Creep is the new project from DJ/Producers Lauren Flax (Fischerspooner) and Lauren Dillard.  Their first album offers up an electronic flavor and features a rotating cast of guest vocalists, including Romy Madley-Croft from the XX.  We sat down with Lauren Flax recently to talk about the new project, videos and vocalists.

Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard photo by IO Tillett Wright

h. How did the formation of Creep come about?

A. About a year and a half ago Lauren (Dillard), myself and Melissa from Telepathe started writing music with no intention in mind. Just a fun side project. Melissa had to start writing the second Telepathe record so she couldn’t be involved anymore. After that, Dillard and I just sort of buckled down and tackled some remixes and original works. When people started to listen, we started to get more serious about it.

h. Your first video has been nominated at the Camerimage Festival. Tell us about the video and who filmed it.

A. Well, Warren Fischer from Fischerspooner had offered to do the video for us. We were beyond excited because he’s such a visionary. We assumed he could get us very far with a very small amount of money. We didn’t actually realize how big of a production it was until we arrived on set. There were about 30 people staffed in this giant Victorian mansion in Yonkers. The video is just stunning. He took imagery we had sent him and turned it into a very ethereal cinematic masterpiece.

h. Romy from the XX is guesting on your album. How was collaborating with her and what other guests will be on the new album.

A. She is the sweetest, most humble person on the planet. It was such a joy to work with her. It was all very organic and natural, which makes for a perfect marriage in collaborating with someone. Our second single feature vocals from Nina Sky and a cameo with Nomi Ruiz. We have others that we are collaborating with as well but it’s a secret. We are very, very excited about our full-length, which should come out late 2011.

(The first single, “Days”, will be released December 20th on Young Turks Records, and Creep will be performing at the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival on December 18^th.)

http://www.myspace.com/wearecreep

Mary Louise Parker

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 7

Shirt by Twenty Cluny

photos by Robert Todd Williamson
styled by Albert Medonca
hair by Gio Campora
make up by Torsten Witte

It is seven o’clock in the morning. The worst hour of any day. Somewhere between hair and make-up, costuming, and shooting another scene, Mary-Louise Parker, who has been at work for a while now, chats me up. I say “chats me up,” because my assignment, an in depth interview, alive with humor, charm, and relevance (my wife in fact thinks of me as the Mexican Jon Stewart), quickly detoured into my own misadventure. Why? Of course —and I blame the hour of day here— I had problems from the get-go.

Problema numero uno: I was not able to record our conversation, and thus was forced to frantically type what was being said as it was happening. Since I am completely incapable of multitasking I was not able to engage Ms. Parker as nimbly and as full of bravado as I would have liked.

Perhaps here I should make a confession… My intention with this interview was simple: I bring myself to the brink of journalistic fame by cracking through the barriers of the most wholesome drug dealer to grace the small screen. My mission — dethrone the Green Queen, Mary-Louise Parker. But typing away like a lowly court reporter, my powers of manipulation were dulled. My attempts to skewer her were foiled. Happily, a terrific side effect of the situation presented itself instantly after the “interview” ended. As I went through my notes, trying to figure out how I would nail Parker with nothing but a shorthand mess of notes on a computer, it dawned on me… None of my quotes were accurate! I could misquote her into oblivion! That would put this celebrity in her place!

This was now where problema numero dos reared its ugly head: I love my mother. Plus my father always said to be good to your mother (and vicariously to other mothers). Added to all of this, my mom once said to never lie about someone else, unless you’re trying to get away from the cops, or to get out of work for something more fun. No, I could not lie about Mary-Louise.

Since she is a real-life mommy, and since I have a soft spot for the mommas, I’ll cut her some slack and not misquote her. I’m sure her evil plots will reveal themselves.

The truth: Mary-Louise has started another season as television-mother and marijuana baroness, Nancy Botwin, in Showtime’s hit series Weeds. The show, in which Parker plays a lovable widowed soccer mom who once sat atop a suburban pot empire, charges into its sixth season. Consequentially, Mary-Louise has a lot of long days ahead. But that’s okay for this single mother. She claims to love her job (I think her exact words were: “I love my job!”), and, more importantly, her two kids have a playroom on set. And a lemonade stand, which I have been led to understand is quite popular.

“My son was eight months old when we shot the pilot for Weeds. For six years, everyone here has been watching him grow up. We’re family,” Parker continues as a member of the costume department offered to help her get her shoes on. They had just painted her nails and she needed to do a costume change soon.

As the conversation goes on, in fact, there is a growing sense that others are becoming concerned she won’t be ready in time for the scene an entire crew is working hard to set up. But Parker, like a good mommy, is never frazzled; gracious to anyone who approaches her. She has already said the crew was like family, and now here she is, acting like it. What is she trying to cover up by doing crap like this?

“I like to work, I like to be at work. I don’t understand when actors complain about [this or that]–you’re getting paid to act. How many people get to do that?” Parker particularly likes working in television, noting “there’s something about the regularity of working [on a show], getting to improve on it.” She claims to have made lots of mistakes during the run of Weeds as she worked to bring Nancy to life, saying that too much of herself would bleed through on occasions.

I suppose she’s made an interesting point. The following I am making up, and I may be completely wrong about it, but I would venture to guess that those mistakes are bound to happen more often in television, whereas in the theater, an actor works the same dialogue for months honing that perfect performance. A feat, by the way, for which Parker has received much critical acclaim, including winning a Tony Award for her performance in “Proof”. With television however, you get to set at five in the morning, grab a bagel, rehearse, costume, then shoot and move on. It’s fast-paced. The character is bound to become a
reflection of the performer.

Perhaps this was it! The point I could use to expose Ms. Parker for the celebrity nightmare she must be: How much of Mary-Louise comes through in Nancy, the equivocating mother whose very actions seem to contradict her stated desire to take care of her family?

So I asked.

“How much of you is in Nancy, or comes out in Nancy?”

“[Nancy’s] an extremist. She lives in a grayer area than I do. She’s always trying to achieve harmony, so she’s often not honest with herself. I don’t feel a kinship with her intellectually, she’s not a wildly self-examined person and doesn’t suffer from a lot of guilt…which I suppose might be nice,” says Parker, adding, “I’ve been able to fix moments that I was unhappy with by getting to re-shoot things, scenes. Everyone here is very supportive, the writers are great. Everyone wants the best.”

Touché, Parker. Tou. Ché.

Her supposed enjoyment of both the acting process and her Weeds family shows in how she treats others, saying at one point, “That I get to do what I love is amazing. I truly feel lucky that I get to do this. I don’t lose sight of that.” I still think it’s a ruse—she must be power hungry, being a good mother notwithstanding.

At a certain point, looking at the clock and getting a sense of people waiting (plus, I’m still searching for an equivocating evil celebrity that must lurking under her well-constructed front-—and my own powers of mental superiority are being taxed by my frantic typing), I offer to say ‘thanks’ and get out of her hair. To which she warmly says, “Tell you what, I’ll do this costume change so I’m ready, go shoot this shot, and get right back to you.”

Right! Sure, sure. You do that! That’s the oldest trick in the book! Oh, Ms. Parker, you just gave me the card I needed to prove to the world you’re insincere and self-centered! Your TV show job is obviously more important than a lowly Mexican writer and new father trying to make it in the world and to support his young family. (To be clear, I am speaking of myself.)

Check. Mate.

But she did! She returned! F! Okay, so, she’s not a flake. There must be some horrible reason she’s doing this and though it wasn’t particularly clear, in hindsight, the opportunity allowed me to over-caffeinate. Which, of course, made me very paranoid that the interview was going horribly, that I was the worst interviewer of all time, I was failing, and my brain started to misfire as I desperately tried to focus and seem cool and super-smart. Was this her strategy
the whole time?

Interestingly, the TV star was not allowed to watch television as a kid. Perhaps this is why she so desperately seeks fame and celebrity power! We shall see.

“I wanted to watch Sonny & Cher, but it was on really late. So I would sneak from my bed into the hallway and watch it,” says Parker, who adds that her favorite childhood show was probably Lidsville, a crazy Saturday morning children’s show from the early ‘70s, in which a boy falls into a magical hat and ends up in Lidsville, a world populated by giant living (and uber-characaturized) hat-people. I mention here what the show was about because Mary-Louise joked that I am too young to know what she was talking about. I guess I showed her!

“I love Flight Of The Conchords. But I wasn’t introduced to it until it was over, it’s really good,” she says, adding “I don’t really watch TV now. I know that sounds like a cliche, an actor saying they don’t watch TV, but it’s true. We never really have the TV on in the house, not as background noise during the day.”

A Southern girl, Mary-Louise is ever polite, if not a bit reserved, or outright shy. In this may lie her secrets, so I press. Reflecting a bit on growing up, she says “I’ve always been a darker person, a little Wednesday Addams girl. I wanted to be a pom-pom girl, but I could never pull it off. I think I was embarrassed by it.” Here we go! Fresh off the sofa from which I marathoned five seasons of Weeds in one sitting (this is actually something I recommend to anybody who likes television–buy a frozen pizza, turn off your phone and enjoy the ride), I have seen the dark side Nancy tries to cover up or suppress. Parker taught her that! I’ve seen her photo shoots and read her interviews. She has never come across as shy. In fact when I ask her about this she says,“I’m not self-conscious in front of the camera— I look on it
as a performance.”

“I was not a good communicator, this is the way I communicate. I was shy, [acting] is how I can express myself.” Well, Ms. Parker, is the shyness the act, or the acting the act? I’ll get to the bottom of this.

Mary-Louise would have us believe that somewhere in

the shyness a wonderful humility lives. That it is probably this shyness which has created her confidence by channeling her expressiveness and talents through performance. That her success is the unexpected result of hard work and solid values, and a commitment to providing for her beloved children. I say, perhaps. It might be looking like that, but I’m not done yet.

A few bios on Mary-Louise floating out there state that she prefers quality to quantity. To which she says, “I was never really career-driven. I still don’t have specific goals and never expected fame. Some actors just have an appealing vibe and that seduces the world. But I wanted to hide behind other people, to step into someone else’s brain and heart and psyche. I wanted a break from being me,” then quoting something that had stuck with her,“I never worried about going out of style, because I never felt as if I were in style.”

Hoping to blow her out of the water with her own words, I press her on one of the first films responsible for the respect people have for her craft. The movie is Longtime Companion, in which Parker plays a woman who experiences through her homosexual friends the destruction caused by the outbreak of AIDS in the 1980s, as directed by Norman Rene and written by Craig Lucas. “Can you talk about it?” I ask. “Yeah!” she says, with obvious fervor. “The guy who directed it was my mentor. I can’t watch it without crying.” Here I learn that the director has since passed away and it’s obvious how much this impacts Ms. Parker. I am now slightly embarrassed by what is looking more and more like a ridiculous effort to find fault in this performer. Is she actually genuine?

“I accepted that job (Longtime Companion) without even reading the script,” she says. “I worked with the writer, Craig, and Norman, the director, before. We had done a play together (“Prelude to a Kiss”). They called me and said, ‘We have a project with a role for you, we’d like to send you the script,’ and I said you can send it to me,
but I’ll do it anyway.”

Parker did another film with the same writer/director duo a few years later called Reckless. Both films are terrific.

Parker has two new films coming out. Howl, a film about the poet Allen Ginsberg’s obscenity trial, which also stars James Franco, Jeff Daniels, and David Strathairn to name a few; and RED (an acronym for Retired and Extremely Dangerous), a very fun looking action/comedy about retired CIA agents getting the ‘ol gang back together for funsies. The latter carries an additionally heavy-hitting cast, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, and Richard Dreyfuss.

It’s time for a subject change. “What have you learned from doing Weeds? How has it affected your life?” I ask Ms. Parker. “Wow,” she says. Then, after a moment, “that you can make marijuana into cupcakes and lollipops!” She laughs. I also laugh. She’s obviously wearing me down. “I think to work [so many hours] and to have kids is hard to negotiate. My instinct is to want to be home with [my kids]. It’s tricky,” she continues. Again with the good mom stuff. Could I have been way wrong about Mary-Louise Parker?

I don’t imagine anybody out there believes that fame makes being a parent easier in any way. How much time Parker connects success and concern and work and play with her children makes very clear what her priorities are. She is a mother—from the sound of it, a damn good one. She

is grateful for the career that allows her to provide, but nonetheless, I was curious if she would enjoy living a life off the grid. Could she say goodbye to the career and go far away to live a private life? Surely this question would expose her true desires: to maintain her celebrity status.“Yes, for sure!” she says very enthusiastically, hardly skipping a beat. “I would go to Calgary. Calgary has a weird vibe, I really like it. I
don’t really know why.”

Dang.

But Parker is a New Yorker. “It would be tough to lose New York. I would lose a lot if I had to leave New York,” she adds. I suppose I can understand this sentiment. New Yorkers have an
amazing town. Kudos.

There was a lot to be said about the various reasons she readily entertains the idea of falling off the grid, finding a private life. Her willingness to share some very personal feelings on celebrity and the romanticization of that kind of life was rather unexpected and incredibly honest. “There is a perception about celebrities. It has just gotten more and more mean spirited and voyeuristic,” she reveals.  “It’s interesting to look at people’s willingness to humiliate themselves publicly, like on reality TV, you can see how people are seduced by public exposure and it seems to be something a lot of people want. I think there are a lot of people who think it’s so desirable, they will do anything to achieve some level of fame or notoriety that there is a bizarre resentment that people have to celebrity. Joe Walsh’s song, ‘Life’s Been Good’ is a great song. But people really do treat you differently. And it’s usually the people you thought you knew best.”

I hate to let you down, dear readers, but I am not famous. I have met a lot of famous people, am even friends with some of them. I have lived in Hollywood for nearly a decade. This part of the conversation is personally the most honest anyone who understands that life and the stresses on such a life has ever been with me. Mary-Louise engaged me from our introduction and did not treat me like a vulture hoping to further my career by latching myself somehow to her (which, sadly, happens to be the case; I’m a latcher). In fact, when I let her know my wife and I had recently had our first son, she turned the tables on me, started asking me questions. When my son grows up, I can tell him, “You see that actress there? She said you had a powerful name! Nice, eh?”

After our interview, I reflected on the experience. There seemed to be none of the front or pretense that I had desperately hoped to expose for my own purposes. This brings me to…

Problema Numero Tres: I was completely wrong about Ms. Parker. She’s cool. In fact, one word comes to mind when I think now of Mary-Louise Parker: Genuine. Ms. Parker is Genuine.

Oh, crap! I almost forgot! Mary-Louise told me that we’ll be seeing the legendary Richard Dreyfuss in the upcoming season of Weeds. “It’s such an honor to work with him, he’s awesome! I saw Postcards From The Edge a month ago, he’s so good in it. He’s so good.” I told her I caught Mr. Holland’s Opus recently on cable. She had not seen it, but is going to rush it onto her Netflix lineup. I suggested she buy the soundtrack and blast the “Opus” theme at his trailer.

She laughed half-heartedly, but after a moment it seemed as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. I got embarrassed and dropped it. Our conversation came to an end. Mary-Louise Parker had won without even knowing she was in a fight. Hot.

I was fortunate to get the first episode of Weeds, season six– and it was awesome! Stay tuned for the premiere; August 16 on Showtime.

Mila Kunis

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 5

sweater by Stella Mccartney belt by Blumarine necklace by Moritz Glik

photos by Robert Todd Williamson
styled by Amit Gajwani
hair by Peter Butler
make up by Genevieve
art direction by Laura Ann

Tis a cold autumn day in New York, and though there’s not a gust of blustery wind about, Mila Kunis has had some trouble making it to the coffee shop at Bowery and Bleecker, where we’ll soon discuss the best Star Trek moment in history over some hot tea. As she unbundles her layers and removes her spaghetti string headphones, she confides, “Walking here, I tripped. I’m clumsy every day, every hour of the day. I trip on my own feet.” I wonder if this curse to bear has ever annoyed her, and she replies with a smile, “No, I wouldn’t know what it’s like not to trip.” I wonder as well if there might’ve been a magical day when her body was in harmony with her surroundings and she nods, “Yeah, there’ve been days where I was like, Whew! Had a good day today. I didn’t fall, I didn’t embarrass myself, good for me! Oh yeah, it happens.”
Mila’s currently in New York preparing to shoot Darren Aronofsky’s latest brain tickler, Black Swan, in which she plays the possible phantom adversary to Natalie Portman in a dark tale of a ballerina finding madness. Though it’s set to be a dark and conjuring film no doubt, the humor here lies in a self-professed klutz filling the stiff point shoes of a ballet virtuoso. “Am I good? I mean, good as in what I can do at 26 in three months. I think I’m doing great! I can get on point. But I’m broken! I’ve pulled so many ligaments, I have tendinitis in my left knee, I have this (a bandaged shoulder she pulls back her shirt to reveal). I had to get an MRI because I popped my shoulder out, and then it inflamed, that was last week. That was exciting. My toes are bruised, this over here (a hip area she points to with gusto) is bruised from being lifted.” Though she might not be making an appearance on Dancing With The Stars any time soon, there are benefits, she confides. “I’m in the sickest shape I’ve been in my life. By far. I’m also on a really strict diet. So I’m dieting, then working out three or four hours a day.”
For those of you unfamiliar with this spitfire nymph from her days as Jackie on That ‘70s Show, her breakthrough film role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or her wails and sobs as Meg on Family Guy, you must know that she is a bundle of energy, a geyser of comedy, and nerdy enough to talk about farts and Tolstoy in the same five minutes. She’s normal, and there’s no false sense of celebrity, a word she scoffs at. She simply thinks of herself as a working actress with a blessed life. Normalness is hard to find amongst the actor lot, but it’s her parents that showed her how to remain grounded through the years as a recognizable face in the crowd. With their children’s future at stake, Mila’s parents, once scientists in the Ukraine, brought her and her brother to the States in 1991. With Los Angeles as their new home, Mila’s father took up a job as a taxi driver and her mother found work as a Rite Aid clerk. For seven-year-old Mila, it was rough-going at first; unable to speak or understand English, she was thrust into an elementary school the day after their arrival, and she claims to have blocked out memories of that first year because it was so alien and painful. Eventually she caught on to the language, thanks to watching The Price Is Right, and studying the over-pronunciated slow drawl of Bob Barker. Even so, times were still tough for the impoverished family as Mila remembers her first real Halloween. “I had just learned what Halloween was, there was no Halloween where I came from, and we were really poor and there was no way we were ever going to buy a costume. The school had a parade where all the kids would go around in a circle in their costumes or whatever, and the day before the parade, I came home and I kept saying, ‘I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.’ My mom didn’t understand why. Eventually she realized it was because everybody was going to be wearing costumes and I didn’t have a costume. So she made me a costume, and it was a tiger; the costume was my brother’s shirt, which was striped black and yellow, and a paper bag that she painted to look like a tiger’s face, with my ‘lil face cutout. So I went to school and I wasn’t embarrassed, and years back, I realized how cool my parents were about all that.”
But such lean times soon came and went after Mila’s parents enrolled her in an acting class for fun, and Hollywood hands plucked her from the fold. She began doing commercials, the first of which was for Barbie. “I was with a group of kids and we went camping, so I think it was an outdoor Barbie of some sort. I ended up doing like 40 commercials when I was little so they all kind of run together. But the Barbies, I still have them. You weren’t able to keep all the Barbies that you did commercials for because a lot of them were testers.” But the golden toy at the time was not Barbie, it was none other than Telephone Tammy. A bit irked, Mila leans in, “I never got to keep Telephone Tammy. When I was nine, that was a kickass doll. It talked. I wanted that one, but I never got it. But I have glitter hair Barbie at home. And then I have winter Barbie, I don’t know (laughs).”After a string of commercials, Mila went in to audition for a pilot, a sitcom called That ‘70s Show, and though they were looking for actors 18 and above, Mila lied about her age and won the part of Jackie, the spoiled high school princess. The producers found out about her age, but didn’t mind keeping her on for eight seasons, and in the meantime, she began her tenure as the tortured high school nerd, Meg, on Family Guy, a role she still does voice over for once a month. And though fame soon arrived, Mila didn’t let it become her life, and managed to maintain a normal healthy social life. Her friends at the time never once found weirdness in what she did for a career: “They wouldn’t be my friends if they did! They’re all very normal, very nice, hard-working adults now. When we were little, they couldn’t give two shits about what I did. We take a yearly girlfriends trip, every year since we were 16. The first one was in San Diego. We were still young, so there were only so many places our parents would let us go. And you would think that 16-year-olds on vacation by themselves would go crazy, but we got massages, rented movies, swam in the pool, we stayed up ‘til 3 a.m. by the pool having a glass of wine. That was our big thing, ‘Oh we’re having wine!’ And that’s it. But since then, that started a tradition, every year we go somewhere else. Not necessarily far, they work full-time and they’re in school.”
As her time in high school drew to a close, it soon came time for Mila to make some tough decisions. “I didn’t know that this was going to be my career, it was just fun. At 16, it was still fun, but I was going to go to college, I was going to quit. When I consciously made it my job, in my late teens, early 20s, that’s when I really changed. The way I went about it changed. ‘What’s my next step, what am I going to do, why do I want to do this?’ It wasn’t so haphazard anymore. So that was kind of a learning process. You can’t learn how to act, you either can act or you can’t. But that’s also a matter of opinion. You might think someone’s a great actor, I might think they’re awful, so it doesn’t even matter. So, really, it’s just about making smart decisions.”
But now, let’s dispense with this bit of A&E biography and get to the current times and the goings on. Mila is soon to be seen in The Book of Eli, the Hughes Brothers pic starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, which offers the promise of, if not a shitload of awesome action, a great acting showdown between the two screen legends. I ask Mila if she was nervous at all about working with actors of such stellar accomplishment, and she shrugs. “If I was, it only worked for the character. I read for The Book of Eli twice, and both times with Denzel. The first time, I didn’t know Denzel was going to be there, so that was a little strange. ‘Cause he’s big. He’s a big man. And the second time I read, I knew he was going to be there, and in the scene, he wanted to improv the scene where my character first meets him. The scene took a turn during the audition where he became very aggressive with the character. That was fantastic, but me being slightly intimidated by him only worked for the character. So yes, you can’t not be intimidated, but it’s not intimidating in the sense that you’re scared, it’s more like I’m going to try and keep up with you. I’m going to do the best scene that I possibly can and I hope it sticks. That’s all I can do.”
As she’s obviously figured out acting without training, I ask Mila what’s been the best education so far. “Trial and error. Really, that’s the best way to learn. I’m not discrediting people that go to school and study it, I think that’s great, but I think it’s just as important to go and do it, and you learn from your peers and the people that you’re surrounded by. A lot of times you end up learning what not to do versus what to do. Because there’s no right or wrong, it’s all a matter of opinion. You figure out what works for you by watching other people and trying things.” I prod, asking if it was weird working with two very supposed intense actors, and if there was indeed some method acting going on. She thinks for a bit and replies, “If I say no, everyone will be disappointed, you would be surprised about who would be method and who wouldn’t. And that’s all I want to say. Gary Oldman has this reputation of being so tough, so serious, but he was one of the funniest, most easy-going people I’ve ever met. In the middle of takes, he’s dropping jokes and dancing. So, I would say no. He maybe was incredibly method at one point, but he’s a brilliant actor and he can switch it on and off at the drop of a hat. Truly, we’ll be having a simple conversation about The Monkees and you’ll hear action and then he’s grabbing my hair and pulling me to the ground and threatening to kill me and I’m like, ‘Holy shit!’ Yeah, he’s pretty badass. And Denzel, they’re both serious actors, and just saying that you can shoot the shit in a middle of a take does not discredit their seriousness at all. It’s just…they both just have a natural presence and a natural way of going about things where they don’t have to try. It’s indescribable.”
As for the comedy that she’s so good at, having been hand-tapped for roles by both the likes of comedy lords Judd Apatow and Mike Judge, I ask her if improv comes easy for her. “It frightens me, more than anything else. It’s more like what you think is funny right now, today, is not necessarily going to be funny a year from now when the movie comes out. The problem with improv is that the jokes that you make have to be sustained. And that’s something that you can’t predict. You can think you’re funny, and the whole crew will laugh, but it doesn’t mean it’s funny tomorrow. It’s hard, it’s different.”
Since Halloween had just passed, I ask her the last horror movie she saw, her favorite of all time being The Shining. “A Nightmare on Elm Street — the first one, we were watching it at a friend’s house. We watched A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, just for fun.  We watch those old horror movies because we do murder mystery tours in L.A., my friend sets up murder mystery tours, for fun, for my friends and I to do. One of my friends has a whole giant book of famous murders that happened in L.A., everything from the Valley to Orange County to Malibu, everything you could possibly imagine. And so when we do these murder nights, we watch movies, then we drive around at midnight, all around to these murder houses and take photos and we recreate the murder scenes, it’s really twisted and weird. Like, we went to the Black Dahlia house–well, it’s a house now, but it used to be a field in East L.A. or whatever it was, Compton. We went by the Hillside Strangler’s place and the Playboy model (Dorothy Stratten) who was murdered by her ex-husband; that house looks exactly the same now as it does in the murder book. Nothing’s changed and there’s an overpass next to it, it’s just creepy. That house gives us bad vibes every time we’re there. We should stop going; I don’t know why we keep going.”
You might find that weird, but it sounds fun. As for other Mila pastimes, she used to play a good deal of World of Warcraft, and in her heyday, she found it hard to be out doing anything other than playing WOW with her boyfriend of seven years, Macaulay Culkin, whom she refers to as Mac, the sane, very intelligent man who grounds her craziness. Since then she’s gone back to more primitive roots.“When we have ‘friends night’ and we all get together, we play board games. The Settlers of Catan. It’s a mixture of Risk and Monopoly. You trade wheat for ore, or brick for wood. It’s like Risk because you want to own the entire world, you want to populate it.” Unfamiliar, and a bit excited, I ask her if it’s like the old classic, Axis and Allies. “Yes! Exactly. Oh my gosh, it’s so nerdy, I love that game. There’s also The Seafarers of Catan and we combine them both. We don’t fuck around. Giant board games are great.” But enjoyment and skill are two different things and I press her on
whether she wins very much. “No. I like to think I do, but I don’t. I would get called out by all my friends if I said I did.”
As our time is drawing close, it’s time to have a showdown, nerd vs. nerd, and appropriately, a trading of our favorite Star Trek moments. I begin with mine first, the moment that I used to think about if I needed to cry, the moment when Spock dies in “Wrath of Khan” and tells a teary and pained Captain Kirk that, ‘The need of the many…outweighs the need of the few…or the one.’ I feel very proud of my chosen moment, but she replies, horrified, “Oh my God. Are you serious?”
I take my stance, ‘Come on! Spock died! You’d known this character for over 20 years. I cried.’ She shakes her head, then nods, “I did, too, but I don’t think that’s a good moment! How about when they killed Data off, then? How’s that for a moment. You were not sad when Data was blown into space?”
I seem to remember Data coming back, but The Next Generation is not my strong suit. She puts me in my place. “No! He did not come back. They left it open, remember how there are a couple of Datas? His evil brother was still intact…and you assumed that one day they would put Data’s brain into the evil brother? But they never finished that.”
She thinks momentarily and easily comes up with her favorite moment, which turns out to be a happy thing rather than a devastating thing, she begins: “There’s an episode in The Next Generation where Captain Picard lives an entire life in 10 minutes in the ‘The Inner Light’ episode. You remember this episode? One of my favorite songs is when Captain Picard is playing the flute. This entire race of people has died off, and the only way that they can sustain their legacy is if they come and implant their memories into human beings. Picard gets chosen to get one of these implants, and he lives this entire life in this olden world, gets married, has kids, has a whole life, everything, in the span of 10 minutes. He’s a flute player in this other life, and he wakes up and he has the flute there. He picks it up and starts playing and it’s the most beautiful song. It’s a beautiful episode, from start to finish, perfect.”
I have to agree, even though having never seen it, that it does seem quite perfect and beautiful. And the same description might not be far off from applying to such a one as this, a beautiful girl who doesn’t think of herself as such, but follows the things that make her happy, and in turn finds the real things that are important: friends, sincerity, and a damn good Star Trek episode. The time being up,
her scheduled events lingering, we leave the coffee shop and walk for awhile down the Bowery together. I ask her what she would do if ever this acting thing didn’t work out, and she speaks of using the money she’s gathered to travel the world and see its every corner, then return home and go back to school and maybe teach kindergarten. We both remark over the cuteness of a tiny puppy making its rounds,
and then our paths split and she heads off to whatever makes her heart happy, the way it should be.

Click Image to Enlarge

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 13

Detour journals is a collection of interviews, handwritten q&a’s, sketches, and polaroid snapshots. Inspired by the personal quality of collage journals and zines the section is dedicated to an “up-close immersion” into the world of up-and-coming or off-beat subjects. In this issue I bring my sleeping bag, typewriter, and camera into the creative compound of 2HeadedHorse, the Echo Park-based production company of skate filmmakers, comedians, and artists.

As we quickly approach 2010, I see the future but remember the past. The past of sitting around the television with my family watching Who’s the Boss?, Wonder Years, and even Family Matters. We would watch them as a family, laugh together, and talk about them afterwards.
The Internet has taken over the TV. I don’t think a family squeezing next to each other hovering over a computer screen watching a YouTube video of a dog singing “November Rain” (even though that sounds kind of cool right now) gives the same feeling as watching a TV show or even a movie on a TV together.
In the past if we didn’t get home on time we would miss our show and there wasn’t any other way to see it; only by chance you would catch the re-run. We’ve gotten comfortable. The Internet helps out in a lot of ways, but for families it’s making it harder to share something together.

INT. The SANDERS Family home.
The year is 2015. Mr. and Mrs. Sanders and their 15 year old son (Charlie) are sitting around the dinner table.
Mr. Sanders is looking at his iPhone and laughing. Mrs. Sanders is looking at her laptop computer and giggling. Charlie is texting someone and laughing his ass off.
MRS. SANDERS
What are you LOL’ing about over there Charlie?
CHARLIE
A video my friend just sent me of him pooping in his pants while he’s falling down the stairs.
MRS. SANDERS
Can you forward that to me, please?
CHARLIE
Yeah, no probs. It’s called, “tripping and pooping”.
MR. SANDERS
Have you guys seen this dog singing “November Rain” on YouTube?
CHARLIE & MRS. SANDERS
Yeah….
MR. SANDERS
Charlie, I emailed you a link to the new digital short they did on SNL this weekend. You like those.
CHARLIE
I already saw it.
MRS. SANDERS
Where did you see it, sweetie?
CHARLIE
On my iPhone. Which reminds me, I got a new App on my iPhone called, “How to know your family better”.
MR. SANDERS
How’s it working out for you?
CHARLIE
I haven’t played it yet.

MRS. SANDERS
Okay, well, let us know how it goes. Sounds interesting.

Derek Waters runs into the Sanders house.
DEREK
Hey! Sanders Family!
MR. SANDERS
Who the hell are you?
DEREK
My name is Derek Waters, I’m from 2009.
MR. SANDERS
Oh…okay…what do you want?
DEREK
You don’t have to let this continue! Get out an old movie, or TV show, and watch it as a family, on the TV.
CHARLIE
Why should we watch TV, when we can watch it on the Internet?
DEREK
Cause you can sit around the TV together as a family…you can’t sit around computer screen together. I mean you can, but it’s not as comfortable.
MRS. SANDERS
The Internet is easier for us Derek.
DEREK
Yes Mrs. Sanders, the Internet makes things easier, but aren’t the great things in life the hard ones to get?
The Sanders family just stares at Derek.
DEREK
If things are always easy, what will make you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something?
CHARLIE
Kid from the recent past has a good point.
DEREK
Thank you, Charles.
CHARLIE
My name is Charlie.
DEREK
Oh, right. Sorry Charlie.
CHARLIE
Mom and Dad, can we watch THE WONDER YEARS together?
MR. & MRS. SANDERS
Yes please!
DEREK
Can I watch with you guys?
MR. SANDERS
No, but thanks for coming to the future and making us realize we need to do things together.
DEREK
No problem….It’s what I do. Have a nice night together.
The end.
I’m not saying that TV makes a family stronger. I am saying a family can have fun if they watch things together AS A FAMILY. Oh, and don’t tell the Sanders Family but the only way I got to time travel was ‘cause of the Internet. Thanks Internet!

“FILMMAKER. BORN MISSOULA, MT. EAGLE SCOUT.”
That is what David Lynch’s Twitter bio reads, and in fact, the unorthodox artist has always held onto this line – or similar iterations of it. This seemingly succinct string of words is a subtle insight into the complicated mind of David Lynch, and though the short if not intriguing bio is accurate, it seems an absurd description of what he and his work represent; complexity, detail-obsessed visions of the disgusting that can be hidden in things beautiful or simple. Mr. Lynch is a multi-faceted and enormously prolific creative powerhouse. In fact, the self-professed peddler of absurdity has a new show in town.

David Lynch at David Lynch's Art Exhibit Hosted by DeLeon Tequil

GRIFFIN, Santa Monica – collaborating with the James Corcoran Gallery- is hosting Mr. Lynch’s first solo show of paintings and photography in Los Angeles in over 10 years. The eloquent hall – host until December 12th – is big which makes it the ideal home for such a uniquely large task. I say large not only in reference to the depth and provocativeness of the work, but also because half a dozen of Mr. Lynch’s pieces are over six feet high and ten feet wide.
In trying to define these specific works, words like creepy, startling, funny, subtle, aggressive, cheeky, uncomfortable, and genius come to mind. Spending some time taking them in, I was overwhelmed with a sense of familiarity that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and since I have no dead girlfriends, angry mothers wielding electric knives, or disembodied vomiting faces in my recent past, I had to go back further – all the way to my childhood. A remarkable quirk with the artwork, the aspect of the show that seemed so familiar, was actually the child-like way in which Mr. Lynch labels what’s happening in the pictures. This is both ironic and subtle – disguised as obvious. It’s like the pictures that little kids in elementary school would draw. Think of a little stick figure of the artist giving another stick figure of someone else a gift, or a kick to the ass- where “me” with an arrow, “you” with another arrow, and “me kicking you” or “me giving you flowers” is neatly labeled for clarity. It is fascinating.
GRIFFIN, Santa Monica has done a remarkable job with this show. Genevieve Devitt Day, GRIFFIN Gallery Director, made an interesting point when asked about the common thread of the show. In reference to a gigantic painting in which a man with very long arms is reaching for a new shirt in a box while standing near the body of his dead girlfriend, she says “…there is a sense that these stories could be taking place now, in Anytown, USA. The mundane (‘Oh, I have a new shirt’) is combined with the ghastly (‘My girlfriend died last night’) and both coexist in the same frame – as in life. I think this is where the absurdity in his paintings lives. But for every evil in Lynch’s paintings there is also redemption.”

Oh...I Said a Bad Thing, 2009 Mixed media on cardboard 34 3/8 x 30 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches

I realize, or at least must acknowledge, that most people know of David Lynch as a filmmaker. “[He] has many fans of his films and this exhibition has introduced them to his artworks.” Devitt Day notes. “For 40 years, he has been painting and creating artwork simultaneously with making films and I think many people are surprised by the longevity of his visual arts career.”
Though I am a big fan of his film and television projects, it is this writers’ opinion, that such aspects of this Missoula, Mont., native’s repertoire are, in fact, the offspring of a greater inspiration – a greater calling….
Notably discussed at length in the many existing bios and interviews on his career, Mr. Lynch’s artistic beginnings seem more important than ever to delve into as one tries to understand and enjoy his current works. It was growing up in the aftermath of WWII, where a young David Lynch first put pencil to paper, drawing pictures of war machines. Guns. Browning Automatic liquid-cooled machine guns in particular. At the age of 14, he was introduced to painting while staying with his aunt and uncle in the Montana town of Hungry Horse (population 2,000). Shortly thereafter, upon moving to Virginia, Lynch was sparked by the idea of taking on painting as a profession, thanks to his best friend’s father. It was, in fact, this profession that brought Lynch into his better-known milieu of movie-making.

Oh...I Have a New Shirt, 2009 Mixed media on cardboard 82 1/4 x 118 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches

The story of his artistry evolving into cinema is a particularly interesting one. While standing in front of one of his paintings as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Lynch was overcome by the sensation that his painting was moving, the leaves of the garden he had been painting blowing in the breeze. The desire to see his work move, to hear it, and for others to experience the same was all it took. Lynch bought a 16-mm camera that was able to capture single frames. The end result was Six Men Getting Sick: A multimedia installation of a projected animation played on loop over a three dimensional screen sculptured with the busts of three human-like figures and a siren blaring in the background. This was followed by The Alphabet and The Grandmother; films which garnered him enough attention to be admitted into AFI, where began his long journey into making Eraserhead. The rest is history if only in bits, pieces, and interesting anecdotes.
Lynch is remarkably varied in his artistry, regularly departing from his painting and narrative filmmaking staples to indulge forays into sketching, multimedia presentations, documentaries, furniture design, rug making, and the like. His Web site hosts original content and has these strange, daily weather reports made by Mr. Lynch himself–or, as in this morning’s report, an absurd cartoon of an angry buffoon trying to cut a giant log with a handsaw while farting. He is inspiringly diverse. If someone told me David Lynch made shoes, I would probably believe them.
As it turns out, this is not far from having actually happened. In 2007, Mr. Lynch collaborated with Christian Louboutin, the renown master shoe designer (famous for his trademark sexy red soles) creating their fascinating offspring; Fetish—a photo essay of stunning naked women, slinking through dramatic shadows in impossibly high-heeled shoes. The work opened to such accolades that the collaboration continued for an entire series.

Crucifixion, 2008-9 Mixed media on canvas 82 1/4 x 130 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches

What else is Lynch up to? Well— he sells coffee on his Web site. He’s promoting his son’s endeavor, Interview Project, and not too long ago, he was making movies about making lamps. Well, actually just one lamp and just one movie – a short, from the DVD release of The Best of DavidLynch.com, and by short, I mean around 30 minutes. That’s right, half an hour of David Lynch mixing Fix All with paint and applying it to the structure of a floor lamp. Why did I watch it? Why would anyone watch it? Because it’s David Lynch, that’s why. There is something about his intonation that captures me and sends me whirling through his repertoire, trying to make sense of it all, trying to pin down that master narrative he must have hiding somewhere just beneath the surface. But, no, that has never happened.  If it did, I fear I would lose interest in the icon that is David Lynch. “Oh, so that was the secret all along…” My life would move on, this particular mysterious and interesting part of the world gone. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. And, so, this week, I head out to the West Side to see Lynch’s show to try to capture some sense of cohesion, but really, to just revel in the absurd.
So who is David Lynch? Is his one-line bio to be taken with a grin and an understanding of whom we’re dealing with? “Filmmaker. Born Missoula, MT. Eagle Scout.” This, like his art, is obviously a commentary on his unique view of the world, or “the neighborhood” as he calls it. From what I’ve seen at GRIFFIN and have rediscovered this week in his never-disappointing endeavors, past and present— he is wholly an artist. More to the point, he is indeed (or possibly it’s just his work) wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate. Depending on your definition of absurd.
For information on this current show please visit www.GriffinLA.com. Mr. Lynch has an exhibition opening later this month at the Max Ernst Museum in Bruhl, Germany. Next year, his exhibition The Air is on Fire, will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark, and his work will be included in a group exhibition, Crime and Punishment, from Goya to Picasso at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris, France.

The year 2009 has been something of a dream for Penélope Cruz. It began with her performance in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, already honored by several critics groups, winning her a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in February. It continued with the filming of Rob Marshall’s musical Nine, based on Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, and the Cannes Film Festival presentation and European release of the noirish, Spanish dramedy Broken Embraces – two films, sure to be awards-circuit contenders themselves, which Cruz will now spend the next several months touring the world promoting.
It’s been a long trip for the girl who began studying women at her mother’s hair salon when she was only five years old, becoming quietly aware of their public faces. Cruz is now an internationally recognized knockout beauty, which her recent appearance at a Beverly Hills hotel – brunette locks cascading over her almond brown blouse, past her shoulders and down her back – only serves to confirm. Yet for all her superstardom, she retains a beguiling mix of enchantress wonderment and button-cute innocence. No doubt some of the latter is due to factors of verbal intrigue; in Cruz’s mouth, the word monitor is pronounced “money-tar,” with no sense of halting uncertainty or embarrassment.
If the accent rather charmingly remains, Cruz’s grasp of English has aided her upward trajectory. “I remember when I was 20 and didn’t speak the language at all,” she recalls. “I did the casting [for a movie] on tape, got the part, and when I met [the filmmakers] they realized that all I knew were the lines for the character…I’m more comfortable with English now, so the roles have become more challenging and demanding.”
Still, it will most likely be Cruz’s past and future collaborations with fellow Spanish native Pedro Almodóvar, whom she met when she was only 16, for which she will most remembered. The duo have made a quartet of features together, the first of which, 1997’s Live Flesh, is largely credited, along with Abre Los Ojos, for bringing Cruz to the attention of American producers. “The four characters that I’ve played for him could not be more different from one another, and from what I am as a woman,” says Cruz, “and as an actor you always need that – someone to have the imagination and trust to put you in the shoes of the character that is completely different than anything you’ve ever done before.”
“You can never be bored next to Pedro,” Cruz continues. “Every day is a huge adventure, you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth. He likes playing with fire, but at the same time is a very kind man. Working together, we have this dance of trust and risk that is really beautiful. And we’ve shared with each other so many special moments in our lives.”
Broken Embraces provides Cruz another meaty role, as Lena, an aspirant actress who finds herself caught up in a love triangle between a film director and her older financier boyfriend. At times brooding and pulsing with a thin bass line of dread, at other times quite funny, the movie is a jumbled grab-bag of various tonalities. In other words, it’s like life, and globetrotter Cruz wouldn’t have it any other way.

The sleepy eyes and sharp wit of Illeana Douglas defy the ingénue stereotype, but are unmistakably sexy. She has one of those immediately recognizable faces, not to be confused with another, one that seems like it was destined to be famous. Her features – offbeat, distinctive, feisty, and intelligent – seem to belie her personality. There is mischief in her intellect; she is a truly rebellious soul running rampant in the center ring of the collective international media circus.
Douglas has obviously misplaced her Hollywood rulebook, and has been self-cast in her current life as director, writer, producer, and lead actress. Not content to wait for ‘that next big part,’ she has single-handedly created her own brand. Longstanding one of Hollywood’s quirky indie darlings, Douglas has proved her inspiration and commitment with her choice of movie roles, and most recently by taking control over her creative destiny. Illeana’s savvy as an artist and businesswoman is impressive, and will no doubt serve as an inspiration to others looking to join the commercial art revolution.

Illeana Douglas and cast

The creator, writer, and lead actress of the web series, “Easy to Assemble”, Douglas gets in touch with her inner Swede. She plays herself, a celebrity-turned-IKEA-employee hired to add some Tinseltown glitz to the blanched Birchwood housewares Mecca. The series was in Season One, as Douglas puts it, “Kind of a throwback to Laugh In”, but Season Two has a noticeably more cinematic feel. Director Greg Pritikin has been brought on board, having met Illeana during the production of Dummy, and has proved a fitting director for this offbeat episodic.
When talking to Illeana about Hollywood, fame, and Swedish optimism, it isn’t difficult to ascertain what might have inspired her to take this uncharted absurd and artistic journey. “Hollywood cannibalized itself, in the sense that it started using celebrities until you kill them, like Anna Nicole, and now with Jon and Kate, it’s like we use them up, and the problem is, they’re not trained actors, they’re not trained spokespeople, they’re not trained in the arts, they have no vision. There actually was a reason actors and artists wanted to be in the arts. They didn’t go into the arts to become famous.”
“When people start utilizing people, using standards of manufacturing, like ‘let’s find cheap goods and sell them to the public and put bright shiny covers on them until we’re tired of them, then let’s destroy them. Let’s trash them like a car and then put a new shiny car in.’ I saw an advertisement last night for a show on TLC about a new family with 10 kids! And sometimes you go, ‘No! Please stop destroying people!’”
Illeana’s outspoken views on the inhumane aspect of reality television, and her intention of producing alternately talent-based content is not surprising; she is a writer, after all. Her passion is clearly contagious, with “Easy To Assemble’s” collection of well-known artist cameos: Cheri Oteri, Tim Meadows, Tom Arnold, Ed Begley, Jr., Kent Nichols, Douglas Sarine (Ask-A-Ninja), and a handful of others have lent their talents to Douglas’ home grown comedy.
Taking advantage of the unique production style, Illeana has hired on several thousand additional writers – the “Easy To Assemble” audience. Viewers of the show have a unique opportunity to decide key plot factors within the series. Season Two finds Illeana in a quasi-friendly rivalry with Justine Bateman for the coveted role of Employee of the Year. Douglas wouldn’t reveal the outcome of this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure twist, but seemed cautiously optimistic about her chances of winning.
Performing the music for the series is the Swedish band Spärhusen – “The Almost Great Band of the ‘70s.” Singer Beirget Kattsson could pass for Douglas herself, albeit in a platinum, cheap synthetic platinum blonde wig kind of way. Speaking on behalf of Spärhusen, Douglas reveals that manager “Bjorn Epstein is quite a controlling presence” over the band, but that such eccentricities must be tolerated for such a visionary.
Triumphing over adversity, Spärhusen members survived a devastating plane crash in the early ‘70s and after much speculation are back with a new record. The band is most well-known for their Swedish-centric singles, “Ice Fishing” and “Apples and Fish”, and are currently working with flamboyant producer Worste Feirron. Worste bears his own odd resemblance to actor Keanu Reeves, but is best known for his signature whale of sound.  As to what’s next for this unpredictable super group, Douglas’ guess is as good as any; she is simply grateful to have them on board. Satisfy your fix for all things Swedish and catch up with the Ikea crew on “Easy to Assemble”, and the new Web series “Spärhusen”, both of which premiered on October 8th
on MyDamnChannel.com.

Share this story with your friends:

]]> http://www.hmonthly.com/2009/12/16/media-maverick-illeana-douglas/feed/ 2 http://www.hmonthly.com/2009/12/15/stricken-city-music-interview/ http://www.hmonthly.com/2009/12/15/stricken-city-music-interview/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:27:42 +0000 Administrator http://www.hmonthly.com/blog/?p=4228 by Devoe Yates

It’s a rainy day in Manhattan and mere hours before they’re set to open for Rain Machine, and close out the CMJ Music Festival, the British chaps and lass of Stricken City are standing huddled beneath a tiny overhang outside of the Pianos club while guitarist Iain Pettifer shoots some Super 8 of the sights to be seen, this being their first trip out to play the States.
Their first album, or mini-album as they refer to it, was released in the UK to glowing reviews, and dropped November 3rd here in the unsuspecting States.   Songs About People I Know is chock full of both poppy dancy wonders and moody candlelit piano tales, and is one of those magical albums that’s a seeming masterpiece from start to finish with nary a mediocre ditty in its grooves.  One might liken their sound to early Cure outings if only they’d hooked up with the Talking Heads and had a spunkier Harriet Wheeler (The Sundays) behind the mike; it harkens back to the jangly catharsis of good ol 80s fun, but at the same time offers up something wholly fresh and addictive, a bit like a new flavor of chocolate I suppose. Rebekah Raa’s sultry and buttery vocals wail and brood with twisting turns while Iain’s spinning guitar, Mike’s flowerful bass, and Kit’s ubiquitous percussion give life to pop magic that often times makes it hard to notice that the lyrics often deal with darker matters about the pains of relationships, life, and the often bitter mixture of the two.
Their childlike delight radiates warmly as we sit down for some icy margaritas at a nearby Mexican joint, happy to be out of the rain.  Rebekah seems terribly transfixed by her margarita, she giggles at the sight of it, and it seems apparent that any man who was once tickled by the early cute-ish wiles of Bjork and wanted to mix them with the wild vibes of Karen O., would gladly order a Rebekah Raa poster for their bedroom.

Stricken City

h: How are the margaritas?

Rebekah: Aw, it tastes good!
Kit: It’s a bit early for a margarita.
Rebekah: Aw, it’s never too early.  It’s just like an Icee; I’ve never had it that way before!

h: How did this all begin?
Iain: Rebekah and I met when we were 15.
Rebekah:  Iain taught me everything I know about music, except classical music, I learned that on my own (laughs). He was in a band called Kenobi.
Iain: We did lots of covers, we kinda wrote some of our own stuff, which they’ve heard, and it’s baaaad.  Typical first school band kind of stuff, sounds a bit like Nirvana (laughs).  So that wasn’t really working.
Rebekah: We were in math class and he always sat behind me.  I sat with the geekiest kid in school, the one that everyone hated.  You and your friend, Tom, sat behind me, making fun of this kid, and I felt so sorry for him. I hated you, what a bastard!
Iain:  But we were both doing it to get your attention (laughs).
Rebekah: I just thought they were so mean, so I didn’t talk to him for a long time.  Then I started getting bullied by this horrible girl and I started hanging around with Iain and his group of friends, and they were all really nice.
Iain: We didn’t do any music in North Hampton, that wasn’t until we moved to London when we were about 19.
Rebekah: I started doing a really rubbishy degree and I didn’t like it, so I used the student loans to buy some musical equipment and started writing songs.  I wrote one song and I was really shy about it. I think Iain expected it to be rubbish, but it was actually quite good, wasn’t it?
Iain:  I was like, ‘Huh, it’s quite snappy.’ I didn’t know you could actually do that, so we did it together.   I went to university thinking I’d get a band together and didn’t, but I had little bits of music.  No words, just bits of instrumental stuff, so they became some of the early songs we did together.  ‘Five Metres Apart’ was one of those very first songs.  We’ve been writing for four and a half years, so it’s just developed over the years.  Before the guitar parts were more dominant, because we just wrote them in the bedroom without thinking about the rest of the band, whereas now we think about everyone else a little bit more.
Rebekah: Kit’s three years old, Mike’s a one-year-old and they’ve really made the band what it is. We do it together, don’t we? Like the song called ‘Pull the House Down’, the way the bass and guitar kind of weave around each other, we couldn’t have sat around in the bedroom and figured that out. We all did that in the rehearsal room together.
Iain: But the music’s written totally separate of the words. We’ll come up with music as a band, and then she’ll just wail her favorite words at the time. How do you pick which ones you’re going to start singing? You go through your book and start to pick out some of your words don’t you?
Rebekah: I just have a book that I write words in all the time.

h: Are the songs really all about people that you know?
Rebekah: They’re all very personal, there’s maybe one or two which are more about the situations I’ve been in with some people.  But a few are very directly about people I know.
h: Do they know?
Rebekah: (sheepishly) No. That would be really weird.  Actually I was really worried about putting the lyric sheets in the packaging for the album, I don’t generally like telling people my lyrics…. If you read them, and you’re the person it’s about, you can pretty much definitely tell that it’s about you.  It’s quite obvious. My mum’s never going to read this, so it doesn’t matter,  but one of the songs is about her.  Two of the songs are about my brother specifically. One of the songs is about this girl I really hated at college.  If they ever read the words, they’d be like, ‘What the fuck?’
Iain:  Can you put at the beginning of this article, ‘Dear Rebekah’s mum and dad, please do not read?’  A little disclaimer.
Rebekah: It’s a little bit embarrassing because you write such personal stuff, one night you might’ve drunk a bottle of wine and be like, ‘Right, rrraaaah!’ and write some stuff out.   It’s not necessarily how you feel every day, you just feel a little bit emotional at that point, so you spill it all out in a notebook, and then a month later, you’re recording a song about it, and then you start feeling a little bit guilty.  And then it’s on a record, and then it’s being released, and you’re like, ‘Oh fuck, what am I gonna do?!’ (laughs).
Mike: You can imagine what the next album is going to be called.
Rebekah: ‘Vague Songs About People I’ve Never Really Met Before!’ (laughs)

h: So for instance, who’s the first single from the album, ‘Tak o Tak’ about?
Rebekah: My mum and dad were always really religious when I was little and they were very strict. One day I wanted to go to Brighton with Iain’s family, his parents, his grandmother, his sister, and Brighton is about an hour and a half away from North Hampton.
Iain: It’s kind of a cool seaside town. It has a big gay community.
Rebekah: And my dad wouldn’t let me go there because he was afraid I’d come back a lesbian. They were really that strict.  So when they split up, when I was 17, I got really annoyed!  I was like, ‘Come on, you’ve had all these rules on me my whole entire life, and I haven’t been able to do anything,’ and now…the tables have turned.  So that was a bit of an annoyed song.

h: But it seems like such a happy fun song.
Iain: I know!  It’s the poppiest thing on the record.  That’s a little like what all The Smiths’ records are like aren’t they?
Rebekah: A lot of my words I think are a bit dark.  No, no, I don’t write too much about happy things.
Mike: You’re too busy being happy when you’re happy.
Rebekah: That’s the thing isn’t it?  You don’t ever think, ‘Oh, I’m really happy!  I’m just going to sit down and write a song,’ do you?  It’s more the other way around, more like, ‘I’m not going to go out tonight, I feel really depressed, so I’ll drink some wine and write a song.’  It’s true.

h: Mike’s being very quiet; tell me about his part in the band.
Rebekah: We love the way Mike plays bass, he plays all these flowery parts.
Iain: He’s very worldly.  It was always quite volatile before with various members, whereas Mike is a very calming influence.
Rebekah: Mike meditates.
Iain: You can’t really have an argument with Mike.
Mike: You can try your best (laughter).
Iain: I consider it a challenge.  I will break you, Mike.
Mike: In your dreams.

h: What’s been your biggest moment as a band so far?
Rebekah: It was in Paris. We were playing a show at this French club and it was going to be on a culture show there, it plays to about six million people.  We got there, all dressed up and all excited and a bit drunk, and when the curtains opened, everyone was cheering!  It was so nice, and during the ‘Lost Art’ song, people were singing along.
Iain: We found the YouTube clip of the show that it was on, where there are two people that come on and show these music videos and they have a Crap-o-Meter, and the crowd votes for the song of the week, and it was us against T-Pain, and we won (laughs).
Rebekah: We won on the Crap-o-Meter, how cool is that? That was a time when we got really drunk. I was meeting some quite important people and it all got a bit messy, but it was really fun. Iain hated me the next day, we had to go on a very long walk through a market, and he wouldn’t talk to me the whole time.
Iain: (shyly) It’s fine. (laughs).
Kit: I got drunk and emotional once.
Iain: He’s always having to drive on our tours in the UK, so, Kit’s all about driving, fighting, and then drumming (laughs).
Kit: Beats always come first.
Mike: He likes to beat people in rhythm (laughter).
Iain:  This one really big gig, there were about 1,400 people there. Some celebrating went on, some drinking. No one’s entirely sure how it happened, but suddenly there was a scuffle.  I don’t know what happened.
Kit: We were sort of play-fighting and I got angry. We had a tussle.
Iain: So if the show goes well tonight, expect something to happen (laughs).
It is with this that the band heads off to prepare for their show, and thankfully the show went well and there was no scuffling to be seen afterwards.  At least while I was there.
Pick up their new album, out on CD and special pink vinyl on The Kora Records – or if you’re lazy, you can get it on iTunes.  If you happen to check out their “Tak o Tak” video on YouTube, you can see evidence of Rebekah’s former days studying the ways of fashion at university, with all the bits of her last costume project well in use.

On an autumn afternoon somewhere in the Nichols Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills, a former model is barely able to contain her excitement. “There are vast regions of consciousness in the unconscious mind that we don’t know what they can do,” she marvels, confirming with lucid precision: “From the pineal gland to the limbic portion of our brain? Absolutely!”

Jessica Bendinger photo by Robert Todd Williamson

Jessica Bendinger is describing her fascination with the paranormal, and I’m trying not to imagine her in a sequined evening gown on a pageant stage somewhere, uttering the perfect response to an inane question posed by Perez Hilton’s hairdo. Bendinger made her imprint in Hollywood in 2000 with the cheerleader rivalry flick, Bring It On. She made her directorial debut in 2006’s gymnastics film Stick It, which she also wrote. The screenwriter’s first novel, “The Seven Rays”, was released in November. The story follows 17-year-old Beth Michaels’ journey of supernatural self-discovery.
Bendinger’s voice lights up often during our phone interview, especially when she discusses authors and scholars—Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer and Lynne McTaggart among them—that she researched for this project. “Extraordinary things are happening all the time that we discount or discredit and don’t want to give credence to cuz it’s kinda scary,” says Bendinger, her voice rising up on its tip-toes for the last three words of the sentence.
The Oak Park, Illinois native does not shy away from the f-word (franchise) in talking about her shift from script to manuscript. I definitely had J.K. [Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” books] in mind,” she says. “J.K. was a big inspiration for me. I thought, if I’m gonna write a really cool “Harry Potter” for girls, yeah, I wanted to at least take a swing at a franchise. That was definitely in the DNA of the idea.” I ask Bendinger if a “Seven Rays” movie is in the works. “I’m sure we’ll be making an announcement within a couple months,” she predicts. Any plans for a sequel? “Locked and loaded,” she informs me.
Bendinger has enjoyed continued success relating to a teen demographic, and I ask how she stays credible with a younger audience. “Writers tend to revisit the site of greatest harm,” she says, laughing. “Bring It On and Stick It were not written by the girl who made the squad or succeeded. They were written by the young girl who was pulled out and forced to watch from the sidelines, you know? I don’t know about your school, but cheerleaders had a lot of power in my school. ” Staying current with ever-morphing pop culture tastes has never been easier because of an omnipresent media, but the flip side of the equation is that trends explode and fade away much more rapidly. “What’s brilliant about this demographic is they are constantly changing and sponging,” she says.
Sports were Bendinger’s self-described salvation during high school. She played field hockey and was recruited to play college basketball. “I had so much anger to get out of my system,” she says, “and sports was the safe place to do that.” Bendinger was involved in gymnastics until a pubescent growth spurt pushed her off the balance beam and into modeling, which she did during the summers while growing up in Chicago. “I developed a thick skin for rejection, because you’re rejected so much for how you look, not for how you think or what comes out of your mouth,” she says. “It prepared me for Hollywood, let’s put it that way.”

Jessica Bendinger photo by Robert Todd Williamson

Growing up, Bendinger consumed a steady diet of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary before sinking her teeth into the “naughty candy” of Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, and Judith Krantz in her teens. A few years later, she would become enthralled by Dorothy Parker and Edith Wharton. While studying English at Columbia University in the ’80s, Bendinger landed a plum internship at SPIN Magazine and got published while still an undergrad. She also wrote news copy at MTV for Kurt Loder during the network’s freewheeling earlier days.
To use Bendinger’s analogy, the distinction between script and book writing is like comparing an orange grove to a can of frozen concentrate. “With a novel, it’s a much bigger canvas you’re working on. You have to really be in the full experience of an orange grove, all the plants and the workers and what it takes [to harvest the fruit].” Or as it’s done in Hollywood (no disrespect, Hollywood), start with a can of frozen orange juice concentrate, plop it in a pitcher, add water and ice cubes, stir, and serve. Put another way, “A script is like an energy bullet,” posits Bendinger. “It’s filled with all the stuff the movie’s gonna have in it without boring the reader and alienating the financier!”
For her part, Bendinger fully intends to continue the saga of heroine teen clairvoyant Beth Michaels. “I’m a total research nerd,” she admits. “It’s one of my favorite parts of the process.” Considering the fact that “The Seven Rays” has been endorsed by Deepak Chopra for its ability to make the paranormal more “normal,” it’s a good bet that Bendinger’s research up to this point has been sound.