A Few Words with Comedian Brian Posehn

If you haven't heard of funny man Brian Posehn, chances are you've seen his work--with a resume that includes "The Sarah Silverman Show," the original "Comedians of Comedy," regular appearances on Comedy Central's Roasts and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." This weekend, he's headlining four shows at Comix (Fri. and Sat. at 8pm and 10:30pm; buy tickets here). In honor of his visit to New York, I asked Brian to tell us about five of his favorite places in the city. Here's what he had to say (so now you can stalk him this weekend. You're welcome).



(1) The Burger Joint at the Parker Meridien: It's a burger joint hidden inside the lobby of a fancy pants hotel, like most good burger joints. Perfect, simple burger and a surly but friendly staff straight out of that old "SNL" Cheeseburger Cheeseburger sketch.

(2) Midtown Comics: Huge two-level comic shop right by Times Square. All the nerds are tough New Yorkers. I had never been afraid for my life while perusing Batman trade paperbacks before I found this shop.

(3) Vasacs Horseshoe Bar/ 7B: Great little dive bar in the East Village. The jukebox is totally metal and they have a Buck Hunter game. And you might even glimpse the ghost of David Cross.

(4) Original Original Original Original Ray's Pizza: This is the best one in the city. I forget where it is, I was very drunk. But it is worth finding.

(5) Morimoto NYC: Yes, this is the best sushi I've had in NYC. Yes, it's that frowny "Iron Chef" dude. The real secret to why his food is so awesome is that angels jerk off on it before it makes it to your table. Sounds gross, but try the miso cod and you'll thank me and those angels.

Jena Malone: Indie Ingenue

BY: JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: SETH KUSHNER

Would you like half?” Jena Malone asks me at the start of our interview, referring to her bottle of Vitamin Water. Sweet and soft-spoken (and extraordinarily polite), you may not know her name—yet—but chances are you’ve seen one of Jena’s films. From Into the Wild to Saved! the young starlet has already racked up over 35 big and small screen credits, and at 23-years-old she’s just getting started. That’s why we jumped on the opportunity to chat with Jena about her upcoming films, her burgeoning music career and her take on the world of fashion.

YRB: So, what projects can we look forward to seeing you in this fall?
Jena: The Go-Getter will still be out this fall. It’s this independent film with Zoey Deschanel and Lou Taylor Pucci. It went to Sundance two years ago, and it’s such a beautiful film about a road trip and coming of age. It’s the most, sort of, sexually deviant character I’ve ever played, just in the sense of a young woman understanding what sexual manipulation is within her own femininity. I think there’s a point when every woman realizes that her looks or her body or her temperament can win her certain things with men. And [my character explores] how to push those limits, and how empowering that feels, how strange that feels and how, in the beginning, it can be very innocent, and she kind of gives Lou Taylor Pucci’s character the ride of his life. And then I’m working on this film right now called The Messenger, which should be coming out in the fall/winter.

YRB: I had a chance to check out some of your music on MySpace. Can you tell me a little bit about that side of your career?
Jena: What song did you hear?

YRB: “New Year Come.”
Jena: Oh, that’s by Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains. All that music came from two demos that I made myself, produced myself, engineered myself with the help of musicians—like I recorded a friend playing guitar over the phone. For “New Year Come” I had a friend of mine from Lake Tahoe (where I live) come in and play violin and help me do an arrangement, and he also let me abstract it, cut and paste it and put it together. I wrote that two years ago on New Year’s Eve.

YRB: So you write the lyrics and the music?
Jena: Uh-huh. But I don’t know how to write music, and I don’t know how to read music. It’s just more intuitive, and working with ProTools and finding something that I like and trying to sort of re-edit that and shape it…but Jena and Her Bloodstains sort of disintegrated. Then I had this dream in January that I was gonna build a shoe—a sort of mobile, one-woman music cart—that I would be able to play anywhere, and I wanted it to be in the shape of an old leather shoe, you know, like the story, “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” So I started doing these designs for it, and it ended up looking like this crazy contraption made of chicken wire and cardboard, with all this electrical equipment. I eventually realized, fuck, this is not gonna work. But then I bought this old steamer trunk and I was about to drive down to L.A., and I was looking at it in my bedroom, and I was like, “That’s it! That’s what I’ll build the instrument out of”—because it’s compactable, and I can wheel it around on a dolly. So I put all of my instrumentations in there—a little karaoke amp, a keyboard, a drum machine, a little mono-synth, some hand percussion instruments—and set it all up, and it was absolutely everything I could have wanted. I put it in my trunk the next morning, drove down to L.A., and started experimenting with it. I brought it over to a friend of mine’s house, and we set it up and we just jammed. I jammed on the shoe, he jammed on the piano, and we wrote four songs in one night. And I was like holy shit, I’ve never met a musician who’s able to follow my extractions and add a certain groundness to it; to make it a little more linear. So now we’re in a band called The Shoe, and we just finished an album called At Lemjay’s Garage. It’s a six-track EP. I also started a record label called There Was an Old Woman Records.

YRB: As an actress and musician, how do you feel about the stigma of “actors-turned-musicians”?
Jena: Well, I think the stigma just lies in how we define what an artist is.

YRB: What would you say you’re most recognized for, or would want to be most recognized for?
Jena: Well, the thing you’re most recognized for is never the thing that you want to be most recognized for. I mean when I got Punk’d I found that more people came up to me because of that than for anything else I’d ever done, which was very disheartening. But I think as an artist you want to be recognized for the most recent thing you’ve done because it’s the most personal to you, it’s the most intimate, and it’s what you’re saying at that moment.

YRB: You’ve worked closely with some pretty major celebrities—from Susan Sarandon to Sean Penn—is there anyone that’s been the most fun work with, or anyone you want to work with? What about a particular film that was especially fun to make?
Jena: I’ve wanted to work with Ben Foster for a very long time, and I’m getting to work with him now [in The Messenger]. I thought he was amazing in 3:10 to Yuma and Alpha Dog. I’ve worked with Emile [Hirsch] a couple of times and thought he was amazing. The most fun film I’ve done is probably Saved! because it was the first time I had done a film besides Cheaters where everyone was the same age. It’s like summer camp—we’re all there for the same reason, but there’s also free time, and you’re spending dinners together, you’re going out for karaoke together and throwing marshmallows off the patio.

YRB: Let’s talk about fashion for a minute. What kind of style do you have? What are you most comfortable wearing: high fashion or sweats?
Jena: I’m probably the most comfortable in something that makes me feel outside of myself, in a sense. I was a tomboy my entire life, and then I turned 21, broke up with my boyfriend and started finding that I was suddenly drawn to clothes that were a lot more girly and feminine.

YRB: What are some of your favorite labels or designers?
Jena: I love Sonia Rykiel, and I also love Linda Loudermilk.

YRB: What would you say are some of your greatest musical influences?
Jena: For music it’s been a very specific group of artists: Tom Waits, Neil Young, PJ Harvey…

YRB: As a young actress in Hollywood, how do you avoid falling victim to the Paris and Lindsay-type of existence?
Jena: The thing is, you are what you eat, you are what you wear, you are what you think, and that’s it. So I feel like whether that is for them a heightened sense of reality or not, what we get from it is some version of what their selling—to themselves, or to the public or to their mothers or to their friends. I’ve only ever sold who I am. They exist so I don’t have to. And I’m glad that they fulfill their space in the collective conscience; if they didn’t, other people would. And what they’ve been hawked as, and what the press has over-established them as, is helping to implode these crazy obsessions with celebrity. So in a way, whether we love them or hate them, it’s a very beautiful thing because they’re actually helping turn the tides. I think the public is a little bit sickened by our own interest, and what our interest has turned these women into, or allowed them to be turned into, and we’ve seen a lot of negative effects that our overindulgence has allowed.

Saturday Night Live Writers, Performers, and Andy Samberg Groupies Turn Out to Support Writers Guild

Surprise guest Janeane Garofalo opened for "SNL" vet Darrell Hammond, below, on Monday night at Comix

It was a full house Monday evening at Comix where assorted "Saturday Night Live" writers and players both past and present participated in a comedy event to benefit the striking Writers Guild of America, East. In keeping with the trend of wearing your support for the writers on your face, "strike beards" were in full effect, and the overall mood seemed to indicate that no one expects to return to work anytime soon.

Hosted by Jason Sudeikis (who joined the cast of "SNL" in 2005 after spending several years in the writers' room, and who also played Floyd on the first season of "30 Rock"), the original lineup boasted appearances by Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen, though in the end, neither of them were able to do so, for reasons unknown. But everything was still kosher thanks to those who did perform, including "SNL" writers Bryan Tucker ("Chappelle's Show"), 25-year-old Harvard success story (it's about time!) Colin Jost, and former staff writer Leo Allen (one half of the comedy duo Slovin & Allen). Several video clips were shown, most notably an hilarious commercial parody starring Kristin Wiig and a digital short starring Armisen and Samberg, directed by the latter's Lonely Island cohort/ "SNL" writer Akiva Schaffer, who was also in the audience at Comix but dipped out halfway through the show.

Although at least one unfortunate heckler made it known that she had only come to see unlikely dreamboat du jour Andy Samberg--whose rise to fame began two years ago with a video about cupcakes and was sustained by a video about his junk--his failure to show up was well-compensated with a special guest set by Janeane Garofalo. As always, her best material was political, and though she generally laid-off the Democratic candidates, she was more than happy to riff on their Republicans counterparts, making light of the fact that three of them "actually believe the jury's still out on evolution." Which is funny--and at the same time not so funny--'cause it's true.

But the real highlight of the evening?

Headliner Darrell Hammond, who announced right off the bat that he was jacked up on Vicodin, although it was unclear whether or not he was kidding, and his behavior throughout the rest of his set made it no clearer. After commenting that he'd just come from Penn Station ("For those of you from out of town, that's the place that inspired all of Stephen King's novels"), the 13-year veteran of "SNL" went on to perform virtually every impression for which he is most famous: Donald Trump, Tony Soprano, Bill Clinton, Sean Connery, Dr. Phil and a dead-on
George W. Bush. (Though, for the record, Sudeikis plays the president in current "SNL" sketches. Or at least he did, when there were current sketches.)

Hammond's musings on the Clintons--particularly his point that if Hilary wins the election, Bill's job will literally be to socialize with and entertain the first ladies of other nations ("Hey there Mrs. Putin, this here is the Lincoln Bedroom. And this is the Lincoln bed")--were a hit, as were his observations about President Bush ("He starts out with the intention of making a point, and then mid-sentence, he decides he simply doesn't feel like it: 'The American people are tirelessly [pause]... They're tireless'").

If you don't consider the cancellation of the Golden Globes to be any great casualty, then you may think that because there is new programming on TV this week, the strike doesn't impact you. But the networks are down to the sitcom reserve supply, and when the scripts run out several weeks down the line, there's going to be no new content on prime-time television until the strike is resolved (unless you count "Celebrity Apprentice," which I refuse to do). And while the networks are making a ton of money off the exploitation of their writers and the strike itself, the people who really make the magic happen are starving to death. Fine,
that last part may not be true, but it totally might be if this doesn't end soon.

So here's my plea: Stop watching episodes of "30 Rock" online, grow a beard, join the picketers, or do whatever else you can to help ensure that the networks start feeling the pain of this strike the way the writers are. If not for them, do it for me-- because with the exception of booze, television is the closest thing I have to a boyfriend.

Human Giant Saves MTV: Suck On This, Spencer Pratt

Above: Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer and Aziz Ansari are Human Giant

Ordinarily, the chances of me going out on a Monday night are nil, especially in this brick-ass cold. But with my television withdrawal giving me an increasingly nasty case of the shakes, I took the opportunity to check out last night's sneak preview of the new season of "Human Giant"--the best thing to happen to MTV's comedy programming (or rather, MTV period) since "The State"-- hosted by the Human Giants themselves.

As any proper night should, this one began with drinks. Various members of the press (editors and writers from Maxim, the NY Post, the Village Voice, ASCAP, Giant, and other publications) assembled beforehand at West Chelsea haunt Half King, along with the show's stars, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer and Aziz Ansari, before making the troupe to the UCB Theater.

It may have been after 11pm on a weeknight, but you wouldn't have known it from the size of the crowd, which was spilling out into the aisles. Granted, the show was free, but it was clear that these people would probably have paid to see it. And for good reason--the raw and uncut clips screened last night were so outrageous, explicit and unbelievably hilarious, it's difficult to imagine that the Standards Department at MTV would even entertain the possibility of airing them, even after heavy editing. (Case in point: A sketch called "Car Accident," which tells the tale of Bruce Penis (Huebel), a deceased gay porn star whose ghost haunts his supposed killer (Ansari) by violating him physically in order to open his, uh, eyes to the truth.)

Afterwards, those of us who aren't a bunch of lightweights and whiners--winos, perhaps, but not whiners--returned to Half King for more drinks with Rob, Paul and Aziz and friends that included several Saturday Night Live writers and performer Bill Hader.

I had the chance to spend some time chatting with Rob (who has frequently appeared on "Best Week Ever" and played the memorable Dr. Mark character in several episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"), and he told me that filming for season two is going well, but admits that it can be quite a lot of work writing and developing consistently funny material that can carry through several hours of sketches (a full season of "Human Giant").

If the material that aired on the first season of the show--which got the green light for season two after MTV execs let the guys take over control of the airwaves for 24-straight hours of programming, broadcast live from the network's Times Square studios--and what we saw last night is any indication, then their hard work is well worth it. Nothing is off-limits (including, but not limited to, 9/11, which they famously parodied last season in a number of episodic sketches entitled "Lil' 9/11").

Though the beer wasn't free (it never is, sadly), getting to see the show was certainly worth every bit of pain I experienced this morning, when my alarm clock began taunting me to rise at the ungodly hour of 9:30am. But more importantly, it's reassuring to know that in March '08, "Human Giant" will be back on the air, giving people like me--who would sooner slit our wrists than watch 30 minutes (let alone a 12-hour programming block) of shows about Heidi Montag, her deadbeat boyfriend Spencer Pratt, and the trials and tribulations of their beef with Lauren Conrad--a reason to watch MTV.

Movie: Death Sentence

After making his wildly successful directorial debut with the low-budget horror film Saw, young director James Wan returns with Death Sentence, a revenge-thriller about a family man (Kevin Bacon) who takes matters into his own hands after his son is murdered. I caught up with Wan to discuss Death Sentence and his approach to filmmaking, and here’s what he had to say.

WWW.FOXMOVIES.COM

A FEW WORDS WITH DEATH SENTENCE DIRECTOR JAMES WAN

Q: Tell us about the basic story behind Death Sentence.
A: Kevin Bacon plays a father whose path crosses with a street gang when his son is murdered in an initiation killing, and in a fit of rage and in the heat of passion he makes a mistake and goes after one of the people that was responsible. I describe the film as a revenge tragedy – it just spirals out of control. It’s not an outright revenge movie from start to finish. The first half of the film plays more like a thriller, while you watch this normal, everyday, white-collar guy just slowly losing control over the world that he knows, and getting caught up in a world that is very opposite his own. It’s basically a story about two different families when worlds collide – you have the family of the gang and the suburban family of Kevin Bacon. It really is a moral tale. He does what he does but he ends up paying dearly for it. ‘How far would you go to protect your family?’ If I was the marketing guy, that would be the tagline.


Q: You’re best known for making horror films. Why did you decide to switch it up?
A: I was really starting to be pigeonholed as a guy who only makes horror films, and that is so not me. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a movie fan as opposed to just a horror fan, and I felt like the revenge-thriller genre was a good stepping stone for me to try something different and concentrate more on the drama of an everyday life, performances and all that stuff, and I got the opportunity to work with a lot of really good actors. I wanted to show another side.


Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers?
A: The best advice I can give would be things I experienced myself, and I say the best thing one should retain is naivety. When you’re young and stupid and you don’t know any better, you just go and do it; you don’t let anyone discourage you, you just follow your heart. You should do what you believe in – just go for it. Especially in today’s world, where studios and producers are willing to take chances on young, up-and-coming directors.

Interview: John Leguizamo & Donnie Wahlberg, stars of "The Kill Point"

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPIKE TV

Who needs Jack Bauer when you’ve got… Pittsburgh?

“I love Pittsburgh, I think it’s underrated,” says actor Donnie Wahlberg, who plays hostage negotiator Horst Cali on Spike TV’s new summer miniseries The Kill Point, shot on location in the ‘Burgh.

Joining Wahlberg on set was John Leguizamo in the role of “Mr. Wolf,” the ringleader of a team of disgruntled Iraq War veterans who decide to rob a bank.

Wahlberg admits that although he is ostensibly playing the role of hero, “You could just as easily not root for [my character]. I think in the end people will,” he says, “but [Wolf and Cali] are two flawed characters, they’re not perfect. It seems like sometimes the choices they make aren’t always great, but at their core they’re both good guys and they make a connection. They’re both fearlessly determined to get their way, and while they respect each other, it’s like a very good chess match. They find that they have a lot in common but they both want to win, they both want to accomplish their goals.”

Leguizamo likens the relationship between Wolf and Cali to that of the lead characters in Les Misérables. “The cops and the underbelly are flipsides of the same coin,” he says. “We relate to and understand each other. We respect each other, but I don’t know if we love each other.” And, as in Les Mis, Leguizamo is confident that the audience will side with the so-called criminal.

“I’m a good guy gone bad that you have to love no matter how much you hate,” Leguizamo says. “If I do my job right then you will totally identify and sympathize and hopefully root for my boys and me. We have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and have it bad. It’s tough to come back from the war or any war and adjust to normal life. Nobody prepares you for it.”

Indeed, aside from to its natural appeal as a traditional tale of cops and robbers, the very premise of The Kill Point – namely, that a high stakes bank heist is being carried out by former U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq – ventures into interesting political territory, territory that most major networks seemingly consider too controversial for primetime television. And while Leguizamo and Wahlberg insist that the show is not intended to make any overt political statements, both actors acknowledge that of course it does, if only implicitly.

“There are probably a lot of veterans going through what these guys are going through. They haven’t all made the choice to rob a bank, but many veterans are very unhappy with the way things have turned out, given the sacrifice that they’ve made. We’ve heard about some of them – we’ve heard about a certain military hospital being inadequate for veterans – so inevitably it will make a statement but I don’t think it’s the goal of the show,” says Wahlberg, not-so-subtly referring to the recent scandal surrounding the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the treatment (or lack thereof) being provided to the vets. “The war is the war,” Wahlberg says. “I don’t think any statements need to be made – they’re clear enough. Whoever doesn’t know what’s going on with this war is living under a rock.”

Similarly, when asked what drew him to this particular show and this particular role, Leguizamo says, “I found the veterans’ plight very important. Hate the war, but not the soldiers – they are the bravest people I know. Especially the vets that came back and are against the war. They risk rejection now from all sides. Can you imagine being brave enough to lose your job, your friends, your pension and being labeled? That’s courage. My character Mr. Wolf is just that. He picks a tough venue for his message, but that’s what makes this miniseries fascinating and difficult and different.”

At its heart, The Kill Point is what all television shows purport to be: an entertaining way to spend an hour each week. That it also happens to be a high-quality, well-acted program is simply an added bonus. But while The Kill Point may lend itself more readily to intelligent analysis than, say, such inexplicably popular shows as Deal Or No Deal, don’t over think it, and rest assured that it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

“If it’s great, then maybe there will be a Broadway show musical skating version,” jokes Leguizamo.

We eagerly await news of The Kill Point On Ice, but in the meantime, we’ll happily resign ourselves to watching it on television.

ONE NIGHT IN PEREZ: Perez Hilton Is The Celebrity Blogger You Hate to Love

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF FORNEY / YRB MAGAZINE

In the age of the gossip blog, if you still subscribe to the belief that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, then chances are you’re not a publicist.

“I’m a polarizing figure,” says Perez Hilton, the self-anointed “Queen of Media” and the creator of the celebrity gossip blog PerezHilton.com. “Some people love me and some people hate me. Some people wanna tell me everything, some people are afraid to even make small talk around me. It depends who you are and how I rub you.”

Every day, close to four million unique visitors flock to Hilton’s site (formerly PageSixSixSix.com) for the inside scoop on the latest Hollywood scandal, juiciest truth-based rumor and even the occasional news byte.

Born Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr., the Cuban-American was raised in Miami before he moved to New York to attend NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. Living in Greenwich Village (the one place gayer than South Beach), it didn’t take long for young Mario to come out. “I guess I tried to hide it the first semester,” he says, “and then I was at a party and a girl was like, ‘You’re gay!’ and I started crying but then I was like, ‘Yes! I am!’ I knew, but I guess I just had problems saying it.”

That wasn’t the only problem Lavandeira would face. “I went through a very unhappy phase. I filed for bankruptcy, I was suicidal, I was at a job that I hated, I got fired from three jobs…it was like down, down, down, down,” he recalls. But rather than joining some lame support group or writing dark poetry, he launched PageSixSixSix.com, and proceeded to literally blog his way out of debt and depression. It was only after he began receiving death threats – courtesy of some Clay Aiken fans who were none too pleased that the blogger had dubbed their American idol “Clay Gayken” – that Lavandeira adopted a pseudonym, becoming his friend Paris Hilton’s fictitious cousin, Perez.

PerezHilton.com quickly swept through the blogosphere, generating more traffic than a holiday weekend. Suddenly millions of people now had a better way to pass the time that would otherwise have been wasted actually working. Luckily, Perez is working hard enough for all of them. “I bust my butt. I don’t know if people really realize how hard I work. I honestly put in 19 hours a day on my website. I sleep four and a half, maybe five hours a night. Every other waking moment I’m answering emails, I’m writing, I’m researching, I’m scouring the Internet for what to write, I’m going to an event,” says Hilton, whose L.A. office isn’t so much an office as it is a table at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a local coffee shop.

Although Hilton maintains that he doesn’t really consider himself a celebrity (“I’m a celebretard,” he says), these days he is just as likely to be the subject of gossip columns as the author of them. When former ‘N Sync member Lance Bass came out betwixt the pages of People Magazine, many critics accused Hilton of having forced him out of the closet, after repeated posts on PerezHilton.com not-so-subtly implied that the singer was gay (literally, not figuratively). Hilton insists that these criticisms are simply the byproduct of America’s deep-seated, internalized homophobia.

“I feel that being gay is not bad. A lot of the reason why people criticize what I do is because a lot of people still think that being gay is bad, and a lot of people still think that being gay in Hollywood will hurt your career, and I don’t believe that… Since I don’t think it’s bad, I’m all about equalizing. So I’m gonna treat everyone the same. I’m gonna report – that’s what I do. I don’t ‘out’ anyone. That’s not part of my vocabulary. I report on facts. I don’t engage in the business of speculation or conjecture.”

What he writes about may be true, but that hasn’t stopped many celebrities from taking him to court. Last year, Hilton was named in a lawsuit filed by Colin Farrell after the now infamous sex tape starring the actor (in what was arguably his best performance to date) appeared on Hilton’s site. Hilton was also sued last November for $7.5 million by a Hollywood photo agency that claimed the use of certain photos on the site constituted copyright infringement. And in February, he was sued by Jennifer Aniston, after a topless photo of the actress appeared on PerezHilton.com.

While some celebs may be less than thrilled to find their personal lives, photos and home videos on display, when they’re not busy suing him they know that being on Hilton’s good side can also have its benefits. Frequent jabs at stars like Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan may not further damage their reputations (they tend to do that all by themselves), but for a Hollywood newcomer, frequent praise (or even just a mention) on PerezHilton.com can make a world of difference. If you’re an up-and-coming musician and Perez is a fan of your music, go ahead and fire your publicist, because you won’t be needing her services. Just one post about how adorable and talented Hilton thinks you are, and millions of people will know the name of your band.

Hilton may not be saving lives with gossip, but that doesn’t make his work meaningless. “Underneath the Perez façade, there is someone who has strong beliefs and will use this platform to hopefully do good. I know I do good, because people enjoy it, and I bring laughter, hopefully, or some sense of escape for folks who are bored at work, or who are going through a difficult time and want some sort of fantasy. That gives what I do meaning, and that’s awesome.”

But just because so many people like his blog, doesn’t mean they all like him. In fact, many of Hilton’s readers actively dislike him. “Dude, you really look like a circus act. I love the website, but there is more and more about you, and you are the most uninteresting person out there. You are a tragedy. From one gay man to another, fucking get a grip,” wrote one reader, after Hilton devoted numerous posts to documenting his own star-studded birthday party (“The Queen’s Ball”) in March.

OK, so maybe no one ever accused him of being overly modest, but isn’t shameless self-promotion exactly what being a celebrity is all about? “I created my own success, I created my own opportunity…I created Perez the celebrity,” says Hilton. “There’s a reason why I put up all these pictures of myself with celebrities: celebrity by association! The whole concept of celebrity is so tangible and so malleable; anyone can be a celebrity these days – even this loser with a blog!”

Love him, hate him, or just love to hate him, Perez Hilton’s shirt says it all: “Keep talking shit, you’re making me famous.”



FASHION CREDITS:
silk striped blazer by The Bohemian Society, “Keep Talking Shit” t-shirt by College Dropout, denim jeans and leather belt by Replay, milano style collection yellow and orange watches by Breil, trainers by Ben Sherman

**One Night In Perez was originally published in YRB Magazine, Issue 73 (May/June 2007)

Movie: Knocked Up

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTO COURTESY OF NBC UNIVERSAL

“Knocked Up is about a guy [Ben], played by Seth Rogen, who is starting a website, is kind of a slacker, who goes out to a bar one night and is lucky enough to end up back home with Katherine Heigl’s character [Alison], and what should have been nothing but a one night stand, next thing you know she’s knocked up. So it’s the story of the two of them coming to terms with the fact that they’re sorta stuck together,” says actor Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother), who, along with Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel and Martin Starr, plays one of Ben’s four roommates in this summer’s Knocked Up.

Jonah Hill offers a somewhat different take on the movie. “The plot is basically like Letters from Iwo Jima. We actually ripped off the same plot, and we just added a few ‘fucks’ every now and then,” he jokes, when asked whether there is more to the story than the title and movie trailer suggest. But Jason and Jonah (whose characters also happen to be named Jason and Jonah) do agree that what makes Knocked Up work so well is largely writer/director Judd Apatow’s approach to movie-making. Both have worked with Apatow before (Jonah had a small but memorable role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Jason starred in Apatow’s television cult classic Freaks and Geeks, among other things) and credit the success of his films with the fact that he trusts his actors enough to let them improvise.

“We spend a lot of time rehearsing and improvising and then the script takes the shape of the direction the improv took. It’s great because by the time you arrive on set, nothing that’s coming out of your mouth feels forced; it’s all sort of in your words. And that’s part of what Judd recognizes – that the acting turns out best when the actors are comfortable,” Jason says, adding, “Anytime Judd comes calling, I’m there. Judd is my mentor and sorta my professional idol as well.”

Instances of spontaneous humor aren’t necessarily the only benefits of the improv approach to a movie like Knocked Up. “Even in the more intense scenes, Seth and Katherine did a lot of improv, and it makes the fights seem more real. That’s how I like to work, and Judd is the best at that in my opinion. I think the best stuff comes from being in the moment, just off the cuff,” says Jonah, echoing the sentiments of his co-star.

Most people would agree that waking up from an alcohol-induced sleep coma in the bed of a girl who looks like Katherine Heigl (or even someone half as hot) is pretty sweet, even if you can’t technically remember her name or how you got there. And there are only two things that might ruin that feeling of self-satisfaction: one would be discovering that you not only had the best night of your life, but you also have the clap; the other would be learning that the girl is pregnant with your seed. So what exactly do Ben’s roommates have to say when they find out about his alcohol-induced, life-altering one-night stand? “We’re basically the devil in his ear. We’re kind of giving him advice that’s crazy. Obviously we’re all ill-prepared to handle one of our best friends having a child, and I think we’re even more immature than he is, so I think we give him terrible advice, [we] just don’t know how to handle it,” says Jonah, 23. “It really freaks us out, and also the big inspiration for me at least was, I was just picturing that this was Seth in real life since I’m friends with him. In real life, he’s obviously way more mature than his character, but it would freak me out if one my best friends was having a kid because I would feel like things wouldn’t be the same, and I would kind of feel like our friendship wouldn’t be the same... it would just be super frightening.”

Super frightening indeed, but if Knocked Up the movie is any indication of the real-life experience, then take solace in knowing that if one of your drunken, idiot friends accidently impregnates a hot girl he met at a bar and they decide to have the kid together, it can also be super hilarious!

KNOCKED UP HITS THEATERS JUNE 1ST

WWW.UNIVERSALPICTURES.COM

15 Seconds of Lame: SearchWithKevin.Org

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KEVIN FEDERLINE FAN CLUB
(YES, THERE REALLY IS A KEVIN FEDERLINE FAN CLUB)

Step aside, Google. There’s a new search engine in town, a special search engine, one endorsed by a celebrity. Now, you’re probably wondering, “Is it James Earl Jones? Or Kelsey Grammer, perhaps?” Guess again. SearchWithKevin.com is the official brainchild (hey, at least it’s not another real child) of Hollywood Z-Lister Kevin Federline. It makes sense, really, because who but K-Fed possesses the authoritative, commanding, trustworthy persona to successfully launch a site designed to be a viable alternative to Google? Kevin, we’ve gotta hand it to you – the fact that you actually thought this would be a good business venture is kind of adorable, and it almost makes us like you (where by "adorable" we mean "unbelievably idiotic" and by "almost makes us like you" we mean "definitely makes us hate you").

WWW.SEARCHWITHKEVIN.PRODEGE.ORG

TATTOO YOU: Linkin Park Frontman Inks a Deal with Etnies

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHS / IMAGES COURTESY OF ETNIES

ONCE UPON A TIME, CHESTER BENNINGTON WAS BEST KNOWN AS THE LEAD SINGER OF LINKIN PARK AND THE CO-FOUNDER OF RENOWNED INK SHOP CLUB TATTOO. NO LONGER, AS HE STEPS INTO THE FASHION ARENA WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF A NEW LINE OF ETNIES SNEAKERS INSPIRED BY HIS LOVE FOR MUSIC, SKATEBOARDING AND TATTOOS. I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO CHAT WITH CHESTER ABOUT HIS LATEST VENTURE, HIS OWN TATS AND THE SOUNDTRACK TO HIS LIFE.

JG: How many tattoos do you have? Do you have a favorite? Any particularly memorable stories about getting tattooed?

CB: I think I have about 18 tattoos right now. I guess my favorite right now would be my back piece, because it takes up my entire back and is made up of multiple tattoos and images. By the time I’m done with it, I will have put in close to 100 hours of tattooing on it. It’s been an undertaking because the back is the most painful place to get tattooed for me. So what usually happens is every time I go to get work done on it, I end up not working on it because I don’t want to deal with the pain. So I end up getting another tattoo someplace else instead! I’ve gotten a few tattoos while on the road on tour, so it’s great to be able to hook up with different tattoo artists in different parts of the world. It’s always fun to start the tattoo before the show, go play the show and then finish it afterwards. Every tattoo has a different story, location and memories behind it.

JG: What led you to make a connection between music, skateboarding, tattoos and, in particular, sneakers? In other words, what do tats have to do with sneakers? What do sneakers have to do with music?
CB: If you think about it, music, art and tattoos have always gone together, and similarly with skateboarding. Skateboarding has always been a place where a lot of bands can get exposure early on. Old school skate videos always had cool music on them. . .they’ve always had the best soundtracks, the coolest new bands that you may have never heard of before, everything from punk to hip-hop. They all just went together with the lifestyle. With skateboarding, the shoe is the most important thing after the board itself. We use them all together, so it was just a natural progression. With Club Tattoo going into clothing as well as tattooing, being able to offer a great sneaker for our customers was key. Our fans skate, motocross, snowboard – the whole bit. Plus it’s a huge part of the lifestyle. If you can incorporate all of that stuff together, it makes sense, which is what I think we’ve done really well here.

JG: What was your role in the actual design process? CB: We have about 14 tattoo artists working for us at any given time and we have a lot of talent there, so we approached the artists and told them to come up with ideas, things that they thought would be cool for tattoos, and what would work well on a shoe. My partner Sean Dowdell and I then went through them and tried them all out on the shoes, moved the designs around, mixed and matched them, then we picked out final designs and sent them to Etnies for their team to give their input on, and that’s how we ended up with the final designs. All of the designs on the shoes came from the tattoo artists themselves that work at Club Tattoo.

JG: If your new kicks (and/or your tats) had their own soundtrack, what songs might be on it? CB: That’s difficult. I like too many kinds of music to be able to pinpoint what I would use to represent mysef.... The shoes might be everything from the Descendants to David Bowie, and the tats would be everything from Motorhead to Zeppelin...that’s a tough one though!




WWW.ETNIES.COM

Interview: Wes Craven

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTO: CARLY FEINGOLD, COURTESY OF FOX ATOMIC

Believe it or not, Wes Craven made quite a few movies before Scream (“You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” jokes Wes), including the original versions of The Hills Have Eyes and The Hills Have Eyes 2 in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We recently caught up with Wes to discuss his latest film and his approach to scary movies.

JG: What is required to make a good horror film? Do you just need to have a morbid imagination to make a movie like Hills?
WC: I don’t really have to have a morbid imagination these days – I just have to read the newspaper… It’s basically doing something that’s intriguing to you at the moment that you find frightening. Not that there’s Hills Have Eyes people running around in the United States. But if you nudge that just a bit, you can understand what it’s like, say, for an American soldier in Afghanistan, encountering people that will literally skin you alive or cut your head off in the middle of the mountains. The Hills’ underlying concept is, ‘What do Westerners do when they confront people who would like to kill them, and follow none of the rules they were trained to fight by?’ What does that do to your own sense of personal confidence and morality?

JG: So you’re tapping into our very real, collective fears.
WC: The first maniac that the audience should be frightened by is the filmmaker. You have to have a sense that you are not in the hands of someone who is going to be considerate of your deepest fears – in fact they’re going to take you there. And they will cross all sorts of lines of taste and gentility and morality and take you into the dark side of things, and it’s a very painful and terrifying part of life to see the dark side of life, of our personalities, of our friends, our nation, and just the way that mankind is. We build and we build and everything’s beautiful and then we tear it down or blow it up, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it, that sort of madness. These kind of pictures are scenarios of societal nightmares, and the human spirit needs ways of encountering these things… In real life if any of these things happened people would be devastated and traumatized and everything else. But in attenuated form of the fatal, you’re able to go through it with other people, in the safety of a theater. And you scream and you’re terrified but you know that you’re gonna walk out intact at the end. I think to the extent that you identify with the central character of almost all horror films, they survive. So you have that template of, ‘OK, this is not only the worst thing that I could imagine but the worst thing Wes Craven can imagine, and if that character can survive and that character seems a lot like me, then maybe I could survive that too.’

JG: Would you say there’s almost a hopeful element involved?
WC: I really think so. And most reporters you say that to just sort of stare at you and think you’re nuts. But why else would humans have retained nightmares? We’re involved in a war with all the military might of the United States, and the fact is that with all those resources we have not been able to defeat this enemy. And they continue to kind of have their way with us, and that is a profoundly frightening thing; everything that you think of as being there to protect you, if it cannot do that, then you feel incredibly vulnerable. And there’s a lot of kids from the core audience that will go into the armed services and will have to face these things. So it seemed to me very, very germane. But on the surface of it, I don’t think anybody’s gonna see that. It’s just a very scary movie.

JG: Is it different for you to make a movie that has a sort of supernatural element as compared to the Scream movies?
WC: I don’t consider anything in Hills to be supernatural. They’re just people. In a way, that’s one of the key statements being made. You can refer to these people as mutants, but they’re mutants in the same way as a person who was born with six fingers because of being exposed to radioactivity. The shock of recognition is that they’re not that different from us in most ways; they are part of the human family. I think that kind of stuff makes audiences think. The other thing I struggle mightily do is not put anything on screen that the audience has seen before, which is, I think, a common flaw of so many horror movies – ‘Let’s do something that’s a combination of Saw and The Ring.’ And the audience recognizes it in the first five or 10 minutes and then they’re bored. So we try to come at it from a totally new direction.

JG: Do you go to a lot of horror movies?
WC: I see the ones that do very well, as kind of homework. Ironically, by and large I don’t like to go see horror films! It’s just that I don’t enjoy watching suffering. It’s funny. I go to see a lot of movies and watch a lot at home, but it’s more the whole spectrum of films, not just scary movies.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT © 2007

A Few Words With Lil' Jon

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN

Lil' Valentine
February 14th is Valentine’s Day, also known as the easiest day of the year to get laid. You’ll still have to pay for it - but with flowers and chocolate instead of by the hour. Hey, romance might be dead, but take solace in the fact that like sweet crunk music, love is alive and well - just ask Lil’ Jon. We did, and here’s what the original dirty South rapper had to say.

JG: In “Lovers and Friends” you talk about ‘knowing a girl for a long time, but fuckin’ never crossed your mind.’ Is that your definition of love?
LJ: Well, that was in the ‘friends’ context.... If you got a homegirl that’s your homegirl, sometimes you don’t never even think about crossing that line. That’s what that was about, just having a female that’s your friend. But sometimes, someone that you’re friends with, something might happen where you just look at someone in a different way, like, ‘Damn, this person been around me all this time, and now I see something else.’ When I first met my wife, I knew that was someone I wanted to be with. We was friends for a lotta years before we even started. And really, the friends in your life are the ones you end up settling down with, only because you known them the longest, you trust them the longest, they know everything about you, and they’re your friend.

JG: What are the most important qualities in a girl?
LJ: They have to be intelligent. They have to be able to listen, as well. Like women want us to listen, but sometimes women gotta listen, too, and know when to just sit back and be quiet and know when to listen to what somebody got to say. All women really want in a man is somebody that listens and tries to understand you, and really that’s one thing we like too – we like somebody that’ll listen too, show us some comfort. So I think a good listener. [Second], you wanna be able to have an intelligent conversation with somebody. You don’t wanna have someone that just is not on the same level. That’s the worst thing in the world, to talk to somebody and realize they an idiot. And personality is important – I’d say those are the three things. Personality, that’s what makes you laugh at someone, that makes them help you to look at shit in a different light, helps you to have fun.

JG: What do you think about dudes that rock the same clothes as their girlfriends?
LJ: Oh that’s the lamest shit in the world! Back in high school, oh my god…we’d see that and be like, ‘Oh, he in love,’ or, ‘He pussy-whipped.’ Cause what kind of man wanna dress up exactly like his woman? That shows you’re just blinded.

JG: How do you know if a girl is cheating on you?
LJ: It’s hard to tell with women because they the most cunning creatures in the world. You can never tell. A woman can make eye contact with a guy she see in the mall while she with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend never know, cause she’ll be cool – cooler than the other side of the pillow. While if it’s the guy, and he with his girlfriend, he gon’ get nervous, gonna walk the other way and start sweatin’. But with a girl, really there’s no way, it’s just hard to tell... Guys, they just suck at being cheaters. ‘Cause guys get lazy, they don’t cover their tracks. A guy will not even tell his homeboy and his girl might see the nigga at the mall and be like, ‘What ya’ll do last night?’ and he be like, ‘Shit, uh, I was at the crib, but what’s good with you?’

JG: Are you into a girl that can chill with your boys, or is it better to chill with your girlfriend solo?
LJ: You don’t want your wife to be best friends with your best friend. ‘Cause that can lead to all types of shit. Just like I was sayin’ before, how you might have friends you look at one way and then all of sudden you look at ‘em differently, like, ‘Oh shit,’ and they look at you different, too. You don’t want your girl being too close with your friends – that’s just like setting yourself up. For some people it’s cool, but I ain’t never really been a fan of that.

JG: So how did you propose to your wife?
LJ: Uh…I forgot. I think we were sitting down, eating dinner... I think it mighta been on Valentine’s Day or her birthday or something... yeah, I think it was her birthday.


ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT © 2007

Interview: The Vincent Black Shadow

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF FORNEY

Listen to “Metro.”

The infectious lead single off The Vincent Black Shadow’s debut full-length Fear’s In the Water (Bodog Music) will turn metalheads and grunge enthusiasts alike into instant fans of the pop-punk rockers.

The Vancouver-based quartet, which pounced onto the scene in recent months, is fronted by Cassandra Ford (lead vocals) and the Kirkham brothers – Robbie (guitar, vocals), Chris (bass, vocals) and Anthony (drums).

Cassandra was always musically inclined. She attended school at a convent in England where students were required to play multiple instruments – everything from piano to recorder to xylophone. Yadda, yadda, yadda, a few years later she found herself in the Philippines being bred for a career as an Asian pop star, courtesy of Universal Music’s Philippines division. “I was like, ‘Why am I doing this, I don’t wanna do it,’ and everyone was like, ‘Oh, but it’s a foot in the door,’ and I was like, ‘A foot in the door for what? I don’t want a foot in this door, I wanna pick the door that I’m sticking my foot in,’ so I just bought a plane ticket and came back,” says Cassandra.

Shortly thereafter, Cassie, Rob and Tony formed The Vincent Black Shadow (Chris joined later). “We were already showcasing for labels on like our fourth show,” says Tony, the youngest member of the band. “We sent Bodog a five or six song demo, and they were really stoked on it.” Stoked indeed; Bodog called them back just a few days later. “We didn’t even really have a band together. It was me, Rob and Cassie. Rob played the bass and piano, and I played the drums and Cassie sang on it. And they were like, ‘We want to see you right away,’” Tony recalls.

“And it was funny because we were like, ‘Oh, sure, we’ll book a show,’ and the show we booked was at this shitty bar in the shittiest part of town, and then they ended up not being able to come!” says Cassandra. “But we ended up meeting with them anyway; they came to a rehearsal and we played for them, and they were like, ‘Well let’s talk contracts,’ and our second ever show was playing for Bif Naked.”

Although the band has yet to break into the mainstream MTV scene (not that they would necessarily want to), they have been blowing up the more alternative music television outlets, particularly Fuse, where they were featured on last year’s Fangoria Chainsaw Awards and went on to repeatedly earn the number one video for “Metro” on countdown shows like Oven Fresh.

As we talk in the hallway of the Park Central Hotel in midtown Manhattan, TVBS is preparing to play a sold-out show at trendy SoHo nightclub Crash Mansion to kickoff the CMJ Music Marathon. Next, they’ll return to a grueling tour schedule throughout the U.S. and Europe in support of Fear’s In the Water, which is flying off the shelves after its re-release in January.

So if you don’t know about The Vincent Black Shadow, here’s a piece of advice: Listen to “Metro.”

To learn more about The Vincent Black Shadow, go to www.myspace.com/tvbs


ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT © 2007

TV: The Sarah Silverman Program

PHOTO: MARC LECUREUIL, COURTESY OF COMEDY CENTRAL
From a woman rivaled only by Borat when it comes to making jokes about all things taboo, comes Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program. Oddly enough, Sarah Silverman plays a character named Sarah Silverman, and the show focuses around her daily life and the various kooky events and situations in which she finds herself. It may sound like a typical sitcom, but if you’re familiar with the comedic stylings of Ms. Silverman then you know this is no Friends rehash. In the premiere episode, Sarah has a run-in with the police after she ingests too much cough syrup and then proceeds to park her car in the middle of a playground. As in her full-length film, Jesus is Magic, Sarah takes every opportunity to incorporate songs with off-color lyrics into the show, and also shares the screen with some of the funniest people in the world of comedy today, most notably Brian Posehn, who plays one of Sarah’s gay neighbors. Whether she’s reading aloud from The Diary of Anne Frank for the talent portion of a children’s beauty contest, or taking in a homeless man, we love The Sarah Silverman Program, and if you have any sense of humor whatsoever, you will, too.
WWW.COMEDYCENTRAL.COM




ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE COPYRIGHT © 2007

Movie: Rescue Dawn

This April, Christian Bale (American Psycho, The Machinist, Batman Begins) stars in Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn as U.S. Fighter pilot Dieter Dangler, whose plane is shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. He is soon captured and subjected to extensive torture – as is the audience, during a difficult first hour that is virtually free of any dialogue whatsoever. The second half of this docu-drama focuses on Dieter’s stay in a prison camp (along with fellow POWs Gene (Jeremy Davies) and Duane (Steve Zahn)), where he devises and ultimately executes a complex escape plan. Rescue Dawn is not a Bruce Willis-style action flick, and it does not even begin to achieve the magnificence of its predecessors, Vietnam classics such as The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. Bale, Zahn and Davies all give excellent performances against a visually stunning backdrop, but in every other sense Rescue Dawn simply comes up short.

WWW.GIBRALTARFILMS.COM

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT © 2007

30 Seconds to Mars

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROGER ERICKSON

It is a cold, gray, fall afternoon in suburban Maplewood, Minnesota, where, in just a few hours, 30 Seconds to Mars will kick off its Welcome to The Universe / MTV $2 Bill Tour at Myth Nightclub. The venue is curiously situated off a highway, betwixt a shopping complex and a cluster of chain restaurants, and the massive parking lot is already beginning to fill.

Yes, the lead singer of 30 Seconds to Mars is also a successful actor. And yes, Jared Leto may still be better known for his roles in American Psycho, Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club and lest we forget My So-Called Life than for his rock band. But with a record that recently went platinum, a huge international following, and three singles and music videos in heavy rotation, it is time to get over the fact that 30STM is a band with a famous frontman.

So get the snide Jordan Catalano remarks out of your system now, and if you’re only reading this in the hopes that it will provide details about Leto’s love life, go pick up a copy of Us Weekly. But if you’re interested in the story of a remarkable band that has relied on the quality of its music rather than its Hollywood connections to earn success, then read on.

Born in Louisiana, Jared and his brother Shannon were raised by their mother (in some 10 different cities) in an environment that encouraged creative expression and the arts. “It was always around, so it was just a natural progression,” says Shannon of being drawn to music at a young age. “We picked up some instruments and started playing; it just made sense.”

With Jared on guitar and vocals and Shannon on drums, 30 Seconds to Mars signed with Virgin/Immortal in 1998. Although their self-titled debut (released in 2002) was little more than a blip on the music industry radar, they began to build a fan base, thanks largely to constant touring.

The band was soon joined by bassist Matt Wachter and guitarist Tomo Milicevic. Born in Sarajevo and reared in Detroit, Tomo is living the dream – before he became a member of 30 Seconds to Mars, he was one of their fans. “It’s kinda crazy, you know? You listen to this music, you admire it, and then one day you’re on stage playing it,” he says.

The foursome’s first collaborative effort, A Beautiful Lie, dropped in August 2005. Technically it is not a new album, but as Tomo points out, “To most people it is. The first year that this album was out, we barely sold 100,000 records,” he says. Since then, that number has jumped to 1 million, “So to those other [900,000] people, this is a brand new record.”

In addition to writing all the lyrics, playing guitar and performing the lead vocals on every song, Jared also directed the videos for “The Kill” and “From Yesterday” (the second and third singles, respectively), under the colorful, Dr. Seuss-borrowed alias, Bartholomew Cubbins. “It’s just a way to have a little fun with it and be creative, and I really wanted people to be able to enjoy and experience the video without having any more preconceived notions or distractions, and just to let it be what it was. It wasn’t important for me to lay claim to it in that way. It’s nice to be recognized for it, but for the right reasons,” Jared says of his decision to direct “The Kill” as his alter ego. That video – a well-executed take on Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, The Shining – recently landed awards at the VMAs, The FUSE Awards and the mtvU Woodies.

30STM’s popularity has risen along with album sales, but they have also had to contend with the burden of the past; such predecessors as Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves and Kevin Bacon haven’t exactly bolstered the public’s expectations of a band led by an actor. “We had a lot of middle fingers pointed at us for years and a lot of bad examples before us,” says Shannon, without naming names. “But we also knew we could play music, and we knew we had something – we knew it the whole time. So we knew we had to tour, tour, tour, and we knew we had to prove it to people, prove it no matter what. And we did that. And we love doing it. And now it speaks for itself. And Jared is the first [actor] to do it and do it well. We’re the first band to really overcome the challenges and become a legitimate band known for its music, and it feels amazing.”

As any fan will tell you, singling out Jared for any reason other than that he is the band’s frontman is totally taboo. Still, his high profile tends to obscure the fact that 30 Seconds to Mars is successful not because one of its members is a talented actor, but because all of its members are talented musicians. And while they could have easily taken advantage of the publicity generated by Jared’s fame, the band doesn’t want that kind of attention, even refusing to play any venue that uses his name to promote a show.

Instead, 30STM has opted for grueling schedules, life on a crowded tour bus, and a $20/day tour stipend in order to earn its own status. “A lot of people might think that we’re an overnight success because they just heard of us, which is fair, but we’re not. We’ve been around for a long time doing this,” says Matt, who describes the band’s method as organic. “We really took a grassroots approach, always for the fans, and we relied on touring to build a fan base as opposed to TV and radio. And now that we’ve got those things, our fan base has grown and grown and grown, and a lot of people are starting to know about 30 Seconds to Mars,” he says.

Fans are always important, but 30STM’s are something special – according to the online message boards, some even have tattoos in honor of the band. But in addition to scores of “regular” fans, the most die-hard belong to an exclusive group known as The Echelon.

On the one hand, like a typical fan club The Echelon serves as a “street team,” spreading the word about the band, calling local radio stations to request their songs and casting votes when 30STM is nominated for fan-driven awards. On the other hand, The Echelon isn’t so much a fan club as it is, say, a throwback to the Freemasons – with its use of Latin adages, symbolic characters, white costumes, secretive rituals (such as an induction process that requires prospective members to be nominated by two existing members) and an almost cultish devotion to 30 Seconds to Mars. But the feeling is mutual, and the band is also intensely committed to The Echelon; its members are the first to learn of any news or announcements involving 30STM, even communicating with them directly, via email. In a unique public display of affection, the deluxe edition of A Beautiful Lie (released in December) contains foldout artwork designed as a special tribute to The Echelon, which bears the actual names of more than 5,000 fans – “the most passionate believers,” as Jared describes them.

When it comes to the fans, perhaps Matt sums it up best. “They’re just true and true, through and through. They’ve been there since the beginning and they’ll be there till the end,” he says. But talking to Shannon, Tomo, Matt and Jared in their parked tour bus, it is clear that the end is nowhere in sight. As they gear up for six weeks on the road, the band has just returned from China, where they shot the “From Yesterday” video at a palace outside of Shanghai. “We had 500 extras, massive amounts of period wardrobe, 40 men on horseback…just phenomenal sets and design, and a period piece to boot. I don’t know how we pulled that off!” Jared says. They then flew to L.A. to play the Bamboozled Festival and the FUSE Awards before dipping to Minnesota – all in the last four days.

“It’s wild, it’s amazing, it’s great opportunities, no complaints – and thank God it’s what we’re doing,” says Jared, more ecstatic than exhausted. “You hear this stuff when you’re young: You better love what you do, especially if you call it your work, because that’s your life. It’s important to have an experience that is fulfilling and inspired, and it’s certainly that for us.”

The result is an album that, for better or worse, is disarmingly thoughtful without being overly angsty or condescending. “The songs Jared writes are purely from the soul – they’re the real deal. And we all get to be a part of that. It’s a real band, not in any way contrived,” Tomo says.

If it sounds intense, that’s because it is; and if Jared sounds intense, that’s because he is. If there were 30 hours in a day, Jared would probably squeeze in 40 hours of work. He is not the type to phone it in (no matter what “it” is), and he doesn’t mistake “good” for “good enough.” He is just as likely to use big words (correctly) as he is to use expletives (gratuitously), and like his bandmates, he doesn’t drink or do drugs. But just because you have nothing in common with the band, if you can judge them by their music rather than their eyeliner, you just might understand what all the fuss is about. “You either get it or you don’t,” says Matt. “And ultimately, the music speaks for itself… . Come to a live show – I think that speaks even louder.”

It does. At Myth Nightclub, the energy in the room is palpable, no less intoxicating than the glass of scotch in my hand - and both will remain with me well after the show has ended. As the lights go dim, signaling the start of 30STM’s set, the formerly sprawling crowd now stands tightly together, united by silent but eager anticipation. The calm soon gives way to shouts and chants, and finally, after a short but spectacular performance by Street Drum Corps, 30 Seconds to Mars takes the stage. And despite the theatrics of the scene – beginning with a pseudo-religious procession that features white masks and flags with the band’s insignia – there is no question that they own it.

In perfect step with his bandmates, Jared’s powerful voice reaches every crevice of the room as he parades around the stage, delivering each note with a fury and intensity befitting his character. He wears all black, save a white electric guitar with a blood-red strap – the same red color as the (dyed) tips of his otherwise (dyed) black hair. Perched atop a platform, Shannon kills it on the drums, his arms rising and falling with such speed and precision it’s a wonder they’re still attached to his torso. In the wings, Tomo and Matt supply sweeping guitar riffs and heavy bass lines, flexing their respective musical muscles on every song.

There is a mosh pit, and Jared indulges throngs of screaming fans by taking song requests (“What do you guys wanna hear? I’ll play whatever you want”) and crowd surfing on more than one occasion. And just when you think it’s over, Jared informs the audience, “We’re just fucking getting started,” and they play for another 30 minutes – but not before he performs a solo, acoustic rendition of the Nine Inch Nails’ classic, “Closer.” Jared is most definitely a natural performer, but right now, on stage with his band, he isn’t acting.

As at all 30STM shows, the set is followed by a signing, and every fan willing to wait in line has the opportunity to meet the band personally. And even though they’ll wake up in a new city tomorrow, tonight 30 Seconds to Mars will stick around until the last, lingering fans have had their moment.


ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE COPYRIGHT © 2007

Lukas Rossi & Rock Star Supernova

BY JUSTINE GOODMAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ODESSY BARBU
CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA

After 15 years of struggling to make it in the music biz, Lukas Rossi is finally a household name – at least in Canada. But for the rest of us, Lukas (a Toronto native) was the winner of Rock Star: Supernova, a CBS reality show in which hopeful rockers vied to become the lead singer of a new “supergroup.” Also called Supernova, the band consists of guitarist Gilby Clarke (formerly of Guns N’ Roses), Metallica’s Jason Newsted on bass, and drummer Tommy Lee, best known for his work with both Mötley Crüe and Pamela Anderson.

For the duration of the 11-week taping, Rossi and 15 other contestants lived together in an L.A. mansion (or the “pretty prison,” as Lukas fondly refers to it), where they had various opportunities to prove themselves worthy of fronting Supernova. In keeping with the reality show prototype, the series also featured “celebrity” hosts Dave Navarro and Brooke Burke, and an interactive component whereby viewers could vote for their favorite rocker. After a grueling elimination and selection process, the fans and band members agreed that Lukas Rossi was their man.

So, how does it feel to go from doing commercial voiceovers in Toronto to pay the rent, to living the dream in L.A., preparing to go on tour with your new band? “I’m just taking it a day at a time; it’s really overwhelming and fast-paced,” says Lukas, the morning after completing work on Supernova’s self-titled debut last fall. “I did a lot of writing on the record, and obviously a lot of singing. I’m still taking a deep breath everyday. It’s exciting as hell though.”

Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first: Being the lead singer of a supergroup comprised of rock industry veterans is awesome, and if you also get to crash on Tommy Lee’s couch when you’re not living on a crowded tour bus, even better. Just one quick question: If you’re Jason Newsted, Gilby Clarke and Tommy Lee, don’t you, like, already know someone, anyone, who could front your band?

“In this day and age, we’re kinda running out of options,” Gilby says. “Radio isn’t what it used to be, MTV isn’t what it used to be, and for all of us, to start a new band and pick the cream of the crop – you know, Tommy Lee on drums, Jason Newsted on bass – and scour the world for the best new singer we could find, it was an opportunity that we had to take.”

If you look beyond the superficial, made-for-TV components of Rock Star: Supernova, and refrain from dismissing all the contestants as a bunch of angsty, black-clad, inked-up, would-be rock stars, what you’re left with is a seriously painstaking audition process. The rockers were subject to a level of public scrutiny that few prospective band members ever are. Given that Lukas prevailed, it would seem that he truly is the most qualified person to front the band (or at least the most qualified person who also screen-tested well). And just because the show might have been gimmicky doesn’t mean the band is.

But no one denies that the publicity generated by the show certainly won’t harm the band’s chances to find wider success. A large segment of Generation Reality Show have Ticketmaster on speed dial, and all they want for Christmas is tickets to a live Supernova performance near them. And while each member of the band brings his own preexisting fan base, it’s questionable whether tickets for the tour (which kicked off on New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas) would be selling out months in advance, as they are, were it not for the exposure afforded by Rock Star: Supernova.

Lukas emphasizes that the 27-city tour is not just a matter of fulfilling contractual obligations, and neither he nor his bandmates view Supernova as a temporary gig. “I don’t want anybody to get confused,” he says. “I don’t think we went through all this just for like a four or five month tour.”

On the contrary, just weeks after dropping their debut album, Supernova is already looking toward working on the follow-up – not because they’re dissatisfied with the first record, but because they’re amped about the possibilities they can explore as a real band, making an entire record in the more traditional way: together, from beginning to end.

“For me, Guns N’ Roses was the ultimate hard rock band. You never really knew what was gonna happen from day to day; it was the perfect hard rock band,” says Gilby. “We don’t really know what Supernova is until we get the record out and start playing as a band together. Ordinarily you would have done that before you made the record – this is a very backwards way of doing things. But the thing was, most importantly, we were all up for the challenge. We’ve all done it the conventional way; we’ve had other bands that have succeeded and failed. So this is just a new, different way to do this, and we were just so excited to try something new.”

Lukas agrees. “The circumstances were obviously unorthodox, considering the way that other records in the past have been done,” he says. “But in my opinion, the product is gonna blow people away.”

For some people, the feeling that Rock Star: Supernova is just a few B-list guest spots short of a VH1 Celebreality special is inescapable, undermining the possibility that the music might actually be great. But does it really matter that the band found its frontman by combining one part Making the Band with equal parts American Idol and The Surreal Life? The show was just a means to a greater end.

“One feeling we had about Lukas through the whole program was that he was a lot like us,” says Gilby. “He just wants to be in a great band, and make a great record and go on tour and be a musician. And that’s the one thing we were really trying to keep for ourselves through this: it’s just a television show, it’s just a process to find this person.”

And then in October, the media was informed via press release that due to a serious shoulder injury, bassist Jason Newsted would have to undergo emergency surgery followed by a long period of recovery, effectively terminating his place in Supernova, at least for now. It’s a setback, but the show must go on.

“When we started this project, I was handed a list of names – guys who could potentially anchor our rhythm section,” says Tommy Lee. “I responded by crumpling up the paper and asking, ‘Where’s Newsted?’ Jason was always the right guy for this band and we’ll miss having him with us as we kick off our album and tour, but we know he’ll be back as soon as he can pick up and play.” Until then, former Black Crowes bassist Johnny Colt will serve as Newsted’s temporary replacement.

Whether Supernova will succeed in bringing rock ‘n’ roll back to its golden age remains to be seen. But with his new bandmates backing him, thousands of fans cheering for him, and one hell of an audition tape to prove he’s the man for the job, Lukas Rossi and Supernova are poised to do big things.

“We’re all human, we’re all musicians, we’re different musicians, and that’s what makes it cool,” says Lukas. “I’m always gonna be the same person that came here. I just can’t wait to take on the world with the band and see all the fans out there that have put me here.”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE COPYRIGHT © 2007