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
-----------------------------------------
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…
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?
-----------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------
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:
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
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!
Spiral
Beach: 
