Interview articles from November 2003

Interview archives from November 2003

Make that truth and dare.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Dear Interview, I practically ripped the October [2003] issue in half trying to get to the Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray interview (I had just come home from seeing Lost in Translation). I think it's perfect that this piece was in an issue...

Better late than never.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Dear Interview, I am just writing to say thank you for putting James Franco on the cover of your February 2003 issue. He is so talented and gorgeous! He deserves way more recognition than he gets. LISA SENSABAUGH Via the Internet

Halifax fights back!(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Dear Interview, I just finished reading Joan Jett's interview with two members of the Stills [September 2003], and I'm outraged! People from Nova Scotia should be offended by what these clowns had to say. Starved for culture? They seem to...

Higher education gets a report card.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Dear Interview, Thanks for the conversation with Camille Paglia about the tyranny of the publish-or-perish philosophy and our inability to see beyond formal education [September 2003]. It's interesting that your article appeared at the...

Our kind of subscription drive.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Dear Interview, I just wanted to tell you that I read each issue religiously from cover to cover and then pass it on to friends who soon become subscribers. Each month I can count on uncensored, cutting-edge material. What could be better?...

Tom Guiry: he contends with Dirty Harry at work and spongebob at home.(Movie Latest)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... A fast-driving "Jersey guy," 23-year-old Tom Guiry has slowed down since becoming a father four years ago. "Having my son made me grow up. I'm keeping my dangers in the movies." The most recent of which is the new Mystic River. Directed by...

Sarah Drew: her character may troll the sidelines, but in her first big role she scores a touchdown.(Movie Tip)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... "I'm an alien in this business," says Sarah Drew. She's joking, but her point is well taken. In Hollywood, where followers of Scientology, Kabbalah, Buddhism, and other nontraditional spiritual disciplines abound, being a devout Evangelical...

Daniel Craig: many consider Sylvia Plath's suicide one of poetry's greatest losses. In a new film, this actor brings Plath's husband, the complex man behind the tragedy, to life.(Movie Breakthrough)(Brief Article)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... One of the most famous literary couples of the last century, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath had a relationship full of passion, rage, and competition, culminating in Plath's suicide In 1963. In the new film Sylvia, about their marriage, British...

Emily Grace: a diamond-in-the-rough role (and the moxie to take it) turned her into an art-house Cinderella.(Movie Spotlight)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Though she's made only one film, next month's What Alice Found, actress Emily Grace is Hollywood-ready. Asked what she's been up to recently, she says, "I'm reading scripts and a book about yoga, and I started taking Pilates." This...

Patricia Clarkson: she doesn't need a big budget or a brand-name leading man. This indie maverick makes movie magic all on her own.(Movie Profile)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... After nearly two decades of acting in a hodgepodge of films (with plenty of television work in between), what's suddenly made Patricia Clarkson the queen of the independent-movie scene? It could've been her performance as a velveteened raptor...

Charles Busch: why let a little thing like gender stop you from becoming a movie diva?(Cult Movie Moment)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... If Far From Heaven had played all those '50s-and '60s-era Hollywood cliches for laughs, you would have gotten Die, Mommie, Die!, the Sundance award-winning film of Charles Busch's play, in which the dramateuse portrays what he calls "a cocktail...

A hero on the seven seas, ten sets of lovers, three tortured souls, and a lion of the fourth estate.(Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; The Matrix Revolutions; Love Actually; Gothika; 21 Grams; In the Cut; Veronica Guerin; Pieces of April)(Movie Review)
November 1, 2003... PREVIEW: MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (20th Century Fox) Directed by Peter Weir Russell Crowe is back in period dress as Captain Jack Aubrey, a Napoleonic-era British naval commander whose ship engages a French frigate....

Jet: classic rock cutups who are bluesy, woozy, and Keith Richards-approved.(Music Buzz)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Every so often a band like Jet comes along that proves the rules of making records can be safely ignored. The Australian quartet's debut EP, Dirty Sweet (Elektra), arrived earlier this year like a splash of cold water to the face. Featuring raw...

Bonnie McKee: the ingenue who turned her messed-up life into music.(Music Prediction)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... At the ripe old age of 18, Bonnie McKee has lived a life filled with enough dangerous liaisons, sudden expulsions, and jilted lovers to make her Madonna-kissing contemporaries blush at the notion. Weaned on Whitney and Mariah and groomed on...

DFA: the soon-to-be jukebox juggernauts with a notion for motion.(Music Heat)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... DFA producers Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy appropriately take their name from the phrase "death from above": The New York City knob twiddlers have been murdering musical boundaries with a run of combustible singles, such as the Rapture's...

Azure Ray: these ethereal southern rockers are scratching out their own niche.(Music Tip)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The women of Azure Ray are mistresses of reinvention. As members of the late-'90s outfit Little Red Rocket, musicians Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor dabbled in major-label alterna-rock. But the group was dropped from their label, Geffen Records,...

Rachael Yamagata: she ditched her band and found her voice.(Music Spotlight)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Rachael Yamagata had to snap in order to get her first real break. She had been toiling in the high-energy, rootsy Chicago funk band Bumpus for five years, playing second string to the group's other songwriters, all the while being forced to...

Pink: Try This (Arista).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Perhaps Malcolm McLaren was right when he came up with the notion of karaoke culture: musical statements that have already been made but that current pop stars endlessly rehash into parody. But the conviction and skill with which 24-year-old...

The Desert Sessions: Volumes 9 & 10 (Ipecac/Rekords Rekords).(Queens of the Stone Age)(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homme ring-leads this long-running conceptual rock collective with a revolving-door membership policy. For this latest installment, he has recruited Irish vamp Polly Jean Harvey and American weirdos Dean...

The Strokes: Room on Fire (RCA).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... "I want to be forgotten/And I don't want to be reminded" warbles singer Julian Casablancas in the opening seconds of this follow-up to his band's 2001 debut, Is This It?. Scuttling would-be critics at the outset, the Strokes appropriate failure...

Basement Jaxx: Kish Kash (Astralwerks).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe's third album is an even bigger stylistic smorgasbord than its predecessor, 2001's Rooty. Their ambition pays off: Meshell Ndegeocello's "delirious" shout-outs on "Right Here's the Spot" and juicy, outrageously...

Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Ostensibly two solo records, this double album is a sprawling meditation on dirty rhythms and dirtier thoughts that ventures from the psychological to the scatological. Big Boi's Speakerboxxx funnels hard-bitten gangsta beats through a...

Ryan Adams: Rock 'n" Roll (Lost Highway).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Ever the garage-rock lover, Adams owes a serious debt to the Rolling Stones and the Replacements, as this third outing makes abundantly evident: Catchy, crunchy Paul Westerberg-ish anthems ("Do Miss America") mix with vintage-Stones blues-rock...

The Thrills: So Much for the City (Virgin).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Proving there are benefits to being a tourist, this Irish five-piece found inspiration the moment they stepped off the plane in California. Lush with upbeat banjos, Mellotrons, and Beach Boys harmonies, their debut is the happiest collection of...

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Out of Season (Sanctuary).(Sound Recording Review)
November 1, 2003... Singer Beth Gibbons steps away from the achingly beautiful melodrama of Portishead for this collaboration with Talk Talk's Paul Webb (a.k.a. Rustin Man). Webb's stark, ethereal atmospherics cascade behind Gibbon's voice like waterfalls,...

Fall's bright idea: why more and more men are turning to the bottle--of bleach.(Look Of The Month)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... How many blonds does it take to spark a trend? What with Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and David Beckham all highlighting their locks to a sunny extreme in recent months, more and more men on the street--traditionally dye-phobic--are taking up...

Boy, oh, boy! Women take another look at the darker sex's closet.(Fashion Flash)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Sigmund Freud dreamed up penis envy, but could he have imagined Savile Row envy? In the tradition of blurring fashion's gender lines--think Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn--many women this season are once again incorporating classic...

Hedi Slimane: Brassai's Paris and Larry Clark's Tulsa intersect and take on new dimensions in Hedi Slimane's brilliant vision of Berlin.(Photography News)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... INGRID SISCHY: Most people know you as a designer--the man behind the Christian Dior Homme line--but this mouth you're coming out with a book of your photographs called Berlin (7L/D.A.P.). Is this a new passion of yours? HEDI SLIMANE:...

And the award goes to ...: the Bennifer wedding aside, here's the latest proof that not all Hollywood marriages are doomed.(Bows And Vows)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Making official a union the world has recognized for years, the city of Beverly Hills this fall cemented the movies' long-standing love affair with designer Giorgio Armani, awarding him the first-ever Rodeo Drive Walk of Style award. To honor...

Shots in the dark: when the stuff dreams are made of turns into nightmares.(Movie Column, The Singing Detective, In the Cut)
November 1, 2003... In 1793, the poet William Blake caustically summed up what men and women "require" in each other as "the lineaments of Gratified Desire"--the appearance of sexual satisfaction. Two new films remind us that gratifying desire often introduces...

Days between stations: thirty years ago, Randy Newman satirically sang, "it's lonely at the top." Today, this composer-performer tops his profession--and it turns out he was right.(Music Column)
November 1, 2003... Randy Newman's first album for his new label, Nonesuch Records, is The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1, a set of solo piano remakes of tunes from across his career. It's an austere and moving piece of work: The songs, some going back 35 years,...

All the dish: as if channeling the spirit of Virginia Woolf, a number of rising whisks are whipping up restaurants of their own.(Food Column, Suenos; L'Impero; WD-50)
November 1, 2003... Beyond rave reviews and a full reservation book, there is perhaps no more concrete evidence of a chef's success, or courage, than the addition of the word "owner" to his or her job description. The achievement represented by those who succeed...

Letter from the editor: November 2003.(View)(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... How interesting that not one, but two recent movies are based on real-life stories with journalists as their central characters. One of the films, Veronica Guerin, directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Cate Blanchett, is about the courage of...

Lisa Kudrow: she's got one of the quickest wits in Hollywood, but in her new film, she's taking a walk on the somber side.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... Having recently begun her 10th and final season of Friends, the show in which she charms us as the goofy Phoebe, Lisa Kudrow can also be seen flexing her significant acting chops in Wonderland, a dark, seedy drama examining multiple murders...

John Robinson: gunshots stilled the halls of Columbine High School four years ago. This month, Gus Van Sant's film Elephant makes us look again at our schools. Here's the actor who helps explain the madness.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... As the many before-they-were-stars TV programs reveal, most young actors make their way up the Hollywood food chain by way of commercials or bit parts In shows and movies. Not John Robinson. In his film debut--and first acting job--the...

Nelly Furtado: she crossed more musical borders on her first album than most singers do in their whole careers. Now she has a new album that's once again full of surprises.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... STEPHEN MOOALLEM: So, Nelly, I understand that you've been sort of busy lately. NELLY FURTADO: Oh, why?. Because of the baby or something? [laughs] SM: Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. NF: Thank you very much. It's pretty incredible....

Jonathan & Phellipe Haagensen: these boys from Brazil have nothing to hide--they bare all in their raw, gritty performances.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... [Translated from Portuguese by Amber Levinson] KATIA LUND: So, guys, you've had an amazing few years, huh? Our film about life in Rio's housing projects, City of God, which I co-directed [Fernando Meirelles is credited as the film's...

A fresh coat: a grand coat makes for a grand entrance--or exit. Here we introduce the season's fiercest, finest coats, as modeled in tandem by actors Phellipe and Jonathan Haagensen, last seen stealing scenes (among other things) in the unforgettable City of God.
November 1, 2003... In this story: Phellipe (opposite, left) and Jonathan (opposite, right) Haagensen. Grooming: VALIERIA RODRIGUIZ. Above: Coat by NICOLE FARHI. Opposite: Coats by YOHJI YAMAMOTO. Long johns by JOCKEY. Boots by WOLVERINE. For fashion details...

Jessica Biel: she's frightened of big spiders, but that hasn't stopped this actress from slashing her way to the top of the horror-film genre.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... She ruled the teen airwaves for six years as one of the WB network's young, sexy soap stars (she still occasionally revisits her series, 7th Heaven, now in its eighth season), but lately Jessica Biel has been focusing on feature films. To talk...

Hayden Christensen: he wrestled with the forces of darkness in Star Wars, and now he's taking on the dark side of journalism in Shattered Glass.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... If Hayden Christensen has proven anything in the past three years, it's that he isn't afraid of the dark. From his goth teen in Life as a House (2001) to his Darth Vader-in-waiting in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, this 22-year-old...

Veronica Guerin: the anti-Stephen Glass.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... Joel Schumacher's new film, Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett, tells the story of an Irish Journalist slain in 1996 by thugs under the hire of Dublin drug lords, whom Guerin was outing in her weekly newspaper column. Aengus Fanning, her...

Andre Leon Talley: the fashion guru gets to the bottom of what makes the fashion maven tick.(Interview)
November 1, 2003... ANDRE LEON TALLEY: Look at you with your gloves and your bag! MIUCCIA PRADA: And look at my shoes! [both laugh] Anyway, this is only the second time I've done an interview, Andre, so I'm not feeling very professional. The last one was also...

Bring on the night: in his new collection of photographs, interview contributing photographer Patrick McMullan reveals just how much more there was to the '80s than glitz, greed, and big hair.(View Back)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... Armed with only a tiny camera and a zeal for embracing and documenting life sprung by a near-death bout with cancer, Patrick McMullan, Interview's contributing photographer for close to 20 years, has been capturing the New York social scene...