by Daniel Robert Epstein

“As long as we enjoy playing music together, then that’s what I want to do.”
– Gary Powell

The Libertines have had a tough time during the past couple of years. After breaking out with their first song, “What a Waster,” they quickly descended into a Behind the Music-like hell when their frontman Pete Doherty became a heavy drug addict, nearly causing the breakup of the band.

But that’s all behind them now; They’’re releasing their latest self-titled album and it’’s their best one yet. I got a chance to talk with Libertines drummer Gary Powell.

Read our interview with Gary Powell on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I love the idea that masochism is a reincarnation of prudery.”
– Bill Condon

Bill Condon is the Oscar winning screenwriter and director of Gods and Monsters which was released to great acclaim in 1998 and launched Ian McKellan as a legitimate film actor. Since then Condon wrote Chicago and finally brought to light his long gestating project, Kinsey, which is a look at the life of Alfred Kinsey, a pioneer in the area of human sexuality research, whose 1948 publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was one of the first recorded works that saw science address sexual behavior.

Read our interview with Bill Condon on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I like to work a lot but I like it even better when I’’m not working.”
– Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek is one of the most beautiful women on earth.

I was very pleased to find that not only is Salma what I wrote above but she is also highly intelligent, and, even though she struggles with her English sometimes, she is very articulate. Certainly more articulate than homegrown Americans like Marisa Tomei and Abel Ferrara.

Though she’’s been in straightforward comedies like Kevin Smith’’s Dogma and the romantic comedy Fools Rush In, After the Sunset is the first time she has ever mixed her beauty and comedic skills perfectly. When we spoke I asked her about watching a movie and she started to talk about how she analyzes the technical side of a movie. I remembered that this is a multi-talented woman because she stars in one or two movies a year but then in 2003 she directed the film, The Maldonado Miracle.

After the Sunset begins where most action capers end – with master thieves Max and Lola [Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek] escaping to a tropical paradise to enjoy the spoils of their labor. The thieves are content to settle into their new life after crime, until their nemesis from the FBI [Woody Harrelson] tracks them down, convinced that their “retirement” is actually a cover for their true intentions of pulling off a million-dollar heist on a nearby “diamond cruise.” The allure of the alleged scheme captures Max and Lola’s attention and sets off a cat and mouse game of friendship, suspicion, and thievery.

Read our interview with Salma Hayek on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“A lot of people say they love what they do, but I really, really love what I do, to the point where I’’m borderline obsessed with what I do.”
– Vin Diesel

When the theatrical version of The Chronicles of Riddick was released this past summer it was considered a failure and another nail in the coffin of Vin Diesel’’s action movie career. But today Universal Studios Home Video has released the Unrated Director’’s Cut of The Chronicles of Riddick on DVD. It adds 15 minutes of footage back into the film mostly of a mystical character named Shirah, giving Riddick knowledge, a lot more violence and amazing extras such as Vin himself showing us around Riddick’’s most impressive sets.

I got a chance to talk with Vin about the DVD. Vin, in person, is a lot more charming than Riddick. He’’s just wonderful, relaxed and a lot of fun. He was a bit late but the fantastic Universal publicity team calmed us down by tossing DVDs at us.

Read our interview with Vin Diesel on SuicideGirls.com.

by Fred Topel

“We’re just acting like a bunch of idiots.”
– Lake Bell

The four season run of Childrens Hospital on Adult Swim has also mirrored Lake Bell’s rise in popularity and success in the entertainment industry. What began as a web series created by Rob Corddry is now an Emmy winning television mainstay. While playing Dr. Cat Black on the comedy, Bell has appeared in big movies, comedy and drama, and this year she directed two episodes of Childrens as well.

Childrens Hospital is ostensibly a comedy set in a hospital, though not a children’s hospital. It’s named after Arthur Childrens. And the characters are doctors, but the random episodes can put them in a horror movie, a courtroom drama, whatever. Bell plays Dr. Cat Black, who at one point died, but then it turns out she didn’t really die. That’s Childrens Hospital.

Bell was at the Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday, September 15 where Childrens Hospital won the Emmy for Outstanding Special Class: Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program. That’s a mouthful. It means the best show under 30 minutes. Adult Swim airs blocks of 15 minute shows. After the big night, Bell returned to the editing room on the film she directed. She also took on a kick ass role in the upcoming film Black Rock, about women on a camping trip fighting for survival, which premiered at Sundance.

While putting the finishing touches on In a World…, Bell chatted about her creative growth on Childrens Hospital and what’s still to come this season. She also shared a good perspective on her sex appeal, which has gotten her on the cover of Maxim and other provocative photo spreads. Childrens Hospital airs Thursdays at midnight on Adult Swim.

Read our exclusive interview with Lake Bell on SuicideGirls.com.

by Chris Goodman

“You’re never alone with the Dirty 3,” reads the etching in the run out groove on side B of their 1996 release Horse Stories. They couldn’t be more right. Falling in love, falling out of love, whatever it was… If you’re a fan of the Dirty Three you can pinpoint the exact moment you heard their records. They spoke with brilliance and clarity beyond you and let you know that wherever you were, whatever was happening, you weren’t alone everything was going to be alright.

Their February release, Toward the Low Sun from Drag City, digs in the second you drop the needle. This doesn’t start like your usual Dirty Three album building on a slowly picked out guitar chord or dancing around Warren Ellis’s pizzicato melody. This album blasts off with “Furnace Skies’ ” overdriven violin and manic drumming, only to take it back down and ground you on the second track of the album “Sometimes I forget you’ve gone,” which features Jim White’s intoxicating drum rolls, Ellis’s sparse piano parts and Mick Turner’s unwinding guitar. When performed live Ellis has related, in his quips between songs, that this is about checking the outbox of your email only to find that all the letters you’ve sent someone telling them how you feel were never received…As the recipient has died. This is their first album in 7 years. And it’s fucking amazing.

In addition to the Dirty Three, Warren Ellis stays busy with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, their side project Grinderman and a slew of soundtracks to movies you’ve seen but you might not know he worked on. The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, The Road and recently the John Hillcoat film Lawless, which was adapted from the novel The Wettest Country in the World from Matt Bondurant. Ellis even contributed to the the soundtrack for West of Memphis chronicling the trial, imprisonment, DNA testing and eventually release in 2011 of three boys from West Memphis, Arkansas wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned for 18 years.

I caught up with Ellis in Montreal on the first night of their second 2012 tour to get his take on creativity, how music and touring has changed in the last 20 years and how working on soundtracks taught him to challenge himself…

Chris Goodman: This is the first night of the tour? Did you guys meet up to rehearse the material beforehand?

Warren Ellis: Well we’ve been playing concerts off and on all year. But we met up in New York before the tour. We just played two weeks ago in England as well. This is all apart of a world tour to celebrate the release of our new record.

CG: You’ve been a band for 20 years. Is touring easier or harder these days?

WE: In a practical sense some things have gotten a lot easier. You have GPS, which we didn’t have in the ‘90s. You used to get a bunch of show dates and then try to find a map or something. It was a much different world then. There was no internet. And there were pagers. You tried to find a hotel with a fax, ya know. Things have really changed.

For me the big difference now is that I’m 15 years older than I was then. But touring is a big part of my life still and technology has made certain aspects of it a lot easier.

CG: I remember when I bought Horse Stories. Headphones on, sitting the floor checking the art out I realized there was an etching in the runout. “You’re never alone with the Dirty 3.” That spoke to me so much. Do you think with so much music being primarily online or on mobile devices that it takes away from the experience? That is a lot less tangible now?

WE: To be honest, everyone has an opinion about that and everybody’s kind of right. It depends when you grew up. I come from a generation where vinyl was a very important thing. We saw them try to get rid of that but it’s hung around and vinyl’s on it’s way back up.

There’s more things people spend their money on now. Back then there were only a handful. It’s just a different world. To me it seems the live shows are where things are really great these days because everything is much more connected. Some people have iPods and they listen to music on that, I mean I use one, but it’s seems like an incredible amount of information rendered into something that makes it feel kind of invalid or something. There is something very different about having 30,000 songs on an iPod and plugging it in as opposed to having a record in your hands and putting it on. The record is kind of contained. But basically you’re just listening to the stuff so I really don’t know if I have an answer about that.

I still love the format of records. I love making and listening to records. I like that vinyl is still around and available because it’s what I relate to. I really engage it in a different way. But for kids growing up with all this new stuff they relate to it differently. Sonically I still love the sound of vinyl but if I want to hear something I’ll listen to it on whatever.

CG: It’s too convenient to not have an iPod I guess?

WE: It is. It really is if you wanna hear “LA Woman” when you’re walking through an airport.

CG: How about technology and the recording industry?

WE: Everybody was down on ProTools a few years ago. And now everyone thinks it’s great. What you lose with the tape you gain with the time that you can save recording digitally. All things have their good and their bad.

CG: So Toward the Low Sun was recorded on ProTools?

WE: Yeah. Cinder we recorded on tape but this time it was digital.

CG: Did you guys have the material ready before you went in? Or do you just book the studio time and figure it out? I’ve read you don’t rehearse much…

WE: We’ve always been like that. We have ideas but we arrange them in the moment. If we flesh things out too much we lose the dynamic that happens when we’re working it out as we go along. That’s been one of the interesting things with the Dirty Three, to try to document that aspect. I mean we’ve tried to make this record a few times and it never worked because we were trying to flesh it out too much. Then we decided we had to go in with really skeletal ideas and just take some risks like we used to do.

CG: Toward the Low Sun really has a lot of breathing room. A lot of space to it. “Furnace Skies” really hits hard in, but it’s followed by “Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone” which is very sparse and light.

WE: Space has always been important. You can easily choke things. The first two tracks were actually recorded in that order and signaled our way into the record, which had been elusive for about 7 years.

CG: Any recording after the tour?

WE: We’ll do the tour and hopefully we’ll get another one underway quicker than this one took. It’s the way it goes though. For the last 15 years we’ve all been involved in other projects. We’ve got families now. We take it when we can and try to keep it moving.

CG: Would you say music is something you create or something that exists out there and is just channeled through you?

WE: If I started to think about that too much it would get pretentious. I know when I play live that there is something else going on. I still don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know what it is because the day that I understand it will be the day that it will stop. Whatever that is I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s some communication with something else out there but it is very addictive and making music is like that too. Anything creative is like that. It opens up something in you, give you access to something you can’t get anywhere else in your life. I know that it doesn’t just fall from the sky. I know that from soundtrack work because not much of that falls into your lap. You have to go out and look for stuff. Music is about going and searching and then making the right changes…It’s not just all given from God or something.

CG: When you do the soundtrack work do you hear “We need happy music now,” or “We need pensive music”?

WE: Nick and I kind of make what we want but at a certain point you have producers or directors saying, “I don’t really get that.” Then you try to work out a way in there to keep yourself happy but sometimes their suggestions are really correct. When we were doing West of Memphis there were a couple of cues there that Nick and I really liked but Peter Jackson really wanted something else. We found something else and when I watched the film he was right. You hope the people working on a film make suggestions for the right reasons but sometimes you can’t see them until it’s done.

I initially found the thought of making music for something else very daunting sort of. Like it would cut my freedom off. But then I realized it could be liberating to be told something wasn’t what they wanted and do try something else. I realized it was about creation.

I can really draw a clear line as to when I started feeling and listening that and how things changed for me and made me look deeper. What first appeared as daunting and counter-creative was actually all in the name of creation. Sometimes it’s good to have a framework. Sometimes it’s good to have constraints put on you to bring out creativity.

CG: Creatively, do you think being satisfied is counterproductive, maybe? That you shouldn’t feel like things have ended and that it was “good enough?”

WE: There’s a point you reach where you feel that something has really happened with the music. You feel enlightened by it… You have to feel that to truly let it go. When you don’t feel it, that’s when you stop engaging and then you become kind of dissatisfied and you start looking toward the next thing and you think, “How can I do something really good” again. With me, there is always a moment when I have to feel, listening back, that I really got it or I won’t settle. It has to be really great. And it is a small window when that happens, when I decide to let it go and I don’t feel that sense of dissatisfaction. I’m always thinking that the next thing I do will be the one that’s really great though… But you have to take risks.

I don’t believe in the starving artist stuff. The struggling artist. Or that when you have kids that’s the end of the deal and the creativity is gone. It’s crap. A lot of that stuff is just romantic and in my experience it has no bearing.

CG: I guess if you talk about what you do too much it can get pretentious.

WE: It can get precious. You can get self-indulgent. And I think that might be something that’s good when you’re young. I’ve been doing this for 20 years now. When I was young I wouldn’t listen to anybody, fuck ‘em. But about 10 years ago when I did the Proposition soundtrack I realized to move in a different world I had to learn a different tolerance and to open myself to different things. I couldn’t have done that when I was younger. It’s not something that you can see as it happens though. You have to look back at your life to understand.

CG: So your outlook on creativity really changed when you started working on the Proposition soundtrack?

WE: Things changed when I had to work for something else entirely but still find my place in it and at the same time feel like what I had done was something of worth.

I still had the esteem for it like I did with my other records, but I was aware that it was being pushed from other directions and not just internally from the group. The great thing about a band is you just satisfy yourselves and that’s it. But sometimes it’s hard to move beyond that and you need things thrown at you to grow.

Doing the soundtrack for The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was one of the greatest learning experiences of my creative life. No question about it.

CG: With movies it’s bigger than you. Bigger than a group. Other people are depending on you for it. Your work reflects their big picture, their outcome.

WE: Exactly. You’re working for a film. You’re serving the film. And it takes on its own life once it’s out there. Like a record, things change when you put it out there and it’s out of your hands. But that comes back to letting things go.

CG: You worked with John Hillcoat on The Road and now Lawless…

WE: Well Nick had written the script and the idea always was that we’d do the music for it.

CG: What are your influences these days? What turns you on?

WE: I still find the stuff I liked as a younger man relevant. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Neil Young, AC/DC, Beethoven, Stravinsky. It feels great to put on a John Lee Hooker record and think, “Man, I was right 20 years ago with this stuff.” It still moves me. Van Morrison, Nina Simone. Or it’s inspiring when I go to a gallery but you can’t really say when things inspire you. I just like seeing and listening to stuff that’s being created.

CG: Van Morrison…Astral Weeks might be the best album of all time.

WE: I think Veedon Fleece is my favorite one of his.

CG: How do your kids deal with you and your wife[Delphine Ciampi] both being musicians? Do they think you’re cool?

WE: They’re my kids and I’m their dad. They’re not meant to think I’m cool. What I do outside of being a dad is just what I do to them I guess. As they’ve gotten a bit older I think they find what I do a little more interesting. (a long pause)…I think they think I’m a dick. Like anyone thinks their dad is a dick.

CG: How did Eastwood guitars end up releasing the Warren Ellis signature tenor guitar? Which, ahem, I bought in the cherry finish…

WE: Yeah, it’s great! They came to me and asked and I gave them the specifications and away it went.

CG: Any new Grinderman material coming out soon?

WE: I can’t say.

CG: Any solo work from you?

WE: I find doing stuff on my own not particularly enjoyable. I like making music with people and I like what they bring out in me. I don’t find it nearly as thrilling as playing with others.

Toward the Low Sun is out now via Drag City. Visit their website for more info and tour dates.

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SG Interview: Kevin Fennell and Mitch Mitchell of Guided By Voices

by Chris Goodman

When asked to describe Guided By Voices in one word they all said “family.” The original line up is back together, and they consider themselves and the fans one big family.

2012 was a busy year from the start with a January release of Lets Go Eat the Factory, their first album since 2004, which was quickly followed up by the July release of Class Clown Spots a UFO. In addition, November promises the release of yet another full-length entitled The Bears for Lunch, which is to be followed by English Little League, in February 2013. Now reformed, these guys are unstoppable.

“If you write 3,000 songs 30 of them will be good. Good enough to play a show in Pittsburgh,” says Robert Pollard as he struts around the stage cigarette and Miller High Life in hand passing around a bottle of tequila to the audience. Pollard’s banter between songs is pretty damn entertaining. At one point he misses the lyrics on “If We Wait” three times and explains, “Listen, if you get a bunch of 50 year old men on stage drinking and fucking around, they’re gonna fuck songs up. If you wanted KISS, you didn’t get it!”

Everyone knows the music. Everyone loves Pollard’s high kicks. Every song plays like a drinking anthem for an endless summer night that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. A GBV show is more like a party with friends. They kick it off with new material and the intensity never dips or waivers for a second. The entire audience is singing along with every song.

“It’s nice that people know more than ‘Game of Pricks,’” drummer Kevin Fennell says to me. “They know it all.” The band ends with three encores, over 40 songs in all, and we’re all left looking at each other surprised that we heard every song we wanted them to play.

I caught up with Fennell and Guitar player Mitch Mitchell after the Mr. Smalls Theatre show in Pittsburgh, PA, and though it was hard to hear them while all the bottles and broken glass were being cleaned up, I was “Smothered in Hugs” (ha ha) and given an attentive and warm interview.

Chris Goodman: You guys started in ‘83. It’s 2012. 30 years later…What keeps you going?

Kevin Fennell: A lot of it is the new material. I’ve always said this is more of a brotherhood than just a band. We’re so close, like a family. And I know that it sounds cliché but it’s so true. There’s a lot of love going on here.

CG: You reunited in 2010 for the Matador 21st anniversary party with the original line up. That has to add to the dynamic and intensity, being together again…More so than when members were floating in and out?

KF: Some fans might like the other lineups, but personally I think we’re all partial to this one.

CG: Do you have time for any other projects outside of GBV?

KF: I’ve got a day job. We all have day jobs. So between that and the music, making records I stay pretty busy.

[Kevin gives me a hug and gets back to packing his drums up. Mitch’s girlfriend brings him over then he gives me a hug and asks what he can do for me…]

CG: Mitch. It’s an honor. GBV has a new album coming out in November and another scheduled for release in February. Where does it come from at this point? What keeps you going?

Mitch Mitchell: It’s the free beer. It keeps us going. The venues give it to us. They have all been great. The places and the people treat us so well and that truly means a lot. When you’ve played music for the majority of your adult life, you find some clubs really treat you like shit. I’ve never played here before but this was really a great place to play. And like I said…they give us all the beer we can drink. We’re all stoked. You can’t argue with beer.

CG: Is there going to be another tour after the next album?

MM: I hope so! We actually have a gig lined up for New Years Eve…It’s at Irving Plaza. I just found out today actually. We’ve always had a great response on the East Coast. New York, Philly, DC, Boston…These are some of the best rock cities there are. You go out to the West Coast and it’s a different kind of rock. The East Coast is the ballsy rock. But you know, rockers rock, man. Where rockers live, we will find them.

CG: Everyone was talking tonight about how stoked they were to see the original line up. Tobin Sprout is back. That’s huge for a lot of people. I heard “bigger than the Beatles” and “my fuckin’ heroes” thrown around all night.

MM: These guys are our heroes! You, the fans. They come to the shows. They support us. They have to work in the morning. I mean we play this music because we like it. We tour because we like it. The fact that other people can dig it is such a driving force though. To be on the road traveling it’s so nice to know you pull in somewhere and it’s like we’re all friends and they know your name and we all know what crazy shit we’re going to get into tonight. That is what means a lot.

CG: What’s the news with Mitch Mitchell’s Terrifying Experience?

MM: We do shows around our hometown. We don’t tour a lot. Just stick close to home and have fun.

CG: Is there an album coming out?

MM: Well there was, but things kind of snagged. I need to find out what’s up with that. I’ve got tons of new material. Two records recorded and ready to go and I’d like to get the shit out. The records are actually done, we just have to find out how to get them released. I’m kind of ignorant to that side of music. I don’t understand the nuts and bolts to putting a record out. If I have to put this shit out myself somehow then that’s what I’ll have to do I guess. We really put a lot into it and I’d like to get it to people GBV is my first and foremost priority, but the Terrifying Experience is like my baby. It’s a great time.

CG: How did you start playing music?

MM: When I first started I was 9 years old and I went to take some lessons at a music store. I listened to a lot of music growing up and I had always wanted to learn to play guitar. And I figured you had to learn from someone that already knew and that you couldn’t figure it out on your own. You had to be taught.

I found a guy at this music store called Dayton Band and I signed up for lessons. The first time I met with this guy he says, “The first thing you need to know about music is ALL drummers are crazy. The second lesson is that most drummers are assholes.” I mean this was my first guitar lesson. And he was right. To this day most of the drummers I’ve met are the nuttiest people in the band.

CG: So you had two lessons, and then figured you could just listen to Stones records and figure the riffs out?

MM: Ha. I took two fuckin’ lessons and decided I’d do it myself. That experience molded me. I learned to do things myself. I know a lot about drummers. Kevin and I have been playing since I was 10 years old. I love him with all my heart. I don’t ever have to look at him to know what’s happening or what he’s gonna do. It’s an unspoken connection.

CG: So there were ups and downs, but how the hell have you stayed a band for 30 years?

MM: The best advice I can give to guys in bands is to just drink and drink and drink! And to rock. If you can drink every night with the guys you’re in a band with, you will become unstoppable. It creates a special bond. Like brothers.

CG: So what have you been listening to lately?

MM: My girlfriend turned me on to Off! recently, Keith Morris’ band.

CG: I found those guys through my roommate and didn’t know who they were and I thought, this is so good but the singer is biting Keith Morris hard. Then I realized it was Keith Morris. I was blown away that they had that whole thing going on.

MM: They are as punk as a punk band gets….You know those early punk bands influenced me so much growing up. With music and skating. These bands just epitomized a lifestyle and a way of thinking. You related to these guys like you knew them, ya know. It was emotional on so many levels. The music and the attitude just spoke to me. And that’s how you connected to them. You hear them play and you might not even know what the hell they’re saying but you just ‘got it.’ And when you finally read the lyrics you realized these guys are going through what you’re going though. That’s how punk spoke to us…

CG: Who else really spoke to you growing up?

MM: Another band I always loved is the Descendants. Those guys just had it. All those old punk bands too…Septic Death, Christ on Parade, DRI, Subhumans, Black Flag and all those SST bands…All those old punk bands are the best. I wish I had the chance to meet them all and thank them… In my heart that shit is the core of what’s driving me. That balls-out attitude and just giving it everything you’ve got.

CG: I interviewed Mike Watt once and it changed my life…

MM: That dude is fucking amazing. I’ve been trying to hook up with Keith Morris for a while…

CG: You’re in Guided by fucking Voices and you can’t get a hold of Keith Morris?

MM: I’m computer illiterate man. I’ll have to have Gwen do that.

CG: Any last words?

MM: I’ll paraphrase Mike Watt on this…That this is all a mutual experience and it’s not just what we give to the fans…It’s what we get back that keeps us moving.

More information can be found at robertpollard.net/. You can try gbv.com but you will be directed to a site that was probably last updated in 1998. It’s actually kind of worth a look…Mitch Mitchell’s Terrifying Experience can be found on Facebook.