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Richmond Fontaine

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Richmond Fontaine
UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the...

UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno

WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the Fitz. I wrote it after I got back. Mostly I wrote lyrics and stories when I was there. The music changed. I always stay there when I’m visiting home. Their rooms are $28 a night so you can stay a long time and they’re safe enough that you can keep your guitar there.

Tell us something about the hotel and its atmosphere.

It’s downtown in Reno on the strip and it’s a pretty nice place really. It’s the Irish casino. It has “Mr. O’Lucky”, a drunken lucky leprechaun statue, as you walk in. But he’s never been very lucky to me, I’m sorry to say. Everything in the place is green. It’s right near the railroad tracks so you can hear the trains going by. They still have lounge singers and they have Guinness on tap and roulette. I can always write when I‘m there. Reno‘s my favourite place to work on stories and songs. You can look out the window at the Fitz and see all of downtown. The strip itself and Fourth Street, which runs near it, are pretty rough.

There are a lot aimless men wandering around. I’m not talking about the tourists. I’m talking about these sorta damaged looking guys. Not bums, just men that have low level jobs and are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. You don’t see many women. Those sort of guys always make me feel comfortable. Being around them makes me feel normal. Plus in the summer, the Fitz hires Eastern European cocktail waitresses on some sort of exchange program so in the summer they have the best looking cocktail waitresses in the world.

Had you gone there specifically to write?

I go to Reno for maybe a month or more a year if I can afford it. I always go to write and just to walk around. Sometimes when I drive down there, I go another place called the Gold Dust West that’s sort of a motor lodge. But usually I stay at the Fitz. That time I did go to write songs and stories and to visit with my mom who thinks I’m crazy ‘cause I won’t stay at home. And that time, I sorta hit a vein I’d been thinking about. Once Post to Wire was done I felt relieved and I felt I could take a breather. And more than anything I like to write folk songs, story songs. I was pretty worried about anyone liking a folk record, but I figured I’d try hard to write a good one and if no one in the band liked it then I would shelve it. So right when Post To Wire was done I

worked on the Fitz songs.

Did you have any particular idea what the new album would be about before you started writing?

I really wanted it to be based around the lyrics and not the other way around. Most times I change around the lyrics to fit the music. I did that a lot on Post To Wire. On this record I didn’t want to do this. I just wanted to tell the story and have the music follow it. I wanted the whole thing to feel like the first song “The Warehouse Life.” That feeling that there’s mistakes and death and darkness all around and you’re trying hard not to run into any of it. You might see it and it

might scar you that way, but the hope that you don’t run into it. That you don’t become it. That you’re not the guy paying the price for gambling in “The Warehouse Life.” Or the murdered kid in “The Incident At Conklin Creek.” You’re just trying to hide from all that like in “Black Road.” Or in the “The Janitor” where the guy tries to help the woman away from it. Or like the kid in “Exit 194B” who’s trying hard just to get by after the death of his brother only to find his cousin

unable to. They are all kind of the same idea.

In other words, was The Fitzgerald conceived as a kind of concept album?

I guess more than anything it’s got the same mood to it. When you can’t shake a feeling then maybe everything is seen in that sorta lens. That everything thing you think about, or the way you perceive things is seen like that. And for me I guess I was just going down that path and couldn’t stop thinking like that. I have a hard time not thinking like that.

Musically, the album is incredibly sparse – is this a new direction for Richmond Fontaine or something you have been working towards?

When we got together with JD Foster [producer of Post To Wire and The Fitzgerald], and we were playing the songs to him as a band it didn’t seem to be right. He was staying at my place and we’d sit around and I’d play him the songs with just a guitar and it made more sense like that.

It was a hard decision not to have pedal steel on it, ‘cause I’m a huge pedal steel fan, but the songs were better without it. It’s an intimate sober kind of record and the steel was too dreamy and took you out of the story. But all in all I don’t think this is the future direction of the band. If it was I think the band would put concrete blocks on my feet and dump me in a river.

How do you think your songwriting has developed on The Fitzgerald – although the lyrics are really stripped down, they seem more vivid than ever.

I have to say writing “The Fitzgerald” was the most fun I’ve had as a songwriter because I could base the whole thing around the lyrics. JD was really supportive about it. I think after doing a rock record like “Post To Wire” I just wanted to hide out and be selfish and write a bunch of story songs. It was a real relief for me. I didn’t put any pressure on myself to write for the band or worry if people would like it all. I just wrote the sorta songs I like.

Are these songs wholly imagined, or are some of them based on real events – if not in your life, then in the lives of others?

I guess a lot of time I take a real life story and then make it much more dramatic. Like the “The Warehouse Life.” I used to work at a warehouse and me and this guy would get drunk on lunch break and he had a huge gambling problem. He had a bookie in Reno. If you have a bookie in Reno you’re in a mess. But he didn’t get beat up. He was threatened an awful lot, but his folks got him out of it. “Incident At Conklin Creek.” My mom’s boyfriend and I go camping a lot out in Nevada, in the desert, and we look around old mines and I remember seeing a pair of women’s underwear and a shoe at the foot of this mine. We were fifty miles from any resemblance of a town. It took us a half hour on foot to get to this old mine. What the hell were a pair of women’s underwear and a single shoe doing there? I stayed awake all that night and worried about it. I could see these horrible scenarios in my mind and those sorta situations always haunt me. That sorta darkness just worries me and eats at me. ’Cause anyone could end up there. Even you or your mom’s boyfriend.

What’s the story behind “Wellhorn Yards”, for instance – it reads like the aftermath of a heist gone wrong.

There are railroad tracks that run through downtown Reno. When you look out the window at the Fitzgerald you can see them. When I lived there in my 20s I used to get drunk and walk along them until I hit the industrial part of town and I’d sit in the dark against this wall and watch the trains. In the song I called this area the Welhorn Yards, although there’s no name I know for this area. I was pretty lonely for a lot of the time I lived in Reno. I was really shy and was really hard on myself and I didn’t fit in with my old friends. So I spent a lot time getting drunk and walking around downtown. When I wrote the song I started thinking how my friends growing up were the kind of guys who were mini-crooks, who would do these somewhat horrible things and I was

always the kid who was just drinking beer and hearing about it. I never did the things they did. I just heard about it and saw the aftermath. Like the kid in “Welhorn Yards.”

On first listen there are songs here that sound as bleak as anything you’ve written – but there’s always a sense of hope struggling to survive.

I always hope that my characters make it out all right, ‘cause in a lot of ways they are me. I hope to hell the couple in “The Janitor” live happily ever after and that the AWOL kid in “Exit 194B” makes it out all right. I hope the kid in “Laramie,Wy” nerves get better and he finds a safer,

easier life with his aunt. And the girl in “Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt” I hope her nerves ease up and she gets stronger and can make it on her own. I hope she didn’t use up all her strength on the move, on the escape, and then get tired and cave in and go back. I like all those people. I don’t think they’re bad people or failures or bums. I think they are good people who have fallen into bad situations. But they’re all trying to be better. To get to a better spot.

You’ve previously cited Dylan, Springsteen, Tom Waits and Dave Alvin as songwriters you admire and who have influenced you to some degree. On The Fitzgerald, there are songs that remind me of Lou Reed’s more reportorial writing – am I imagining an influence that isn’t there?

Hell, I wish I could say I knew Lou Reed’s work better than I do. The truth is he’s always sorta freaked me out, and so when I’m at the record store I just kind of pass over him. But maybe I shouldn’t. I guess more than anything Springsteen and Dave Alvin and Tom Waits inspired me to do this record. I really admire those guys. They all create their own world and that’s what I was hoping to do. To create my own world.

Interview by Allan Jones

Interview: Bo Diddley

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Interview: Bo Diddley

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom - The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones - Diddley was nothing short of a living god. His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”. Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit. UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley - you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel? DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin'. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me. Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has? Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51. So why do you think you’ve survived all this time? Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley… …God forbid! Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere! What do you think of music today - the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters? No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was. What about The Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José! Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is? Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this - don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye! Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records? Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to. Why the rectangular guitar? I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh. What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley? You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one! What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing? I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at. What do you want to be remembered for? Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute… …well, hopefully not. Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig? Absolutely. In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car - not fall out a window, but bumped by a car - it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here. Interview by Simon Goddard

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom – The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones – Diddley was nothing short of a living god.

His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”.

Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit.

UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley – you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel?

DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin’. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me.

Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has?

Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51.

So why do you think you’ve survived all this time?

Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley…

…God forbid!

Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere!

What do you think of music today – the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters?

No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was.

What about The Rolling Stones?

The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José!

Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is?

Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this – don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye!

Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records?

Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to.

Why the rectangular guitar?

I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh.

What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley?

You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one!

What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing?

I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute…

…well, hopefully not.

Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig?

Absolutely.

In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car – not fall out a window, but bumped by a car – it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here.

Interview by Simon Goddard

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2005 – FINAL REPORT

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CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2005 – FINAL REPORT

This is the end! A clutch of 21st century reinventions of film noir, coming-of-age slacker yarns and neo-westerns have helped make the last week of Cannes a rich experience for Uncut’s festival foot soldiers. Making his debut behind the camera, Lethal Weapon screenwriter SHANE BLACK turns his acid humour on pulp thriller convention with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a highly knowing Hollywood noir starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR and VAL KILMER. Likewise Canadian indie veteran ATOM EGOYAN, whose Where The Truth Lies is a similarly arch blend of whodunit and showbiz satire. The young Icelandic writer-director DAGUR KARI, highly praised for his bleak debut Noi Albinoi two years ago, came back in more romantic vein with Dark Horse. A gentle slacker comedy about a Danish graffiti artist facing the strains of love, life and adulthood, this little monochrome gem is a winning blend of early TRUFFAUT and classic JARMUSCH. A member of the Icelandic indie-folk duo SLOWBLOW, Kari also provides the film’s soundtrack. But so much for the young turks. The real revelations of the closing stages of Cannes have come from a posse of maverick old-timers making their strongest statements in years. German arthouse legend WIM WENDERS has turned in his finest film for over a decade by re-uniting with Paris, Texas co-writer SAM SHEPARD on Don’t Come Knocking, another sumptuous road movie about broken families and Old West myths seen through the jaded eyes of an ageing western star, played by Shepard himself. Also delving into modern-day cowboy mythology is The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, the terrific feature directing debut of grizzled hard-ass TOMMY LEE JONES. Written by GUILLERMO ARRIAGA of Amores Perros and 21 Grams fame, this poetically bleak Tex-Mex fable adds one shot of Unforgiven to two shots of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. With a face as battered and pockmarked as Mount Rushmore, Jones gives a magnificently weary performance as Pete Perkins, a desert rancher who vows to avenge a Mexican friend shot dead by a US border patrol guard. “Pete IS Tommy,” Arriaga told Uncut. “They are the same person…” Now it is time for Uncut to saddle up and head home. But watch out for these and more post-Cannes treasures in the coming months. And finally, Ladies and gentlemen… the victors at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival: Palme d'Or The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) Grand Prix Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch) Best Actress Award Hanna Laslo (Free Zone) Best Actor Award Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada) Best Director Award Michael Haneke (Hidden) Best Screenplay Award Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada) Jury Prize Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai) STEPHEN DALTON

This is the end!

A clutch of 21st century reinventions of film noir, coming-of-age slacker yarns and neo-westerns have helped make the last week of Cannes a rich experience for Uncut’s festival foot soldiers.

Making his debut behind the camera, Lethal Weapon screenwriter SHANE BLACK turns his acid humour on pulp thriller convention with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a highly knowing Hollywood noir starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR and VAL KILMER. Likewise Canadian indie veteran ATOM EGOYAN, whose Where The Truth Lies is a similarly arch blend of whodunit and showbiz satire.

The young Icelandic writer-director DAGUR KARI, highly praised for his bleak debut Noi Albinoi two years ago, came back in more romantic vein with Dark Horse. A gentle slacker comedy about a Danish graffiti artist facing the strains of love, life and adulthood, this little monochrome gem is a winning blend of early TRUFFAUT and classic JARMUSCH. A member of the Icelandic indie-folk duo SLOWBLOW, Kari also provides the film’s soundtrack.

But so much for the young turks. The real revelations of the closing stages of Cannes have come from a posse of maverick old-timers making their strongest statements in years. German arthouse legend WIM WENDERS has turned in his finest film for over a decade by re-uniting with Paris, Texas co-writer SAM SHEPARD on Don’t Come Knocking, another sumptuous road movie about broken families and Old West myths seen through the jaded eyes of an ageing western star, played by Shepard himself.

Also delving into modern-day cowboy mythology is The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, the terrific feature directing debut of grizzled hard-ass TOMMY LEE JONES. Written by GUILLERMO ARRIAGA of Amores Perros and 21 Grams fame, this poetically bleak Tex-Mex fable adds one shot of Unforgiven to two shots of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. With a face as battered and pockmarked as Mount Rushmore, Jones gives a magnificently weary performance as Pete Perkins, a desert rancher who vows to avenge a Mexican friend shot dead by a US border patrol guard. “Pete IS Tommy,” Arriaga told Uncut. “They are the same person…”

Now it is time for Uncut to saddle up and head home. But watch out for these and more post-Cannes treasures in the coming months.

And finally, Ladies and gentlemen… the victors at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival:

Palme d’Or

The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

Grand Prix

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch)

Best Actress Award

Hanna Laslo (Free Zone)

Best Actor Award

Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada)

Best Director Award

Michael Haneke (Hidden)

Best Screenplay Award

Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada)

Jury Prize

Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai)

STEPHEN DALTON

Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 3

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Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 3

The usual array of buffed and beautiful celebrities were out in force at this year's Cannes Film Festival - whether it be a curiously bouffant GEORGE LUCAS leading the charge at the premier of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith, or MATT DILLON hanging out round the bar terrace at the Grand Hotel, dresed unassumingly in black jeans and a t shirt, and happily chatting away with anyone who dropped by to say hello. UNCUT spotted the likes of BENICIO DEL TORO, VIGGO MORTENSEN, MICHAEL MADSEN, CHRISTOPHER DOYLE and DENNIS HOPPER out and about on the Croisette. Our favourite Hopper story went something like this: when asked whether he still took drugs by a friend of UNCUT, the Easy Rider star admitted he still smokes weed "because it keeps the bowels regular." Haven't you heard of dried apricots, Dennis? And the parties? Yep, we went to a few, and we drank southern France's reserves of rosé dry. They got off to a bumpy start, though, due to some serious transport difficulties getting to the hyper-hot annual MTV party, this year held in honour of UNCUT's forthcoming Film Of The Month, Kung Fu Hustle - while the Star Wars' party was widely considered a disappointment, save for the giant YODA ice sculptures. Elsewhere, at the party for Last Days - GUS VAN SANT's incredible fictionalised take on the last days of KURT COBAIN - we were treated to a set by grunge rockers Pagoda, featuring the film's star MICHAEL PITT on vocals. We also caught MALCOLM McLAREN playing his *own* records at the yacht party for GAEL GARCIA BERNAL's new film, The King. Or rather, someone else was playing them while Talcy Malcy hung around in the background. Cannes 05 also saw a large number of major new projects announced, including new films from DAVID LYNCH, SHANE MEADOWS and ROBERT ALTMAN, screening of footage from TERRY GILLIAM's Brothers' Grimm footage and the creation of a major new distributor from Time Warner companies New Line Cinema and HBO Films. Lynch's latest project is INLAND EMPIRE, starring LAURA DERN HARRY DEAN STANTON and JUSTIN THEROUX - who've all worked with the Wild At Heart director before. "It's about a woman in trouble, and it's a mystery, and that¹s all I want to say about it," Lynch is quoted in Variety. Meadows - whose last film, Dead Man's Shoes, was one of UNCUT's favourite films from 2004 - is drawing on his own experiences as a skinhead for Oi! This Is England, set in England in 1983. Also revealed at Cannes is a documentary called Requiem for Billy The Kid, currently in post-production, produced by legendary French director of Diva and Betty Blue, JEAN-JACQUES BIENEIX. The doc includes footage from SAM PECKINPAH's Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, plus interviews with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, who played Billy in the movie, and screenwriter RUDY WURLIZTER. ALTMAN's new movie will star MERYL STREEP, WOODY HARRELSON and JOHN C REILLY and is a spin-off from GARRISON KEILLOR's long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Elsewhere, among the myriad of new movie projects their newly formed WeinsteinCo are involved with, HARVEY and BOB WEINSTEIN announced their forthcoming return to concert promoting - presenting the ROLLING STONES at the Giants Stadium, New Jersey, in September. Finally, HBO Films and New Line Cinema have formed Picturehouse, a new theatrical distribution whose slate has nine films lined up, including Last Days, Fur - starring NICOLE KIDMAN and ROBERT DOWNEY JNR - and MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM's A Cock And Bull Story, aka Tristram Shandy, starring STEVE COOGAN. Right. That's it. The booze is finally wearing off so we're off to bed. Check back here to www.uncut.co.uk for our final report on the movie's that mattered at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The usual array of buffed and beautiful celebrities were out in force at this year’s Cannes Film Festival – whether it be a curiously bouffant GEORGE LUCAS leading the charge at the premier of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith, or MATT DILLON hanging out round the bar terrace at the Grand Hotel, dresed unassumingly in black jeans and a t shirt, and happily chatting away with anyone who dropped by to say hello. UNCUT spotted the likes of BENICIO DEL TORO, VIGGO MORTENSEN, MICHAEL MADSEN, CHRISTOPHER DOYLE and DENNIS HOPPER out and about on the Croisette. Our favourite Hopper story went something like this: when asked whether he still took drugs by a friend of UNCUT, the Easy Rider star admitted he still smokes weed “because it keeps the bowels regular.” Haven’t you heard of dried apricots, Dennis?

And the parties? Yep, we went to a few, and we drank southern France’s reserves of rosé dry. They got off to a bumpy start, though, due to some serious transport difficulties getting to the hyper-hot annual MTV party, this year held in honour of UNCUT’s forthcoming Film Of The Month, Kung Fu Hustle – while the Star Wars’ party was widely considered a disappointment, save for the giant YODA ice sculptures. Elsewhere, at the party for Last Days – GUS VAN SANT’s incredible fictionalised take on the last days of KURT COBAIN – we were treated to a set by grunge rockers Pagoda, featuring the film’s star MICHAEL PITT on vocals. We also caught MALCOLM McLAREN playing his *own* records at the yacht party for GAEL GARCIA BERNAL’s new film, The King. Or rather, someone else was playing them while Talcy Malcy hung around in the background.

Cannes 05 also saw a large number of major new projects announced, including new films from DAVID LYNCH, SHANE MEADOWS and ROBERT ALTMAN, screening of footage from TERRY GILLIAM’s Brothers’ Grimm footage and the creation of a major new distributor from Time Warner companies New Line Cinema and HBO Films. Lynch’s latest project is INLAND EMPIRE, starring LAURA DERN HARRY DEAN STANTON and JUSTIN THEROUX – who’ve all worked with the Wild At Heart director before. “It’s about a woman in trouble, and it’s a mystery, and that¹s all I want to say about it,” Lynch is quoted in Variety. Meadows – whose last film, Dead Man’s Shoes, was one of UNCUT’s favourite films from 2004 – is drawing on his own experiences as a skinhead for Oi! This Is England, set in England in 1983.

Also revealed at Cannes is a documentary called Requiem for Billy The Kid, currently in post-production, produced by legendary French director of Diva and Betty Blue, JEAN-JACQUES BIENEIX. The doc includes footage from SAM PECKINPAH’s Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, plus interviews with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, who played Billy in the movie, and screenwriter RUDY WURLIZTER. ALTMAN’s new movie will star MERYL STREEP, WOODY HARRELSON and JOHN C REILLY and is a spin-off from GARRISON KEILLOR’s long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.

Elsewhere, among the myriad of new movie projects their newly formed WeinsteinCo are involved with, HARVEY and BOB WEINSTEIN announced their forthcoming return to concert promoting – presenting the ROLLING STONES at the Giants Stadium, New Jersey, in September. Finally, HBO Films and New Line Cinema have formed Picturehouse, a new theatrical distribution whose slate has nine films lined up, including Last Days, Fur – starring NICOLE KIDMAN and ROBERT DOWNEY JNR – and MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’s A Cock And Bull Story, aka Tristram Shandy, starring STEVE COOGAN. Right. That’s it. The booze is finally wearing off so we’re off to bed. Check back here to www.uncut.co.uk for our final report on the movie’s that mattered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes Film Festival Report 2

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Cannes Film Festival Report 2

Uncut's favourite film director, the late maverick Sam Peckinpah, was honoured at this year's Cannes Film Festival in a series of events which took place on Monday, May 16 - including a panel discussing his life and work which featured Uncut's Associate Editor, Michael Bonner. The events kicked off with a screening of a new print of Peckinpah's second film, 1962's Ride The High Country. The film starred Randolph Scott and Joel McRae as two ageing gunfighters out of place in a world that no longer needed them - a theme Peckinpah would return to again and again in his films, most notably in his 1969's classic, The Wild Bunch. The screening was part of the Festival's prestigious Director's Fortnight section and played to a full house at the 800-seater Fortnight theatre. As the final credits rolled, the audience burst into a spontaneous applause, with many cheering. The panel following was hosted by Fortnight director Olivier Pere and included Uncut's Michael Bonner alongside Variety's Executive Director Steven Gaydos, Peckinpah biographer Gerard Camy and cult American director Monte Hellman. Hellman, who co-edited 1972's The Killer Elite and cast Peckinpah in his own Western China 9, Liberty 37, provided a unique insight into his personal and professional relationship with the director: 'Sam hid more and more behind a mask of machismo, but he never stopped being a poet,' he concluded. Gaydos remembered introducing himself to Peckinpah as 'one of his biggest fans,' to which he received the reply: 'Hell, boy, don't you know you're a dying breed?' A champagne reception on the roof terrace at the Noga Hilton took place immediately after the panel and was attended by some heavyweight industry players, ranging from programmers for the London Film Festival to execs from Turner Classic Movies, one of the companies who made the day's events possible. Highlights from the panel can found at www.tiscali.co.uk. Don't forget the Uncut Film Of The Month on Turner Classic Movies on the first Wednesday of every month, next up - Rio Bravo on June 1.

Uncut’s favourite film director, the late maverick Sam Peckinpah, was honoured at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in a series of events which took place on Monday, May 16 – including a panel discussing his life and work which featured Uncut’s Associate Editor, Michael Bonner.

The events kicked off with a screening of a new print of Peckinpah’s second film, 1962’s Ride The High Country. The film starred Randolph Scott and Joel McRae as two ageing gunfighters out of place in a world that no longer needed them – a theme Peckinpah would return to again and again in his films, most notably in his 1969’s classic, The Wild Bunch. The screening was part of the Festival’s prestigious Director’s Fortnight section and played to a full house at the 800-seater Fortnight theatre. As the final credits rolled, the audience burst into a spontaneous applause, with many cheering.

The panel following was hosted by Fortnight director Olivier Pere and included Uncut’s Michael Bonner alongside Variety’s Executive Director Steven Gaydos, Peckinpah biographer Gerard Camy and cult American director Monte Hellman. Hellman, who co-edited 1972’s The Killer Elite and cast Peckinpah in his own Western China 9, Liberty 37, provided a unique insight into his personal and professional relationship with the director: ‘Sam hid more and more behind a mask of machismo, but he never stopped being a poet,’ he concluded. Gaydos remembered introducing himself to Peckinpah as ‘one of his biggest fans,’ to which he received the reply: ‘Hell, boy, don’t you know you’re a dying breed?’ A champagne reception on the roof terrace at the Noga Hilton took place immediately after the panel and was attended by some heavyweight industry players, ranging from programmers for the London Film Festival to execs from Turner Classic Movies, one of the companies who made the day’s events possible.

Highlights from the panel can found at www.tiscali.co.uk.

Don’t forget the Uncut Film Of The Month on Turner Classic Movies on the first Wednesday of every month, next up – Rio Bravo on June 1.

Watch the trailer for Batman Begins

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Watch the trailer for Batman Begins

Firstly, you'll need Windows Media player. Then just click one of the links below. Choose your bitrate: Low/Med/High

Firstly, you’ll need Windows Media player. Then just click one of the links below.

Choose your bitrate: Low/Med/High

Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation – Mighty Rearranger

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There's always a temptation when a significant artist returns with a decent album after a period of low-key activity to talk in over-excited terms of a 'comeback'. Such reactions, though, are understandable in the case of Robert Plant. In the seven years since 1998's disappointing Walking Into Clarksdale with Jimmy Page, he's played semi-anonymously with pub band Priory Of Brion and made a highly enjoyable but unchallenging album of Covers (2002’s Dreamland). Now comes Mighty Rearranger, an album of a dozen new compositions that sounds like the personal manifesto of a man who, once again, has much to get off the chest he used to bare so brazenly. Lyrically, he's certainly got plenty to say. Three songs – “Another Tribe”, “Takamba” and the brilliant “Freedom Fries” ("And burns and scars") - provide a concerned commentary on the post 9/11 world. “Tin Pan Valley” is an honest analysis of the dangers of living on former glories and an attack on those who "flirt with cabaret" (take a tuxedoed bow, Rod Stewart?) or still "fake the rebel yell" (Sir Mick?). There are typical forays into mysticism (“The Enchanter”, “Dancing In Heaven”) and satisfying lyrical nods to his blues heroes (“Somebody Knocking”, “Let The Four Winds Blow”). Musically, all his eclectic passions are represented, from rock riffs (“Shine It All Around”) and blues wailing (the title track) to burnished West Coast filigree (“Dancing In Heaven”) and Zep III-style acoustics (the stunning “All The King's Horses”), via Arabic and North African influences “Another Tribe”, “Takamba”). Often, these diverse elements collide in unexpected and thrilling fashion. As for his voice, Plant reckons it's the best he's ever sung. From time to time he unleashes that open-throated, leonine roar, just to show he still can. But he also deploys a lot of subtle shading and nuance. Call it a comeback, if you like. The simple truth is that as a mature statement by someone who's done it all but still retains a desire to create something new and fresh, Mighty Rearranger is a record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion. If anyone from today's crop of bands is making music half as interesting as this in 30 years time, we will be blessed, indeed. By Nigel Williamson

There’s always a temptation when a significant artist returns with a decent album after a period of low-key activity to talk in over-excited terms of a ‘comeback’. Such reactions, though, are understandable in the case of Robert Plant. In the seven years since 1998’s disappointing Walking Into Clarksdale with Jimmy Page, he’s played semi-anonymously with pub band Priory Of Brion and made a highly enjoyable but unchallenging album of Covers (2002’s Dreamland).

Now comes Mighty Rearranger, an album of a dozen new compositions that sounds like the personal manifesto of a man who, once again, has much to get off the chest he used to bare so brazenly. Lyrically, he’s certainly got plenty to say. Three songs – “Another Tribe”, “Takamba” and the brilliant “Freedom Fries” (“And burns and scars”) – provide a concerned commentary on the post 9/11 world. “Tin Pan Valley” is an honest analysis of the dangers of living on former glories and an attack on those who “flirt with cabaret” (take a tuxedoed bow, Rod Stewart?) or still “fake the rebel yell” (Sir Mick?). There are typical forays into mysticism (“The Enchanter”, “Dancing In Heaven”) and satisfying lyrical nods to his blues heroes (“Somebody Knocking”, “Let The Four Winds Blow”).

Musically, all his eclectic passions are represented, from rock riffs (“Shine It All Around”) and blues wailing (the title track) to burnished West Coast filigree (“Dancing In Heaven”) and Zep III-style acoustics (the stunning “All The King’s Horses”), via Arabic and North African influences “Another Tribe”, “Takamba”). Often, these diverse elements collide in unexpected and thrilling fashion. As for his voice, Plant reckons it’s the best he’s ever sung. From time to time he unleashes that open-throated, leonine roar, just to show he still can. But he also deploys a lot of subtle shading and nuance. Call it a comeback, if you like. The simple truth is that as a mature statement by someone who’s done it all but still retains a desire to create something new and fresh, Mighty Rearranger is a record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion. If anyone from today’s crop of bands is making music half as interesting as this in 30 years time, we will be blessed, indeed.

By Nigel Williamson

Eels – Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

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To Mark ‘E’ Everett, life must have long seemed a cosmic black joke. Famously losing his mother to cancer shortly after his sister’s 1996 suicide, his cousin dying on 9/11 was one more blow to a man already fragilely depressed. But he reacted fiercely, self-financing redemptive albums recorded in his basement, short-circuiting major-label compromise. These records patented a sort of surging chamber-pop about how hard and necessary it is to live. Tentatively begun the year after eels’ hit debut Beautiful Freak (1996), five albums on Blinking Lights further defines E’s ornery kingdom of uncomfortable truth and beauty. It stretches into pop’s outer limits, mourning the absence of God and Mom in a fallen America. When he says making it “almost killed” him, you doubt it’s a metaphor. For E, rock’n’roll really is life and death. Blinking Lights’ lengthy gestation has left its mark. You can feel the jeweller’s care with which its 33 tracks have been chipped into place. Unfolding with the pregnant pauses of the Bergman movies that were its models, its pace may seen alien, even arthritic. But keep listening, and Blinking Lights comes into focus. It’s an album composed partly from disgust and defeat, as in “The Other Shoe”’s litany of literal and societal tumours, or “Railroad Man”’s admission of personal obsolescence. The 78 crackle of “Last Time We Spoke”, meanwhile, sees E wounded by the death of someone who knew his soul. But if the quiet of other people’s graves sometimes haunts Blinking Lights, that makes its moments of defiant affirmation more moving. “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” would be a hit if radio was supposed to make you feel, positing gut-spilling pain and heartache as the price of admission to life. In a record that deals soberly with suicide, that could be the belief that allows E to not only still be here, but conclude: “I’m a very thankful man.” Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America’s greats. By Nick Hasted

To Mark ‘E’ Everett, life must have long seemed a cosmic black joke. Famously losing his mother to cancer shortly after his sister’s 1996 suicide, his cousin dying on 9/11 was one more blow to a man already fragilely depressed. But he reacted fiercely, self-financing redemptive albums recorded in his basement, short-circuiting major-label compromise. These records patented a sort of surging chamber-pop about how hard and necessary it is to live.

Tentatively begun the year after eels’ hit debut Beautiful Freak (1996), five albums on Blinking Lights further defines E’s ornery kingdom of uncomfortable truth and beauty. It stretches into pop’s outer limits, mourning the absence of God and Mom in a fallen America. When he says making it “almost killed” him, you doubt it’s a metaphor. For E, rock’n’roll really is life and death.

Blinking Lights’ lengthy gestation has left its mark. You can feel the jeweller’s care with which its 33 tracks have been chipped into place. Unfolding with the pregnant pauses of the Bergman movies that were its models, its pace may seen alien, even arthritic. But keep listening, and Blinking Lights comes into focus.

It’s an album composed partly from disgust and defeat, as in “The Other Shoe”’s litany of literal and societal tumours, or “Railroad Man”’s admission of personal obsolescence. The 78 crackle of “Last Time We Spoke”, meanwhile, sees E wounded by the death of someone who knew his soul. But if the quiet of other people’s graves sometimes haunts Blinking Lights, that makes its moments of defiant affirmation more moving. “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” would be a hit if radio was supposed to make you feel, positing gut-spilling pain and heartache as the price of admission to life. In a record that deals soberly with suicide, that could be the belief that allows E to not only still be here, but conclude: “I’m a very thankful man.” Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America’s greats.

By Nick Hasted

Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 1

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Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 1

DARTH VADER’S asthmatic rasp has been playing at high volume up and down the Croisette for much of this year’s Cannes festival, but so far all of Uncut’s opening week highlights have been far removed from such hollow Hollywood grandstanding. The emotionally drained, fly-on-the-wall anti-drama of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS left many baffled, especially those expecting a conventional exploration of Kurt Cobain’s tragic final hours. But Van Sant insists his strangely hypnotic memoir is more “a poem about Kurt” than a depiction of real events. Even Cobain’s suicide is left open-ended. “Did he even kill himself?” Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, who plays a small role in the film, asked Uncut. “There are plenty of people around Kurt who think he was murdered…” Downbeat Americana provides the inspiration for Daniel Jacobson’s DOWN IN THE VALLEY and James Walsh’s THE KING. The first stars Ed Norton as a modern-day cowboy with all the lethal, innocent charm of Martin Sheen’s silver-tongued killer in BADLANDS. The latter stars GAEL GARCIA BERNAL as an existential anti-hero who wreaks havoc on the family of his estranged preacher father, a towering tour-de-force performance by William Hurt. Both films boast rich alt-country soundtracks, with Calexico as a shared reference point. Some bolshie Cannes veterans have received warm welcomes, including Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier for his provocative slavery drama MANDERLAY, which picks up where DOGVILLE ended in 2003. Meanwhile NYC post-punk veteran Jim Jarmusch and the perennially fabulous Bill Murray collaborate on the terrific bittersweet comedy BROKEN FLOWERS, proving that their sassy vignette in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES was no fluke. Murray is soulfully hilarious as a womanising rogue tracking down the child he never knew. But as Cannes passes its halfway point, Uncut’s tip of the festival so far has to be David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, a roaring rampage of revenge based on a blood-splattered graphic novel. Viggo Mortensen stars as a mid-Western family man with a murky past that eventually catches up with him, leading to a some strikingly explicit carnage. In the hands of any normal director this would have been a generic pulp thriller, but Cronenberg somehow manages to give these B-movie ingredients pace, depth and subversive comedy. Once again, William Hurt burns up the screen in a scene-stealing support role, as does Ed Harris as a glass-eyed mob enforcer. So much for the festival’s opening reel. Darth Vader may have packed up his inhaler, but Uncut will be here to the bitter end. Keep watching this space...

DARTH VADER’S asthmatic rasp has been playing at high volume up and down the Croisette for much of this year’s Cannes festival, but so far all of Uncut’s opening week highlights have been far removed from such hollow Hollywood grandstanding.

The emotionally drained, fly-on-the-wall anti-drama of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS left many baffled, especially those expecting a conventional exploration of Kurt Cobain’s tragic final hours. But Van Sant insists his strangely hypnotic memoir is more “a poem about Kurt” than a depiction of real events. Even Cobain’s suicide is left open-ended. “Did he even kill himself?” Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, who plays a small role in the film, asked Uncut. “There are plenty of people around Kurt who think he was murdered…”

Downbeat Americana provides the inspiration for Daniel Jacobson’s DOWN IN THE VALLEY and James Walsh’s THE KING. The first stars Ed Norton as a modern-day cowboy with all the lethal, innocent charm of Martin Sheen’s silver-tongued killer in BADLANDS. The latter stars GAEL GARCIA BERNAL as an existential anti-hero who wreaks havoc on the family of his estranged preacher father, a towering tour-de-force performance by William Hurt. Both films boast rich alt-country soundtracks, with Calexico as a shared reference point.

Some bolshie Cannes veterans have received warm welcomes, including Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier for his provocative slavery drama MANDERLAY, which picks up where DOGVILLE ended in 2003. Meanwhile NYC post-punk veteran Jim Jarmusch and the perennially fabulous Bill Murray collaborate on the terrific bittersweet comedy BROKEN FLOWERS, proving that their sassy vignette in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES was no fluke. Murray is soulfully hilarious as a womanising rogue tracking down the child he never knew.

But as Cannes passes its halfway point, Uncut’s tip of the festival so far has to be David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, a roaring rampage of revenge based on a blood-splattered graphic novel. Viggo Mortensen stars as a mid-Western family man with a murky past that eventually catches up with him, leading to a some strikingly explicit carnage. In the hands of any normal director this would have been a generic pulp thriller, but Cronenberg somehow manages to give these B-movie ingredients pace, depth and subversive comedy. Once again, William Hurt burns up the screen in a scene-stealing support role, as does Ed Harris as a glass-eyed mob enforcer.

So much for the festival’s opening reel. Darth Vader may have packed up his inhaler, but Uncut will be here to the bitter end. Keep watching this space…

The Assassination Of Richard Nixon

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In 1974, a Baltimore man called Sam Byck tried to kill then US President, Richard Nixon. He never came close, of course, and, although his scheme might seem eerily prescient - he planned hijacking a plane and crashing into the Whitehouse - history consigned him to the dustbin. Why first-time director Niels Mueller has salvaged Byck, or Bicke as he's rechristened in this fictionalised account, seems a mystery; until you realise failure, and what it does to people in a society like America's, is the entire theme of his hazy, nagging movie. Sean Penn plays Bicke. A King Midas in reverse, everything he touches turns to shit. His own brother has fired him from their tyre business for incompetence. He's close to losing his new job, as an office furniture salesman. His marriage is over, but while his estranged wife, Marie (Watts), squirms impatiently away from his attempts at communication, he still imagines he can get back with her and their children. Bicke stubbornly believes the problem lies with society, not him. All he wants is to be recognised. All he sees are lies and power games. Finally, utterly alone, he becomes obsessed with Nixon, the biggest, most powerful liar around. "Bicke" is close to "Bickle," of course, and Bicke records random thoughts ("I am a grain of sand") onto tapes he senselessly plans sending to Leonard Bernstein, just as Travis once scrawled fantasies in his journal. With an authentic, shabby early-70s feel, Assassination plays like the suburban offspring of Taxi Driver and King Of Comedy, with some of the latter's desperate, clueless-loser's comedy: seeking support, Bicke sympathises with The Black Panthers, and, in the craziest scene, visits them to suggest opening the organisation to whites and renaming it "The Zebras." Where the movie falls down is in its complete lack of narrative pace. Quickly, it becomes simply a draining succession of scenes of Bicke screwing up, then sitting alone and staring at Nixon on TV, then screwing up again. But within this lies one of the finest character studies you'll see. Penn is at his lightest and most intense, moving hesitantly toward breaking point. He's an uncertain smile and mild, nervous energy, losing himself in Bicke's troubles like Art Pepper in a lonely solo. Trouble is, soon, the solo is all there is. By Damien Love

In 1974, a Baltimore man called Sam Byck tried to kill then US President, Richard Nixon. He never came close, of course, and, although his scheme might seem eerily prescient – he planned hijacking a plane and crashing into the Whitehouse – history consigned him to the dustbin.

Why first-time director Niels Mueller has salvaged Byck, or Bicke as he’s rechristened in this fictionalised account, seems a mystery; until you realise failure, and what it does to people in a society like America’s, is the entire theme of his hazy, nagging movie.

Sean Penn plays Bicke. A King Midas in reverse, everything he touches turns to shit. His own brother has fired him from their tyre business for incompetence. He’s close to losing his new job, as an office furniture salesman. His marriage is over, but while his estranged wife, Marie (Watts), squirms impatiently away from his attempts at communication, he still imagines he can get back with her and their children.

Bicke stubbornly believes the problem lies with society, not him. All he wants is to be recognised. All he sees are lies and power games. Finally, utterly alone, he becomes obsessed with Nixon, the biggest, most powerful liar around.

“Bicke” is close to “Bickle,” of course, and Bicke records random thoughts (“I am a grain of sand”) onto tapes he senselessly plans sending to Leonard Bernstein, just as Travis once scrawled fantasies in his journal. With an authentic, shabby early-70s feel, Assassination plays like the suburban offspring of Taxi Driver and King Of Comedy, with some of the latter’s desperate, clueless-loser’s comedy: seeking support, Bicke sympathises with The Black Panthers, and, in the craziest scene, visits them to suggest opening the organisation to whites and renaming it “The Zebras.”

Where the movie falls down is in its complete lack of narrative pace. Quickly, it becomes simply a draining succession of scenes of Bicke screwing up, then sitting alone and staring at Nixon on TV, then screwing up again. But within this lies one of the finest character studies you’ll see. Penn is at his lightest and most intense, moving hesitantly toward breaking point. He’s an uncertain smile and mild, nervous energy, losing himself in Bicke’s troubles like Art Pepper in a lonely solo. Trouble is, soon, the solo is all there is.

By Damien Love

We Don’t Live Here Anymore

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This fraught, intense drama is based on two Seventies novellas by Andre Dubus, a writer who, like Raymond Carver, was interested not just in the small wrong things we do to each other, but in the way our self-imposed punishments are often harsher than those any just deity would dish out. Jack, Terry, Hank and Edith - and yes, the film does echo period sex trips like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, or Carnal Knowledge - are two married couples for whom the honeymoon period is well and truly over. Larry Gross' script asks whether they can hang on beyond the itch, and then beyond the scratching. Hank (the estimable Krause, Six Feet Under star) and Jack (Ruffalo) are English teachers in a quiet New England town. They're burn-outs, though Hank still strives to write a stillborn novel, and they can muster up a silly but telling competitiveness when jogging. While Hank's wife Edith (Watts) seems calmly capable, and Jack's wife Terry (Dern) is fiery and volatile, things aren't so simple beneath the surface. Jack and Edith are in full-blown affair mode ("I wonder how we'll get caught," mutters Edith: not "if"), and soon Hank and Terry are returning the insult, partly through revenge, partly through confusion. All four loathe and fear the fact that they're sliding into the anticlimax of middle-aged parenthood. They realise the futility of fighting it and each other, but can dream up no other way to rage. The minutiae of relationship etiquette are raked over, from meaningful lack of eye contact to pillow talk to explosive rows. Obsessing over infidelity and guilt, it often suggests Six Feet Under, and similarly tries not to judge, but there's less leavening humour, dark or otherwise. All four performances are courageous, with Dern going hell for leather, though Krause and Watts seem more graceful at stepping back from the bonfire as well as hurling themselves into it. Whereas In The Bedroom - also adapted from Dubus' work - flattered to deceive, this maintains its temperature to the final knock-out blows, shattering sureties. A fearless, uncommonly truthful film. By Chris Roberts

This fraught, intense drama is based on two Seventies novellas by Andre Dubus, a writer who, like Raymond Carver, was interested not just in the small wrong things we do to each other, but in the way our self-imposed punishments are often harsher than those any just deity would dish out. Jack, Terry, Hank and Edith – and yes, the film does echo period sex trips like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, or Carnal Knowledge – are two married couples for whom the honeymoon period is well and truly over. Larry Gross’ script asks whether they can hang on beyond the itch, and then beyond the scratching.

Hank (the estimable Krause, Six Feet Under star) and Jack (Ruffalo) are English teachers in a quiet New England town. They’re burn-outs, though Hank still strives to write a stillborn novel, and they can muster up a silly but telling competitiveness when jogging. While Hank’s wife Edith (Watts) seems calmly capable, and Jack’s wife Terry (Dern) is fiery and volatile, things aren’t so simple beneath the surface. Jack and Edith are in full-blown affair mode (“I wonder how we’ll get caught,” mutters Edith: not “if”), and soon Hank and Terry are returning the insult, partly through revenge, partly through confusion. All four loathe and fear the fact that they’re sliding into the anticlimax of middle-aged parenthood. They realise the futility of fighting it and each other, but can dream up no other way to rage.

The minutiae of relationship etiquette are raked over, from meaningful lack of eye contact to pillow talk to explosive rows. Obsessing over infidelity and guilt, it often suggests Six Feet Under, and similarly tries not to judge, but there’s less leavening humour, dark or otherwise. All four performances are courageous, with Dern going hell for leather, though Krause and Watts seem more graceful at stepping back from the bonfire as well as hurling themselves into it.

Whereas In The Bedroom – also adapted from Dubus’ work – flattered to deceive, this maintains its temperature to the final knock-out blows, shattering sureties. A fearless, uncommonly truthful film.

By Chris Roberts

Hal – Hal

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Twentysomething brothers Dave and Paul Allen, offspring of folk musician parents and raiders of their record collection, aren’t shy about revealing their love of Sixties/Seventies West Coast sounds. As vocal harmonisers and, respectively, guitarist and bassist of the quartet Hal, they’ve crafted a charming and disarming debut, which conveys their mastery of sun-baked manners but never merely copies. There’s a real joie de vivre to these songs, strong and seductive enough to be both original and timeless. Having drawn an A&R scramble to Kiliney, south of Dublin, the band may find their blend of overt influences - Van Morrison, The Beach Boys, Spector - drawing initial comparisons to The Thrills of two years ago. But Hal live in their own, Teenage Fanclub-like, geography-irrelevant dreamworld. Dave, whose gorgeous voice is their gearstick, writes with keyboardist Stephen O’Brien in a manner which straddles both the mainstream melodies of a Beautiful South and the grittier edge of a chilled-out Neil Young. He’s said he wants the band to evoke indefinable nostalgia, a pining for a nebulous, half-recalled emotion. So whereas The Thrills’ second album fizzled commercially because of an increasingly arch knowingness which many found alienating, Hal - perfectionists eschewing irony - keep the envelope taut, the air fresh. Edwyn Collins makes a great choice of producer for “Play The Hits”, a frisky, California surf flurry which has too much adrenalin for pastiche, while “What A Lovely Dance” is exquisitely romantic. Hal tend to opt for lyrics which suggest rather than spell out, but its coda is a deeply affecting paean to hope. The spare, sweet “Keep Love As Your Golden Rule” points to Young’s Harvest, and “Don’t Come Running” gently coaxes out shades of Badfinger. “I Sat Down” (favourite Hal song of touring partners The Magic Numbers) is as subtly shaped by The Band as the more obvious “Worry About The Wind”, and moulds mature chord patterns into a pyramid of yearning. Embracing the torch-pop of The Everlys as much as the panoramas of the Wilsons, the brothers Allen melt any resistance with their aching take on purity and pre-modernism. By Chris Roberts

Twentysomething brothers Dave and Paul Allen, offspring of folk musician parents and raiders of their record collection, aren’t shy about revealing their love of Sixties/Seventies West Coast sounds. As vocal harmonisers and, respectively, guitarist and bassist of the quartet Hal, they’ve crafted a charming and disarming debut, which conveys their mastery of sun-baked manners but never merely copies. There’s a real joie de vivre to these songs, strong and seductive enough to be both original and timeless.

Having drawn an A&R scramble to Kiliney, south of Dublin, the band may find their blend of overt influences – Van Morrison, The Beach Boys, Spector – drawing initial comparisons to The Thrills of two years ago. But Hal live in their own, Teenage Fanclub-like, geography-irrelevant dreamworld. Dave, whose gorgeous voice is their gearstick, writes with keyboardist Stephen O’Brien in a manner which straddles both the mainstream melodies of a Beautiful South and the grittier edge of a chilled-out Neil Young. He’s said he wants the band to evoke indefinable nostalgia, a pining for a nebulous, half-recalled emotion. So whereas The Thrills’ second album fizzled commercially because of an increasingly arch knowingness which many found alienating, Hal – perfectionists eschewing irony – keep the envelope taut, the air fresh.

Edwyn Collins makes a great choice of producer for “Play The Hits”, a frisky, California surf flurry which has too much adrenalin for pastiche, while “What A Lovely Dance” is exquisitely romantic. Hal tend to opt for lyrics which suggest rather than spell out, but its coda is a deeply affecting paean to hope. The spare, sweet “Keep Love As Your Golden Rule” points to Young’s Harvest, and “Don’t Come Running” gently coaxes out shades of Badfinger. “I Sat Down” (favourite Hal song of touring partners The Magic Numbers) is as subtly shaped by The Band as the more obvious “Worry About The Wind”, and moulds mature chord patterns into a pyramid of yearning.

Embracing the torch-pop of The Everlys as much as the panoramas of the Wilsons, the brothers Allen melt any resistance with their aching take on purity and pre-modernism.

By Chris Roberts

Damien Jurado – On My Way To Absence

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Rehearsals For Departure. Ghost Of David. Postcards and Audio Letters. Where Shall You Take Me? And now On My Way To Absence. It doesn’t take a leap of Poirot proportions to spot the transient motif at the heart of Jurado’s work. But the world’s foremost singing pre-school teacher is all about transformation rather than simple escape. He’s no self-confessor either. Like Will Oldham or Dylan, he disappears rather than reveals, but his songs pivot on the Big Questions. For Jurado, too, the dark stuff - regret, retribution, madness, murder and other jollities – is an endless source of fascination and truth. It’s where he finds the essence of everyone’s soul. And though Jurado’s career has thrown up stylistic diversions (most notably on 2002’s two-fisted rock-out I Break Chairs), the American idiom that best suits his unsettling and ambiguous morality tales is old-time folk. In some ways, …Absence is his most diverse record yet, but it’s at its brilliant best when spare and uncompromising. Regular cohorts Eric Fisher (guitarist/producer), Josh Golden (bass) and Andy Myers (drums) are all here, but there’s something quietly shattering about “Fuel”, just Jurado and guitar drawing blood as a merciless small-town killer - “I murdered the law here/ I took on God here/ So in place of your sins/ I bring you a Judas” – imploring his mother to torch his body for oil. Or the destructive “Northbound”: “Tail lights broken/ Stop lights out/ I speed without caution on a road made of ice/ My body an engine/ My car is a train/ I don’t feel guilty for the hurt or pain”. It could be straight out of Badlands. Amongst the empty farmhouses, black widows, pink champagne and guns in the drawer, Jurado’s riveting narratives explore sunken relationships and thwarted dreams, perhaps most tellingly on the outstanding “A Jealous Heart Is A Heavy Heart”, mordant strings giving way to a lonely piano coda and a desperate plea - “Grow old with me” - fading into oblivion. It’s the most heartbreaking thing he’s recorded since Ghost Of David’s “Medication”.

Rehearsals For Departure. Ghost Of David. Postcards and Audio Letters. Where Shall You Take Me? And now On My Way To Absence. It doesn’t take a leap of Poirot proportions to spot the transient motif at the heart of Jurado’s work. But the world’s foremost singing pre-school teacher is all about transformation rather than simple escape. He’s no self-confessor either. Like Will Oldham or Dylan, he disappears rather than reveals, but his songs pivot on the Big Questions. For Jurado, too, the dark stuff – regret, retribution, madness, murder and other jollities – is an endless source of fascination and truth. It’s where he finds the essence of everyone’s soul. And though Jurado’s career has thrown up stylistic diversions (most notably on 2002’s two-fisted rock-out I Break Chairs), the American idiom that best suits his unsettling and ambiguous morality tales is old-time folk.

In some ways, …Absence is his most diverse record yet, but it’s at its brilliant best when spare and uncompromising. Regular cohorts Eric Fisher (guitarist/producer), Josh Golden (bass) and Andy Myers (drums) are all here, but there’s something quietly shattering about “Fuel”, just Jurado and guitar drawing blood as a merciless small-town killer – “I murdered the law here/ I took on God here/ So in place of your sins/ I bring you a Judas” – imploring his mother to torch his body for oil. Or the destructive “Northbound”: “Tail lights broken/ Stop lights out/ I speed without caution on a road made of ice/ My body an engine/ My car is a train/ I don’t feel guilty for the hurt or pain”. It could be straight out of Badlands. Amongst the empty farmhouses, black widows, pink champagne and guns in the drawer, Jurado’s riveting narratives explore sunken relationships and thwarted dreams, perhaps most tellingly on the outstanding “A Jealous Heart Is A Heavy Heart”, mordant strings giving way to a lonely piano coda and a desperate plea – “Grow old with me” – fading into oblivion. It’s the most heartbreaking thing he’s recorded since Ghost Of David’s “Medication”.

The Go-Betweens – Oceans Apart

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“Wave after wave,” sang Robert Smith from the sunken canoe of the Go-Betweens’ pop career in 1988, “your tension and your tenderness.” Those words might capture the rare balance the band struck through the 1980s. The tenderness in their facility to knock out a perfectly heartwrecking ballad at the slip of a stetson. The tension in their knowledge that they had to strive for more, to hit the charts, or at least be fit to follow in the boho sneakers of Smith or Verlaine. By 2003’s Bright Yellow, Bright Orange that tension was long gone, the double-act resigned to autumnal acoustics. Even Forster seemed to acknowledge this: “Trapped in an image, unable to move/I want to get out of folk and into rare groove”. You could imagine him and Grant McLennan living out their afternoons, trading wry rhymes on some Brisbane porch. This was how the band ends: not with a bang, but with the swish of a finished kiss. So it’s good news that “Here Comes A City”, Forster’s opening track of Oceans Apart, goes screeching away from that backporch at great speed, heading somewhere where people “who read Dostoevsky look like Dostoevsky”. The band sounds re-energised by an idea of the city, the marketplace, pop ambition. You can hear it on a couple of other Forster tracks: “Lavender” and, especially, “Darlinghurst Years”. The latter starts off as a sick Sydney sister to 1987’s “The House That Jack Kerouac Built”, except here Forster sounds giddy at the thought of that demi-monde decadence, the traffic, the cello playing through the nights, as discordant brass wails and wells through his reveries. McLennan too, so often the soft balladeer, now sounds positively wracked. “The Statue” and “This Night’s For You” could be the strongest songs he’s ever written: shimmering, synthetic, noir torch songs of longing and regret. Harvard academic Stanley Cavell coined the phrase “the comedy of remarriage” to describe those 1930 screwball movies whose couples conclude that settling down quietly is for chumps and resolve to live out their lives in disputatious adventure. With Oceans Apart, The Go-Betweens reunion, which once seemed a sweet, sighing coda, now promises to be similarly lively. Sometimes you really do need two heads. By Stephen Trousse

“Wave after wave,” sang Robert Smith from the sunken canoe of the Go-Betweens’ pop career in 1988, “your tension and your tenderness.” Those words might capture the rare balance the band struck through the 1980s. The tenderness in their facility to knock out a perfectly heartwrecking ballad at the slip of a stetson. The tension in their knowledge that they had to strive for more, to hit the charts, or at least be fit to follow in the boho sneakers of Smith or Verlaine.

By 2003’s Bright Yellow, Bright Orange that tension was long gone, the double-act resigned to autumnal acoustics. Even Forster seemed to acknowledge this: “Trapped in an image, unable to move/I want to get out of folk and into rare groove”. You could imagine him and Grant McLennan living out their afternoons, trading wry rhymes on some Brisbane porch. This was how the band ends: not with a bang, but with the swish of a finished kiss.

So it’s good news that “Here Comes A City”, Forster’s opening track of Oceans Apart, goes screeching away from that backporch at great speed, heading somewhere where people “who read Dostoevsky look like Dostoevsky”. The band sounds re-energised by an idea of the city, the marketplace, pop ambition. You can hear it on a couple of other Forster tracks: “Lavender” and, especially, “Darlinghurst Years”. The latter starts off as a sick Sydney sister to 1987’s “The House That Jack Kerouac Built”, except here Forster sounds giddy at the thought of that demi-monde decadence, the traffic, the cello playing through the nights, as discordant brass wails and wells through his reveries. McLennan too, so often the soft balladeer, now sounds positively wracked. “The Statue” and “This Night’s For You” could be the strongest songs he’s ever written: shimmering, synthetic, noir torch songs of longing and regret.

Harvard academic Stanley Cavell coined the phrase “the comedy of remarriage” to describe those 1930 screwball movies whose couples conclude that settling down quietly is for chumps and resolve to live out their lives in disputatious adventure. With Oceans Apart, The Go-Betweens reunion, which once seemed a sweet, sighing coda, now promises to be similarly lively. Sometimes you really do need two heads.

By Stephen Trousse

Interview: Norman Blake

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Interview: Norman Blake

It’s a beautiful spring morning and Uncut is on the blower to the undisputed owner of the title ‘Nicest Man In Rock’. Guitarist/singer Norman Blake is in his usual bright and breezy self as he joins us from his Glasgow home for a chinwag as his band Teenage Fanclub prepare to release their beautiful new album ‘Man-Made’. In the five years since last LP ‘Howdy!’ things have changed for TFC. The band’s deal with Sony/Columbia expired following the release of 2003’s best of compilation (2003’s ‘Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds – A Rough Guide To Teenage Fanclub’) and the new LP is their first release on their own label PeMa. And what’s more, ‘Man-Made’ was produced by post-rock veteran John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea And Cake). So who better than stormin’ Norman to give us the lowdown from the frontline… Why were there five years between ‘Howdy!’ and the new album? “We did the compilation, which was a great way for us to bring to Sony deal to an end. We were down in the studio making ‘Howdy!’ And Alan McGee came and told us he was ending the label. He told us to finish the record and Sony would pick it up or we’d get paid off. But Sony picked up the option for the two remaining records – they did the same with Primal Scream and Super Furry Animals as well. And you know, it did OK, but we were well down their list of priorities at the label and it kind of got lost. I don’t think they’re really structured to work with a band like us. We spoke to the MD and came to an arrangement that we would do a compilation, which was great ‘cos it meant we didn’t have to give them many new songs (there were three on the compilation). It was great for them so it meant they wouldn’t have to give us lots of money to make a new record. But we spent a lot of time and effort getting the artwork right. We had a battle with them about that too. That brought us to the end of that, but because we wanted to do the compilation properly, we spent a good year on it. Then we toured that record, so before you know it there’s another two years gone! We did the record with Jad Fair (2002’s ‘Words Of Wisdom And Hope’). That album was released on Alternative Tentacles! We were in San Francisco and Jello Biafra came to see us! We met Jello! I thought it was fantastic 'cos I was really into The Dead Kennedys when I was younger and he was a brilliant guy. I just thought it was brilliant that this Glaswegian pop band ends up on Alternative Tentacles. We toured the Jad record and that took up more time. We done some bits and pieces here and there, tried to keep our hand in. And we’ve been planning the label for a bit.” So why go it alone? Can you explain how it happened? “We nearly went with Domino, but to be fair to them, they did say to us ‘You can do it yourselves’. That was decent of them. It took us a bit of time to set up, getting a distributor and all the other things you have to sort out. We can now release what we want whenever we want. We’ve got a few things coming up, for example, at the live shows we’ve got a 7” single we’re gonna be selling, tracks we did with Jad Fair. Daniel Johnston’s going to do the artwork. We’ve got the freedom to do that, and we’re going to exploit that. We’re gonna do things like that, limited stuff which we can sell at gigs and on our website.” And how does it differ from having to answer to a label? “It’s a bit more exciting, getting back to what making records is about. We’ve built up different friendships over the years, which has helped us. It’s nice to be working with old friends. We’re back to where we started, we’ve got the control that it’s so difficult for bands to have nowadays. We’re much much happier. It becomes a bit soul destroying. You become product, there’s no art. That had gone for us for a period of time. “ So what does owning your own label entail then? “Raymond (McGinley, lead guitarist/singer)’s been filling in forms for different collection agencies, generating bar codes, weird things that you have to do. We did a press trip last week, and we’re on the budget. We did the Ryanair’s all over Europe. I even had a hotel room that didn’t have any windows! Wasn’t far from being a prison cell. But we’re much more comfortable doing it like that anyway. With the first record Raymond sold a fridge and a washing machine his neighbour had left him, and we made ‘A Catholic Education’ from that. When we first went America we were skint, didn’t have any money. Drove around in a stolen car with false number plates and a hole in the floor. Totally busking it. We don’t have the stolen car anymore. But we’re getting things done.” Any plans to release records by other acts? “We’re fucking with someone else’s life if we get it wrong, so we’re aware of that. So we’ll experiment on ourselves first. Once we know the ropes, it’s something we’ll consider. Maybe not on a large scale, but a 7” or something. Hopefully we can get Franz Ferdinand to do it, sell a million, and that will set us up!” Speaking of Franz Ferdinand, how do you feel about their massive success? “I’m very happy for them. It’s about time. It’s been building up in Glasgow for about 10 years, it’s the culmination of a lot of work, from the likes of Belle & Sebastian, The Pastels, Mogwai, it’s really good that there’s a music community. People are pretty confident there. People abroad are very reverential about Glasgow. It’s kind of exotic for an American, this quaint little place.” Onto the new album then - why record with John McEntire? “We’d liked what John had done on the Stereolab records, so we got in touch with him. He was up for it, and suggested we come to Chicago. He did us a great deal on the studio, and put us up in really nice B&B round the corner. So we could afford to do it. When he was mixing things he would be pulling things out rather than putting stuff in. We just left him to it, generally we liked all the ones he did. It was a really easy process. We hardly took any equipment, just some guitars and a pair of drumsticks. We even borrowed a guitar from Jeff Tweedy. We know him from way back, when we played shows with Uncle Tupelo. I’m glad we did, otherwise we’d have been fucked. We’d have had to buy one! Chicago’s a great place. We wanted to concentrate more on the performances. We recorded it all in 5 weeks. We went back in the summer and mixed it, while Euro 2004 was on. Seven weeks, recorded and mixed.” What are your plans for the future? “Touring, as much as we can. We want to go to places we haven’t been before. Then we’ll just see what happens. Once we pay the studios and our tax bill we can make another record – either that or we’ll be going to jail for tax evasion! Either of those scenarios could happen. As long as we feel like we’ve got something to contribute then we’ll do it. But people still seem to be interested. We’ve never really looked further than six months ahead. We’d rather just keep doing that. Although we’d like to do a B-sides/rarities collection at some point.” How do feel about all the goodwill you’ve received? “It’s great that people say they like what we’ve done and that we’ve influenced them. I think people would raise their fists for us!” By Alan Woodhouse

It’s a beautiful spring morning and Uncut is on the blower to the undisputed owner of the title ‘Nicest Man In Rock’. Guitarist/singer Norman Blake is in his usual bright and breezy self as he joins us from his Glasgow home for a chinwag as his band Teenage Fanclub prepare to release their beautiful new album ‘Man-Made’.

In the five years since last LP ‘Howdy!’ things have changed for TFC. The band’s deal with Sony/Columbia expired following the release of 2003’s best of compilation (2003’s ‘Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds – A Rough Guide To Teenage Fanclub’) and the new LP is their first release on their own label PeMa. And what’s more, ‘Man-Made’ was produced by post-rock veteran John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea And Cake).

So who better than stormin’ Norman to give us the lowdown from the frontline…

Why were there five years between ‘Howdy!’ and the new album?

“We did the compilation, which was a great way for us to bring to Sony deal to an end. We were down in the studio making ‘Howdy!’ And Alan McGee came and told us he was ending the label. He told us to finish the record and Sony would pick it up or we’d get paid off.

But Sony picked up the option for the two remaining records – they did the same with Primal Scream and Super Furry Animals as well. And you know, it did OK, but we were well down their list of priorities at the label and it kind of got lost. I don’t think they’re really structured to work with a band like us. We spoke to the MD and came to an arrangement that we would do a compilation, which was great ‘cos it meant we didn’t have to give them many new songs (there were three on the compilation). It was great for them so it meant they wouldn’t have to give us lots of money to make a new record. But we spent a lot of time and effort getting the artwork right. We had a battle with them about that too.

That brought us to the end of that, but because we wanted to do the compilation properly, we spent a good year on it. Then we toured that record, so before you know it there’s another two years gone!

We did the record with Jad Fair (2002’s ‘Words Of Wisdom And Hope’). That album was released on Alternative Tentacles! We were in San Francisco and Jello Biafra came to see us! We met Jello! I thought it was fantastic ‘cos I was really into The Dead Kennedys when I was younger and he was a brilliant guy. I just thought it was brilliant that this Glaswegian pop band ends up on Alternative Tentacles.

We toured the Jad record and that took up more time. We done some bits and pieces here and there, tried to keep our hand in. And we’ve been planning the label for a bit.”

So why go it alone? Can you explain how it happened?

“We nearly went with Domino, but to be fair to them, they did say to us ‘You can do it yourselves’. That was decent of them. It took us a bit of time to set up, getting a distributor and all the other things you have to sort out. We can now release what we want whenever we want. We’ve got a few things coming up, for example, at the live shows we’ve got a 7” single we’re gonna be selling, tracks we did with Jad Fair. Daniel Johnston’s going to do the artwork. We’ve got the freedom to do that, and we’re going to exploit that. We’re gonna do things like that, limited stuff which we can sell at gigs and on our website.”

And how does it differ from having to answer to a label?

“It’s a bit more exciting, getting back to what making records is about. We’ve built up different friendships over the years, which has helped us. It’s nice to be working with old friends. We’re back to where we started, we’ve got the control that it’s so difficult for bands to have nowadays. We’re much much happier. It becomes a bit soul destroying. You become product, there’s no art. That had gone for us for a period of time. “

So what does owning your own label entail then?

“Raymond (McGinley, lead guitarist/singer)’s been filling in forms for different collection agencies, generating bar codes, weird things that you have to do. We did a press trip last week, and we’re on the budget. We did the Ryanair’s all over Europe. I even had a hotel room that didn’t have any windows! Wasn’t far from being a prison cell. But we’re much more comfortable doing it like that anyway. With the first record Raymond sold a fridge and a washing machine his neighbour had left him, and we made ‘A Catholic Education’ from that. When we first went America we were skint, didn’t have any money. Drove around in a stolen car with false number plates and a hole in the floor. Totally busking it. We don’t have the stolen car anymore. But we’re getting things done.”

Any plans to release records by other acts?

“We’re fucking with someone else’s life if we get it wrong, so we’re aware of that. So we’ll experiment on ourselves first. Once we know the ropes, it’s something we’ll consider. Maybe not on a large scale, but a 7” or something. Hopefully we can get Franz Ferdinand to do it, sell a million, and that will set us up!”

Speaking of Franz Ferdinand, how do you feel about their massive success?

“I’m very happy for them. It’s about time. It’s been building up in Glasgow for about 10 years, it’s the culmination of a lot of work, from the likes of Belle & Sebastian, The Pastels, Mogwai, it’s really good that there’s a music community. People are pretty confident there. People abroad are very reverential about Glasgow. It’s kind of exotic for an American, this quaint little place.”

Onto the new album then – why record with John McEntire?

“We’d liked what John had done on the Stereolab records, so we got in touch with him. He was up for it, and suggested we come to Chicago. He did us a great deal on the studio, and put us up in really nice B&B round the corner. So we could afford to do it. When he was mixing things he would be pulling things out rather than putting stuff in. We just left him to it, generally we liked all the ones he did. It was a really easy process.

We hardly took any equipment, just some guitars and a pair of drumsticks. We even borrowed a guitar from Jeff Tweedy. We know him from way back, when we played shows with Uncle Tupelo. I’m glad we did, otherwise we’d have been fucked. We’d have had to buy one! Chicago’s a great place.

We wanted to concentrate more on the performances. We recorded it all in 5 weeks. We went back in the summer and mixed it, while Euro 2004 was on. Seven weeks, recorded and mixed.”

What are your plans for the future?

“Touring, as much as we can. We want to go to places we haven’t been before. Then we’ll just see what happens. Once we pay the studios and our tax bill we can make another record – either that or we’ll be going to jail for tax evasion! Either of those scenarios could happen. As long as we feel like we’ve got something to contribute then we’ll do it. But people still seem to be interested. We’ve never really looked further than six months ahead. We’d rather just keep doing that. Although we’d like to do a B-sides/rarities collection at some point.”

How do feel about all the goodwill you’ve received?

“It’s great that people say they like what we’ve done and that we’ve influenced them. I think people would raise their fists for us!”

By Alan Woodhouse

Interview: Kevin Smith

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Interview: Kevin Smith

It’s March 2005 and Kevin Smith is a tired man. As Uncut is ushered into an understated drawing room at London’s tastefully elegant Langham Hotel, the comic book-loving writer/director/raconteur/slacker icon is garbed in his infamous green and black Silent Bob overcoat and splayed out on a chaise longue, flat out asleep. Smith tore up the international cinema scene with his breakthrough indie flick, Clerks, a fast-talking, eloquently profane low-budget masterpiece centering on the go-nowhere lives of two convenience store workers. Culled largely from Smith’s own New Jersey convenience store experiences, Clerks won the main prize at Sundance and was rapidly picked up by Harvey & Bob Weinstein’s Miramax. The Weinsteins parlayed Smith’s self-financed $26,800 black & white labour of love into a hugely profitable worldwide hit and swiftly installed Smith at the forefront of their trusted creative inner circle. “I came in right after Quentin’s Reservoir Dogs and before the release of Pulp Fiction. I’m very often – and rightly so – tied to that era, the Golden Age of Miramax, where they fucking exploded.” Over the ensuing decade, Miramax’s fortunes have risen dramatically, netting them a total of 60 Oscar wins and ten blockbuster movies (from Pulp Fiction to Spy Kids) that have grossed over $100 million at the US box office. Throughout the same period, Smith has written and directed five modestly-budgeted movies under his View Askew imprint: two raucous gung-ho comedies steeped in the comic book-inflected mythos of his “View Askewniverse” (Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), one controversial religious fantasia (Dogma), one critically-lauded exploration of contemporary sexual politics (Chasing Amy, his best movie to date) and one almost universally-derided experiment in family-friendly comedy drama (2004’s Affleck clunker, Jersey Girl). All but the latter feature Smith and childhood pal Jason Mewes as drug-dealing fanboy icons Jay and Silent Bob. In a bid to rival Robert Rodriguez as Miramax’s busiest multimedia-hyphenate, Smith has also found time to relaunch two major comic-book heroes (Daredevil for Marvel and Green Arrow for DC), maintain two award-winning websites (ViewAskew.com and MoviePoopShoot.com), film his ongoing series of Roadside Attractions shorts for Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, produce an infamously short-lived Clerks cartoon show for the ABC network and launch an outrageously successful career as a raconteur on the US college lecture circuit (spawning the never-less-than-100%-entertaining DVD 'An Evening with Kevin Smith'). The View Askew canon’s record-breaking performance on DVD has ensured that Smith, along with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, is one of the company assets that the Weinstein brothers are taking with them following their acrimonious split from Disney. Harvey and Bob have had to sacrifice their beloved Miramax company name (named after their parents, Miriam and Max) but managed to keep their Dimension Films imprint. Dimension plans to release 15 to 20 films per year and the first of these is Smith’s soon-to-be-filmed Clerks sequel, The Passion of the Clerks, a production that promises to play to his creative strengths after the misfire of Jersey Girl. As Uncut thuds down in a chair opposite, Smith gingerly opens one eye. He’s clearly fucked after a marathon five-hour Q&A session (recorded at London’s Criterion Theatre for his soon-to-be-released An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder DVD), swiftly followed by a long day promoting his new book, Silent Bob Speaks (a must-read collection of Smith’s sardonic magazine columns – reviewed by Uncut this month, June 2005). Nonetheless, Smith is a man who’s incapable of delivering a half-arsed anecdote and, mere seconds after his wearily amiable greeting, he’s sat bolt upright, issuing forth with evangelical New Jersey zeal on ten years of Miramax, his real opinion of Tarantino, the brilliance of Shaun of the Dead and the raw animal power of iconoclastic Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein. You’re the man who extended Miramax’s independent portfolio beyond the pure art-house aesthetic. Who, besides Harvey and Bob Weinstein, deserves the credit for Miramax’s initial rise to power? You gotta give it up to Steven Soderbergh for Sex, Lies and Videotape in ’89, man. Sex, Lies was Harvey and Bob’s first multi-million dollar grosser – they did $25 million with that. It was an independent film that travelled well beyond the art house ghetto. After that, Tarantino is the one that blows Miramax off the fucking map. Miramax became The House That Quentin Built because Pulp Fiction made over 100 million bucks at the US box office alone - unheard of at that time for an independent flick. Now that they’ve stormed out of Disney, is it easy to assess the scope of the Weinstein brothers’ contribution to moviemaking over the last fifteen years? Without Harvey and Bob, independent film doesn’t get into the hands of the masses. Essentially, without them, it stays within the art house community. Harvey and Bob are responsible for taking indie flicks and bringing them to the suburbs. I grew up in the fucking backwoods of New Jersey and if I wanted to see movies like Prick Up Your Ears or My Own Private Idaho, I had to travel all the fucking way into New York to see them. Harvey and Bob completely changed the game, they took those movies to the fucking suburbs. They gave the audience the benefit of the doubt, something that the major studios hadn’t done since the late 70’s, when they decided that all American audiences wanted to see were these big budget fucking popcorn movies. They fucking forgot that there was a whole period of fantastic, successful movies that weren’t instantly commercial or marketable, made by the young turks of the 70’s. Harvey and Bob essentially reinvented that period and put independent movies back into the hands of the regular neighbourhood people who weren’t metropolitan sophisticates. You reference Quentin Tarantino’s importance to Miramax. As a fellow Weinstein employee, what’s your take on QT? Tarantino? Brilliant. Without him, I don’t have a fucking job. I saw Reservoir Dogs and I was like “Oh my god, you can reference The Thing [from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four] in a movie? Ben Grimm? You can have a poster of The Silver Surfer hanging up? You can dissect a fucking song by Madonna?” So that opened up the door for me with Clerks. Y’know, you sit there with Pulp Fiction going “Why can’t there be more movies like this?” and at the same time you’re so glad that there’s not more flicks like Pulp Fiction because you wouldn’t appreciate Quentin as much as you do. That movie was a total eye-opener, it’s like a masterclass in mixing tones. When I first saw it, I was like “Okay, you can make a movie where one moment it’s very funny and the next minute somebody’s getting their fucking head blown off.” He really is the progenitor, man – he’s the godfather of everything. Is Tarantino a Jay and Silent Bob fan? I saw Quentin on a US TV show when Chasing Amy came out. It was around the time that Jackie Brown was released and he was sitting in with a bunch of critics discussing movies of the year. Anyway [Time Magazine film critic] Richard Corliss asked Quentin what his favourite movie of the year was and he said: “Chasing Amy, because Kevin Smith took a quantum leap between that movie and his first two movies.” I mean, that meant everything to me - my fucking head almost exploded because I respect the guy so much. A couple of years later, I saw him at the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back premiere and he fucking loved the movie. I was like “You? You loved that movie?” But he really did. His only complaint was that he wasn’t in it. He said: “You made a fucking movie about Miramax and you didn’t put me in it?” Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back [Smith’s lunatic, self-reverential 2001 cartoon romp through the mythology of his previous four movies, full of returning characters, bad taste gags and celebrity cameos] was a real weird movie for me, ‘cause that was the one that – for some reason - seemed to gain me the credibility and respect of the dudes who’ve been doing this longer than I have. Robert Rodriguez fucking loved that movie. Richard Linklater was like “I really think that’s your best work, you’re on solid footing with this movie” and I’m like “That movie is my best work?” Six movies into your film-making career, do you get debut fimmakers quoting Kevin Smith as an influence? A while ago, Quentin called me up and said “I’m having a screening of this British movie Shaun of the Dead, have you seen it yet?” So I went over to Quentin’s and I fucking loved the movie. Last night, I was out in London with the dudes who made it, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg – excellent fucking guys. They were telling me about seeing Clerks for the first time and that watching Dante and Randall have the Star Wars conversation was a real eye opener for them. They were like “My god, you can really talk about stuff like this on film?” and when they put things together a few years later, that scene informed what they were doing with their TV show, Spaced. Two of Hollywood’s highest profile leading men, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and an Uncut favourite, Jason Lee, all received their first break working for you, right? I met Affleck and Lee through the Mallrats auditions – we set open auditions and they were the two dudes who came through. When we were shooting the flick, I just fell in love with them both. I met Matty Damon through Affleck and just kept using all three of them from then on. Affleck is like one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet - a tall, good looking, smart guy who’s really fucking witty. He’s really got everything. There isn’t much difference between Ben and Matt then and Ben and Matt now, except now they work more steadily and have a lot more fucking cash. Of course, Affleck, right now, is getting the shit knocked out of him - but that seems to have run its course. What makes you think that open season on Affleck is over? I think that Truth, Justice and the American Way (Allen Coulter’s upcoming movie about the mystery surrounding typecast 50’s Superman actor George Reeves’ sudden death, starring Affleck as Reeves] is the movie that’ll put him back on top. It’s Ben Affleck, a guy whose career has been troubled over the last year, playing George Reeves, a guy who’s career had been troubled for many years prior to his death. It’s a perfect role for him, and he’s not the lead – the movie’s really about the guy investigating Reeves’ death [played by Adrien Brody], so Affleck doesn’t have to carry the whole fucking thing. It’s a perfect comeback vehicle and we know this because we have Pulp Fiction as the model - this is the Travolta role from Pulp Fiction. Were you around when Miramax picked up the movie that kicked Affleck & Damon into the big leagues - Good Will Hunting? Back when I was writing Chasing Amy for Affleck, he gave me the Good Will Hunting script and asked me to put it in front of Harvey. I read it in the bathroom. I was there for two hours and just read the whole fucking script - y’know, fucking weeping on the toilet, which I normally do when I look between my legs. I fucking loved the script and I called Harvey and said “Boss, I know this sounds stupid, but this script my friends wrote, it’s like the best thing I’ve ever read, it’s fucking breathtaking. Like it’s good, it’s Oscar good…. I think. But it comes with a huge turnaround cost. It’s currently with Castle Rock, who picked it up for $800 grand - it’ll probably cost you a million bucks”. Harvey tells me that he never pays that kind of money for a script, that’s really fucking high, but what the fuck, send it over anyway and he’ll read it over the weekend. First thing Monday, Harvey calls me back and starts booming: “I’m buying this, I fucking love it.” So that put us all in the Miramax family – Matt, Ben and me. I was already kind of there with Chasing Amy, but that lodged us firmly in there with Harvey and Bob. You’ve often described Harvey Weinstein as a father figure and famously defended him when Peter Biskind trashed him in his 2004 book, Down and Dirty Pictures. On the eve of your fifth collaboration with The Passion of the Clerks, what’s your final word on the notorious Harvey Weinstein? He’s a fantastic man, a great beast. From time to time, he asks me “Why do you call me a beast?” It’s got nothing to do with his size, it’s just that he’s this great beast that doesn’t exist anymore, who’s all commerce and passion at the same time. With the US studio system, you get people who are all about the commerce and very little about the passion. Harvey just can’t be one without the other. He’s always a businessman, always thinking about how he can turn a buck off stuff, but how he directs movies into the cinemas and how he figures out what he wants to change about them and how he gets behind certain movies - that’s all about genuine fucking passion. He’s like an old-time Hollywood studio boss. It’s easy to take shots at contemporary Hollywood and say: “They don’t care about the art.” It’s easy ‘cause it’s fucking true – they really flat out don’t care about the art and they fucking didn’t until Harvey and Bob showed up. So, he’s just your average misunderstood movie mogul? He’s just this unique dude who’s a real creature of the ego and the id. He has this powerful fucking demeanour that’s a combination of regal and street. Like, when he bought Clerks, Harvey called us over to this restaurant at Sundance and he was sitting there, eating the greasiest fucking pile of potato skins and smoking a cigarette at the same time, going from one to the other bellowing “I fucking love this movie, I’m taking this fucking movie and we’ll put it in fucking multiplexes. We’re gonna put a fucking soundtrack on it and we’re gonna fucking blow it out”. We were like: “Fucking A, he talks like us.” He really is a splendid, splendid man. Kind of like Henry the Eighth, or Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast, but coupled with that edge that Ben Kingsley has in Sexy Beast. He can be very fucking dangerous at times. Thankfully, it’s never been turned on me but I’ve seen it turned on and, shit, he’s a fucking frightening dude when he wants to be. Interview by Andrew Sumner

It’s March 2005 and Kevin Smith is a tired man. As Uncut is ushered into an understated drawing room at London’s tastefully elegant Langham Hotel, the comic book-loving writer/director/raconteur/slacker icon is garbed in his infamous green and black Silent Bob overcoat and splayed out on a chaise longue, flat out asleep.

Smith tore up the international cinema scene with his breakthrough indie flick, Clerks, a fast-talking, eloquently profane low-budget masterpiece centering on the go-nowhere lives of two convenience store workers. Culled largely from Smith’s own New Jersey convenience store experiences, Clerks won the main prize at Sundance and was rapidly picked up by Harvey & Bob Weinstein’s Miramax. The Weinsteins parlayed Smith’s self-financed $26,800 black & white labour of love into a hugely profitable worldwide hit and swiftly installed Smith at the forefront of their trusted creative inner circle. “I came in right after Quentin’s Reservoir Dogs and before the release of Pulp Fiction. I’m very often – and rightly so – tied to that era, the Golden Age of Miramax, where they fucking exploded.”

Over the ensuing decade, Miramax’s fortunes have risen dramatically, netting them a total of 60 Oscar wins and ten blockbuster movies (from Pulp Fiction to Spy Kids) that have grossed over $100 million at the US box office. Throughout the same period, Smith has written and directed five modestly-budgeted movies under his View Askew imprint: two raucous gung-ho comedies steeped in the comic book-inflected mythos of his “View Askewniverse” (Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), one controversial religious fantasia (Dogma), one critically-lauded exploration of contemporary sexual politics (Chasing Amy, his best movie to date) and one almost universally-derided experiment in family-friendly comedy drama (2004’s Affleck clunker, Jersey Girl). All but the latter feature Smith and childhood pal Jason Mewes as drug-dealing fanboy icons Jay and Silent Bob.

In a bid to rival Robert Rodriguez as Miramax’s busiest multimedia-hyphenate, Smith has also found time to relaunch two major comic-book heroes (Daredevil for Marvel and Green Arrow for DC), maintain two award-winning websites (ViewAskew.com and MoviePoopShoot.com), film his ongoing series of Roadside Attractions shorts for Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, produce an infamously short-lived Clerks cartoon show for the ABC network and launch an outrageously successful career as a raconteur on the US college lecture circuit (spawning the never-less-than-100%-entertaining DVD ‘An Evening with Kevin Smith’).

The View Askew canon’s record-breaking performance on DVD has ensured that Smith, along with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, is one of the company assets that the Weinstein brothers are taking with them following their acrimonious split from Disney. Harvey and Bob have had to sacrifice their beloved Miramax company name (named after their parents, Miriam and Max) but managed to keep their Dimension Films imprint. Dimension plans to release 15 to 20 films per year and the first of these is Smith’s soon-to-be-filmed Clerks sequel, The Passion of the Clerks, a production that promises to play to his creative strengths after the misfire of Jersey Girl.

As Uncut thuds down in a chair opposite, Smith gingerly opens one eye. He’s clearly fucked after a marathon five-hour Q&A session (recorded at London’s Criterion Theatre for his soon-to-be-released An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder DVD), swiftly followed by a long day promoting his new book, Silent Bob Speaks (a must-read collection of Smith’s sardonic magazine columns – reviewed by Uncut this month, June 2005).

Nonetheless, Smith is a man who’s incapable of delivering a half-arsed anecdote and, mere seconds after his wearily amiable greeting, he’s sat bolt upright, issuing forth with evangelical New Jersey zeal on ten years of Miramax, his real opinion of Tarantino, the brilliance of Shaun of the Dead and the raw animal power of iconoclastic Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein.

You’re the man who extended Miramax’s independent portfolio beyond the pure art-house aesthetic. Who, besides Harvey and Bob Weinstein, deserves the credit for Miramax’s initial rise to power?

You gotta give it up to Steven Soderbergh for Sex, Lies and Videotape in ’89, man.

Sex, Lies was Harvey and Bob’s first multi-million dollar grosser – they did $25 million with that. It was an independent film that travelled well beyond the art house ghetto. After that, Tarantino is the one that blows Miramax off the fucking map. Miramax became The House That Quentin Built because Pulp Fiction made over 100 million bucks at the US box office alone – unheard of at that time for an independent flick.

Now that they’ve stormed out of Disney, is it easy to assess the scope of the Weinstein brothers’ contribution to moviemaking over the last fifteen years?

Without Harvey and Bob, independent film doesn’t get into the hands of the masses. Essentially, without them, it stays within the art house community. Harvey and Bob are responsible for taking indie flicks and bringing them to the suburbs. I grew up in the fucking backwoods of New Jersey and if I wanted to see movies like Prick Up Your Ears or My Own Private Idaho, I had to travel all the fucking way into New York to see them. Harvey and Bob completely changed the game, they took those movies to the fucking suburbs.

They gave the audience the benefit of the doubt, something that the major studios hadn’t done since the late 70’s, when they decided that all American audiences wanted to see were these big budget fucking popcorn movies. They fucking forgot that there was a whole period of fantastic, successful movies that weren’t instantly commercial or marketable, made by the young turks of the 70’s.

Harvey and Bob essentially reinvented that period and put independent movies back into the hands of the regular neighbourhood people who weren’t metropolitan sophisticates.

You reference Quentin Tarantino’s importance to Miramax. As a fellow Weinstein employee, what’s your take on QT?

Tarantino? Brilliant. Without him, I don’t have a fucking job. I saw Reservoir Dogs and I was like “Oh my god, you can reference The Thing [from Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four] in a movie? Ben Grimm? You can have a poster of The Silver Surfer hanging up? You can dissect a fucking song by Madonna?” So that opened up the door for me with Clerks.

Y’know, you sit there with Pulp Fiction going “Why can’t there be more movies like this?” and at the same time you’re so glad that there’s not more flicks like Pulp Fiction because you wouldn’t appreciate Quentin as much as you do. That movie was a total eye-opener, it’s like a masterclass in mixing tones. When I first saw it, I was like “Okay, you can make a movie where one moment it’s very funny and the next minute somebody’s getting their fucking head blown off.” He really is the progenitor, man – he’s the godfather of everything.

Is Tarantino a Jay and Silent Bob fan?

I saw Quentin on a US TV show when Chasing Amy came out. It was around the time that Jackie Brown was released and he was sitting in with a bunch of critics discussing movies of the year. Anyway [Time Magazine film critic] Richard Corliss asked Quentin what his favourite movie of the year was and he said: “Chasing Amy, because Kevin Smith took a quantum leap between that movie and his first two movies.” I mean, that meant everything to me – my fucking head almost exploded because I respect the guy so much.

A couple of years later, I saw him at the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back premiere and he fucking loved the movie. I was like “You? You loved that movie?” But he really did. His only complaint was that he wasn’t in it. He said: “You made a fucking movie about Miramax and you didn’t put me in it?”

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back [Smith’s lunatic, self-reverential 2001 cartoon romp through the mythology of his previous four movies, full of returning characters, bad taste gags and celebrity cameos] was a real weird movie for me, ‘cause that was the one that – for some reason – seemed to gain me the credibility and respect of the dudes who’ve been doing this longer than I have. Robert Rodriguez fucking loved that movie. Richard Linklater was like “I really think that’s your best work, you’re on solid footing with this movie” and I’m like “That movie is my best work?”

Six movies into your film-making career, do you get debut fimmakers quoting Kevin Smith as an influence?

A while ago, Quentin called me up and said “I’m having a screening of this British movie Shaun of the Dead, have you seen it yet?” So I went over to Quentin’s and I fucking loved the movie. Last night, I was out in London with the dudes who made it, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg – excellent fucking guys. They were telling me about seeing Clerks for the first time and that watching Dante and Randall have the Star Wars conversation was a real eye opener for them. They were like “My god, you can really talk about stuff like this on film?” and when they put things together a few years later, that scene informed what they were doing with their TV show, Spaced.

Two of Hollywood’s highest profile leading men, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and an Uncut favourite, Jason Lee, all received their first break working for you, right?

I met Affleck and Lee through the Mallrats auditions – we set open auditions and they were the two dudes who came through. When we were shooting the flick, I just fell in love with them both. I met Matty Damon through Affleck and just kept using all three of them from then on. Affleck is like one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet – a tall, good looking, smart guy who’s really fucking witty. He’s really got everything. There isn’t much difference between Ben and Matt then and Ben and Matt now, except now they work more steadily and have a lot more fucking cash.

Of course, Affleck, right now, is getting the shit knocked out of him – but that seems to have run its course.

What makes you think that open season on Affleck is over?

I think that Truth, Justice and the American Way (Allen Coulter’s upcoming movie about the mystery surrounding typecast 50’s Superman actor George Reeves’ sudden death, starring Affleck as Reeves] is the movie that’ll put him back on top. It’s Ben Affleck, a guy whose career has been troubled over the last year, playing George Reeves, a guy who’s career had been troubled for many years prior to his death. It’s a perfect role for him, and he’s not the lead – the movie’s really about the guy investigating Reeves’ death [played by Adrien Brody], so Affleck doesn’t have to carry the whole fucking thing. It’s a perfect comeback vehicle and we know this because we have Pulp Fiction as the model – this is the Travolta role from Pulp Fiction.

Were you around when Miramax picked up the movie that kicked Affleck & Damon into the big leagues – Good Will Hunting?

Back when I was writing Chasing Amy for Affleck, he gave me the Good Will Hunting script and asked me to put it in front of Harvey. I read it in the bathroom. I was there for two hours and just read the whole fucking script – y’know, fucking weeping on the toilet, which I normally do when I look between my legs. I fucking loved the script and I called Harvey and said “Boss, I know this sounds stupid, but this script my friends wrote, it’s like the best thing I’ve ever read, it’s fucking breathtaking. Like it’s good, it’s Oscar good…. I think. But it comes with a huge turnaround cost. It’s currently with Castle Rock, who picked it up for $800 grand – it’ll probably cost you a million bucks”. Harvey tells me that he never pays that kind of money for a script, that’s really fucking high, but what the fuck, send it over anyway and he’ll read it over the weekend. First thing Monday, Harvey calls me back and starts booming: “I’m buying this, I fucking love it.” So that put us all in the Miramax family – Matt, Ben and me. I was already kind of there with Chasing Amy, but that lodged us firmly in there with Harvey and Bob.

You’ve often described Harvey Weinstein as a father figure and famously defended him when Peter Biskind trashed him in his 2004 book, Down and Dirty Pictures. On the eve of your fifth collaboration with The Passion of the Clerks, what’s your final word on the notorious Harvey Weinstein?

He’s a fantastic man, a great beast. From time to time, he asks me “Why do you call me a beast?” It’s got nothing to do with his size, it’s just that he’s this great beast that doesn’t exist anymore, who’s all commerce and passion at the same time. With the US studio system, you get people who are all about the commerce and very little about the passion. Harvey just can’t be one without the other. He’s always a businessman, always thinking about how he can turn a buck off stuff, but how he directs movies into the cinemas and how he figures out what he wants to change about them and how he gets behind certain movies – that’s all about genuine fucking passion. He’s like an old-time Hollywood studio boss.

It’s easy to take shots at contemporary Hollywood and say: “They don’t care about the art.” It’s easy ‘cause it’s fucking true – they really flat out don’t care about the art and they fucking didn’t until Harvey and Bob showed up.

So, he’s just your average misunderstood movie mogul?

He’s just this unique dude who’s a real creature of the ego and the id. He has this powerful fucking demeanour that’s a combination of regal and street. Like, when he bought Clerks, Harvey called us over to this restaurant at Sundance and he was sitting there, eating the greasiest fucking pile of potato skins and smoking a cigarette at the same time, going from one to the other bellowing “I fucking love this movie, I’m taking this fucking movie and we’ll put it in fucking multiplexes. We’re gonna put a fucking soundtrack on it and we’re gonna fucking blow it out”. We were like: “Fucking A, he talks like us.”

He really is a splendid, splendid man. Kind of like Henry the Eighth, or Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast, but coupled with that edge that Ben Kingsley has in Sexy Beast. He can be very fucking dangerous at times. Thankfully, it’s never been turned on me but I’ve seen it turned on and, shit, he’s a fucking frightening dude when he wants to be.

Interview by Andrew Sumner

Anatomy Of A Murder

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Anatomy Of A Murder

Otto Preminger was a wealth of contradictions and ambiguities. A dictatorial movie director, nicknamed "Otto The Terrible", his films are still steeped in social equality. He was a Viennese Jew who moonlighted as a screen Nazi (see Stalag 17), made his classic 'Hollywood' films while working outside of the Hollywood system, and balanced his oft-declared antipathy towards actors and stars with his own celebrity status (he appeared as Mr Freeze in TV's Batman, and was a regular on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show). It's no surprise then, that courtroom drama Anatomy Of A Murder from 1959, arguably Preminger's finest film, is also his most brazenly ambiguous. From the opening Saul Bass title sequence and Duke Ellington score, Preminger introduces a movie that's simultaneously seedy and righteous. There's defence attorney Paul Biegler (Stewart), who frequents late night jazz bars, has been passed over for promotion and isn't averse to leering at slatternly soldier's wife and rape victim, Laura Manion (Remick). Manion's hothead husband Fred (Gazzara) has murdered Laura's alleged rapist, and now Biegler has to prove that Fred was temporarily insane at the time. But Preminger, himself a law graduate, doesn't stop there. Fred (the brilliantly mercurial Gazzara) is deeply sinister and possibly homicidal, while Remick's Laura is sociopathically horny - she attempts to seduce Biegler at the crime scene, is forever "jiggling about" in tight outfits, and her torn 'panties' become the cornerstone of the case. Denying us a team to cheer, Preminger asks us to observe open-mouthed as the process of law is batted furiously back'n'forth between the resourceful Biegler and prosector George C Scott. Preminger's methods are ultimately so assured that by the movie's end it barely matters who wins or loses, just that Biegler has another case. And he does. By Kevin Maher

Otto Preminger was a wealth of contradictions and ambiguities. A dictatorial movie director, nicknamed “Otto The Terrible”, his films are still steeped in social equality. He was a Viennese Jew who moonlighted as a screen Nazi (see Stalag 17), made his classic ‘Hollywood’ films while working outside of the Hollywood system, and balanced his oft-declared antipathy towards actors and stars with his own celebrity status (he appeared as Mr Freeze in TV’s Batman, and was a regular on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show). It’s no surprise then, that courtroom drama Anatomy Of A Murder from 1959, arguably Preminger’s finest film, is also his most brazenly ambiguous.

From the opening Saul Bass title sequence and Duke Ellington score, Preminger introduces a movie that’s simultaneously seedy and righteous. There’s defence attorney Paul Biegler (Stewart), who frequents late night jazz bars, has been passed over for promotion and isn’t averse to leering at slatternly soldier’s wife and rape victim, Laura Manion (Remick). Manion’s hothead husband Fred (Gazzara) has murdered Laura’s alleged rapist, and now Biegler has to prove that Fred was temporarily insane at the time. But Preminger, himself a law graduate, doesn’t stop there. Fred (the brilliantly mercurial Gazzara) is deeply sinister and possibly homicidal, while Remick’s Laura is sociopathically horny – she attempts to seduce Biegler at the crime scene, is forever “jiggling about” in tight outfits, and her torn ‘panties’ become the cornerstone of the case. Denying us a team to cheer, Preminger asks us to observe open-mouthed as the process of law is batted furiously back’n’forth between the resourceful Biegler and prosector George C Scott.

Preminger’s methods are ultimately so assured that by the movie’s end it barely matters who wins or loses, just that Biegler has another case. And he does.

By Kevin Maher

Van Der Graaf Generator – Present

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Van Der Graaf Generator – Present

Although customarily associated with prog, Van der Graaf Generator were always a world away from the ridiculous likes of Yes and Jethro Tull. They hit darker, more urgent notes that resonated with a rogues’ gallery of fellow pop mavericks, from Bowie and Johnny Rotten to Mark E. Smith, Graham Coxon and Luke Haines. In recent years, singer-guitarist Peter Hammill has re-emerged with increasingly confident and acute solo records about our current condition. And it was a rapturously received Van der Graaf encore at a 2003 Hammill gig that sparked their reunion. Hammill’s near-fatal heart attack that December only added intensity to this risky return. It’s the core of the band’s shifting line-up: Hammill plus Hugh Banton (keyboards), Guy Evans (drums) and David Jackson (saxes and flutes), offering 37 minutes of new songs, plus an hour labelled Improvisations. They sound eerily similar to the last time this quartet recorded, in 1976: this isn’t their crunk record. Instead it’s a restatement of old strengths, and far from quaint. When “Every Bloody Emperor”, a typical recent Hammill lyric about our tawdry rulers, breaks into a seasick madrigal sway, it suggests the historical reach of older men without blunting its anti-Blair bite. Such hints of English pastoralism, always key to Van der Graaf’s appeal, bolster “Boleas Panic”’s bucolic spaciness, all flutes and church organs, pacific yet musically tense. Johnny Rotten’s soft spot for these so-called proggers is then justified by “Nutter Alert”, a prime Hammill paranoid rant as “darkness falls in a telephone call”, punctured only when a lengthy band breakdown lets its raging glee slip. “On the Beach” is a suitably elegiac coda, Hammill warmly pondering passing time before the sound of waves washes over it all. The Improvisations CD, though heavier going, fulfils its intended function as a once-only insight into the band’s inner workings. Not yet quite reaching peak wattage, it’s still a worthy return from these peerless English dreamers. By Nick Hasted

Although customarily associated with prog, Van der Graaf Generator were always a world away from the ridiculous likes of Yes and Jethro Tull. They hit darker, more urgent notes that resonated with a rogues’ gallery of fellow pop mavericks, from Bowie and Johnny Rotten to Mark E. Smith, Graham Coxon and Luke Haines. In recent years, singer-guitarist Peter Hammill has re-emerged with increasingly confident and acute solo records about our current condition. And it was a rapturously received Van der Graaf encore at a 2003 Hammill gig that sparked their reunion. Hammill’s near-fatal heart attack that December only added intensity to this risky return.

It’s the core of the band’s shifting line-up: Hammill plus Hugh Banton (keyboards), Guy Evans (drums) and David Jackson (saxes and flutes), offering 37 minutes of new songs, plus an hour labelled Improvisations. They sound eerily similar to the last time this quartet recorded, in 1976: this isn’t their crunk record. Instead it’s a restatement of old strengths, and far from quaint. When “Every Bloody Emperor”, a typical recent Hammill lyric about our tawdry rulers, breaks into a seasick madrigal sway, it suggests the historical reach of older men without blunting its anti-Blair bite.

Such hints of English pastoralism, always key to Van der Graaf’s appeal, bolster “Boleas Panic”’s bucolic spaciness, all flutes and church organs, pacific yet musically tense. Johnny Rotten’s soft spot for these so-called proggers is then justified by “Nutter Alert”, a prime Hammill paranoid rant as “darkness falls in a telephone call”, punctured only when a lengthy band breakdown lets its raging glee slip. “On the Beach” is a suitably elegiac coda, Hammill warmly pondering passing time before the sound of waves washes over it all. The Improvisations CD, though heavier going, fulfils its intended function as a once-only insight into the band’s inner workings. Not yet quite reaching peak wattage, it’s still a worthy return from these peerless English dreamers.

By Nick Hasted

The National – Alligator

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The National – Alligator

Relocate the Tindersticks or the Czars to the restless buzz of New York and you’re close to the sound of The National, who began to build a reputation as intense, hopelessly doomed romantics with 2001’s self-titled debut. By 2003’s Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (partly helmed by Interpol producer Peter Katis and arranged by Padma Newsome, member of criminally-overlooked avant-classicists Clogs), people began to take notice - not least in these pages, where it nestled in our year-best shortlist. With hangdog frontman Matt Berninger’s baritone somewhere between Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen, and rich velvet tunes loaded with spite and self-loathing, The National were undeniably seductive. Music that many took to be studied self-pity, however, was suffused with narcissistic humour and deadpan shock tactics. Alligator, their new label debut, expands on both. On “Karen”, for instance, Berninger pursues a relationship to escape his own lack of direction, and is faced with a truly disturbing potential father-in-law: “It’s a common fetish for a doting man/ To ballerina on the coffee table/ Cock in hand.” On the Bunnymen/Joy Division spiral of “Lit Up”, the self-deprecation extends to the music itself, “This sound I make/ That only lasts a season/ And only heard by bedroom kids who buy it for that reason”. The band themselves – two pairs of brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dressner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf – judge it near-perfectly, delicately poised between liberty and restraint. Lyrically, “Val Jester” is the simplest thing here, but the swollen strings and circular arpeggios elicit a world of heartbreak on their own. With humming guitars to the forefront, there’s an anxiety forever threatening to simmer over into full-on paranoia. In this respect – even without the vocals – it could only be the product of a teeming metropolis. It is Berninger’s fragile ego and his luxuriant words which dominate, though. “I’m a perfect piece of ass,” he proclaims in the shadowy strut of “All The Wine” (previously on last year’s excellent mini-album, Cherry Tree). And by the closing “Mr November” he is almost desperately upbeat: “The English are waiting,” he notes, as the deadline set by new label Beggar’s Banquet looms, “And I don’t know what to do/ In my best clothes/ I’m the new blue blood/ I’m the new white hope”. Remarkably, it’s no idle boast. By Rob Hughes

Relocate the Tindersticks or the Czars to the restless buzz of New York and you’re close to the sound of The National, who began to build a reputation as intense, hopelessly doomed romantics with 2001’s self-titled debut. By 2003’s Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers (partly helmed by Interpol producer Peter Katis and arranged by Padma Newsome, member of criminally-overlooked avant-classicists Clogs), people began to take notice – not least in these pages, where it nestled in our year-best shortlist.

With hangdog frontman Matt Berninger’s baritone somewhere between Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen, and rich velvet tunes loaded with spite and self-loathing, The National were undeniably seductive. Music that many took to be studied self-pity, however, was suffused with narcissistic humour and deadpan shock tactics. Alligator, their new label debut, expands on both.

On “Karen”, for instance, Berninger pursues a relationship to escape his own lack of direction, and is faced with a truly disturbing potential father-in-law: “It’s a common fetish for a doting man/ To ballerina on the coffee table/ Cock in hand.” On the Bunnymen/Joy Division spiral of “Lit Up”, the self-deprecation extends to the music itself, “This sound I make/ That only lasts a season/ And only heard by bedroom kids who buy it for that reason”.

The band themselves – two pairs of brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dressner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf – judge it near-perfectly, delicately poised between liberty and restraint. Lyrically, “Val Jester” is the simplest thing here, but the swollen strings and circular arpeggios elicit a world of heartbreak on their own. With humming guitars to the forefront, there’s an anxiety forever threatening to simmer over into full-on paranoia. In this respect – even without the vocals – it could only be the product of a teeming metropolis.

It is Berninger’s fragile ego and his luxuriant words which dominate, though. “I’m a perfect piece of ass,” he proclaims in the shadowy strut of “All The Wine” (previously on last year’s excellent mini-album, Cherry Tree). And by the closing “Mr November” he is almost desperately upbeat: “The English are waiting,” he notes, as the deadline set by new label Beggar’s Banquet looms, “And I don’t know what to do/ In my best clothes/ I’m the new blue blood/ I’m the new white hope”. Remarkably, it’s no idle boast.

By Rob Hughes

Interview: Gorillaz

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Interview: Gorillaz
"Every great band is destroyed by their success: cartoon bands are no exception." Discuss... Noodle: When many great bands start off they are uniquely oblivious to what makes them special, what makes that exceptional. When they become successful these reasons are pointed out to them. Their magic i...

“Every great band is destroyed by their success: cartoon bands are no exception.” Discuss…

Noodle: When many great bands start off they are uniquely oblivious to what makes them special, what makes that exceptional. When they become successful these reasons are pointed out to them. Their magic is analysed and explained to them by their fans, the press or the people surround them. Therefore it forces a change in them. Either the band

react against it, or try to imitate the elements that make them successful, or other people expect a change. Even the choice to ignore these explanations is a decision. It usually affects that chemistry of a band. It can never remain the same as that first initial unconscious period. Every great band will face destruction or must destroy themselves in order to..start again. Cartoon bands are no exception.

Murdoc: The trouble with great bands is they lose their edge, y’know? The get distracted, or they start writing. ballads, or they mellow out. You know what I’m talking about anyway. As soon as bands become big they invariably need to be brought down. They get complacent. However, cartoon bands are the exception.

Russel: Yeah that’s the difference. You don’t want a cartoon band to become a caricature of themselves.

2D: That would just be weird.

Murdoc: Bands just seem to screw it up at some stage for some reason. If

they don’t, well that’s just equally dull.

Any truth in the rumours that Murdoc wants to kick 2D’s head in for being such an irritatingly good-natured pretty boy?

Murdoc; Hey, I’d want to kick his head in even if he was ugly. You can’t blame it all on good looks.

Was Danger Mouse chosen to produce because of his skills or his name?

Russel: We would never be so flippant with our music as to choose a producer for any other reason than a mutual love and respect for music, and an incredible ability to execute the vision they had for the album.

Murdoc: Yeah. The name Dangermouse was just a bonus.

2D: So was the fact that he turned up with an eyepatch and a mate called Penfold.

Noodle: I was impressed with the work he had done on his own ‘Grey Album’ which I had downloaded from the Internet. It took a while to convince him to work with Gorillaz, but the album took a leap into the incredible when Mr. Mouse arrived. This would be around June 2004. Dangermouse and myself immediately began an intricate pre-production session.

Murdoc: This mainly involved playing table tennis and listening to a load of old electro records.

Noodle: His instinct and insight into music is very intuitive. He will pull out the necessary elements of a track and disguard the rest. In that way the music has an athletic, direct economy whilst still remaining full and rich. I fully expect Dangermouse to produce an impressive run of excellent albums over the next 10 years.

Murdoc: Pass us a biscuit Noodle. I’m getting a bit peckish.

How on earth did Dennis Hopper get involved in this madness?

Murdoc: Oh yeah. Right. Blame it on us. Like Dennis Hopper had spent his entire life in perfectly normal and sane surroundings until he got dragged into the big old nasty madness of the Gorillaz world. Christ! Why don’t you find some other scapegoat, Huh?

Russel: Noodle ran into him at some award show and it turns out he knew some Gorillaz tracks already. We told him what we were working on and then took it from there. He’s always been a symbol for a certain type of expression and free speech that suited the track we were working on. So he seemed a relevant choice for Gorillaz.

Murdoc: He’s always crashed his bike right into the palace of wisdom so we thought, ‘wait a sec I’ll just get my helmet.’

Noodle: The track he narrated was a serious tale or a nation of innocents whose happiness was destroyed by people infiltrating them, and trying to overtake them. As they had never seen aggression or this type of behavior before, they were unprepared. It awoke something in their society which destroyed them and their attackers. This story is read by Dennis Hopper on the album, and because of his history he seemed the right person to deliver it.

2D: Hmmm. And he was great in Speed as well.

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