have with Dennis. It’s nice. I totally appreciate when I can find a hot girl and bring her home with us to share. Sharing is caring.”
A major test in the relationship occurs when Sunset Thomas returns to the Ranch to see Dennis. During the first two specials, Sunset was Dennis’ woman. Was Brooke nervous at the ex-girlfriend haunting the ranch?
“I was OK with it,” Brooke said. “I figured if Dennis had wanted to be back with Sunset, he’d be back with Sunset. HBO kinda wanted controversy, but I hope I didn’t give it to them. Sunset was very nice to me when she was there. It was awkward cause I didn’t know how she would be and she didn’t know how I would be. I think it went OK. My nerves about it came from other people. We knew she was coming in so people kept saying how do you feel about Sunset coming here? Sunset! Sunset! Sunset! Stop relax, it’s all OK. And at the end of the day, it all went fine.
“I think if it happened today, I’d have no problem. I wouldn’t have any nerves. I’m very secure with Dennis now. It was the beginning of our relationship. We were still getting to know each other. It kinda threw an imbalance in there. But I just stayed with what I knew. I knew that I was with him. I was at the Ranch. She wasn’t there. She was coming in to visit. I tried to remain as calm as possible. I think the people around me were more afraid of my reaction to her than I was.”
She has grown a lot in the year at the Ranch especially when it come to exploring her bisexuality. “My first experience with a woman was at the Bunny Ranch. Over this year, I’ve really grown to enjoy them. I’m interested in seeing how my interactions with women are on the show. I know what it is now, but I want to see the differences.”
One of the women Brooke was able to please was Isabella Soprano, America’s Sweetwhore. “I’m in love with her. She was my favorite from the first show. You’ll see me and Isabella doing some things together. We have a little fun together.”
Isabella has made a splash starring fetish films and is no longer working at the Ranch. “She came down for the show and worked a bit. She made herself some money and is raising organic vegetables now,” Dennis said. “They work and do real well. Then they’ll hook up with a guy and the first thing he wants is for her to quit working. As soon as they split up with the guy, they’re back. That’s what I envision for Isabella.”
Another fan favorite to the Ranch is Bridget the Midget. Dennis has good news for her fans. “She had a baby and is coming back to work in the next week or so.”
Unlike the first special where the room negotiations were secretly filmed, the clients in the series know about HBO’s cameras ahead of time. Only one room in the house is wired up with the hidden cameras. HBO’s folks do an amazing Candid Camera job to keep out of the way of the real performers in the room. “We don’t know where they’re located in the room,” Brooke said. “They don’t tell us where they’re at. I kept looking for them and I couldn’t find them. I’m glad they didn’t tell me where they were because it helps me to forget they are there.”
Dennis is in the process of writing a book about his business for Harper Collins. “There’s No Business like Ho Business was the title Judith Regan liked,” Dennis said. He’s now considering Pimp’n Ain’t Easy. I suggested Pimpin’ Made Easy since people want to buy a book that simplifies the process.
People always like to ask Dennis about the Potter Twins. They were his rebound girlfriends after Sunset Thomas. Dennis has warning for those that dream of such a situation. “The two of them were a handful together. You separated them and they were very normal. You couldn’t go to dinner and sit between them. It was like playing ping pong. One would say one word of a sentence with a subject and the other one would pick up a skit from Second City. And they’d go back and forth. It’d make you nuts. They’re so bright they’re silly. So that didn’t work.”
So what is next on Dennis’ carnal “to do” list? “Triplets,” Dennis said. “I’m like the Fonz. I’m looking for the Hooper triplets. You never saw them on the show. But I’m looking for the Hooper triplets.”
Recently the show was visited by FoxNew’s Sean Hannity for his Hannity’s America series. Dennis enjoyed tripping up the self-righteous Hannity by being a perfect host. “He’s just a fish out of water there. But he loves the place. He’s a man,” Dennis said. “He’s got Brooke and Bunny in bed. They’re wearing scantily clad nighties. He took it in the homes of America at 6:30 on a Sunday night. He stands over the bed and asks the girls “Do you believe in God.” He’s waiting for one of those answers that they back into it like “maybe” and then he’s going to rip into them. Simultaneously these girls said “No!” It was like game over. He had this deer in the headlights look that was just fucking priceless. He had no idea where to go with that. He just looked at them.”
Fans of Grizzly Adams were delighted to see Dan Haggerty conducting a wedding at the brothel. It turns out that this is not a one time thing as another Ranch nuptials is in the works. “We’re trying to confirm a date with Dan,” Dennis said. “I got him ordained. Dan is the official pastor of the Bunny Ranch.” Shame they can’t get Bozo the bear to escort the bride down the aisle for an extra fee.
With the success of the show, there’s been a lot more visitors to the Ranch. Unlike a TGIFridays that’s all about getting the customers in and out, Dennis doesn’t enforce a buy or split attitude. There’s no time limit to sitting at the bar and meeting the various women that have appeared on the show. “Some guys do come and hang out and don’t find anything that they’re interested in. Maybe they want to meet every single girl in the whole Bunny Ranch before they make their decision,” Dennis said. “The guys are very scared coming in there. You watch the show. You go online. You fly out there. The next thing you know, you’re faced with a decision of 30 or 40 gorgeous girls. The toughest NFL guy crumbles in front of the girls. ‘I gotta get a drink’ really means they need a minute to regain their composure.”
The question always comes up that on Cathouse, guys get charged $5,000 for a fun time. And on Brent Owens’ Hookers at the Point films, we see guys have sex with skanky street walkers for $50. I ask Dennis if HBO will ever give us a show that allows a guy to have sex without losing the kid’s college fund or bringing home an STD for the wife? Where are the clean hookers for the middle class budget?
“The reality is this, you’re going to see a thousand guys spend $200 to $600 at the Bunny Ranch before one guy drops twenty five grand,” Dennis said. “It’s better television showing the big parties. That’s what HBO does to us. It’s almost like you’re fishing for whales. We had a guy a couple weeks ago drop $200,000. We had a guy who came in when the first series aired that spent a $1.7 million. He never left the place. It’s a free market. The girls are negotiable. They’re there to make money. Do they want guys to steal any booty from them? No. The guy needs to pay a fair amount. You come to the Ranch, come in there clean, have a good time, make the girls laugh, buy a couple drinks and your money will go a long way in the room.
“Even if you don’t want to have sex, partying with these girls is amazing. They’re beautiful. They’re young. They’re vibrant. They’re hot. They’re skilled. And they’re nasty. That’s wonderful. Sitting around the ranch having cocktails with 30 girls running around in g-strings – priceless.”
It was then that Dennis let me in on a secret. “The guys who spend the big big money, it’s not about sex. Bunny has a guy who spends $30,000 a time, tell him what the party consists of.” Bunny continued, “It consists of just hanging out, watching cartoons, going out for dinner and room service. He never watched cartoons before in his life until he met me.” There is a man willing to pay $30,000 to watch Adult Swim with Bunny. Dana Snyder is the voice of seduction?
Cathouse The Series is currently airing on HBO. I’m not sure of the time, but it’s on around the clock if you have HBO OnDemand. If you’re interested in visiting the Bunny Ranch, it’s located in Carson City – not Las Vegas. Carson City is about twenty minutes between Tahoe and Reno. Tell Dennis you’re a friend of the “Party Favors” and you’ll get an extra olive in your drink.
##
The big screen adventures of Reno’s “finest” opens this Friday, as Comedy Central’s Reno 911! makes its way from the small screen to the big in Reno 911!: Miami.
KEN PLUME: It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you.
It was strange but as I was channel surfing one afternoon Tanya gave an interview to a local reporter in Chicago about an upcoming show she was getting ready to do with her band Belly. During the story they played a clip from the “Feed The Tree” video. While I took enough notice that I’ve never forgotten about it, and this is the important part of the story, it didn’t do a whole lot for me. Nothing, in fact. What happened, though, during the following weeks is notable in that the news segment stayed with me. The clip replayed over and over again in my head. I was humming “Feed The Tree” to myself every now and then when it played on the radio. The tune had such internal resonance for me that Belly’s STAR would be the very first Rock album I would ever purchase in the USED section of a small record store and, to this day, represents where my musical renaissance began.
DONELLY: Thank you very much.
DONELLY: It’s very varied but it’s what labels don’t like. I guess”¦I don’t know”¦Children’s music, so we’re told, except for a few very lucky instances, children’s music doesn’t really sell well. Stuff like The Wiggles will because it’s completely catered”¦and this is not at all. This is like regular rock music with just lyrics that are appropriate. So, people are just having a hard time figuring out just how to market it. At this point, the woman who started the whole project, Chris Tappin, she’s probably going to put it up on CD Baby and we’re waiting to hear”¦she’s going to let me know if that happens and then I’m going to let people know.
CS: And that wasn’t difficult? Exposing her to that kind of music as a kid? I only ask because I’m thinking of mounting some kind of campaign to get my kid to listen to Wilco, Neko Case”¦
DONELLY: Yeah, I know, I know. You just have to mourn that and go, “Alright, how do I get it done now?”
DONELLY: Well, the main thing that I want to release are the demos. For STAR, which are actually Breeder’s demos, which, unfortunately, when I went back to try to mix it down the integrity of the tape is a little bit compromised”¦because they’re so freakin’ old”¦but I think Ivo Watts-Russell, who used to run 4AD, I think he has a CD of it. I’m going to see if I can wrestle that away from him and just put it up as-is.
The only thing is”¦is sometimes I wish I could get this music to more people. That’s the only thing but it’s never a lifestyle issue for a second.
And when Belly broke up, and with my first solo record, they sent me back in a few times, it was mixed a couple of times, they made me write more and take songs off and put songs on. They were very”¦on top of that one. Which, at the time, I was kind of in a panic myself, that was my year of panic, and then after that I calmed down.
CS: And your husband, Dean, is an amazing musician as well. I remember seeing him play live when he toured with Juliana Hatfield, has he been a good sounding board for your music or do you have your own way of doing things?
CS: Then what’s the deal? They’re like ten pages long. I read them every night. It’s the biggest con in the book business. Just write ten sentences and you’re golden, you’re done”¦
CS: Does he have like the big, expensive high fidelity set-up in the house?
In a tenure lasting over 25 years and beginning in the transition from the Nine Old Men to young turks that included fellow artists like John Lasseter and Glen Keane, Tad Stones made his mark not in the Disney Company’s fabled feature animation department, but in its burgeoning TV Animation division.
STONES: Hey! And I just stubbed my toe, so I’ll be in pain… Give you that extra edge…
KP: So, in other words, if you’d just put a couple more jokes in it…
KP: Right. But I can’t imagine a show like Darkwing Duck getting launched today within Disney.
STONES: Maybe not. (laughs) Maybe we won’t do that. We’re very lucky to be able to work in the long form on these. And there are characters that fans really want to see. Roger gets named entirely, and my feeling is that Roger the Homunculus can’t just be another agent. You don’t introduce him in a briefing and say, “Oh yeah, here’s a guy who’s kind of made of pig manure and straw and a few incantations.” You know? It’s like, “Okay, she’s a pyrotechnic. Got it. The fish guy? Okay, got it. I saw Creature from the Black Lagoon. Hellboy, devil. I understand that. The fist is a little odd, but it’s big and it hits things. I understand that.” Once you start getting into other stuff that gets weirder and weirder, I don’t want to make them mundane. Roger deserves his own movie. Will we do that movie? Maybe. That would kind of have to be a direct adaptation, and I don’t know if we’re ready to do one of those yet. We did, within Hellboy: Sword of Storms – available February 6, Tuesday! Buy two, they’re small.
NELSON: Yeah, no, it was just sort of… there were a couple of projects that I was working on freelance that brought me out there anyway. So it was kinda like, you know, if those could be extended or maybe if I could find some really good TV work, then we’d have a go of it. It was just kinda, “Let’s see what happens.” And I was probably 50/50 on the fence of, can I even do this or not?
NELSON: Mine are throttled pretty low. My thought is that there was a certain audience for Mystery Science, that we got so many letters from families and kids, mothers and fathers and daughters watching together. An astounding amount of people, for whatever reason, would say, “My father was sick,” or something, or “He was recuperating from this, and I brought tapes in, and he’d never seen it. And we watched and we loved it.” So I always have this thought of generations of people watching. That’s always in the back of my mind. I really want to keep it accessible to as many people as possible. And I love writing around problems where a certain joke, if you got a little blue might be good, but to solve the problem of, “Can there be just as good or better of a joke without that?” And I love that challenge.
KP: You tell me it’s not a glimmer in the back of Jim Mallon’s mind?
NELSON: No. See, I was a little too miffed about that. I mean, come on, I’m far more closely associated with Road House than him…
NELSON: I really, really, truly hated Star Wars: Episode I. I can’t even describe how angry it made me.
NELSON: It was in his home, too. Because there were only computers in our office, so he would go home and type his thing out. And actually sometimes he would, if he had to write at work, he would longhand it. So then I just had longhand sketches.
KP: I’m surprised you haven’t done the MST movie yet.
If you’re a child of comic books and Saturday morning TV (like myself), then Stan Lee is instantly recognizable as the creator (with legendary artists such as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby) of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, X-Men, and many, many more.
LEE: Well, what I really wanted… I was trying to think of, “What kind of a heroine can I do that hasn’t been done before?” And forgetting the super power for a moment, I thought I’d like to get a girl who’s just out of her teens, and who wants to be an actress, and that’s the big thing. I thought that a lot of girls could relate to that. Most girls at some age want to be actresses or rock stars. And then I figured, “Okay, what super power will I give her?” And it occurred to me that if a girl wanted to be an actress, probably the best super power – the thing she’d most want – would be the ability to take over other people’s personas. To be able to act like other people and look like other people. So I gave her this chameleon-like quality.
KP: Which is the collaboration with Ringo Starr?
KP: You’ve also participated in Kevin’s poetry readings in the past…
KP: To anyone actually watching your visual signals, you tipped it off just with that broad grin when they introduced you…
KP: Well, you just did again. And Lightspeed.
LEE: Yes, I thought you would! It stands, of course – and I’m sure our readers will already have guessed it – but it stands for “Purveyors Of Wonder.” POW! And the reason we had to give it that definition is I didn’t want people to think it stood for Prisoner Of War. So, for that reason, I put an exclamation point after it. You see the things you learn when you do these kind of interviews?
After receiving an award from the 
Eighteen months ago, during the editing process, we did the trailer, I wrote the trailer music for the first trailer, and that stuck more to the original guidelines of what we were thinking about; it was bigger, the music was bigger, the music was heavier, it was more epic. And that worked for the trailer because that’s the sort thing you want, you want it to leap off the screen, but when I took that music and then tried to cut it into the film just to try to see how it would work you could tell instantly that this was wrong. It was too big, it was too grand, it was too bombastic for the story we were now telling and that was when Kronos [Quartet] came back in again because I saw that I didn’t need a sixty piece orchestra, I just needed these four guys to do it.
STIPP: It translates perfectly, And as I was preparing for this interview I went back and listened to REQUIEM, the REQUIEM FOR A DREAM remix CD and then THE FOUNTAIN. I am struck by the capturing of mood on both the original REQUIEM and FOUNTAIN scores. REQUIEM, when I listen to it, is just haunting. There is no other emotion running through that work. Is that part of your writing, that you want to evoke something specific?
MANSELL: Yeah, I mean not in a bad way. The way the score is, when I was mocking it up in demo form, it didn’t come across like it does now. A lot of the stuff was done on piano, it wasn’t done with strings but then we got it to Kronos and their strings just brought it to life. The Mogwai elements, while written by me, they were sort of estimating a Mogwai-ishness if you like. And when you put together those disparate elements it takes a while for it to gel without it sounding, not hokey”¦but melodically and thematically we were just trying to get the right vibe. It’s hard work when you take two fantastic artists you’re effectively trying to replicate with a computer. It took a little time but I knew where I was trying to take it but Darren was having trouble envisioning it from what I was giving him at the time.
Ricky Gervais, along with Stephen Merchant (our interview with whom you can read 
QS: And then we had spoken a year prior to that.
GERVAIS: Yes, I know, but you say widely pirated – it’s probably a few Anglophiles dotted around mainly in New York and L.A., I’d suspect. But I could be wrong. I’d want to do it properly, really. I’m doing a gig in America in May, and I may conflate the best of those and mostly new stuff. I don’t want people to just get second hand goods. And also, the more you improve, you want them to see the latest thing. It’s there for them to get, but I think to package it up and release it as new, I think it’s giving them a 90% product just because of the things… if I was doing live work in America, I would change or leave out or…
GERVAIS: Karl Pilkington…
GERVAIS: Have you seen it on the Politics DVD?
QS: Are you surprised that he’s become sort of a cult figure? It’s almost like a modern Kilroy. 
QS: I noticed even in his moment of triumph, you had to make Steve’s British Comedy Award all about you…
GERVAIS: But you know, some people don’t think that way. The ones that do, they sort of go to America and try and make it.  But they’re trying to make on their own terms, as opposed to just coming out with a product that’s universal. It’s very strange… but then again, we’ve got a different attitude, really. Americans are brought up to believe they can become the president of the United States, and we’re told, “Don’t be so silly. Get a load of you.”
GERVAIS: Yeah. It’s funny, ’cause I was speaking to Joel Surnow. I went down there, I just did a little thing for the gag reel. I’d spoke to him. His phone cut out. He called me back. My phone cut out. I phoned him back and I said, “This doesn’t happen in fucking 24, does it?”
QS: My Fair Karl.
As co-creator of both the original British and American versions of The Office and now two series of the BBC/HBO hit Extras – not to mention co-host of the most downloaded podcast in history – you’d think more people would know the name Stephen Merchant.
MERCHANT: I wouldn’t say disappointed. I think generally the people that enjoyed it understood exactly what we were trying to do, really, which was just to write some funny comedy. But I think we made it difficult with The Office, in that we had given people maybe a little bit more than they were expecting from a sitcom. That we were giving them a world which they could entirely invest in and a kind of emotional journey. Which is something we very consciously decided not to do with Extras. We just felt we would be judged against ourselves, and why not just give ourselves a bit of time off and just have fun. And bizarrely, we were still judged against ourselves by some people for failing to give them what we’d given them in The Office. And it was like, “Well, we’re not trying to give it to you again.” And I always find that slightly frustrating because you sort of feel like, you know, “Judge the show on its own terms.” Did it make you laugh? If not, fair enough. But please don’t judge it compared with either what we’ve done in the past or what someone else has done, because it seems to defeat the object, really. But that’s just the nature of the beast. My feeling is just to keep making shows and then hopefully you can have a bit of a body of work which in years to come kind of stands on its own two feet, and is not judged chronologically – if you know what I mean. People can just dip in and out of your oeuvre as they see fit. That may seem rather grand, that, but the people I always admired were people with varied careers, with very eclectic stuff in their canon.
QS:Â And is developing a project like that within the television arena still your intended mode of expression, or are features a path you’re interested in?
MERCHANT: I’m just sat here by the phone, so it’s just waiting for it to… I should say that what they see me do in Extras is pretty much the limits of my ability. I can do that with slightly different degrees of West Country accent.
MERCHANT: Well, in a sense, we just have to let him go back out there and he has to go and play with some insects and dig up some worms and whatever it is he does with his time. And hopefully he’ll recharge his batteries and we can just present him to the world again.
A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an in-depth interview with Jonathan Katz. I can only assume he was sitting as well, a necessary bit of speculation considering he was over a thousand miles away and our only connection was a phone line and the fact that he had agreed to do the aforementioned interview.
KP: Caffeinated…
KATZ: Or Howdy Doody.
KP: How often in the past have you blamed an audience for a joke not working?
I figured it would be fun”¦Horror movies are such great things to film because every day is high adrenaline, high energy, so I figured why not.
Stipp: So how was working with Quentin and his envisioning of what a horror, splatter, exploitation flick should be and your experience on BLACK CHRISTMAS?
Stipp: Do you get more of that with every project you take on? A little more public recognition? With SKY HIGH, you’ve got to have a cadre of small fans who’ve probably watched that thing again and again while now you’re also cultivating a more mature audience with BLACK CHRISTMAS and later on, GRINDHOUSE and DIE HARD 4.
It was a nice training background for me and I miss it. I still try and take classes whenever I can.
As I try to bring what I can to the table with all that’s going on. There’s a lot more waiting around for the scenes to be set up because the explosions have to happen at the EXACT right time. The cars have to drive away at the exact right time. There’s so much more, technically, going on but Len is handling it so well. It would seem like it’s such a high stress type of job but he’s so calm, and so fun loving through it all. I think that’s a good sign of someone who knows what they’re doing, not letting it get you.
Winstead: I don’t really think of other actresses as competition, just because I feel like everyone is so different and everyone brings something completely different to the roles that they play so that when I am meeting for different roles, and I see another actress there, I don’t have that competitive edge like, “Oh, I’ve got to get it over her. I’ve got to do better than her.” I think that everyone is going to be liked or disliked for completely different reasons.
Winstead: Well, I really enjoyed the original BLACK CHRISTMAS. 
And as soon as I put them on, I loved them. I thought they were cool, I thought they were really lightweight and comfortable. I grew up wearing Vans nonstop. So, to me, they were like a lighter weight Vans and were something different. I liked the style, I was wearing them around and on the last week of my trip I had already contacted a group called 
They just didn’t get it. It made things difficult because they didn’t believe me when I said, to a supplier, “I’m going to buy this much fabric.” Or, “I want to hire you to do this,” and they figured, “Oh, you’re going to make, like, 10 of them and never see you again.” So it was important for me to explain that I was serious and that I had the financial backing to do it. We made the shoes, we made 200 pairs, a couple of little mom and pop makers helped to make the initial pairs. Even after that we just grew upon those and we’re still aren’t in a very large factory; it’s a very small operation.
PEREGRYM: I felt bad that I didn’t have that to contribute because they explained that if I pay the money then they’ll give me a pair and some kid gets another pair too. And, after I walked around, and got to his booth I was really impressed with what the company stood for, and I felt TERRIBLE that I only had $26 to contribute, and I knew there was no way I could take a pair of shoes, I couldn’t even pay for them. So, I was like, “Can you please take my $26 and maybe you can give my shoes to another kid?”
visa to go work with the studio. So, I lost a job, but I couldn’t really cry about it because now I had the chance to go to Argentina.
Once I got down there I was so emotional, and it was so overwhelming to have all these people I cared about, who were dedicating their time and money to be down there to help me fulfill my dream of giving these shoes away to see how touched they were and the joy they experienced in connecting with the kids was the most amazing byproduct of the whole thing.
When you’re working on establishing a brand you, initially, put it in some very unique, select spots and keep it limited to create buzz and that’s what we did this summer. We were in some top boutiques in LA, top boutiques in New York, maybe one or two in Chicago; we kept it kind of limited on purpose to create the buzz. And, now that we have, in the Spring we are going to be in 72 out of 80 Nordstrom’s, we’ll be in every single Urban Outfitters, we’ll be in 30% of the Bloomingdale’s and then we’ll be in over 150 boutiques nationwide.
PEREGRYM: Well, to start something from nothing is not something I would want to do and it’s just difficult because in this industry it just takes a long time”¦you even have an idea of a project it takes years for it to actually go through. I know enough of the right people right now that hopefully this will work out with the next project but it doesn’t really matter what you try to do; it is always in the hands of other people.
Thirty years ago, Howard Shore was a recently transplanted Canadian brought to New York City – 30 Rockefeller Center, to be exact – to be the bandleader for a soon-to-premiere, upstart late night comedy show called Saturday Night Live. Within five years, he done over a hundred live broadcasts, helped Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi put together the original Blues Brothers Band, and much more.
SHORE: Well, I think it was just a way for your work to come out as to what you had created for the film. And the complete recordings really have their own art to them, and they can be listened to in a way that’s never really been experienced, I think, in the films. I think that they have a way… that you can listen in a way you’ve never heard before. And I think that was really part of the reason for bringing them out – and part of it was to allow the complete work to come out so that the relationships and how the piece was created could be understood. Because I don’t know if it was quite well understood in its shorter form. The original CDs that came out were only, at the very most, a third of the entire piece. So nobody had ever really heard the entire piece except in the film. But in the film, you’re also playing against dialogue and other effects, and not always the best place to listen to music.
How can I or even you, as a horror movie fan, NOT just wonder what kind of depravity exists with a movie that has this kind of a tag line at the end of its trailer? It wasn’t until I really took a look at the offerings, individually, of the 
If you get the chance to see the trailer
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: 1) Tell me about why I need to seek out UNREST this weekend. Sell me like you want me to sign on the dotted line without first consulting with the wife and her nagging whining about why we can’t afford it.
ENGLISH: Okay, I just had to look up what on earth Funk and Wagnalls is”¦is that bad? Am I like one of those people on Leno who doesn’t know who the vice president is? (Arnold Schwartsneger, duh!) What ever happened to good ole Webster? I don’t think it’s ever impossible to make a beautiful actress look appropriate for a role, with makeup and wardrobe anything is possible. I think it is more a matter of whether the actress is willing to go there. For Monster, Charlize was willing to truly make herself ugly, not just rub some dirt on her cheeks and pose as usual. She went to a dark, ugly place ““ her facial expressions, walk, and voice were all altered to create the character. An actor who always wants to look pretty regardless of the character will always be limited. An actor who truly wants to embody a character is virtually limitless in my opinion. And those kinds of characters – that’s the good stuff, the stuff I hope for.
In the sense that being paid makes you a professional, yes, that first paycheck definitely gave me validation. On the other hand, I’ve been doing some kind of acting work since I was a kid, so I’ve gotten more validation from being able to turn acting into a real career. My goal when I came out to California was simply to be able to support myself acting without having to get another job. I’ve been lucky enough to do that (although I always thought it would be nice to get the employee discount at Starbucks), and, well, I’m happy! I like my job! A lot of people really don’t ““ so the combination makes me feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
ENGLISH: It can definitely be a frustrating road ““ you have to have tough skin because, at least in the beginning, it is all about mostly being rejected. It is nice to have friends who can empathize, and that you can vent to. But typically I don’t like to talk much about work outside of work. In fact, that’s one of the difficulties I’ve found living in Los Angeles. Like I said ““ I’m from Georgia, there are very few actors there, so no one is asking who my agent is and if I have a demo reel when I go out for a glass of wine at night. Not that I am opposed to talking about what I do, I love what I do, but there is an element of competition inherent in any “industry” conversation in this town, and that can make it hard to make real connections with people. Living here, you can never really leave work behind for an evening.
g) Were you one of those drama women in high school that not only knew they were going to be an actress but had to let everyone else know it by affecting some unholy hybrid of Eva Gardner while always speaking in a faux British accent? 
ENGLISH: I, too, am still mourning the loss of Arrested Development. A whole lot of people loved that show!! I really believe that if it had been left on the air, the audience would have continued to grow.
STIPP: Yup. Thankfully it was changed, just coming from my end of things, because it was really difficult”¦in fact, one story involves you.
ARONOFSKY: Not quite. I think it’s always a struggle and I think the film was kind”¦a beginning of an exploration by me to start thinking about these things or at least think about it in a more formal way.
And, on top of that, they are the most ridiculous musicians you’ve ever seen as far as skill. You’re like listening to some rhythm and you’re like, “Is that a 1/16th?” and they’re, “No, it’s a 1/32.”
I know Hugh talks about in some of his interviews”¦I took him to see brain surgery. We went in and saw an actual brain surgery on an actual person. And Hugh, I think, had a conversation with the woman beforehand. During the surgery the doctors were saying that she was going to die and this was just a last hope to extend her life a little bit.
So, as they’re going down this path the ironic thing is that the families, who are healthy, are so indoctrinated into western medicine and science are like, “You’ve got to fight. You’ve got to keep fighting. You’ve got to fight.”
In anticipation of the DVD release of Clerks 2, we took some time to go in-depth with Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa of 
KEN PLUME: And you also were much closer to when there were still some raw nerves about Clerks in evidence, particularly with Jeff, and you got a much clearer picture of clarifying exactly what went down post-Clerks release…
have things to put on the internet as promotion to get fans excited about, but also to get new fans to come to the sites and go, “I wanna go see that movie.” And then when the DVDs come out, they then can have a feature length documentary, or a series of documentary shorts, that are more in-depth, that fans haven’t seen before, so that buying that DVD – which is now the studio’s number one priority money maker… studios make more money on DVDs than they do with the feature film release. So it’s the number one cash cow for those guys. They always want to try to make ’em better – or at least most studios do. So if we can do that; do what we want to do, help out the filmmaker, help out the studio, and then make some money at the same time, it would be outstanding. King Kong with Peter Jackson, those guys did an outstanding job. Those are the ones that I look to as being outstanding. They’re entertaining, they’re informative – it got people, in my opinion, to want to see that movie. It kept fans entertained and it brought more people over. Bryan Singer started to do it with Superman and then bailed out, which I heard his crew basically… they were falling out of fuckin’ windows and all kinds of crazy shit. I really feel bad for those guys. Now at the same time, it’s Joe and me. Joe and I did pretty much everything on the Train Wrecks and on the documentary except for the music on the documentary. Danny Sternbaum did that and he did an amazing job. So if we can keep our overhead low, bring the creative, bring the business, and do all that kinda stuff, I would love to see Chop Shop do things for other studios and other filmmakers. Like, if we can get to the Jerry Bruckheimers of the world, the Steven Spielbergs, get involved in their projects – because a lot of times, especially now with the internet, which is what helped Kevin out with the Train Wrecks, you can avoid spoilers just by having your own stuff out there. Kevin was able to fend off people ruining the beginning and end of Clerks through the Train Wrecks. We had fire trucks out there. The Quick Stop was burning. Then the Quick Stop was rebuilt. But because we had the Train Wrecks we were kinda able to throw people off the path. Now, I don’t want to say I’m lying to people…
Be it under a rock or deep in a cave upon the highest peak, you must have been living there if the Spongebob Squarepants phenomenon has passed you by. If you’ve been around any child below the age of 15, they can probably tell you exactly who Bikini Bottom’s most famous animated invertebrate is – and, chances are, there are some hip adults that will also clue you in, being fans themselves (I’m looking at you, Fred Hembeck).
He’s also crafted (with Andy Paley) a toe-tapping album starring Spongebob and friends titled The Best Day Ever – a glorious piece of pop informed by his idols, including the likes of The Beach Boys and The Who (in fact, Brian Wilson is a guest artist on the album).
If you saw this movie cold like I did, 
She then, after partying with us, drinking, having fun, doing whatever with my friends, and then announced that she is doing an article”¦she’s a Page Six reporter. And then, when I heard that, I said, “Oh, you gotta help me out over there. They’re so mean. They’re constantly raking me over the coals. You can see we’re just having fun, we all are, we’re laughing, we’re having fun.” She’s laughing, she’s having fun, she’s flirting with my guy friends, she’s pretty much slutting her way around my dressing room, like I said, holding court with all my guy friends.
Now, I didn’t need any help to figure out I needed to sober up. I was taking a break, I had just finished months before the roast, Less Than Perfect got cancelled, and I was taking what I call a mini-vacation. I was drinking, taking a vacation, and I knew I was going to sober up before I started working on the Comedy Central pilot. I didn’t need any help from this girl. I can take myself down to my own bottom.
CS: Let’s talk DANNY ROANE: FIRST TIME DIRECTOR.
For what I shot, and the amount of money I had, DANNY ROANE is as good as it can be or I wouldn’t have stopped. I edited my little heart out till I said this movie isn’t going to get any better for what it is and for what I have shot. I can keep going back to add a little more, edit a little more but I can’t because I don’t have the money. You just have to stop. And that’s when the director becomes the artist. He has to make that creative decision. “Ok, now we’re done folks.”
I have a relationship with Howard Stern and he”¦we already did a pilot episode [on Sirius] that was an hour long, and that was two Tuesdays ago, at 10 o’clock at night or something like that. And it went really well and they were trying to make a deal with me but the money is so low, it’s laughable.
For the most part the time runs out really fast, I never want it to end, and the whole time the musician is acoustically playing background music and by the end we talk about what’s coming up for them and then they play one or two songs from their album. They can play covers. It’s really an awesome show.
They’re like, “Really Andy Dick it up! Andy Dick it up! Bigger!”
While most know her from her role as Jerri Blank on Comedy Central’s cult hit Strangers With Candy – or her numerous guest appearances on David Letterman and Sex and the City – friends and family know Amy Sedaris as a hostess par excellence, famed for her parties and dinners, and her fantastic home-cooked cuisine.
SEDARIS: Well, I’ve had, like, 20 people in my apartment for big events, and I’ve had just small gatherings. I can’t get any more than 20 in my apartment…
With the first of the 2-part season finale of The Venture Bros. airing this Sunday Evening (October 8th) at 10:30pm on adult swim, we thought now would be the perfect time to run our in-depth interview with James Urbaniak – better known to fans as Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture.
URBANIAK: So, I was really excited about the play. And I was so excited that I memorized the entire play. I memorized the lines I was understudying, but I just couldn’t help it. I learned the whole play. And I remember being at recess reciting it to friends of mine, the entire play. And I understudied a kid named David Briman, who played one of the main characters. There was also a kid in the play named Mark, who was kind of a weird kid who had a sty in his eye – he had this red mark in his eye – who was one of the other main characters, and his understudy was a kid who everyone felt probably wasn’t up to the job. And that kid’s name was Lance. And you could tell Lance wasn’t really into plays. He didn’t seem to really care. And I remember the day before the show someone saying to Mark, “Hey, don’t be sick tomorrow ’cause Lance is your understudy.” And the next day, I came into school and Mark was absent. And I remember a bunch of kids gathered around Lance, and Lance was reading the script, looking really uncomfortable, and kids saying, “Well, maybe your character could have a book on stage, and you can have the lines in the book.” And I said to my teacher, “I know all the lines in the play. I could do the part.” And they said, “Lance, is that okay?” and he said, “Oh yeah.” And he was really happy to be relieved of that duty, and I went on. I went on… (laughing)
Cyber-troubadour Jonathan Coulton is an evil, evil man who must be destroyed.
QS: So what would be the biggest turnaround in your feelings on a song? If you were to choose one that completely went a 180 on you?
QS: So what was the longest, most disturbing Googling session you’ve ever done…
QS: Are you going to continue to archive the “Thing a Week” songs as free downloads, or are you going to take them down as the CDs go up?
QS: Even better. Because I honestly wasn’t listening to you.
Once in a generation, a humorist will step forward whose thinking is so uniquely, sublimely outside of the box that a new box must be hastily constructed – usually out of found materials, since the process must be undertaken with incredible speed or risk losing so gossamer a genius. In this generation, that freak of nature is named John Hodgman, and he has written a book called The Areas Of My Expertise.
HODGMAN: Well, as you may know, there are still people in the world who ride the rails, and ride box cars… Emulate the hobo lifestyle as it was sort of defined in the early 20th century. But these people are hobo emulators – what we call in the hobo observation business “fauxbos” – instead of the true hobos, who left after 1941. Some believe that, after Pearl Harbor, they gave up their wandering ways and joined the fight against our common enemy, Europe. Others believe that they went to another planet or another dimension. Others think they just simply went underground and are waiting to come back. But that’s not true. Most historians agree that they probably went to another planet.
HODGMAN: I think it would had to have been… I think that moment in London, playing at the London Barbican, which is a huge performing arts center in London, and introducing Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby and They Might Be Giants and Arthur Bradford and Dave Eggers. It’s like, “What’s going on? How did this happen?” That was a moment where you felt a learning curve. Then, of course, all those people knowing who I was, and I went out and just started talking about radio attack ads – which is a piece that ended up being in my book – and doing that piece, and I could feel this audience of 1,000 people suddenly get it all at once, and then they really got it and they really liked it. You know, it was very much like writing, actually, because I could not for the life of me write out what it was that I wanted to say on that event. Then two seconds before I went on stage I knew exactly how I wanted to set up the radio attack ads piece. It was like channeling Gobus, you know?
If there is a master list of actors whom you immediately identify whenever they show up on screen, Robert Vaughn surely has a secure place on it. From The Magnificent Seven to The Man From U.N.C.L.E., from The Towering Inferno to Superman III – you know, the list just goes on an on, in a career spanning nearly 50 years.