BONGORAMA.COM

I Played in Glenn Branca's Hallucination City and All I Got Was Mass Hypnotic Transcendence

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:17:00 +0000

After nearly a century of being ritually smashed, set on fire, and wielded as a phallus, the electric guitar has lost some of its subtle mystery. The notes had seemingly all been played. Yet, on a certain high-school evening, some Thurston Moore–loving, prog-rock-leaning friends introduced me—a child reared on guitar heroes of all varieties and learned in the various show-off techniques of butt rock and bebop—to Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, and the mystery was forcefully, harshly restored.

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Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:40:00 +0000

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

Shigeo Tokuda is, in fact, his screen name. He prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 films over the past 14 years. And in his double life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan's sexuality: in surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. Those figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he has just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

Tokuda's exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an "old man" series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. "The adult-video industry is very competitive," says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. "If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers' hearts."

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. "I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them," says Kono passionately.

But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: "Elderly people don't identify with school dramas," he says. "It's easier for them to relate to older-men-and-daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them." The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he's 80 — or older, as long as the industry will cast him. Given the bullish market for his work, he's unlikely to go without work.

"People of my age generally have shame, so they are very hesitant to show their private parts," Tokuda says. "But I am proud of myself doing something they cannot." Still, he says, laughing, "That doesn't mean that I can tell them about my old-age pensioner job."

Japan's adult-video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year, according to industry insiders, with the largest video-store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward "mature women" has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are "mature women" films.

Ryuichi Kadowaki, director of Ruby Inc., which specializes in mature-women titles, says that when the company started offering the genre a few years ago, the term referred to actresses in their late 20s, and that last year it was expanded to those in their 70s. The company believes the advantage of mature titles is their enduring appeal. "Adult videos with young actresses sell well only in the first three months after the release," Kadowaki explains. "On the other hand, mature-women films enjoy a steady, long-term popularity, which after 10 years or so might lead to a best seller." And then there are the cost savings. A popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000.

The market for elder porn has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki. "In view of [Japan's] aging society," he adds, "I think that in the future, we will see a steady increase in demand."

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Jack Nicholson says he's looking for love, but 'can't hit on a girl in public like I used to'

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:56:00 +0000

Jack Nicholson, the legendary ladies' man, says he'd like to fall in love again.

"I never minded being a fool for love," the 70-year-old Oscar winner tells AARP The Magazine. "It's nice to have a place to be foolish. Ask any old friend of mine, they'll say, 'Jack's pretty smart, but in this area the man is beyond the pale. Don't ask him anything about love. Or if you ask him, don't listen to him.'"

Nicholson says getting older has changed the way he woos women.

"I can't hit on a girl in public like I used to," he says. "I never thought words like 'undignified' would come into my own reflections on myself, but I can't do it anymore."

Nicholson, whose past flames include Anjelica Huston and Lara Flynn Boyle, explains: "I feel uncomfortable. I don't think anybody cares what I do in these areas, but it feels a little bit off to me."

He says he'd date a woman close to his age — or younger.

"In fact, every year I like to cover a very broad spectrum," he says. "But you know? I've been single for quite a long time. I've been invested in my teenage children" with ex-girlfriend Rebecca Broussard. (He was married to Sandra Knight in the 1960s.)

Nicholson says nearly all his contemporaries tell him they want "that one last big romance."

"I don't do a lot of original screenwriting anymore, but if I were, I'd find a way to make this the dramatic narrative of a movie, because it's one of those silent yearnings of my own age group," he says.

Nicholson co-stars with Morgan Freeman in "The Bucket List," about two terminally ill patients on a final fling. The film is the winner of "Best Buddy Movie" in AARP The Magazine's Movies for Grownups awards, which will be presented Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.

Nicholson has received 12 Oscar nominations, winning for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as it Gets."

The March/April issue of the magazine will be available the week of Jan. 24.

___

On the Net:

AARP The Magazine:

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/

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Interview with Claudia Morgado Escanilla

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:36:00 +0000

Producer/writer/director Claudia Morgado Escanilla took home the PlanetOut Short Movie Awards Grand Prize for "No Bikini," a delightful -- and truly amazing -- short film about a little girl who abandons her bikini top and spends weeks in swim camp passing as a boy.

As the Grand Prize winner, Escanilla takes home a $10,000 cash prize -- the world's largest cash prize for a LGBT film competition -- and her film will screen at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival this April (all winning films will screen in Miami).

“I had a sex change once, when I was six or seven years old.” The opening line of No Bikini introduces us to a young girl who defies convention during her summer swim class. Filled with humour, this film is less about defining one’s gender than it is about discovering personal strength.

Escanilla is a Vancouver, B.C., filmmaker born in Santiago, Chile. We recently spoke with an excited Escanilla about the film, winning the Grand Prize and her future as a filmmaker.

"No Bikini" is incredibly original. How did you come up with the idea? Was it autobiographical?

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but about 10 years ago I read the short story "No Bikini" by Ivan Coyote. In 2004, I contacted her to get the rights. It was great to work with Ivan because she encouraged me to make it my own, went with the changes I made as I was writing the script; plus we collaborated on the VO, which she recorded.

Read the full interview here.

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Earl Anthony vs. Charlie Tapp (Part 2)

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:29:00 +0000

Earl Anthony vs. Charlie Tapp (Part 1)

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:28:00 +0000

Designed to last: Richard Rogers

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:04:00 +0000

At 74, Richard Rogers is as busy as ever shaping the future. Slippers are not an option

By Tom Dyckhoff

And before you ask, no, I’m not going to retire.” You can forgive the preemptive strike. Richard Rogers, Lord Rogers of Riverside to give him the grand title he rarely uses, has fielded a lot of questions about the “r” word lately. The young Turk who gave the world those once futuristic, still shocking buildings with their guts hanging out – Paris’s Pompidou Centre, London’s Lloyd’s Building – nowadays, at 74, looks like nothing more radical than your favourite grandpa, the one with the twinkly eyes and endearingly rambling tales about the war – the war against the Prince of Wales, architectural conservatism and cities gone to the dogs.

He’s reached “that retrospective time of life” – later this month a massive exhibition of his life’s work opens at the Pompidou, marking the building’s 30th birthday – so “they expect you to pop off at any minute”. Rumours mounted after a remarkable year so backed up with plaudits – the Stirling Prize last autumn for his Madrid airport, the Pritzker Prize, and the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, for starters – you half-wondered if the juries had got wind of his imminent demise. Final proof? Last year, the name of the firm he established 29 years ago, Richard Rogers Partnership, was changed to Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners, to honour the next generation of young Turks – Ivan Harbour and Graham Stirk – increasingly taking the reins. Slippers and cocoa seemed certain. “Can you imagine?” he breaks out into one of his guffaws, as if the very idea was the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Which it is.” That’ll be a no then. “

I enjoy life too much,” he says. And Rogers really does seem to have a lovely life. His place in history is guaranteed by the Pompidou and Lloyd’s. He still has fulfilling work – more than ever, with Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opening next spring, a City skyscraper, Leadenhall Building, in the offing, and his largest building to date, the Javits Centre in Manhattan, on the drawing board. It’s a buzz of activity in an office which, a few years previously, seemed in hiatus compared with that of his friend and eternal rival, Norman Foster.

His treasured roles as Ken Livingstone’s adviser and Labour peer mean he is still hard-wired into politics, taken seriously. There’s the big artsy family: still on good terms with his first wife Su, five sons all in influential, creative, fulfilling jobs (one, Abe, has designed the exhibition). There’s the lovely office by the Thames in Hammersmith, filled with 180 reverential staff. And, icing on the cake, there’s having the River Caf� for your staff canteen just by the front door. The cherry on top? Your wife, Ruthie, runs it! Extra portions of chocolate nemesis all round!

With nearly 50 years of hindsight poured through the exhibition, his life’s work seems less about architecture than selling this Pollyannaish, liberal lifestyle to a mercenary, puritanical world. Born to creative, professional, left-wing Italian parents who escaped fascist Italy for Britain in 1938, his view of life is distinctly Italian – “Where public life and family are entwined,” he says, “as long as I was sitting at the family table everything was OK. I was very affected when I was 5, in Florence, and I’d look across the street and see this caf�, and every morning I saw what I assumed was an accountant, who’d come in, they’d put a table on the pavement, they’d give him a phone, and he’d do his job. And I thought that’s what I want to do. Not to be an accountant, of course. But the idea that you could mix in your lifestyle, your work, your city, your quality of friendship.”

His wish came true. There are few architects who live the worlds they espouse quite so wholeheartedly as Rogers. Foster – with whom he started in business in the early 1960s – may now have the thousand-strong design-factory, but Rogers, you suspect, has the nicer life. Rogers’s high-tech, drenched in old-fashioned modernist optimism for this thing called “society”, has soul and colour, Foster’s has rigour, but no passion. Indeed, once you get past the shock value of his eviscerated buildings, Rogers’s architecture isn’t really about looks at all. He despises the word “style”, instead his buildings – and this is what was so radical about Pompidou – are basically big family tables, public spaces in which people come together arguing, sharing, resolving differences, given form by the life inside. His vision for cities, now applied patchily as government policy, is all about public space, generosity, tolerance.

Not everyone has shared the Rogers vision: the architecturally conservative, for instance will never warm to his Heath Robinson buildings. There are those who quite rightly state that his “guts on the outside” aesthetic was never very practical (he hasn’t used it himself in a while).

Last year his support for Palestine nearly cost him the Javits job in New York. “The office constitution states you have to think before taking on work which is antienvironment, military, and so on. But then people say ‘airports?’ In that case, since an architect alone cannot stop airports being built he should make them as good, as environmentally sound as possible. But it’s a difficult excuse to make. All architecture is political. All work involves debate, compromise. You’re always juggling, questioning yourself.” This is what makes him unique in Britain, where architects, eyes on realising their monuments and plumping the bank balances tend, as far as possible, to eschew politics.

Rogers marched for CND in the 1950s, against Bush in the Noughties. When Margaret Thatcher started dismantling the public realm so dear to him, private politics became professional. The crux came while designing “London as it could be”, highlight of the Royal Academy’s 1986 exhibition, Foster Rogers Stirling, which envisaged London as a Thames-side playground – fantastical at the height of the no-such-thing-as-society era. Thereafter, building took a backseat to campaigning for Britain’s “urban renaissance” through the Reith Lectures, new Labour’s Urban Task Force, battling with John Prescott, and, today, Livingstone. He concedes that he is somewhat on his own: “I do sometimes feel like an eternal refugee.”

When he arrived in 1938, “there was only one espresso machine in London”. Now, he thinks, we’re at last starting on the right road towards civilised life and decent coffee for all. . . Pollyanna again? “There are a lot of big ifs: the distribution of wealth is horrific. But overall, what an evolution – life is a lot better, especially for those of us who are more fortunate. For those who are not, life is tough. But what can an architect do for them?” his voice trails off. “I don’t know... ”

Richard Rogers + Architects, Pompidou Centre, Paris (www.centrepompidou.fr 00 331 44 78 12 33), from Wed, until March; the exhibition moves to the Design Museum, London SE1, in April.

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Tecno Brega

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:50:00 +0000

A music scene called Tecno Brega making use of an alternative business model has emerged in the city of Belem in Brazil. This parallel music industry has been active for years and has achieved great success. Several hundred new Tecno Brega records are produced and released every year by local artists, with both the production and distribution taking place outside of the mainstream music industry. The tecno brega model is simple: the music lies outside the realm of traditional copyright and is used as a method of marketing events. Every weekend the “sound system” parties attract thousands of people to the outskirts of Belem to listen to the Tecno Brega music. The parties are advertised by the distribution of the music itself. The numbers are incomplete, but the Belem scene alone brings in yearly revenues of several million US dollars.

The Tecno Brega music is “born free” in the sense that copyright protection is not a part of the business model developed by its creators. The CDs sold are utilized as marketing material– advertisements for the highly popular weekly “sound system” parties. The Tecno Brega CDs are sold by local street vendors as per arrangements with the local recording studios. At a mere US$1.50, the CDs are highly affordable by the local population, thus providing greater access to the music at a grassroots level.

The goal is not for artists to make money on conventional CD sales. Instead, the price charged works exclusively as an incentive for the local vendors to sell the CDs and in effect market the tecno brega parties. The artists thus make money through innovative business models related to the sound system parties. One such example consists of artists recording their live concert sets at the parties in real time and then selling the recordings at the conclusion of the event. This enables the audience to go home with a souvenir of the concert they have just attended. Another technique utilized by the artists is to acknowledge the presence of various people and neighborhoods in the course of the live presentations. Hearing such acknowledgment is greatly valuable to the audience– naturally people want to hear a “shout out” to them, their friends, or their neighborhood. As a result, thousands of people buy copies of the live CDs to have a permanent memoir of this form of homage.

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I have 200 orgasms every day...

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:20:00 +0000

PRETTY Sarah Carmen is a 200-a-day orgasm girl who gets good, good, GOOD vibrations from almost anything.

The rumble of a train on the tracks, the purr of a hairdryer, the rhythmic drone of a photo-copier are all enough to make her go oh oh oh, ahhhhh.

She had FIVE orgasms during our 40-minute interview. But I can't take the credit—it was just talking about her sex life that set her off.

Sarah, 24, suffers from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), which increases blood flow to the sex organs.

CLICK FOR MORE
OF SARAH’S INTERVIEW
(Online Exclusive)

She said: "Sometimes I have so much sex to try to calm myself down I get bored of it. And men I sleep with don't seem to make as much effort because I climax so easily."

As she chatted, Sarah became increasingly flustered.

"Sorry, you'll have to excuse me for a minute. I'll be with you in a sec," she mumbled before letting out a long sigh.

Sarah, from London, developed PSAS after being prescribed anti-depressants at 19.
Stunned

She believes her condition was brought on by the pills.

She said: "Within a few weeks I just began to get more and more aroused more and more of the time and I just kept having endless orgasms.

"It started off in bed where sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm.

"Then it would happen after sex. I'd be thinking about what we'd done in bed and I'd start feeling a bit flushed, then I'd become aroused and climax.

"In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200."

She and her boyfriend split— and new partners struggle to keep up with her sex demands. "Often, I'll want to wear myself out by having as many orgasms as I can so they stop and I can get some peace," she said.

Sarah is a beautician and working in salons filled with whirring hairdryers and skincare gadgets can cause problems.

"If I start coughing and run to the loo, the girls know to fetch the client a magazine or a cup of tea," she said, adding, "Sometimes I'd like to just have a normal life."

All together now, aaaahhhhh!

***

Ever Wonder What the Staff Eats at a Chinese Restaurant?

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:26:00 +0000

A little after nine o'clock, Ricky Ker sits down for dinner at a back table of Goodies, his restaurant on East Broadway, with a waitress or two. The only customers in the plain, small dining room are a young couple and a few Russian tourists—they might have come because the Shanghainese food is recommended by Zagat, and the soup dumplings are a must-order. The staff, however, is dining tonight on winter melon soup and a plate of stir-fried pork liver and stomach. "We always have one soup and one dish," head waitress Jojo explains. Ker likes white pepper in his soup, and shakes some into a visitor's cup as well. The winter melon, a big, bland fruit, has been shredded and boiled in water and salty chicken stock, with a healthy dose of cilantro tossed in at the end. It's simple, cheap stuff, but tasty.

When it comes to the various pig elements, Ker grins and offers just a taste in case it doesn't go over well with the outsider. But the innards, particularly the tripe, are delicious. The liver is aggressive, cut into thin, triangular, iron-intensive slabs, but the pieces of stomach are tender and mild, tasting fatty and carrying the soy sauce and ginger nicely. Slices of hot green pepper break the intensity, and the visitor has seconds. Jojo, who has been at Goodies for two and a half years, says she tries not to eat too much organ meat anymore because "you get everything the animal ate, and they have chemicals now." Ker laughs at this, pointing to her plate. "You're eating liver, though." Yes, she giggles, "but not every day."

The staff communicates mostly in Mandarin, but Ker and Jojo, plus two of the three other waitresses, are from Malaysia. Ker came to New York in 1998 and, through an employment agency, got a cashier job at the original Goody's in Rego Park. When the owners opened a Manhattan location in 2000, Ker was transferred to Chinatown, still working as a cashier. But four years later, when the place was struggling financially, Ker saw an opportunity and worked out a deal to take over the lease. He changed the spelling and even had it trademarked last year, but, wisely, he kept the cooks.

Ker's oldest daughter now has a master's degree in global economy, and he sounds like he's been studying the same subject. He talks a lot about marketing and came up with a slogan for the place: "Good food, good times, good luck, at Goodies." When diners get their bill at the end of a meal, it's delivered with a scratch-off lottery card—that's the luck part. Once, someone won $500. The Russian tourists win some money, but they leave it for the staff.

Tonight, Jojo and another waitress, Kimberly, feel like making dessert for family meal: a room-temperature soup of oats, brown sugar, and water. At a quarter to 10, when all the customers are gone, Jojo divvies up the tips. But the food is good to the last drop: The newest waitress stands in the back, draining the last of her sweet soup from a plastic container.

[via villagevoice.com]

***

Mellowing Out on Marijuana

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:16:00 +0000

Those Rocky Mountains are getting higher. Two municipalities — Denver, Colorado, and the small town of Hailey, Idaho — passed pro-marijuana measures on election day this week, joining a growing number of liberal localities that are reducing or removing penalities on using pot. It's part of a slowly evolving populist rehabilitation of the drug. San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica in California, along with Missoula, Montana, and Seattle, Washington, have previously passed laws that give the lowest priority to enforcing existing marijuana laws.

Federal regulations, which supercede local ordinances, continue to prescribe heavy penalties — even in some cases death — for major dealers of illegal drugs, including marijuana. The federal penalty for possession of even a miniscule amount is a misdemeanor punishable by one year in prison and $1,000. Penalties are higher with cultivation, sale and crossing state lines. However, magistrates generally use state and local laws as sentencing guidelines — unless there is federal intervention, which doesn't occur in every drug case because they would increase court time and costs.

Read the full article on time.com here.

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Japan carmakers need to bet more on luxury

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:10:00 +0000

Tyler Brûlé: By the time you read this, Tokyo will be crawling with a curious mix of never-before-seen vehicles and the journalists that cover them. In sprawling trade halls, marketing directors from Nissan, Toyota and Subaru and others will be putting the finishing touches to their stands at the Tokyo Motor Show - applying extra lubricant to the turntables that will spin over-buffed cars and making sure that hostess's dresses are hemmed so they hang just so - not too much leg but just enough to attract car correspondents from Germany's powerful trade titles.

I managed to escape just before the motoring press (as the British like to call them) descended on my hotel. As I said farewell to the hotel manager, he was bracing himself for what counts for one of the most important weeks for Japan's convention business.

Read the full article on iht.com here.

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Airbus delivers its first A380 superjumbo to Singapore Airlines

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:50:00 +0000

TOULOUSE, France: There were no Jacuzzis or bowling alleys. No casinos or gyms. But the chilled bottle of Champagne perched on an elegantly laid-out double bed said it all.

Singapore Airlines showed off the interior of its first A380 superjumbo jet in an elaborate ceremony here Monday, bringing an end to a decade of anticipation of what the airline has always said would be a step up in the level of quality and comfort in long-haul air travel.

"From today, there is a new queen of the skies for air travel," a beaming Chew Choon Seng, the Singapore Airlines chief executive, told a gathering of more than 500 international guests. And with that, Chew introduced the unique features of his carrier's new 471-seat craft, which, in the premium-class cabin at least, sometimes resembles a luxury hotel rather than an airliner.

Twelve private "suites" created by the French yacht designer Jean-Jacques Coste grace the front half of the plane's lower deck. Designed to maximize privacy, these partitioned nooks are each fitted with fully adjustable leather seats and a separate bed that folds out with a full-sized mattress, draped in crisp cream-colored linens designed by Givenchy.

A 58 centimeter, or 23 inch, LCD video screen hangs on one wall, where passengers can view a selection of up to 100 movies and more than 180 television channels. The same entertainment system includes a word processor and spreadsheet programs as well as multiplayer 3D video games.

Read the full article on iht.com here.

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Here's Looking at You, Syd

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:45:00 +0000

How did one of pop music's epic breakdowns—that of Pink Floyd's dashing, mentally ill, drug-addled front man, Syd Barrett—find a place in a drama about Communist Czechoslovakia? The author recalls the genesis of his most recent play, Rock 'n' Roll, a London hit which reaches Broadway this month.

Read the article on vanityfair.com here.

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Interview with Malcolm McDowell

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:38:00 +0000

Interviewed by Noel Murray
October 11th, 2007

At the dawn of the '70s, the legendary faces of British theater and cinema (the Laurence Oliviers, Peter O'Tooles, and Richard Burtons) gave way to one face in particular: the angular, pop-eyed mug of Malcolm McDowell. His performances in Lindsay Anderson's If… and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange at the start of his career made him an international movie star and a go-to leading man for edgy filmmakers. Since the '70s, McDowell's career has had its ups and downs, but he's always maintained a steady work schedule, largely because of his willingness to try anything, be it sitcoms (the short-lived Pearl), cartoon voiceovers (like Superman: The Animated Series), or the villain role on a popular superhero-themed TV drama (Heroes). On the occasion of the new DVD release of Caligula—a notorious big-budget sex epic produced by Penthouse's Bob Guccione—McDowell spoke about that film, his relationships with great directors, and his dedication to working hard.

The A.V. Club: A lot of actors would've run from something like Caligula, but even though you've made it plain that you have problems with the movie, you've still embraced it over the years.

Malcolm McDowell: Of course. Once you commit to something, you've got to commit the whole way. Try and make the best of it. Now, things weren't perfect on that movie, which is sort of well-known, but as far as my professional ability and my professionalism goes, it doesn't really make a difference whether you're making a Stanley Kubrick film or Caligula. The effort and the work that you do is basically the same. Of course, the result is not the same, but from my own point of view—which is admittedly narrow—it's the same effort. If not moreso. It's much easier to be doing a Stanley Kubrick film.

AVC: How easy or hard is it for you to perceive how a movie is going while it's still in production?

MM: You really don't know, to be honest. You could be feeling very, very good, some of the scenes are fantastic, but maybe they'll screw it up in the editing. Who knows? It's such a collaborative medium, and you're a small cog in a big wheel, and everything has to be aligned to make a great film. That's why there are so few great films. It's sort of like going into battle. If you use the analogy of Waterloo, how lucky was [the Duke of] Wellington that everything just aligned? And also, you can do all the planning you like, but that's only half the story. Real greatness comes from that sort of spontaneity of the moment that takes it into another level. That can never be planned; it happens or it doesn't. And you can't force it. You know, with Kubrick, he wouldn't turn on the camera until there was what he called "a little magic." And so we'd work hard rehearsing it, and try to find that. Sometimes it just wasn't there, so we'd just keep on and on and on. And then actually, out of sheer boredom, I'd do something ridiculous and it was perfect.

AVC: Was it different with, say, Robert Altman? Did he prefer to shoot and see what was happening while you were rehearsing?

MM: Robert was completely different. He was a master of what he does, I think. One of the most extraordinary talents to come out of America, in terms of directing. An authentic voice. But Bob's thing was many cameras. He wanted actors to live in the moment, and he would then choreograph the dance and pick what he wanted. Lots of ad-libbing, of course. Pretty much all the time, you never knew what was on and what was not. So better stay in character. The film that I did [2003's The Company], Bob actually shot in hi-def, which could go on for 90 minutes on a single chip. And I think after about 20 minutes of doing a scene, I'd look at the camera—and he wasn't in the room, he was next door with his earphones on at the monitors—and I'd just say, "Bob! There's nothing left to say!" And I heard, "Cut!" [Laughs.]

AVC: You've worked with a lot of great directors: Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Lindsay Anderson. Which one do you think brought out your best?

MM: Different directors offer you different things, and it's not necessarily the most obvious things. The most nurturing of directors can make you feel too comfortable, and you don't really push for that extra whatever. Lindsay Anderson was, of course, my favorite. He was just a great friend as well, and I knew the style in which he wanted me to work. He wanted me to be real, but never realistic. To work in a heightened style, which was wonderful. He was bored with naturalism and said, "That's nothing to do with us. Save that for television or documentaries. I'm not interested." And so he taught me, really, how to work in a heightened style while at all times keeping it real. Hopefully. And he was my first director, and really ,I couldn't have started with a better man.

Did he get the best out of me? I think he did. I did numerous things with him. The parts that I played in If… and O Lucky Man! particularly were much more voyeuristic kinds of roles. Especially O Lucky Man! I'm always coming into a scene, observing it, and moving on. In fact, this was one of my complaints to him at the time: "I'm not driving this thing. I feel like an idiot. How many more times can I react? I'm getting sick of it. I've got no more reactions! I've done five already!" And we used to laugh about it, but it was sort of true that reacting in cinema is a great art. Humphrey Bogart comes to mind, or Gary Cooper. No better reactors than those two.

AVC: Caligula started filming toward the end of the era when films by the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Luis Buñuel, and Federico Fellini trafficked in a similarly over-the-top sensibility. But by the time Caligula was released, it was like its time had passed. Did you sense that?

MM: No, I can't see the forest for the trees. But there is something old-fashioned about Caligula, even though it's risqué. It was a strange experience, to say the least. I got into it because of Gore Vidal, who wrote the original screenplay. But then he left, took his name off of it, and still tried to manipulate the situation, whatever it was. So basically, I was left on my own, contracted to do it. I was signed. I just had to do it the best I could. I did feel a sort of betrayal by Guccione, who added all this porn footage later. That was annoying. But at the end of the day, I don't know if any of that really matters. It's best not to harbor too many grudges. That's what I feel now, and that's why I did the commentary on the DVD. I didn't tell all the stories, because I still feel there is a good comedy show on Caligula. I have so many good stories about the shooting of that movie that would make a good hour and a half onstage. It's extremely funny, a lot of it.

AVC: Walking onto a set of half-naked Penthouse Pets: fun or embarrassing?

MM: It's work! It's sort of funny. When they first arrived, I think they thought they were supposed to be in some sort of James Bond movie. There was one being shot nearby, but it was being shot in Malta. They were nice girls. They were pretty game. They were sent in because Guccione didn't think the extras we had been using were pretty enough. [Caligula director] Tinto Brass threw up his hands and said, "This is Rome, for God's sake! This is Fellini's Rome!" Rome is not full of beautiful people by any stretch of the imagination, and it still isn't.

But Guccione was very smart in a lot of ways. He headed an empire, a bit like a Roman emperor. And he lost it, just like a Roman emperor. It was really strange to be doing a movie that he was paying for. But when you're filming, that isn't what you're thinking. You're just trying to get the scenes to work. That was particularly what I was trying to do. I was just trying to work and figure out, logically, "What are we trying to say here?" I can't tell you how many times the scenes were rewritten and redone. That was endless. But we just tried to make it work. It still doesn't work, but, anyway, there's enough interest in it. My friends who know about that period, and who have read Suetonius, who is the historian of that period, think it is very authentic. And our director did a lot of research, and our art department was brilliant. It's Danilo Donati, Fellini's designer, no less, who did all the sets and the costumes.

AVC: Between films like John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, there seems to be a resurgence of films that try to grapple with how far you can go onscreen sexually: whether you need to put on enough of a show to make it look real, or you need to actually be explicit. As an actor, how do you feel about a filmmaker saying, "In order for it to be real, it has to be real"?

MM: I think that's crap. I think that's pathetic. Go get another job. Listen: We're in the business of illusion. We are illusionists. Seriously, that is absolutely pathetic. You're telling me to do a love scene, you actually have to have penetration? That's absolutely beyond pathetic. If you can't think of any way of making that exciting, you're in the wrong job. That's what I think. I remember when they did Don't Look Now, and they thought that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie actually made love on camera. It's laughable. They were just two extremely gifted actors who made everybody believe they did and ran with it. There was no way there was penetration on the set. No way. Because that crosses over into a porno picture, and I don't care which way you dress it up.

AVC: Throughout the '70s, you seemed to land in films—like If…, O Lucky Man!, and A Clockwork Orange, and at the end of the decade Caligula—that were controversial to say the least. Were you drawn to that kind of material, or were the casting directors just drawn to you?

MM: I really had no say in it, except O Lucky Man!, for which I wrote the original storyline and original script. I lucked out that my first film [If…] was with a master, and he was just an extraordinary person in my life. When I met him, my life did a 360 completely. It was one of those extraordinary meetings that you have occasionally in your life. And I don't mean only work; I mean in friendship and loyalty and everything else. I learned so much from him. I think it might have been something like John Wayne had with John Ford, or Lillian Gish with [director D.W.] Griffith. Just such a powerful character in your life early on, it means so much. Stanley Kubrick cast me from seeing If… He saw it five times. I didn't audition, I just went to meet him, had a cup of tea, and he gave me the book and said, "Read it and call me." And that was it. Kubrick of course was extraordinary in a very different way, but if I hadn't worked for Lindsay Anderson, I wouldn't have been ready for Stanley. He gave me the confidence and he gave me the technique, such as it was in those early days, to survive. And to prosper.

AVC: Having worked with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson right out of the box, did you find it more difficult to work with directors who are a little less inspired?

MM: No, not at all. I'm very pragmatic in that I know there are very few greats in anything. I got lucky just to have gotten two of the real greats very early on. Better to have had them than to not have had them. And I've worked with other good directors—some of them really good. I've been really fortunate. That's the key relationship on a movie: the director and the actor. Of course, you can't compare the experiences. When you're in your early 20s, you're a very different person. It was a very exciting time, and my whole world was changing. Now I'm looking back, and hoping I can still offer something. Still do good work.

AVC: In your recent filmography, you've worked in areas that people might not have expected you to go in: animation, sitcoms, superhero stories. You really seem to be open to whatever comes along.

MM: Yeah, I've tried it all. I'd love to do radio plays. I think that one should be open to everything and shouldn't limit oneself. I particularly love theater, but with my family situation, it's much harder for me to do that now. I just love a challenge, and always have, and will do anything to make it interesting. I'll try anything, really, as long as it's a challenge and you can have some fun doing it. I think, honestly, having fun and keeping it fairly light are the key elements.

[via avclub.com]

***

Why Do Mexican Women Yell for their Papi During Sex?

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:28:00 +0000

Q. I am addressing this to both "¡Ask a Mexican!" and "Savage Love," hoping one of you will have an answer to this: Why do Mexican chicks yell for their papi during sex? —DADDY DEL DIABLO

A. "Dear Gabacho: Latinas calling men papi (daddy) during sex or in day-to-day conversation is really more of a Caribbean thing," says Gustavo Arellano, author of "¡Ask a Mexican!," "and my column isn't called ' J.Lo!' Then again, there was that chilanga chula (hot-ass Mexico City chick) who'd whisper it whenever the Mexican slipped her the chorizo . . . so let's answer your pregunta. In Mexico, as in the rest of Latin America, fathers stand atop the machismo mountaintop. They're the hombres who allow or deny a daughter permission to marry or leave the household, the man that wives must tend to and sons respect, fear, and follow. Dads earned such a place in Mexico gracias to the cultures of Catholicism, the Conquest, and the Aztecs—all governed by males who considered women little more than birth canals. Mix the three societies together, add some Freudian and Oedipal impulses, and you're left with some fucked-up sexual mores that a half-century of Chicana feminism and modernity have yet to eradicate. But, hey: Better your brown lady yell 'papi' during coitus than ' chiquito gabacho!' ÀQué no?"

[via villagevoice.com]

***

Janus Friis on Joost: adult content coming soon!

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:37:00 +0000

Joost co-founder Janus Friis has outlined future possibilities for the web TV service including charging users, introducing adult content and never going down the "slippery slope" of splitting ad revenue with ISPs.

Friis, interviewed in the Futureview address at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh TV Festival, was keen for the most part to convince the mostly-TV industry audience of the virtues of the nascent Joost service.

It was tough for Matt Wells, Guardian Unlimited's head of audio, who was conducting the interview, to extract anything other than textbook comments from Friis.

On the BBC iPlayer: "Great product, not as good as it will be".

On ITV, Channel 4 and BBC developing their own platforms for distribution: "It is like the retail category. Companies have a flagship store where they have their own branded experience and only their own products. Then they also distribute products through many other stores".

But a few nuggets emerged nevertheless. One wasn't that one name in the mix for the web TV service was the rather dodgy sounding Mowli (isn't that the name of Carphone Warehouse's animated mobile character?).

Friis did expand to say that Joost was "opening up" in a number of ways. This flexibility meant that it "could add pay-per-view in the future" and would "not rule out" introducing potentially lucrative adult content "sometime in the future".

When confronted with the sticky question of bandwidth issues - the same one the BBC is currently grappling with over potential mass-adoption of the iPlayer - Friis confidently answered that "the reality is the internet can cope. Cisco and ISPs can scale".

"Killer services" - such as TV content - will drive broadband uptake and usage, a good thing for ISPs surely, says Friis. "People don't get it (broadband) to get email".

This wasn't good enough for Magic Lantern's editorial development director Richard Ayers, the former portal director at Tiscali, who took Friis to task in the Q&A session claiming that "ISPs hate Joost".

Friis' response was that "people running ISPs" are in favour but those within the ISP world developing similar products don't like it.

"It is a schism within ISPs," he argued. Mr Ayers followed up by asking if in order to balance the extra costs of delivering TV over ISP networks, would Joost cut off a slice of ad revenue it makes?

"We are not negotiating to give up revenue," said Friis emphatically. "That is a slippery slope".

"If any ISP turned off eBay, Skype or YouTube other ISPs would find themselves with a lot of new users," is how he ended his defence on why ISPs are unlikely to get heavy-handed over the issue.

***

German Terrorist Haule Will Be Paroled After 21 Years in Prison

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:09:00 +0000

German terrorist Eva Haule, who was convicted for participating in the murder of an American soldier and a bombing attack on a U.S. airbase, will be released on probation after serving 21 years in prison.

The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt decided to parole Haule, who can leave prison on Aug. 21, the court said in an e- mailed statement today. Haule was a member of Germany's Red Army Faction terrorist movement from 1984 until her arrest in 1986.

``The court has come to the conclusion, together with the federal prosecutor and after hearing several psychological experts, that the convict now no longer poses a danger to the public,'' the court said.

Several members of the terrorist organization have sought early release from prison this year, spurring discussion on the Red Army and its so called Offensive 77. The terrorist campaign 30 years ago led to a series of murders, including that of Dresdner Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Juergen Ponto and the kidnapping and killing of BDI industry lobby chairman Hanns Martin Schleyer.

Haule was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for participating in the murder of U.S. soldier Edward Pimental. Terrorists killed him in August 1985 to obtain his identification card which allowed one of the terrorists entrance to the U.S. Rhine-Main-Airbase with a bomb-loaded car. The explosion killed two Americans and wounded several others.

In April 2006, the court said Haule must serve at least 21 years before being eligible for parole. Since June 2004, Haule was allowed to leave her Berlin prison during the day and started an apprenticeship as a photographer.

The fact that Haule now renounces violence as a means to reach political goals led to the decision, the court said. The judges heard Haule two times before reaching their decision.

In March, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a leader of the Red Army in the 1970s, was released from prison after serving 24 years. In May, German President Horst Koehler rejected a petition by Christian Klar for a pardon. Mohnhaupt and Klar were convicted for the 1977 murders of Ponto and Schleyer.

***

Hitler's record collection

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:53:00 +0000

Hitler’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ turn up in a dead Russian soldier’s attic.

Adolf Hitler, the most notorious champion of Richard Wagner and “racially pure” German music, banished Jewish and Russian musicians from the concert halls of the Third Reich — but apparently listened secretly to their work.

New light has been shed on the Nazi leader’s musical tastes by the discovery of what are said to be a hundred of his gramophone records found in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer, Lev Besymenski.

“There were classical recordings, performed by the best orchestras of Europe and Germany with the best soloists of the age,” Mr Besymenski said in a document explaining how the records came into his possession.

The 86-year-old, who helped to interrogate captured Nazi generals, died this summer. The document and the record collection have now been made available to Der Spiegel magazine.

Related Links
A cultivated taste that went for very best
“I was astonished that Russian musicians were among the collection,” Mr Besymenski wrote. Hitler dismissed Russians as ‘Untermenschen’, sub-humans, and was contemptuous of their contribution to world culture. Yet the records included works by Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninov — scratched from frequent playing and all clearly labelled ‘Föhrerhauptquartier’, the Föhrer’s headquarters.”

The Soviet intelligence officer had found them in Hitler’s Chancellery in Berlin in May 1945, still packed in crates. Hitler’s staff were counting on an evacuation to the Nazi leader’s Alpine hideaway on the Obersalzberg and it was known that he could only relax with his music.

Mr Besymenski, then a captain in military intelligence, kept quiet about the records during his lifetime for fear that he would be accused of looting.

The most astonishing fact about the records — essentially Hitler’s “Best of . . .” collections — is the presence of Jewish performers. Among the recordings is a Tchaikovsky concerto performed by the virtuoso Polish Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman. Hitler would have been aware, while listening to Huberman’s playing, that he had founded the Palestine Orchestra in 1936 (which went on to be the foundation of today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) and that he was living in enforced exile. The Austrian Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel, whose mother was killed by the Nazis, also had his work included in Hitler’s personal collection. It is not known which records in the collection were listened to most frequently, nor have they been formally catalogued.

“I’m not terribly surprised by Hitler’s record choices,” said James Kennaway, of Stanford University. “Nazi music policy was pretty incoherent. Stravinsky was played in the Third Reich because he was known to have right-wing views, Bartok because Hungary was a German ally.” Dr Kennaway, a leading musicologist who specialises in the Nazi period, added: “The only real point of consistency in Nazi policy was antiSemitism, so the Schnabel and Huberman recordings do stand out.”

Hitler had spelt out his view of Jewish culture in Mein Kampf. “There was never a Jewish art and there is none today,” he wrote, adding that the “two queens of the arts, architecture and music, gained nothing original from the Jews”.

Roger Moorhouse, a historian and the author of Killing Hitler, said that the record collection, if authentic, suggested a contradiction between the Föhrer’s aesthetic and political values. He said: “It is interesting that being Russian or Jewish did not disqualify a musician from a place in Hitler’s record collection. There was probably a separation in his world view between the political and the artistic.”

Although Hitler took piano lessons as a child, he displayed no personal musical talent. His surgeon, Hanskarl von Hasselbach, noted that “Hitler always whistled out of tune”.

His former radio operator, Rochus Misch, the last survivor of Hitler’s bunker, recently recalled how he had summoned his manservant to put on a record after a row with army commanders. “He just sat there, completely sunk in the music. The Föhrer needed distraction.”

Fuhrer’s favourites

Five discs that Hitler wanted to take with him

1 Piano sonatas, Opus 78 and 90, Beethoven
2 Wagner’s overture to The Flying Dutchman by the Bayreuth Orchestra, conducted by Heinz Tietjen
3 Russian arias, including the death in Boris Godunov, by Mussorgsky, sung by the Russian bass Fyodor Shalyapin
4 Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, soloist Bronislaw Huberman
5 Mozart Piano Sonata No 8 in A minor with Artur Schnabel

***

Porsche demonstrates Cayenne SUV hybrid prototype

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:23:00 +0000

July 27, 2007 Porsche this week demonstrated a Cayenne SUV hybrid prototype, providing a glimpse of what the company will offer to consumers by the end of the decade. The Cayenne Hybrid features a full-hybrid design where the hybrid module (clutch and electric motor) is positioned between the combustion engine and the transmission. The design will improve acceleration and engine flexibility compared to a conventional Cayenne and Porsche is targeting average fuel consumption figures of 9.8 liters/100 kilometers in the New European Driving Cycle and about 24 miles per gallon in the US FTP cycle for the Cayenne Hybrid, and hopes future developments may allow it to push towards a consumption figure of 8.9 liters/kilometer (approximately 26 miles per gallon).

Coordinating the car’s three main components – the combustion engine, the electric motor and the battery – is the Hybrid Manager, the heart of the Cayenne Hybrid. The Hybrid Manager, which oversees some 20,000 data parameters as compared to only 6,000 data parameters for a conventional engine, is one of the most powerful technologies found in any hybrid vehicle.

Other unique features of the Cayenne Hybrid designed to decrease fuel consumption include the power steering and vacuum pump for the brakes, as well as the air conditioning, which operate on electric power. Technical components, such as the oil pump in the Cayenne’s automatic transmission, have been replaced by electrically powered units. The Cayenne Hybrid’s electro-hydraulic steering – a first for a vehicle of its kind, will ensure the Cayenne Hybrid drives like a Porsche with predictable and safe handling characteristics and the agility that is expected of a Porsche SUV.

Porsche plans to introduce similar hybrid technology in a version of its Panamera four-door Gran Turismo. The Panamera will debut in 2009, with a hybrid to follow.

[via gizmag.com]

***

China's Me Generation

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:03:00 +0000

THIS YEAR'S MODEL: Young Chinese like Liu Yun, 23, an actress pictured in a Beijing dance studio, belong to a generation for whom prosperity and personal freedom haven't required democracy.

***

Mad Men

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:53:00 +0000

What you are, what you want, what you love doesn't matter. It's all about how you sell it. From AMC and the Emmy® Award-winning executive producer and writer of "The Sopranos" Matthew Weiner, comes MAD MEN, a provocative new primetime drama about how to sell the truth. Set in 1960 New York, the daring new series is about the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell while their private world gets sold. The 13-episode, one-hour original program produced by Lionsgate premieres Thursday, July 19 at 10 PM 9C.

Created, executive produced and written by Weiner, the drama series stars Jon Hamm (We Were Soldiers), Elisabeth Moss ("The West Wing"), Vincent Kartheiser ("Angel"), January Jones (We Are Marshall) and Christina Hendricks ("Kevin Hill"), and guest stars John Slattery ("Desperate Housewives"), Rosemarie DeWitt ("Standoff"), Talia Balsam (All the Kings Men) and legendary stage and screen star Robert Morse ("How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"). Michael Gladis ("Third Watch"), Aaron Staton ("The Nanny Diaries"), Rich Sommer ("The Devil Wears Prada"), Maggie Siff ("Michael Clayton") and Bryan Batt ("La Cage Aux Folles") round out the cast.

The Setting: In 1960, advertising agencies were an all-powerful influence on the masses. Personal and professional manipulation and sexual exploits defined the workplace and closed the deals. The high profile Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency created advertising campaigns – from cigarettes to political candidates -- better than anyone. It was a time of great ferment. Women had barely begun to come into their own. Librium and birth control were on the move. Ethics in the workplace, smoke-free environments, sexual harassment and ethnic diversity were workshops of the future.

The Premise: The series depicts the sexual exploits and social mores of this most innovative yet ruthless profession, while taking an unflinching look at the ad-men who shaped the hopes and dreams of Americans on a daily basis.

The Players: The series revolves around the conflicted world of Don Draper (Hamm), the biggest ad man (and ladies man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960 traditional family values.

Watch a sneak peek of the Mad Men Series Premiere.
See how Mad Men went from script to screen. Watch the Making of Mad Men.

***

Mad Men Watch: A Very Anxious Young Woman

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:51:00 +0000

TIME.COM: If you didn't already know that Mad Men was created by a producer of The Sopranos, you might be able to guess it by now. Like The Sopranos, it has a gift for making its world seem utterly hellish and utterly seductive at the same time. The casual sexism and racism and the highly cultivated cynicism. The smartly dressed men and women enjoying cocktails and cigarettes. The despair! The scotch!

This show pays loving, almost fetishistic attention to small gestures of style and courtesy--a server cracking an egg into a Caesar salad bowl--and to details down to the bananas (the crew sought out smaller, and thus period-appropriate, pieces of fruit as props). An enlightened 21st-century man will feel a twinge of guilt for so enjoying the show's lavish pictures of the trappings of midcentury white-male hegemony, but damn! what good-looking hegemons they were!

Another element the show shares with The Sopranos now: therapy. But in Mad Men, understandably, it's a woman having the panic attacks. Episode 2, "Ladies' Room," was self-consciously structured around the plight of its main female characters--chased by wolves as single girls (Peggy), captive and insecure as wives (Betty), or pursuing a tenuous brand of freedom (Midge). The structure could have been a little less overt; my main complaint about the show so far is that it's too in-your-face with its themes, not just with the this-is-what-it-was-like jokes (here, the admittedly funny bit about letting the daughter play with the drycleaning bag). The plight-of-women theme was unavoidable already; on top of that, the woman weeping in the bathroom and the divorcee lugging a heavy box alone were two blows of the hammer too many.

What saves Mad Men for me is that its dialogue, mainly, isn't too obvious, and it's well-played. As quiet and acquiescing as Betty is, January Jones gives us the sense that five things are going on in her head at once; she knows that she's trapped, even if she can't quite articulate how or find the way out; she's conscious that she needs help but can't insist on seeing a shrink without further distancing Don, the source of her anxiety to begin with. (And she's more trapped than she knows, as Don ends up getting a report--"She's a very anxious young woman"--from her doctor; modern science in the service of old-fashioned paternalism.)

And what is Don hiding, anyway? Ironically, the one place where Mad Men's self-consciousness doesn't bother me is in the office scenes. Yes, Don and his writers talk overtly about the zeitgeist--but that's what ad creatives do, or at least the ones I've talked to. It's natural, for instance, that Paul would describe the aerosol can as "nothing less than space age. It's steel, it has exhaust, it's even shaped like a rocket." And Don's objection suggests some dark things going on in that head that he doesn't like to let anyone into. "Some people think of the future and it upsets them. They see a rocket and they start building bomb shelters... I don't think it's ridiculous to assume that we're looking for other planets because this one will end."

There's the big hidden period detail of Mad Men: Don is an existentialist, or at least a nihilist. Life is absurd, people give you no loyalty nor deserve any, someday the world will end and there will be nothing but an aerosol cloud in space.

In the meantime, have another old-fashioned.

***

TELEVISION: Smoking, Drinking, Cheating and Selling

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:47:00 +0000

There were seven deadly sins practiced at the dawn of the 1960s: smoking, drinking, adultery, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and racism. In its first few minutes “Mad Men” on AMC taps into all of them.

This new drama set in the golden age of Madison Avenue serves as a bridge to a faded and now forbidden world.

Men wore white shirts, drank Manhattans and harassed compliant secretaries in the elevator. Everybody read Reader’s Digest. Jews worked in Jewish advertising agencies, blacks were waiters and careful not to seem too uppity, and doctors smoked during gynecological exams. Women were called “girls.” Men who loved men kept it to themselves.

The magic of “Mad Men” is that it softly spoofs those cruel, antiquated mores without draining away the romance of that era: the amber-lit bars and indigo nightclubs, soaring skyscrapers, smoky railway cars and the brash confidence that comes with winning a war and owning the world. It’s a sardonic love letter to the era that wrought “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” and “The Best of Everything,” but homage is paid with more affection than satire.

Matthew Weiner, who was a producer and writer on “The Sopranos,” created “Mad Men” and lends it some of the HBO show’s wit, apt music and sumptuous cinematography. Most of all the series walks the line between tongue-in-cheek knowingness and know-it-all parody.

The advertising executives, who called themselves “mad men,” were at the front of the consumer rat race, hypnotizing the American buyer with huckster campaigns created off-the-cuff in smoky meeting rooms or on a cocktail napkin at El Morocco. The advertising business was flush, blissfully unburdened by aging readerships, failing newspapers, DVRs or the Internet, and only barely accountable to the federal government or public opinion.

And that kind of unbridled freedom is the series’s one speck of sentiment, evoking nostalgia for a time before the current audience-knows-best rule of business, in which viewers vote on who gets to become a pop star, publishers ask readers to choose their authors, and politicians ask viewers to decide what issues they should discuss, as is the plan in next week’s live Democratic debate, a joint project between CNN and YouTube. When Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the suave creative director of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, receives consumer data from the research director that suggests there is no way to avoid addressing Americans’ concerns about the health risks of smoking, Don coolly drops the report in his wastepaper basket.

But Don knows he has a problem. Reader’s Digest says smoking causes cancer, and the Federal Trade Commission won’t allow tobacco companies to suggest there are “safer” brands of cigarettes anymore. Lucky Strike is one of his top accounts. “All I have is a crushproof box and ‘Four out of five dead people smoke your brand,’ ” he complains to his mistress (Rosemarie DeWitt).

She goes by the quaintly dated name Midge, but has her own career as an illustrator and a modern view of love and sex. “You know the rules,” she tells Don as she hands him his wristwatch after their postcoital cigarette. “I don’t make plans, and I don’t make breakfast.”

Midge and the Lucky Strike account are just a few of the many challenges in Don’s life, though his trusting wife and two children tucked away in the suburbs do not appear to be among them.

The boss, Roger Sterling (John Slattery), wants Don to handle a new client, Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), whose Jewish family owns a department store. Before the first meeting Roger asks Don to bring in a Jewish colleague to make her more “comfortable.” Don says there aren’t any, and is surprised to enter the room and find himself being introduced to David Cohen. ( “I had to go all the way to the mailroom,” Roger murmurs, “but I found one.”)

Don is put off by Rachel’s tony aspirations and high-handed manner. “I’m not going to let a woman talk to me like this,” he says, before storming out.

The younger, hungrier junior executives who aspire to taking over his corner office are also a worry. The worst is Paul, a slimy 26-year-old account executive engaged to a rich girl and constantly looking for a chance to outshine Don. (The show also owes a lot to “What Makes Sammy Run?”)

Roger, however, has so much confidence in Don he tries to enlist his protégé to work on a presidential campaign. “Consider the product: He’s young, handsome, a Navy hero,” Roger says. “Honestly, it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince America that Dick Nixon is a winner.”

Primitive technology is a running joke in “Mad Men,” and so is the position of women in the era before the dawn of women’s liberation and the widespread use of the Pill.

Tough, career-minded Rachel and Midge are the exceptions to the laws of the “Mad Men” jungle. (Exceptions, however, often rule: In real life two of the most legendary ad men of that era were actually women: Mary Wells, who had Braniff planes put in pastel and stewardesses in Pucci, and Shirley Polykoff, who asked, “Does she or doesn’t she?” and made Clairol’s fortune.)

On her first day Don’s new secretary, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), is hazed with leering comments by the young wolves in the company. “You got to let them know what kind of guy you are,” one says to a meeker colleague afterward. “Then they’ll know what kind of girl to be.”

Peggy is shown the ropes by Joan (Christina Hendricks), a sexy redhead who advises her to shorten her skirts and keep a fifth of Scotch and a needle and thread in her desk.

“Try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology,” Joan says as she removes a plastic cover from an IBM electric typewriter. “It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.”

In recent years there have been a few movies set in the late ’50s and early ’60s and directed in that vintage style: before “Good Night, and Good Luck,” there was “Far From Heaven” in 2002, a loving tribute to the full-throttle melodramas of Douglas Sirk. In 2003 Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor were paired in “Down With Love,” a sendup of Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedies.

“Mad Men” is both a drama and a comedy and all the better for it, a series that breaks new ground by luxuriating in the not-so-distant past.

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Interview with Glenn Danzig

rockerbande@gmail.com (Ronnie) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:18:00 +0000

"The Misfits helped form what American punk is," Danzig says. "It was like holding an atom bomb in your hand."

Tight black T-shirt. Straight black hair. Talons for fingernails. Pale, corpselike skin. Skull tattoo on pumped left bicep. Glenn Danzig relishes his image as hard rock's dark lord, even in the serene confines of Anarkali, his favorite Indian restaurant in Hollywood. Yet when the former Glenn Anzalone speaks, he sounds like the street-corner Jersey kid he once was. "This is a cool place, nice low lights," he says. "Maybe I'm mellowing in my old age." Danzig has never courted the mainstream, despite a major hit with the live version of his oedipal projectile "Mother" in 1993. But his impact is undeniable: My Chemical Romance and AFI might not exist if it weren't for his three ghoulish bands: punk pioneers the Misfits, the goth-metal Samhain, and the eponymous Danzig. And for a guy often considered prickly and combative, he seems anything but, as he generously offers up a bite of his chicken jalfrezi.

Highlights from the Danzig interview:

On My Chem and AFI taking Danzig's aesthetic to mainstream success: "It's cool, because both of those bands have said in print, 'We love Danzig.' We took AFI out on tour. And they've both covered Misfits songs. What irritates me are bands that pretend they've never heard of the Misfits or Danzig, but they've got the skeleton shirt."

On splitting his professional connection with Rick Rubin: "[D]uring the Danzig 4 sessions, I said, 'Rick, we gotta talk about this. We're selling a lot of records, and we're not gettin' paid.' We never got royalty statements for all those years. And there was an issue about publishing [rights], too. Rick told me he had nothing to do with it, and that I had to sue him -- that I shouldn't take it personally, that was the way business was. And I was like, 'What?' Because I felt we were also friends."

On Satanism: "There's all kinds of schisms in Satanism, but the thing I like about it is the quest for knowledge. Other religions are more like, 'No, you're not allowed to learn any of this. Only the select few are allowed.' ... I don't see any holy wars being fought in the name of Satan."

Read the complete Danzig interview in the August issue of Spin.

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