“I’m interested in fear and suspense and dread but I’m not interested particularly in physical violence or gore. I’m not a horror director in that way.”
– Mary Harron
Before 2000, Mary Harron was best known as the director of I Shot Andy Warhol. But after taking the reins of American Psycho after Oliver Stone lost interest she turned a very harsh book into a scathing look at materialism and how one perceives their personal reality. Lions Gate Home Entertainment has just released the Uncut Killer Collector’s Edition of American Psycho which has deleted scenes and a brand new commentary from Harron.
I got a chance to talk with Mary Harron from the set of the TV show Big Love about making American Psycho and her upcoming film biography of Bettie Page, The Notorious Bettie Page.
“Well I’m crazy but a different kind of crazy.”
– Nick Nolte
Nick Nolte said it himself, he’s crazy and I would tend to believe the man. Nolte is easily one of the best actors in the world but he has never gotten an Academy Award and his work is often overlooked because he does mostly independent films now. His latest flick is The Beautiful Country, an amazing film about a half Vietnamese half American who leaves his native country to try and find his father in America.
“It’s like being a kid in the playground…There’s a reason why people become actors.”
– Tim Roth
The great thing about Tim Roth is that he immediately puts you at ease by seeming like he doesn’t give a shit what questions you ask him. Other journalists at the Dark Water press event were lobbing some of the dumbest crap I ever heard at him and even though there 25 people in the room he answered them as though each one was the only person in the room. In Dark Water, Roth plays a lawyer who is helping Jennifer Connelly through a tough divorce and then tries to help her with this strange situation that is happening in her apartment building.
“It’s not like I’m only compelled to tell stories about sex!”
– Maggie Gyllenhaal
Maggie Gyllenhaal has been a SuicideGirls favorite since she starred in the critically acclaimed S & M film, Secretary. Normally when an actor delivers such a spot on performance in a popular movie like that they will get trapped playing those roles over and over again. But due to her diligence and great acting she has consistently turned in great performances in such as films as Mona Lisa Smile, Criminal and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Her latest role is that of Jude, the sexually manipulative free spirited girl in Don Roo’s Happy Endings. Jude puts herself into a home where she seduces the son of the house in order to live there and ingratiate herself with his very wealthy father.
Michael Robbins made a splash in the poetry world when his poem “Alien vs. Predator” was published in The New Yorker in 2009. The poem, which called Rilke a jerk and included the line “That elk is such a dick,” was atypical for the magazine. Robbins, who received a Ph.D. in English, would go onto write poems like “Dig Dug,” which was inspired by the video for Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” and has just had his first book published by Penguin Poets, Alien vs. Predator.
Robbins’ poetry owes as much to hip-hop and contemporary music as it does to classical poetry and it’s clear from talking with Robbins that while he is as obsessed with pop culture as the rest of the us, he’s more concerned with poetic form. His poems take place amidst chain stores and suburban wastelands with references to the Care Bears, Jeffrey Dahmer, Soylent Green and everything in between.
However, he’s interested in what has always been the focus of poetry: truth, beauty, ugliness, vulgarity and making some sense of the world in a fun way that sounds good when read aloud. In talking with SG, Robbins quoted Rimbaud and Eliot with the same ease with which he discussed Guns N’ Roses. and complained about the laziness of many contemporary artists, and, as in his work, was not just fun to talk with but was thoughtful in talking about life and art.
“When I saw the glamorous photos of burlesque queens of the ’30s and ’40s, there is a confidence in their sexuality that they seem to radiate.”
– Liz Goldwyn
Pretty Things is a documentary about the burlesque stars of the 1940s through 1960s, such as Zorita, Betty Rowland, Sherry Britton, Dixie Evans and Lois de Fee. It’s a very serious but still entertaining look at the golden era of the art form. We got a chance to talk to the director of Pretty Things, Liz Goldwyn who worked on this film for over eight years, and also authored a book which shares the it’s name.
“The whole thing about directing is you have to find a special way to manipulate each actor to do exactly what you want.”
– Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie has followed up his horror hit House of 1000 Corpses with a much more brutal, ugly and sadistic film, The Devil’s Rejects. It keeps some of the characters such as Captain Spaulding [Sid Haig], Otis [Bill Moseley] and Baby [Sheri Moon], but now instead of them being hunters they are being stalked by Sheriff Wydell [William Forsythe] whose brother they had killed.
