Whenever this crazy ride of entertainment interviews that I’m on ends there are only a few things that will stick out as highlights. Interviewing David Cronenberg is number one on that list and number two will surely be visiting the set of Superman Returns in Australia. While I was on set with a number of other online writers a number of publicists kept apologizing to us for not having what they considered the most impressive sets up anymore. I kept telling them that what we were seeing was amazing regardless. We got to see a black colored Fortress of Solitude, I got to feel up the Superman costume [on a mannequin you sick minded freaks] and we got to walk about Lex Luthor’s yacht. From what I gather Superman Returns takes place five years after the events of Superman II. Superman traveled to the remains of Krypton and when he came back to Earth, Lois Lane has had a child with another man. While on set I got to view the footage of Superman Returns that was shown at San Diego Comicon and interview director Bryan Singer.
“The only thing that really fascinates me is marriage.”
– Donald Sutherland
It’s possible to forget just how damn funny Donald Sutherland is. He’s been in some of the funniest movies of all time and it shows when he walks into our interview with a wry smile while cracking jokes. But his latest movie, An American Haunting, is definitely not a comedy. The movie is set in the American south in 1818 and Sutherland stars as John Bell Sr. a man with a tight knit family who commits a sin against his church which releases a spirit to haunt his house and take out anger against his daughter.
“My style has been a bit different from anyone else.”
– Lady Sovereign
I love all this awesome hip-hop thats coming out so much lately. Ladies like Kelli Ali and M.I.A. are doing such amazingly sexy and funky work. Lady Sovereign is at the forefront of that new wave with her new album Vertically Challenged.
“It takes a lot of electricity to turn black crude oil into gasoline.”
– Chris Paine
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, General Motors’ EV1s were the Apple Macs of cars. Ahead of their time, they were only driven by an enlightened “different” thinking few, but those that did felt passionately about their high tech machines.
A fully electric plug-in vehicle with a range of between 70 and 140 miles depending on model, the EV1 was first introduced into the marketplace in 1996. Available in limited test markets on a closed lease-only basis (whereby no actual purchase was allowed), it was developed by General Motors partly in response to the California Air Resources Board’s requirement that the seven major auto companies in the US had to make at least 2% of their output zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 1998 in order to sell any cars within the state (with further graduated steps stipulated up to 10% in 2003).
Though grudgingly produced by General Motors, the vehicle was beloved by the few consumers lucky enough to rise to the top of the company’s reportedly vast waiting list. But it was likely a car that was never intended to succeed. General Motors seemingly put more effort into fighting the CARB mandate in court than meeting existing demand for vehicles or marketing the EV1 to create even more. It was therefore not uncoincidental that the demise of the EV1 occurred in tandem with the gutting of CARB’s ZEV rules. The EV1 program was officially cancelled in 2003, and a total recall was put in motion, with repossessed cars being not only compacted but shredded for good measure too.
A 2006 documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car, chronicled the crushing demise of this groundbreaking car. In it filmmaker Chris Paine highlighted the collusion of the auto industry, oil companies, and politicians, who all had a vested interest in seeing the electric vehicle die an untimely death alongside CARB’s environmentally prudent directives. Catching the zeitgeist, Who Killed The Electric was the third highest grossing documentary that year (Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth being the first).
However, a decade after General Motors presided over the funeral of the EV1, the killing of the vehicle has proven to be a costly mistake. With gas prices rising, Toyota filled the rapidly increasing fuel-efficient void with their hybrid Prius, which went on sale in Japan in 1997. Following its worldwide debut in 2001, Toyota have sold over a million Prius cars in the US alone, and the rest of the auto industry has been scrabbling to catch up.
With revenge being served on a platter less than a decade on, Paine and his documentary team were compelled to reexamine the fortunes of the electric vehicle in a follow up film. The first had centered on activists working from outside the industry, with this film Paine chose to follow a diverse group of instigators working from within. Revenge Of The Electric Car therefore features four EV evangelists (some of whom were more recently converted than others) who are attempting to drive the future of the automobile into the present: Bob Lutz (General Motors’ Vice Chairman up until May 2010), Elon Musk (Tesla Motors’s CEO), Carlos Ghosn (Nissan’s President and CEO), and Greg “Gadget” Abbot (a DIY electric engine retro-fitter).
SuicideGirls recently visited Paine at his ultra green home to talk about his cinematic “I told you so” and the electric awakening of a sluggish car industry that was in need of a shock. After checking out the 2008 Tesla Roadster parked in Paine’s garage, the irony was not lost that we were conversing about, and anticipating the dominance of, the gas-free vehicle in the heart of LA’s oil country amidst the pumpjack nodding donkeys of Baldwin Hills.
“When you keep failing at things like I have, nobody knows you’re reinventing…”
– Dito Montiel
I first learned about Dito Montiel when his first film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints came out. It was notable for a cast including Robert Downey Jr., Shia Labeouf and Channing Tatum before they broke out, and Rosario Dawson who was already a star. Based on Montiel’s own book about growing up in and leaving New York, it introduced Montiel’s voice to Hollywood, particularly in dialogue that’s more like real people who have trouble articulating, rather than polished Hollywood screenplay.
His next movie was the studio action movie Fighting, also starring Tatum as an underground street fighter. Now that I knew who Montiel was, I stopped when I saw a Dito Montiel CD in a bin at the massive used record store Amoeba. The album had sophisticated music, layering different instruments with harmony and telling stories about, again, growing up. Montiel is also a painter. Tatum again stars in Montiel’s third film, The Son of No One. He plays a cop who gets assigned to the precinct of the housing project where he grew up. Tracy Morgan plays a stark, dramatic role as his childhood friend, now in rough shape from a traumatic childhood of abuse. Al Pacino plays police chief with ties to the old case.
Montiel is now a West Coaster like me. This is the third film I’ve had the opportunity to interview him for. Despite the serious subjects of his films and the raw style in which he portrays them, he always seems like lovable friendly guy. He even got a bit shy when I started asking about his music this time.
“I try to operate on an instinctual level…”
– Brian Molko of Placebo
When I put Placebo’s new album Meds into my player it really surprised me. It sounded so different from what I’ve heard from Placebo in the past but at the same time it was so uniquely them. I got a chance to talk with the lead singer of Placebo, Brian Molko, about making a less electronic based album, doing a duet with Michael Stipe, and just generally whats it’s like to be such a cool down to earth dude.
“We felt duped because we met J.T. Leroy and everything.”
– Dita Von Teese
Dita Von Teese is one of the most beautiful and sexy women alive today. She is a SuicideGirls favorite for her breakthrough work in burlesque performance and fetish posing. Her famous figure can be found on display all over the internet and fetish magazines but now she has showcased her humor and intelligence in the double sided book Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese.
