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Everybody Wants Some!! An Interview with Richard Linklater

The 2014 film Boyhood took us through a young man’s life from the tender age of six to his first day at college.

Now that the 12-year project has concluded, writer/director Richard Linklater is telling the story of the next phase in life.

Adulthood? Not exactly. Everybody Wants Some!! (named after a song by Van Halen) follows Jake – a cipher for Linklater – as he enters the hugely competitive world of college sports and the hedonism of frat house life. But here’s the kicker: they may be full of bluster, but these aren’t the jerky jocks you’re used to as a cinemagoer.

“I know!” says Linklater with delight. “I’ve broken new ground in cinema history – to show athletes not as fully thugged, rapists, horrible, stupid. Although, you know, there’s a range of stupidity on display, just ’cause it’s all men, but there’s also a lot of humour and bonding.

“They’re not bad guys! I figured that out ’cause I’m an ex-athlete myself, showing something that I remember affectionately, whereas most movies are made by geeks who didn’t like athletes, so their depictions can be very prejudiced.”

Sure, he’s arguing that straight white males are being discriminated against, but it’s hard to meet the endearing cast of Everybody Wants Some!! and not think that when it comes to cinema, Linklater might just have a point.

“That’s just kinda how this society is geared, even though strangely we worship athletes to a psychopathic [degree],” he says. “They have this unwarranted elevated status; they’re also as a group put down and not taken very seriously as people.

“Talk about objectification – people say they objectify women, but the culture objectifies athletes. People don’t care about their souls, they don’t care about them [as people] – they’re just there to entertain them with their athletic prowess.”

Taking place as a ‘spiritual successor’ to his snapshot of the ’70s, Dazed And Confused, the new film is loosely based on Linklater’s experiences as a college baseball player before he made the dramatic and total shift to filmmaking at age 20. He sees it as a critique of young male behaviour, but one without the malevolence of modern initiation rituals.

“If you’re good enough to get a college scholarship and play at that level – a) you have to be good; and b) you have to be really competitive,” he says. “You gotta be a little obsessed, you gotta be kinda what you see in the movies. People think, ‘OK, those guys are competitive assholes,’ and it’s like, ‘Yeah, they all are. You have to be or you don’t belong there.’ But what do you do with all that once you’re not playing ball anymore?”

For Linklater, the answer came easily enough – he got stuck into playwrighting before producing his second feature, Slacker, which saw his career leave home plate. But Everybody Wants Some!! has been a grand opportunity to look back on his former ideology.

“It’s funny how something can mean so much to you – like for me, ages 12 through 20, baseball was such a focus in my life – and then can end and mean so little,” he laughs. “Like, absolutely nothing! It’s just gone. I’m the kind of guy who, the second I wasn’t playing anymore, I didn’t care about it … I was just on a huge non-physical-fitness binge. I just shifted, the arts took over my life.”

Now after almost 30 years in the film industry, Linklater’s competitive streak – appearing in the film as endless battles over ping-pong, women, drink and just about anything else – has been steadily replaced by a devotion to cinema. “For me it’s self-exploration, it’s storytelling. It’s not a zero-sum game. Everybody’s victories are kinda everybody’s victories in the arts. That’s how I see it. If some film does poorly, that doesn’t help me, you know?”

Thankfully, Linklater’s post-baseball change in career path never meant having to leave his teammates behind. “It’s kinda like going through the war with someone,” he laughs. “You’re kind of a platoon mate forever.” During the filming of Everybody Wants Some!!, the director brought his old “platoon mates” on set to relive their glory days, and to ensure that his evocation of the past had the same vibrancy and life to it as the reality.

“There really was a disco we went to called The Sound Machine, there really was a club called The Jolly Fox. They would come [on set] and the guys were just freaking out,” he laughs. “It was so real for them! There’s really 30 guys on the planet who really, really get this movie. The ones who lived there over a three-year period.”

Niche as that may sound, the movie is surprisingly inclusive, as Jake throws himself headlong into every subculture of college life without question or judgement. It’s so all-encompassing that The Guardian’s Noah Gittell referred to the film as a “potent, anti-partisan political statement”.

“To me, the movie’s very much a depiction of the end of an era,” says Linklater. “It’s like setting a movie on September 10, 2001 in New York, y’know? Things are gonna change. We know what’s comin’: fuckin’ Reagan/Bush years, anti-drugs, upping drinking ages, AIDS… the culture’s going to shift and go backwards really quick, so to me it’s like the last look at a certain era that’s pretty long gone.”

It may also be the best college film of the decade. But hey, it’s not a competition.

Everybody Wants Some!! (dir. Richard Linklater) shows, as part of Sydney Film Festival 2016, at State Theatre on Sunday June 12 and Event Cinemas George Street on Saturday June 18; then the film is in cinemas nationally from Thursday June 23.

Post originally printed in The BRAG; available at http://thebrag.com/arts/everybody-wants-some

Honesty In Obscurity: An Interview with John Grant

Reykjavík, Iceland’s coastal capital, is fast becoming the location of choice for the musically inclined.

It’s the go-to place for expansive music videos, and it’s home to such industry heavy-hitters as Björk, Ben Frost, Sigur Rós and Ásgeir. John Grant, the American-born singer-songwriter and former head of The Czars, has called Reykjavík home since recording his second solo album there in 2012, Pale Green Ghosts. “Luxuriating” in his bed, he sounds like he’s never felt more grounded.

“It’s an unstressful environment to be in,” he says. “The landscape is stunning, the air is crisp and fresh all the time and there’s a thriving music scene here that’s very progressive and modern. And, you know, it’s also a very friendly scene – it’s a pretty happening place. It doesn’t feel as small as it is.”

For Grant, it seems the perfect place to focus on his career without being sidetracked by his gradually increasing profile. Despite the critical successes of his latest album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, and his solo career as a whole, he hasn’t seen a great increase in media attention – something he considers fortunate.

“I’m not terribly jealous of the people I see who are constantly in the limelight, you know?” he says. “That doesn’t seem to have a good effect for anybody, because it just seems like their reality gets warped in the public eye. You get all sorts of different types of entities interested in you that weren’t interested in you before, and I don’t feel like I would be terribly comfortable with that much attention.”

Living comfortably out of the spotlight has given Grant the opportunity to focus solely on his craft. Given the personal nature of his songwriting, the freedom and time for introspection are practically vital.

“It seems to me that I’m in a good position, because I’m with a record label that allows me to do whatever the hell I want to do with every album. And the only person that’s putting any input into the music is me. That’s a great position to be in, because I would prefer for my visibility to develop naturally because of people’s reaction to the music.”

If and when the fame monster does rear its head in Grant’s life, he has excellent models to aspire to – the list of artists he has worked with includes such monolithic names as Sinéad O’Connor and Elton John.

“They’re people that have their heads screwed on quite firmly, I would say – I mean, with Elton, it’s a little bit different because he is at the head of a gigantic empire,” Grant laughs. “So when you’re out to dinner with him or when you’re at his house – I’ve never seen things like that before, so it’s quite crazy. “[Sinéad] has a nice house on the coast of Ireland and, you know, it’s a very normal existence. I’m just sort of underground and sort of barely visible, and so I suppose I haven’t really had the need to feel like I needed advice on that.”

Grant’s relationship with visibility is a curious one, as his solo albums have always been marked by a fearless honesty about his own experiences with drug addiction, homophobia, domestic division and living with HIV. The provocative trailer for Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is said to be indicative of what he’d like to do every time someone calls him a ‘faggot’.

“It’s more a phantom of the past,” he says, “leftover rage from having experienced that for several decades. I think the worst thing about it was always that I never really felt or never really was able to stand up for myself, because I felt like I was getting what I deserved, and that was the worst part of it for me.

“That definitely has translated to a lot of rage in me because I allowed people to treat me in a way that I thought I deserved, because I was taught to believe that what I was was a hundred per cent bad and undesirable and sick.”

Fortunately, he’s able to say that at least some progress has been made on this front in the decades since his own traumatic experiences. “I do think that there are a lot more people who are willing to come forward and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. To treat these people differently than other people…’ My very own father has changed his thinking quite a bit, simply because he wants to have a relationship with his children, because he loves us.”

Grant is the first to admit, however, that his honesty doesn’t necessarily stem from altruistic intentions, and that its therapeutic value to others is a corollary to his reaching out in search of empathy.

“I definitely am seeking connections with people, with my music. I think that I wanted to just be able to speak about myself and not be ashamed about myself, so I think it’s more of a selfish thing than an intention to help other people. I get a lot of letters from people and the music does seem to resonate with a lot of people and, of course, for me that’s very humbling and I feel very good about that.

“I just needed to say things exactly the way they were, without any fantasies attached to it and without the escapism. To just say, ‘This is the way it is, and I don’t give a shit whether you like it or not, it’s just the truth of my particular existence.’ And I don’t think that my existence is more important than your existence – I just wanted to be able to feel like I expressed myself clearly, for once in my life.”

Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is out now through Bella Union. John Grant appears, along with Caitlin Park, at the Metro Theatre, Wednesday March 16.

Post originally printed in The BRAG; available at http://www.thebrag.com/music/john-grant-0

Shallow Cuts: An Interview with Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow)

After three years of solo projects and collaborations with pop royalty, indie-pop giants Miike Snow are back and swinging the biggest dance hooks of their careers.

They’ve never been strangers to the dancefloor, but with time away to work through new ideas and new influences, the trio have blended hip hop aesthetics into the mix to expand their sound into bombastic club tracks. For singer Andrew Wyatt, it makes perfect sense – fresh from making cuts with the likes of Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars and Flume, his motivation is simply to get bodies moving.

“We bring a combination of what you might see in DJ sets, and some of the sonics of a DJ set,” he says. “We try to combine some of the elements of more improvisational bands with the strict pop songwriting that’s in our recorded library. And then just really hot dance moves.”

There’s a vivacity to the new album, simply titled III, that lends itself to the new angle, and the honing of Wyatt’s songwriting is evident in the renewed focus of the band. “I wasn’t, on this record, trying to tell some great truths about this or that, you know? I was just trying to make music that was fun to move to. I don’t think I’ve ever had a song that I could put on in a club and people would just dance!

“I think in some ways it’s just a shallower sound, or something. We were just having fun and trying to make songs that were super catchy and classic-sounding without being annoying.”

Drawing heavily from the swagger of contemporary hip hop and a ‘classic’ pop aesthetic (read: horns), III is a record that shamelessly struts its stuff as assuredly on its album tracks as its singles, ‘Genghis Khan’ and ‘Heart Is Full’. “It sounds quite confident, which I like,” says Wyatt. “Relaxed and confident, so in a way it’s like you get through the difficult [second] album and you relax a little bit, do your thing. I hope people hear that in it.”

How confident? How about an opening line like, “I saw you licking a dollar bill”? The image takes Wyatt all the way back to the heady days of Miike Snow’s self-titled debut.

“When we did ‘Silvia’, I was in a phase in my life where I was actually going to strip clubs a lot. I dated a girl who then became a stripper – that was what that song was about – and I don’t know why but I don’t do that anymore; I haven’t in years.

“Actually Christian [Karlsson] came up with that line, and when he did I kinda just put myself in the strip club and finished the song from there, in the sense that I knew what I wanted the song to be about and Christian was down with having it be about that, so it was cool. But yeah, somehow, we have a lot of songs about strippers in our band. I don’t know why.”

The self-assuredness of Miike Snow’s new sound is indicative not just of Wyatt’s working environment with Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (AKA producers Bloodshy & Avant), but of a maturing in their approach to making music. Wyatt actually finds working in the band environment quite liberating.

“I’m just a very impulsive person with music and I respond to what’s right in front of me,” he says. “My own music, I’m a bit more conceptual and I have a target, at least. I miss the target, but I at least have some kind of a target I’m focusing at when I start my own record, because I know I’m gonna have control over steering the ship all the time. With Miike Snow, I don’t really have a target, I just respond to what’s in the speakers, which is cool; I like that. And then its influence or whatever it’s supposed to mean out there – you can decide that, and I don’t have to.”

Written in response to beats crafted by Karlsson and Winnberg, Wyatt’s lyrics touch on tangible lived experience, primal emotions and the ever-present spectre of pop’s core lyrical obsession: love. As often happens, darker emotions slip in occasionally from the periphery – ‘Genghis Khan’, for instance, is loaded with irrational jealousy and the potential for violence – though Wyatt shrugs them off as broad truths of the human experience.

“I just think people like to hear lyrics they can connect to, you know? You try to write songs for others. Even John Lennon did a better version of it with ‘Jealous Guy’, where he’s just being so bloody honest about it. I think that level of songwriting has become more common; that people really wanna hear the real shit about what’s going on in your personal life.

“Everything from [Drake’s song] ‘Marvin’s Room’ to whatever, it’s kind of everywhere in pop. And a lot of what we experience in life is not positive all the time, so it’s just a reality and it’s one of the things that, across the board, everyone has felt.”

Alongside their chart-busting originals, Miike Snow’s collaborations have seen them land some spectacular remixes, the most notable cut arriving at the end of the new album: a version of ‘Heart Is Full’ featuring a verse from hip hop powerhouses Run The Jewels.

“I think there was a brief minute where it was gonna be Young Thug and Run The Jewels,” Wyatt explains, “and then Young Thug got, you know, just distracted by something and left town. And of course, that was our window of opportunity, it was gone with him, because now he’s like the biggest rapper since Drake, really, or Kendrick.

“I think our manager knows [Run The Jewels] so just casually asked them to do it and they did it that weekend, so it was really, really great working with people who are that responsible, frankly.”

As for their own show, Miike Snow are gearing up to take on a huge American tour that lands them at Coachella alongside the two massive reunions of LCD Soundsystem and Guns N’ Roses. Who knows when we’ll next see Wyatt, as he makes regular trips down here to play with Mark Ronson and Flume.

“I think the new Flume song with Kai is fucking amazing!” he says when the young Aussie otherwise known as Harley Streten is mentioned – Wyatt dropped ‘Some Minds’ with him last year. “I mean that’s, to me, great pop music and it’s kinda the first glitch laptop hip hop song that’s been done well as a pop song, you know? I think there’s been many attempts and this is the most exceptional one. I think it’s had a huge life in the United States, too. I keep texting Harley about that.”

Wyatt has always had an ear for great pop songwriting, and he leaves us with a recommendation: the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, his go-to source for greatness.

“It’s got so many layers to it and it’s enjoyable and the images that it conjures are so rich and textured and subtle,” he says. “It was part of a cultural movement at a certain time, and then it’s just structured so brilliantly and it’s sonically so deep and it’s mature and sensitive – at the same time it’s masculine but it’s sung in a falsetto. It’s like, I dunno – that music is kinda like supreme pop music to me.”

With that record in his decks, it’s no wonder Wyatt’s mind is wired to the dancefloor.

Miike Snow’s III out Friday March 4 through Atlantic/Warner.

Post originally printed in The BRAG; available at http://thebrag.com/music/miike-snow

No More Bullshit: An Interview with Jonathan Boulet

For a restless soul like Sydney noisemaker Jonathan Boulet, the only constant is change.

In the last five years – a good chunk of which he spent in Berlin – the mercurial muso has gone from an indie-folk festival mainstay to the grime-smeared Gubba, a character who slithered from Boulet’s 2014 garage-punk album of the same name.

Let’s backtrack a second: just who the fuck is Gubba? “The phrase is an indigenous term for a white man,” Boulet explains, “but when I was thinking about it over the course of that album, it turned into this character who’s kinda like white man’s evil over the course of time, of history. You know the cartoon character Rat Fink? That’s kinda what it looked like to me: it was just this crazy, psycho, don’t-get-in-his-way son of a bitch.”

For the unfamiliar, Rat Fink appeared in the album art of The Birthday Party’s Junkyard, a similarly “moody and aggressive” record, in Boulet’s words. It may seem like an odd reference point, but fans of his self-produced albums may not be so familiar with the rough-and-ready bands he’s played with in the past.

“The whole record is just a summation of all the heavier, aggressive bands that I was in before we moved, like Snakeface, Top People and my solo stuff,” he says. “Everything’s narrowing into the same project in [Gubba], and I think most of those songs could work with any of those bands.”

Despite the sudden sneering doom aesthetic, there’s been no real philosophical change for Boulet, he maintains, even after time spent overseas in a city that many of our generation perceive to be something of a cultural mecca. “It’s such a different place; there’s such culture and history there,” he says of Berlin. “But at the same time, most of me would prefer Sydney because it’s such a thriving city. It’s got everything you need.”

While it’s worth noting this interview occurred before New South Wales Premier Mike Baird’s reiteration of his lockout policies, the nightlife is not what Boulet’s after. “I like being close to the bush, having access to the beach and the bush, and having the good weather. They’re really simple things, but if you’re not around them all the time, of course you’re gonna start to miss ’em.”

Gubba is simultaneously more stripped-back and weightier than Boulet’s previous releases, driven by a mindset of ‘maximum impact, minimal bullshit’ that forms the backbone of his new approach to music.

“The album before Gubba [2012’s We Keep The Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start The Heart] was quite thick, it was quite layered … and it kind of made it harder to hear what was going on because there wasn’t a lot of clarity,” he admits. “I found through the shows that was kind of where I needed to go – for it to work properly, you need to arrange with clarity in mind and make sure everything has purpose. And there was too much – there was bullshit! I didn’t want to have any long, wanky intros, soundscapes, that kinda thing. People seem to have short attention spans; I’ve also got a really short attention span, so I kinda just want the song to start when it starts, you know?”

We talk about the kinds of bands that are carrying the no-bullshit torch and getting Boulet excited – “ridiculous” underground punk bands, specifically Melbourne’s Total Control and “any band that Mikey Young is associated with” – and I can’t help but bring up the recent Hottest 100 countdown to gauge Boulet’s reaction. It elicits a laugh. “It was on at the pub we were at. Every song, one of us was just like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ I don’t wanna rat on anyone, but I think it’s interesting that was the reaction that I think a lot of people had also.”

We swing back to Boulet’s own work, which at present sees him hit the studio every day – as he puts it, “I’ve just gotta sit there until the shit comes out.” He says he’s sticking to the aesthetic established on Gubba for now, at least loosely.

“In the same ballpark,” he says. “I think it was a fun album and it was pretty brash, a little bit offensive on the ears, but I’m hoping to stay close to it. Maybe, like, make it a little more groovy, a little more dynamic. When we launched [Gubba] in Sydney, at one point it just erupted and I was like, ‘Yes! This is why the whole album happened!’ It was very nice.”

Boulet is looking to make the live show more fun than ever, and with Popfrenzy’s Divine Times festival on the horizon as part of the 2016 Spectrum Now program – which sees Boulet play alongside post-punk pioneers The Jesus and Mary Chain – there’s never been a better time. Never fear, hardcore fans; he’s still raging with his other outfits – Snakeface tore up Black Wire Records just last week.

“We’re currently making new music with all those guys,” Boulet says. “Snakeface is starting to record some new stuff; same with Top People, trying to get that started up. [I’ve] got another project called Party Cousin, which is this noisy saxophone and drums duo. Basically right now, for me, it’s time to go to town and just make as much shit as possible.”

Gubba is out now through Popfrenzy and Jonathan Boulet plays Divine Times as part of Spectrum Now 2016, with The Jesus and Mary Chain, Seekae, Alvvays and U.S. Girls, at The Domain on Saturday March 5.

Post originally printed in The BRAG; available at http://thebrag.com/music/jonathan-boulet

A Rare Sight: An Interview with Jonas Bjerre (Mew)

Much like the Pokémon character their band name recalls for us ’90s kids, Danish prog rockers Mew are creatures of legend rarely seen in these parts.

In fact, their December show at Manning Bar will be the first time any of them have ever set foot in Australia, despite two decades of touring.

For the band’s Antipodean fans, it’s been a long time coming – so much so that fan collectives like Mewstralia had to petition and push for the band to snag an Aussie venue. Mew’s soft-spoken frontman Jonas Bjerre recounts how surprising it was to learn years ago that such a sizable grassroots movement had developed around their music.

“It was always a mystery – I would like to ask them that, how did they learn about us, you know?” he says, resting up in Paris before the next leg of their world tour in support of new album + –. “I guess it’s just word of mouth, and maybe the internet. So yeah, we know we’ve had a lot of people waiting for us there, and it’s gonna be so great to go, finally!”

For someone who’s only ever experienced Australia through films and music, touring here is an exciting prospect. Bjerre mentions Tame Impala, INXS and “everyone surfing” as his reference points, as well as the praise of other touring musicians, but it’s the nature that most attracts him.

“You have a completely different animal kingdom there, which is something that fascinates me a lot,” he says. “I’m a little bit scared of the big bugs I hear about, but I don’t know – I think you have to probably go into the wilderness to see that, right?”

It seems that logistics have gotten in the way of any earlier Mew tours, along with the band’s shifting lineup. In the last year alone, founding bassist Johan Wohlert returned to the fold after a six-year absence, and founding guitarist Bo Madsen bowed out to be replaced by Mads Wegner.

“It’s hard to talk about it,” says Bjerre. “There’s obviously a lot of different factors involved in a member leaving, and you know, we’ve written music together for 20 years, so it’s quite a change … We’re very happy with Mads, he’s a great guy and a wonderful guitar player. He’s really enjoying being on tour with us. It’s contagious; when someone’s really excited to be on tour, then it excites you as well. We have a really good feedback loop of excitement and joy, being on tour.”

That feedback is likely to soar to even greater heights when thousands of Aussie fans, after so long a wait, get their first glimpse of Mew’s renowned ‘indie stadium’ live experience. “People say we have a very grandiose sound, even if we play a small place,” says Bjerre. “I don’t know if we sound more grandiose than other bands but our songs are very emotional and they’re a little bit dreamlike. We have a very fresh energy right now, and usually we have very good shows. I think people will like it. I hope so.”

The ultimate nature of these performances is yet to be seen, however, as even Bjerre is not certain whether Mew will use his animations as video backdrop for the gigs. “I think I started [animating] because I was quite shy being onstage,” he admits, “so it’s kind of a compensation for not being very extrovert[ed]. Obviously it’s been a long time since then and I feel more confident being onstage now.

“It’s nice sometimes to play without it as well, because you feel like the focus is more direct. It’s almost like a kind of conversation between the audience and the band, and when you have the visuals, it becomes something slightly different – it’s more sort of, I dunno, like a piece of art or something.”

Given the promise the setlists will cover a broad range of material from Mew’s six-album back catalogue, that’s as good as a guarantee. Bjerre has been focused on crafting sets that will allow for the new and old material to effortlessly flow together.

“I think that makes for the best shows,” he says. “It’s surprising to me. Sometimes, when you play really old songs and mix them with really new songs, they obviously are different from each other but they still work together really well.”

As for the new material, + – has been making waves for the band since its April release, refining the rough edges from 2009’s experimental No More Stories… and returning to the crunchier prog rock textures that made Frengers a hit in 2003.

“Our producer was very adamant that the songs had to work with just [us] guys playing,” says Bjerre. “In the past we’ve made albums where we completely just focused on making the album, and obviously kind of ambitious production ideas, and then had to sort of translate that … It’s always a bit more raw live, which I like.”

It’s an album that Bjerre calls “celebratory”, and one that embodies who and what they are – which, apparently, is nothing to do with Pokémon. “We’re older than that, I’m ashamed to say,” Bjerre laughs. “We came up with Mew before Nintendo came up with the pesky little pink thing.”

The title actually arose from their high school days when, disappointed after baking a “disgusting” cake, the boys threw possible band names around, and Mew stuck. “It had a sort of incomplete symmetry to it – it was kinda pointy at the edges and soft in the middle with the small E. There wasn’t any deeper thought behind it than that, just how it sounded and looked. And it had a mystery to it, in a way.”

Finally, we get to catch a glimpse of that mystery on our very own shores.

Mew’s + – is out through [PIAS]. They play Manning Bar on Wednesday December 2.

Post originally printed in The BRAG, available at http://thebrag.com/music/mew

Between Love and Death: An Interview with Guillermo del Toro

A movie like Crimson Peak is a hard sell as far as production studios are concerned. Despite films like The Conjuring experiencing a box office resurrection, the ‘ghost story’ tag is too simplistic and clear-cut to apply to such an elaborate and intricate film.

However, like the film’s protagonist Edith (Mia Wasikowska), Crimson Peak is a story that Mexican-born director Guillermo del Toro has carried with him for years. Yes, it may contain truly horrific elements, but its origins lie in the gothic romances that ignited Del Toro’s passions as a child: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

“It’s a strange genre, because it’s caught between love and death,” says Del Toro. “It’s really not quite a horror genre but not quite a romantic genre. It’s sort of a nostalgic, creepy kind of love story, and I wanted to do one because it’s been decades, many decades, since Hollywood tackled the genre with any scope.

“I wanted to make an old-fashioned, really lavish movie but still have really creepy moments, and a couple of scares – but ultimately a very human story.”

It’s a pitch that could well describe most of Del Toro’s creations, ranging from early horror efforts like Cronos and Mimic to the immaculate, Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth, as well as Hollywood blockbusters Hellboy, Blade II and Pacific Rim. Originally a special effects and make-up designer, Del Toro’s trademark visual spectacle finds an ideal home in Crimson Peak, a tale that demands bold, striking colours and extravagant architecture to create its classic atmosphere.

“The gothic romance require[s] the actors and the story to be a little bit on the hyperdrive,” he says. “You have to be a little overwrought, and I would say a little melodramatic in the tone. I knew that I wanted to be a little operatic in order to make the movie feel of a piece. I tried to use the visuals as images that are telling you the story.

“I jokingly say, instead of eye candy, I am fabricating eye protein.”

It’s an appropriate analogy, given the obsession with ophthalmology on display in the film. Not only do the film’s transitions often sink into the eyes of the characters, but the house setting itself was designed by Del Toro, with round, eye-like windows leering in on its inhabitants. 

“It was important to underline the theme of capacity to see,” he explains. “Edith lives in a very modern America, but she can see something as ancient as ghosts, and Thomas [Tom Hiddleston] lives in an ancient land but he can see the future in his machine. So they are both outcasts, and they find each other in the story, and they ultimately fall in love.”

Though Edith and Thomas’ romance is the heart of the story, it is counterpointed with moments of stomach-turning violence, reminiscent of the dance between fairytale and war story that made Pan’s Labyrinth so potent. This, Del Toro says, is all courtesy of the penny dreadfuls that inspired him in his continuing search for “terrible beauty”. “When they were at the height of their popularity in the 1800s, they were novels that contained very lurid and titillating moments of sex and violence. And obviously, by our standards, those novels are now very quaint, but back then, people were shocked,” he says with a chuckle.

“I wanted to stimulate the same sort of sensory centres in people watching the movie. I needed to shock them a little bit with the violence and make sure the sex was not exploited in a gratuitous way, but it was strong enough to make it into an adult movie.”

A film that is both romantic and unsettling, arousing and shocking in equal measure is a challenging proposition. But Del Toro has spent his entire career in the realm of the impossible, and cares only for the freedom to create.

“A lot of people are gonna tell you, ‘Go where the budget is’; I’m gonna tell you, ‘Go where the freedom is,’” he says, his voice loaded with passion. “I can tell you I have complete freedom on Crimson Peak, but you know, if the budgets were $20 million, $30 million more, I would lose that freedom.

“What you should always protect as a filmmaker is your freedom. And if you are young and starting, I would advise: put everything you can on your first movie, and be ready to sort of die for it, because you should not think any further than that. If you die of a heart attack or you never finance another movie, let the one movie you make contain everything you can, you know?”

Sadly, Del Toro’s own projects are themselves caught between love and death. In the last decade, many of his most beloved projects have languished in pre-production purgatory, failing to acquire either the funds or Del Toro’s vital freedom. The Lovecraftian At The Mountains Of Madness; trilogy closer Hellboy III; the hugely anticipated game Silent Hills – all have suffered the same fate. It has led Del Toro to a rather pessimistic view of his career.

“I’m always at the mercy of strangers, you know? I’m always out with my tin cup asking for financing for the movies, and it’s always really hard,” he says.

As such, we will not be hearing much about Del Toro’s next project, a film “of the same size as Pan’s Labyrinth”, until it hits the big screen. “I have found with horrifying result that every time I talk about a project, it falls apart,” he laughs. “So I’m gonna keep it quiet in the hopes that it happens.”

Crimson Peak is in cinemas Thursday October 15.

Post originally printed in The BRAG, available at http://thebrag.com/arts/crimson-peak

Fringe Dweller: An Interview with Danny Bhoy

It’s four days out from the end of the world’s largest arts and comedy festival, the spectacular Edinburgh Fringe, and Danny Bhoy is looking forward to being one of the very few comedians who won’t be evacuating the city come week’s end.

To the Scotland-born comic, it’s not simply home sweet home. From the moment he sat in on a late-night Lee Mack gig at the age of 12 – one of six people in the audience – Bhoy’s relationship with the Fringe, the comedy circuit and the city itself has flourished.

“I love the cities, right? I think the places I like going won’t surprise you because everyone loves them – places like New York, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne. London, even. I love history and architecture and all those things, ’cause I did history as a degree. It’s nice to see that hasn’t gone to waste,” he laughs.

“But honestly, if I had to say this, Edinburgh’s still my favourite, y’know? Because everything I’ve ever done has always come from the Edinburgh Festival. Every job I’ve got, every festival I’ve done, every tour I’ve done, it’s always been because people have seen me here and thought I could work in Canada or Australia or wherever. So I’ve gotta take my hat off to Edinburgh.”

It’s been a rather different festival for Bhoy this year – he’s taken a rare break from his touring schedule to enjoy the festival from the other side of the mic. “I’m a proper punter!” he laughs. “I’m going and heckling my friends.”

For those who haven’t been to the Fringe, it’s an incomparable experience. For one month in the Scotland summer, its capital city is flooded with performers and tourists alike, and every nook and cranny are filled with the wildest the arts have to offer. It can be an overwhelming experience even for a regular showgoer, so Bhoy is kind enough to provide a few tips on surviving your first Fringe.

“Listen, the thing about Edinburgh [Fringe] is you walk around the city and everyone’s got five stars on their poster, right?” he says. “Everyone’s got a quote that suggests they’re the next comic genius and everyone’s got recommendations and fancy artwork and all that sort of stuff, but to delve inside that and underneath that is the key to enjoying the Fringe; to discover something which hasn’t already been discovered.

“It’s a great place for just taking a punt on something and, y’know, 90 per cent of the stuff you see might be shit. But if you see that one or two incredible things, it’s worth the journey.”

We swap anecdotes about Fringe comedians’ posters we’ve seen – a one-star review being used as the quote “A Star”; Alan Carr stealing Jimmy Carr’s glowing references in The Guardian – but Bhoy guarantees he’s come across much worse in his time. “There’s all kinds of tricks at the Edinburgh Fringe, believe me. I’ve seen people so desperate to get people into their show. They will literally try anything.”

Of course, Bhoy’s been in the game for years, so naturally he’s had poster troubles of his own. A standout in his memory was the poster printed for his Canadian tour that used an Aussie reviewer’s quote calling him “the stand-up equivalent of Bill Bryson”.

“About halfway through my tour, I met my promoter for dinner and she said, ‘Yeah, who is Bill Bryson?’ And I went, ‘What?! How could you have commissioned this poster without knowing?’ And she goes, ‘No-one in Canada knows who he is’. I went, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that when I put the fucking poster out?!’” he laughs.

Despite this, it’s remained one of his favourite references, simply because it avoids the platitudes of so many headline-grabbers pasted on festival flyers.

“I don’t think Bill Bryson said [it]. I think it’ll be a long time before he has a quote on his book saying, ‘I’m the literary equivalent of Danny Bhoy – edgy and effortlessly funny on page.’ Maybe it’s a self-correcting quote, because if you don’t know who Bill Bryson is, you probably shouldn’t be coming to my show.”

Even without his own show at Edinburgh this year, Bhoy has noticed the festival change over time, gradually becoming more of a business than a creative love-in. Regardless, he says, there’s still plenty to recommend the trip.

“The whole idea is that people come up with crazy, wacky shows and put them on in small pubs and little back rooms and stuff,” he says. “It seems to have become a little bit more geared towards now the tourist market, but that’s sorta like anywhere, right? Anything that’s good sooner or later becomes slightly bastardised by corporate interests.”

Therein lies the inspiration for Bhoy’s newest show, Please Untick This Box; an effort to beat a tactical retreat from the theatricality of its predecessor, Dear Epson, in favour of a fresh stand-up show lamenting the ‘overpackaging’ of just about everything in the modern world.

“Being the typically contrary, obtuse person I am, I decided to do the opposite [to Dear Epson], so now this show is all about stripping it all back and going back to what stand-up is and being very raw and not having big light shows,” he says. “I start off the show talking about people that overpackage things and need a kind of forced hype in order to enjoy the experience. And this also goes back to what we were talking about, about the Edinburgh Festival, actually, and how if you unpeel that and actually start listening to what people are talking about, that’s really where the actual kernel or the joy of the show is.”

Going back to basics is something that allows for Bhoy to hone his craft in a different way to experimenting with structure. It also allows him to tackle a frustration he admitted to in an interview with Australia’s Digital Spy around the time of his last visit: that many bigger-name comedians – including himself – are too afraid of losing fans to innovate or stay politically edgy.

“We’re very fragile people, comedians,” he laughs. “We’re scared to take a leap of faith. It’s hard when you’ve already got an established audience that like what you do … The last show I did was deliberately out of my comfort zone and the reason I did that was ’cause I wanted to challenge myself. And I was getting a bit bored, to be honest, with just doing regular stand-up shows, y’know? There’s no harm; there’s always going to be a market for people that want to see certain people tell jokes the way they always do. But it’s also important as an artist or if you’re creative – if you’ve got a brain that wants to be constantly challenged – that you’ve gotta mix it up a bit.”

It’s this desire to challenge himself that has fuelled Bhoy’s rise through the ranks of global comedy and kept him touring the world for the last 14 years, alongside his humility and a dedication to learning from experience.

“Someone once told me a few years ago, ‘You never learn anything from a good gig.’ And I think that’s really true, y’know? It’s the bad gigs which you learn from – it’s the six people in the crowd, it’s the hundred people staring at you, it’s the pissed hecklers.

“It’s when those things go wrong, if you like, that things start to go right.”

Please Untick This Box runs Monday October 26 – Wednesday October 28 at the State Theatre, as part of Just For Laughs Sydney 2015. Danny Bhoy also appears at the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House on Sunday October 25.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://thebrag.com/arts/danny-bhoy

Don’t Look Away: An Interview with Philip Rouse

Life stirs yet in the small-to-medium arts sector, and we’re lucky enough this year to witness the birth of a whole venue – a 60-seater theatre atop Kings Cross messy-night mainstay The World Bar.

As the saying goes, something new pairs well with something old, and so Philip Rouse, artistic director for Aussie revivalists Don’t Look Away, is christening the Blood Moon Theatre with Nick Enright’s classic play, A Property Of The Clan.

“It’s great, actually!” says Rouse of the opportunity. “I think it’s gonna be a really interesting new venue on the Sydney entertainment scene … It’s very much a cave, and people need to work to find interesting new ways of presenting their shows in that space, so I’m finding it really exciting to work there.”

Rouse is setting the tone for future experiments with the design for his production, which may be more familiar to young Australian audiences as the source material for HSC regular screener Blackrock.

“An idea that the designer Martelle Hunt and myself came upon is the idea of the students of this school, and just the actors in general, painting the whole way through, and creating a work that’s been inspired by those murals at the back of your primary school tuckshop,” says Rouse. “We’re working with that and using paint as a really visceral way, a very material way of expressing some of the darker forces at play in the show.”

Of which there are plenty: A Property Of The Clan chronicles the rape and subsequent murder of a teenage girl at a party, and the circumstances surrounding the event. It’s heavy stuff, but Rouse is sure of his approach.

“You can’t skirt around it at all when you’re dealing with this kind of material,” he says. “It’s examining the pathology that leads to it: that’s the pathology of victim-blaming, the pathology of slut-shaming, the pathology of guys’ sense of entitlement over women.

“In the examination of that there’s a lot of discussion, we talk a lot about our own experiences with these things, things that we’ve witnessed – I think if you’re afraid of talking about it, you simply can’t get anything done.”

Admirably, this is a company that genuinely wants to get things done, and is doing so by donating a chunk of the ticket sales to White Ribbon, an organisation dedicated to making violence against women an issue for men to face.

“We’re in an epidemic at the moment – 60-plus women have been killed in this year, in 2015,” says Rouse. “The media talk about it, don’t wanna call it what it is, which is abhorrent violence against women and abhorrent acts of domestic violence.

“We have to be responsible with this sort of material as theatremakers and as human beings and as a society, and if we’re gonna do this, we need to be giving to something that affects real change. We make art and that’s very important, but these are real issues for a lot of people. Anything we can do to help, we will.”

This change begins at the Blood Moon Theatre, a name that Rouse takes to have great portent for the future.

“It’s just about something that’s usually very small becoming very large, which is the lunar effect of the blood moon,” he says. “It’s a new venue, it’s very small – it’s never gonna seat more than 60 people.

“But even with the nature of this work, with A Property Of The Clan, maybe something really small can help in very large ways.”

A Property Of The Clan previews at the newly opened Blood Moon Theatre, at The World Bar on Tuesday September 29 then runs until Saturday October 17.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://thebrag.com/arts/property-clan

Stumbling Across Something New: An interview with Stephen Gilby

Since 2002, the Art & About festival has engaged Sydneysiders and visitors alike with its diverse and eclectic range of art stuffed into every nook and cranny of the city. Like a smaller, less electricity-guzzling version of Vivid, it splashes a blend of performance, music, installation art and exhibitions across the CBD for the whole of September.

Until now, that is. Art & About is, as of this year, leaping out of the barriers of September and promising a full 12-month calendar of events to flood our city with creative works all year round. Project manager and acting creative director Stephen Gilby is just one of many contributors who are extremely excited about this brave new direction.

“What it does is it gives us an opportunity to not just focus on that one month when you might have all these fantastic things happening,” he says. “It means that throughout the year you can expect to see more things on every corner, every space in the city; things from major contemporary projects and installations [and] performances through to collaborative partnerships, or just thought-provoking exhibitions.”

For those who were already planning their September around Art & About’s photography exhibitions, talks and live works, Gilby has ensured the first month of this new schedule is kicking off in style.

“We’ve got a kind of mini-festival for this first year of transition into our annual program,” he says, revealing that the opening night gala has been replaced with nine consecutive nights of music “right in the heart of the city” in a brand new pop-up bar on the Sydney Town Hall terrace.

“What we’re basically creating is an outdoor garden bar in homage to spring and the arrival of the warmer weather, with different sorts of live music; a really diverse lineup of music every evening,” Gilby says.

Featured in this flashy, New York-style setting will be the acoustic stylings of Dave Leaupepe and Joji Malani from Gang Of Youths, husband-and-wife indie-pop duo Microwave Jenny, Latin jazz from Emma Pask, R&B from Jones Jnr., rockabilly from Pat Capocci, a kids’ evening, and a host of DJs to keep the good vibes buzzing into the night. It culminates with a performance by local legend Paul Capsis singing alongside a 20-strong gospel choir, Café Of The Gate Of Salvation.

Taking over the Town Hall terrace is typical of this festival’s goals, based around its ability to find new and intriguing sites in which to host local and international works.

“We’ve had a general theme, which is ‘Art In Unusual Places’,” says Gilby. “That’s what Art & About is for – it’s there to put artists into places where you just wouldn’t expect them, and that’s what we really want to try and bring to the people of Sydney. You know, surprise you!”

The tagline bears great resemblance to what it did when the festival was first created, born of “a desire to take art out of the galleries and out of those big institutions, and bring it out into the public, to the people”, Gilby says.

“Very straightforward, very simple. We’re not doing anything too obscure with it, we just want to bring people some art and let them enjoy it.”

Echoing the sentiments of Sydney Contemporary director Barry Keldoulis, Gilby sees the city as more than what the tourism board portrays – beaches, the great outdoors and glamour.

“There’s a lot of real depth within Sydney, there’s so many artists practising out there… we can work with artists to develop and create work, and new work, new things that people can see and experience and engage with in a meaningful way, so we are very much still in the business of making sure that there are opportunities there for artists within Sydney.”

There is plenty to be excited about in the new program, with core sculpture Near Kin Kin – a 21-metre-high tower of bamboo that can be entered at ground level – currently being installed in Customs House Square.

“When you walk inside the sculpture it’s like you’re encased inside within this bamboo forest, and you can look up through the canopy to the sky above you,” Gilby says.

The sculpture, created by Sydney designers Cave Urban, is reflective of a focus on sustainability and environmental responsibility that, intriguingly, was not a planned theme of the festival.

“That’s just what came through,” says Gilby. “There were a lot of applications that came through to us – about 330 this year, so a huge number – and the ones that we have chosen like Blue Trees, like the [H20] Water Bar, like Near Kin Kin, they’re just the very best of the works that came through that really, we thought, resonated, and will really be things that the people of Sydney and visitors to Sydney are really going to enjoy and be able to engage with.”

The program for the year also includes the return of Art & About’s patented Australian Life and Little Sydney Lives photography exhibitions, outdoor “immersive” screenings by Golden Age Cinema, and installation work Blue Trees, which “engages with people in the creation of the work itself”.

But for Gilby, the most exciting aspect of this year’s festival is that it stretches across the next 12 months.

“It’s going to be a year of things happening all the time, different times in different places throughout the year, and that’s fantastic. We’ve never been able to do that before, and it really just gives more opportunity where you can go out and stumble across something new and exciting that really speaks to you.”

Art & About runs from Friday September 18, various locations around Sydney.

For more info head to artandabout.com.au.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://thebrag.com/arts/art-about-1

The Normality of Everything: An Interview with Anton Corbijn

“Photography is a good way of saying I’ve been here and you’ve been here,” says photographer Dennis Stock to his subject in the new film by Anton Corbijn, Life. It’s not exactly a dramatic moment – just two men walking through the rain when one takes a snapshot of the other. History remembers it differently, however: it’s 1955, the rain is falling on Times Square in New York City, and the subject of the photograph is up-and-coming actor James Dean.

“Just an iconic image that a lot of people know,” says Corbijn of the original photograph, recreated with painstaking attention to detail in the film. “They don’t know the photographer always, but they know the image. The producers thought I should make this a very big emotional moment, and I said, ‘Well, that’s just not how that works,’ you know?”

And he would know – Corbijn has been capturing artists on film for 40 years, lensing everyone from Depeche Mode to Nirvana, Björk to U2, and working with A-list actors to craft his four feature films to date. To him, it is everyday reality.

“If you take that picture and it’s raining, you only take a few snapshots – I’ve seen the contact sheets, I know there’s only a few photos taken,” he says. “It’s just one of these pictures you’re taking, and then later on it somehow gains a weight through a variety of reasons, one of which, of course, is that James Dean passed away so early.

“I guess he looks like a lonely man, a lost rebel, amidst all the busyness of Times Square. I think when you take that photograph, you don’t experience it as, ‘I’ve just made an iconic image,’ you know? It just doesn’t play like that.”

Life is set in the midst of 1955’s dramatic changes in American culture – the great wars were over, exciting new artistic and musical movements were emerging, and the culture was gradually being defined by performers like Dean.

“They broke the mould of how these people operated, and I feel the generation that grew up in the war never found a voice until ten years after the wars finished, and then the role became theirs,” says Corbijn. “And James Dean was part of that.”

But this is not a film about Dean: the attraction for Corbijn was a story about a photographer and his subject, and the fact the subject happens to be Dean is something Corbijn considers a “nice bonus”.

“They share equal screen time, but it’s really about how these people touch each other’s lives,” he says.

Sharing the screen are Robert Pattinson as the uneasy photographer Stock, and Dane DeHaan in what may be a career-defining performance as Dean.

“It was, I have to say, a pleasure working with both. It reminded me a little bit of the energy we had on Control, because they’re young actors and they’re just energetic,” says Corbijn, referencing his Joy Division biopic and screen debut.

“Dane and Robert are quite different actors, and that, in a way, was purposeful for me because the characters they play are also quite different characters … Dane is very analytical and very well prepared – which he had to [be], of course, because he had to change so much, both physically and to get into the voice and all that. Rob is more intuitive, and so they are both different in their approach, but I love both performances a lot.”

As a photographer and filmmaker, Corbijn is well versed in the complexities of artist-subject relations. His stills, including those currently on display in The Hague, are frequently shaped by his relationships with the creatives he captures, and he has shared a long-standing professional connection to industry heavyweights like Depeche Mode and U2.

“First of all, I only picked up a camera because I wanted to be closer to musicians, and therefore a camera was a great excuse,” he says. “The attraction to people for me is always what they make … You start building up a relationship, but that’s something that grows over time.

“I mean, I have to admit, I was not attracted to Depeche Mode or U2 initially, so that was just a process that grew and, you know, suddenly you’re talking 30 years later and you’re still working together. And it’s fun, and you think for each other what could be the next step for them visually.”

As for Corbijn’s own next steps, he’s becoming increasingly engrossed in the world of film – his next, currently shrouded in secrecy, is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on race relations – which is necessitating a movement away from photography as his primary form. He even refers to his recent museum shows in Holland as “a kind of goodbye”.

“It’s so all-encompassing, you know, it takes a lot of your energy making a movie,” he says. “I see photography now as a nice day out: when I do photography, it’s more of a zen moment. The scale of it is so small and it’s so attractive, when you make movies, to go back to this more solitary kind of existence at times.”

Perhaps that’s why Life held such a sway over Corbijn – it too has something solitary and sober about it, an intimacy that reflects the scale of his photography. Its core, he says, is “the normality of everything, you know? It’s not hyped up. It’s just normal life and you just go through life and try to make the best of it.

“I just make photographs and films and hopefully that’s what people remember.”

Life (dir. Anton Corbijn) is in cinemas now.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://thebrag.com/arts/life-0