Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing my longtime singing hero Daryl Hall, whose 2013 Jazz Fest show with partner John Oates I wrote about for New Orleans Gambit Weekly – CLICK HERE to read that long article. Below this video of Daryl singing my favorite Hall & Oates song “One On One” with Cee Lo from Goodie MOB, is the raw, unpublished Q&A interview I did via phone with Daryl Hall.
One Halloween we put together a Hall & Oates cover band. We do a different band every Halloween. We’ve done Prince, Public Enemy, George Michael, Roy Orbison. But Hall & Oates was by far the hardest one.
Why was it hard?
It just had a lot of very subtle, unexpected key changes. It made most other pop music seem really repetitive.
Now you know my secret! That’s why I am not like other people. Our music stands apart from other people’s bands and music. It’s got a certain kind of intricacy, with surprises and all kinds of things going on that other music doesn’t have.
I’ve been getting into your colleague Todd Rundgren’s music lately because he too laces his songs with all sorts of little subtlies. Are you attending his 65th birthday party at Nottaway mansion outside of New Orleans? $799 to camp for six days, including food and booze.
So he’s doing that in Louisiana? That’s wild. That’s pretty cool. I don’t think I can make it for the scheduling. Well…you tell him happy birthday. Todd is unbelievable.
At his party he’ll also be playing his new sort of techno album. I always relate my favorite Hall & Oates music with electronics. The “I Can’t Go For That” video has that image of the Moog. Do you still dabble with the electronics?
That’s a hard question to answer. I’ve come up through every kind of technology in music. When I started it was four-track reel-to-reel and the only non-acoustic instruments you could play where the electric guitar, electric piano and organ. Through all that, over the years, the Moog became the Poly-Moog which was polyphonic, and I went through all that, and all different kinds of advances in keyboard technology, especially in the 80s. My music in the 80s reflected that because I was making use of all these new tools. By now I’ve sort of gone past all that because I don’t really feel the technology has gone any farther than it did then, as far as songs go. So I just sort of revert to a more simplistic way of production and recording now than I did in the 80s.
It seems like on your web show Live From Daryl’s House you take artists who were maybe influenced by your more electronic 80s stuff, and you bring them into your current more organic zone.
It’s just an evolution, the way I’ve grown and the direction I have gone recently. It’s the way I like to sound now.
When you present the Hall & Oates material today, like you will at JazzFest, do the songs sound different?
I think they’ve evolved, and in some cases maybe devolved into a more simplistic style. I’ve been playing the Hall & Oates catalog so many different ways over the years. We’ve done acoustic tours without and electric instruments at all. We’ve played shows that were more electronically oriented. Now, the band I have – the Live From Daryl’s House band– that style really allows all the different elements to be involved in the arrangement. They don’t sound like the records, but if you listen to our set it’s all of a piece now, it incorporates all the eras.
So you use the Daryl’s House band for Hall & Oates now? It’s just your regular band, plus John. Do you tour with that band without John?
Every once in a while I do a solo tour [with that band], and we do a lot with John, and I always use the same band. That’s my band. And when John’s in it, that’s his band too. I’ve had a lot of these guys for quite a while and have known them all for a long time. We have a great musical relationship. Our saxophone player joined our band in 1975. My drummer is the person I’ve known the shortest amount of time, Brian Dunn, and the rest of them I’ve known for decades.
In Hall and Oates’ heyday, you almost always played keys, yet today it seems like, left to your own devices, you’d rather play guitar instead. Is that fair to say?
Yeah. I came to the guitar much later – I started playing piano was I was five, then throughout my teenage years grew proficient on keyboards, then in my 20s I started picking up the guitar because I thought it would complete my ability to write different styles and play different ways. I go back and forth but especially on stage I like playing guitar.
You have a great falsetto. Can you explain the difference between falsetto and simply having a high voice?
A falsetto is just what it says, it’s a false voice. You can find it if you yodel; what’s at the top of your yodel is your falsetto. And I switch naturally between my natural voice and my falsetto – it kind of flows and overlaps. It’s hard to explain really but falsetto is a certain thing that happens with the vocal chords. I am a second tenor – if you want to get technical about it – but my falsetto increases my range considerably.
Most instruments you can practice until you are good, but with singing it often seems like you either have it or you don’t. If you can’t naturally sing, is it possible to learn?
I have a very open mind about vocalizing. You can be a great technical singer – and that has to do with genetics and experience – or you can just be a person who expresses themselves well vocally in less technical ways. The voice is really a complete extension of your personality if you are doing it right. And you don’t have to be a great singer to be a good singer. I am lucky and had a lot of training as a kid, so I had the tools. But you can be a technically good singer but if don’t have soul and you’re stiff, you can not be a good singer. It’s really all about what’s going on in your head that makes you a good or bad singer.
May I ask why you and John don’t write together anymore?
John and I are together through our body of work. Even during our recording time that extended all of those years, we didn’t write that much together. You can’t really tell from the credits but we wrote a lot separately. We did come together on some really important songs like “She’s Gone,” and “Maneater” and “Out of Touch,” but most of the songs were written more separately. We’ve always tried to maintain a separateness – which is one of the reasons we’re still together, really.
You don’t have record company people bugging you to put out another record together?
Well, luckily the music industry crashed and burned and I don’t really have to deal with that anymore. Really, it was a royal pain in the ass dealing with record company people who didn’t know anything, and confused selling with creating — that’s always a problem [chuckles]. With the rise of the internet and the gross stupidity of record companies, it did crash, but it depends what you mean by crash – it’s now all about gathering the tribe. When you have a loyal tribe, then you’re successful. It’s all about that now. The mainstream is just another stream now. What passes for pop music, it’s ephemeral, and sure, more people probably buy it than other things, but if you have a tribe, that’s more important than selling records. It always was that way really, but was masked by some people’s perceptions. It’s all out in the open now: if you want to be successful, gather a tribe.
Yes, going back to Todd Rundgren, he considers his weird Louisiana birthday bash for his fans to be his end of the year employee party!
Todd has always understood. I had success when I dabbled with [the mainstream] but he likes being on the outside and he always understood the tribe mentality. I went about it a slightly different way, but he and I have a lot of similarities, we grew up together, so we have a similar outlook.
What’s the most obscure Hall & Oates song you might do at JazzFest?
What’s obscure depends on how often you see us. We have a good problem in that we can’t even play all of our hits in one set or else we’d have to play for three hours. That’s not a brag, it’s the truth. But having said that, we do like to throw in some lesser-known songs. We create a mood up there, so we change up the set a lot. I am not sure what we will do in New Orleans. We play “Uncanny,” that’s definitely a song I like to play.
So you famously make a hobby of restoring giant mansions, and in some cases you’ve moved a few mansions over from England. Do you have any particular attachment to the architecture of New Orleans.
Well yeah, New Orleans has always been one of my favorite cities in the states because of that. I love antique architecture. I love early 19th century architecture and that’s New Orleans, at least the Quarter. Early on I was fascinated between the difference between northern architecture and New Orleans architecture with its French and Spanish influence. It’s definitely a place where I love to come look around and study. I considered [buying a home there] for a while but other things happened. We used to play in Louisiana, all over the place for years and years and years – not so much recently – but I love that part of the country. I am happy to be coming to New Orleans.
The Jazz Fest 2013 edition of my VICE Magazine column Neither Big Nor Easy focused on hyper-lyrical New Orleans female rapper, 3D Na’Tee. CLICK HERE to read that article. Then down below the video for her Timbaland mashup “Switch,” is the raw, unpublished, long Q&A interview between Na’Tee and me.
Were you surprised to get asked to play Jazz Fest? I’ve liked your music for some years but I was surprised. Usually they just throw the one most hyped up rapper of the year to play.
There were two opportunities. I sat down with Scott Aiges of New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. We were just talking and he told me someone recommended me so he started telling me he’d heard a lot about me and he wanted to put me in the show. Then I spoke with another guy from my neighborhood and he was putting together the New Orleans Experience event I am performing at in Congo Square May 4.
Can you picture that crowd liking deep lyrical rap? I can kind of picture them liking Big Freedia and other crowd pleasing stuff, but you have to really listen to your music to hear it. You have to pay attention.
You really do. They’re giving me the opportunity. They obviously had to have listened. This is such a big stage. They’re not letting me go under the radar. That’s a good thing. I am not worried because it will peak interest. It will be great.
Are you from New Orleans? How long have you been rapping here?
I’m from Uptown, 3rd Ward. I’m 26. I started in 1999, but in 2006 was my first mixtape. But I had been going around doin battles and bein on other people’s projects. I am from the same neighborhood as KLC and Solja Slim and all them. I remember being 12-years-old and standing outside in Delechase Parkway???. I remember seeing KLC when he was with No Limit, he would come and visit his family in the neighborhood and I would purposely walk past that way to go to the store, and I”d just be rapping. Someone from the neighborhood would be like, “Yeah that girl right there she know howta rap! Stop her!” So I would stop and rap for him. And he always remembered me. One of the greatest things about this past NOLA HipHop Awards they honored him. And I won five awards and he got on stage and he was like “Yeah I remember Na’Tee” and I didn’t know he really gave a fuck about that [laughs]. Yeah I been doing this a long time, but really pursuing it since 2006.
How does one become drawn to lyrical style rap in New Orleans, where lyrics are often secondary? There’s Solja Slim, and of course Mystikal, but…
I never was big on bounce. I like to dance and shake my ass and stuff but I was never was big on bounce music. My favorite hip-hop artist was Biggie. Up north rappers: Jay Z, Nas of course. But then I would hear Juvenile because I am from this same area where all this music was being played, so. But I stayed with the more lyrical side because – for one, people saw it as a challenge. A girl? A girl can’t do that.
Who are the other great female lyricists? MC Lyte.
I spoke with MC Lyte on the phone a few months ago. That was the craziest shit ever. I think it was Eric Sermon; I talked to him and he told her about me and she called my phone. I was like ‘This is not MC Lyte. I’ma hang up the phone.’ I think she saw my video ‘Lil Kim.’ She told me ‘You gotta keep goin, cause this is what they need. You have to continue because the industry is lacking this.’ I’m still on the phone like, This is not real.
But unlike me you weren’t listening to MC Lyte when you were little.
No it was more like Lil Kim and Dr. Dre, Lauren Hill, Eve. Lil Kim, Da Brat – some of the artists I look up to obviously listened to MC Lyte, so I did my research.
Freestylin is your bread and butter?
I can freestyle but I don’t like to. I’d rather get my thoughts flush out on paper. I’d rather make sure I say exactly what I mean. It depends but mostly I write about everything. For the most part all of my stuff is written.
What do you feel about the anti-writing movement in hip-hop?
Some people can do that better than others. Some people fail miserably. I like that you call it the anti-writing period – people thought it was so cool not to write, and they were making songs that had no concept… I am big on concept, and having a complete thought on my records. I just think that it’s necessary.
When Lil Wayne stopped writing his stuff down, that’s when he started getting shitty.
Mm hmm.
Do you make beats?
I get them from everywhere. The more popular I become the more people reach out. A few days ago a guy named KE, who produced “You Da Boss” for Rick Ross and Nicky Manaj, he did “Swag Surfin,” he did “Magic,” he did a lot of stuff for Wayne. Anyway, he sent me like 150 beats, just a while buncha shit just because he had it around. I remember this particular guy…he’d produced a couple records on the charts so I hit him up. He said he liked my music and I said I wanted to work with him, and he said it would be $2,000 per beat. Fast forward years later a few days ago he hit me up on Twitter, ‘Follow back, I wanna work.’ I asked him if he remembered when I was reaching out to him. He said he remembered, and sent me some tracks and he was like, ‘Use whatever you want, do whatever you want and we can put out something.’ Proving yourself – it happens like that.
Tell me you Timbaland story. Specifically what it was in the contract that made you turn it down? I know that can be a touchy thing to speak on.
It can be a touchy thing. But what I will say about that situation is: Timbaland is a great guy, he’s a great person. The contract wasn’t just between me and his production company – they also wanted to manage me too, and I felt like the things that were in the contract weren’t really beneficial to what I was trying to do as a an artists and who I am trying to become creatively. Creatively I want to make sure I continue to represent what I stand for. I’m stickin by this. I am not going to water my shit down.
Some artists who’ve gotten signed, you can tell how they’ve been molded and compromised. Have you run into a lot of that?
Not necessarily. It was percentages, and things like that. I don’t want anyone to think I haven’t signed a deal because of money. It’s not because of money. I’m not worried about the money.
Well, it’s interesting you would give up the money?
I been through a lot of shit. To be 26-years-old going from getting in trouble, parents were in drugs and daddy committed suicide, and all these things – and I am the happiest that I’ve ever been in my life, period. I am happy and excited. And I am not going to fuck up this happiness over some money and be forced to be somebody I don’t want to be, and ruin that happiness. But a week and a half ago I sat down with Steve Rifkin and they’re talking some great things – that’s the guy who signed Wu Tang, he’s responsible for AKON’s career. So I sat down with him and with a few people.
This all does make you sound picky.
But not in a disrespectful way. I’m just trying to do what’s good for my future.
Don’t you worry that the train is gonna leave the station?
I don’t worry about that at all. I’m not arrogant when it comes to my career. I make pretty good music, but I’m not arrogant. I know there could be a day when people aren’t interested in what I’m doing. But this is my truth, and I feel strongly about it. And I don’t want anybody to ruin what people love, or taint what I’m doing. If I sign a deal even though it’s not right, and then I’m totally different – the fan base that I have built is totally from me, and the type of person that I am, and if that totally changed I’d abandon all the core fan base.
How do you write? It’s so dense, lyrically.
I always looked at it like pages out of my diary, shit that I gotta get down on paper. I like rappin fast sometimes.
You don’t like choruses?
I do on certain records. I just like to spit. But I will be having a lot more choruses on the next project. I didn’t consciously do it. I was actually writing records for other artists and they had choruses, so I can definitely do it.
Does anyone ever say your music sounds old school?
They don’t put it like that. But I think it’s a compliment. They don’t word it like that – you make it sound so bad. It’s not so bad. I definitely understand when people say that. And I hear it and I think that what they love, I remind them of the era that they love. That’s a beautiful thing. I want to be a part of bringing it back. I believe it will be, I believe it will.
I feel nostalgia for the day when people were trying to outsmart each other on the mic.
Hip-hop has always been dictated by the youth. And it’s dictated by corporations believing what the youth wants to hear. They look at the kids like they’re dumb, they’re fucking idiots. So they find the dumbest artist who looks like an idiot and puts them out there. I’ve met some of them. The fact that now they’re forcefeeding shit and that’s the beauty of YouTube and other social media. If someone doesn’t want to hear that – people say all the time, please bring real rap back! YouTube and everything makes my music available, and whatever artist they like. That’s the great thing.
But how do you monetize your talent then?
Right now I have the mobile app that I sell. Every week I drop new music on it. Lots of things you don’t see on the internet I put on the app for people who pay 99-cents. People go there first. I also have the clothing line BMB, Business Minded Bosses. I’m all right, I’m not rich.
Ghostwriting for Detox is good work, I hear. Bionic Brown from New Orleans was doing that before he died in the car wreck.
D.O.C. wants me to work with him. He’s doing some stuff. He want me to work with him on some things he’s got happening. He wants me to ghostwrite some things for other artists because that’s what he’s into. He’s gonna have his surgery to get his voice back. D.O.C. can still write his ass off. And he saw me on Dear Father and he called me, and he was like pouring his heart out, telling me how dope he thought the song was – and this was way before the Timbaland shit. So I would always talk to him about shit I was going through. As far as the ghostwriting thing, he did so much stuff for Dre, and I just think he’s one of the greatest ever when it comes to ghostwriting – and I’m not just saying that because I fuck with him. But as far as ghost-writing I do get paid for my versus on other people’s songs. I am now able to do shows and get money. I am able to do shows out of town. A lot of artists from out of town will ask me to get on their record and I get paid for it.
Tell me about your freestyle with Kendrick Lamar on Sway in the Morning.
I am a big fan of his. I like Kendrick Lamar. I did Sway in the morning a month before that and they asked me to come back on the show at South By Southwest. They had DJ Drama in there, Pusha T from the Clipse, a buncha artists, and they were doing the interviews two by two. They had a buncha up and coming artists there, and one of the producers of the show said, ‘I’m gonna out Na’Tee up there with Kendrick Lamar.’ And I was like ‘Oh, shit’ because everybody’s gonna see that. It was a decision made by the guys on the show. It was definitely a big opportunity.
When you see pictures of yourself, you definitely play on your attractiveness. Have the people who have offered you contracts tried to focus on your beauty?
Some of them. But this is what I think it is: people have never seen an attractive woman [rapper] that didn’t talk about her pussy all day. But I am a female and I love men, you know what I’m saying? I love being a woman. I’m not going to dress like Da Brat just because I need you to focus solely on my music. I think that’s why that will be the total package because I am a woman and I love being a woman.
But it seems like people would be annoying the shit out of you – lame people trying to make you famous for the wrong reasons.
I’ve had that. And not with the Timbaland deal. But people are used to seeing Lil Kim, with her titty out and shit, and play up on that fact, and she rapped about sex a lot in her music – so if you see me and I’m not dressed with my pants sagging or not like a fucking lesbian or anything, then you would expect me to do the same thing, and then when I don’t…it gets people to look at me and then when they hear my music I think that adds to the wow factor. But I don’t consciously do it – I’m just me, I’m a woman.
A few weeks back I interviewed soul singer Alicia Keys before her March performance at the New Orleans arena. You can read my preview of that concert at Gambit Weekly by clicking HERE. I also wrote a brief review of the concert, which can be found HERE at Gambit’s blog.
But below this video for my (current) favorite Keys song, “Unthinkable,” you’ll find the raw Q&A from which my Gambit piece drew.
So you have a son, Egypt.What is the impetus for your son’s name?
Because I had a very empowering trip to Egypt, at a very important time in my life when I was at a crossroads. I went because I had to get away, and it was so powerful and I really re-found my…my mojo I guess. It was so beautiful, seeing these structures that were so big and strong and built by the hands of human beings. It was so incredible to know that a human can do anything you can possibly think of. We can build it and create it and it can stand for generations and centuries. That was empowering to me and that trip changed my life, and it helped me make the changes that I needed to, and get on the right track. So when I was pregnant my husband [Swizz Beatz] said, ‘Egypt was such a big change for you, why don’t we name the baby Egypt.’ And I instantly just loved it, whether it was a boy or a girl.
Did any songs on Girl on Fire come out of that trip?
This was before As I Am, that album actually that followed that trip. So it’s more the songs on that album. Everything related to that trip was about finding a little bit more who I wanted to be so even like “Best Thing About Love,” the bridge on that, that was a big one there. There’s a whole gang of songs that are in a vault somewhere that have the whole pentatonic scale in them[laughs] that didn’t make it to the record. But a lot of things were inspired by that trip, mostly an emotional state.
How does having a child effect your songwriting?
You know I mean I feel like I’m writing from a deeper place of understanding of emotions and these things until you live em. Having a son now and a husband and a family, I have come to be more the head of my own table, where I have to make sure that everything is the way I envision it or want it to be. I am writing from a different space. I think I am open more, I know I am open more, definitely, positively, more open.
It sounds like maybe you worry less now that you have a child.
That makes so much sense to me. I think you just gain more perspective and so everything seems…now it’s easier for me to make choices. Whereas before I would bounce around for days and days thinking ‘Ahhhh I don’t know should I got this place? Or do this thing? Or switch this?’ Now it’s almost more easy because I know it’s more important. I know what’s most important to me now, and then I can choose everything else. It’s easier to make choices because you have a priority.
I read you recorded some of this album in Jamaica. I feel like I can hear that in some of the more psychedelic touches, like echoes and reverbs
It was all about coming from a place simplicity. And a lot of the firs things that we did were so simple, like a piano and maybe like a Moog sound, and vocals. That allowed me to really write the song and hear the song first before we cluttered it. But this whole record, even the biggest song, big huge drums, if you break it down, it’s only four instruments. It’s not overdone. And there was something about approaching it from this way, getting ideas out. The less I put in a song, the bigger it became a song. I guess that makes sense but it never made sense to me before. I thought I had to pile on more and more things for it to get bigger and bigger but that actually makes it smaller. The less I put on a song, the more present it became. And so I think the echoes you’re describing, while Jamaica did influence me greatly because it was a really impactful, powerful trip, and the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. A lot of this album was born out of this trip. But I think it’s really about the simplicity of it, where you can even hear that delay whereas you probably couldn’t hear that before because there was so much in the way. And that goes back to me opening up more, and just simplifying my process more, all of those things I learned in creating this albums.
I really like the Moog. Is that your Moog or was that in the studio?
Well, that’s my Moog, but that’s my studio too [laughs]. It’s the Voyager, it’s the latest but it has all the oscillators on it still. It’s new but it still has the old analog feel and sound, without being so overcomplicated with plugging in all those wires which, to me, is like…if you know how to do that, can we please get together and you show me?
You don’t have a studio in your home anymore. Between Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats, there is no gear in y’all’s house?
No, there’s no gear the house, yeah. We will possibly soon but as of right now. Also gear is so much smaller you can travel with it everywhere. He has his setup in a backpack. These days it’s crazy what you can do.
Pitchfork pointed out that there are a lot of breakup songs and romantic tragedy on the Girl on Fire album. Where does that come from?
The snake was gonna shed its skin and it was gonna grow that much bigger and longer, so that’s the reason why there’s those types of songs on there. There’s been a huge growth process for me. I’ve shed a layer of skin and with that shedding comes a lot of emotion, a lot of changes, difficult changes and choices, to become bigger and stronger.
If your first album was famously in the key of A-minor, what key is this new album in?
[laughs] Really? This album is in many keys. This album is in the key of coming into my own. It’s not easy to do that. But I’m really proud of it.
During my 12 years in New Orleans, I’ve managed to mostly avoid crime. For five of those years, I tempted fate by not owning a car and riding everywhere on bikes—three of which I did lose to thieves, but bike theft is quaint compared to the crime this city coughs up daily. I’ve swung my heavy U-lock at groups of teenagers who’d pulled their shirts up over their noses and grabbed at me in passing, but I’ve remained in the minority of longtime Marigny/Bywater residents who’ve never been mugged or robbed. Until last Tuesday, when someone smashed the window of my rental car and stole my laptop bag stuffed with four pounds of writing that my elementary and middle school students had planned to publish as a book…
This piece comes from my VICE column “Neither Big Nor Easy.”
Louisiana’s Department of Tourism recently launched a new ad campaign that declared, “No America We Will Not ‘Turn That Music Down.’” But on the ground, the authorities in New Orleans have been trying to quiet the city’s famously vibrant music scene.
First they came for our flyers. Until recently, our telephone poles were decorated with hundreds of colorful handbills keeping us abreast of concerts and reminding us that we lived in the world’s music capital. In summer of 2011, though, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration decided to crack down on this scourge of New Orleans. The city did boast a fantastic amount of “bandit signs,” advertising not just shows but cheap post-Katrina housing contractors, brand new schools, and sometimes pitbull puppies for sale, not to mention the many, many community pleas to stop gun violence. Mayor Landrieu’s administration hasn’t had much lucklowering the crime rate, but he’s doing a bang-up job ridding New Orleans of those signs and hassling unlicensed music clubs…
At times throughout my life I’ve wished Chuck D were my father. Nothing else has ever spun my brain as hard, both musically and socially, as Public Enemy. Various teenage groundings by my parents kept me from ever seeing P.E. live — outside of a 1996 DVD where Chuck and Flavor Flav seemed tired, like boxers in the last round. But the 2007 New Orleans P.E. show at House of Blues was objectively amazing. The live-band version featuring DJ Lord brought the group’s twenty years of experience to bear, along with an obvious passion for our city. Old rock stars often look silly, straining to somehow recapture youth, but Public Enemy was never youth-obsessed. Chuck’s 46 now, but then he seemed 46 when he was 30, so there was nothing silly about P.E. 2007. Except Flav.
Interviewing Chuck was one of my life goals. And the morning after the concert, I was also honored to watch him speak to a small group of performing arts students at an Uptown high school. Afterwards he asked me to navigate his first ever destruction tour of the lower Ninth Ward. No shit. Chuck D dropped me off at my house. Shit’s crazy.
Like other celebrities, orators, and 46-year-old father figures, Chuck D possesses a store of memorized talking points. As a fan, during our interview and the subsequent van ride, I noticed him repeating points he’d made in other interviews, verbatim. Just like your father would. As with my actual dad, I didn’t necessarily feel ours were always interactive conversations. But walking through piles of destroyed 9th Ward homes, I gleaned as much wisdom from Chuck D as I always fantasized I might. Chuck D’s brain is an awesome thing.
During our two phone interviews, he gave me a lot of time and gutsy answers; I was originally allotted only 20 phone minutes with the legend, but we outran that just discussing New Orleans/Katrina/racial bullshit. So Chuck called me back days later, to also talk about music. No shit.
You couldn’t possibly enjoy this interview as much as I did — it is below this video of Public Enemy’s Katrina song, “Hell No, We Ain’t All Right.”
ANTIGRAVITY: Most of my questions are about New Orleans. I promise to ask you about music, but I can’t help but pick your brain regarding the racial implications of our situation down here. I saw Tucker Carlson’s interview you on CNN about Katrina and he came off pretty asinine in his bowtie, telling you that nothing about our disaster was racially motivated — but wait. First: what is your personal definition of “racism?”
CD: There is one race, the human race. Racism splits that race up into categories, and benefits at other people’s expense.
AG: Are we all racists? It often feels like everything in New Orleans is racially motivated.
CD: For you to understand life in this world, you have to understand that Americans are poor on three things: they’re poor on time, poor on Geography, and terrible in History. With those three things going against Americans, anything can happen at any time and [the government] can blame it on anything. Most Americans didn’t know so many black people lived in New Orleans. American history is still a misunderstood story. I ask people all the time, ‘What does 1801 mean to you?’ But so many grown folks just kinda looked at history as being a pass/fail-type quiz that they don’t realize what role the Louisiana Purchase played in the formation of New Orleans — even up to the levees not being as secure as they should have.
AG: Watching that Tucker Carlson thing I just kept thinking, “Split hairs all you want but it comes down to that fact that the government couldn’t get water to the Superdome for four days.” I can’t imagine that happening anywhere else. For me it was the one thing that proved this was all, on some level, on purpose.
CD: Well, America might be too big for itself. Countries that move quicker and are more streamlined can take care of needs. This whole consolidation of fifty states may have worked better in another time. There’s New York, L.A., and D.C., maybe Chicago, and everyplace else has to fend for itself. [Katrina] wouldn’t happen in Boston because it doesn’t have a heavy black population. A black city (that was) dominant at another time, not in the millennium.
AG: New Orleans has made such minimal progress so far that it just feels, again, like everything’s on purpose. If I’m right, what is thepurpose of killing off New Orleans, or at least just letting it die?
CD: Naw. It’s just disregarded as not being a priority. America’s money is not worth the paper it’s printed on. They’re concentrating on [the war]. New Orleans is an afterthought.
People asked why folks didn’t get out of town before the flood, but they don’t realize that a lot of New Orleanians don’t ever leave their neighborhoods; they never even go to the other side of this small town.
CD: That’s an American problem. 22% have passports, meaning 78% of the people don’t go nowhere, ain’t seen nothing — that’s a slave mentality, being in a cage and liking it.
AG: I’ve heard you reiterate that quite a bit: ‘Americans, get a passport, visit Europe…’
CD: Visit anywhere. Understand that the world has a lot to offer.
AG: But you’re lucky enough to be able to do that, Chuck. Especially here — like, I teach, and I know many kids and their parents have never been outside of here. I ask a kid. I’ve lived here for six years and have wanted desperately to visit Europe and just haven’t been able, in this economy, to save up even a thousand dollars to go anywhere.
CD: But how different is that from the African who knows themselves and would, back in the day, travel to the other side of the continent?
AG: Because now it costs a thousand bucks. You have to be in a situation where you can save up money to move around.
CD: No, I know, I know. But, like my sister, she had to get the hell up outta New York. She got on the Greyhound with her two kids and went to California, for two hundred dollars. And she… Black folks’ whole thing is like, “When the shit gets rough you gotta get it movin, to protect your family.” When Jim Crow said, “Nigga you better get your ass crackin, working for me or die nigga,” we got our ass up out of there and migrated. Now you got a lot of black folks migrating down to the southern areas, and New Orleans was one of those places they were coming down to, until the disaster. New Orleans should be protected by the government, as a cultural Toa to the rest of the planet. It can’t protect itself — it was built in the wrong place for all the wrong reasons. That’s why it feels funny for me to come down to New Orleans and play a show. I played the State Municipal, I’ve played the ‘Dome, played UNO, and House of Blues a number of times. New Orleans has always shown a greater love. So, not speaking for Public Enemy, but just me and Professor Griff, we are doing whatever we can do, putting up our proceeds from this show to grassroots New Orleans organizations.
AG: I don’t want to ask you anything about Flavor’s television show, but I did find this interesting quote where you said, “Flavor is the type of black man that America feels comfortable with.” I have to say: I have a lot of racist relatives and none of them would feel at all comfortable around Flavor Flav. He’s their worst nightmare.
CD: Well, I meant that he’s always happy-go-lucky, and so considered non-threatening to white America. Griff is the exact opposite; he’s straight forward, he’s of high intelligence, and he has a demeanor where if you smack him he’ll kick you back. And that’s always been a threat to America.
AG: I know you wrote that New Orleans song (“Hell No, We Ain’t Alright”) the week of Katrina, and one of the issues of the Public Enemy comic book was set during our flood. What new insight have you gleaned about all this in the last year and a half since the flood? I know you’re probably not asked about New Orleans so much since we’re no longer national news…
CD: [Chuckles] The reason we have any Jazz and Blues culture today is because of the universal language of love and lookout music developed from New Orleans and slavery. The fact that New Orleans was a… is a port, and we were channeled through that port, is the reason our music meant so much in the first place. Without New Orleans we no longer have a code to communicate to one another through the same methods that we had… And to have our music morph into hate music the way it has, it goes against… black music has always been the love music, it’s the unspoken code…
AG: But Tucker Carlson did bring up one point that I always wonder too: if New Orleans is — at least seemingly — run by black people, then why are black people so fucked over here?
CD: [Silence]
AG: I mean a lot of our politicians are black but still racism just seems so much deeper here to where it seems a concerted effort to…
CD: To keep black people down?
AG: Yeah. I teach public school and it seems very obvious and, again, on purpose.
CD: Throughout the years, wherever we’re abundant in numbers, there’s gonna be a different type of game that has us work against ourselves — that’s been systematic. As for New Orleans, there’s [also] a severe lack of endorsement by the government to allow states and cities to seriously be funded but still beat to their own drumbeat. When you don’t have that, you have a possible implosion.
AG: Well I was going to ask you about music now. I’ve read a lot about…
CD: If somebody says that New Orleans belongs to us, that’s just a cultural attachment. New Orleans never made us — America doesn’t make us, even Africa doesn’t make us as a people. We make us as a people. We have to understand that. I think as black folks, we’ve always had the inherent sense to be nomadic: in Africa, and whenever shit gets crazy, we keep it moving. The reason our music and culture has traveled is because we’ve kept it moving. We’ve never been inherently stuck to one place…
AG: So you think that New Orleanians should “get moving”?
CD: I’m not saying that. But if hurricane season is putting the place in jeopardy every year, and there’s global warming [making it worse], and you know the government ain’t gonna do shit, then… You got your answers right there. I was born and raised in New York and there’s a certain love for New York, but then New York makes it impossible for black people to live, so black people have to end up saying, “Fuck New York.”
AG: You did a song recently with our Dirty Dozen Brass band. I teach a class where the kids learn to program beats, and they also write record reviews, and one of them wrote of the Dirty Dozen album, “It sounds like music at a ball for rich people.”
CD: It’s music for rich people?
AG: My question is: I know you’re a big advocate of blues and jazz, but I have a problem with blues music made in 2007, because rarely does anyone seem to do anything new with it. Lots of genre music just seems imitative, to appease audiences.
CD: Well, you know what, if a person is used to going to McDonalds, and they got running water, and they can go to Wal-Mart for clothes and a plasma TV and they’re watching cable, what hard life do they have as opposed to people a hundred years ago? Blues and soul came out of real, tough experiences. And not just experiences of somebody’s mind. So that’s one of the reasons the effort in blues seems contrived today, not coming from people who’ve really been through it. Today, if a person’s doesn’t have a job, there’s a system to keep them from being homeless; a hundred years ago you’d die in the streets, man. For real. 1907, if you ain’t working to survive, your ass is dying in the streets, in the woods. And today America is a spoiled…fat…
AG: [Laughs]
CD: Americans are hated everywhere else in the world, they’re delusional and have a very poor sense of time, geography and history. And that’s how the government wants people to be.
AG: But shouldn’t more people who play the blues or jazz do something with it?
CD: Of course. The blues was just born out of something that decided to be what it was. People try something on their own, but the problem is, if others don’t like it they’re quick to reject it. Sometimes hearing a record and hating it at first can be good for you. Like vegetables and greens; you can’t go out and buy okra and say, “I’m gonna make this okra look just as good as Twinkies.” Okra’s not gonna get that winning nod offa first glance. Then some day you’re like “I need some okra; fuck Twinkies.” And with iPods and everything — when’s the last time someone heard a record all the way to the end? On to the next one. When was the last time you heard a song go out in a crescendo instead of a fade? In the ‘70s and ‘80s, people at least checked for the instrumental break. Now people are just checking out the first 15 seconds of the record and “It ain’t hittin, it’s whack.” But even if it’s whack, are you gonna give it a chance three times? Naw. That’s why ringtones are popular; they sell you their bullshit: they give you fifteen seconds and that’s it.
AG: I hadn’t thought of it that way.
CD: I got teenage daughters, they can’t get even get to the middle of the song and that song is outta there. When was the last time you heard a song with an actual ending? 98% of black music is lazy. It’s lazy. TV On The Radio are so good because they know they gotta have an effort to keep up with the standards of the music that surrounds them.
AG: You like Mr. Lif, I assume…
CD: He’s incredible. And El-P just put out an incredible record. These are people who actually love the craft and the art form. And because there’s thought into it, that means it’s for twenty-one and over. But going back to your students saying Dirty Dozen sounded like music for rich people — it’s easy for a young person to hear music with any thought in and say ‘this is music for old people’.
AG: Actually, I think the kids were just saying the Dirty Dozen don’t sound like the brass bands in their neighborhoods but that they sound like a version of New Orleans that’s relevant mostly to the tourist industry.
CD: New Orleans 2007 needs to make its own statement. It ain’t Cash Money and No Limit no more. And Birdman’s making the same record he made five years ago, rehashing another time.Well, black people, we need to evolve from our neighborhoods and assume our places as worldly people. If we don’t think globally we’ll stay slaves here, trying to ask the white American government to help us get better. You ain’t got a passport: you’re signed to slavery.
OK. My last question is about the class I told you I teach, where the students make beats and write raps. What advice would you give a teacher of rap music today?
CD: Something that’s really lacking nowdays is dreaming — teach them to dream. Teach them that if they can turn their talent into a skill and apply it, it’s more than a beat, man. The beat is nothing but fuel to take a person into dreaming about a lot of different things. But first they have to master the language, then they have to write about something right? Well, what are they gonna write about? If you’re gonna make up something, if you’re gonna take something that’s factual. But hype is what’s gonna get a young person in trouble nine times out of ten.
AG: Hype is what kids are attracted to.
CD: Then your job, which is difficult, is to diffuse the hype. And your job, to defuse the hype, is a motherfucking job and three-quarters, man. Also, teach them time: the time that we have been on this Earth. Learn history, thoroughly, because then you start to understand the history of music, musicians and technology. And understand geography and the migration of music. That’s a great place to start, and go all the way up to making beats with a machine. If they don’t know time, history and geography, you’re wasting your time teaching them anything, ‘cause you’re not giving them a basis to comprehend anything that they’re going to want to do in the future, and you’re taking their future away — it ain’t gonna be saved by making a beat. You gotta know where you come from to know where to put the beat. People think that making a beat gonna make ‘em rich but, nah, it ain’t like that.
AG: What would you tell my kids about expressing themselves through writing rhymes?
CD: Time. Geography. And History. Then you understand language. If you can’t master the language you’re in, how good you gonna be at writing words and writing rhymes? I know cats that can rhyme in two or three different languages. Would that make you say that American kids are dumber than other kids around the world? Would you say America has fell off? Tell your kids: they’re part of a system that fell off. Make them expand and think outside the box, and see that they’re a wonderful gift to the planet.
To read the actual professional published interview at VICE Magazine, CLICK HERE. Below I have pasted the tons of interesting leftover material from that interview, wherein Bret Easton Ellis and Braxton Pope discuss their new movie The Canyons, plus Bret’s reputation, Lindsay Lohan, paprazzi, Lindsay Lohan, porn star James Deen, Lindsay Lohan, modern novelists, and Lindsay Lohan. Interview after this clip from the Braxton Pope produced Kevin Spacey film, Shrink:
ON WHETHER OR NOT BRET EASTON ELLIS IS “NICE”
Bret’s persona doesn’t make him seem easy to befriend. How did you two fellows meet, Braxton?
Braxton Pope: I had produced a Showtime pilot with author Jonathan Ames (“Bored to Death”) in New York and have always been interested in contemporary fiction as source material for movies, so when Ames told me he was friends with Bret, I had him arrange a meeting. Bret was someone I instantly liked, and was surprised because he’s a very empathicperson, he listens carefully and he doesn’t have the level of solipsism and narcissism socially that so many artists have. He’s actually a really good friend to me. And he’s such an interesting thinker about culture, as a creator and a consumer, we just started talking every day about movies and books and music and found it very easy to collaborate with one another. We now have this production company together, Sodium Fox. He is very, very nice. I give him shit about it all the time because you have this image of him as this provocateur and dark soul in his writing, then when you meet him he’s very magnanimous and kind. There’s a huge disjunction between Bret the authorial persona and the human.
Bret, it sounds like Braxton is saying you are “nice.”
Bret Easton Ellis: Yes. I am a very nice guy. Might not come off that way in the Twitterverse, or because of my work’s subject matters and the narrators I am drawn to. We also have a very surface-oriented culture that is incredibly sincere and very self-pitying and – increasingly I find – people can’t make those leaps between between what an author writes and his own persona. I’ve gotten in trouble I guess – I don’t know if I consider it trouble or not but – they have this idea about me as a bad boy and a provocateur in social media or novels. For example The Canyons, a lot of people have already painted with the Bret Easton Ellis brand: seedy, violent, sexual, nasty cold people doing nasty cold things to each other. All of which is true but I am not drawn to those people in real life.
Is Ellis just one of those people who gets on the keyboard or twitter and gets…mean. Does he just drink a lot or?
Pope: He does drink, no question [laughs]. I think there are times when his melancholy plus alcohol probably brings out a certain candor that rankles people. But his honesty also makes his Twitter very interesting and creates a big following. It’s more interesting to hear what he really thinks about XYZ movie than to read other people who – because Hollywood is such a small community – are simply going to prop up whatever has come out.
People aren’t super honest on social media partly because they’re afraid of doors shutting in their face. Has his “meanness” limited him in any way, you think?
Pope: Only in the past few years has he switches focus to screenplays. But he gets a lot of deals. He’s a successful, well-compensated screenwriter, and sought after. That was one issue I had with the NYTimes magazine: [in the cutline beneath the photo] they made it seem like Schrader was over the hill and having a hard time finding financing. It denoted this desperation.
Bret, have you gotten the impression that doors shut in your face because people don’t want to involved with a mean person?
Ellis: I would assume I have, but I can’t offer you any concrete evidence because no one is going to say that. But those doors…the way Braxton and I are now making movies, I don’t think it’s so dependent on those doors anymore. There’s nothing I can do to not be authentic in a very transparent world. It’s interesting to see how Hollywood deals with this transparency that is slowly edging out everything. I don’t think I know anyone in their mid 20s who has any kind of issue of problems with social media and how you express yourself on it; I am living with someone who is muhc younger than me and I see how all of his friends react and express themselves and what they post. Then I see my friends who are in their 40s and it’s a very different situation, this notion of holding onto a kind of privacy that isn’t going to exist much longer.
ON WHAT ‘THE CANYONS’ ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Since no one has seen The Canyons, describe your favorite part of the flick?
Pope: Paul Schrader has sort of a meditative pacing and quality. He has a discerning eye and visual sensibility — I like that. James Deen and Lindsay Lohan give very compelling performances. The opportunity to see them play off one another is intrinsically interesting.
Ellis: Visually, the most successful scene is the one between James Deen and Lindsay Lohan that takes place by the pool of his Malibu mansion. As written, it was pretty simple: he knows she’s lying to him because he’s had her followed, and she’s beginning to understand this. So it’s two characters, a couple, who know what the truth is and are talking around it. The stage directions were very simple: Christian (James Deen) walks down to the pool and talks to Tara (Lohan), and Paul Schrader shoots it in a way that makes it much more visual, beautiful, epic in a way: the camera follows James’ car into the carport, tracks James through the house to the porch which looks over the Pacific, then it follows him down a massive staircase to the pool where Lindsay is laying. That ended up being my favorite scene, visually. I also really like the opening scene that is very troubled because it has lots of exposition — the main four characters are being introduced — and it was shot in a way that makes it seem slower than it plays on paper.
ON RESPONSES TO ‘THE CANYONS’
When South-By-Southwest gave that quote about its “ugliness and deadness,” I just figured that meant you two must have nailed Bret’s writing. The ugliness and deadness of Bret’s characters is sort of what his fans are drawn to, no?
Pope: Bret writes a specific type of character, so the quote “ugliness and deadness” yeah, I have no issue with that, because it’s translating some of the soul and artistic DNA of Bret onto the screen. Some of the other SXSW quotes were offensive and the fact that they broke festival protocol to comment on it was ridiculous. They could have legitimately just not liked the movie, but there are press and certain film circles who for whatever reason have a view of Lindsay that makes them almost want to punish her. Our movie is very much wrapped up in who she is and her performance; they’re inextricably linked and that influences certain people.
Was that unprecedented that SXSW spoke about the movie like that instead of just giving it a yes or no vote?
Pope: I did talk to our production attorneys about the situation, and as far as I know it was unprecedented. It was extraordinarily lame and inexcusable. Especially since I had a documentary in competition at SXSW, I had a feature film a few years ago that premiered at SXSW, so as an alum it felt like such disrespect and such poor form. Such a breach of protocol.
So was it then challenging to find a distributor after the SXSW debacle?
Pope: It certain didn’t help. But we had William Morris Endeavor sell the movie, and a number of distributors made offers, so it all worked out. We’re extremely happy with Independent Film Channel. I can tell you I was driving to the set of my recent Passion Pit music video, and I was listening to KROQ’s Kevin and Bean Morning Show and they were talking about The Canyons and spending a lot of time discussing the SXSW comment. This very popular radio show is talking about this little indy movie that hasn’t been released; it just isn’t the type of thing that should be on their radar, really. They might talk about a little indy movie once it’s released and done really well, but the fact that I had to spend 20 minutes listening to them recite this criticism from SXSW… It circulated so widely that it did make us concerned for the impact of this rogue comment.
You are now working with French filmmaker Gaspar Noe. What did he think of ‘The Canyons’?
Pope: He thought James Deen was quite good, he thought Lindsay…gave a very strong performance. He thought the title sequence – a panoramic montage of decaying theaters, was really haunting and captivating. He had other observations, but he liked the film.
ON LINDSAY LOHAN
But what movie prior to this made you think she was great?
Pope: Well, I have seen a lot of her films and I rewatched Mean Girls right before The Canyons.
Right, but aside from Mean Girls, what other movies has she even done?
Pope: She worked with Robert Altman in Prairie Home Companion. But you’re right, obviously the media fascination exceeds her body of work. Her work has been almost exclusively mainstream studio teen movies. But there is a reason why she was connecting with people and became hugely popular. She is ready to assume the more mature roles with interesting filmmakers. There are just a lot of issues that complicate that process.
The New York Times article says Bret was initially anti-Lohan.
Ellis: I thought she carried too much baggage and that this would become the Lindsay Lohan show, and I didn’t know where that was going to get us. I didn’t know what was positive about any of this. But in the audition she was better than my first choice which was Leslie Coutterand,this unknown French actress who was great in the audition, though she did have the handicap of a heavy French accent, which I thought would maybe mess up the film, but I thought we could work with it. Lindsay though, kind of blew it out of the water. And Braxton as a producer believed she’d bring in another audience for this movie. There’s a chance she’ll take it past a New York, L.A. crowd, since the curiosity factor is a lot bigger. Truth be told, that is what’s happened: Lindsay Lohan has put the movie on the map in a way it wouldn’t have been otherwise, whether that’s good or bad. Yeah, she has a lot of personal baggage, but she is a very good actress who delivers. So I was wrong!
At some point in the beginning she didn’t show up when promised and Schrader fired her. But you, Braxton, were the person who made that phonecall. The NYT piece makes it seem like y’all were just scaring her straight though, before giving her another chance. Was firing her just a tactic?
Pope: From my perspective I wasn’t ever trying to manipulate her or the situation, or coming from any place that wasn’t forthright and transparent – that was a huge part of our mission statement with this move. So much of Hollywood is critical and treacherous – I don’t even wanna get into the insanity of how people deal with you and the things you have to go through, which just makes things inordinately arduous. But because we were controlling this movie, I just wanted to be transparent and straight forward. I understood Schrader’s perspective. Paul’s strict Calvinist upbringing and his approach means he’s a very serious guy.
The NYTimes article made it seem like she was doing this small movie because no other movie would insure her.
Pope: It can be a little difficult to get smaller films bonded. I don’t know in truth the status of her bondability, her insurability, but we didn’t have a bond on this movie. If one of our lead actors filmed half the movie then something happened, there was no insurance policy that would give us money to recast and reshoot. We woulda just been out. In our case if some disaster would have befallen us, that would have been it.
In Lindsay’s heyday, I was an extra on her movie “Just My Luck” and she wouldn’t practice her lines with the cast, she had a stand-in do all her blocking. So it was interesting to read that she did a screen test for you and everything.
Pope: Normally, with someone at her level, you just have to make an offer and they won’t do any tests. Either you want them or you don’t. But when we met with her she had a script with a lot of handwritten notes and it was clearly a character that resonated with her. We offered her a smaller role and she said she wanted to play the lead.
How much of the money you raised went to pay for Lindsay Lohan’s reported $46,000 hotel bill and $600 sushi lunch?
Pope: We didn’t cover any of her hotel bills. Those are charges she incurred. The sushi, production got stuck with the tab. Although I will say that Lindsay, when we were in Malibu, we went to Nobu and she bought sushi for everybody. So perhaps the karmic scales were balanced. But she has been one of the reasons why there has been a tremendous amount of interest in the movie and when you’re doing something DIY that’s so modestly budgeted you’re looking for ways to be heard above the chatter. But it was not a decision about ‘Oh, Lindsay’s gonna bring us all this publicity.’
But aren’t you at least worried people will walk out of the movie not even remembering what her character’s name was? At this point it’s almost like having Hulk Hogan in your movie…
Ellis: That’s how I watch movies anyway. I haven’t watched movies for so long, having been involved in the business since I was a kid. Like I watched Silver Linings Playbook and think “Jennifer Lawrenceis great.” Or “Bradley Cooper is great.” And when I talk about the film I am talking about them. It’s the language of movies now; I am rarely talking about characters; I’m usually talking about the actor or the actress. If people don’t disappear into the film because it’s Lindsay instead of an unknown…meh. It’s apples and oranges. Maybe it’s a problem. It’s not something that troubles me.
ON PAPRAZZI
With no money in the budget for trailers even, it seems you’d have a hard time keeping away the paparazzi, no?
Pope: That was a legit concern. But a lot of our locations were interior. And we were moving locations quite a bit so they had a hard time homing in on us. They did figure out when we were shooting at Café Med on Sunset Blvd. — we were kind of out in the open, and they did find us quite quickly there. They were disruptive during one outdoor mall sequence but we knew that guerrilla filmmaking in a public place with someone as big as Lindsay would be a roll of the dice. But even when we filmed at my house, we had paparazzi jumping up the high cinderblock wall in my yard; you would just see their heads pop up. And when Lindsay left in her Porsche after she wrapped for the day, they were literally making these wild U-turns on a busy street and forcing cars to slam on their brakes or careen off into driveways. Right in front of my house there were almost three different accidents because they just have no regard.
That’s what I meant about firing her: if she wears the wrong shoes, people write about it. So god forbid she gets fired from a movie.
Pope: At one point while shooting she went outside in jean shorts and suddenly it was all over the world, people critiquing her. Just so bizarre. Anything having to do with Lindsay is so touchy. It just blows up across the blogosphere. So in talking about her I try to be very careful because I don’t want it to be misconstrued. I wanted this movie to be, for her, a sort of reintroduction in an adult role. I wanted this to be a boost to her career, not a black eye.
ON ‘THE CANYONS’ FUNDING ETC.
Utilizing Kickstarter for a film with huge stars is sort of a first. What Hollywood “firsts” has The Canyons accomplished?
Pope: I don’t think it’s any single component; it’s the confluence of a bunch of new media devices and methods: crowd-funding, and using Facebook and Twitter, andanonline casting service called “Let It Cast” while also featuring two artists the profile of Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader.
Ellis: The social media aspect is the publicity, that is where your advertising dollars go. You don’t need advertising dollars anymore; you just make people aware of the movie via social media. It’s increasingly a no-brainer. I can’t imagine I would ever go into a major studio project again. I have flirted with it. But life is too short.
One of the Kickstarter rewards was, for $3,000 someone gets to go work out with you and your trainer in the gym, Bret. That seems kind of odd.
Ellis: It does. It’s gonna be a really easy workout [laughs]. It’s really not strenuous at all. We’ll see how that goes. I think we sold two or three of those.
So you work out, and I heard you’ve become an early riser.
Ellis: I’ve been changing my routine lately. I’m kind of on the same schedule as most people now. My boyfriend started getting up early. He recently got off drugs last fall, pills, and decided to become a health nut. So he was getting up really early and doing yoga and working on his blogs and stuff. His lifestyle permeated mine and became symbiotic in a way and I found myself going to sleep early and getting up early and just being more healthy than I used to be.
Have you all started acting out the Kickstarter pledges yet?
Pope: Well not really, a lot of the packages include signed artwork, which we wouldn’t have until we found a distributor to generate those marketing materials. Later this Spring and into early summer we’ll start, in a couple months. We have been required to watch some movies and then tweet reactions because the donors wanted to time them with the movies’ release. Bret and I have seen some independent films and have tweeted about them.
The fact that people who have an extra five grand to donate to your Kickstarter sitting around writing novels…I don’t know why that seems strange to me. Rich people write novels?
Ellis: I have to say that I think I met a couple of the people who did that donation – they were invited to the wrap party last summer – and my feeling from them was that they really didn’t have a lot of money, because of what their jobs were, my sense was that this was kind of a sacrifice for them, but something that was kind of exciting, so they got the money together. Even though the lagtime between the donation and the time I read them is about a year-and-a-half, which was explained in the Kickstarter. I could have read them really wrong but… With the workout donation, I did have the feeling that those kids had money.
Once Braxton cast Lindsay Lohan, didn’t you just think, “Well fuck Kickstarter, let’s do it big then”?
Ellis: No, never. We were always going to make it with Kickstarter money, and our own money. We always wanted to shoot it for $150K and then do post for $90k, and we were not going to invite anyone else. It was never going to be a Lindsay Lohan movie and she came in way into the casting process. We thought we were going to cast it off the internet; people uploading auditions. We had no money and needed people who wanted to be part of it; they had to want to, and they had to accept $100-a-day. Lindsay got the part based on being the best actress we saw. She kind of blew it away and was so committed to it.
Pope:With this package, perhaps we could have just gotten traditional financing. Of course Lindsay complicates that because bond issues and insurance issues. But ultimately we wanted to tell the story with our sensibilities and didn’t want to jump through any casting hoops or ask a studio’s permission, or get approvals from anyone. We just wanted whoever we thought was best for any individual role. That’s what happened with James Deen and Lindsay.
ON SELF-FUNDING, KICKSTARTER, AND SELF-PUBLISHING
In the publishing world, self-funding is stigmatized as an admission of failure. Has that changed at all?
Ellis: I always believed that and to an extent still do, that great books don’t go unpublished. After being in publishing for 30 years, having friends who couldn’t get published and seeing how the business works and knowing a lot of editors. I don’t know what it’s like now. Maybe it’s different in the last ten years. But it wasn’t like Hollywood where there were great scripts that won’t get made. But I never saw that in publishing. But who is writing novels anymore? If you had this disposable free time to sit down and write a novel, you probably had money. It was probably a white mostly middle-class endeavor. But I am kind of out of the game as far as what’s going with what writers are doing. I certainly know a lot of broke writers who are working on novels…
ON PORN STAR JAMES DEEN
How did you come upon porn star James Deen?
Ellis: Braxton and I share with each other a lot of writers and bands, and we talk about whatever is going on in the culture, so one day he sent me a link some article called “The Porn Star Next Door” about James Deen, who I’d never heard of. We were just starting to make this microbudget movie, and I started to think of ideas and what I wanted to write about at that moment — what were my obsessions in that time and what was I going to be able to get excited enough about to write a script in five or six weeks and have it go straight into production? So I looked at some of James Deen’s work: first the porn scenes, then the non-porn scenes where he had to act. And I noticed there was something very genuine about his work, a sincerity but also a theatricality that really sells his work. It’s there in a way that isn’t for other male porn performers. I thought he was electrifying, and I thought he would be great for the movie that was slowly taking shape in my mind. Because of James I was able to create this role of Christian. I wrote a very detailed outline and on a whim I Tweeted at James – we’d never met – and I said, “Hey you wanna star in a movie I am writing?” And he got back to me and said he’d love to. When I then explained to Braxton and Paul that I wrote the role of Christian for James Deen there was some…some sighing. Some heavy, deep, sighing. And some “That’s really not going to happen.” By then I’d met James and I was even more convinced he could do it. Everyone else who wanted to play Christian was playing it just a little too campy. No one was playing it plainly without actorly flourishes, which is how the role was written. Christian is a blank, and he’s psycho, but everyone else foreshadowed the psycho part of this character too early, and were far too menacing. It needed that boy next door quality with just a hint of the devilish side, which is what I think James had. When James screen tested, even Schrader was surprised.
Does he have what it takes to be a movie star?
Pope: I think there’s no question that if he wanted to pursue mainstream opportunities he would be able to do so. He has an easy charisma and believability, a certain presence on screen. We’ve discussed some other film opportunities in the mainstream arena. There are some people I am introducing him to on the representation side…
How do you think the porn helped him?
Pope: Probably in the same way that some musicians can make the transition and act, doing that amount of adult films makes you less self-conscious and comfortable in front of a crew and cameras. That’s a huge part of being able to act for us, whatever the emotional component is, you have to be able to focus to be able to do that, and if you are self-conscious and worried about all the mechanics of film-making it doesn’t work.
Have you seen his porn work?
Pope: [Laughs, stalls] Well [Laughs again] I’ve seen snippets.
Must be weird to know someone and then see them in a porn.
Pope: I think so much of my Hollywood existence is odd and surreal, like having dinner with Nic Cage in Las Vegas last week, was slightly surreal.
ON TURNING GREAT WRITING INTO MOVIES
Bret, did you move to L.A. to write scripts and make movies?
Ellis: No. I’d always been interested in writing scripts but I never planned to give up writing books and become a screenwriter for hire. The purpose of moving was always to write scripts and produce the ones I wanted to make myself, and those were always small scale independent movies, outside of the system. And that’s all I’ve really worked on. And that’s what Braxton and I are going to do again after The Canyons. We are already in pre-production on another microbudget movie.
I have a few friends who’ve had movies made of their books but I’ve never met anyone who liked the movie that was made. Since you had such a hand in The Canyons, Bret, do you feel differently about it than you do about other movies based on your writing?
Ellis: I actually like this movie. It was an experiment. It was kind of a mission to see if we could make a movie for very little money and make it look really great because of the technology and see if we could use social media to get the word out, and on that level I really like the movie. It’s not great, but it’s good, and I can stand by it. I don’t know if my other books should have been turned into movies but I also like Roger Avary’s Rules of Attraction. I did an adaptation myself of The Informers which did not turn out that well either, so I would have to say that I like The Canyons, which is actually the first produced script of mine that was an original screenplay.
