Linda Hamilton


Linda Hamilton is a Legend. She’s primarily known as “Sarah Connor” from the first two original Terminator films where she played alongside Arnie as the tough mum who would do anything to protect her child and the rest of humanity. Having made such a serious impact as Sarah Connor, Linda’s found herself playing an array of troubled tough women who have to overcome serious hardships to triumph in the end.

Having played such tough characters, her reputation is very intimidating, and having heard that I would be getting the chance to interview Linda, I have to say I was slightly terrified. Lucky for me, she was the exact opposite of every tough lady she’s played. I’m not saying she’s fragile… not by any means… She is a survivor having gone through two divorces, and having to live with Bi-Polar disorder, never even mind the surviving of a life in Hollywood. But she’s also a lovely jolly lady who is warm and chatty and anything but ready to blow you to bits with a machine gun. (Phew)

Linda’s been in London for a few days promoting her new film HOLY WATER, an Irish comedy about Viagra. The premise itself is as far as you can get from the Terminator flicks, but Linda is playing a tough, no BS, American cop. A role she easily slips into and can translate from Action, to Tragedy to Comedy. Linda actually hopes to do more comedy in the future, as she’d like to play characters that reflect her true self, which is lighter and funnier, rather than these tough characters she’s often typecast as.

“Strong is great but I’m just tired. I mean, strong is wonderful but I’ve done so much of it and so many professional women, and if I never did tragedy on film again, that would be fine. So tired of looking at myself with a look of consternation or whatever on my face. I’m just sick of it. I wanna smile.”

But don’t get her wrong. She’s grateful and honoured to have had the chance to play someone such as Sarah Connor and to have such a longstanding place in pop culture is something Linda herself still seems in awe of.

The film HOLY WATER is something she got involved with as she was sent the script by the director, and just unhesitatingly fell in love with its sweet simplicity as well as the fact that it made her laugh.

For Linda, comedy and action are closely related.

“It takes tremendous energy to do both and you have to be light on your feet and quick in your mind to be able to be a successful action star. You are doing so much that really isn’t there for you. You’re acting with a green screen, you’re doing so much creating on your own, you have to be so quick and so thorough because in your mind, and in your view you have to see the whole picture in order to be successful at all in the moment. So somehow comedy… you’re not going to sit there and be lackadaisical and be funny for long. Do you know what I mean? It takes energy. And the same sort of quick quarter horse, you know, turn on a dime, go in the other direction… the faster you can change directions, the funnier it’s gonna be and it’s the same with action. The faster you can create THAT, the more you’re roping your audience in and the more compelling it is.”

She is a wonderful lady and it felt more like going out for drinks with a mate rather than doing an interview. What a sweetheart… as long as there are no killer robots in sight!!!

One word to summarize Linda Hamilton?

"Beacon".

 

HOLY WATER is out in UK cinemas from February 5th, 2010.


Listen to our interview below:


Me and Linda

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The Sconek-T

The Sconek-T is a 4-piece ensemble from Mexico, who have hit the big time in their homeland, but are just on the cusp of breaking out on the international scene. From a classical music background, the boys incorporate their music education and instrumentation (violin x2, cello and percussion) with an inspiration deriving from a vast amount of more pop sources, especially from the realm of Brit Pop.

Having previously found success in Mexico with classical covers of classic pop tunes, the band is branching out and creating an album of all new original material. With their thorough Brit Pop influences, the band decided that they should use this opportunity of recording a new album to get closer to the bands that they admire. They came to England to work with 5A Studios to produce their latest Masterpiece. Luckily we’re in the know and got a chance to speak to the boys (sans percussionist who stayed back in Mexico for this trip), and thanks to 5A’s Cristina who acted as interpreter.

Having met as music students, they used to play classical music in a string quartet and decided to perform their own music and music of their generation. Cellist Omar conceived quite a few of the songs on the new album while the others enriched each of the song ideas through their arrangements. As they come from very different cultural backgrounds in Mexico, they have different perspectives and different experiences to derive from.

On the music scene in Mexico, they don’t have any direct competition as they are a very unique band. They play classical music festivals, huge venues, to an audience ranging from kids to old men, playing cover songs and their own tunes… Diversity at its finest. People from the classical music realm have bizarre expectations from the band as their instrumentation and the material are juxtaposed. The audience don’t know the bulk of their repertoire so they respond very well as they are suddenly presented with popular music in a completely different package. They fit exactly where the two markets of Classical and Pop music meet. The perfect blend, with influences including The Beatles, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Green Day, Mozart and local Mexican musicians that I won’t dare attempt to transcribe.

So with many of these influences being British, they thought it was best to use the government grant they won to record their latest album and come to the UK for the production. With a Mexican production, they don’t feel that they would have got the same results they achieved here, as there is no real understanding of collaboration between the engineer/producer and artists. They took a big risk and a big step to come to UK and are very happy with the results.

Coming to the UK is the first step in their intention of becoming an international success. It’s important to them, as they want to show that in Mexico, there are artists who can perform with a high calibre of musical skill. For The Sconek-T themselves, it’s a need for the band to grow up. They feel their music itself is asking to grow outside of Mexico, as violinist Israel declares, “ It’s understandable to the whole world. “.

It was a long interview coming in at 45 minutes, but as usual, we had to fit in that one last question…

One word to sum up The Sconek-T? “Big Massive Penis”… No, that’s 3 words.. try again. “Eclecticism”. That’ll do. Cheers.

Now hear for yourselves what they had to say… and if you don’t speak Spanish, who cares… enjoy the sexy language! Purrr…


Ooh.... What's this? I've found a violin!


I'll become the 5th member of Sconek-T!!! YAY!!!


Dreams shattered..... *sniff*

http://www.myspace.com/thesconektnsamble



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Spiral Beach:
The Interview

Spiral Beach were in town to play a couple of London gigs in the midst of their European tour. They spontaneously let me interview them and in spite of having no questions prepared on my part, and a massive hangover on their part… we got some good stuff out of the situation.

Before you read on to see what the band had to say for themselves, here’s a bit of background information on SPIRAL BEACH:

The band hail from Toronto, Canada and dominate the local music scene. In spite of their youthful appearance, they have actually been playing together in this incarnation for 7 years and are tighter, more energetic and certainly more fun than most other bands of their genre. The band is very visual, often using props and sheer energy to get the crowds emotionally involved. Coming to London without their bag of tricks, they had to rely solely on their musical skill, which is extremely prevalent, to win over audiences. Mission accomplished.

I spoke with brothers Daniel and Airick Woodhead who are Drummer and Singer/Guitarist respectively speaking. Singer/Keyboardist Maddy Wilde was on hand as well but she desperately wanted to finish her book Catch 22, which we annoyingly kept preventing her from doing.

Instead of writing more about Spiral Beach, just have a listen to the wonderful spontaneous interview. Please note, I sound completely insane cuz I just downed a coffee and was high on cold medication. And I’m loving the conversation going on in the background! Sounds very animated! Anyway….. if you can’t be bothered to listen to the interview, the one word Spiral Beach say sums up Spiral Beach is “CHAOS”. Made you wanna listen?



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Charlyne Yi Has Loose Lips:
An Interview with Charlyne Yi and Nick Jasenovec of Paper Heart

For the back story on the film Paper Heart, please read our film review - part of our Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival coverage.

Charlyne Yi and Nick Jasenovec aren’t your typical Hollywoodites. They’ve come out with their first feature film and have found themselves flung into the spotlight. They remain down to earth, charming, funny and not TWEE like some critics claim. Yes, they are slightly bitter about those patronizing reviews. Nonetheless, they persevere with endless promotion of their charming, funny and just AWESOME film Paper Heart.

The origin of Paper Heart goes way back to the days when a girl named Charlyne met a boy named Nick. They met through a mutual friend, shot some hoops and Charlyne pursued him. Not romantically or sexually of course. “We’re like brother and sister..so that would be like incest”, says Charlyne.

Charlyne had the idea about making a documentary about love and came to Nick. She questioned the idea of love and wanted to focus on that aspect of the narrative, but Nick suggested that she appear on camera. He convinced her to appear on camera, but they couldn’t guarantee that she would experience love firsthand to create a story arc, so that inspired the idea of creating a hybrid of fiction and documentary.

“Ideally, you know, if it was more than just stories, if there was an arc, and if I actually experienced love firsthand, that would be a great situation, but we couldn’t guarantee that, so that kind of inspired the idea of creating a hybrid of both fiction, a through line, and documentary elements.”, says Charlyne.

So that is how the film Paper Heart got its heroine Charlyne Yi. Alongside Charlyne is the character of Nick Jasenovec. But this is not the real Nick Jasenovec. Nick and Charlyne approached their friend Jake Johnson to take on the role of Nick for the film. But why would the real Nick Jasenovec bail out on acting in his own film? “Um, I’m just not a very good actor so we knew, we realized very early on that the Nick character was going to need to play a fairly big role just in terms of being the sort of on screen friend to Charlyne so that she had someone to talk to and sort of get exposition and feelings across on camera. And, um, so the minute we realized that that was going to be kind of an important role, I wasn’t really up to the task and, uh, we decided to get our friend Jake to play me.”, admits Nick.

It’s a CHARACTER, not the real Nick. Jake briefly considered following the real Nick around to study him and accurately portray him, but as the real Nick points out, “It was kind of unnecessary too cuz no one knows who I am or what I’m like so...”.

Charlyne also appreciated working with Jake rather than Nick on screen. “It’s also nice to have someone who knew how to act and improvise cuz I didn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing, so like being paired up with him is so helpful and he SAVED me, you know!”, she says.

So we know it’s not the real Nick on screen, but are we witnessing the “real” Charlyne?

“It’s close to me as far as mannerisms and voice and certain habits, but I think you know ultimately a character or a person is defined by actions and I would never make a documentary exposing my real life, my personal life especially. In that way I think we’re very different… “ says Charlyne. “It’s like it’s fictionalized just enough to make the movie work.”, adds Nick.

With all this blurring the line between reality and fiction, they hope that the audience will just enjoy the film for its entertainment value, and hopefully not be too upset about these blurry lines of reality and fiction.

Making a hybrid documentary / narrative, Nick and Charlyne found many challenges. “One of the earliest ones just in the creation of storyline and stuff was always trying to rationalize why the cameras would be there for example.”, says Nick.

Over 300 hours of footage were shot and they had to root through it all in the edit sessions. They first put together all the fictional elements and at first it ended up as 2 hours of footage! That’s obviously longer than the film’s total final length, so back to the cutting room and voila- 45 minutes of fiction on film.

So after all this hard work and life on the road, did Charlyne change her thoughts on love? She realized that no one is right and no one is wrong about love. For some people love at first sight can work out, or it cannot. “I think it’s great that people believe in what they want…. I think there’s this whole thing about Hollywood and how they think that true love is forever, but I’m like, I don’t think so. I think it can last for weeks, days or years, and that’s something that I learned.”, states Charlyne.

So finishing up our interview with the usual question… what would be the one word to sum up Paper Heart?

“Twee!... Quirky!… That’s what negative people would like to …. I embrace it.”, jests Nick.

“Voluptuous!”, shouts Charlyne.

“Anti Sexy!”, retorts Nick.

“What? That’s contradicting what I’m saying!!”, says Charlyne.

In the end, they both agree that to define Paper Heart as one word in a serious way would be too difficult and too pretentious, so they can only joke in the end.



The End.

Paper Heart is out in UK Cinemas November 6, 2009


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STEREO MCs
One Sunny Day in Hoxton Square

My interview with the Stereo MCs was a disaster from the start. I wasn’t supposed to be the one interviewing them so had very little time to prepare questions and working equipment. And of course, Stereo Mcs Nick Hallam and Rob Birch are fairly intimidating people, which did not help my ill-prepared self one little bit.

I showed up to the venue early, was wandering around in a daze, was introduced to the guys, was terrified of Rob as he has this perpetual expression like he could punch you in the face at any given moment, was left wandering with the guys for a quiet place to talk, ended up in the middle of the greenery in Hoxton Square, sat down for our chat, and none of my frickin equipment worked! Luckily Rob didn’t throw a punch at this.

Nick was very understanding – he was the main one responding to my interview questions… He was SO understanding that after the interview he said that if my recording didn’t work, I could take the liberty to make up the entire interview!!! GENIUS!

Turns out my equipment DID work, but fuck it… Nick Hallam said I could, so here is my made up interview with the Stereo MCs:

LLHG: So guys. What inspired you to get into the music biz?
NH: I always walk around the house with major AGRO, banging shit, like pots and pans and stuff so I thought, why not make some money out of this?
RB: *intense stare*

LLHG: Fascinating. So of all the people you’ve worked with, who were some of your faves?
NH: Beyonce. She was a class act.
RB: *intense stare*

LLHG: Who was your first love?
NH: Well, let’s just say that Justin wasn’t Britney’s first. Or, rather, Britney wasn’t Justin’s first.
RB: *intense stare*

Well, there you have it folks. Total utter nonsense inspired by the words of Nick Hallam and the stare of Rob Birch, collectively known as the Stereo MCs.
The real interview was more like this:

LLHG: *Very professional question*
NH: *insert totally sane, gentlemanly comment here*
RB:*intense stare*

Any Salvagable Audio Clips COMING SOON!!!

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GARY NUMAN
Mighty Boosh Festival 2008

From Right to Left: Me and Gaz


How can I not admit that I was shitting myself at the prospect of interviewing Gary Numan – the LEGEND himself. I kept putting it off saying I didn’t mind waiting until the end of the journalist queue for my interview, trying to go over all of the research I had done about him over the past few days in preparation for our chat. After all, I didn’t want to seem clueless about his epic past, even though I was only aware of dribs n drabs before my date with Google.

The music speaks for itself. His most famous hit Cars is recognized all over the world nearly 30 years after its release. He’s been sampled numerous times by everyone from the Sugababes to Basement Jaxx to who knows who else. He’s also influenced some top artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Beck, Dave Grohl, and countless others. He’s also mentioned rather fondly as well as frequently by Noel Fielding’s Vince Noir on the Mighty Boosh. He’s used to this affectionate fan behaviour as his loyal fanbase call themselves Numanoids.

He’s rather modest about the whole LEGEND status and Numanoid following. He is genuinely flattered by all the attention he gets and cites Noel and fellow admirer Trent Reznor mutual influences as he’s a fan of them as much as they’re fans of his! LEGEND!!!

On the BOOSH attention, Gaz says, “The thing that’s lovely about it is that I am genuinely a fan and I saw the first ever… I actually saw Noel do standup about 2 years before I even knew about the boosh… so I was actually a fan of him before I even knew who he was… Then the boosh came along and I started to get mentioned on it and I just thought HOW COOL IS THAT!”

Is he the nicest rock star ever or what!!?

Anyway, discussing what he thought of those artists that cite him as an influence but copy his sounds rather than his early pop-modernist attitude, he again was just grateful for the attention and the adoration and does not take his success for granted whatsoever. Especially when Trent Reznor told him that he was the reason that he ever got into keyboards in the first place, Gary was just flattered as he was a huge Nine Inch Nails fan!

I didn’t get a chance to get onto the topic of his aviation skills (the man has a pilot’s license! LEGEND!), but I did get to geek it up a bit and ask him how the evolution of technology has affected his music writing process. Gary believes one must learn discipline otherwise it would take 10 years to make an album playing with all the toys now readily available. In some ways he envies guitar bands as he feels it must be ‘easier’ for them to just nail their sounds.

I didn’t have time to ask our usual One Word to Sum You Up question, so I am taking the liberty of deciding that it’s LEGEND

www.numan.co.uk


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Robots in Disguise
THE TRIALS OF THE ROBOTS
The Mighty Boosh Festival 2008

The Robots put on their Geil (HORNY) faces for the camera

Girl duo Robots in Disguise are probably known better for their Mighty Boosh association than their music. But with some great electro tunes in the vein of Chicks on Speed or Peaches, I doubt things will be that way forever for Robots in Disguise.

While guest appearing on Mighty Boosh (Dee Plume dates Noel Fielding!) has exposed them to a wider audience, the gals still find it stressful being in the music biz as their autobiographical single We’re In the Music Biz may allude to. Dee Plume and Sue Denim have been around for years and of course being 2 girls, they have experienced sexism firsthand in the cock-rock dominated music industry.

“GET ON THE FUCKING STAGE AND PLAY” is some of the abuse they’ve gotten from ‘macho’ sound engineers. “Yeah you’re girls, who do you think you are? The music industry is still really about boys. There are just loads of girls coming to our gigs and I feel like we’re doing something important for them.”

I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with the Robots, but I got the impression that they’re slightly ADD jumping from one topic to another, breaking into song and sporadically admiring my watch. Full of energy, hyper, fun-loving good people who are coming up to nearly 10 years in the music biz because they genuinely love what they do and are not in it for the money, or lack of in their case.

Sue currently lives in Berlin with their drummer, one reason being that she can’t afford to live in London. She has a “good quality of life out there in Berlin as an ex pat” with rent a mere 200 euros per month. Berlin is like a bigger Shoreditch in their eyes. A huge music scene including their idol Peaches who they desperately want as producer on their next album… They promised they would be asking her that day while she was on site to perform a DJ set! Let us know how it went girls!!!

Even though Dee and Sue live in different cities, they still manage to work well together. Many of their songs were written over the past few years and Dee went to live in Berlin for three months while making the last album.

When asked our usual tormenting question of one word to sum them up, after much debate, the word is… (drum roll please) Geil – the German word for HORNY!

www.robotsindisguise.co.uk

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