Interview conducted with Julian Barratt (right) on 11 August 2009.

How’s your day so far?
I’m in SOHO, London, [and] it’s nice and sunny. I strolled in this morning, got a coffee, [and have] talked about myself for a couple of hours. It’s been a nice morning.

What are you working on at the moment?
We’re writing a Boosh film treatment, [and] I’m working on some other film outlines with other people. We’ve just done this American tour sort of thing - well, some shows out there - and we’re trying to make the right step in what we do next, so we’ll probably try and get this film going, and then film it next year, and then tour again, maybe do something in America, and possibly Australia next year.

I’m writing, really, at the moment.

The third season of The Mighty Boosh has recently screened on Adult Swim in the United States, and judging by your recent trip there, is it safe to say the show’s a success?
It went really well, yeah. We didn’t know it was going to be what it was going to be. We went out there just to do some press, and some shows - some DJ sets - and the reaction was such that we thought we’d better do an actual show there of some sort, so we cobbled together a show when we were out in New York. We were pretty jet-lagged, and we were building props and I was trying to do the music, [but] we made a show that we strung together and we did that in the Bowery Ballroom in New York. It was rammed and people were queueing up, [so] we thought we’d better do a show in LA as well, and so we did it in LA, we flew our band out to play - a bit excessive, but who would’ve thought we’d end up playing LA? For some reason we just never thought we would, so it was exciting. It went really well, and we realised we could probably tour a bit around America - especially the student towns, and places like Nashville and Chicago. So we’re going to try and figure out a way to do that in the States.

But yeah, the next thing is to make a film, really.

Are you just plotting ideas for the film at this stage, or is production well and truly under way?
So far it’s a ‘how we met’ [story], about us meeting and gathering this group of people that the Boosh are, and then [we] go on an adventure. So it’s going back in time a little bit.

An ‘Origins’ story?
The origins, yeah, a little bit like that…the origins of how Howard became a jazz superhero. [Laughs]

Will you be revisiting the Zooniverse?
I don’t know about that. We moved out of the Zoo and it wasn’t really talked about, and it’s not in a George Lucas universe of trying to track logic back. I think we’ll do whatever works in a film, and it’s almost like if you saw the TV show, great, but actually forget the TV show as we’ll re-calibrate things and rejig things in order to make it fit in a film on itself. If we can make it tie into the universe that’s already existed, you know, fine, but I think it’s almost like I just want to ignore the TV show, and imagine we’ve just been asked to make a film and what would that be? I don’t want to make it an in joke with people that know the TV show, because I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make when they try and do the transition [from TV to film].

Is that what you do, with the TV show you say forget the radio show, then with the live show you forget everything else, and now with the film…?
One side of it is maintaining a ‘world’, because that’s what the Boosh is - this sort of group of people and they travel about. There’s on-going relationships, and there’s that aspect of it. Specifically what we wanted to make, rather than a Python-esque thing, we were more interested in creating a group of people, especially a double act at the heart of it, because we like that kind of humour and banter - and from that the madness comes, and rather than just saying, ‘OK let’s make a really insane-’ I mean, we have a lot of weird ideas, which you could just put together in a Python-esque stream of consciousness kind of way, but we’re much too interested in the relationships of the main characters. We’re in the middle ground between trying to maintain all the things that we’ve done and trying to reinvent it all the time. [The] thing with a film is you can make that leap or adjust things, readjust the dials.

So will the film come before the fourth season of the TV series?
I suppose so, yeah. These things take time. This is my ultimate ‘what we would do now’: We’d write the film, and we’d get moving on it, we’d make a pilot for a TV show - another series, perhaps, in America - and then we’d do the film, and then we’d do the series, and then…and then we’d retire. So that’s hopefully what we’ll do.

Maybe we won’t do that in reality. Maybe I’ll move into the world of sculpture, or macramé. [Laughs] You never know what happens…

The idea, though, is a film. I’ve wanted to make a film for so long, now.

You’ve just made your first film, Curtains, haven’t you?
Yeah, that was shown at Edinburgh Film Festival, and I’m making another one with the guy I made that with, Dan Jemmett. That’s a different side to what I do, something a bit more serious. I mean, it’s funny still, but it’s darker, it’s not quite the relentless comedic stuff that we do. But I want to do other things as well, as does Noel, so we always have worked with other people, but because the Boosh is the highest profile thing I do, and he does, people seem to see anything else we do as some sort of betrayal to the fans. Like we’re having an affair with another comedian or another writer…

We’ll, you’ve been doing the Boosh for ten years now…
That’s right. It’s a bit of an open relationship. [Laughs]

Is it hard to tell where Howard Moon ends and Julian Barratt begins these days?
No. You just cut off certain aspects of yourself in order to exaggerate the more manic and more obsessional and more comedic versions of yourself. I mean, it’s not that hard for me, because I am obsessed with certain things - jazz and stuff - and always have been. But the characters have always been just what we’re interested in, [so] it’s always been quite easy to write.

To step back for a minute, you’ve said in previous interviews that stand up comedy was never something you wanted to do, and yet that’s how you meet Noel, and how you got involved in the Boosh, wasn’t it?
Yeah.

So how did you get into the comedy scene?
I was at university. I was studying American Studies actually, and I was studying American film, literature…and I wanted to go to the States. So I had a year abroad. I went over to Washington DC, and there was a stand up competition over there. I’d been massively into comedy when I was a kid, but I never thought of doing it, but while I was at university a lot of comedians came to the college and did gigs, and it was a revelation to see close-up. I’d never seen stand up, I think on TV I’d seen Robin Williams do one - live at the Met or something - seen some DVDs of Richard Pryor, and obviously I was aware of it. Then I started seeing these performers close up and seeing Jack Dee and Eddie Izzard and Sean Hughes - really amazing people - and I was thinking ‘I can see how you do it’ - you stand up with a microphone and do it. So I stared writing stuff at university, and then in America I did my first gig, in a competition - and won it. I wanted to do something away from my hometown. I would never tell anyone when I was doing it, because I was a bit afraid I’d die and I didn’t want my friends to come and see that. So I would do it a bit secretly, I would go out at night and do my bitter trade - ply my grisly trade - and come back sort of like a murderer from my gigs, and no one knew where I’d been…

With Noel it was much different, he’d take an entourage of people along - there were always his friends. His way of doing it was much different to mine.

But I suppose from doing stand up I got that confidence of ‘Oh, right, I’m funny then’. You never know straight away, but when there’s a room of people laughing and go, ‘Oh right I can do this’, it encourages you. It’s very easy to understand how you do stand up, it’s not like TV, like, ‘How do you do TV?’ when you’re not in TV. You just think it’s this labyrinth of people and meetings and a whole maze of places. So [stand up] was a very easy thing to do: a microphone and a stage and you’re there. So that was the way in, and I met Noel pretty quickly; he saw me do a stand up competition on TV. I won a competition in Edinburgh, an open mic competition, and he had it on tape, he liked what I did. I think he liked that I was new, and that I was in the scene. He’d follow me in Time Out, the listings, he’d find out where I was and he came and saw me do a few gigs - he turned up at a few gigs I was at, actually. I was at the Hackney Empire once, and he turned up, I was on the bill with Simon Pegg, who was just starting out then as well - he was doing stand up initially. He won the competition - I remember that. We were in the same heat together, me and Simon, and he won that one and I was quite annoyed. [Laughs] We’re friends now.

A lot of the people I did stand up with initially - Sacha Baron Cohen, Mackenzie Crook (Gareth in the UK version of The Office) - we would do gigs with these people quite often, and get to know them, and it’s funny, you don’t see them for a while and then suddenly they’ve got a hit show and a film in the States and you go, ‘Oh my god, I played the Chuckle Club with you, to ten people!’

One of the great things about the new crop of British comedies is that there’s a whole community of people working together on shows, such as The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley, Snuff Box, The IT Crowd, etc….
I always liked that. We always try and get the Garth Marenghi lot into our show. Originally Richard Ayoade was going to be in ours, he was in the pilot playing Bainbridge, and Channel 4 wouldn’t let him come do our series, you know, so we had to cast Matt Berry as Bainbridge, and that was when we realised that the people in charge are more interested in the money and the ownership of you than the ideas, and that was a bit of a rude awakening. But in the end it didn’t matter because we’ve used Richard in lots of different ways and it’s since blown over, but it’s the enemy of art, really, a lot of that stuff. It’s hard because they give you a chance, and then they give you a chance with rules attached, and then you feel like you need to be thankful that you’re on TV, but you don’t really want to… So you have to swallow it a little bit to begin with, you have to take one for the team, you have to do one for them and then you can do what you want, which, once you’ve got an audience they can’t do anything about.

We got through the net because they didn’t understand it, but it got enough people for us to carry on, and it went under the radar for a bit. When the gigs started happening they saw that we were very popular with a certain group of people who they wanted to appeal to, so that allowed us a few more chances to get what we were doing right. It’s always a lot of luck involved, I suppose, you know, but me and Noel were still going to do what we did no matter what happened, because we could do live shows, so we could carry on between getting commissioned, we could carry on and tour, go to Australia - which we did. We had such a great time in Australia, we’re desperate to come back, but we kept getting things commissioned just when we were going to come out there, so we’d say, ‘No we can’t do it, we’ve got to do the show, it’s important.’ We got so frustrated doing all these live shows and not having a record of them, and everything was going into the ether, so we thought we’ve got to try and put something down on tape, so the radio show was the first attempt at that, and we haven’t looked back since, really.

Can we expect you in Australia anytime soon?
Yeah. It’s always part of the plan, really. We can tour out a bit more now, which I love to do because we have such a great time in Australia. I’d love to come out there - I think maybe next year is the idea. We’ve got to do other things, but I think it’s on the agenda. We’d be stupid not to come out there. It’s just a matter of finding the time when we’re all ready to go, and [deciding] what kind of show we’d do out there - whether we’d write a new one and come out there with it, or [if we’d] do some sort of hybrid of what we’re working on at the moment and some bits from the old stuff. If we’re to write a whole new show it’d be next year, but we could come out sooner with something else.

Finally: Nathan Barley. Will there be a second series?
We did some work on on it initially straight afterwards, and planned a possible way forward for the series, and then we sort of… He [Chris Morris, co-creator] parked it for a bit, he said to me he ‘parked it’. So if it’s parked, you know, I suppose it can be driven off at some point, I guess. He’s making a film at the moment. I don’t know, Charlie Brooker [fellow co-creator] and him are both busy on other things, so it’s not as if it couldn’t happen again. But I’m waiting to hear.

Your Dan Ashcroft character is a hero of mine and a few of my journalism friends; is there a bit of you in there?
[Laughs] Well, I guess in everything you do there is, I suppose. It was quite a difficult thing to do, that, actually, because … initially he [Chris Morris] wanted a very verbal character - a witty, sort of vicious character who would let fly with lots of verbal pyrotechnics and sort of destroy people in this way. And I’m not that kind of person, I couldn’t play it like that. [His character] came out of when I was improvising in sessions, and then they [Morris and Brooker] would go away and write it. My stuff was more sort of painful looks, inner crumbling, so I found it actually quite difficult to do. [Laughs] It’s quite a painful part to play, in a way. I haven’t done lots of acting. I think when you go to drama college you learn how to deal with that sort of stuff a bit more, and I felt it was a bit of an ordeal. It was good fun, but my part was quite hard to do.

Would you be interested in channelling something similar in another project?
I’d love to, yeah. You hope that the Boosh allows us to do these other things that we want to do, so when we have breaks from doing what we’re doing hopefully I’ll do some, uh, I’ll do Hamlet. Think I’m getting a bit old for Hamlet, maybe I’ll do King Lear…

Anyway, it turns out I’ve only got one high resolution image on my computer (and I don’t have access to the internet at home) so it’s with this image that the process started. It took me maybe 30 minutes to an hour to complete the following cover mock-up. I say ‘complete’ but I could have easily continued working on it, but I wanted to play with my iPhone.

The story of my life at the moment.

The white triangle in the top right-hand corner is where the barcode would sit. It’s hardly design heavy but that’s what I like about it.

In 1981 The Human League released Dare, which featured the single ‘Don’t You Want Me’.

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In 2001, to mark the 20th anniversary of Dare’s release, Stephen Merrit (The Magnetic Fields) produced an album of Human League covers called Reproductions: Songs of The Human League, featuring his cover of ‘Don’t You Want Me’ with his other band, Future Bible Heroes. In 2008 he released Distortion with The Magnetic Fields, an ode to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s debut album, Psychocandy.

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‘Just Like Honey’, the opening track from Psychocandy, was used in the pivotal closing scene in Sophia Coppola’s 2003 film, Lost in Translation, which starred Bill Murray.

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In 2003 Bill Murray also featured in the Jim Jarmusch ensemble film, Coffee & Cigarettes, alongside Steve Coogan.

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Steve Coogan played the role of the late Tony Wilson in Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, which chronicled the legendary Factory Records – home to Joy Division, the Happy Mondays and New Order.

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The Killers are named after the fictional band of the same name in the music video to the 2001 New Order single, ‘Crystal‘.

OR, THE HUMAN LEAGUE TO THE KILLERS IN ONE MOVE

Both The Killers and The Human League have singles called ‘Human’. Stuart Price (producer of The Killers’ latest album and remixer of ‘Mr Brightside’ as Jacques Lu Cont) has also said he grew up exclusively listening to classical music, until he heard Dare.

Hazel Rose Markus hails from Stockholm, which is in Sweden. At 27 years of age she’s performed in several bands (the avant garde pop act Identities, the electro duo HELM and the Joy Division channeling Noir York) as well as under her solo alias, Hermès, for the past five years, writing and recording some of the finest folk music since Vashti Bunyan. While spending the past year in Prague, Hazel Rose has listened to a lot of Arvo Pärt, Charles Ives and Brian Eno. On Which is what life is all about Hazel Rose takes these new influences and adds her own unique style, which she says “is what life is all about”.

Communards’ Wall are a communist band from Italy that write intelligent, thought-provoking and definitely un-PC songs. With a sound that falls somewhere between industrial metal and noise, the three-piece cite Animal Collective, Napalm Death and Manu Chao as influences. Their debut single, Shoot First, Think Later, became the most requested song in the history of Italian radio, until it was promptly removed from the airwaves once its true meaning became apparent. The Bombing Begins in Five Minutes sees Communards’ Wall maturing as a band, evident in the addition of trumpet, saxophone and the flugelhorn, as well as the still life artwork.

Aquaforte, Newfoundland and Labrador take their name from the quintet’s hometown of Aquaforte, which is located in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Frontman Ben Butler is a distant cousin of The Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, and subsequently no less than four Arcade Fire tracks appear on ANL’s debut EP, We Could Have a Pretty Good Time?????? ?????. Ukelele pop has never sounded so good. Aquaforte have also just been announced for SXSW and are in talks to play next year’s CMJ in New York.

Finally we have the speed garage/punk/emo quartet Speedlite EX, hailing from Hoboken, New Jersey. Having toured the United States seven times under the wing of the Vans Warped Tour, Speedlite EX have played alongside luminaries NOFX and MXPX. With their new album - their fourth - produced by Taking Back Sunday vocalist Adam Lazzara, I Have Come to Realize That All My Trouble With Living Has Come From Fear and Smallness Within Me marks their major label debut through Warner. In true punk spirit, they designed all the artwork themselves. It’s currently on sale (a month early) through Starbucks, and streaming in its entirety on MySpace.

Thanks to Darryn.

Hearing Mickey Rourke announced as the winner of Best Actor: Drama at the recent Golden Globes was a beautiful moment in the history of cinema. Nobody deserved the award more than Rourke and hopefully the Academy will recognise this when they announce the Best Actor award on 22 February. Never has the phrase ‘come-back role’ been so apt.

Without doubt Mickey Rourke gives the performance of the year – of the past few years, in fact – and definitely the performance of his career in The Wrestler. As Randy “The Ram” Robinson the 52-year-old completely transforms on screen.

The Ram is a former professional wrestler who’s long past his prime. He now spends weekends fighting exhibition matches for pocket money and nostalgic glory. He works packing boxes for the local supermarket and has an estranged relationship with his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). When asked to perform a 20-year anniversary match against his greatest opponent, The Ayatollah, he picks up his game and enters a particularly vicious wrestling match – complete with staples and broken glass – and suffers a heart attack post-match. Forging a relationship with an exotic dancer (Marisa Tomei) Randy tries to reconnect with his daughter – which provides some of the most poignant moments of the film. Randy is lively yet lost, humorous yet heartbroken, warm yet worn; a man that has spent the past 20 years in a blur, with things only beginning to clarify. It’s not simply for aesthetic reasons that Randy wears both glasses and a hearing aid.

It is cinema like this that makes you remember how important the art form is. The Dark Knight is a brilliant film, but for all its hundreds of millions of dollars, there’s a strong lack of honest emotional connection. The Wrestler, however, over its 100 minutes consumes you; it draws you in until you feel you know this Randy character more than you’ve ever known a person on screen.

You can see the parallel between Rourke and his character. Rourke crashed and burned out as an actor in the early ’90s, eventually finding a therapist who set him on the right path. He also had a career as a boxer, so he’s used to having the shit beaten out of him physically and mentally. The Wrestler is Rourke exorcising his demons on-screen.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in September, Rourke addressed the connection between him and his character: “Randy the Ram was somebody 20 years ago and so was Mickey Rourke,” he said. “When you used to be somebody and you aren’t anymore, you live in what my doctor calls a state of shame. You don’t want to go out of the house. You hate just going to the store and having to stand in line, because inevitably someone will stare at you and say, ‘Hey, didn’t you used to be someone in the movies?’”

The echoes of Rourke are never stronger than in a scene where, working in a supermarket deli, a customer recognises the Ram as a past great. It is an awkward, heartbreaking moment.

A film has never had such a profound affect on me. After leaving the theatre I felt I’d been in the ring with the Ram. I felt I’d been knocked for a six. If it wasn’t for the welling up – causing my prompt exodus from the cinema – I would’ve remained in my seat, possibly for the remainder of the night. The last scene is about as intensely emotional as film gets.

After the likes of Pi and Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler seems unlikely source material for Darren Aronofsky, but he’s managed to make a film about wrestling that isn’t really about wrestling – it’s about one man’s quest to find the truth in himself.

I remember your particularly lively and impassioned rendition of Too Drunk to Fuck at the Metro Theatre here in Sydney last year. Is that a particularly fun song to perform live? The crowd seemed to love it!
It is the highlight of the live show; it’s so funny for us and for the audience to scream ‘fuck’ in a middle of a lounge kind of performance, two girls wearing pretty dresses going crazy and drunk, singing really machismo lyrics… I think I’ve sung this song more than 200 times and I’m still curious to see the reaction of the audience. My mom is worried about me ’cause I actually drink whisky during this song, and it’s been four years now…

Are there any songs you’d love to cover with Nouvelle Vague? I see you’re a PJ Harvey fan – have you covered any of her material?
I would love to do a cover of Nick Cave actually; his new wave period could be good material. I’m also covering in my solo gigs lots of song by Harry Nilsson and Nancy Sinatra. I’ve never done a cover of PJ Harvey though.

Are you involved with the new NV album? Which track/s are you featuring on?
I recorded three tracks for the next Nouvelle Vague album, and I’m really proud of them: God Save the Queen from the Sex Pistols, Master and Servant from Depeche Mode and All My Colours from Echo and the Bunnymen.

You’ve been a part of Nouvelle Vague since the very beginning. Did Marc and Olivier already have their idea before you joined, or did that come about afterwards?
I met Marc and Olivier for the first time in Marc’s studio, where we recorded the first album. They gave me the lyrics and we recorded three songs in four hours. It was very spontaneous work at first and as we got to know each other on tour I came with a few ideas for the second album, like Blue Monday and Ever Fallen in Love. But mainly both of them have all the arrangements ideas and art direction.

You’ve got your own album out now, My Name. Can you tell us about it? Will NV fans find themselves in familiar territory; the tracks on your MySpace profile seem quite different in tone…
I’ve been working on my solo album in between Nouvelle Vague tours – it’s more pop than Nouvelle Vague but I think it has the same melancholy. I’m singing in French and English and I try to create an intimate atmosphere based on soft vocals but intense arrangements and emotions. It’s quite the same vibe as some Nouvelle Vague live versions, for example when I sing Sweet and Tender Hooligan or In a Manner of Speaking. I’ve done the support act for Nouvelle Vague recently and people really recognised my voice and like the fact that they can hear me sing in French.

Listen to Mélanie Pain’s solo work here. Visit Nouvelle Vague on MySpace.

I wrote this because I didn’t really want to do just another interview / preview for the upcoming Hola Mexico Film Festival.

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MEXICO CITY
The capital of Mexico is the most populated city in the Western world (third in total, behind Tokyo and Seoul) and with 20 million inhabitants contains almost the entire population of Australia in an area two-thirds the size of Sydney. This is one city where you don’t want to get lost. Located in the Valley of Mexico, the city was originally built by the Aztecs in 1325.

AZTECS
The Aztecs is a name given to ethnic groups that spoke a common language (Nahuatl) and became the dominant political and military force across Mesoamerica (early Mexico) in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. They had some crazy ideas, those old Aztecs, such as human sacrifice, but also built some striking monuments, which still attract hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

TEQUILA
Walking for kilometres to witness ancient temples makes for thirsty work, and no beverage is more Mexican than tequila – the agave-based spirit that has become a household name around the world thanks to its incredible healing powers and magical ability to make you eat raw salt. Locals are known to call it “la buena mierda”. Coincidentally it hails from the region of Tequila.

CHIHUAHUAS
Also sharing its name with a state is the breed of pooch called the Chihuahua (which may or may not be pronounced chee-hooa-hooa). While they’re great Mexican ambassadors, we’re not quite sure why they’re so goddamn popular, since they never shut up and have a habit of biting your ankles incessantly. However they are damn cute, and the chien du jour of Hollywood. (There must be a political metaphor in there somewhere…)

SPEEDY GONZALEZ
From Hollywood homes to Hollywood studios, Speedy Gonzalez rivals Mickey and Apple for the title of world’s most famous mouse. With that infamous catchphrase “¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!” Gonzalez can be credited with being the first person to bring Spanish into American homes*. However, the Mexican people themselves aren’t too fond of Speedy’s lifestyle of hard-drinking and hard women, something they deem to be cultural stereotypes – along with the sombrero he wears.

SOMBREROS
What a segue! Mexico’s national costume piece, the sombrero – or ‘sombrero mexicano’ as the locals call it, as all hats with a brim are deemed a ‘sombrero’ in Mexico – rivals our very own ‘cork hat’ for world’s most famous silly hat. Although, unlike Australia’s fashion icon, you wouldn’t be laughed out wearing a sombrero to a bar. Perhaps.

MARIACHI MUSIC
If you do head to a bar, restaurant, or as Hollywood has taught us, any eating establishment in Mexico, you will encounter a Mariachi band. Despite popular speculation, mariachi music did not spawn from the 1986 film ¡Three Amigos!, starring Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin. Apparently, the style has been around since the 18th Century. Who’d have thought? Sydney doesn’t have enough Mariachi bands – get on it, people.

TAXIS
What Sydney does have a lot of, though, are taxis (although they’re never around when you need them). But local cabs are pretty boring. If only our fleet were iconic VW Beetles, vividly painted green and white! Oh wait, Mexican eatery Guzman y Gomez have a fleet of Mexican taxis on the streets of Sydney throughout November? Bueno! Keep an eye out for them in the inner city.

NACHOS, BURRITOS, ENCHILADAS, ET AL.
Taxis are one of the best ways to get to your favourite restaurant, because you can get shit-faced on sangria, tequila (see above) or Corona without having to worry about driving home. Mexican food is the second best food in the world, but unlike the best food in the world (which is Italian, if you’re wondering), Mexican food is eaten with your hands, which is awesome. Nachos, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, tortillas, chilli, if you like your food hot and spicy, Mexican it is.

GAEL GARCIA BERNAL
Speaking of hot and spicy we have Mexico’s answer to Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal. You may have seen him in Amores Perros, Babel, The Motorcycle Diaries or The Science of Sleep. Chances are you have and haven’t been able to get those chiselled features and charm out of your mind. For more Garcia Bernal than you could possibly handle, try Y Tu Mama Tambien.

* Probably not true.

The name is, of course, from the Clash song and the awesome image is of Thurston Moore.

So the world’s premiere idiot-free music festival is finally coming to Australia. I guess the term ‘finally’ is being used a little liberally here since the event is still a relatively new phenomenon, but with the current state of festivals in Australia, the arrival of All Tomorrow’s Parties down under is a welcomed breath of fresh air.

Over the past ten years, All Tomorrow’s Parties has become the festival du jour for true music lovers. What makes the festival special is the attention to detail of each ATP event, each one curated by a highly regarded artist – be it Belle & Sebastian, Portishead, Sonic Youth, Modest Mouse, Mogwai, even Matt Groening and Vincent Gallo – and their ethos of screaming a big fuck you to corporate festivals, basically. For the film lovers out there even Criterion jumped on board to host film screenings at ATP New York last year, with plans to return for ATP New York 2009.

Australia’s inaugural All Tomorrow’s Parties is certainly in outstanding hands. I personally couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather curate a music festival than Nick Cave, even if I will (rather embarrassingly) admit to never having owned a single Bad Seeds album. The re-reformation of The Saints (they briefly reformed a few years back for an event in Brisbane) is exciting, and will hopefully earn the legendary punk act a slew of new fans. Continuing on the Brisbane theme, Australian music icon – and Queensland local – Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster will also be taking to the Cockatoo Island stage. Laughing Clowns, formed by Saints’ Ed Kuepper are another band I’m keen to check out – nothing like a bit of post-punk with a brass section to stimulate the mind. And every since hearing a Spiritualized track on a Q Magazine Glastonbury cover-mount CD, I’ve been keen to check out the English quintet.

It’s really great that there are festivals like St Jerome’s Laneway and ATP to compete with the fluoro-pulling conglomerate that is Big Park Vibes.

Maybe I should introduce this column before I go any further. Clampdown fills a quarter page void in the magazine that should be dedicated to the other side – namely indie music that’s too good to ignore, old and new. Nothing too obscure as to seem pretentious, but nothing too obvious that you could quite easily find on blogs.

Sydney quartet Traps are the first band to get a mention in this space. Landing on my desk a good month ago, their debut single Common Errors is the reason this column came to fruition. I had to write about it. As a massive fan of We Are Scientists (playing tonight at the Metro Theatre), Traps made me sit up and listen from the moment I first heard Kieran Day sing. Combining quick-paced guitar stabs, a driving beat and nonchalant vocals, this is the finest slice of indie I’ve heard come out of this city in a while, and a must for fans of the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Britpop. While on paper they may sound just like their peers, there’s conviction in this music and enough experimentation to make me believe they’re not just in it for the free jeans. Let’s hope they don’t prove me wrong.

This week’s five: Glasvegas, White Lies, new Ryan Adams, Laughing Clowns, Television.

What is it?

It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

IT IS MINE. (According to his answers.)

However, for the purpose of cleanliness of text and ease of reading, I have chosen to use the regular title case for Glover’s films throughout this story.

Also it should be noted that a lot of his text was simply cut and pasted into the document (question one’s answer was repeated verbatim at the end of the last question, for example) so I have a feeling these answers might be elsewhere on the internet.

Finally, I have left my questions as I sent them, as I find it interesting how/what he chooses to answer.

Enjoy!

Crispin Glover and partner.

Could you please introduce your films What Is It? and It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine to our readers?
What Is It? is my psychological reaction to the corporate restraints that have happened in the last 20 to 30 years in filmmaking: specifically, anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable is necessarily excised or the film will not be corporately funded or distributed. This is damaging to the culture because it is the very moment when an audience member sits back in their chair, looks up at the screen and thinks to their self, ‘Is this right what I am watching? Is this wrong what I am watching? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have made this? What is it?’

What is it that is taboo in the culture? What does it mean that taboo has been ubiquitously excised in this culture’s media? What does it mean to the culture when it does not properly process taboo in its media? It is a bad thing when questions are not being asked? Because these kinds of questions are when people are having a truly educational experience. For the culture to not be able to ask questions leads towards a non-educational experience, and that is what is happening in this culture. This stupefies this culture and that is of course a bad thing. So What Is It? is a direct reaction to the contents of this culture’s media.

It is important to show What Is It? first because it sets up going in to taboo subject matter to the extent so that when people view It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine the taboo element is not what becomes important, but the emotional content of the film.

The two films have thematic similarities but are very different kinds of film. It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine very much deals with the emotional catharsis of the main character and is played by the author of the screenplay Steven C. Stewart who was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy. I put Steven C. Stewart into What Is It? when I turned What Is It? into a feature from what was originally going to be a short film.

Steve had written his screenplay in the late 1970s. I read it in 1986 and as soon as I had read it I knew I had to produce the film. Steve had been locked in a nursing home for about ten years when his mother died. As previously stated he had been born with a severe case of cerebral palsy and was very difficult to understand. People that were caring for him in the nursing home would derisively call him an ‘M.R.’ – short for ‘mental retard’. This is not a nice thing to say to anyone, but [particularly so in this instance as] Steve was of normal intelligence. When he did get out he wrote his screenplay. Although it is written in the genre of a murder detective thriller truths of his own existence come through much more clearly than if he had written it as a standard autobiography. We shot It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine while I was still completing What Is It? and this is partly why What Is It? took a long time to complete. I am very proud of the film as I am of What Is It? I feel It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine will probably be the best film I will have anything to do with in my entire career.

You don’t distribute your films en masse in theatres or for home viewing. Why is this?
The fact that I tour with the film helps the distribution element. I consider what I am doing to be following in the steps of vaudeville performers. Vaudeville was the main form of entertainment for most of the history of the US. It has only relatively recently stopped being the main source of entertainment, but that does not mean this live element mixed with other media is no longer viable. In fact it is apparent that it is sorely missed.

Being in total control of your films, how do you know when they’re completely finished? When do you stop thinking, ‘I could do this, or this…’?
Both the films were very evident when they were completed in the editing process. What Is It? took much longer to compete than It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, mainly because of a technical problem with SMPTE timecode. The film was also extruded into a feature film from what was originally going to be a short film. This organic process took some work as well, but the time when the film was actually [finished] was quite clear.

Are the themes you explore in your works personal to you, or are they more abstract?
As one can see in the answers above they are quite personal to me and [to] others and reactive to very specific particulars.

What do you hope people take away from your work?
I would like for people to think for themselves.

Your directorial debut has been compared to the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Are you a fan of his work? What are your thoughts on this comparison? Do you draw inspiration from other directors? Peter Greenaway perhaps?
There are four filmmakers that I was very consciously thinking a lot about while I was making What Is It? These four were Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Stanley Kubrick. That is not to say there are no other filmmakers that I thought about, as I am sure there were, but those four very much.

I should also mention that David Lynch had agreed years ago to executive produce what will now be part three of the ‘It’ trilogy, titled It Is Mine, so he also was very important in this trilogy of films and I am very grateful to him for that. On top of which Eraserhead was an extremely important film to me when I was 16 years old and I still hold that film in the highest regard.

What started your love affair with film?
I have been working in film for a long time. I believe I started knowing it would be a good idea to work as an actor starting when I was about 11. I began professionally at age 13. My interest in film has probably developed out from that.

Name some films you’ve seen lately that you’ve loved…
The most recent film I saw projected in a theatre was at the LA County Art Museum. It was a Russian eight-hour version of War and Peace made in the 1960s. That was quite beautiful to see.

There’s the third part of the ‘It’ trilogy, It Is Mine, planned. How is it coming along? Will you be releasing it in similar manner to your current films, only showing it on tour?
Yes, I plan to direct It Is Mine. That will be part three of the ‘It’ trilogy. But it will not be the next film I make. There are some other films that deal with different themes that I would like to work on next. One never knows what the future holds as far as filmmaking. I am quite enthusiastic about producing, directing and distributing the films in the way I am currently doing it – but many variations are possible!

I should not go into detail for It Is Mine yet and I will not shoot that film next. There are other projects outside of the trilogy that I will shoot next. I own property in the Czech Republic and am making a small soundstage out there to continue making my own films. It is another culture and another language and I need to build up to complex productions like What Is It? and the existing sequel It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. It Is Mine is an even more complex project than those two films were so it will be a while yet for that production. I would say [it will be] at least a few years if not many more than that [before I start it].

I found an old interview online where you said you’ve written a screenplay for a film to be shot on a soundstage in the Czech Republic. Is this happening?
I have several projects that I am developing to shoot at my soundstage in the Czech Republic. It will still take some time before I am able to cohesively discuss those projects.

Off topic for a moment I’m interest in Trent Harris’ Beaver Trilogy. Can you please tell me a little more about it?
Unfortunately there are legal issues with Trent Harris’ Beaver Trilogy. It is best for me to not comment on this.

So what exactly can we expect from your events in Australia? Are you showing both films each session?
I definitely have been aware of the element of utilising the fact that I am known from work in the corporate media I have done in the last 25 years or so. This is something I rely on for when I go on tour with my films. It lets me go to various places and have the local media cover the fact that I will be performing either ‘Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show I’ or ‘Crispin Hellion Glover’s All New Big Slide Show’.

These are one-hour live dramatic narration of eight different books (Part I) or six different books (Part II), which are profusely illustrated and projected as I go through them. Then I show the film; either What Is It? – being 72 minutes – or It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine – being 74 minutes. Then I have a Q&A with the audience and after that a book signing. As I funded the films I knew that this is how I would recoup my investment even if it is a slow process.

I perform a one-hour dramatic narration of eight different books I have made over the years. The books are taken from old books from the 1800s that have been changed into different books from what they originally were. They are heavily illustrated with original drawings and reworked images and photographs. When I first started publishing the books in 1987 people said I should have book readings. But the books are so heavily illustrated and the way the illustrations are used within the books help to tell the story so the only way for the books to make sense was to have visually representations of the images. This is why I knew a slideshow was necessary.

It took a while but in 1992 I started performing what I used to call Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Side Show. People get confused as to what that is so now I always let it be known that it is a one-hour dramatic narration of eight different books that I have made over the years.

Also after I show the film I have a Q&A session with the audience. This has become an extremely important part of the show, particularly after showing What Is It? What Is It? deals with many taboo elements and audiences can have very strong questions after the film and it is important to not explain the film to people in terms of symbols and meaning, but to put the film in context of what it is reacting to, and let people know that this is not just an exercise in something random – there are specific reason why what is being reacted to with these films is important.

Crispin Glover will be showcasing his Slide Show in Sydney at the Chauvel Cinema October 7 and 9. Visit Crispin’s personal website here.

TRAILERS

What Is It?

It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine