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Sep 2011 08

By Fred Topel

“[A show] called Sluts… was the first job I had.”
– Liz Meriwether

I fell in love with Liz Meriwether when she presented her new show, New Girl, to the Television Critics Association over the summer. I would have naturally had affection for anyone who created such a warm, quirky show, but freckles and glasses just completely did me in.

New Girl stars Zooey Deschanel as Jess, a woman who moves in with three male roommates after catching her live-in boyfriend cheating. As she starts to date again, she sings her own theme song to get through the heartbreaks, and dances in celebration a lot. The rough version of the pilot even had a title song set to a sequence of freeze frames where Deschanel posed in different adorable positions. Deschanel sings the theme, lending her musical talents to the show too.

So this innocent reaction to typical sitcom plot lines (wacky roommates, crazy dates) already endeared Meriwether to me. I ran into her later at the party Fox held for its new batch of shows at Gladstones in Malibu. Standing in the beach air at dusk, Meriwether was starstruck herself to see chef Gordon Ramsay at the same party. She was concerned she was not yet drunk enough to be an entertaining interview. Little did she know I was smitten by her natural charm, no drunken word vomit necessary.

Read our exclusive interview with Liz Meriwether on SuicideGirls.com.

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Sep 2011 07

By Nicole Powers

“You can’t have a AAA credit rating with a junk rated Congress.”
– Harry Markopolos

Harry Markopolos has a way with numbers. It’s this innate ability that led him to uncover Bernie Madoff’s epic Ponzi scheme almost a decade before market forces ultimately leveraged a confession out of the spectacularly crooked investment fund manager.

In 1999, while working as a portfolio manager at Rampart, a Boston based investment management company, Markopolos had been asked to reverse engineer a fund offered by Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC so his firm could compete by offering a similar product. After studying Madoff’s marketing material for a mere 5 minutes, Markopolos realized that the results the fund claimed to achieve were highly improbable, a further 4 hours of mathematical modeling proved the stated returns were categorically impossible by legal means.

Smelling a rat, Markopolos assembled an informal investigative team to probe Madoff’s operation further. In May 2000, when Madoff’s scheme was only a $3 to $7 billion fraud, they submitted their first whistleblowing report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It was summarily ignored. Frustrated but undeterred, Markopolos’ tenacious group, dubbed The Foxhounds, submitted numerous subsequent memos (in 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008) offering even more evidence, to no avail. A 2005 missive had what one might consider to be an attention-grabbing title -“The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud” – but even this failed to get an appropriate response from those charged with policing Wall Street.

It was only following the crash of 2008, when Madoff’s investors were clamoring to liquidate their assets and he was unable to meet their demands, that the man responsible for the largest act of financial fraud in world history was forced to fess up. By then, Madoff’s “fund” had grown on paper to a value of $65 billion. In the following days, the complete and utter failure of the SEC came to light, as press outlets – who had also been alerted by Markopolos, but by and large had declined to report his findings before Madoff’s arrest – competed to interview the “Madoff whistleblower.” With egg on their faces, the government also sought out Markopolos’ knowledge and expertise, and on February 4, 2009 he delivered some riveting televised testimony in front of the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Subcommittee.

In March 2010, Markopolos published a book chronicling his investigations into Madoff and the utter incompetence he bore witness to during his dealings with the SEC. Called No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller, it became a New York Times bestseller. A new film, Chasing Madoff, based on the book is currently in cinemas. SuicideGirls caught up with Markopolos, who now works as a freelance investigative accountant exposing Fortune 500 wrongdoing, to talk about Madoff and the current state of play in our financial markets. We also asked him to focus his considerable financial acumen our nation’s balance sheet and assess the future prospects of our economy. Given Markopolos’ track record, his conclusions about America’s should-be junk status are indeed cause for concern, if not outright alarm.

Read our exclusive interview with Harry Markopolos on SuicideGirls.com.

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Sep 2011 06

By Fred Topel

“I doubt I’m going to be playing characters in their ’20s for a little while.”
– Britt Robertson

Britt Robertson is starring on a new show, The Secret Circle. Based on the books by The Vampire Diaries’ L.J. Smith and produced by Kevin Williamson, who also worked on the vampiric show, Secret Circle already has a bewitching fan base before it’s even on air. Last week Robertson was driving to the set at 3 PM for an evening shoot. She had a new movie opening and wanted to get the word out, so through the crackle of her cell phone we got an interview.

The Family Tree is an edgy indie dramedy about the Burnett family. Robertson plays Kelly Burnett, a provocative teenager who uses profanity to push her mother’s buttons. She even takes off her shirt at the breakfast table, though classily this scene is filmed from behind. Mrs. Burnett has an accident that gives her amnesia, so while the family deals with that drama, Kelly also gets involved with a fellow student and teacher’s secret relationship.

Robertson has been playing teenagers for some time, even though she’s now 21. She’s got one of those faces that still passes for 16, which can be an asset in casting calls. Her most visible role has been as Lux Cassidy on The CW’s drama Life Unexpected, which lasted two years. She also had a cameo in this year’s Scream 4.

On The Secret Circle, she plays Cassie Blake, who moves to the town of Chance Harbor after her mom’s death. There, the children of the other five witch families try to expose her to the secret past from which her mother always tried to protect her. Five episodes into her new show, this is still a new world for Robertson, so after discussing her new movie we caught up on the witchcraft of The Secret Circle.

Read our exclusive interview with Britt Robertson on SuicideGirls.com.

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Sep 2011 05

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“SuicideGirls are American royalty.”
– Anthony E. Zuiker

This October 18th a number of SuicideGirls will be appearing on an episode of CSI: NY. This kind of acceptance from such a mainstream narrative television series on a major network truly proves that SuicideGirls has become a significant part of pop culture. The episode truly focuses on the positive aspects of SuicideGirls. They aren’t just in the background while the main characters are showcased. The SuicideGirls are integral to the storyline which makes for a very unique and exciting episode. I had a chance to talk with the creator of all the CSI shows, Anthony E. Zuiker.

Read our exclusive interview with Anthony E. Zuiker on SuicideGirls.com.

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Sep 2011 02

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I was sober for this one.”
– Chi Cheng of the Deftones

It was truly an honor to get to talk with Chi Cheng of the Deftones. I have been a fan of theirs for many years. The Deftones may be hanging out with the kids on the Family Values Tour, but that hasn’’t made them any less awesome.

Read our exclusive interview with Chi Cheng of the Deftones on SuicideGirls.com.

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Sep 2011 01

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“Aww yeah!”
– Bootsy Collins

I’’ve done about 800 original interviews for SuicideGirls and probably a couple thousand more for other venues, so I think it’s fair to say that I’’ve gotten pretty good at working around people’’s tertiary expressions like, ““oh man”” and ““yeah.”” But when you’’ve got a legend like Bootsy Collins saying “yeah mama, baby and man,” it would be sacrilegious to delete it.

Collins is best known as one of the co-founders of the seminal 1970’s funk group Parliament Funkadelic, but I really got into his work in the early ’90’s when he teamed up with Bill Laswell and Buckethead. As Collins and I discuss in this interview, that was a golden era — and it’s still going on today. Bootsy’’s latest album, Christmas is 4 Ever, features many new songs by Bootsy and his crew.

Read our exclusive interview with Bootsy Collins on SuicideGirls.com.

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Aug 2011 31

By Fred Topel

“I’m not punk enough to be steampunk I think.” – Erin Morgenstern

Erin Morgenstern’s first book, The Night Circus, will be released on September 13th. She already has a movie deal in the works. Summit Entertainment bought the film rights to develop a motion picture based on the upcoming publication.

The Night Circus is set in a fantastical circus that magically appears at night. Two magicians battle as they’ve been trained to since childhood, but as they compete they fall in love. Now can’t you imagine some Hollywood megastars brooding it up as those emotionally tormented sorcerers, in lavish circus costumes too?

Morgenstern herself exhibits a unique style fitting for a chronicler of the performing arts. She likes corsets, and the red stripes of the one she wore in San Diego was the only color in her all black ensemble. If you look up her website, you’ll see influences from Stephen King to J.K. Rowling. You’ll also find out she has also painted her own deck of Tarot cards. We sat down with the emerging literary star and soon to be movie star in San Diego.

Read our exclusive interview with Erin Morgenstern on SuicideGirls.com.