FRED Entertainment

Tag: interview

  • Holiday Havoc: An Evening With John Hodgman & Ken Plume III

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    holly.jpg

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    Continuing my annual tradition, I’ve got an in-depth conversation between minor television celebrity, PC, and literary trivialist John Hodgman and FRED’s own me, Ken Plume. I present this audio feast for the ears, as one titan of culture and one Ken Plume touch on social networking, A GAME OF THRONES, fan expectations, Jeff Goldblum, the strut of dreams, & more.

    Be sure to pick up a copy of Mr. Hodgman’s most recent book, More Information Than You Require, also available in Audiobook Form…

    havoc-hodgman.jpg

    Download “An Evening With John Hodgman & Ken Plume III“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-john_hodgman_2.mp3]

    Check out the rest of this year’s Holiday Havoc – and past Havoc – HERE

    holly.jpg

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

    If you enjoyed this post, please take a moment to DONATE

    holly.jpg

  • Trailer Park: Andrew Jarecki of ALL GOOD THINGS

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Andrew Jarecki – Interview

    You need to see this movie.

    I know, the din from all the Oscar bait is much too loud to ignore but, I implore you, do what  you can to see an emotionally evocative film that takes the “ripped from the headlines” to a whole new level. At the center of a very real murder mystery is Ryan Gosling who plays David Marks, a man who may or may not have killed his wife. Whether he did or not is where this film departs from so many procedurals where the outcome is the one thing that’s needed by an audience who has to know, unequivocally, whether the accused did it or not. You will not get that satisfaction here as the real pleasure comes in the form of Gosling who is downright riveting in an Oscar worthy performance portraying a man who is beset on all sides by ambition, by love, by raw passion.

    The brilliance comes in, you understand, by Jarecki who never once wants to make this man seem like a monster who is obviously capable of murder, capable of making his wife vanish. Jarecki, who directed one of the greatest documentaries of the 21st century, Capturing the Friedmans, brings that same sensibility here as we focus on what is in front of us and not what we can infer. It’s the attention to detail, of making this period piece actually feel like the time in which we’re experiencing these events, that elevates this from a simple drama to a dynamic entry into an already congested list of films that need to be looked at when it comes time to handing out little gold statues. From Frank Langella, Kirsten Dunst, even Kristen Wiig the performances are uniformly spectacular.

    Jarecki spoke with me recently about the film and its production. All Good Things is out today.

    all_good_things_movie_poster_01CHRISTOPHER STIPP:  Thank you for talking with me.  I just got a chance to see the movie over the weekend and loved it.  It was a great film and one that, just reading the synopsis it seems like I’ve seen this movie a dozen times before but this one really felt fresh.

    JARECKI: It’s hard to come up with a one liner to describe this movie, I have to say.

    (Laughs)

    CS:  What made you think that there was a movie to be made out of this story?

    JARECKI: I’ve always been fascinated by monster stories.

    Often because when you see someone who has been described in awful ways and in the past has been painted as a one dimensional figure, when you get more deeply into it you find that that person is much more complex and human than you originally thought.  That was certainly the case here and as I started to research the original story, the story about Robert Durst, I found so much depth to it that it was clear to me that this was something that had never been told ““ even though there’s been thousands of pages of newsprint written about the story and there had been hours and hours of tabloid television shows about it over the last 30 years – nobody had a picture of what might have happened, particularly early on in this relationship.  In the early stages this was a couple that was in love and who had great hopes and plans for the future and nobody ever sets out to have this path in their lives but it happens that they go on different journeys than what they had expected.

    CS:  I know we spend a lot of time following Ryan Gosling through this. He actually provided some depth to this man but you position it to where we actually like him on some level, to listen to what he is saying.  Was it tough for you to break that shell and to make him more of a ““ you might not feel great sympathy towards him – sympathetic character?

    JARECKI: Yes, I think you have to feel his sense of humanity.  And I also think that, in terms of characters in film or drama or literature that are not instantly appealing to us, there is always that feeling that even if we don’t actually love this person as long as somebody that we love loves that person.  So once you know that Kirsten Dunst’s character is in love with this man, which she clearly is, we have stakes in that relationship ““ that we care what happens.

    CS:  Did you have any influence with Marcus Hinche and Marc Smerling who helped co-write the story?  Were they the ones who crafted this script by themselves and came to you with it or did you help shepherd it in any way?

    JARECKI: We all started the movie together and then we all went out ““ the very first step was that we all went out researching the story and getting into the relationships and discussions with people who had known the families and done business with the family and were friendly with the couple and had been part of the investigation.  We really met over 100 people who had something to do with the story, the case and the couple.  In the course of that we began to develop an idea of what the movie would be, which we worked on together.  So we started developing a script together.  The director, certainly in this case because I had initiated the contact with my partner Marc, and then we put Marcus into it, it was pretty democratic and free flowing process.

    CS:  I didn’t realize that your last full length film, Capturing the Friedmans, had come out over a half decade ago.  Were you just waiting for a movie like this to come along?

    JARECKI: It’s probably taken me a long time to observe the story and try to get a take on it because this is a story that had never been made into a movie and, in fact, even when it’s been explained in one way or another on television they always take a piece of the story because it’s very hard to convey 30 years of history and these three presumed murders over 30 years of this very large block of someone’s life.  It’s just a difficult thing to do and a lot of the time is compressing the history.  You can say, well it Andrew it took you 5 years to make this movie, which it really did.  It took about 2 years to write the screenplay and then it took about 3 years to get the movie made.  Aren’t you glad I didn’t make you sit through the whole 30 years?

    (Laughs)

    For me, I’m not in a hurry that’s for sure.  I know it would be fun to work on a movie very quickly.  I think I might have that in me but historically I’ve wanted to do all this homework first.  So as a kid, maybe it was ingrained into me by my father who has a lot in common with Sanford Marks.

    CS:  It’s funny that you bring that point up.  I am reminded of a great film I saw this year which was The Red Riding Trilogy. It spans years and years and years but it’s broken up into 3 films.  Was it ever a thing to you that if it wasn’t a movie this maybe a mini-series for HBO?  They might like something like that, or did it ever come to a point where you thought that maybe this could be longer than just 90 minutes?

    JARECKI: I remember when we made Capturing the Friedmans. We had a 5 ½ hour version of the movie.  And I have to say it was extremely logical.  I was living in Rome at the time and we showed it to groups of people and people never said I’m done after 2 hours.  They said, can I get a glass of water and sit back down.  So, I think there is always a much fuller version of the story that you can tell but at the same time I think the challenge here was to try, in a relatively short period of time, convey a lot of emotional history and so it felt to me that we could ultimately get it to the length of a feature film and that was probably the right way to do it.

    CS:  Obviously, it worked.  Talking to Frank, Kirsten, and Ryan, did you convey that to them or did you lean on them as actors, let them read the material and act the way they saw fit?

    JARECKI: I direct a lot of theater and I’m a big believer that the actors bring a huge amount of the work we put into the character and it’s very much a collaborative process and if you cast the actors right you are lucky to be working with actors who have the capabilities like Ryan and Kirsten and Frank and some of the other people.  We took some big risks in this movie like we cast the part of Deborah Lehrman who is in her 20’s when we meet and her and then later is in her 50’s.  We cast this 25 year old girl, Lily Rabe, because we thought she could do it ““ play the character and play the same character 30 years later and I think she did.  She transformed herself.  Physically, her body becomes decrepit.  She’s fundamentally different.  She has a bad hip and she walks funny and a lot of these things happen in a way that I think is true to the way people age and how people evolve.  So we were really lucky to have this group and I think lucky that they all took their jobs very seriously.  Then we also did something unusual.  Somebody said “I guess you’ll be wanting some rehearsal time” and I said, “Yes, about 2 months.”

    Everybody really laughed at that and they said, “This is not a play.  These actors are very busy and they have other jobs that they’re doing and it’s going to be crazy and to even consider the possibility that you would have them in New York for 2 months before you start shooting a movie.”  So I said, “Alright.”  Then I called Ryan and I called Kirsten and they said “When do you want us there?” and I said,  “How about a few weeks ““ that would give us 2 months to rehearse?” They said OK.  So I realize that was fortunate because they were in a position to do it ““ they could have been in the middle of some other movie but they weren’t.  They were excited about that idea ““ about giving the movie the rehearsal period that it needed.

    CS:  How did production on the film translate?  I know documentary filmmaking obviously would lend something as to how you shot this film.  Did you find it was a smooth transition?

    600full-andrew-jareckiJARECKI: For me I was comfortable working with the actors.  I like actors a lot.  I knew what they would bring.  I thought a lot visually about how we wanted the film to look.  We joined forces with the cinematographer that had lots of experience because if I had an idea for how I wanted to say something I wanted someone that had the chops to say that’s not going to work or I have an even better idea.

    Michael Seresin shot Angela’s Ashes, Midnight Express, a Harry Potter movie, he is an extraordinary talent and someone that helped us visualize the story so that everything was speaking the same direction so that the style of the movie was visually was properly married to the subject.

    CS:  Yes, it’s gorgeous.  It literally is like walking into another decade.

    JARECKI: Yes, thanks.  The period was so important ““ just getting the period right without getting hokey.  Michael Clancy who is the costume designer ““ not only did he go way beyond the regular costume ““ he had a huge collection of his own vintage 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, were original pieces ““ he said the problem of early 70’s is that things can get pretty clownish.  People tend to overdue 70’s.  The 70’s was a clownish period ““ like what John Travolta wore.  So that period that was properly done but was reserved enough without looking ridiculous.

    CS:  It was very subtle.  That comes across.

    JARECKI: And in Kirsten’s case ““ the early 70’s ““ she’s very knowledgeable herself and she knows that it’s a big part of the character that here’s a girl that comes from this modest background in Long Island and comes to New York City and meets this incredibly wealthy, young man from this huge real estate family and when we first meet her she is in this very simple sundress and clearly nothing appropriate to wear to dinner at Gracie Mansion and within a few years she has become much more sophisticated and see her style evolve as she gets more confidence in herself.  And that was an important part of the evolution.  Even Ryan’s character.  He rebels in some way but at the same time he becomes more strapped into the jacket and tie that his father wants him to wear.  In the beginning we see him as a much more free spirit.

  • Trailer Park: Yony Leyser of William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Yony Leyser – Interview

    Watching a documentary on William S. Burroughs is kind of like opening your mind up like a flower waiting for a bumblebee to come and pollenate it. You know that in order to carry on, you need to have someone assist you in continuing down the path of evolving as a species. Burroughs was that bee. He was slight, unassuming, but wielded such a power as to be completely and totally dangerous.

    I hadn’t ever come into contact with his work until having this documentary, crafted together by director Yony Leyser, put in front of me to see exactly what kind man he was. Forget about what the media has built up around the perceived mystique of the man, what you think you know about him, as this documentary is informative as it is, at times, nonlinear. Burroughs’ sensibility lives in this documentary but it’s completely accessible. Through the wonderful lens of archival footage, interviews and excerpts from the man’s work this film is a loving testament to the enduring power of Burroughs’ strengths as a writer, a poet, and as someone acutely aware of what was happening in the world around him. I had a chance to talk to filmmaker Yony Leyser about the making of this movie and why John Waters is so delightful.

    William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is now playing.

    william_s_burroughs-_a_man_within-1288295074CHRISTOPHER STIPP:  Yony, it’s so nice to talk to you.  I saw the movie over the weekend and was mesmerized by it.

    YONY LEYSER: Great.  Thank you so much.

    CS:  You are so welcome.  Unfortunately, I’m not a hipster and can’t say I knew of his work and never interacted other than seeing Naked Lunch.  How did you come upon the idea that this would be a documentary that you would want to do?

    LEYSER: I read his work in high school.  I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and Naked Lunch was the first thing I picked up.  It blew my mind. It opened a whole new world to me.

    CS:  I had no idea that the notion of the beats was manufactured, that it was something the media crafted and ran with.  You sort of explore that a little bit.  Did you feel that Burroughs ever felt comfortable with being labeled being part of that scene?

    LEYSER:  I don’t think he was, no.

    CS:  As you look on it and his work was it hard getting this film off the ground?

    LEYSER: Oh yes, absolutely.  I started to film in the spring and had no idea what I was undertaking.

    I worked on this film for many years.  I actually started in Lawrence, Kansas and then moved to New York.

    CS:  I was very taken by the amount of footage that you were able to get from various sources.  When you were doing the project, were people giving you these things or were you finding these things on your own?

    LEYSER: Yeah, a lot of it was just in people’s basements or junk drawers.

    CS:  Really?  They thought there was just no need for it, put it in a collection somewhere?

    LEYSER: Yeah, it was like, “What am I going to do with it?”

    CS:  I would imagine that there would be some sort of writing museum that would love to have it or some school that would love to own it.  With regard to the process of making this film — did you go to film school or did you just have a camera and say, “I want to interview some people about Burroughs?”

    LEYSER: Yes, I got a camera and started shooting and had no idea it would turn into what it turned into.  It was really all his friends that pushed it forward.

    yoniCS:  Was this an ongoing process?  Did you have another job?

    LEYSER: Yes, I had jobs and enrolled in school so I got my diploma while I was making the film.

    CS:  So on weekends, were you going places to get this done?

    LEYSER: Yeah.

    CS:  And I have to say this and I think he gets a bad rap but I’m a John Waters fan.  When he’s talking, the mind of that man is brilliant in the way he sees things is very matter of fact, no superfluousness.

    LEYSER: He’s brilliant”¦”¦Â  He nailed everything as soon as I asked.

    CS:  He makes it so people like me who are not familiar with his work become familiar, like I get it.  I understand.  The other people you got to interview for this, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, were they just as receptive as John was?

    LEYSER: I think John was unusually receptive.

    CS:  Did you find the narrative for the film difficult in terms of knowing where you wanted to start?

    LEYSER: Yes, I knew I didn’t want linear form but Ilko Davidov, our editor, helped with that a lot.

    CS:  When you started the editing process when you were like, “OK, I got what I needed, I have what I have.” How much footage did you have by the end of this?

    LEYSER: I had about 100 hours and cut it down to an hour and a half.

    CS:  Where do you start on a process like that?  Did you find you had to come up with the narrative yourself?

    LEYSER: I let his friends tell the story.  There wasn’t much time for me to edit but having a big time editor was very helpful.

    CS:  Were you sick of Burroughs at the end of this?

    LEYSER: He was such a complex, multifaceted, person.  Not only him but the influencers that he influenced.

    CS:  I noticed that the project started or at least had some part of this movie began on Kickstarter, which I have become very familiar with this year.  It seems to be a new way for filmmakers to get financial support without having to go to a man in a suit and tie.  Did you find that was a real positive way to help get your film financed?

    LEYSER: Yes, it was awesome.

    CS:  Were you looking for a lot?  5K?  10K?

    LEYSER: We weren’t looking for much but raised 150%.

    CS:  Was it knocking around any film festivals beforehand or did this go straight from finished product to getting it into their hands?

    LEYSER: It was a part of the film festival circuit extensively.

    CS:  I’m curious to know from this standpoint, now that you have this finished film, are you looking ahead to do another 5 year project?

    LEYSER: I have two films in the works but can’t talk about them yet.  One is a major documentary and one I hope  doesn’t take me 5 years.

    CS:  And the technical aspects of filmmaking”¦was it sort of a learn as you go, get the best camera you can find?

    LEYSER: I worked on a film set and I had a bunch of sound equipment.

    CS:  And the technical aspects, like framing, it’s quite wonderful to look at.  I would never has assumed that this would be anyone’s first film.  It’s a high compliment to you.

    LEYSER: Thank you much.

    CS:  Do you feel like you have lots to learn or found out that filmmaking really isn’t that difficult?

    LEYSER: I just went head first and learned so much like a doctorate degree.

    CS:  Any sort of ideas of lessons you took away from this film?  Did you think you knew everything you knew and this bolstered what you thought of the man or did you come away with thoughts of, “I didn’t really know what I thought?”

    LEYSER: I learned every day.

    CS:  Why do you think the man’s work still endures to this day?  It’s amazing that the man is still alive in pop culture to this day.

    LEYSER: I know.  He was the first to do it and anyone who is the first is going to be remembered.

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Jonathan Coulton 2

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I chat with Troubadour 2.0 Jonathan Coulton about off-roading, gongs, Giants, cruises, and more.

    You can purchase all of his discs, plus other merch – as well as partake of more sonic goodness – at www.JonathanCoulton.com. While you’re over there, be sure to check out all 52 Things – and pick up his CDs. And pledge your life to him. The talented bastard.

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Jonathan Coulton 2“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-jonathan_coulton_2.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Rebecca Watson

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with author, presenter, and skeptic extraordinaire Rebecca Watson about judges, beverages, knives, aging, and karaoke. And be sure to visit Skepchick.

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Rebecca Watson“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-rebecca_watson.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Phill Jupitus

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with comedian, poet, cartoonist, TV quiz show captain, and author of GOOD MORNING NANTWICH, the great Phill Jupitus, about his book, the future of radio, and Sarah Vowell impressions…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Phill Jupitus“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-phill_jupitus.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Adam Savage

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with the man, the Mythbuster, Mr. Adam Savage, about ghost chairs, zen painting litmus, and how to slice time…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Adam Savage“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-adam_savage.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • Trailer Park: Innocence Mission

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Innocence Mission- Interview

    I remember taking a cab when I lived in the city of Chicago to see The Innocence Mission in 2006. It was a cold night, and they were playing a small club, but I couldn’t have been more excited. The band was riding a small wave of popularity with a couple of singles, most notably Bright As Yellow which became ubiquitous as their signature song around this time. Meeting them after the show was done I was struck with how disaffected they were with popularity. Meeting lead singer Karen Peris and talking with her I’ll never forget simply because of how low-key and genial she was, the moment captured with a ballpoint autograph on a CD single I brought with me.

    Her personality is the person you hear coming through the speakers  and as they went from playing clubs to touring with Natalie Merchant when she broke from the 10,000 Maniacs they never conformed to any logic that dictated that you needed to change your “sound” with every progressive release. It’s almost a cliche at this point to hear how bands say “this” release is a real departure for them or that the band has never sounded better. But with every album Innocence Mission has released since 1995, 6 albums in total, they’ve kept things just as they’ve always been. With a sound that has been compared to The Sundays, I would say they possess a sound that is wholly their own. With an emphasis with muted percussion and deft guitar work, with Karen’s vocals languidly smoothing everything out, they are neither folk nor are they easy listening. The newest album out now, My Room in the Trees, is a testament to their power as a group that produces catchy, low-key songs that embody everything good about what’s possible with modern music that evokes the music you would play on a rainy morning or a gentle Sunday afternoon spent relaxing. The band answered some questions I submitted about their process and what it has been like to be together over two decades.

    My Room in the Trees is available now.

    my-room-in-the-trees-web1CHRISTOPHER STIPP: What drives you to keep putting out albums? Many bands from the mid-90’s who had some popularity are all but extinct yet you keep producing quality material.

    THE INNOCENCE MISSION: It is really just a love of music, and an on-going searching for ways to express things that can’t really be expressed.  Also it’s partly because of the kind letters we’ve received that we keep recording the songs and sharing them out loud. Otherwise I think I would just sings the songs to myself. But this way, it is like joining in a conversation with other people. That’s the way it feels to me, anyway.

    CS: Does age slow your desire to play live? I saw you on a few dates during Natalie Merchant’s solo tour many many years ago and I recently found myself hoping you would get out of the house more often.

    TIM: Well, not really age, as much as circumstance.  Not wanting to leave our kids made me take a long break from touring, and then, maybe because of not using it in that way,  my voice has sort of un-adapted itself to singing for long periods of time.  Performing is a whole other discipline, so different from writing.  The thing I miss is being able to meet and be with such kind people in different places. It really was a privilege that I enjoyed for a lot of years.  Maybe we can do concerts again someday.

    CS: The creative process. Has it gotten easier with the band being together for as long as it has? I would assume that the well you go to for inspiration constantly changes but are you finding there is always something new to write about?

    TIM: Yes, I think there is always a lot to write about. But I am not always as aware of  this.  And then some days I feel that I want to try to  write about every small aspect of a single moment, I get excited about words,  about trying to see the words, and  mapping out poems. It goes like that. Music is different, though. Music is more immediately discoverable. It is almost always easy to become absorbed in composing something new.

    CS: The actual recording process. Some people go to exotic locations, mess with the physical ways they lay down tracks, work with an arcane producer who is convinced they can get “something new” out of the band, but you don’t seem to share any of those notions. Do you have favorite method when you have a batch of songs that need recording?

    TIM: We used to travel to record and that was nice, too.  But recording at home has been better for our music, I think.  It is just us here, in our studio, and so we can take the time to really hear and to try to do our best with every song.  I don’t know if I have a favorite method, other than thinking that just about every song should have pump organ on it.

    CS: Is there an Innocence Mission sound? I hear many bands talk about wanting to reinvent themselves after album, after album but you’ve, delightfully, stayed consistent. Do you ever feel pressure that you should change it up?

    mission-2010_2TIM: Well,  we really don’t think about the songs in that way. We don’t talk about changing or not changing.  We just try to strive for the sounds that we’re hearing for each song.  The first two albums are dramatically different from what we’ve made over the last twelve years or so, since Birds of My Neighborhood.   It took a little while for us to find our way.

    CS: The world consumes music differently than it did when you first came onto the scene. Do you see people’s shifting methods to getting music as a benefit to where you are today or are you finding yourselves on the outside looking in because of how fractured the marketplace is? Has it even mattered to you at all, the business of getting your music out into the world?

    TIM: I have to admit, I don’t really think about it that much.  I do see that new music in general is more accessible to everyone now, which is great.

    CS: What does it take to stay together in a band like this? Is it easy for a group best known for its delicate arrangements? I would imagine any fighting is done politely and with the kind of manners usually reserved for those at a swanky dinner party.

    TIM: That’s funny.  Well, we don’t usually have fights about music. And if we do, it’s always Don’s fault. (Kidding). Working together on recordings has always been such a big part of our friendship and marriage. It’s not something I have to question, but I am grateful for it.

    CS: This album in particular, what was the impetus for making it? Was there any great event that hurried you into the studio or was it a slow, progressive build-up of material?

    TIM: It was just the enjoyment of writing and making the recordings. It does seem to take a long while to have a group of songs that we still feel close to over time.  But that’s okay. It always seems better not to be in too much of a hurry to finish a record.

    CS: What are your hopes for the future of this band? Do you see yourselves continuously putting out new material every now and then?

    TIM: I hope to be able to keep writing.   I hope the songs will be worthy of sharing. That’s about it.

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Paul F. Tompkins 2

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have another chat with actor, stand-up, gadfly, and sartorial dandy Paul F. Tompkins, fresh from his cross-country rail journey, and we proceed to plot & scheme…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Paul F. Tompkins“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-paul_f_tompkins_2.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    pft-01.png

    lucyline.gif

  • FROM THE VAULT: An Interview with Gary Kurtz

    vaultinterviews.png

    The wonderful sci-fi geek site i09.com recently linked out to an LA Times interview with producer Gary Kurtz, and i09 believed it to be the first time that Kurtz had spoken in-depth, on the record, about the creation of Star Wars and the issues he had with George Lucas during the making of The Empire Strikes Back that led to a massive falling out between the two creative partners.

    Well, not so.

    I’d done a massive interview with Kurtz back in 2002, which goes into a lot more detail about the falling out, plus Kurtz’s other work on American Graffiti and with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal.

    Here is that interview…

    -Ken Plume

    ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 11, 2002

    In many projects, there are “unsung heroes”… people whose contributions are extensive, but have been overshadowed by the passage of time (or the bluster of others).

    One of those “unsung heroes” is producer Gary Kurtz, whose credits include American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Dark Crystal, and Return to Oz.

    I’m not going to try and explain Kurtz’s importance to Star Wars in this introduction – the interview will accomplish that.

    Without further ado, my in-depth interview with Gary Kurtz…

    KEN PLUME: I’d like to go back to the very beginning and ask about your introduction to the film industry.

    GARY KURTZ: Well, I went to film school at USC in Los Angeles. Actually, to go back even further than that, I was a music major, really, in high school in the southern California area and actually went to USC on a music scholarship to begin with. At that time, I was looking to major in composition and conducting with a possibility of maybe teaching music. But, it was a bit vague and in the first year one of the requirements of music scholarships is that you have to play in every group that’s available – so I was playing in the concert band, the symphony orchestra, the opera orchestra, the wind and other small ensembles in the classical music side, as well as the jazz band and a couple of other jazz groups that were organized at the school.

    PLUME: Was that just meant to give you versatility as far as that curriculum?

    KURTZ: Well, that was part of it, and also they always desperately needed members to play in the various groups and so they felt that music experience and performance – a lot of composition majors didn’t know how to play anything but the piano, so one of the important things was to get orchestral experience playing an orchestra instrument other than the piano. I didn’t have that problem. I played reeds primarily and then oboe and English horn, and dabbled in most of the rest of the instruments except for the heavy brass. I never tried to play anything other than a bit of the clarinet.

    In that first year at USC I did the music for three or four student films. It didn’t necessarily mean composing music, because the time deadlines were unbelievably short, so it meant mostly to assemble music from a variety of sources. Since they were student films, it didn’t really matter where they came from – there were no rights problems. In doing that, though, I became more and more interested in the films. I had had previous experience in high school at shooting 8mm and 16mm film footage, both documentary and sort of dramatic type materials, so it wasn’t a new thing to me. And I had been a keen still photographer for years, so moving to a cinema major wasn’t really that big a jump.

    PLUME: … and this would have been what, the mid-’60s?

    KURTZ: No, no … I went to USC first in 1959, so it was in the early ’60s. Very early ’60s.

    PLUME: So you were a part of that initial group of classes in the film department.

    KURTZ: No, the film department at USC had been going on since the 1920s, since the silent days … I guess it was the oldest film school in existence, because it started so early … It wasn’t really until the mid-’60s, after I’d finished and was gone, that the popularity of studying cinema became magnified 100 percent or more, because when I was there, it was very difficult to find enough students to make up film crews. As a matter of fact … in the first senior project year that I was in in that term, I was doing advanced camera, as well as sound and production management and other things, and I had to work on four of the seven projects. Normally, you’re only supposed to work on one! But everybody in the class that I was in worked on four or five projects, because there weren’t enough people.

    Then the next term, when I directed, I had a really hard time getting together enough of a crew. I had to actually do a lot of my own camera work – there wasn’t a cameraperson available. Film school wasn’t particularly popular at that time. It wasn’t until George Lucas and his group, John Milius and those guys, who went to USC also – they didn’t start until ’66 – by then it seemed to be much more popular. And certainly by the end of the ’60s, it was incredibly popular and they had to create all kinds of devices to wheedle out a lot of people by requiring a lot of portfolio work and films made in high school – all kinds of pre-requirements, just to get it down to a usable number of students that they could cope with.

    PLUME: During the time you were there, was it rather open?

    KURTZ: Oh, it was completely open. If you had projects – either written or film projects – they would look at early film projects or just written material, scripts and proposals for projects, for acceptance. But it wasn’t too definitive, because they were interested in having enough students to make up the program.

    PLUME: And at the time you were going, how respected was the film program by the industry?

    KURTZ: Oh, it was quite well respected. There were a lot of people that had graduated out of the program in the post-war period – the late ’40s, ’50s – that had become fixtures in the industry of one kind or another – studio executives or agents or television producers or a few film directors – but … it wasn’t a straight line to the creative heart, because the other big factor was the fact that the unions in the late ’50s and ’60s were very strong, and you couldn’t work in the industry unless you were a union member, as far as the crafts were concerned, and you couldn’t get into the unions because they were closed. A closed-shop kind of system. So the experience that I got while I was a film student was working on Roger Corman kind of low-budget exploitation films, and I worked on a lot of those – 40 or 50 over a three or four year period.

    PLUME: Generally doing what type of work?

    KURTZ: Well, everything really. I started out being a grip and an electrician and a sound boom operator, and on some of the later ones I was the director of photography and film editor or production supervisor.

    PLUME: So, basically, a jack-of-all-trades.

    KURTZ: Yes, yes, a little of everything. On some projects, there was so few crew that they were very much like student films. I remember one picture where I was production manager and the assistant director, as well as the editor and one of the cameramen – and the second unit director as well.

    PLUME: Now …in film school at that time, what were the aspirations for afterwards? I mean, when you talk to film students now, everyone wants to be a director right out of the gate.

    KURTZ: Yes, that wasn’t quite as strong then … there was a general feeling, in the very early ’60s, that people wanted to sort of break down the barriers of Hollywood and go into ALL of the various things. There were a lot of students who wanted to become editors, and there were a lot who wanted to become cameramen. There were quite a few who wanted to be directors as well, but it didn’t seem to be the only thing.

    PLUME: It hadn’t quite been placed on the pedestal it got placed on later, had it?

    KURTZ: No, no … the auteur theory really came out of the French new wave writings in the late ’50s/early ’60s, and we were reading all that stuff from Cahiers du Cinema and talking about it at school, I remember, and I think most of the students thought the concept intellectually was valid, but practically was rubbish because there’re so many accidents that happen on a film. The chemistry of the group that you’ve gotten together makes a huge difference, and yes, picking the right people is important. But it’s really difficult for a director – unless you’re Stanley Kubrick – to have the final say on every single little minute detail, so all the films are pretty much a group effort. It can be pretty much assumed that most of the aspiring directors felt that way – they had no illusions about the fact that they could become like French directors were.

    PLUME: Sometimes having absolute final say is one of the worst things that can happen if you have wrong instincts.

    KURTZ: Yes, absolutely. I mean, the whole point of having a group effort is that your crew becomes a sounding board.

    PLUME: I never understood the auteur theory when so much of a film is a matter of checks and balances.

    KURTZ: Well, I think that intellectually the auteur theory came out of the idea of looking at a body of work – like Hitchcock’s work or Hawks’s work or John Ford’s work – and trying to see common threads. Well, that’s perfectly acceptable as an analysis of the whole career of a filmmaker, because there are going to be tying threads there. A director’s not going to pick a project to do unless it has some meaning to them. You are going to find that it’s just the idea of the director being the only creative entity on a picture was the aspect that I think most people felt was a bit far-fetched.

    PLUME: And do you think that that trend has become detrimental over time?

    KURTZ: Yes, I do. Definitely. I especially think, since I’ve focused mostly on my career on producing and working with a lot of first time directors, I’ve felt that what’s happened is that the working producer’s job – basically, of being the director’s partner and being his mirror and sounding bound – has disappeared and the producer’s job has primarily turned to deal making. Most of the people whose names you see up on the screen don’t have anything to do with the making of the film, which is a shame, really, because it leaves the director kind of totally on his own – and it means also that there’s no one to say “Wait a minute, that’s terrible, don’t do that!”

    PLUME: There’re no ‘no-men’ anymore.

    KURTZ: There’re no ‘no-men’. Yes, exactly.

    PLUME: Do you think that leads to the working producer now being more of a traveling man than they were in the past? You used to be able to see that certain directors worked hand-in-hand with producers over ten films. Now you’ll be lucky if they work past two films, if one of those is a success.

    KURTZ: Yes, I think that’s a result of most of those relationships having risen out of the deals. Sometimes the producer’s relationship with the director and the writer on a project is only because either they own the property in the first place or they’re the one that pulled the money together, so that there is no actual working relationship. The legwork that the producer should be doing is shared out amongst the production staff, some of it being done by the production supervisor and others, and the rest being absorbed by the director. I mean, I’ve never felt that it’s fair to a director, in a way, to saddle him with having to deal with all that stuff. I’ve always felt that a good producer should insulate the director completely from having to deal with the studio and any outside influences, to allow him to get on with working with the actors and putting the film together.

    PLUME: Do you think that film schools today – and to a large extent apocryphal evidence that filters down – have made directors nowadays believe that any and all producers should be seen as enemies to whatever the vision of the director may – or may not – be?

    KURTZ: I’m sure they do, because that’s probably the case. The producer is looked upon as pretty much the same as a studio executive, who may not have any idea about the project. Whereas if you go back to the ’60s, ’70s and even before … even of the big studios days, prior to the studios losing their real power in the ’60s… the producers that were working – the Arthur Freeds of the world, and David O. Selnicks – they had the power. The directors were their hired hands. That’s not necessarily great either, but those kinds of producers from the ’30s and ’40s seemed to have a fairly grand vision of what they wanted to see on the screen. The directors that they hired went along with them – and that was part of the studio system anyway, when they all were employees of the studio. So it isn’t fair to try to compare that with what’s going on today.

    PLUME: The irony is that a good deal of major directors nowadays have become those type of producers as well, bringing on other directors as hired hands.

    KURTZ: Yes, exactly… Because they had the power to do that. But there’re so few good movies made today, it’s difficult for me to believe that it’s all because the directors don’t have any vision in what they want to see. I think it’s primarily due to the fact that the studios are now all owned by big conglomerates who are interested in making money to the exclusion of everything else. Now, the studios always wanted to make money – that was one of their reasons for being in existence – but the men who ran the studios, no matter how difficult they were, they had some sense of what being a showman was like.

    They were willing to take chances on oddball projects, and you don’t see that as much anymore. There are smaller companies who will, but there’s so many stories about projects floating around the last ten years that couldn’t get made because the elements weren’t right. When you just look at the list of the elements that the studios wanted, you know it wouldn’t work that way. But it’s a security blanket to have it be a Tom Cruise picture, or a Jack Nicholson picture, or whoever. Whether they’re right for the project or not, the studio executive is not going to get fired if the picture fails if they have A-list talent.

    PLUME: Right – and then they complain about the audience, for not accepting it.

    KURTZ: Yes.

    PLUME: I’m interested… when you talk about the Golden Age of Hollywood, as opposed to now, there seemed to be a better balance between “Okay, these are our A pictures, and then these are our B pictures, the experimental ones that we’ll toss money towards, but … we’re going to bank on the A ones, if the B ones hit – fine.” Now it seems that everything has to be a blockbuster.

    KURTZ: Yes, that’s exactly right. I mean, I was part of the program at Universal Studios in the early ’70s – the low-budget program that was run by Ned Tanen which produced twelve or thirteen pictures, all under a million dollars at that time. Anything under a million dollars was considered bare bones movies. The most famous film that came out of that group was, of course, American Graffiti – and it made the most money – but all the films that were made under that program were interesting, quirky films that at least made their money back. If you count video and things over the long run, they all made money … it’s not Jaws business, but American Graffiti even wasn’t Jaws business. American Graffiti was a very, very small picture that went on to do reasonably well. I think it eventually did $60 million in America, which wasn’t big box office even in the early ’70s. But, based on the cost of the picture, it was pretty phenomenal. The other pictures in that program – Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running and John Cassavetes’s Minnie and Moskowitz and Milos Forman’s Taking Off and Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand and the other one that I helped produce, Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop – all of those films are interesting films and they’re worth seeing today.

    PLUME: They hold up very well.

    KURTZ: They do hold up very well, and because they cost so little money, the studio didn’t worry about them. But no one seems to be willing to experiment with a program like that today – at all. They’re not willing to make small films, or if they do, they make them by – well, they don’t make them, actually. They have a classics division of some kind or another like Fox Searchlight or Miramax that seek out odd projects, and they get made independently and then just released by the studio. The studio doesn’t instigate the making of those projects.

    PLUME: So they have no initial costs…

    KURTZ: No, they do have costs. They wait for the filmmakers to come to them with a developed script.

    PLUME: Or, in some cases, a completely filmed project…

    KURTZ: Well, yes, that happens, too.

    PLUME: It seems like the industry depends solely upon initiative, nowadays, rather than taking any risks.

    KURTZ: At the time we were doing American Graffiti at Universal – which was not a picture made on the lot, although we had an office there – it was made in San Francisco, and we were very rarely at the studio. But some of the times when I was at the studio for meetings and various things, I realized in talking to some of the story department people that they had probably 100 projects in various stages of development – script development – that they were paying someone to develop. They don’t do much of that anymore at all. I suppose the idea is now that the scripts will somehow be generated. Either the independent producers or the writers themselves will spend the time and energy to develop them to the point where they can be seen. I think one of the reasons that there’re so few good movies is that that process has been truncated so much. Too many films go into production before they’re ready.

    (continued below…)

  • Trailer Park: George Gallo of MIDDLE MEN – Part 1

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    GEORGE GALLO – Interview

    One of the most thrilling things you get to do when you’re in a position to see a film very, very early is knowing that whatever you are feeling about the experience of seeing that movie, is pure. Pure because you are not tainted by the pool of public opinion or subconsciously projecting someone’s off-handed comment onto your own. It’s devoid of judgment and expectation and watching a movie like Middle Men, with a crowd that only knew that it starred Luke Wilson, who hasn’t given such a dynamic performance since The Royal Tennenbaums, Giovanni Ribisi, a complete terror who delightfully and shamelessly steals every scene he’s in, and James Caan, who lets loose in one the more engaging roles in recent memory, you realize just how fun it is to go to the movies.

    Middle Men is a production you never saw coming in a month usually reserved for the detrius of summer because it is just a rock solid film and one brimming with character. It is hilarious, dark, unnerving, and is the reason why talkies that don’t deal in superheroes or have budgets that swell into straospheric heights can still inspire that sense you’re in the presence of great filmmaking. To wit, a large part of that should be credited to writer and director George Gallo who many will remember as the writer behind Midnight Run and, still one of my personal favorites in the 90’s, Bad Boys.

    To hear Gallo talk is to hear a man who really should be teaching how to make a movie from the ground up. Forget about the nascent ramblings of stuffy shirted old men who want to talk about making movies in a way that makes the process seem filled with pomposity, Gallo is chock full of stories that make you want to put down the voice recorder and just listen to a man who has navigated decades within a business that delights in chewing and spitting out talent like obese midwesterners at a Sizzler. He’s a joy, a fascinating player in a game he’s very much still a part of and, based on the film in question, still full of good ideas and is on point behind the lens. There’s no question he belongs in this business because he’s both a realist and man undeterred by the barriers that have stopped lesser creative types.

    My only wish after talking with the man was wanting to be in the position to take the man out for a drink, to have him talk about what it means to be a survivor in Hollywood, to hear what it takes to be relevant for a market that seems so fragmented thanks to the multitude of entertainment options an audience has at its disposal. He’s one of a kind, a man capable of crafting a fine film about porn and commerce, and there wouldn’t be anyone else I’d rather listen to all day than this man. Here’s to hoping he’ll consider being a mentor to those who have logenevity on the brain, to someday be as accomplished as he is.

    MIDDLE MEN opens today and tune in next week for Part 2 where George talks about his thoughts on a much ballyhooed Midnight Run sequel, what it took to get it made, and much more.

    middle_men_posterGEORGE GALLO: Hello.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Hello George.

    GALLO: Christopher. What’s up, buddy?

    CS: What’s happening?

    GALLO: I’ve been trying to take it easy. I’ve been working so much and writing so much my brain is kind of mush.

    (Laughs)

    So, I’m trying to take it easy which is something I don’t know how to do in general but I’m doing my best to try and sit still and get some exercise and that kind of thing and not think about this person talks to that person and this person reacts over that person and then they can say this and they can say that and they can go here and they can go there”¦I just don’t want to think about it right now if that’s OK.

    (Laughs)

    CS: Well, are you are on any sort of schedule or regimen?

    GALLO: Oh yeah. Generally I get up real early, like 6:00, 6:30, and then I start writing at about 7:00. Sometimes we go all day, literally all day. And that’s 5 days a week. I’m always writing something.

    CS: How has that been? The last time I talked to you was for Local Color and now it’s for Middle Men. I look at your directorial filmography and compared to guys who want to knock out a film a year you’re very selective, yet you are intensely prolific with your writing. Do you write with the intent to make everything that you put to paper?

    GALLO: No, I don’t. A lot of times I, because I started out as a writer and I still ““ I helped a lot of friends out. A lot of times I’ll write things to help friends that are directors out that I don’t even get credit on, you know? I am going to probably start something for Andy Davis now, you know. He’s a buddy and I’ll do about three weeks of a project for him. But I need a week off before I start it. To be honest with you some of it was by choice and some of it wasn’t by choice. I know I’m sort of a mainstream guy, but to be honest with you I never thought of perceived myself as that. There’s Hollywood movies that are the classic mainstream fast ball down the middle. Other than maybe Bad Boys, and even Midnight Run to me was sort of left handed. I never considered myself that mainstream down the middle. So a lot of those projects to me are kind of boring. They just sort of ““ not that I’m above making money ““ I’m not saying that ““ but I don’t know, they seem sort of boring to me and I just like something that has a little more teeth in it. And, like I say, I’ve written a few things that were commercial ““ not that I have a problem with it ““ it just takes so much time and energy to write a screen play and especially if you are directing the movie that when you are all done with it, hopefully, you won’t feel stupid that you spent that much time on it.

    (Laughs)

    It takes a long time. I still really care about this stuff. I have friends who make a lot more money than I do and they don’t care nearly as much as I do. I think some people just resign themselves to the fact that it’s a business and they see it more as a business than I do.

    CS: It’s funny you mention that. I have been at events, press lines, what have you, in L.A. and what have you, but here in Phoenix when Middle Men was closing out the Phoenix Film Festival you had this dichotomy of these straitlaced, suburban couples with those in your entourage. It seemed to be the epitome of people who look very nice, very tan, very beautiful ““ there were dozens of them. It struck me that this business seems to be built on this cavalcade which includes showy, flamboyant, “Let’s go where the party is” kind of attitude. Is this ritual of the entourages, the hangers on, all that, just second nature to you, is it background noise at this point in your career?

    GALLO: I’ll be honest with you, it’s funny that what you saw was a rare occurrence for me because I don’t ““ people who see me do this say I do it very well but I’m a true couch potato.

    (Laughs)

    And my wife and I don’t like to go anywhere ““ which in some ways has gotten in the way of me making other films or making bigger films or whatever but I like to come home ““ she cooks, we eat dinner, we watch TV and shout at the television quite a bit. We rarely go out. This last year has been different because I don’t even like to fly. We flew to Cannes the year before, for Middle Men, that’s where it premiered, world premiere, and it was received really well. I’m happy that the movie has a very positive buzz and, yes, I’ve been going to a lot more of those types of things. But in general, I have to tell you, dude, my friends on the technical side of filmmaking, like editors and directors and stuff like that, cameramen ““ I like to hit golf balls at the driving range. I’m just not big on the circuit thing. I’ve never been that great at it.

    CS: Let’s talk about the film a little bit. When I watched it I really know what to expect but I was surprised that I haven’t heard more about a movie made as well as this one.

    GALLO: I’m so proud of this movie.

    CS: To even look at it ““ I think your cinematographer, Lukas Ettlin, did an amazing job. I’m curious to know ““ it was based on the life and times of Chris Mell with Andy Weiss helping you write it.

    GALLO: Yes, Andy was a friend of Chris’s. Andy introduced me to Chris and Chris started telling his story one night and I was on the edge of my seat and that’s how it happened.

    CS: When you co-write a film like that, how does the process go? From him telling you this crazy story to you saying, “Alright, let’s make this a screen play.” How does that process start for you?

    GALLO: For me I just started ““ Andy had known Chris longer and Andy knew the facts more than I did and oddly I was more interested in the tone of it, rather than the facts ““ at least from jump street. I just started sketching out what the movie could be and stuff like that. I guess my accuracy was off in the time line of events that happened. A lot of the stuff, about 80% of this actually happened. Maybe more, like 80 to 90% did happen. It didn’t necessarily happen in the order that we said it happened. So I sort of sketched out this outline. Andy and I did it together.

    It was very much an interesting process. I can’t actually say who did what. It was a lot of talking back and forth. A lot of disagreeing, Andy and I both ““ we agreed on a lot of stuff but the one thing that we agreed on from the beginning was that it should not be linear. The story seemed the most interesting when it was told the way Chris told us the story. And when Chris told us the story, he had a tendency…he had a stream of conscious kind of way to jump all over the place, especially in the beginning. He was talking about one event, then he would talk about how he worked here and then this and then that. The way one tells a story and we both thought that was the most interesting way to lay the story out because it would seem the most honest. So we structured it that way and I wrote some scenes, Andy wrote some scenes, he rewrote my scenes, I rewrote his scenes. It was a tumultuous and fairly bloody process but at the same time we had a great time doing it and had sometimes very different ideas on how to present things and where to place things but in general you couldn’t have two guys who were more passionate about what we were doing. And, sometimes I would cave if I thought he was right and he would cave, that kind of thing.

    CS: One of the things that holds a lot of great stories back is financing and I was impressed that you got as much as you did in order to make it. I think every penny is up on screen. Is that ever a process for you or has that ever impeded you from getting a film like this made?

    middlemenparty2009cannesfilmfestivalwfax1fwalo9lGALLO: No. Chris produced the movie and it was his personal money to help make the film. He is the best partner I ever had in terms of a person that has skin in the game. I think he respected me because he knew I made Local Color with my own money and now here I was turning around and making a film using his money but I knew what it was like to be spending your own money every day. I’m always very respectful of other people’s dough. I know some filmmakers just don’t give a shit. I’m a working class kid. I watched my father go to work every morning and come home. I have an appreciation of what a dollar actually means to someone. Just flagrantly round around spending someone else’s money is just not who I am. I convinced Chris, certainly, that to make the movie look enormous without wasting money I do know how to make a movie and look, this was a fairly expensive movie, but I think that the picture looks twice as expensive as it is.

    We shot all over the place. We shot a lot of it in Phoenix and we shot in LA and shot in Vegas. I don’t know. I just have been sorta smart about where to put a camera, how to tell a story. From Local Color I started out as a painter. I tend to see things in paintings to begin with and I know you can’t paint beyond the edges of the canvass so I’m usually pretty clear about where I want to look or where I want to point the camera. I don’t like setting up 3 blocks away and then shoot a close-up. I’ve always been very cognizant about how to tell stories through I wouldn’t say minimally, but certainly economically.

    CS: One of the questions about that, on the same subject, are there workshops for directors to help keep up with new techniques you can use in future films? Kind of like doctors where they have continuing education, is there anything you do to stay fresh as a director?

    GALLO: Yes. I watch everything. I watch a lot of movies and even TV commercials. I just watch stuff and I’m always asking, “How was that done?” In terms of style, I think the rules of filmmaking are changing, certainly, and I think the way stories are being told is changing. I think people retain more information now, very quickly, and how many shots and cuts you can do inside of a minute. I think the whole language of film is changing. It’s always evolving. I’m always watching that stuff and trying to learn and don’t want to do the same tricks I did in the last one.

    The great thing about Middle Men was that it really afforded me an opportunity to stretch and do a lot of those things because I’ve never done a film that like at the core was chaotic. Some of the comedies were just out and out comedies. You can’t really reach or pushing the bounds of cinema ““ you are trying to tell jokes and do visual sight gags. To be honest with you, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplain they did it with minimal means and it’s hard to top what they did anyway. So with comedy you don’t need a lot in terms of goofing around with the cameras and stuff. It’s more like what goes on inside of the frame as opposed to deliciously wacky angles and stuff. With Middle Men because it was such a chaotic drug induced sexual universe where everybody was so paranoid and acting so crazy, I could make the camera crazy. I could make the colors louder. I could be more voyeuristic or perverse. We do a lot of both shoulders and opposites and just stuff like that. It was a lot of fun. I got to stretch and just had a blast doing it.

    CS: I think the casting deserves equal credit as well. Someone who really steals the show is Giovanni Ribisi. They guy is just talented beyond a lot of his peers and I think ““ I don’t want to say he gets overlooked – but I wish I could see that guy in more movies. He is just phenomenally crazy in this movie.

    GALLO: He’s terrific and really a good guy. I think he’s so good because he’s humble. And I think the second ego creeps into your work, you are finished. He’s just so humble and so without ego and so “How can I make it better”, “What can I do to make it better?” Almost to the point where you think he’s kidding. He’s that humble and gracious about the work. And I’m that way because to me it’s just an honor to get a chance to do this stuff. I still paint every chance I get. I paint a few days a week. But to paint on a canvass as large as a movie screen and all the money and all the equipment and all the talent that goes along with it to make a film, considering I did not come from a showbiz family ““ I did this because I wanted to. I came out to LA and went through the trials and tribulations to get to where I got and I consider it an honor whenever you are on a movie set and you are working you should thank your lucky stars and thank God that you are there. I have the same feeling of humility about it so that’s why we got along so well. We would just sit around and talk about how to make it better. How can we make it better? How can we express this idea? That sort of thing.

    CS: To that point, one of the things about filmmaking is actually visualizing your initial thoughts on the page. Did you have any happy surprises that you had on paper that you didn’t realize were there as you filmed? Any moments when the words weren’t working?

    middlemenparty2009cannesfilmfestivalc8oskcmvprolGALLO: I would say, yeah. Almost everyday was a surprise. The script was solid structurally. And a lot of the dialogue that was written is still in the movie but I think a fair amount isn’t and the one thing I do as a director that I think you have to do as a director is that you have to keep your writer hat on when you’re writing and throw that hat away when you are directing. There may be other directors that may tell you differently ““ Tarantino might have a different view on it ““ but I’m not as into the sanctity of the word but what I am into is absolutely believing everything that I’m seeing in front of me.

    Sometimes you can write half a page of dialogue and an actor can get that moment across with just a look or a wink or a nod or something and I think you can throw that half a page away. And a lot of Giovanni and Gabriel sometimes would go off on these improvs that were frankly better than what was written and I would just tell the cameraman just keep shooting”¦keep shooting”¦keep shooting. When that delicious stuff starts to happen, it’s not just people hitting marks and saying lines but it starts getting into that other place and a lot of that happened everyday. It just started ““ people just became those people and you’re witnessing it and you know that what you are seeing is just special because it doesn’t happen that often. It happened on Local Color with Armin Mueller-Stahl and Trevor Morgan, Samantha Mathis and everybody. We had great moments but it was a different kind of storytelling. It was a very internal, deliberately paced film where this film, Middle Men, is just craziness and people doing massive amounts of cocaine were not acting in their best interest at any time. To me the whole movie was like driving across a bridge ““ the bridge is out ““ but they just keep driving. Me personally, that stuff just makes me laugh. Sort of like he was being his best and worst all at once. I hope I am answering your question.

    CS: Yes, you are.

    GALLO: Everyday was a surprise. Jimmy Caan, who I think is terrific in the movie. I think he really reached. He said he didn’t want to do what we call a safe performance. Because a guy with a movie persona like that can always lean on the 100 or so movies that he’s done and he didn’t want to do that on this one. He really wanted to reach. He wanted to create a character that was legitimately creepy, not creepy in a movie sense. We had a lot of discussions about things that never ended up in the movie ““ things that wouldn’t end up in the movie but we created a whole backstory for him. Like things he has been doing for the last 20 years of his life that led to this type of behavior and I said not one shred of it is in the movie but it is in the movie because of some of the bizarre choices he made. Creepy choices he made as an actor. I really respect that he reached the way he did because he could have just said “I’ll be James Caan, tough guy” as opposed to doing what he did.

    CS: And I was just going to pop in with that before you did. He made me feel uneasy. The whole time I saw him on the screen, it was a great performance because it wasn’t bombastic, it wasn’t over the top, it was just enough to make you feel that whatever this guy is selling, don’t buy it.

    GALLO: Yeah. He said to me at one point he based it on a couple people he knew. He wouldn’t tell me who they were but he said they were guys he met in his life that after you shook hands with them you literally wanted to boil your hand. Sleazy business types, lawyers and I think he just took some of those creeps that we all meet in our lives and he put them all in a blender and he became that person. It’s a terrific performance. It’s almost like he’s sexually ambiguous. There was a kind of rage in him that was very interesting. He’s also very charming at times but you know that everything that’s coming out of his mouth is an out and out lie and that it’s all self-serving. If he says the words good morning, he’s already angling. There’s an agenda to everything with this guy. It’s out and out creepy and at the same time he had the ability to make it fun. Because, let’s face it, he’s as creepy as hell and we know he’s probably capable of murder but somehow we keep laughing at that.

    (Laughs)

    And a lot of times when we were making the movie, we were laughing a lot and saying why are we laughing? But we were laughing all day long and said, there’s something good going on here.

    CS: I think something else too ““ I can’t let an interview go by but Rade Serbedzija ““ he could read the bible and I think I would buy that DVD.

    GALLO: He’s terrific. He’s absolutely terrific. With him for instance, I kept saying I don’t want to do the standard Russian mob guy that’s always posing and you’ve seen it in a million movies. My personal problem with a lot of the films today I think it’s because some of the directors are so self-conscious in the choices that they are making they don’t feel comfortable ““ it might be ego or insecurities ““ but they don’t feel comfortable just telling the story. They have to let you know every 5 seconds that they were also there behind the camera. I find it quite annoying. You look at Hitchcock and you look at Frank Capra and look at William Wilder and look at even some of the later guys ““ John Frankenheimer, certainly Sidney Lumet, you got to look at their films several times before you start to realize the tricks an chicanery they were doing. It is so well hidden. I’m a real student of this stuff. I really watch films but those guys were storytellers first. And they would say “What’s the story, what’s the story about, what’s the subtext about, what are these people feeling, what do their homes look like?”

    If you watch a lot of Hitchcock films, those people didn’t know they were in a thriller. They were just normal people that got caught up in a situation and they just happened to be in a Hitchcock movie. They weren’t doing a lot of posing. I find in a lot of the movies today the director says “I’m making a thriller so I’m going to have people in a pose-y, kind of thriller way””¦and I’m like, “What?” That’s bullshit. Am I making any sense?

    CS: Absolutely.

    GALLO: And with Middle Men these people don’t know they are in this movie I’m making. They are just trying to get through their day. Obviously they have a whole lot of issues and problems and stuff like that but I’m going to shot them in a certain way but they don’t know they are in this movie. I wanted to make it as natural as I could in terms of their performances and then try to catch the soul of what they were doing using cameras and lenses and lights. Those are my tools. Same things like paint brushes and paint.

    CS: You choose to shoot a lot of it here in Phoenix. What drew you here instead of shooting it down in So Cal where porn is king.

    GALLO: To be completely honest, that was a choice of the producers because of the tax credit. You get 30 or 25% back. Whatever it was, it was very enticing for the filmmakers ““ for the producers. For Chris. Because you can throw that money back in post production which is what we did. That’s how we got all the Stones music and all that stuff ““ soundtrack is loaded.

    CS: Insane.

    GALLO: Yeah. That was one of my big things when I was cutting the movie. I cut the movie with a lot of those tunes because I’m a big music buff too. I love music. I play saxophone and guitar. I just love music and to me music was a character in the movie. It had to drive the movie. It is a movie certainly about a sub-culture in the United States yet it is something that most people, fairly intimately familiar with it whether they want to talk to it or not but at the same time when you think of a porn star or your think of a Russian mob guy you don’t necessarily thing that they go home and listen to the Rolling Stones.

    (Laughs)

    But the truth is they probably do or they listen to something that we’ve all heard so I wanted to constantly make it accessible and remind you that these are all very ““ they have different lives but they certainly are our neighbors or certainly live in the same city that we do. I wanted to keep driving that idea home. These are not alien space creatures. These are very normal people who some of them went to school with you and they spun out and led the lives that they did. I always wanted to have that reminder be at the center of the movie all the time. That’s why we made the music choices that we made.

    CS: One of the other subtle things that happens with this movie is it never feels judgmental in any way about the subject matter.

    GALLO: I went out of my way to not be pro or con. It just is. It’s here. This is what’s going on. I met some people and interviewed them and I was very surprised that you can’t make assumptions about anybody. I was shocked. Especially with the porn stars. I don’t deal much with the porn stars in the movie other than Laura Ramsey, her character. Some of the women I talked to, and again I don’t want to make an assumption that a porn star is stupid, but sometimes you could just say oh the bimbo and put them in a box instantly but I found that to be more not the case. I found most of the women ““ yeah, there was certainly that like central casting bimbo ““ but at the same time there are some people I would say are crass capitalists. I’m talking about the women. I found the whole world to be very fascinating. Once you get over your initial discomfort dealing with it, it does, certainly in the early stages of researching this and talking to people, I would catch myself being uncomfortable or embarrassed because you are dropping a lot of those layers or boundaries. At first I was very uncomfortable with it and that sort of went away because I had to deal with and I had to deal with my own feelings about it.

    CS: You work your way through it. Luke Wilson’s character had to work through it in a way ““ he’s not doing anything but it’s a business. It’s commerce. That’s basically what it is.

    GALLO: I think at the same time his character does have something knocking. Something in his subconscious that is knocking constantly and in the end he just doesn’t feel right about it and without giving too much away but it does eat at him. An interesting thing ““ we had a test preview with the cards and stuff which is sort of useful process to make movies and I think people misuse the information a lot of times. They don’t understand how to really use that process properly. But with 300 people in the audience and 280 get confused in a scene you should certainly listen to that. But, the movie ““ we screened it and it tested insanely high and we were shocked that all four quadrants scored into the 90’s. I literally was shocked. How the hell? I mean Tom Sherak, who was the head of distribution at Fox and Revolution, his son William is one of the producers he laughed and said how the hell did you make a movie about the porn business that ends up being a date movie and I said, “I don’t know.”

    (Laughs)

    But it scored the highest with older women.

    CS: Really?

    GALLO: And we were shocked at that. Like mid-high 90’s with older women. And I was like why? I think ultimately it was because I don’t think any of the women were portrayed badly and I think Luke just wants to go home. He wants to go back to his wife and kids and doesn’t know how to do it anymore. He gets exposed to something that effects him and he just wants to go back. I think that made it so powerful for everyone.

  • Trailer Park: Reed Cowan of 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my other column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Reed Cowan, Director of 8: The Mormon Proposition – Interview

    fullsize8A movie like this is vitally important to the dialogue process.

    There are certain things in this world where there is a definite understanding that it simply cannot last. When it came to discrimination at the turn of the last century it was fine to turn away people based on which country they came from, at the mid-century mark we thought there was nothing wrong with separating people based on the color of their skin, and even now there are people who think that discriminating against individuals based on their sexual orientation is OK. The fact that the two former facts are now seen a egregiously backward and a blemish on the face of the humanity we seem to embrace here in America is appalling when you consider that it’s still en vogue to base legislation and opposition to a normal, tax-paying segment of the population who want nothing more than to be joined in matrimony.

    It’s equally appalling to think that some in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormons for those needing a shorthand, would mount a political attack to overturn California’s already sanctioned same-sex, constitutional right, to marry. Again, it was already a state supreme court decision and this one proposition changed everything.

    Documentary filmmaker Reed Cowan, a former Mormon raised in the faith, looked deep into this issue and came out with a film that is at once informative and infuriating. Not enough people were out there to care last November, as the tumult this threatened to cause thousands didn’t stop this from passing but this film should serve as the first step in showing people that these gay men, gay women, are people, are human beings. We will look back at these kinds of egregious political acts as the behavior of cowards but it still remains to be seen how many more years we will have to wait until we accept everyone as equal. Until then, films like this need to be made in order to show that stupidity is still alive and well in this country.

    8: The Mormon Proposition is now playing. Check the official site to see if it’s appearing near you.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Please let me get right down to the film itself. I was really interested, at least reading about the movie that this movie started out as sort of a documentary on the homeless gay teen issue in Utah and that this issue took on a life of its own. What was the flash point for you to say, “You know what? I think I’m making the wrong movie.”

    club-jam-hosts-reed-cowan-and-the-mormon-proposition-posterCOWAN: I think it was the combination of “What’s the real problem here” and the real problem is bigotry spoken over the pulpit, right?

    CS: Right.

    COWAN: And so we felt that really made sense and so while we were in the production of the homeless angle we became consumed with Proposition 8. So we felt sort of like an historic imperative to back-off and reassess and put our cameras where they needed to be and that was Proposition 8 and that was a wild ride. Because the discovery that happened after that was so shocking to me. So shocking.

    CS: And I think the movie’s main thrust, and certainly one of the things that comes up, is that it is a movie about trying to create dialogue than it is about trying to point a finger. Looking back at the experience of making the film do you think that true dialogue can still happen with the church?

    COWAN: I believe it can happen and I believe it is happening. And I know that it’s happening in people’s homes all over California, especially. I know it’s happening all over the country where people are beginning to talk about what happened because I think Mormons share a part, and there are many, and are beginning to see that this is causing a division and with good Mormons that I know of who aren’t like that. They bristle at the thought that this would cause a division. I think there is a beautiful minority who are beginning to step forward and say, “We caused pain and we have to dissect it and vow to never let this happen again.”

    CS: I was really impressed with the narration of [Oscar winning writer of Milk] Dustin Lance Black. As well as Steven Greenstreet, who did the wonderful documentary Killer At Large who I actually interviewed a couple of years ago. How did these people attach themselves to the picture? Obviously, it’s great that they did, but how did the become aware of it?

    COWAN: Well, first of all, Dustin Lance Black”¦.I’m a journalist and I’m aware of a young girl in the Midwest who was doing her school project on Harvey Milk and her teachers would not allow her to bring that to class and, of course, that made the news. So, I contacted him on his Facebook page and asked if he would have any interest in talking to this girl because I think she would really be bolstered by you talking to her and he responded and out of that grew a friendship and he began to see the research and work I was doing on this film and when the time was right I asked him if he would participate and he interrupted filming on What’s Wrong With Virginia, he’s almost wrapped with it now, he interrupted production to narrate this film. So, that’s how that happened.

    Steven Greenstreet came on the scene for me about halfway through my process. I had found online that he did a piece for AmericanNewsProject called Proposition 8 ““ Did Mormons Go Too Far? I contacted him and I purchased his footage, I purchased some of his documentation, and after we got into Sundance it was abundantly clear that we needed all hands on deck. So I brought Steven on as a producer and editor of the project and then by virtue of the hours he put into the film in the last few months of production I said I would give him co-director credit. So that was all I could do and that’s how it all evolved. It’s how all those relationships evolved and those relationships are indicative of many that came together to make this film. So many people all over the country.

    prop-8-la-mormon-demo-cCS: And I think that one of the overriding things, at least I was thinking looking at my notes, was why did the church see something in California as an issue that they really wanted to try to get behind?

    COWAN: Of course we know that as California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. And I think Mormons thought, “Oh God. Oh Heavenly Father. If gay marriage happens in California, it’s going to happen all over.” The Mormons in their call, as you saw in the movie said indeed we are compelled by our faith to speak out and I think that really is at the root of it all.

    The Mormons think that the only way to achieve the highest level in heaven is to be baptized a Mormon, to be married man to woman in the Mormon temple, to progress to godhood on your own planet where men can marry multiple wives and make many multitudes of babies and inhabit their own planet and repeat the cycle. Mormons teach that man is what God once was and God is what man may become. And so the doctrine is “Look, man to woman, man to multiple woman, babies and gay people don’t fit into that picture.” I truly think that Mormons, I don’t think, I know from my own training that Mormons see gay people as an interruption in the grand scheme of heaven. And that has to be corrected or extinguished.

    CS: And you’re no longer a Mormon, correct?

    COWAN: I left the Mormon Church years ago. Ironically, not over this issue but I left the Mormon Church after my Mormon mission because I served the church in a country where there is a beautiful proud African American population and I could never get a straight answer from any of them as to why the Church I was knocking doors for didn’t allow full participation from African Americans until 1978. And finally if I couldn’t get an adequate explanation, I can’t put my name on it and I won’t.

    CS: There was a mother couldn’t witness her own child being married in a temple here across town because she, herself, was not Mormon. The boy went to the process of being one but she had to actually wait for them to leave the temple and celebrate outside. It seems like such a harsh thing to have happened. Is this just a religion that is like like any other religions or is there something more deeply seeded that it makes you want to come back and say, “What is really going on in that church?”

    COWAN: As to that Mormons believe that the ceremony that literally binds and seals a husband to a wife for time and eternity is one of the most sacred ceremonies that is performed in their tradition. And only those who are Mormon who pay 10% of their income to the Mormon Church, who keep the moral code, who keep the physical code or not drinking, smoking, drugs, coffee, tea, only those who keep the highest strictest moral codes, financial codes, can go into the temple to witness that.

    My own grandmother who passed away a year and a half ago was an angel. Truly, one of the finest people I have ever known in my life and was not a Mormon and had to sit out at my sisters wedding. And what I found ironic was that was the last time I went into a temple because I had to leave my Grandma parked on the curb to go watch my sister get married. And all the while my aunts and uncles could go up and I looked around the room and saw in their marriages that perhaps there were some dishonest business practices going on in their lives but they were allowed to go in and witness this marriage. And my own Grandma who lived a simple, beautiful, pure life was not. And that is a sting for most people but people have to understand from the outside that Mormons believe they are the one and only true religion on the face of the earth that you cannot go to the highest level of heaven unless you are baptized Mormon and marry in the Mormon Temple.

    And, there are strict hurdles to go over in order to achieve all those benchmarks in Mormon life and their objective is to convert everyone whether they are alive or dead. You don’t get into a temple easily and that’s just how it is.

    2010-01-13-prop81CS: In the movie as well, at what point, again it started out as a project on the homeless gay teen population in Utah, at one point did you see that activism involves more than just holding a sign or saying something out loud, that it actually involves getting involved and doing things?

    COWAN: Well, as a former Mormon who went through those very sacred, secret temple ceremonies, I know what the secret handshakes are and I know what the language is and in the Temple you make promises, the Mormons call them covenants to God, upon which you entire, eternal salvation and the salvation of your children is based. And they use covenant language. And in the film we show, which is the answer to your question, I know that it was big. It was bigger than just a call to arms and it was a holy war and that when Mormons use that sacred language of the Mormon Temple. Means and time.

    In the Mormon Temple you covenant to dedicate your means and time to the church. So when Mormons heard the call from their leadership in Salt Lake ““ use those trigger words, it turned simple activism or advocacy into a holy war against gay people. Because everything is out the window at that point their own adherence to their own covenant, to their own promise is in that temple were on the line. And I would imagine many Mormons went home and thought in the privacy of their bedrooms said to their wives and husbands, “My gosh, they used the words means and time and we made these covenants and not only should get involved, but we must if we value the salvation of our entire family.”

    Serious, serious stuff to Mormons.

    CS: And at what point do you see an end game from the stance that 50 years ago we’d be talking about the white and black population ““ the issues of racism now that we look back on it now and say, “Oh my God, there was a drinking fountain that said for Whites Only, for Blacks Only…” Do you have it in your head about what has to happen before we look at this and go, “What were we wasting our lives doing?”

    mormonCOWAN: I believe in a population that can get “when we know better, we can do better.” I always talk about he civil rights struggle and how at one point people had televisions and on the television they saw the police use night sticks on African American brothers and sisters and they saw the fire cannons and saw the fire hoses turned on these people and saw how inhumane that was. And they saw the beam that bigotry leveled on people and their families and I really think that’s why our film is important.

    I do believe the arc of history bends towards justice and I do believe that people will see what happened and they will choose better. I really believe that. And I was on the radio recently with a man from California, a very successful man from California who happens to be an active Mormon and he said no longer are Mormons appealing to educated people, we’re appealing to uneducated people land people and people of different segments of the population, we’re not appealing to the young people anymore. To me, eventually the Mormons are going to have to see that if they are going to survive by way of numbers, they are going to have to be a more inclusive organization and they are going to have to teach their people to be more inclusive with gay people.

    CS: Well, Reed, I know our time is short and I have just one more question to ask you and that is that now that this is done and you’ve seen the response its gotten, where are you emotionally, mentally, about moving forward in your own personal space? Are you hopeful for what’s around the corner? I realize this is a big blow to everyone when this was defeated but how are you going forward now that you made this film?

    COWAN: I adopted two little boys a year ago on Thursday and my personal space is defined by them and I am as motivated and as hopeful as you can ever be when you look into the eyes of two little twin boys who deserve to be raised in a relationship where their parents enjoy the full benefits and protections, rights, privileges, blessings, of full marriage equality. I am very hopeful and I am very determined and very passionate that before I draw my last breath my children will be able to say that the family they were raised in was seen as important and as crucial to society as their peers and that’s where my hope lies.

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & John Moe

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a bit of a chat with writer, broadcaster, humorist, and Twitter gadfly, John Moe…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & John Moe“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-john_moe.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Nat Saunders

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a bit of a chat with writer, musician, co-creator of Misery Bear, and angry man in kitchen, Nat Saunders…

    You can visit his official site at www.wormhotel.co.uk, and pick up his album at www.airport85.co.uk.

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Nat Saunders“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-nat_saunders.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Doc Hammer: Part 2

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have the second of a two-part chat featuring THE VENTURE BROS’ own Doc Hammer…

    Oh yeah, and be sure to pick up his band’s new album, WORN THIN.

    hammeralbum.png

    Hope you enjoy…

    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO PART 1

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Doc Hammer: Part 2“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-doc_hammer_pt2.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Doc Hammer: Part 1

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have the first of a two-part chat featuring THE VENTURE BROS’ own Doc Hammer…

    Oh yeah, and be sure to pick up his band’s new album, WORN THIN.

    hammeralbum.png

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Doc Hammer: Part 1“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-doc_hammer_pt1.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • Trailer Park: SEX AND THE CITY 2 and LOST

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Get Him To The Greek – Movie Pass Giveaway

    get-him-to-the-greek-posterI am hoping this is the movie I need.

    It’s almost June and I have yet to see a film that just wants to be funny. We’ve had countless blockbusters, animated films, chick flicks, but where has the comedy been? If MacGruber is any indication I know that a lot of people have stayed away from movies that only purport to be a fun romp. Here’s to wishing that the latest from Nicholas Stoller delivers on the idea that this will be the vehicle that properly channels Russell Brand’s unique comedic aesthetic.

    For those living in Arizona I have a stack of passes to see Greek on Tuesday, June 1st at 7:00 p.m. at the Tempe Marketplace. If you want some just e-mail me at Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com and I’ll make it happen for those who act swiftly.

    About the movie:

    Aaron Greenberg (Hill) gets things done. The ambitious 23-year-old has exaggerated his way into a dream job just in time for a career-making assignment. His mission: Fly to London and escort a rock god to L.A.’s Greek Theatre for the first-stop on a $100-million tour. His warning: Turn your back on him at your own peril.

    British rocker Aldous Snow (Brand) is both a brilliant musician and walking sex. Weary of yes men and piles of money, the former front man is searching for the meaning of life. But that doesn’t mean he can’t have a few orgies while he finds it. When he learns his true love is in California, Aldous makes it his quest to win her back”¦right before kick-starting his world domination.

    As the countdown to the concert begins, one intern must navigate a minefield of London drug smuggles, New York City brawls and Vegas lap dances to deliver his charge safe and, sort of, sound. He may have to coax, lie to, enable and party with Aldous, but Aaron will get him to the Greek.

    Sex and the City 2 – Review

    sex_and_the_city_2_posterThere is nothing at stake for any of these characters.

    It’s the moment when Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) confide in one another about the trials of being a mother in Sex and the City 2 when it’s obvious this movie has absolutely no interest in being relevant. Once, this was a show that gave a voice to modern women who felt that they needed to have a program that showcased what it was really like to be a lady, post-feminism, in a world that still wanted to keep their musings to themselves.

    Sex and the City, the television show, broke boundaries when it challenged the dominant male stranglehold on crass and crude depictions of sexuality. It was men who slept around, it’s was men who were always fumfering trying to find love, it was men who felt inadequate. The show was a fun examination that seemed to harness the many facets of the female psyche: the need to be glamorous, the pressure to succeed professionally, the ambitions to be socially accepted at any cost, the desire to be in control, sexually, regardless of age.

    This film is amazing in that it completely fails to honor the values that made the series, and the first film for that matter, a wonderful hallmark for women everywhere to embrace as their own. They’d just as soon be better served to revisit their DVDs rather than to sit through this completely useless exercise which could be better classified as a throwaway curtain call that is obnoxiously too long, filled with monotonous and superfluous storylines that seem more interested in resurrecting characters than focusing on the ones in front of us, and is entirely ignorant of the irony that these women have now become an example of what happens when you put last year’s style up against what’s couture today. Anna Wintour, if she was being honest, would say this film has a style more suited to the tastes of those who find the fashion of Old Navy to be cutting edge.

    The girls come together in this second entry for a film that shames Michael Patrick King’s earlier efforts as director/writer for SATC part 1, to say nothing of the work he did on the television show when it was on from 1998-2004. The crux, primarily, of this film is how Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are dealing with marriage two years in but the problems they have are so far removed from the Carrie we all knew in the series and the first film that it never occurs to anyone that hers is now a life devoid of restriction. Besides a genuinely painful, and horribly written, exchange early on in the film when a couple at a wedding talk to Carrie and Big about having children, the idea of what’s considered normal small talk is obviously lost on King, and the forced realization that these two older individuals have chosen a life without kids ought to be one of personal contentment. They should be satisfied in their decisions but King
    makes it awkward for all of us when he has the couple who realize Carrie and Big don’t see parenthood as a part of their master plan recoil from admiration to abject shame. Whether King is obsessed with more important things like getting tight shots of men’s pouches donning Speedos and slo-mos of them disrobing throughout the film I couldn’t tell you but what I do know is that this story plays out like a ham fisted attempt to cash in on a franchise that no one with a big enough checkbook wants to see go away.

    Rather, what we’re given really is an insult to the fans who have supported the idea that these women who are all demure and exciting in their own way are reduced to shells of their former selves, drifting though life doing nothing more than complaining about their pitiful existence. As it stands, however, these women just come off as haggard old also-rans who live lives of privilege.

    Charlotte rants and bawls at one point about her tough time as a mother, never acknowledging her privileged life with a live-in nanny who whisks her kids away at the first sign of trouble. She comes off as a selfish witch who would be better served to have her money taken away for a while before being allowed to complain about her circumstances.

    Samantha Jones, played by the always interesting Kim Cattrall, visits Abu Dhabi with her three girlfriends as the guest of a wealthy man but ends up trying to let her freak flag fly as high as it can go, completely disregarding custom and socially appropriate etiquette on multiple levels. Instead of harnessing that energy and making something interesting, King treats it as a chance to toss in one of the more obnoxiously half-baked storylines ever to be concocted. Hers is a character that ends up looking more pathetic and embarrassing than she does as the representative of labial empowerment. It’s also insulting to the women of that emirate who see the invading hoards of high fashion to be seen as women who are in the need of rescuing. Oddly, we’re clued in that some progressive women are challenging the norms but, later in the film, we’re forced into a moment that makes us feel like this isn’t good enough, that male domination cannot be allowed
    to stand one minute longer. It wants it both ways in this film and it ends up making this mess even murkier to wade through.

    Carrie, as well, doesn’t fare well here either. Watching the working girl struggle to find ways in order to feed her need for fashion accoutrements in the series, the plateau of which was seen in the first film when she married a man who was now in the position to let her get her fix until the day she died, was one of the reasons people tuned in. Hyper analyzing her marriage two years in not only reeks of a writer desperate to find a chink in a gorgeous piece of armor but it doesn’t make for a very good story. When the worst thing that besets this celluloid power couple, and the whole movie for that matter, is an unintended kiss, only for it to be remedied with a black diamond offered up by the offended party, it smacks of stupidity and laziness.

    Alas, it is Miranda who ends up coming off as the most interesting of the four but even there is an issue with her arc as a character. Her quitting of a job that was built up as a device that could have lasted the entire film within the first ¼ of the film, only to be brought up at the very end of the picture, represented the totality of her growth. Used as merely window dressing to move the plodding, lumbering plot forward, there could not have been a worse way to treat someone who always represented something special in this band of sisters.

    Ultimately, no one was safe from their mishandling at the hands of King. Unable to comprehend that this comedy of multiple errors should have ended or have been edited down a half hour or even 45 minutes to make this a true 90 minute comedy King had his own plan and, unfortunately, the movie feels like a monetary cash-in, a fiscal decision, that truly wants to give the audience what they want. The problem is, a trip to Abu Dhabi, a stolen kiss from Aiden, a two year itch, problems with a nanny, these all are irrelevant to the genuinely amusing lives these women once had.

    They say that money doesn’t change you, that it only enhances the person you are. If that’s the case, and judging by what was on the screen, I don’t think I knew these women at all and I don’t think I want to anymore.

    Josh Holloway – Interview

    For many years I have held this interview as one of the best experiences I’ve had with an actor. Way back in 2005, months after the first season came to an end and lit a fire in the hearts of many who saw this as groundbreaking television I had the chance to talk to Josh an immediately jumped at the chance to talk to the guy, never minding that I was green as could be when it came to interviewing.

    Lost was a program I sometimes wavered from in the middle years, the story just growing and bloating to epic proportions, but it got me back in the last couple of years. The ending, for me, was a semi-satisfying one and a wholly satisfying one with regard to giving Jack some closure. I wanted to do something novel and I thought back to when I talked to Josh after the first season was over, when Lost fever was high, and when he was feeling the love from fans at San Diego Comic-Con, the nexus point, really, where the love flowed all too freely.

    I’ll miss Lost so here’s one for the road…An interview that I still remember clearly almost 5 years later.

    Josh Holloway likes to smile.

    It would be completely clichéd and People Magazine of me to state that, of course, he has a lot to smile about but that’s not what struck me when I made this observation about him. What made the time I spent with Josh so memorable was the absolute sense of openness that he engendered in the twenty five minutes I spent with him discussing his own trajectory as an actor as a lead in his very first major motion picture.

    With every interview I’ve done there is always a little something I’ve built up about a celebrity, for a lack of a better word. It’s either I’ve seen their work and I secretly hope the interview is a little bit of them appeasing me with the questions I ask and a little bit of that charisma that so many of the “stars” people see on stage or screen seem to exude. I think there’s a lot of fan boy in me that I have to keep in check like it’s a caged animal that needs to be restrained but there’s also the inquisitive other half of me that wants to throw out the kinds of inquires some celebs have never been asked.

    My goal, my only goal, with Josh was to not ask a damn thing about Lost, Season 2. I didn’t want to know anything about the show that he wasn’t going to volunteer. I didn’t care to ask anything about the meanings of his back story and what it meant to all that’s happened to him on the show, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about where he thinks his relationship with Kate’s going and I really didn’t want to know whether he and Sayid were going to have it out again this year. After listening to dozens of Entertainment Tonight, Extra and all sorts of other tabloids and radio interviewers speculate and fish for answers whenever they managed to corner one of the stars of Lost, one excruciating interview was one I heard with Naveen Andrews and even though Naveen’s role on the show and real life resume is one of the most interesting all the radio host could ask about was how he ended up with Barbara Hershey and what secrets he could let the world in on, I just realized how sad it was that the actors on this show were part of one of the biggest successes to hit the free air and all anyone could do was talk about the most meaningless thing they could think of.

    So, if you’re looking to know what’s coming in season 2 of Lost, whether or not Sawyer is going to get it on with Freckles, what the hell is up with the polar bear and what seems to be his predilection for the George Michael 2-Day stubble look he’s rocking on his face week after week, you can stop reading right now and skip to next week where other celebs shamelessly gladly pimped their wares with me. This isn’t an act of pomposity on my part, I assure you. I think the dalliances of any Hollywood actor as I hear how their lives are so much better than mine are completely engrossing. I watch Cribs, I read Entertainment Weekly, I steal a peek at the National Enquirer; I’m shallow, I admit that. But what I didn’t want my short amount of time with Josh to be was everything that I eschewed about the press surrounding the show and I wanted to give you, the audience, a good look at the person behind one of the best played bad boys this side of the Pacific.

    I wanted to actually talk to Josh. Have a real conversation with him. Find out more about where he’s come from, where he’s planning on going. I just hoped he wouldn’t have an attitude. It was a short list of hopes and aims, sure, but when I first stepped onto the brightly lit sundeck on a warm July afternoon in San Diego I was greeted with what I can only describe as a force that I can’t begin to genuinely describe because of its oddity. As soon as I was formally introduced Josh seemed genuinely pleased to meet me as I got a look at a smile I would be seeing a lot in the time I would be spending with him. Like a complete gentleman he, himself, introduced me to his wife who also seemed to be happy to meet me, a feat not too many strange women have ever accorded to me in a non-inebriated state. She was lovely. The two of them not only didn’t seem to mind when I asked to take their picture together but they seemed, as they stood next to each other, like a couple who honestly seemed happy to be with one another. If there ever was a Bizzaro world episode on Lost where Sawyer had to meet his doppelganger, I think I know who should play him.

    All superlatives aside, there isn’t much more I can say about the man who has the left the greatest impression on me as an interviewer; even more than getting to talk to Stan Lee, even better than asking Natalie Portman a couple of questions face-to-face, Josh just seemed grateful for everything he’s been given. When you’re talking with him you just want to think that of all those people who you see struggling to make it in Hollywood you’re happy that someone like him is one of those who did. Josh likes to laugh, no question about it. His stories of struggling to give his career one last shot of everything he has are the kinds of things you’d want to listen to while having a beer with the guy at a party. He’s just plain interesting and engrossing as a subject while being one of the nicest strangers you ever could hope to meet.

    Class act doesn’t begin to describe him. It embodies him.

    joshCHRISTOPHER STIPP: So, how was it to walk on that stage and seeing all those people?

    JOSH HOLLOWAY: That was exciting. That’s the reward of doing as well as we have. I’ve never done a convention. No one ever wanted me at one; it’s a little different. I find panels, though, to be a lot of fun.

    I hope that I am answering the questions intelligently enough but I like the comedy of it. I like a panel for the banter with the fans. I love the energy. I’m having a blast.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: The Comic-Con crowds with their questions can sometimes be a little different. I am thinking of the person who asked you in the panel discussion about whether you like to swim in the nude.

    (Josh laughs)

    Did they warn you that “You know, there are probably going to be questions”¦”

    HOLLOWAY: No, but I figured, and it’s so funny, because that’s been going around for a while. Just because when we first arrived in Hawaii everyone was like, “Look at our office! This is ridiculous.” Everyone was, and it wasn’t everyone, just the brave ones, it was that Hawaii inspired us and it was just like, “Let’s go swimming naked!” I haven’t skinny dipped in years and it felt good.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: In Ohau?

    HOLLOWAY: Yeah, and it’s just amazing. My wife and I just bought a house there and so we’re really loving”¦melting into the Hawaiian culture and hope to be there a few more years.

    I mean, it’s paradise; it’s the best place in the world to be working and just existing. You only work so much and you’ve got to live in the place. It’s better, than say, Siberia. There are much worse places you could be working.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Now, your movie WHISPER. Give me a quick synopsis. It’s your first real lead, right?

    HOLLOWAY: Yes, yes, which is really nerve wracking, actually.

    I’ve just gotten Sawyer, and I am developing that, and to take the step, to take a role and to do a movie is exciting and nerve wracking. The movie, WHISPER, basically is about a group of people who are really down on their luck, not being given a chance anymore, by society because of past records. The old story is that when you’re a convict you can’t get a job, no one will give you a second chance. So, what these people decide to do, essentially, is kidnap this kid for ransom. Aaaand, it goes badly. We get a lot more than we bargained for with this kid.

    But what excited me about this role was that my character doesn’t want to do it. He’s trying to start a new life because he’s fallen in love and he wants to provide for his woman and start a new life, a good life, with this woman. Everything that motivates him is love when what he’s doing is horribly wrong and I liked the dichotomy of that. And the fact that the kid is supposed to be the innocent one and, when it flips, there is a beautiful transition there. That’s what excited me and made me say, “Wow, innocence is evil and evil is innocence.”

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: I’m curious to know about your first day on the set of WHIPSER. I just think back to every first job I’ve had, regardless of what it was I was doing, and I remember how it emotionally felt to just try and get a footing, a handle on things. How was it for you?

    HOLLOWAY: It was a whirlwind.

    Because of scheduling, of course, they were pushing the movie, pushing the movie, they already started filming the movie, so I wrapped Lost and the very next day I am on set so there was no break in moving from one character to this one.

    And it takes you a minute before you hit your stride. So, that first day is nerve wracking and, also, I am kind of used to having a family in Hawaii. I mean we’ve all become a family over the season. The comfort level of going to work and experiencing that”¦and then the first day of the movie is like you have to introduce yourself to all these new people and then having to feel the pressure of it being on that level, a movie. It’s awesome but you have to be ready and everyone is expecting. And I’m thinking to myself, “Oookay, I’ve got to deliver.” So, it’s the usual pre-game jitters but once the game starts, you’ve got no room for that. It all goes away.

    It’s just what we put ourselves through before the game that’s torture.

    And it was such an honor to work with Michael Rooker as he’s been in so many things: DAYS OF THUNDER, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and I have been watching him for years so it’s definitely an honor to have worked with him. And Stewart Hendler, a first time director, that was actually a nice bond because him and I were both awe struck by it all but then the balance to that was Dean Cundey, a masterful filmmaker. He did the original FOG, he did the original HALLOWEEN, THE THING, he was the orgininal DP on all of those. And of course he went on to win the Academy Award for APOLLO 13 but he wanted to come back and get his hands dirty and do a classic thriller/horror kind of movie and that’s what I loved about it and what he loves about it. It’s very simple. Not a lot of tricks. It’s kind of like your old school horror movie which is great.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: And those kinds of films are making a resurgence”¦

    HOLLOWAY: Yes, they are.

    I was glad to be making one that wasn’t gimmick, gimmick, gimmick, you know what I mean? This one really works on the original principals of horror movies and the unknown, and all that kind of stuff, a little bit of demonic stuff brought in there, a little DAMIEN kind of thing.

    It’s good, It’s simple and it’s spooky.

    CS: One of things I wanted to do before meeting you was to get an idea, professionally speaking, of the roles you did before landing Sawyer on Lost. One of the first things I saw was that you were billed as “Good Looking Guy” in an episode of Angel.

    (Laughs for good reason)

    josh2HOLLOWAY: That’s right!

    My very first job was Good Looking Guy. That’s what they said as the description, I just thought it was funny. My next job I think I got was Bartender. It took me a while to get a name on my trailer.

    So, you do what you do. I did seven indies. True indies with no money, guerella shooting. I did some television spots for Angel, Walker, Texas Ranger, CSI, a couple more.

    But, those movies, doing those independents on that level, was such a great experience and growing time for me as an actor because the nature of it being a true indie, everyone’s disorganized, you’ve got 18 days to get this thing in the can, and it’s only so much money but you’re busting it, getting it done. But, in that, you’re allowed a great deal of creative freedom. Because people are like runnin’ and gunnin’ as they’re saying, “This isn’t making sense. Can you make it work?” Yeah, I can make that work. You’re able to work with the writers and you create as you go. It also taught me to think on my feet. It’s made me available for any twists that may come and that’s what really made it such a good experience. I also did a diverse type of characters. I did a comedy, two comedies. In one I played this bodybuilder who was this complete innocent guy that was being hit on by a homosexual man the whole time and he was just so happy just to have a friend and there was a lot that went on there. Then, I played the opposite of that where I played the Obi-Wan of sex, if you will. That was a lot of fun. I moved on to a western, a crazy, psycho guy, so I got to do a lot of stretching as an actor which I think has helped me a lot because I love character work.

    I don’t just don’t get up and say, “I’ll just go be me.” I try and put me in every character and just blow that aspect up but I just don’t play an idea.

    CS: I think that comes through because the character of Sawyer, to anyone who comes upon him, they know exactly what he means and where he’s coming from, the intensity of it all. It’s a character that’s been infused with a history.

    HOLLOWAY: Yes!

    And that’s what I love about this craft. For me, a lot of the things that I see in character work is an idea. You can tell when someone is playing an idea or if they’re emboding it and it’s so important to find that aspect within you, that’s truly you, and blow it up. That’s what makes it real.

    (Josh turns his head quickly as his wife tries to sneak through his jeans to steal a cigarette. He starts to ask her what she needs before she puts a finger to her lips and points down to my recorder. Josh laughs anyway as the faux noises of passionate love embed themselves into my digital device; it is funny. She absconds with what she wants from Josh.)

    CS: How long have you been married?

    HOLLOWAY: Since October 1st.

    CS: Congratulations.

    HOLLOWAY: Thank you so much. 1 year. We’ve almost been together 7 now.

    CS: Really?

    HOLLOWAY: Long time.

    She has seen me at my worst.

    CS: I was just going to say that I heard something about real estate.

    HOLLOWAY: Oh yes.

    CS: Were you getting to the point where you were thinking about giving it all up?

    HOLLOWAY: Again. I think that was the 3rd time the town broke me. But in 8 ½ years of busting it and constant rejection and getting close and never quite getting to work, to do the work you’ve been trained to do that’s in you. It just burns you up. And, yeah, right before I booked Lost I had just got my real estate license, I was making my exit again, and I had t have the conversation with my wife who was then my girlfriend, I hadn’t yet proposed, I just didn’t have anything I could bring. I couldn’t support her. It’s part of being a man I guess. My feeling was, “If I can’t provide anything then what am I doing?”

    And that was it. I needed to move on in my life. Just for my soul I had to do something. So I went into real estate. I got my license, I got Lost and promptly filed it away.

    (Laughs the kind of laugh only people who really do know what it’s like to no longer be indentured to a 9 to 5 existence.)

    CS: Did you realize how big this job was going to be when you saw that J.J. Abrams was attached to it?

    HOLLOWAY: Just because I had been beaten as bad as I did for 8 ½ years I knew, statistically, and knowing my past, I knew I was going to have to go the Clooney path which was that I was going to have to do 16 pilots before one goes. So I was just happy to get the first level for what I thought was going to be a really long road. I was praying, of course, that it would work but, statistically, they were telling me it was going to be one of the most expensive shows ever, and that’s when I was like”¦

    CS: Were you thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening?”

    HOLLOWAY: The one thing that goes through your head is, “Oh my God, I better kick it. I better be on the level with this one or they’ll kill me quickly.” And that was a bit intimidating at first, working with actors that I had been watching through the years like Harold, who did ROMEO AND JULIET, Naveen who was in the ENGLISH PATIENT and Dom who was in the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, and Matt Fox who was in his series forever, and I was like, “Oh boy.”

    CS: Was the experience like thinking, “These guys have so much experience”¦”

    josh5HOLLOWAY: Yes and the knowledge that, “You’re damn right I’m ready and I can certainly be on the level.”

    But of course you’re worried about it until you actually get in the game.

    That’s what amazing, too, is that we’ve become such a family of friends and that rarely happens with a cast. Even with a small cast that’s rare but a large cast? For us to get along so well”¦I want, as much as I want to be on the show, I want to be able and continue these relationships with these wonderful people, my new friends. That’s been a huge gift.

    And we get together on Wednesdays, whoever’s flashback episode it is, we go to their house and, whether they like it or not, it’s their responsibility to host the party. So, every Wednesday we get to touch base because a lot of the time we don’t get to film together. We’re all off shooting different parts. So, every Wednesday we pull it back together, we have some laughs and get inspired by each other and inspire each other.

    CS: You never hear these kinds of things.

    HOLLOWAY: No, you don’t.

    CS: To go with the ABC angle, Desperate Housewives have been doing so well but on the US magazines of the world it’s all about who’s fighting with who, who’s asking for more money”¦

    HOLLOWAY: Yeah, which is the norm, from what I’ve been told and that this is extremely rare. And I’m like, “Really? This is awesome.” And what’s difficult is that you get so close and Ian Somerhalder is no longer there and he’s a very good friend and it’s, “Argh!” I was getting into our fishing together.

    CS: And on the subject of finding work, what really got you through the day when you were looking for that one job or that one break which would’ve helped you out? Everyone says it’s believing in yourself, it’s perseverance, but self-help garbage aside, what really carried you through your days?

    HOLLOWAY: I couldn’t stop my dreams.

    I couldn’t stop my daydreams or night dreams or my dreams of what I want out of life. I don’t know, I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, I wanted to be everything. Acting would provide that. I could taste what it would be like to be a secret agent, I could taste what it would be like to be a contractor, a lawyer, whatever, this or that. That really”¦I didn’t want to let that go because I wanted to experience what movies and the like would allow you to experience. And it’s still”¦it’s what got me up in the morning. It takes everything you have, emotionally and physically, just to keep going. You’re constantly nervous or excited, really happy or really sad, and it’s just a constant plethora of emotions that you’re faced with in this job.

    I mean, I’m a cancer, I’m emotional and that’s what kept me in: the magic. You hit those moments and you have that magic happen it’s freeing. And when I was about to leave I’d hit the magic again. And it would reel me back in. But I can’t. It’s so all-encompassing for me. And that’s what inspires me in life; I want to inspire and be inspired.

    CS: 23 episodes. That’s tough enough on a writer but what you have to go through to get it all in as an actor?

    It’s difficult to get it all in and filmed in 8 days. They write such amazing little movies each time. To get it all in that amount of time we’re moving at a ballistic pace and thank God we have the kind of actors we do as we’re handed scripts and pretty much told, “Here you go. You have five minutes. Good luck.” And they all do it. And they knock it out of the park. Begrudgingly, because it’s so nerve wracking, but you do it and that’s been amazing. That we’ve been able to keep up the pace but keep the bar up.

    And you know”¦I’m looking forward to doing more scenes with people I didn’t get to do many scenes with during the first season. I didn’t get many scenes with Emily. One scene with Jorge; can’t wait to do more scenes with Jorge. I love the casting because you get to work with so many actors that are awesome and each one is a different flavor and adds a different dimension to your character. How you deal with them and what they bring out of you and what you bring out of them.

  • Interview: Anthony Del Col

    soapbox-header.png

    Kill Shakespeare Interview: Anthony Del Col

    lucyline.gif

    killshakespeareissue1Meet Anthony Del Col, writer & co-creator of Kill Shakespeare, a new comic from IDW which has been featured at Toronto Wizard Con, Comic Con and Wonder Con in San Francisco.

    Kill Shakespeare is a daring new comic which follows Shakespeare’s most loved characters on a quest to kill a reclusive wizard… William Shakespeare himself. To view the official IDW trailer for Kill Shakespeare, click here. Follow these links for previews of Issue #1 and Issue #2.

    Can you tell me a little about yourself and the team behind Kill Shakespeare? I understand you are the Shakespeare geek of the bunch.

    It’s funny that I’ve been labeled the ‘Shakespeare geek’ while Conor is the ‘comic geek’ because we both trade off at various times (at this precise moment Conor is reading ‘Richard III’ while I’m going through the latest ‘Fables’ adventures). Conor and I both enter this project with various experiences in the business and media worlds: myself as the producer of some indie films, a music manager and entrepreneur; Conor as a writer, producer and journalist. We work well because of these various backgrounds and our ability to trade off when necessary ““ we both balance the creative and the business at various points.

    Was it a challenge to combine your very diverse skill set?

    Well, we have to play rock-paper-scissors to make some decisions when there’s a stalemate… Seriously, though, there hasn’t been much of a challenge at all. Our strong partnership comes from a shared story sensibility ““ we both like similar films, books, games, etc. And as mentioned above, we have the ability to trade off on the various aspects of our venture, between the creative and the business. It’s an incredibly challenging and time-consuming endeavor to create, release and market a comic book series like this and it makes it a hell of a lot easier when you have a co-pilot.

    In a recent article featured on Bleeding Cool, graphic novelist and Shakespeare expert Kimberly Cox gives a fairly scathing review of the first issue of KILL SHAKESPEARE. How do you respond to her claims that these days everyone hates Shakespeare?

    Methinks she doth protest too much… Ms. Cox may have been exaggerating this point but it was still well made… The general perception is that most people hate Shakespeare. This is not true. Most people are not fans of the way that Shakespeare is taught these days. However, when taught or presented properly (as a kinetic, entertaining story) the Bard’s work can come alive and speak to everyone. As we’ve been talking to people over the last year about this project we’re amazed by how many fans of the Bard there are ““ from all walks of life, and all demographics. We’d love the opportunity to bring some of these people together as a community with this project.

    How do you think academia as a whole will respond to these comics?

    For the most part academics LOVE this project. We’ve heard from librarians, academics and teachers that they see this as a great gateway into the world of Shakespeare ““ a unique way of introducing him to a new generation and set of audiences. However, there have been some purists (such as Ms. Cox) who object to this. That’s okay ““ we delight in the discussion and feel that ol’ Shakey himself would embrace this project (though would be upset that we beat him to the punch).

    Was it your aim to make William Shakespeare’s works more accessible through these comics or will it just a positive side effect if they do?

    Our top priority at all times is to create an entertaining story. If we don’t do this then we’ve failed completely. However, our second goal is indeed to make the Bard accessible. We want this project to speak to audiences that shudder at the thought of being forced to read or watch Shakespeare ““ whether it’s a fifteen-year-old boy in class forced to study Romeo & Juliet or a fifty-year-old woman who has never had the time.

    You and the other Kill Shakespeare creators have often talked of the emerging literary mashup genre (such as Bill Willingham’s Fables) as a source of inspiration. What is it about this genre that has so intrigued you?

    It’s the possibility of the “what if” question… What if a character that you’ve read about, analyzed and loved suddenly found him/herself in a new scenario? Or found themselves in the same world as another classic character? What would happen in these scenarios? I’m really intrigued by taking well-known characters (such as the Bard’s) and placing them into a new world and having them come alive to new and unique audiences.

    connorandyanthony

    The Kill Shakespeare Creative Team (L to R) : Conor McCreery, Andy Belanger, Anthony Del Col.

    –

    In terms of comics, your debut issue was fantastic in each and every regard. Can you tell us a little bit about the process involved in making Kill Shakespeare happen?

    Glad to hear that you liked it! We first came up with the idea six years ago in a brainstorming exercise but after developing it for a while we had to shelve it because Conor and I became busy with some other projects/activities. It was about two years ago when we decided that our story was best served in the comics medium that it started to take flight… We then went out and raised some private money to fund the project, brought IDW Publishing on board, and now our project is really starting to take flight…

    I understand the first issue of Kill Shakespeare took 16 drafts to get right. How difficult was it to incorporate such dense reading material into a comic book?

    Conor and I actually made a conscious decision to NOT re-read the plays line-by-line because we wanted a fresh take on the characters and their stories. We also did not want to become too caught up in the minute details of each play. We’re trying to write the comics to work on two levels ““ the first level is a straight entertaining tale that everyone can enjoy, whether you’ve studied the plays or not. The second level is to put in little references and Easter Eggs that Shakespeare devotees can appreciate and sink their teeth into (such as naming a brothel that Falstaff takes Hamlet to as ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’).

    How much did you experiment with the mix of modern and Shakespearian language?

    Well, we’re getting really good at writing “thee” and “thou”… We made a decision early on that we wanted to go the modern-language route with this project and we haven’t looked back. I know that some Shakespeare scholars (such as Ms. Cox) have blasted us for this decision, but it worked well for Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), did it not? The element that most makes Shakespeare’s plays inaccessible today is the language ““ don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful and poetic, but it was written four hundred years ago and is often tough to understand.

    Is there anything you can tell us about where this project is going after the initial run of 12 issues?

    Fishing for spoilers, are you now?… If the positive reaction continues like it has, Conor and I have a lot of ideas for future installments of our story. We have a trilogy mapped out in our heads which will really dazzle readers and put the characters in some really interesting scenarios. There have been so many characters that we wanted to put into this first series but couldn’t find the room. We’d love to grow out our universe and ’cause there are so many things we’d love to do.

    Your co-writer, Connor McCreery said in an interview with Wired.com that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would be J.J Abrams. Is it safe to assume that Kill Shakespeare will keep us guessing until the last minute?

    Seeing as how this is the final question in the interview, should I actually answer this, or continue to keep you guessing until the next one?…

    Guessing it is! Thank you Anthony for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with me.

    –

    To order your copy of Kill Shakespeare, click here.

    Follow Kill Shakespeare on Facebook or visit the official site.

    – Mary Hoffman

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Stan Lee

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with master storyteller (and living legend, natch) Stan Lee….

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Stan Lee“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-stan_lee.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Joel Hodgson

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with the creator of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 (and one-fifth of Cinematic Titanic team), Joel Hodgson….

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Joel Hodgson“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-joel_hodgson.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Joe Randazzo

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have a chat with the Editor of THE ONION, Joe Randazzo…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Joe Randazzo“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-joe_randazzo.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Al Campbell

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, Ken Plume has a chat with the Screenwipe/Newswipe/Gameswipe, Happy Finish, and Funny Or Die director, Al Campbell…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Al Campbell“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-al_campbell.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & Rob Delaney

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, Ken has a bit of a chat with writer/comedian Rob Delaney…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & Rob Delaney“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-rob_delaney.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • A Bit Of A Chat with Ken Plume & James Urbaniak 2

    bitofachat-header.png

    lucyline.gif

    I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.

    In this episode, I have another chat with the actor behind THE VENTURE BROS’ own Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture and AMERICAN SPLENDOR’s Robert Crumb, who’s also a bit of a net bon vivant/commentator, James Urbaniak…

    Hope you enjoy…

    Download “A Bit of a Chat with Ken Plume & James Urbaniak 2“:

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/bitofachat/bit_of_a_chat-james_urbaniak_2.mp3]

    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to this Podcast via iTunes

    ##

    patreon-fred.png

    Drop Ken a line HERE.

    ##

    You can also find more of my interviews by clicking HERE.

    lucyline.gif

  • Trailer Park: Ray Manzarek of The Doors and Tom DiCillo, Director of WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here
    Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE – DVD Review

    youssou_posterThis has been a wild couple of weeks with the number of documentaries I’ve been watching about musicians as of late.

    From a couple of Blu-ray releases of live concerts, a movie about the Doors, and now this, it has been a whirlwind of performances that showcase music of all kinds. The thing about YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE is that I was not expecting to like it as much as I did. Ballasted by the fact that this movie has come out under the Oscilloscope Laboratory banner, becoming required viewing simply because it has so far had an unbeaten track record of films that have a unique way of telling a story, I quite didn’t know what to expect other than this was going to be a movie about music. It’s much more that, however, as I found out.

    Youssou is a musician that many know but probably didn’t realize. Heck, I didn’t realize. He’s the chanting voice you hear in the song In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. A man who embraced music from all over the world, Gabriel help push Youssou into greater prominence among those within the industry. It was shocking to see that as a Senegalese pop star he received worldwide acclaim for his music and recognition for it as well all the while I was blissfully unaware of this man for decades.

    This movie goes beyond just capturing Youssou’s time on the road, and we get many live performances in venues all over the globe, but it charts the time when he had to deal with an album he made called Egypt, a record that was deemed incendiary because of its content. Not that it had blasphemous, dirty language but it contained his own thoughts and feelings about a religion and faith not many were too keen on learning more about in 2004: Islam. This movie captures his feelings on the matter and it’s rather gripping and forces you to reflect about what it would be like for anyone to believe something so fervently and want to share that joy with the world only to have your native land, here Senegal, turn away. Heartbreaking and sad, Youssou’s determination and love comes though in one the films that I have been able to watch about musicians which doesn’t make me think that all the world’s musicians are in it for themselves. Youssou genuinely seems passionate about the things he’s been allowed to do and to share with the rest of the world and you simply do not see that in today’s crop of entertainers.

    Wholly refreshing, wonderful to look at, director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s film captures the essence of Youssou’s music that you can feel come through the screen. I had never heard of the man before seeing this film but I was a fan by the end and I think that’s the point of any good movie like this. You don’t necessarily have to be enthralled by the music but you cannot help but to be in awe of one man’s perseverance to be the best man he can be in the face of so many who would try and change that course.

    If you have a chance to rent it or buy it you could not do yourself a better favor than picking this title up and seeing some music come alive.

    Synopsis

    YOUSSOU N’DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE is a gorgeously photographed, music infused cinematic portrait of world famous Senegalese pop sensation Youssou N’Dour. Best known in the West for his collaborations with Bono and Peter Gabriel, N’Dour is one of the most beloved musicians in pop music and his legendary career has spanned decades.

    In 2004, responding to negative perceptions about his Muslim faith, N’Dour recorded EGYPT, a deeply spiritual album dedicated to a more tolerant view of Islam. In a critical and career-defining moment, the album was awarded the 2004 Grammy® for BEST WORLD MUSIC ALBUM. While Western audiences embraced N’Dour’s brave musical message, it encountered a serious religious backlash in his native country of Senegal where N’Dour is considered a national hero. Local critics and the media accused him of insulting Islam, arguing that pop and religious music should not mix.

    Combining unprecedented images of Senegal’s most sacred Muslim rituals, vibrant concert performances filmed around the world, and intimate access to N’Dour and his family, I BRING WHAT I LOVE chronicles the difficult path this remarkable artist must take. It is a stirring journey of faith, redemption, and the power of music to overcome intolerance.

    Tom DiCillo – Interview

    The documentary is endlessly fascinating, let’s get that right out of the way.

    Using footage from Jim Morrison’s own film HWY: An American Pastoral from 1969 the new Doors documentary When You’re Strange also uses footage never before seen of the band that ignited a generation. For any fan who thinks that Oliver Stone made the definitive Doors movie this doc sheds some light on the figure that is Jim Morrison the legend and dispels the ideas that he walked around in a constant drug-fueled stupor. In fact, this film shows Morrison as a rather humorous individual capable of so much more than just being a part of a cliche.

    Using footage never before seen and utilizing Johnny Depp’s silken vocals to narrate the story of how the band came together to take over a nation, then the world, you get a new perspective on a band that most feel like they already figured out. It’s endlessly fascinating from a documentary perspective, like reading years of biographies on one person only to find their autobiography and putting the two together. Comparative literature it is not but there is a story here that you have to open yourself to in order to wade beyond all that you already think you know. When You’re Strange is a brisk foray into a brief period of time when music could rattle a population of listeners and a glimpse into a band that never sold their rights to have their music played in a car commercial. And they never will.

    WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE opens today

    when_youre_strange-posterCHRISTOPHER STIPP: Hey, Tom. How are you doing?

    TOM DICILLO: I’m good man. How are you?

    CS: Doing fine. Hopefully this hasn’t been a long press day for you.

    DICILLO: Well, it has been but it’s been really enjoyable because people are really digging this film and that’s just exciting to see.

    CS: I really dug it.

    DICILLO: Good.

    CS: I did a search for Doors films or documentaries and I was floor by the lack of them out there. Did you immediately look at this project and immediately jump on it?

    DICILLO: Well, the project was presented to me as a possibility and then I was asked if I wanted to direct it. And I said yes immediately without question. I didn’t know what I was getting into. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of the footage. After I said yes, then they began the process of them showing me stuff and asking me to come up with the concept. I just think it was the right timing. They had been trying to make something with this footage for sometime and I don’t know, I think perhaps they just didn’t have the right combination of people. And, something about my idea about only using this original footage just freaks them out and just freaked The Doors out too. They said, “How can you make a film about the Doors in which we don’t have The Doors talking?” I said, “Because I think if you look at this footage it’s so astonishing that it will ultimately be better.” When they saw the first half hour I put together, they were floored. Let’s just thank the Lord”¦not the Lord, because there is no Lord”¦

    (Laughs)

    Thanks to whoever that it worked out and all came together.

    CS: I’m interested to get your take ““ as a filmmaker ““ you’ve done feature film, you’ve done television, was there a learning curve as a documentarian when you had to sift through this info and try to create a narrative?

    DICILLO: Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding? Very good question, man. My experience is with writing and directing and working that way. Creating every image and then choosing the best image and then editing it. This one ““ I had to go, “OK, here’s the footage, here are the dailies from the film”¦What can I do with it?”

    Certain things hit me immediately.

    I didn’t know that this footage of Morrison walking through the desert was from his own film HWY. I just thought they were random shots of Jim walking through the desert. So I felt free to use them. I knew that they were going to go in the film and I knew they were going to be kind of a framing device immediately. Almost like, there’s a shot of him getting out of a car stuck in the sand. I said, “That’s going to be Morrison.”

    It’s the spirit of Morrison ““ re-emerging, so to speak.

    But then I had a whole story to tell and your probably could make six stories about The Doors, they did so much in that short period of time. In some cases, the footage helps me. It was easy to do it because I had great images. In other cases, I had to do a little bit of explaining or somehow bridging gaps in things. And the narration became critical and I realized immediately that the narration was going to have to sustain this film. It was going to have to pull it together and I think Johnny Depp brings such an amazing intimacy and sense of belief in things he’s saying that he becomes almost as a fifth character in the film.

    CS: Right. And he does. I was read in a previous interview with Ray [Manzarek] who said that Oliver Stone got it wrong when he made The Doors. That he wasn’t that drunken, wacked out of his skull 24/7 kind of guy people saw in that film. Do you think you saw a picture of the real Morrison as you went through this footage?

    DICILLO: I saw several pictures of the real Morrison. That’s what I wanted to do, was to not limit the ones that I saw. I think that Stone’s movie limited severely the dimension of what Morrison was. I really do. And I’m not disrespecting Oliver Stone but saying he probably gave a thumbnail, a fingernail of what this guy really was. He was an immensely complicated guy. Immensely complicated. At times he was, yes, the drunken ass that was just pissing in his pants in the middle of a recording session. And then I had this footage of him dancing in the sand in the middle of the desert with complete strangers, these kids and the look on his face, it’s absolutely convincing that he’s enjoying the hell out of himself and that he’s really there, dancing with those kids. That’s as much a part of his character as the other stuff, and I wanted to try and show that.

    You know what? I just feel there was something deeply compelling about him and that, for me, it wasn’t just the drinking, it wasn’t the excesses, it was the more personal things. Because if you talk to any of these guys, they’ll tell you the same thing. He was immensely articulate. He enjoyed life. I don’t think he had a death-wish. I don’t think so at all. I think he just got caught up in something and could not get out of it.

    when-youCS: And I think he comes off ““ I was surprised to see he was quite erudite and scholarly as a young man ““ completely different than public perception of what people “thought” he was.

    DICILLO: Yeah. It’s pretty phenomenal that at 16 he was reading Nietzsche and Kerouac and this was before he even took acid. He was an intensely intelligent man and I think to only show one aspect of his character does him a huge disservice. And also, the same for the rest of the band members. They were hugely involved in the creation and development of the band. All of them. And each one was critical to the band and all of them amazing musicians. That’s what I wanted to show. I wanted to go from the more basic sort of misunderstanding that a lot of people wrote Light My Fire. Well, I wanted to clear that up and say well, “No, he didn’t.” Actually, it was Robby Krieger.

    CS: I was shocked to see that was the first one out of the box as a writer and it gets the guy a number one slot on the charts.

    DICILLO: Isn’t that amazing? It’s just astonishing. And then he had a number of other number ones.

    There’s a lot there that you can appreciate that you don’t have to build up a myth about, do you know what I mean? And I wanted to try to create a new myth but one based on reality.

    CS: Do you think it was important to know the band deeply before working on this? Did you pour yourself into the mythos, what people had to say, or did you intentionally go in there blind and create something from what you had?

    DICILLO: I went in blind but I did a lot of research. I had to be careful though to avoid simply paraphrasing what other people had said. I didn’t want to do that. A lot has been written about this band, some of it really amazing, intuitive. Some of it is conjecture and some of it bullshit. I just said, “Listen, I’ve got to try to find something new for myself, something new for myself to drive me through this entire process.”

    That’s all you can do as a filmmaker is to have such a belief in the subject that it pulls you through every single agonizing moment of nightmare and terror when you feel like it’s all meaningless. And for me that was showing them as they were. Just letting the material speak and allowing the audience to experience the band as if they were alive in 1966 and they happen to walk in and here’s a new band called The Doors.

    That was the thing that kept me going.

    And I talked to the band members and I read the books of Ray and Don and I talked to a lot of people and essentially decided I would only try to use stuff that had been collaborated ““ stuff that would be true ““ as far as people knew.

    Ray Manzarek – Interview

    I don’t own any Doors albums.

    when_you_re_strange_movie_image_the_doors_jim_morrison__1_CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Ray, I don’t know if I should start out with Your Highness, Your Holiness, I don’t know which one you would prefer”¦

    MANZAREK: Your Obsequiousness. That’s what you should call me.

    (Laughs)

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Well, I’ve got so many questions and only a few minutes.

    MANZAREK: You don’t have that much time so you can’t have sooo many!

    (Laughs)

    “I’ve got quite a few questions for you””¦OK, go ahead, dude!

    (Laughs)

    CS: I want to start kind of lighthearted but getting ready to talk to you I was reminded about William Shatner’s Saturday Night Live sketch where he tells people to grow up or get a life and find something else to talk about with regard to fanatical nature of the fans who obsessed over Star Trek. Are The Doors like that for you in that, yes, it was a part of your life but you’ve gone on and accomplished other artistic things. Is this something you really love talking about again, and again, and again?

    MANZAREK: Absolutely, because it was The Doors. You know what, if I don’t talk about The Doors how can I thankfully work in the word psychedelic into our conversation?

    (Laughs)

    And I can if I talk about The Doors and I can talk about The Doors, I can talk about opening the doors of perception and if I talk about opening the doors of perception I can talk about psychedelic substances to wit, LSD.

    CS: Exactly

    MANZAREK: So, it’s a great opportunity to bring the message of psychedelics to the 21st century.

    CS: Please. School me on something. I was reading previous interviews with you and I was absolutely amazed, as you just mentioned, the psychedelic, the opening of one’s mind. And how the current crop of what we call musicians that flail themselves around on purpose, have no real similarity to what Jim was. I was at fault when I thought it was just Jim flopping around when it was really him internalizing the music. Can you talk a little bit about the misconception about Jim vs. what other people are aping?

    MANZAREK: It’s hard for me to talk about yours or the people’s misconceptions because I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking about. I know what I’m thinking when I’m making music with Jim Morrison is entering the ineffable oneness, the zen, peace and time. That’s what you do as a musician. You surrender yourself to all that goes into creating a song and you give up your ego and you become one with the music, the chord changes, the rhythm, the lyrics, the beat, all that stuff.

    That’s what you are. You are nothing else in time. People are watching with their eyeballs, Jim Morrison but Dionysus, the spirit of Dionysus, the spirit of madness and chaos and wildness that enters through the ears. As far as what Morrison did on stage, I’m hardly even aware of him. I know the singer on stage, the performer but I don’t know the mad character people are watching on stage. So, it’s virtually impossible for me to answer that idea.

    CS: Understood. Absolutely understood.

    MANZAREK: I’m on the inside looking out. I’m not looking in. I’m looking out.

    CS: Jim, when he started, humble beginnings, you and him, he had no form of musical training. What did you see in each other that you said, “You know what, we need to express ourselves.” What was that moment that you two shared that really started the genesis of the band?

    manzMANZAREK: Well, that moment was Moonlight Drive. He sang Moonlight Drive to me. I heard the lyrics, and I heard his rephrasing and his singing and he was right on pitch and he had a good sense of timing and a good sense of space and I said “You know what, I can play all kinds of funky Ray Charles kind of stuff and Jimmy Smith organ behind that” and Jim said, “That’s cool man, that’s what I hear too. If you can do that that would be fabulous.”

    And then he did My Eyes Have Seen You and Summer’s Almost Gone and those were great songs, I could play Bach behind Summer’s Almost Gone. My Eyes Have Seen You I could play all kinds of Latino jazz, southern California Latin style stuff. And Jim says “Sounds great to me, I love that” and that’s what we shared. We shared those ideas ““ those complimentary ideas.

    CS: Was there a theology with the band? Was there ever an overarching theme to what the band should be about?

    MANZAREK: The band should be about entering a state of transcendental consciousness. Yes. The band should be about LSD. The band should be about rising up out of the mundane, ordinary state of consciousness into a higher state of consciousness, that virtually the entire generation of the 60’s was into and that’s what we tried to do.

    CS: I was reading previous articles about how I think people ““ I don’t think in our current time people ““ there is not a rising up of the youth against the oppressive nature of government and what have you that we’ve become a little soft. Do you see yourself, or at least your place in musical history, as something more powerful than just music but you were a force of social and political change?

    MANZAREK: Just being in The Doors. A lot of people said “You guys didn’t participate in the marches” and whatnot but I always thought The Doors were political just by their nature. Morrison was the son of an Admiral, for God’s sake. For him to be a rock and roll guy and the son of an Admiral at the same time was virtually unheard of. Everything we did was political. Everything everyone was doing was political. We were in Vietnam just like we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then was there was a draft and anybody could go at any moment. Just pick you up and you’re gone ““ you’re gone off to Vietnam. Now it’s a volunteer army so I suppose that people who haven’t volunteered for the army are, “Cool, I’m not going.”

    I didn’t volunteer.

    If you want to volunteer to go fight ““ go ahead ““ go fight. It’s like, man ““ we got to make love here not war. I’m getting a little tired of waiting. It’s the 21st century. When do we make love and not war? I don’t think that we’re going to. We like war. We love killing. We think death is great. Kill the bad guys. Aren’t we the good guys by the way? I hope we’re not the bad guys.

    CS: I think it gets blurred and I’ve seen it in the idea of capitalism. I think that wraps that up really tightly ““ killing and capitalism. I think the two have gone hand in hand and I think the youth have gravitated to greed and their ideas are in things ““ not ideas of ideas.

    MANZAREK: Well, Jesus was a capitalist I think. So, it’s OK to be capitalist. I always thought Jesus was a lover. He loved humanity. He said love the Lord thy God, etc. and love thy neighbor as thyself. Somehow I think we’ve abandoned that idea of love but maybe we’ll get back to it. Who knows?

    CS: I don’t know if he ever said anything about being untruthful but in an interview with you I read that your feeling about Oliver Stone’s film was his take of Jim was completely, off, false, not right.

    51315665FM001_millerMANZAREK: Yes. Oliver Stone movie”¦.no good. It makes Jim Morrison an alcoholic and a wino, a drunkard, a crazy man. He was actually very intelligent, very sophisticated, very funny. He was a funny guy. It’s entirely the wrong portrait. That’s what so much fun doing When You’re Strange. You are going to get the real Jim Morrison being Jim Morrison and you will see the real Doors. It’s nothing but Jim Morrison as Jim Morrison and that’s what’s so great about When You’re Strange.

    CS: Great film.

    MANZAREK: That’s cool. Thank you, man.

    CS: I was blown away ““ and I’ll tell you straight up that I am just a casual fan, not just a guy who says, “I love The Doors!”, but I got a deep appreciation for the real thing. It wasn’t a fictionalized representation. I was, however, curious about a couple things: One, your involvement was limited. I was expecting to have you and the other band members talking every so often, that didn’t happen, and, two, I was also really floored that Jim’s movie was incorporated into this documentary.

    MANZAREK: See that. He was brilliant. He was a brilliant filmmaker. He was a filmmaker, and a writer, and he was Dionysian and wore leather and he was a poet. So there you are.

    CS: Was there any part of you that wanted to ““ was it Tom [DiCillo’s] idea not to have you talk on screen or have anybody else talk on screen?

    MANZAREK: No, the idea was we don’t have to talk. Just watch the footage. We’ve got plenty of footage. What do you want to see me talk for?

    (Laughs)

    I want to watch Jim Morrison and if I see Ray Manzarek”¦.I want to see The Doors. So why should we see old guys saying, “When I was a youngster”¦” I don’t want to see that. The only time that was interesting was in Warren Beatty’s movie, Reds.

    CS: Good movie.

    MANZAREK: It is a good movie. You see the actual people who are being portrayed. But I mean, we got The Doors. Let’s just watch The Doors. To hell with watching the guys comment.

    CS: And one of the special things about the band and you might agree or disagree is that The Doors feel like band that was never corrupted by a money man, a corporation. Do you feel it was always true to its own self?

    MANZAREK: Incorruptible. The Doors were pure. The Doors were rock and roll. The Doors were artists. They would not sell their souls to the man. No way.

    CS: Is that a point of pride for you? That you get to say, “We were what we were and we never compromised?”

    MANZAREK: Never compromised. Absolutely it’s a point of pride. Absolutely man. You bet it is.