The A.V. Club - Interview

TV: Interview:Wanda Sykes

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:32:00 -0600

Wanda Sykes got a relatively late start in show business, beginning her stand-up career in earnest when she was nearly 30 years old. But it didn’t take her long to become a familiar face (and voice) in comedy. From starting as a writer and performer on The Chris Rock Show, Sykes has gone to become a reliable supporting player in sitcoms like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The New Adventures Of Old Christine, as well as a go-to voice actress in animated features like Over The Hedge and Barnyard. Lately, Sykes has become more involved in political causes, coming out ...

Film: Interview:Lee Daniels and Gabby Sidibe

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

In his movie Precious, producer-turned-director Lee Daniels has the kind of cinematic success story that gives hope to generations of independent filmmakers and other assorted dreamers. On paper, the film looks almost comically non-commercial. It’s a kitchen-sink melodrama about a morbidly obese, illiterate black teenager in 1980s New York who is physically abused by her monstrous welfare-cheat mother and sexually abused by her father, who is also the father of her two children. Throw in a complete unknown in the lead (Gabby Sidibe) and a director whose only other directorial effort (2005’s Shadowboxer) came and went without a ...

Music: Interview:Jim O’Rourke

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:06:00 -0600

Jim O’Rourke is a storied musician and producer who has cut something of a Zelig-like figure in indie music in the 1990s and 2000s. He came up with the prescient avant-folk group Gastr Del Sol, made numerous records full of drones and noise, and played crucial roles in such big bands as Wilco (he helped conceive Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and Sonic Youth (he was temporarily a fifth member of the band). His studio credits, as a producer and/or mixer, include records by Stereolab, John Fahey, Joanna Newsom, Faust, Beth Orton, and many more. Alongside all that, O’Rourke ...

Music: Interview:Daryl Hall and John Oates

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

When Daryl Hall and John Oates met in 1967, both men had been kicking around the Philadelphia music scene for nearly a decade. They immediately found common ground, and they began collaborating a couple of years later, releasing their first album, Whole Oats, in 1972. In 1973, they notched their first hit single, “She’s Gone,” from the album Abandoned Luncheonette, though follow-up successes were more scattered throughout the ’70s, as the duo experimented with different sounds and styles. With the 1980 album Voices, Hall and Oates began to hit their stride, and for the next half-decade, they released an ...

TV: Interview:Chris Pratt

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Chris Pratt kicked around Hollywood for a few years following an inauspicious debut in the 2000 horror film Cursed Part 3, but in 2002, he got his first regular television gig, co-starring as Bright Abbott on Everwood. After a handful of other roles, he landed a high-profile gig as Ché on The O.C., but he found a whole new audience of comedy fans starting in 2008. In addition to bigger movie parts, he landed the choice role of Andy Dwyer, Rashida Jones’ hapless ex-boyfriend on NBC’s Parks And Recreation. Pratt recently spoke to The A.V. Club about ...

Film: Interview:Charlotte Gainsbourg

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The daughter of French singer-provocateur Serge Gainsbourg and Swinging London icon Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg was born to fame, but her career path hasn’t been a straight line. At the age of 12, she dueted with her father on “Lemon Incest,” a proclamation of paternal devotion whose ambiguous lyrics and semi-clad video prompted public outcry. She quickly followed it in 1986 with the album Charlotte For Ever, but it took two decades for her next album, 5:55, to arrive. She started young as an actress as well, playing the lead in 1988’s The Little Thief and an ...

Film: Interview:Jemaine Clement

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Most people think of Jemaine Clement as part of a unit—the Costello, or possibly the Abbott, to pal Bret McKenzie in their New Zealand folk-comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords. But lately there have been signs that Clement is close to breaking out on his own, beginning with his “Best Actor” Emmy nomination for the Conchords’ HBO show and his starring role in Eagle Vs. Shark, and now his prominent role in Gentlemen Broncos, the latest from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. Though his actual screen time logs him as a supporting character, it’s unquestionably Clement’s film ...

Film: Interview:Alfred Molina

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

From Doc Ock to Joe Orton’s homicidal lover, Alfred Molina has run the gamut. The quintessential character actor, he has stolen whole movies with a few minutes of screen time: He got impaled in Raiders Of The Lost Ark’s first reel, but he left an indelible impression as Dr. Jones’ traitorous South American guide, and he managed to upstage Mark Wahlberg’s prosthetic schlong with his turn as a cracked-out drug dealer with a fondness for Night Ranger in Boogie Nights. In An Education, he takes an affable turn as Jack, an aspirant patriarch in 1960s England who ...

TV: Interview:Nick Kroll

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Over the last few years, Nick Kroll has racked up an impressive résumé of comedic parts, though many of them were short-lived. He appeared several times on the talking-head version of Best Week Ever. He did voices for Mitch Hurwitz’s Sit Down, Shut Up and the underappreciated comic gem The Life & Times Of Tim. He took bit parts on Human Giant and Reno 911!, and enjoyed a substantial run on Worst Week and Cavemen. (Okay, that last one probably doesn’t count as “impressive.”) He’s been working himself to the bone on his own projects as well ...

Film: Interview:Lars von Trier

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The woolly career of Danish provocateur Lars von Trier might well be summed up with the phrase “chaos reigns,” uttered by an unexpected source in his new film Antichrist, and currently spreading through the culture like swine flu. From the beginning, his work has always thrived on the tension between chaos and control—both on the screen, where rigidly managed societies like those in 2003’s Dogville and 2005’s Manderlay start to break down, and behind the scenes, where von Trier has repeatedly tried to simplify and control his effects, from the “Automavision” camera in 2006’s The Boss ...

TV: Interview:Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (and merchandising)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Anyone seeking to learn how to create a lasting brand could take a lesson from Cassandra Peterson: As the beehived, bosomy Elvira, the former Las Vegas showgirl turned making fun of schlocky horror movies for a public-access station into a formidable media empire that’s lasted nearly 30 years. While it’s been some time since Elvira was making iconic cameos on TV shows like CHiPs, or exhausting Johnny Carson’s store of double entendres on The Tonight Show, she’s never lost her pop-culture cachet—she’s buoyed by a shrewd eye for self-promotion that’s seen her likeness ...

Film: Interview:Peter Sarsgaard

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

You won’t often see Peter Sarsgaard act. Between his regular contributions to specialty films, from Boys Don’t Cry to Kinsey, and mainstream forays like Flightplan and Orphan, the versatile performer keeps plenty busy, but he never lets people see him work. Without making a show of his ability to blend into characters, Sarsgaard never gives the same performance twice—or perhaps it’s just that the private-minded actor doesn’t let his core self interact with his roles. In either case, the part of An Education’s David fits him perfectly. A working-class Jew in 1960s England, David ...

Books: Interview:Chuck Klosterman’s greatest fears

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The first essay in Chuck Klosterman’s excellent new collection Eating The Dinosaur concerns the inherent lack of real truth to be found when interviewing famous people. As a guy who’s been on both sides of the journalist’s tape recorder, he should know, and in the essay, he does what he generally does best—asks himself a pointed but sort of unanswerable question, then examines it. (And brings pop culture into the mix to provide evidence and/or anecdotes.) So “Why do I give interviews?” and “Are people honest when they’re giving interviews?” are rolled around and ...

Film: Interview:Jess Franco

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

With an oeuvre of more than 300 films, Spanish director Jesús “Jess” Franco is easily one of cinema’s most prolific directors. From the 1960s through the late 1980s, he churned out films at such a breakneck pace, he often released them under dozens of different pseudonyms—a tactic he adopted, he’s said, so that other directors wouldn’t hate him. (He’s also an amateur musician himself; many of these pseudonyms were taken from obscure jazz players.) Franco is also one of filmdom’s most provocative creators, drawn to dreamlike stories of lesbian vampires, sadomasochism (he’s ...

Books: Interview:Eddie Campbell

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:28:00 -0500

Eddie Campbell came to prominence as the creator of Alec, one of the first and most enduring autobiographical comics, in which Alec MacGarry stood in for the author. The first of these stories, published in 1981, ended up collected in The King Canute Crowd, the first of the so-called “Alec Books,” which have now all been collected, along with new material and rarities, into a massive, gorgeous career anthology called The Years Have Pants (Top Shelf). The stories follow Alec/Eddie from his days as a directionless drifter through his big move from Britain to Australia, his marriage, and the ...

Film: Interview:Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Black Dynamite is far from the first blaxploitation parody, but it’s unique among them. Instead of merely spoofing blaxploitation conventions, the film is shot to look exactly like a low-budget 1974 black exploitation movie. In that respect, it has more in common with ambitious genre pastiches like Grindhouse, The Good German, and Far From Heaven than I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Co-writer/director Scott Sanders “sampled” footage from ’70s blaxploitation movies and detective shows to give the film authentic period grit. The film was financed in a backward fashion: Sanders and co-writer/star Michael Jai White shot a ...

DVD: Interview:John Cleese

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:13:00 -0500

The members of Monty Python went on to plenty of distinguished projects after the group split, but none of them made the lasting contribution to comedy John Cleese did with Fawlty Towers. Comprising a bare 12 episodes—six aired in 1975, the rest in 1979—the show has been enshrined as a high-water mark of the sitcom format. It’s a dizzying farce starring Cleese as the obstinate owner of a seaside hotel, Prunella Scales as his domineering wife, and Andrew Sachs as a hopeless but unfailingly optimistic Spanish waiter. Written with his then-wife, Connie Booth, who also plays the ...

Film: Interview:Willem Dafoe

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Spousal hobbling and primal fears: just another day’s work for Willem Dafoe. Although he’s starred in plenty of mainstream films—his role as Spider-Man’s Green Goblin comes to mind—he’s always had a taste for the extreme, whether playing a real-life vampire cast in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu or a flawed and all-too-human Jesus Christ. In Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, he’s a psychotherapist coping with his son’s death and his wife’s grief, which goes from agonizing to dangerous when he unwisely prescribes a restorative stay in their secluded cabin in the ...

Music: Interview:RZA

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

As the mastermind behind Wu-Tang Clan, rapper, producer, director, and actor Robert “RZA” Diggs changed pop music in general and hip-hop in particular with the release of his group’s seminal 1993 debut Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Over the course of a single album, RZA radically reinvented hip-hop with a homemade mythology and defiantly new sound that brilliantly fused black crime fiction, gangsta rap, martial arts, and Nation Of Islam ideology. RZA went on to produce a string of instant-classic solo albums from Wu-Tang Clan brethren like Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx), Method Man (Tical), and Ghostface Killah ...

Music: Interview:Yoko Ono

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Yoko Ono was exposed to music early in her life and started performing at “happenings” of various avant-garde kinds in the ’50s. She was an early follower of John Cage, figured into the post-Dada ’60s art movement known as Fluxus, and started a relationship with John Lennon after meeting him at a gallery in London in 1966. Ono made much music with Lennon, including experimental Beatles material like the tape-collage piece “Revolution 9” (from The White Album) and various noisy exercises under the name Plastic Ono Band. Lennon put out a Plastic Ono Band album in 1970, and so did ...