The Cooper Temple Clause Interview

The Cooper Temple Clause
Interview by Alexander Laurence

The Cooper Temple Clause was formed in Reading in the late 1990s by a group of six perverts, outsiders, and drunks. They were more interested in how well they could destroy equipment and drink than playing music. They came from all over but had some connection to the Reading area. Their first album was so raunchy and offensive that the record company didn't bother releasing it in America. Their hybrid style that mixes many genres and explodes the standard song form was a breath of fresh air in the British scene, which had become predictable and stale. The band is Ben Gautrey (vocals), Tom Bellamy (guitar, synthesizer, bass), Dan Fisher (bass, guitar), Didz (bass), Kieran Mahon (keyboards), and Jon Harper (drums).

In 2000, the group managed to sign a deal. On an extensive tour the group gave life to the new British alternative scene, which had been dominated by American acts. In February 2002, the Cooper Temple Clause delivered their debut album, See This Through and Leave. After a few years of tours and festivals they have become one of the top new acts from England. They played their first New York City show in October 2003, during CMJ. Their song "Promises, Promises" was a sign that the Clause was expanding their chaotic sound for a new continent. I spoke to lead singer, Ben Gautrey, right after some big Christmas shows. Gautrey went to the same Swiss school as The Strokes.

The second album, Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose, has already gone up the UK charts. It will be released in America in February. They will be doing the first of hopefully many American tours in March.

AL: How long has the band been together?

Ben: We all went to the same school. We have been playing for almost six years now. Tom and me have been best friends since we were twelve. We were into a lot of grunge then: Nirvana, Pumpkins, and Britpop stuff like Blur, Radiohead, and Oasis. The next thing to do was to pick up instruments and start playing. The others joined through friends and mutual acquaintances. When we were twelve we sounded like the heaviest band ever: we sounded like Boston. Luckily we didn't do any gigs.

AL: Did any of you have musical backgrounds or did your families support your musical ability?

Ben: The six of us are probably in a band because of our Dads. All of our Das are music nuts. We used to go through our attics for any strange piece of vinyl that had been collected over the years. All of our Dads had a healthy passion for rock and roll.

AL: Since you lived nearby, did you always go to the Reading Festival?

Ben: We started going to the Reading Festival every year since we were about fourteen. That was one of the main reasons we wanted to be in a band. You have such a diverse wealth of talent coming to your town every year. It's hard not to be inspired by it. I think that festival had a big impact on this band.

AL: Did you also get into the DJ Culture and dance music, which was big in the mid-1990s?

Ben: We are. We are discovering later now that we are fans of electronic music in general. We love everything on the Warp Label. Tom and Kieran are really into Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher. Five or six years ago, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were the biggest bands in Britain. Those bands opened our eyes to other elements. You can go back to Kraftwerk and Neu!, and all the Krautrock stuff.

AL: Did you get to play with any older bands?

Ben: We played with the Rolling Stones a few months ago, which was pretty surreal. Never in our wildest dreams, did we think that we would be sharing a stage with the Rolling Stones. That was very humbling and very special. We did a show with them in Dublin. Even though they had written some of the best songs ever, the way they toured was like so business-like backstage. It was so organized. You have this magic that you sense in your heads, like a dreamy state, that the Rolling Stones are this badboy, rebellious band. That mist was blown away when we toured with them. I guess it has to be that way when your tour on that scale and you has done it for so long. They all have their own separate tour buses. They don't sleep in the buses either.

AL: How many people do you tour with?

Ben: There are six of us. We do need a few people who can help Tom with the synths. We have about eight or nine people in our crew, but that is just for the bigger venues. At a smaller club we could survive with just one person. Part of the fun of going to America in 2004 is doing some low key dates where it. We are getting excited because you miss that atmosphere of small intimate clubs when you step up to the bigger venues.

AL: The New York shows at CMJ were the only time you played in America so far?

Ben: Yeah. We played just that one show in New York. It was in and out. We really enjoyed it. We have always wanted to come to America and tour and tour and see the east coast and the west coast. We want to see all the cities and go everywhere you can. It was nice just to finally play in New York. The reception we got from the crowd was surprising. We didn't expect them to know who we were, but they really did. They knew the songs. There was a lot of enthusiasm from all the people that we met there. We are doing a four-week tour in March.

AL: We have been hearing about the live show for a long time, but not all British bands come to America.

Ben: The main facet of The Cooper Temple Clause is that we are primarily a live band. We enjoy playing whether it's in front of two people, or two thousand people, or ten thousand people. It's the same every night. We go out and play with the same passion for the songs. We are not one of those bands that just stand there looking bored and pissed and look like they would rather spend their time doing something else. We absolutely love playing live to anyone who wants to hear it.

AL: In America we are used to British bands being sort of mellow. The Cooper Temple Clause is a little bit more intense than most of us would expect.

Ben: Yeah, I think so. That is one of the reasons that we started the band. We wanted to break this illusion of new bands aping and mimicking bands from twenty and thirty years ago, and not doing anything new. We wanted to push music forward. We wanted to say something new. We never said that we are better than anyone else. We just do what we want to do. We do what we love and feel. Our live show is energetic and intense and we are wearing our hearts on our sleeves. We are very lucky to be playing and very lucky to have people listening to what we do.

AL: When did you start recording this new album?

Ben: We started in October, 2002. We finished in May. That was quick since we had to build the studio. We wrote all the songs in that time as well. We didn't go in there with twenty songs. We didn't have any songs. We went to this little farm and converted it into our little world. We didn't know if you would be able to hear the metal workers next door. We didn't know if it was a suitable place for a studio. It definitely created the mood for the album. It took about eight months to do it.

AL: How do you go about writing songs?

Ben: Each song is different. There is not one way or set rule that we follow. All six of us do the writing. Sometimes it's one person that has an idea for a song. Sometimes there is some jamming. Something there is three or four people there. It does change. That is one of our endearing qualities that all of us write the songs. There is not one person standing there dictating how it should sound. We have completely different tastes in music and we are trying to work together. We are trying to make this big sound and push music in a way we all want it to go.

AL: Some of your songs go one place, then go somewhere completely different? What is up with that?

Ben: I don't know. Maybe that is just our warped heads. That is what happens when you are stuck in a farm in the middle of nowhere. We were three miles from any civilization. Your headspace becomes distorted. That is just how we end up writing music. It's quite unexplainable how we get there. It seems natural to us. When someone says that sound weird, we have no answers. It sounds to us how it should be.

AL: The title of the album comes from a Philip Larkin poem. Why did you choose that?

Ben: When you are in a band with six people, you are going to have a hard time agreeing about anything. Fisher was reading this book by Philip Larkin, and a line from one of the poems just stuck in his head. He mentioned it when the album was half done. Everyone thought it was too long. When we were finishing the album and we had a list of album titles, that name popped up again. Later that title made more sense. Some of the imagery in the lyrics of "Blind Pilots" and "Music Box" related to that title. Then we became worried about whether you could put the band and the title on a spine of a CD. It seemed to make sense. Our attitude is just deal with the repercussions later.

AL: Do you write all the lyrics?

Ben: No. It used to be mainly Fisher who wrote all the lyrics. Now Kieran and me are all chipping in. Tom wrote a few songs. We usually write about personal experiences and things we know. We don't feel comfortable writing about anything else. The first album was about us growing up in a satellite town in England, fifteen miles from London, where there is nothing for young kids to do. There is a lot of disillusionment and intimidation from people when you are different and want to do different things. The second album is more about close friends and families and people who supported us. It will be exciting to see what we do on the third album and what direction we will go in.

AL: Didz got sick recently?

Ben: Yeah. Last Christmas he had too many sun dried tomatoes. He was going to have his appendix taken out, but it ended up being more serious. He became physically ill and lost three stones (fifty pounds). The doctor said there was a chance of him dying but Didz wouldn't believe it. That was right in the middle of the album. We were playing him demos in the hospital. It was good to have an outside opinion. It was a scary time.

Didz (above) used to be in this band.

AL: Have you read any book recently?

Ben: I have been on a gothic adventure. I have been reading Dracula and Frankenstein. I was disappointed with both of them. I also read The 39 Steps. It was easy to read. Fisher and Kieran have been getting into Russian novelists. Big epic thousand paged books.

AL: Do you have any favorite films that you have seen recently?

Ben: I saw a film that was awful the other night. It was called The Transporter. It had an English actor in it trying to be an action hero. It was absolutely terrible. I still haven't seen a film that could match The Goonies. That and Back To The Future are my favorites. We are all fans of films of the 1980s. Back To The Future always comes on around Christmas in England.

AL: Are there any bands that you have played with in the past year that you liked or who are any good?

Ben: There have been a few. Oceansize are absolutely amazing. They are cross between Mogwai and Soundgarden. They are amazing live. We are all big fans of this Scottish band called Aerogramme. The 80 Matchbox B-Line Disaster are a phenomenal band.

AL: What songs are you going to play on this tour?

Ben: We will probably play all the songs on the new album. We will play the singles from the first album. It is unknown what we will actually do. Just expect a wall of noise. We have some weeks off right now. We are jamming and maybe we will have some new songs by the time of the American tour. We just played Wembley Stadium a few days ago. We opened up for Feeder. Wembley is almost the biggest venue in England. We got to play it the other day. If you would have told us a few years ago that we would be playing at Wembley we would have never believed it. We would never have dreamed that we have gotten this far. It was very exciting.

***

Website: www.thecoopertempleclause.com

Coachella the film

DOCUMENTARY FILM ENTITLED
"COACHELLA"
SET FOR THEATRICAL RELEASE
JANUARY 24, 2006;

DATES SET FOR
COACHELLA VALLEY MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL 2006:
SATURDAY, APRIL 29 AND SUNDAY, APRIL 30
AT EMPIRE POLO FIELD

As excitement builds for 2006's COACHELLA VALLEY MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL--set to return for its seventh year on Saturday, April 29 and Sunday, April 30 at the breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful Empire Polo Field in Indio, CA--music fans across the country will now have the chance to experience six years of festival highlights when the documentary film entitled COACHELLA arrives in theatres January 24, 2006.

Directed by Drew Thomas and produced by Goldenvoice, the two-hour feature film captures the magical sense of adventure that is unique to the COACHELLA VALLEY MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL, hailed as "The Best American Festival" by Rolling Stone, "...the nation's most respected rock festival" by the Los Angeles Times and "probably the best festival in the world" by England's NME. The film is filled with one classic performance after another by iconic headliners and wide-ranging, forward-looking artists, and also includes interviews with COACHELLA VALLEY MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL artists and fans amidst the vast green landscape framed by beautiful desert mountains.

The full list of performances in the COACHELLA documentary is as follows:
The Arcade Fire
Belle & Sebastian
Bjork
Bright Eyes
The Chemical Brothers
The Crystal Method
Fischerspooner
The Flaming Lips
Iggy & The Stooges
Kool Keith
The Mars Volta
Morrissey
Nu-Mark & Cut Chemist
Oasis
Pixies
The Polyphonic Spree
Prodigy
Radiohead
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Roni Size
Saul Williams
Spearhead
Squarepusher
The White Stripes
Zero 7

Gomez Interview

Gomez An interview with Ben Ottewell and Olly Peacock by Alexander Laurence

I first saw Gomez in New York City at the CMJ convention four years ago. They had just won the Mercury Prize and were curiously thrown into the spotlight. Gomez seemed like a humble band that had an affinity for American-styled rock. When I heard their song "Tijuana Lady," I thought that they were from New Mexico. It was hard to believe that vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Tom Gray, vocalist/guitarist Ian Ball, vocalist/ guitarist Ben Ottewell, bassist Paul Blackburn and drummer Olly Peacock got their start in Liverpool, England. Now they have been together six years and a well established band. Gomez is a wild mix of American blues, funk, electronic music, and psychedelic rock.

Gomez' debut release, Bring It On (1998), revealed the influence of artists like Tim Buckley and Tom Waits. The band's fame rose steeply due to the publicity generated by Ben Ottewell singing the Beatles' "Getting Better" for a TV commercial. The release of two more critically acclaimed albums, Liquid Skin (1999) and Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline in (2000) followed. After six American tours, and six years of being together, they have gained a massive American audience. Their recent tour culminated in two sold out shows at The Fillmore and two shows in Hollywood at The House of Blues. Their new self-produced album In Our Gun (2002) should collect more fans in the meantime for Gomez on their next tour. I spoke to Ben Ottewell and Olly Peacock in the lobby of the Fillmore as we looked at posters of bands who had played at the venue over the years ranging from The Grateful Dead to Erasure.

****

AL: Gomez isn't gimmicky. The music is the most important thing?

Ben: Yeah. The most important thing is being a musician. We don't have much else to focus on.

AL: When did you work on In Our Gun?

Olly: We finished this one at the end of 2001. Last year.

AL: Did you work more individually on this record this time?

Ben: Yeah. We did that this time. This record wasn't played live at all at the time. We took a six month break. It was interesting that because obviously playing it live is going to affect the way it sounds. Liquid Skin was played live all the time before we recorded it. In Our Gun was done more like Bring It On. Some of the original recordings were stuff we had done on machines at home. It was slightly better machines this time. We went into a big manor house for a month or so to finish it up at this place called Real World.

AL: Is location important? Like doing stuff at Abbey Road?

Ben: Yeah, definitely. It's cool to say that you recorded at Abbey Road but I think that Real World is better.

Olly: Abbey Road costs a fortune. We recorded Liquid Skin there.

AL: The early albums seem like a cohesive statement. In Our Gun seems more like an eclectic mix of songs.

Olly: The early albums are more like a pairing in a way. The latest one has more toys and sounds. It is the result of experiments. There is more time between this one and the others. By the time the first one was released, we already had quite a lot of songs that could have either gone on that one or the next one. We had written quite a lot of songs at that time. There is a feel on the first two albums that is the same feeling. By the time we got to Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline, we had cleared the decks. All the songs we had done in the first four years had found a home. Since then it's all been up to date.

AL: In Our Gun is a real departure then?

Ben: They are all new songs. We took a break because we had burned out touring. We had been on tour for three and a half years by the time we stopped. We have toured the States five or six times. We have done Europe the most. Then we have done quite a lot of stuff in Australia. That's a big place to go around. There's only about five major cities there. Then there's a lot of desert where no one lives.

AL: Who does the songwriting in Gomez? You have different lead singers and different songs. It almost sounds like a different band from song to song.

Olly: That is the point of the band: that it is mixed up and you could expect anything. Songs can come from anything. It can be generated from a sample, or a bass lead, or someone can have a song, or a half-written song, and bring it to everyone else. Everyone plays around with that and things change. It's a messy process.

AL: Did you get a lot of new gear to play around with on this record?

Ben: We did get a bunch of new gear. We have always been into that but we haven't had time to mess around with it before.

Olly: It just gave us more opportunity to create material to play something on top of. We had more time to practice and get newer sounds out of machines. People just turn on the machine and get this basic generic sound and play straight from that.

AL: Are you against conventional songwriting? The song "In Our Gun" stops, and then there's a bass riff, and the song gets really fast and goes somewhere else totally unexpected.

Olly: It's usually for our own amusement. We like it if it sounds good.

Ben: We get bored very easily. That's usually just a result of someone having a new good part. The song is going into a certain direction, then we come up with something else, and we say put that in there, and see if it works. We try it out. That's what it's like being in a group and having ideas coming at you all the time. We can try it out and see if it works. If it doesn't work, you can throw it away straight away.

AL: Are you still capable of being influenced?

Ben: Now we are listening to a lot of Rockabilly before the shows. It's cool. Eddie Cochran and Carl Perkins are really great. They have probably played here before at The Fillmore. Everyone has played here including Erasure. Oh dear.

AL: Did you grow up being a fan of music?

Ben: Yeah. We grew up in the CD age. When you got to your music buying potential, and you had money, basically that's when CDs came out. That was amazing. That's why most of the decent bands around today sound like they do. There's a whole heap of bands out at the moment who mix things up. A lot of it has to do with the availability of music these days. When you go into a store today there's almost one hundred years of recorded music available to you today. There are records from the 1920 to go delve into and listen to. That probably defines us more than anything else. I wasn't one of those guys who goes into every record store and every record fare there is. I didn't have the time. When I was younger, and I got into music, that was when CDs came out, and that made it easier to discover things.

AL: But some bands seem stuck with their influences. There are bands today who pretend like they never heard of Aphex Twin.

Olly: Yeah, sure. We absorb everything really, whether it's cool old stuff or the new Primal Scream record. It's all music. It's all going to get into you somewhere, not to the point that you are going to listen to Aphex Twin then go push buttons.

Ben: It's just music not a lifestyle choice.

AL: What was it like winning The Mercury Prize over some established groups like Pulp and Massive Attack?

Olly: That was all amazing and good. It was a bit bewildering. We were just about a year old as a proper touring band. It was an alien experience. We had to learn very fast. We were like chucked into the pool and had to learn how to swim.

AL: Have you played with any other bands or musicians that you liked recently?

Ben: Joseph Arthurs is great. We have played with him a lot.

Olly: Ian Brown is cool. We played with Cornelius a few months ago in Japan. It's a proper show with massive visuals. They are all timed and syncopated. It was awesome.

AL: Did you grow up listening to a lot of Heavy Metal?

Olly: Loads of it. When you twelve years old, you were either into indie Manchester stuff like Inspiral Carpets, or you were into Metal bands from LA or the Bay Area.

Ben: Well, I used to listen to Slayer. Mostly stuff from the Bay Area. We still like to play fast and loud.

AL: How do you choose who sings lead vocals on a song? Am I to suppose to think that whoever wrote the lyrics is the one who is singing the song?

Ben: Depends on the song. Sometimes whoever wrote the lyrics sings it. Mainly that's how it works, but sometimes one person writes the lyrics, one person writes the melody, and one person sings it. We use the voices like we use anything else, like guitar effects, just to get a different sound.

AL: Have you produced all your records?

Olly: We started out on a four-track. We did it at our parent's houses and garages. When we got signed we stipulated that we wanted to carry on in that way. They were happy for us to do that, and that process continued. We are happy producing ourselves and we are getting better at doing it.

AL: Do you use drum machines?

Ben: We use lots of drum machines live. Olly played most of the samples into the drum machines. There are samples and loops. There are various things running onstage all the time. We play on top of that, behind, in between.

AL: How has this tour been?

Olly: Really good. It's hard what to think after coming back after so much time off. One thing we knew was that we were getting better musically. People in the States haven't seen us in years, and in that time we knew that we had improved. More people have showed up to gigs this time and it's been great. It's a big place. It takes a while for word to go around.

AL: Some bands have to tour five or six times before people will have heard of them in America. Many bands put out a few records and do a few small tours and never come back. Only then, when they have gone people start to get interested.

Ben: You have to keep going. Bands in England think that they can do what they did in England over here quite quickly. In England, they have a solid music press. There is a weekly publication for the whole of the country. It's a little easier to get some recognition. But over here the country is so big.

AL: Many kids who are younger than eighteen and live in the suburbs don't go to shows because their parents won't let them go.

Olly: Most shows in England are flexible for ages generally speaking. Many kids come down.

AL: What qualities do you love about music?

Ben: Primarily because music is a means of escape. Not in a bad way, like I would want to get away from everything, but entering another reality. That applies mostly to playing music live. In the studio it's more like a craft thing where it's a challenge. It's like a puzzle a lot of time. But live you can wake up after a song and don't know where you have been. It's a trip.

Olly: It might make you feel really good as well. You might feel stinky or shitty in the morning, then you put on some Slayer and then it gets you going.

AL: Are you very political?

Ben: We are not like a political collective, but our eyes are open.

Olly: The biggest problem now is with the Palestine and Israel. Americans pump in three billion dollars of aid every year to Israel. That is where the Arab world has grievances with the Western World. Things should start right there.

AL: What is Gomez going to do for the rest of the year?

Ben: Go back home. We have some dates in England. Possibly we are going to come back to the States early next year. We don't know yet. But as soon as we can, we are going to do another American tour.

AL: When will you record again?

Olly: We have a whole new studio to rehearse and record in. That is being built at the moment. It should be done in a few weeks. So we will begin recording bits whenever we can.

AL: What should people expect when they come and see the live show?

Ben: Chaos. And turmoil.

****

Website: www.freegomez.com

The Alexander Laurence letter archive

LETTERS ARCHIVE 1985-2014

Notables:

24 letters from Harry Mathews, American Writer

8 letters from Gilbert Sorrentino, American Writer (1929-2006)

5 letters from David Markson, American Writer (1927-2010)

1 letter from Jacques Derrida, French Philosopher (1930-2004)

8 letters from Alexander Theroux, American Writer

5 letters from Mary Gaitskill, American Writer

2 letters from Rikki Ducornet, American Writer

5 letters from Stephen Dixon, American Writer

2 letters from Joseph McElroy. American Writer

2 letters from Gordon Lish, American Writer

2 letters from Raymond Federman, French Writer (1928-2009)

2 letters from S. E. Gontarski, professor and Beckett Scholar FSU Tallahassee

3 letters from Ronald Sukenick, American Writer (1932-2004) includes interview MS

1 letter from Floyd Salas, American Writer

1 letter from Hal Sirowitz, American Poet

1 letter from Bruce Benderson, American Writer and translator

1 letter from Doug Rice, American Writer and professor

1 letter from Julia Solis, American Writer and translator

1 note from William T. Vollmann, American Writer

1 letter from David Foster Wallace, American Writer

1 letter from Evelin Sullivan, American Writer, includes MS

3 letters from Stewart Home, British Writer

3 letters from Editions Du Seuil, Catherine Roulsin, concerning CodeX translation

1 letter from Lauren Fairbanks Jagernauth, American Writer

1 letter from R. G. Davis, Actor, SF Mime Troupe

1 letter from Ed Baxter, Scottish Journalist, re: Harry Mathews

1 letter from Nicole Panter, American Writer

1 letter from Colin Newman, British Musician and member of WIRE

2 letters from Marilyn Johnson, American Poet

2 letters from Catherine Texier, French/American Writer

1 letter from Rosemaire Waldrop, American Poet

2 letters from the Museum of Modern Art, NYC

1 letter to Harry Mathews (returned) wrong address

6 letters from Norma Cole, Canadian American poet

1 letter from Rick Moody, American Writer

1 letter from Lynne Tillman, American Writer

1 letter from William T. Vollmann, American Writer

1 letter from Janice Eidus, American Writer

1 letter from Tama Janowitz, American Writer

2 letters from Karen Elizabeth Gordon, American Writer

6 postcards from David Markson, American writer

2 postcards from Dennis Cooper, American Writer

1 postcard from Mark Amerika, American Writer

1 postcard from David Strauss, American Journalist

1 postcard from Joseph McElroy, American Writer

1 postcard from Joseph Simas, American Poet

2 postcards from S. E. Gontarski, American Professor

8 poems in original manuscript by Alexander Theroux

20 letters regarding publishing and submissions

THESE LETTERS ARE FOR SALE FOR ANY LITERARY ARCHIVES

SERIOUS OFFERS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO Alexander Laurence 

Email AlexLaurence (at) aol.com

Giant Drag Interview

Since I moved back to Los Angeles three years ago, Giant Drag has been one of the most exciting bands I have discovered locally. They may seem like a new band just formed. But It has really been a lifelong project born out of a love for music. Giant Drag is Annie Hardy (guitar/vocals) and Micah Calabrese (drums/keyboards). They are best friends and band members now situated in Echo Park and Silverlake. The band started in 2003. I saw them play at Silverlake Lounge a few years ago. They had a song "Blunt Picket Fence" on The Fold compilation. Next came the Lemona EP (2004). That led to tours with Har Mar Superstar and Brendan Benson.

Giant Drag combines folk music, blues with hard rock and even shoegazer music. After playing a ton of shows locally and a UK tour they came back to NYC during the CMJ and wowed the critics there too. The first album is Hearts and Unicorns (2005). It is coming out September 13th. They have taken their sound to a new level. There are some old songs from the EP like "Cordial Invitation" and "This Isn't It" but also a new batch of new impressive songs. Even their oldest song "Blunt Picket Fence" gets a new improvement updated with strings.

Some of the new songs like "Kevin Is Gay" and "Pretty Little Neighbor" and "You're Full Of Shit" are their best ever and indicate their new direction. Giant Drag have a soft side and a hard side. Their music has all the power and glory of a great impressive debut. This is for me one of the exciting records of the fall so far. Giant Drag has delivered the goods. This record is all about the pain and the struggle of life. You have to hear this amazing sound. I got to speak to Annie Hardy recently in her apartment in Echo Park. She seemed pretty excited about the album and touring this fall.

* * * *
AL: Most bands do their first album and it's all the songs they have written when they were young. It's all about hope and aspirations. Then they do a second album and it's songs about life on the road and groupies.
Annie: I don't ever want to do that. I don't want to be like The Get-Up Kids and write songs about missing people while I am on tour. I don't think that I will. I would rather write songs about Oprah, about how she is raising awareness by interviewing women over 60 with AIDS. Who would have known?

AL: Are your family musicians? What do they do?
Annie: No. Not at all. My mom is a writer. That is where I got my creativity. She writes plays and directs them. She wrote a musical even though she is tone deaf. She doesn't play any instrument whatsoever. She wrote it with another person. She wrote three plays and they are all very different. One is about suicide. She tours in high schools and jails. Her name is Molly Hardy. The plays are pretty cool. I played music in one of them. The plays actually change the lives of young people. These tough gangster types who are juvenile hall see the plays and they are moved. They are crying at the end.

AL: That sounds great.
Annie: Another play of hers is about AIDS. Her best friend died of AIDS when I was eight years old. He wrote the music for it. When that happened I was living in San Clemente. Places like that in Orange County are ten years behind culturally. When my best friend's family found out that I knew someone who died of AIDS, they wouldn't let my best friend drink off the same soda can as me. It's very white trash there.

AL: In Orange County, there is a lot of homophobia.
Annie: Yeah. Those people would start telling people that my mom was a lesbian. It was because she had a gay friend. You have to be kidding me?

AL: Were you going to be an actor early on?
Annie: I was in her plays when I was a little kid. I was acting all the time. I was thinking that was something I wanted to do. I went to boarding school when I was in the tenth grade. There was nothing to do there. I was acting there and I was in the choir. There are a bunch of boarding schools in Ojai.

AL: That sounds like going to a Prep School?
Annie: Everyone who went to my boarding school got into real colleges afterwards. It was weird to not go that way with your life. I tried some acting. I was only good at it when the character was an extension of my own personality. I can be myself on stage. As long at it is fun or sarcastic I can do it.

AL: How did learn how to play an instrument?
Annie: I always knew that I wanted to. When I was a kid and watching TV, I would watch Janet Jackson and "She's sweet." When I was in sixth grade I got my first guitar. My parents tried to get me to take lessons. I have always hated school and being taught a certain way. The first attempts at guitar lessons didn't work. I learned how to play the riff from "Jeremy" and "Cats in The Cradle." I thought that something is not right. In ninth grade I took lessons aga in. My teacher stopped giving me lessons because I told him "I was God." He called my Mom.

AL: You were being contrary?
Annie: Yeah, I was just fucking with him. He called my Mom and said, "Hey, Annie told me that she was God and she seemed really serious." I stopped then. The next year I went to boarding school and I met another girl who had a guitar. Her Dad was teaching her Beatles songs. So we learned how to play together. I learned a lot by studying piano books that had chord charts. I bought some r ock books. Around then I learned how to play and sing at the same time. Since then I have been all over that shit.

AL: You must have been in some bands before Giant Drag? What were those like?
Annie: It was pretty harsh. Being a girl was difficult. Even I was prejudiced against female musicians. I didn't benefit from being one of the guys, and having them teach me how to play the guitar. I would try to assemble groups with other girls. I thought that would work. In one band I played guitar and the other two girls were the singers. I couldn't find any girls who could play an instrument.

AL: Why is that?
Annie: It's weird. In San Clemente, it's shocking if you are a girl and you do something other than go shopping or go to the beach. Eventually a few of my guy friends let me play keyboards in their band for a while. I played my first show with that band. It was mostly playing some backyard parties. After a while I said, "Fuck these guys." I moved to Los Angeles. I knew I could find some girls, or maybe some guys if I was lucky, who would play with me.

AL: It seems like when you have four or five members in a band you always have to write parts for each member to play. Maybe you don't want any guitars on a track. What is that guy going to do when you play that song?
Annie: That is the great thing about having two people in a band. We always know what we are going to do. We always think about having a bass player or another member. But we eventually choose not to do that.

AL: When did you move to LA?
Annie: I was eighteen years old. It was in 1998. At that time I recorded a lot of my own songs on a four-track. I knew that I wanted a band. It's very lonely being a solo artist. You are very limited when you are alone. When I got to LA the same things would happen. I would meet girls who wanted to be in a band that couldn't play anything. In one band I was teaching one girl how to play the drums. I hardly know how to play the drums. I was showing one girl how to play the bass, and another how to play guitar. It was so fucking frustrating. Everything I tried, nothing really clicked. Nothing felt like it was worth it. I had one band that came pretty close. It was a band called Mein Coiffe. It was my friend Mike Felix. We used the Beauty Bar logo as our logo. I was twenty and I had a fake ID. I was going to bars and I was drunk, and I thought of that. That band almost worked. I got to collaborate with another songwriter. But that fell apart.

AL: Did any Giant Drag songs come into being yet?
Annie: We were doing a cover of "Wicked Game." There was an early version of "Blunt Picket Fence." There was one other band before Giant Drag. It was with this other girl. Before we even played a note together, she said, "This is what we are going to wear onstage for our first show. This is how I want to be. We are all going to have a special name."

AL: That sounds really interesting.
Annie: That is not what it is about. Dude, I am not going to do that. That girl still plays in a band now. I was really discouraged. I felt like I couldn't find another girl who had the same ideals as me. I want to find someone who didn't want to be in a band for the wrong reasons.

AL: What are some of the right reasons? It seems to me that a lot of female musicians go out with guys in other bands, while male musicians will go out with anybody.
Annie: Yeah. When you are a girl and you are boning a guy in a band, there is a thin line from being a groupie. But if you have a guitar, somehow you are supposed to be equal? I don't know.

AL: If you are dating someone in your own band, and then you break up as a couple, then you jeopardize the life of the band.
Annie: The White Stripes did it. That always seems like a bad idea. I have always dated people who were similar to me. Since they are similar, they end up being musicians or drug addicts. It's not a prerequisite. I like to hang out with people who have similar interests.

AL: How did Micah come into the picture?
Annie: He was actually recording a lot of my songs, for me. We are really good friends. We would hang out. We would spend a whole Sunday and record a bunch of songs. We would play a cover song by Journey at his house. One day I said, "Hey dude, you know all my songs. Why don't you be my drummer?" He agreed. Then we started thinking about getting a bass player. Just as a joke Micah started playing the bass parts on a synthesizer with his left hand and the drums with his right hand. We laughed. We said, "Wait, it's funny, but it works."

AL: I saw you play some shows in New York without Micah. There was a time last fall when he was out of the band. Then I see you guys play this year and he's back in. What was that all about?
Annie: That was pretty fucked. I was very hopeful at first. I thought it could be cool. But no one can play these songs as good as Micah. We have a special chemistry that I don't have with anybody else. The new guy came into the band right at the time we were getting signed. He said that he wanted to be on the deal. It's like "Dude, you have been in this band for a month. The record label won't even let you be on the deal, because it's too much of a risk. And if you do that the record label will own you for the rest of your life." At the end of the day, he quit. I asked Micah to come back for the recording. He had such a great time that he decided to stay. I made him sell me his soul at the studio one day. He was trying to buy something from me. I said "I will sell this to you for ten dollars... and your soul! That means you have to stay in this band for the rest of your life."

AL: You did that UK tour back in September last year without Micah.
Annie: There was a press photo of Micah and me. The new guy joined the band and we were doing a tour of England two weeks later. There were reviews of the show saying: "There's Micah." Sorry, that wasn't Micah.

AL: When did you play the first shows as Giant Drag?
Annie: We did our first show June 4th, 2003. We did a show about a month after we decided to be a band. I booked a show so we could get ready for it. I knew there wouldn't be any urgency unless I did something like that. It was like "Micah, I booked a show at the Scene. You either play it with me or I go it alone." The ball started rolling and shit started happening really fast.

AL: What were the first shows like?
Annie: The first show was at the Scene. The second show was at the Troubadour. The third show was at the Silverlake Lounge. From that show we got a residency. Scott really liked us so we started to play at The Fold a lot. We played a lot of shows at The Derby and the Silverlake Lounge.

AL: Then last summer you did another residency at Spaceland?
Annie: That was in June 2004.

AL: You did that show with Scissor Sisters?
Annie: Oh my God! That was the first show we did at Spaceland. I was going "Wow. Are we that popular? No, it's for that band." I thought they sucked. But all the shows were all full. That was pretty cool. That was a fun time. Micah actually quit the band in the middle of our residency, but played the rest of the shows. That was weird.

AL: Is that why you were wrestling with him on stage?
Annie: Yeah, I think so. I would get mad at Micah when he would make mistakes. It would fuck you up doing that. I would leap over the drums just to knock Micah over.

AL: What about some of the rumors surrounding the band?
Annie: Like what?

AL: I don't know. Maybe we should make some up right now?
Annie: I keep hearing a rumor that we have broken up. That is so boring. I heard a rumor that someone else writes all the songs. That one is funny.

AL: Did you go into the hospital for secret plastic surgery?
Annie: Definitely not!

AL: Who made the "This Isn't It" video? What is going on there?
Annie: My friend GJ made it. He is going to make the new video we are doing at the end of July. We were going to do that video for "Blunt Picket Fence." That was the only song we had mastered at the time. His concept was of me being in bed with a few dudes and a couple chicks. They are just getting up and out, and leaving me alone. That idea sounded better for the song "This Isn't It." Since we did it so fast we used the demo version of the song. It was a different tempo than the one on the EP. It got played on MTV2 in the UK.

AL: What about cover songs?
Annie: We have done three. "Wicked Game" seems like a song that I could have written. It felt really natural playing it. We have played it so many times now that it feels like our own song. We covered "When You Sleep" by My Bloody Valentine when we played those Spaceland shows. We also played "Ashes To Ashes" by David Bowie. We played that at Silverlake Lounge when I had cut my hand on a meat slicer. I couldn't play guitar for two weeks. We were doing some keyboard songs and that was one of them. I haven't figured out any great cover songs since then that are right for us.

AL: How did you do the new album?
Annie: We recorded every song that we have. We had eighteen songs now. I had an idea of the track listing. It's good that we recorded all the songs because some of the songs that I didn't think would be on the record ended up sounding really good. We put those on the final album instead of the other songs. We chose one song by Joe from The Icarus Line. It's funny because that is who people keep thinking wrote all my songs. That is ridiculous. But I think it's funny that he wrote a song that is on there. It's a real great song.

AL: Has the sound of the band evolved over the past two years?
Annie: Definitely. Before we had a bunch of songs with slower tempos. All our songs were sad and mopey. For live shows it's better to be upbeat. It's nice to have a fast pace. Maybe I have gotten angrier too?

AL: What pisses you off?
Annie: People especially. Injustice.

AL: You were a DJ at a club for a while. How does that fit in with the whole Annie Hardy universe?
Annie: That was the only thing giving me any money for a while. I didn't want to have a job and do a band on the side. I wanted to do music all the time. Because whenever I had a job or went to school I was bummed out. I hate dealing with shitty people and getting them a coffee, or being told what to do. I decided to live on very little money while my creativity didn't suffer. It worked. As a DJ at Beauty Bar I made in one night what I would have made a whole week as a barista at Starbucks. I lost that gig as a DJ when I moved into this apartment.

AL: What did you play?
Annie: I played stuff that I liked. People would come up to me and say "You are the best DJ I have ever heard." At least two people say that every time I play. I don't know if they are really drunk or what? Then I get the people who try to request songs. People want to hear stuff like Meatloaf and Madonna.

AL: Has you being from Orange County influenced the songs at all?
Annie: Definitely. Growing up in Orange County set up the tone for the rest of my life. You can take the girl from Orange County... Whatever. I was a weird person down there. I wasn't like anybody else. The only people who I could relate to were the really fucked up people. They were weird but not in the same way. We were the outcasts.

AL: Is that show "The OC" really accurate?
Annie: Micah and I were watching it the other day. It seems like Orange County. Only if these people were really young enough to be in high school. Only if they were shooting heroin would it be more accurate. "The OC" is mostly about Newport Beach. San Clemente is really different.

AL: Do you go back there?
Annie: I do but it's so depressing. I don't know what the fuck is going on down there. A bunch of kids I went to school with have died already. If they didn't overdose, they have kids already. Some of them are strung out. I don't know what is going on down there. There is a nuclear plant down there. Where I lived, Forrester Ranch, is built on a toxic waste dump. There are high rates of cancer down there. My mom had a twenty-pound tumor on her ovary.

AL: You had this article or two about you in the NME. For a lot of people in the UK that is one of the newspapers that everyone reads. How does it feel when you are one of the first few bands that some 15-year-old girl hears in Essex?
Annie: I feel weird when anything is written about me. I am not a hipster. I don't go out every night. I don't feel like "indie rock popular band" Giant Drag? Are we really popular? Are we really indie rock? What is that?

AL: I guess "indie rock" in that case is all the new bands that tour in vans and are not mainstream bands.
Annie: Don't you think that all those "indie rock" bands would tour in a big bus if they could?

AL: When we were in New York City last fall at CMJ, we were talking about all those articles comparing Giant Drag to The Breeders. What was that about?
Annie: Yeah. I finally figured out why that happened.

AL: You were really annoyed about it last year.
Annie: I didn't understand it. Why are people saying this? They were all saying the same thing. I was hoping that someone would change it up. But it was our press release, which I had never seen, that made the comparison. Once I saw it, I realized that 75% of what has been written about us was a ripped off sound bite from our press release. I like when people compare us to Nirvana. It's great when I get compared to any guy in another band.

AL: You want to be treated like one of the guys?
Annie: Yeah. I have always been that way. Most of my friends are guys.

AL: If there is a band with four guys, you think it's a good band. If there is a few girls in the band, you have to think to yourself "Is this a girl group?" But at the end of the day a good band is a good band. Let's evolve people!
Annie: I know it's impossible to ignore the fact that there is a girl up there. But I don't want to thought of as a girl band. I am a girl, but I don't act like a typical girl. I'd rather look like a guy onstage. I would like to be like almost non-sexual.

AL: Have you toured the United States yet?
Annie: We have been to Texas, New York, and the West Coast. In the UK music is really cool. It's really different over there. People like music and they really want to hear new bands. People are not to cool for school like they are over here. People go nuts for shows over there. They are dancing. They let you know if you are awesome. At our second show over there we sold twenty CDs. Everyone wanted us to sign them. It was insane.

AL: If people are listening to Giant Drag, what bands should they be listening to because you are paying homage to them?
Annie: I listen to so much different shit. If you are a kid and you haven't heard The Beatles, start there. Go from there.

AL: You do a lot of talking between songs. People expect now that you are going to tell jokes. How did that happen?
Annie: It's become a reason why people want to go to the shows. It started because Micah is changing the settings on the synthesizer in between songs. It's an old analog synth and it takes a while. If I didn't talk in between songs I would be standing there for a minute doing nothing. I started yapping at one of the shows and people started laughing. People have told me that I should do stand up comedy. The only time I have said anything funny it was just made up then for that particular time. It's perfect for a band situation.

AL: When did you record the record?
Annie: We started in December 2004. That was about six months ago. We recorded all our songs and "Wicked Game." There were two songs that we knew weren't going to be on the album. We recorded a lot of shit. It took forever. We worked in a few different studios. It took months.

AL: Was it done all live?
Annie: No. It was all done painstakingly slow. We recorded the drums in a nice studio at Paramount. We recorded the rest at Downtown Studio. Our friends from Dirty Little Secrets have a studio there. There is a vocal booth. It's the worst place to record. You can hear the other bands in the other rooms. The sound comes through the floor. You walk in the hall and you are bombarded with the shittiest music you have ever heard in your life. We used a tape machine for most of the recording. We recorded one thing at a time.

AL: You did the EP the same way?
Annie: Yeah. Pretty much the same way. We did most of it at Record Plant. It is a super-nice studio. We were getting it for free. We would have to go in when no one else was there. We did eleven songs because we thought we were doing an album then. We would work really fast and do fourteen hours of drums one day. Did one day of guitar tracks. Did another day of vocals. We finished it at the Dirty Little Secrets' studio. We had to redo the vocals and guitars there. The first stuff sounded like Pink. The engineer didn't know what we were supposed to sound like. He didn't have a feel for the music.

By alexander laurence

Lech Kowalski interview Director of Born To Lose (The Last Rock and Roll Movie)

The Lech Kowalski Interview BETWEEN DOCUMENTARY AND FICTION Director of Born To Lose (The Last Rock and Roll Movie)

I met Lech Kowalski at the NYUFF premiere of Born To Lose, a documentary about Johnny Thunders. Kowalski has done other movies in the past including DOA, a documentary about The Sex Pistols and punk rock. But Thunders was a seminal member of The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers. He died in 1991 at age 38 of years of drug abuse. Thunders was an influence on almost everyone who came after him, with his sense of style and always being close to the street. It was a twenty year rock and roll journey that had it's high and low moments and few survivors. In the movie, we see rare footage of The Dolls and The Heartbrakers, plus interviews with Mink Deville, Dee Dee Ramone, Sylvain Sylvain, Wayne Kramer, Thunders' family, and a cast of sleazy characters and depressing junkies that make your skin crawl.

*******

AL: A few months ago in Toronto you showed a version of the film that was three hours. You had a bunch of footage to chose from. What was the original idea you want to convey in this documentary?

LK: Making a documentary about Johnny Thunders seems like an easy thing to do. You can choose to easy or complex. When he died in 1991, and I originally thought of making a documentary about him, I had already shot a bunch of footage of him in the early 1980s. I had also shot a movie with him in it called "Gringo." It was a combination of a narrative structure made with real people, and then I added some real elements. It's a very real film. Johnny was going to be in that film, but it didn't work out because he was hard to work with. The people who were financing the film were uptight about drugs. Not that they had a problem with drugs, but that Johnny was so consumed with cocaine, it was difficult to work with him. We shot a lot of footage at the Mudd Club. Then Johnny had to leave the country. At that point the shooting ended. I decided not to use that material in the film because we never finished it. I decided to make another film called "Stations of The Cross" which never got done, but a soundtrack was released in the 1987 by ROIR Records. We shot him doing forty songs over three sets at The Mudd Club. I shot most of it myself.

AL: That was the stuff in color?

LK: Yeah. I went off and did my other films and I didn't keep in touch with Johnny. I talked to him on the phone a few times. I was working on a film in 1991 called Rock Soup about the homeless scene in New York. I came out of a mix and bought a newspaper and saw that Johnny's picture was in there. He died in New Orleans. I immediately decided on the spot, the corner of Broadway and 49th, to make a movie about him. His death signified an end to an era. His death was both expected and unexpected. Finally it happened. You would hear that Johnny died over the years. When he died, it was shocking, because it finally happened. I make it sound very cold now, but it a moving moment because I was involved in the scene.

AL: When did you start shooting actual footage of the family and places that Johnny went?

LK: I went down to New Orleans and started shooting on High-8. This was when High-8 was just coming in. I had bought a new camera. That's how the whole thing started. I had footage, I knew about other footage that had existed in New York. I shot stuff in all formats and over the years I accumulated all this material. The concept kept changing and it was at first financial. I wanted to shoot everything in 35mm in the studio. We did that with Johnny's son, Vito, and Dee Dee Ramone. The people who were financing the film in France were nervous about the cost. I modified my original idea because the stuff I shot in High-8 for mainly test shots was better. So I traveled around the world with a High-8 camera for years interviewing people and going to places were Johnny had played. I had five hundred hours of tape. I was thinking about how to structure the film.

AL: What were some of the ideas about structure?

LK: I had this plan to make this big fucking four hour movie. It was not going to be just about Johnny but the whole scene. Johnny would be the catalyst for it and the reference point. But I got tired of anecdotal stories. I wanted to make a different kind of film. I didn't want to make a "looking back" film. I wanted to make you feel like you were there in a club. I didn't want a bunch of junkies reminiscing about the past and make it dated. It took a long time to find a structure. There was one version that was five hours long, and another that was three hours, and an entire different version that was structured around Dee Dee Ramone.

AL: Do you change the film every time you screen it? To see what the audience reacts to?

LK: I watch the rhythm of the film. What works or doesn't. By playing this film in different forms, it not like the film is crystallized in any specific way. Each version gets a strong reaction from people. This film is always changing. I've screen the film in Poland, Sweden, Toronto, Finland, New York, France, and England, and there's always been a strong reaction from people internationally.

AL: I saw D.O.A. about twenty years ago so my memory is fuzzy. But it seems that in both movies there's no strong point of view, relying on talking heads to drive a point, or any moral perspective. You just show the subject and let the flaws show. You have to judge for yourself.

LK: I don't like moralizing. It's a simple thing to do. Who's to say who's right or wrong? People see the film and say "What a sad life Johnny had. It's too bad he died. It's too bad he took drugs." Johnny did what he did because that was a choice he made long ago. There's nothing sad about it, for me. If someone doesn't like it, or does like it, I have no feelings in that way. The power of what he did and how he lived is what I tried to interpret in the film, but I didn't want to say that this is bad or good. That stuff is boring. We have too much of that shit in our media anyway. That's not the point of the films I make.

AL: Much of the film is about heroin use. You interview many of his friends and you see Johnny Thunders on stage especially in the later parts, and you see the gradual effect of what heroin does. Having all these people talk with slightly slurred speech and slow drugged out tones, makes you feel intoxicated on something.

LK: I want to induce this state of what it would be like to be him. Johnny was high almost all the time. He lived this chemical existence like a lot of other musicians did who come from other musical traditions like Jazz. There's a history of musicians with talent who take up this drug thing. It goes back to the 1940s and 50s, to up till now. It's a reality.

AL: Taking drugs mixed with artistic expression always seemed to me a Romantic ideal. But when the ideal is not far away and it's in your face, when your whole life is fixated on drugs, it's very ugly and a bad idea at the end of the day.

LK: What you saw in the film was twenty years of Johnny's life condensed in an hour and a half. You see his physical progression from being a young stud superstar, who believed in the rock and roll dream, to what he became in the end. That arc is pretty strong. You mentioned the structure of D.O.A. before and compared it to this film. Both films were very hard to edit. But both structures are very strong, not that obvious to the eye, yet if start breaking it down you can see a certain progression. Filmmaking is divided into documentaries and then Hollywood fictions, the three-act play sort of thing. But there's also another category of film which is pure cinematic storytelling. That's a tour de force of what the medium can do which borrows from both documentary and fiction. That's what I try to do. I don't think of these films as just documentaries, but as pure filmmaking techniques that stand up on their own. It's like looking at a painting. A painting can be an action painting or a more realistic thing, but it's still a painting. The films I make are just films.

AL: When you go down to New Orleans and talk to Willy DeVille and the people who saw Johnny in the last days, you raise a bunch of questions and create mysteries: Was he murdered? Did he die of AIDS? Was he just sick of all the drug use?

LK: Johnny lives on in a state of a myth more now than when he was alive. There was always a myth floating around Johnny. To me that was the most important thing, not to answer any questions, but to help move that myth along.

AL: Did you interview Johnny Thunders himself and why didn't you use any of that footage?

LK: There's a lot of interviews with Johnny. I have a lot of stuff with him, but I didn't want to use any of it. I've done cuts where he speaks in the film. When Johnny spoke on camera, he was very literal. What he was saying was not that interesting. It didn't do justice to Johnny. When I put that material in the film, it made Johnny too realistic, and it didn't add anything to the flow. I said fuck it. I don't want to see Johnny talk about anything, because he talks to me with his music and that's enough. It's a film where you don't see Johnny speaking. The times where I liked Johnny speaking was in between songs. He would say a few words and that was his stand-up routine. That was a form of genius there. It was entirely non-intellectual. He was connected to the audience. He had a few things on his mind. The audience would feed him some energy and he would jump in there and say something and move on to the next song. He didn't have any intellectual pretensions. He needed a rhythmic thing to happen in between songs to keep a tension and keep the audience's attention, so he had a complete show.

AL: Was Johnny Thunders a Nazi? I ask because he wore the swastika.

LK: Johnny had that insignia around him a lot. Bob Gruen has this great photo of Johnny standing in front of a bunch of Andy Warhol paintings of swastikas. It's a weird and powerful image. Did Johnny know the power it had? Subconsciously I think he did. But I'm not sure if he understood the history of Germany at that point or discuss it at all. I'm not sure what it meant to him.

AL: Why does a movie about Johnny Thunders seem like an event, but any other rock and roll group would seem like a joke?

LK: It's there for people to discover, and it's fresh, because very few people know about it. Johnny is a known source. Who cares about the fucking Rolling Stones? They have no relevance. Johnny has a relevance because of the way he lived and his myth never really coalesced historically. So it's all left open. Nobody wrote a definitive biography about him. There's no definitive album. No record company has exploited his myth and reality and put out a CD that sells millions, and therefore end the myth. Once something is pushed by the corporate system it's dead. At this point in history, people are sick and tired of packaging and selling. I don't want this film just to be a flavor of the month. The film has to have a sense of discovery, so they can enjoy it without the sense of it being forced down their throats by Miramax. Those companies are concerned with making money, so most of their films add nothing to the culture. Who cares about any film made three years ago or three months ago, because they are all boring.

AL: Do you think that filmmaking is the only democratic artform?

LK: Until you get to the point of financing. All these new DVD formats is interesting, but it's still expensive to transfer to film. The mini-DVD is a real great tool for filmmaking. I'm making a film in Poland right now about a bunch of underground guys who make handmade boots. I'm making it for French TV. I shot some stuff on High-8 to give it a certain texture to mix together. I like cutting films on the computer. People who are purists and want to shoot only film are silly. Film is really dirty ecologically and fucks up a lot of water. Unless you are a really good filmmaker and going to make a good film, why mess up so much water? Shoot on video.

AL: Are there any directors that you like?

LK: I just saw an interview with Polanski. He's been around for a long time, but for me, he's a real brilliant filmmaker. He's the elder statesman of a certain film heritage that's almost gone. He bridges different worlds and different time periods. I'm curious to see his new film. Wim Wenders I have a lot of appreciation for. I'm really not interested in filmmakers who want to travel around the world, looking for adventure, tapping into other cultures, using that to say something that is really irrelevant. They're tapping into exotic cultures because they're bored with reality. Wenders is guilty of this in the case of Cuban music, with The Buena Vista Social Club, but hopefully that music isn't destroyed because it has been packaged. You have to be careful of how you present a subject because filmmaking can be like pollution. There's too many cars in the world and that's destroying the world ecologically. Films have the same potential to destroy the world, not ecologically, but culturally. When you present things to the world, it becomes a product. I'm afraid of extinguishing anything that is vital.

-- by Alexander Laurence