Sometimes you just feel you’re in the presence of great knowledge when you talk to someone.
Robert Vaughn has a list of film and television credits that span fifty years and spans multiple generations of people who grew up consuming television. I happen to be one of those people and it wasn’t until the A-TEAM came on in the 80’s when I was introduced to not only Robert but to the kind of history he brings to every production he’s in. Whether it’s acting alongside Mr. T or Steve McQueen or even modern day Gen X actors who are major talents across the pond there are just some things you’re never going to get around asking someone who has seen it all.
And Robert has.
From series that didn’t so well to the ones that did, Robert just will not relent. And it was this sense of enduring determination that has allowed him to strike ratings gold with his long successful series on the BBC with HUSTLE, a program that has finally found an outlet here, stateside, through AMC. Equal parts OCEAN’S ELEVEN, THE STING and a whole lot of snappy writing from the minds that brought the equally successful MI-5 to Americans, HUSTLE brims with intelligence while giving plenty enough to those who are in the mood for a show about modern day Robin Hoods. The show is fast, quick-paced and with four seasons equaling a total of 24 episodes you’re able to catch up with these cats in no time at all.
Robert spoke to me regarding the show, his take on the state of modern television and how much longer he intends on staying in front of the camera.
All four seasons can now be seen playing on AMC every Wednesday night at 10/9C and are now available to be purchased on DVD.
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Great series. I only learned about HUSTLE a week ago and”¦
[Laughs]
ROBERT VAUGHN: Really? It’s been out for four years.
STIPP: I just don’t happen to live in England and haven’t heard anything about the series being brought over on AMC. I did want to say that the show is quite excellent and the fact that there are four seasons now on AMC really gives people a chance to get ensconced with what’s happening. I am curious to know, if you can answer it, why a full season represents six episodes on the BBC?
VAUGHN: Quite simply, that’s all the United Kingdom can afford, in terms of producing a series to try it out. Let’s say here you shoot a pilot and someone feels strongly about it, really strong about it, they’ll order 22 more. Well, in Britain, the BBC has much lower budgets. They have to wait until they have a group of shows that total 24 before they can sell it internationally. It’s what they’ve done with us. It’s playing all over the Orient, Africa, Eastern Europe and so on.
STIPP: It’s seems like it is here where if you can make it to five seasons, that’s the goal for any television show.
VAUGHN: Right. And AMC didn’t buy HUSTLE for four seasons. They bought three seasons and the fourth one was completed in time for them to show it last year.
STIPP: And what was Robert Wagner’s connection to the program? I saw him listed on IMDB for the show.
VAUGHN: He’s listed as a guest star on the last show we did for the season. Of the 24 shows we’ve done we filmed 2 in America, one in Las Vegas and one in Los Angeles. The one from Los Angeles, RJ, as he’s called by his friends, was a guest star on the show. And we used him in connection with the publicity of the show because I’ve known him since he married Natalie Wood the first time. So they put us all on shows, like The View, where we were brought out as a team.
STIPP: I’m fascinated by the show’s ethos, that you hustle those who don’t deserve it.
VAUGHN: One of the things I learned early on in the first season of the show, and I came in three days after they had started shooting, is that when I started reading about people who have been hustled out of large amounts of money, wealthy people, never report it to police”¦out of embarrassment. These people, most of them, made their money by their wits and they don’t want made known that they’ve been outwitted.
STIPP: So, do you think that’s the allure, that there are people who operate outside of the law, like modern day Robin Hoods, righting wrongs?
VAUGHN: Yeah, the fact that they are living at the highest level possible when they are successful and, when they are not successful, are trying to scrape by, which we have done in the series. We have done shows where living conditions dropped dramatically because they had not been successful, recently, with conning people.
[Laughs]
Kind of like any job.
STIPP: How do you keep things fresh without it seeming gimmicky?
VAUGHN: It’s exactly as you mentioned earlier. It’s not like American television where you have to come up with 20 plus episodes with 20 plus scenarios for one season. It’s much easier for the producers to come up with 6 as opposed to 24.
STIPP: How have you seen these characters evolve?
VAUGHN: I think they got lucky. Casting is everything in TV as it is in movies. If there’s something wrong with 1 or 2 people in the cast, the show doesn’t work. Television is all about attracting people to the personalities within the show. And everybody seemed to like all of us. The black guy who was in the first three seasons, Adrian Lester, he was referred to as the black Olivier in England. He’s the star of theater, he’s done everything and had a huge following even prior to getting into HUSTLE. Marc [Warren] was on his way up and is famous because of this show. He had done some wonderful things prior to this, character work, he had never done something so consistent. And Jamie [Murray], who’s a very pretty girl, and looks like she’s Eurasian, she’s one hundred percent Irish. So, we’ve all caught on.
One strange thing, and I did come into things one week after they started shooing the show, that happened after I began my work was that I started receiving these messages from these people I’ve come to know over the years, largely press people. They all wanted to know about my character, what I thought about it, what research I’ve done on it. And I explained exactly as I just told you, there was no research, I came in at the last minute. I’m getting all these questions and it was then when I started to talk, to myself, and said, “I’ll just make something up.” It was then when I said to people that, “Oh, it’s really like if Napoleon Solo from MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. went and retired on his government pension but all those years of being exposed to jewelry and wealth and beautiful cars and beautiful women and casinos all over the world, like James Bond, realizes he can’t live on his pension. So, what they do would be in the confines of the law”¦” I was just making it up as I was going along. Everybody wrote it down as what was going on with my character.
STIPP: Was that part of the appeal? That could you revisit this sort of debonair kind of character?
VAUGHN: I get scripts every year”¦Usually after 10 or 15 pages I close it. But I got sent three shows from a production company, called SPOOKS or MI-5 here, that company produced that show. I read the first script for the show and I continued to read the other two and my wife has never seen me read something like this all the way through. I said, “This is something really different.” My guess was right. Sometimes your guess can be wrong but I guess if everybody guessed right there’d be more shows on the air.
STIPP: Are the English different when it comes to what they like out of their television? I guess you could see it from a sociological point of view and see what the two cultures really value but do they respond to things differently?
VAUGHN: Well, the English seem to respond to our comedies but we don’t respond to all of theirs. Usually, comedies are harder to translate from one culture to the next but that’s not the case in England with what America exports over there. Or, in the case of ALL IN THE FAMILY, that was originally a British show.
STIPP: Good point. Now, if you try and compare apples to apples, not that you can do it exactly, but you had a spate of con shows debuting on a variety channels here in America. I’m thinking of Ray Liotta’s failed show and the failed show on ABC, THE KNIGHTS OF PROSPERITY. What was the angle that made this show really connect with the audience?
VAUGHN: I just don’t know. If I did know I could be a mega producer like Dick Wolf and be a billionaire. He’s the one who obviously knows because he has a formula that works.
STIPP: The producers of HUSTLE tip their caps to the older productions like THE STING and even recent movies like OCEAN’S ELEVEN.
VAUGHN: Well, that’s exactly the case of my television show, MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., which rode the crest of the first three James Bond movies and it came on just as the third movie opened. There was just a huge interest in secret agents and spying.
STIPP: Is there something to when people that the element of luck has something to with the success of a particular program?
VAUGHN: I’m writing an autobiography and it was just last week”¦David McCallum, who was my co-star on U.N.C.L.E., they’re putting a DVD of all four seasons, and Warner Brothers, who are putting out the DVDs asked us to be sat down and be interviewed for this. It lasted about three hours and it was because of this where I went and thought about why U.N.C.L.E. was as successful as it was, when it was. There were a number of reasons. Mainly, it was because of the success of the Bond pictures. Next, David and I were successful in engaging a young audience. And, the next most important reason was the time slot. Because, when we went on the air, in 1964 we were on the verge of being cancelled two months after we started because our Nielsen ratings were so low. They changed our time slots from Tuesday night to Monday night but one of the things about that is that the show caught on with college students who were away at school. In those days, in regular houses, there was just one black and white set so when they came back, during the holidays, they were the ones controlling what was being watched.
And so, the ratings suddenly went through the roof and, by the summer, when they re-ran the entire first season, it wound up being the number one show in the country almost a year after it almost canceled. It was mostly all due to college students and it the time slot was moved once more accordingly and the show remained a huge hit.
STIPP: It’s just these little things that contribute to the overall success and not just one big factor.
VAUGHN: I said yesterday when I was being interviewed for the U.N.C.L.E. DVD that this would not have happened in modern television. If the show is not a hit within the first two airings it is off the air. If the show, if U.N.C.L.E. would have been released now it would have been off the air permanently by October because networks do not take chances like that anymore.
STIPP: How does that sit with you now? That there a possible gems that are simply not given enough room to find an audience?
VAUGHN: And sometimes they’re not the most miserable show, either, but they’re put in one of the most miserable time slots. I mean ALL IN THE FAMILY is a good example of that. They did three pilots before they went on the air before they even had a crack at success. Everyone was terrified of that premise”¦glorify a bigot. But Norman [Campbell] kept coming back because he believed in it. The question of how long you’re willing to hang around, if you’ve got the money as Norman did, you’ve got to consider there are lot of other factors at play. In U.N.C.L.E., David had the ability to attract young girls and I attracted the older women, the women in their 20’s.
[Laughs]
STIPP: One of the other things I’ve found is that some really good television actors have, at one time, been good doing traditional theater. Have you found that to be the case?
VAUGHN: Yeah, very much so. Before movies, before talkies even, almost any actor could be put up on screen but once talkies started to come into play there was a rush to hire traditionally trained actors because there’s a famous story about Valentino opening his mouth for the very first time on the screen and out came [in a high pitched squeal], “Hi, my name is”¦”
[Laughs]
But that was the reason why there was a rush to get well-trained actors on the screen. The whole dynamic changed.
STIPP: In your fifty years as an actor you could be out enjoying your accomplishments away from the lens of a camera. What keeps you coming back?
VAUGHN: Well, I’ve played Hamlet three times, I’d play Hamlet a 100 times if I wasn’t so old but it is the most extraordinary role ever written in the English language for an actor to play. But all my children are grown, I have a lovely home in the Connecticut countryside and I don’t leave it that often but when I find something that I like I leave it because I still enjoy doing the actual process of acting.
As long as I am ambulatory I will be out there acting wherever I can.
[Laughs]
STIPP: That’s about as good as an end as there is. Thank you, Robert.
JANNEY: Actually, no. The premiere is tonight here in LA and I did a workshop in New York, and I did two weeks of that, I’m back for the premiere here tonight and I am going back to New York, renting a car, and heading up to the Williamstown Theater Festival; I’m going to be doing a play called The Autumn Garden. After that I come back here and then, hopefully, I’m going to be doing His Girl Friday at the Roundabout Theater this fall and through the spring. John Guare did an adaptation of it, in conjunction with The Front Page, which was a stage version of His Girl Friday and he kind of did an amalgam of those and we’re going to try and put it on if we can find the man who can play Walter.
STIPP: Like any other job, I take it.
JANNEY: I know, believe me. They gave that part to John. She’s a little trimmed down in this version.
JANNEY: My very first day there I was able to see them do one of those really big numbers, Good Morning Baltimore, which was so exciting. It was thrilling.
STIPP: I think, too, that Waters’ original was pretty good with the way he treated segregation. The film comes at a time in history before the pressure cookers of racial change. Is that still at the core of this movie?
JANNEY: Yeah. I think that Julia Roberts is brave to go and do theater. That’s how you really prove your weight as an actor is in the theater. And I feel like any great actor would be good in the theater and I think that everyone should do more theater. Most actors should not be afraid to jump in and do it but if you grow up doing television it’s like, “I’ve already done that scene. I don’t want to do it again.” People get lazy. But there’s so much fun in the repetition of the theater, you find new things, and there’s so much freedom in that structure and the relationship with the audience every night.
ADAM DE LA PENA: I’ll tell you why the commercial is on all the time…It’s the only damn show on that network.
STIPP: Wow.
DE LA PENA: Well, I spent the vast majority of my childhood, like I’m sure many of those same people who visit your site, watching TV”¦and a lot of people talk about the influences of TV and movies but I also spent a lot of time playing video games when I wasn’t directly watching TV. And I’ve only done 2 animated shows but I’ve always known that you’ve got to have a reason for how it looks, not the other way around. When you do an animated script you’ve to ask, “Why does this have to be animated?” But the reason for me why it was going to be in the style that it’s in is that the games that these guys make are reflective of the way the show progresses. It has a really strong look. For example, when I was doing Minoriteam it had this very strong, Jack Kirby influenced, limited animation style. And even Adult Swim, who was notorious for giving everyone their space was like, “Are you sure want to animate it this way?” The answer was, “Of course! We don’t want it to be Superfriends. This is it.” We stuck to it, we stuck to that animation style and I’m really happy we did because it gave the show the look that it did.
STIPP: Since you’ve spent so much time surrounded by it, and since you’re probably like me with the way you grew up in the midst of all the evolution in video games, is there any one thing designers or programmers say about what’s changed for them as things have become more complex?
STIPP: Yeah. I think I’ve missed the boat on that because I haven’t really had the urge to be connected with kids from Guam. 
Director: Michael Ian Black
Director: John Dahl
Director: Andrew Currie 
Director: Seth Gordon
STIPP: I would’ve guessed the exact opposite considering that there was a finite date you had to get this movie out by, July 4th, and even then the movie is opening earlier than originally intended. 
STIPP: Even Willis decided to drop your name in an interview recently. To quote Willis: “Mary Elizabeth Winstead really did her homework on the character, and not only shows up with that kind of “˜fuck you’ attitude, she gets some laughs with it.” I’m curious to know”¦did you really show up and bring it with that “˜fuck you’ attitude? 
WINSTEAD: Watching him work was amazing to me because he’s incredibly subtle but it seems so much when you watch him on the screen. He’s so charismatic and it conveys so much with just the look in his eyes and that little smirk on his face”¦that sort of deadpan delivery. It’s amazing how effortless it is for him. And then, at the premiere, he would give these small tidbits of knowledge and wisdom. I was really overwhelmed, all I could do was take deep breaths and just say “This is insane”, and he just kept telling me to just take it in and appreciate it because you never know when you’re going to get another experience quite like that”¦and go back to your normal life the next day and you’re going to look back and think, “Wow, I was just at one of the biggest premieres at Radio City Music Hall.”
They’re like, “Really Andy Dick it up! Andy Dick it up! Bigger!”
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.”
So, I think in the west right now we’re completely cut off from having any type of tool or any way of understanding that what makes us human and what makes us alive is that we will die and mortality is actually a part of our humanity”¦and that dying can actually be a part of our spiritual path.
You see eggheads get the MacArthur “Genius” grant, a free $500,000 to keep on keepin’ on with your artistic bad ass self, but you never see it bestowed on artisans who choose to toil in the folk art of comic books. I’ve always equated those who possess the ability to transcend the mundane and static into something that can resonate with the human spirit with those who possess a tuning fork for the souls of the rest of us but, unfortunately, bigger eggheads with even bigger checkbooks deem otherwise.
STIPP: But you’re on the front lines selling your own stuff. There’s a little bit of excitement, I could be way wrong, but you’re the one who’s written and drawn your work and here you are, selling to the public. Like the modern day DJ who’s selling their mix CDs out of the back of their trunk. Is that the way you want to keep it or do you have designs of someday hooking up with a big corporation like a DC or Marvel and have a cush gig just sitting at well-manicured tables for an hour or so just signing things?
MAHFOOD: Yeah, but it’s also something that unconsciously evolves on its own, too. The more you do it, you hope, the better you get and things start to work themselves out but, yeah, I definitely consciously started going”¦going from portraiture kinds of things to straight up Peanuts style. Where the drawings of me and my friends have round heads and little arms and little legs because I think it looks funnier, for one, and also I don’t take myself seriously enough to do realistic portrait work of me and my friends; it would be too weird.
If you look at these things from the beginning there’s like 10 panels, whole lots of word balloons, it’s all very heavy diatribes but now, for me, it’s a looser idea of, “Let’s put out 10 ideas instead of one really detailed, convoluted, idea.” And there’s so much to comment on nowadays.
STIPP: Are you finding some political satisfaction in taking a stance every week for the people to interpret?
It’s my funky version of the world.
And the live art, the live art is a literal reaction to music because we are literally painting and drawing what we’re feeling while the music is going on, loud as fuck, pumping through our bodies, our eardrums, like when Scott and I paint live we don’t talk about what we’re going to do, we don’t plan it out. We just go up and we do it. It just comes out, it’s like an exorcism”¦and it’s like this subconscious, crazy shit just comes out and when a piece is done sometimes you step back and it’s like, “Whoa. Wait. Where did that come from?” But it just came out. It is what it is.
that even Mr. T would have to agree is a bit too much.
3) Building on a bit of what I had to say in number 2, I finally have something lined up weeks prior to me ever having to do anything to set it up. For those who enjoy the perks of writing for a known publication that publicists line up knocking at your door just hoping you’ll spill a little e-ink on their client this will come as no surprise to you: some of us, even though we can kinda sorta draw a link between us and Kevin Smith when we’re having to cold call prospective interview subjects, have to play the see-and-wait game with plebes who couldn’t care that I would be better for the person of the hour that they have to wrangle for the day because I wouldn’t start off the interview with, “If you could be an action figure…” or some sort of nonsense that passes for mainstream journalism. The words pathetic don’t come close to describing my pain when I see who I am passed over in lieu of. But, whatever, right? This is a time to play Johnny Hustle and, damn, I just love cold calling.
getting the chance to see what’s coming out next summer in ’08 to sitting in on forums about what’s up with my favorite geeky indulgence it’s just nice to be as old as me and genuinely look forward to wallowing in my own nerdiness.
Director: George Ratliff
Director: Phillip G. Atwell
Director: Lars Von Trier 
Director(s): Frank A. Cappello
On one of my perusing journeys I came across an article that decried the lunkheadedness of many reporters out there who are aching to serve entertainment outlets with vapid and shallow filling that will play well to Ma and Pa Kettle in Bumwad, Tennessee.
Director: Ken Kwapis
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Director: Wong Kar Wai 
Director(s): Gus Van Sant, Joel Coen, Alexander Payne, Olivier Assayas, Frederic Auburtin, Gérard Depardieu, Christoffer Boe, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Ethan Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Christopher Doyle, Vincenzo Natali
Director: Roland Joffe
Director: Adam Shankman
Director: Akiva Schaffer 
Director: Michael Bay
Director: Mark Helfrich
Director: David Yates
Director: Paul Greengrass 
Director: Julia Loktev
Director: Greg Mottola
Director: Hal Hartley
Director: Mike White 
Director: Tamara Jenkins
STIPP: And had you been living in LA prior to that?
PEREGRYM: It’s been a lot of fun. Sometimes it’s tough because my character”¦I don’t get to do a lot of the stuff. I mean, my scenes, the way they’re written, are amazing. Now, sometimes it’s frustrating because I can’t act them out because everyone else is acting my part and I just pop up at the end and say, “Ha-ha.” So, believe me, it was great to be a part of it”¦I love the show so much and I love my character and I hope I’ll get to do a little more but it’s been a blast and I never thought I could love playing evil so much.
PEREGRYM: Well, no, not really. I’ll be around for my scenes. I have to be around for the entire scene whether or not if I’m in it but when you’re on set, you’re on set for 12 hours and that’s for your stuff. So, even though the camera time isn’t a whole lot it’s the process that takes a lot of time. And it’s important that I’m there as they’re there for my stuff because we both have to kind of interact. We have to do the same things and copy each other from the time that I morph to the time that it’s me. It’s fun, though. I think it’s a fun role for everyone else to play to because they get to step out of their character too and play it a little cheekier than usual”¦except for Ali Larter’s character because she’s already got that going on.
PEREGRYM: When I joined, I knew it was a hit, I knew it was doing really well. But, I don’t think I really understood because I don’t watch a lot of TV. The shows I was a part of LIFE AS WE KNOW IT, shows like that, things I was proud of, they did OK but it’s pretty incredible to be part of a show that’s taking off as much as it is.
PEREGRYM: Well, nothing is confirmed, as of yet but filming for HEROES starts back up at the end of June. There’s not much time to do anything unless it starts right now.
PEREGRYM: I think they have an idea of where they want to go with the characters but realize they don’t tell us very much at all”¦and when I entered they had so many other storylines going”¦and I don’t think they have a lot of time to focus on me when they have all these other things to tie up. I don’t feel my character has alliances with anybody and”¦I can tell you that I honestly have no idea what’s in store with my character.
STIPP: Does she appreciate your work on the show?
PEREGRYM: I have two other sisters and we’re all very close. I’ll be 25 in June. So, it’ll be 25, 24 and 22. So”¦good luck. You will be stressed, I can promise you that.
On the one hand I am not in any way a fan of The Jamie Kennedy Experiment. I saw the program as a shallow attempt to blend his style of comedy, his need to dress up and portray a gaggle of imaginary characters and set it all against a Candid Camera-like backdrop. I didn’t find it amusing. I didn’t see anything particularly brilliant about his humor and the roles he chose in mainstream film only really solidified the theory that he was, essentially, a vanilla alternative to Jim Carrey.
Director: Katherine Dieckmann
Director: Harvey Glazer
Director: Michael Addis 
Director: Christopher Smith
Director: Craig Gillespie
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Director: Dennis Dugan 
Director: Rob Zombie
Director: Danny Boyle
Director: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava
Director: Lee Tamahori 
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
I was going to hold my tongue about all this until you made your way down below and beheld the sight of Venom and Co. swinging face first into your lives in the latest SPIDER-MAN 3 trailer. However, I just couldn’t shake the drifting thought about why Sony has sought fit to release this “International” trailer with oodles of the very thing you know every geek and his imaginary girlfriend who lives in Canada wants to see: Venom.
Surely this isn’t a GODZILLA issue; the tease that everyone wants but are denied until opening day to behold the craptacular behemoth that would sink its way back into the ocean with nary a whimper. The studio has released not only the transformation of Topher Grace into the destructive black beast but you get a look at the moves he has in mid-air and even a vampire-like smile, jagged canines and all, that is really a sight to behold. It was enough for me to even pause the damn trailer and wonder at the top shelf make-up job they did to get Grace moved over from pretty boy to downright creepy.
And, really, the crux of the issue is that this version of the trailer isn’t Sony’s latest entry into what American kids are getting amped up to see as they watch their twenty or so minutes of Coming Attractions before their Spring features. You’ve got to be a nerd like me and actually visit a site that is based in the UK and only then can you see this thing. The international audiences are rolling into this version with a plethora of dangers that the American trailer barely scratched. For the record, and in fairness in reporting, neither trailer deals with how Gwen Stacy factors into the mix. She will in a great way but there isn’t anything to really go off of. However, the international trailer tosses in a heaping helping of the many directions that this film is going to but why is the average American, at this stage of the game, only being led to believe that this is a film that deals with a black suit that gives Spider-Man new powers, the struggle he is going to have with Harry and the fight he’s going to have with Sandman by film’s end? 
(My honest opinion is that Haden Church is going to serve a near perfunctory role if this film is going to be juggling no less than seven major plot points but he may not. Perhaps he and Venom are going to be a super bad tag team with Harry eventually siding with Peter in a battle royale the likes of which have never been seen before! Probably not.)
Director: Andrew O’Connor
Director: James Longley
Director: D.J. Caruso 
Director: Sam Raimi
STIPP: When did this all happen?
But I took a lot away from it all even though I was simply enjoying myself at the time, just trying to be an annoying little kid.
If my song doesn’t sound good with me and an acoustic guitar in my hand or me and a piano or just me singing a capella”¦if it doesn’t have any meaning or significance when I do any of those then I don’t believe there’s any grounds for me to put it on an album. That’s why I’m so excited about the album because all those songs mean something to me and they say something. They all can be played acoustically.
CANNATA: Absolutely. And that’s what I want to come out of my music; I want to be as specific enough and say exactly how I feel but yet when people listen to it I hope they can say something like, “Yeah. I’ve been there.” Something that can capture the audience like that as they listen.
CANNATA: Here’s the brilliant part about that”¦my father has a recording studio here in Glen Cove, Long Island and it was basically that when my dad was on the road with Billy my mom wouldn’t let my dad spend his money on fancy cars or boats or anything. So, she said, “Buy something that will give back”¦something that you can do and love it for the rest of your life.” So, they put a studio together and since I’m an only child I am totally indebted to my parents for that. Being that it was here, my dad produced my album and it was a lovely thing where all the comments that were made were in my best interest. It was like “How do you feel?”, “What do think you should do?”, “What do you think sounds good with this?” That’s why it worked out real well.
CANNATA: A lot of musicians want it so bad that they’re willing to compromise integrity for it”¦which is tough. If I didn’t have this position I might be compromising my integrity too. I want it that bad as well. It’s a dirty game but you’ve got to play by the rules and break some rules at the same time.
STIPP: Going back to the recording of the album, I’m curious, did there ever come a time when you felt like you were overproducing a song? You can hear it in how some artists just add layer after layer”¦
STIPP: Your sound seems reminiscent, like I’ve stated, of the college rock that seemed to be so prevalent in the early 90’s; minimal production, thick sound. Has anyone else commented on what this music appears indicative of to them?
I mean, really, who puts caraway seeds in their Irish Soda Bread?
Director: Marc Evans
Director: Michael Tucker
Director: Cam Archer 
Director: Satoshi Kon
When you opened your newspaper, or clicked your way through Digg, on Monday morning the one piece of information which should be old news by now is 300’s triumphant take at the box office over the weekend. It’s success was never in doubt, just how much it was going to pull in was up to debate. I believe even the most aggressive pundits were short a few million in thinking how many people were going to show up to watch a bunch of dudes get all 
I can understand that there are some actors that believe that participating isn’t their bag and that the movie should be all that’s important when it comes to the finished product but the funny thing about the Special Panty Raid Edition of NERDS has Curtis Armstrong, Robert Carradine, Timothy Busfield and the movie’s director all providing a commentary track for the new DVD. Noticeably absent is ER’s Anthony Edwards who, depending on what really happened, passed on the chance to put his personal stamp on a film that has really defined the nerd experience in the early 80’s for a lot of people who grew up on this film. I can understand that Anthony just wants to forget this movie was what helped establish what would eventually become his empire but it’s just disconcerting that Edwards would eschew this, being the one real hold-out from a cast that involves dudes who have went on to star in an Academy Award winning movie, a successful syndicated television show, an acclaimed television series that will forever provide a sweet royalty check and a director who, well, he made that one movie with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas that I didn’t think completely sucked.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Director: Martin Weisz
Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner 
Director: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
I normally don’t take too much satisfaction in pointing out the demise of a periodical that I bought on a consistent basis and enjoyed the hell out of for simply the level of respect given to the medium.
Director: Judd Apatow
Director: Peter Berg
Director: Chris Rock
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Never mind segregation, women and their place in organized sports was also just another way that a specific and directed patriarchal societal bubble, because there are still pockets of them in existence today whether we care to admit it or not, defined what women should be doing with their free time.
STIPP: Well, considering your injury, did any of the pivotal moments in the telling of this team’s story have to be tweaked to accommodate what happened to you?
STIPP: Are you still in school?
ob and he did a nice job in explaining that this was more than just a basketball movie. And what really made us realize, and appreciate, what we were doing was when we met the real team that this movie is based on. We met the real coach, Jim Keith and his wife and all the girls who he influenced and coached, and it really hit home for me. And, when I met the woman who I was playing in the movie, just talking with her about how this man changed her whole life made me see how it paved the way for women’s sports and where they are today.
Enjoy the weekend and apropos of absolutely NOTHING but my own shameless self-indulgence in the sport, and for the life of me I can’t explain that for every cinephile who enjoyed MAJOR LEAGUE, with a MEN AT AT WORK Charlie Sheen gearing-up for his brother’s greatest filmic achievement and who would’ve thought all these years later it would be Dennis Haysbert, aka Pedro Cerrano, who would be the real star of that flick, hates to even think about real baseball, I’m fully engorged that Spring Training for The Chicago Cubs, straight representin’ yo, has finally started. There is a world beyond the silver screen and it is the hope that this team finishes a few notches above last place that keeps me coming back year after year.
Director: Curtis Hanson
Director: Todd Field
Director: David Fincher
Director: Luc Besson 
Director: Julie Taymor
Director: Joel Schumacher
Director: Walt Becker
Director: Ben Garant 
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?