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In 1984, actor Lance Guest became the symbol of the video game champion when he appeared in the sci-fi/fantasy film "The Last Starfighter."

During the 1980’s a new breed of hero made its way onto the pop culture scene.  Out of dark and noisy arcades all over North America came the figure of the video game champion.  Normal teenager, often from the fringes of society, became unlikely idols due to quick reflexes, abnormal hand/eye coordination and inhuman stamina.  Although kids like Billy Mitchell and Chris Steel wouldn’t replace sports figures or pop stars as major icons, these seemingly everyday kids gained their own cult following during the golden age of video games for being the best of the best at games such as Pac-Man, Galaga, Bezerk and Frogger.  A brand new phenomenon, Hollywood quickly took notice and films featuring master video gamers as the protagonists, such as War Games, Cloak and Dagger and Tron, began to make their way to the silver screen.  But it was 1984’s The Last Starfighter which, for the first time, truly captured the spirit and the soul of the video gamer.  When Alex Rogan, a teenager who dreams of leaving the trailer park he lives in, beats the high score on a video game called Starfighter, he becomes enlisted by an outer space alliance to do battle in an intergalactic war.  The Last Starfighter combined science fiction fantasy with a truly human and relatable element that was felt by any kid who spent hours playing a video game machine and dreamed of adventures far beyond his everyday existence.  Actor Lance Guest, who played Alex Rogan, would be adopted as a symbol of 80’s video game culture, despite the fact that, in reality, he didn’t play video games at all.

Lance Guest as Alex Rogan in "The Last Starfighter."

Twenty four years old at the time that The Last Starfighter was released, Lance Guest had been acting professionally since 1981 and had appeared regularly on award winning programs such as Lou Grant and St. Elsewhere, as well as in the cult horror classic Halloween II.  Afterwards he would make appearances on Knots Landing and Life Goes On, and would co-star in Jaws: The Revenge.  However, The Last Starfighter would be the role that captured the hearts and minds of the audience, and would continue to be his most celebrated screen performance.  Although the film seemed to disappear from the radar for a number of years, with 80’s nostalgia becoming rediscovered and appreciated, the people who grew up in the 80’s are now introducing The Last Starfighter to their own children.  With video games even more relevant in today’s culture then ever before, The Last Starfighter has survived astonishingly well, and continues to hit an emotional chord to a whole new generation who recognize a part of themselves in the character of Alex Rogan.

Nearly thirty years has gone by since The Last Starfighter premiered, and the tall lanky kid that was Lance Guest has been replaced by a solid man with an intense face.  To Lance Guest, The Last Starfighter was just another acting job, and he moved onto his next gig.  These days that gig has been a three and a half year stint playing the legendary Man in Black, Johnny Cash, in the hit Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet.  I had the great pleasure to talk with Lance Guest when he appeared at Toronto Wizard World in April 2012.  Having just finishing a holiday in Los Angeles, Lance stopped in Toronto en route to his home in New York.  Lance talked with me about his career in film, on stage and, of course, as The Last Starfighter.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE PRESENTS

GREETINGS, STARFIGHTER:

A CONVERSATION WITH LANCE GUEST

"It kinda happened a lot faster then I had expected. I figured I’d be pounding the pavement for a few years, but my agent was really aggressive and he got me on Lou Grant."

Sam Tweedle:  Not long ago I was watching an old episode of Dallas and I was surprised to see you in it.  I was checking out your credits and I saw that it was the earliest thing you did professionally.  This was at the height of its popularity, right before J.R was shot.  What was it like to be at the start of your career and to be on the most popular show in America?

Lance Guest:  All I know was that I had two or three lines.  I was a guy in a diner.  I didn’t watch Dallas.

Sam:  But you were aware that millions of people were watching you.

Lance:  Well, to me it was just something I did.  I just went on.

Sam:  What made you pursue acting professionally?

Lance Guest as reporter Lance Reinecke on "Lou Grant": "To me it was weird that it was the first show I was on because everyone was so committed and had a high standard."

Lance:  I was a computer major in school, and I got into a lot of plays.  But I never got the big parts and I thought “Well, I can do better than this.”  In my sophomore year I realized that I had two years before I got out, so I thought I better start now so by the time I [graduated] I’d have something going on.  It’s better then waiting until the end and [wondering] “What am I going to do?”  So I decided to get a two year head start on things.  I went to an open call for Fame, and the casting director said “You’re good, but you’re too tall.”  I said “Okay.” I didn’t know why that would be a problem.  But she was totally cool and she set me up with my agent.  She was awesome. Her name was Linda Krandom.  So I got an agent and the agent started sending me out.  It kinda happened a lot faster then I had expected.  I figured I’d be pounding the pavement for a few years, but my agent was really aggressive and he got me on Lou Grant.  That was the first show I was on.

Sam:  Lou Grant was a really fantastic show.  Very ahead of it’s time.

Lance:  Yeah.  It was a great show.  To me it was weird that it was the first show I was on because everyone was so committed and had a high standard.  That was my first big gig.

Sam:  One of your first breakthrough roles was in Halloween II with Jamie Lee Curtis.  That is really where you first hit on the pop culture radar.

Lance Guest with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween II: "It took a while for Halloween II to be appreciated. It just wasn’t that big of a deal when it came out."

Lance:  I guess.  It took a while for Halloween II to be appreciated.  It just wasn’t that big of a deal when it came out.  It was later on when people are really into the Halloween movies and looked back at it [that it was a big deal].

Sam:  So are you surprised that Halloween became as big as it did?

Lance:  Oh yeah.  Absolutely.  I just went on and did another job.  I did an Afterschool Special and a bunch of things that I thought were much more visible.  But, the thing is, Nick Castle, the director of The Last Starfighter, was friends with John Carpenter.  John was working on the editing of Halloween II and showed Nick some of the footage and he saw me and he thought I’d be good [for The Last Starfighter].

Lance Guest with Catherine Mary Stewart in "The Last Starfighter": " To me it was always interesting that every time I went someplace new people would say “'ou were that guy from The Last Starfighter.'"

Sam:  The Last Starfighter has become a cult classic.  It sort of dropped off the radar for a while, but in the last few years has really come back on the cultural radar.

Lance:  To me it was always interesting that every time I went someplace new people would say “You were that guy from The Last Starfighter.”  Again, it was out for two or three weeks and nobody made a very big deal out of it.  We had a premier and stuff.  We had a premier in London as well, but I never really felt like it was a big deal.

Sam:  The film gets compared to Tron a lot, but The Last Starfighter had much more of a human factor that Tron didn’t have.  Did you connect at all to the character Alex Rogan?

Lance:  Yeah.  Oh sure.

"I didn’t have money to throw away in video game machines. I was an actor. I had no money."

Sam:  Did you play video games in the 80’s?

Lance:  No.  I played pinball.  I was 22 when the movie was being made.  To me video games were kids stuff.  I guess there was a thing called Space Invaders back then.  But I was broke.  I didn’t have money to throw away in video game machines.  I was an actor.  I had no money.

Sam:  The video game industry of the 1980’s has gained its own cult following in the last couple of years.  I feel this has a lot to do with the resurgence of popularity of The Last Starfighter.

Lance:  Yeah.  It’s interesting because obviously the popularity of video games is so much more then it used to be.  You used to go to an arcade and spend how much time or money you had and blow it all at the arcade.  But with the home video systems its become really complicated and now it’s taking over people’s lives.

Lance Guest with character actor Robert Preston in "The Last Starfighter": "He was really cool. He was in his seventies, with jet black hair."

Sam:  The Last Starfighter was Robert Preston’s final film.  What was it like working with him?

Lance:  He was great.  He had just come off of Victor/Victoria.  I wanted him to rehearse with him, but a lot of old Hollywood actors say “Call me when my close up comes.  I’ll be in my trailer.”  They are those kind of guys.  But he was completely the opposite.  He [said] “Whatever you want to do kid.  I’m a theater actor.”  He was really cool.  He was in his seventies, with jet black hair.  He was this tough guy.

Sam:  At the end of The Last Starfighter it was set up nicely for a sequel that never happened.  Was there ever talk of a sequel?

Lance:  There has always been talk of a sequel, but it’s just if they want to plunk the money down and do it.

Sam:  Well why didn’t they do a sequel immediately?

"There has always been talk of a sequel, but it’s just if they want to plunk the money down and do it."

Lance:  Because it didn’t make any money.  I’m telling you; in the initial release it didn’t make any money.  I was talking to one of the guys from the studio and I said “So what’s happening with the movie” and the guy said “It didn’t make any money.”  It played in LA for two or three weeks.  The Karate Kid outdid it.  That and Purple Rain.  Those were the two big [films], although we got good reviews saying that our movie was better then those other ones.  But it just didn’t have the initial box office.  It wasn’t a hot commodity.

Sam:  Now I was really interested to hear that you have been playing Johnny Cash on stage now for a number of years.  I am a huge Johnny Cash fan.  Give me a lowdown on Million Dollar Quartet.

Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley in an iconic photo by Sam Phillips was the inspiration for hit musical "Million Dollar Quartet" in which Lance Guest has been playing Johnny Cash since October 2008.

Lance:  [I’ve been doing it] for almost four years now.  It’s the story of this afternoon at Sun Records in 1956.  Sam Phillips was the producer there and Carl Perkins was recording a song and Jerry Lee Lewis was a total unknown session piano player.  It was around Christmas and Elvis Presley stopped by and said “Hey Mr. Phillips.  I wanted to come by and say Merry Christmas.  I really miss everybody” and Sam was looking around at everybody and said “We gotta call Cash.”  So he called Johnny Cash and he came down, and they sat around and sang songs and jammed and played and they took a photo, that’s become sort of a famous photograph.  What few people know is that there is actually a girl in that photograph.  Elvis brought a girl, but they cut her out.  Well Sam Phillips shot the picture and he called them “The Million Dollar Quartet” because they all had record deals.  Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott, our writers, wrote this script based on that evening.  We all play the songs, and we play our own instruments.  There are guitars and stand up bass and drums and pianos on stage.  That’s the show.  [It’s a two hour] theatrical jam session, and through it you learn about Sam Phillips’ relationship with each of the guys and their relationships with each other and the way their lives were going.

Lance Guest as Johnny Cash in "Million Dollar Quartet."

Sam:  Now when I look at you I can see the resemblance to Johnny Cash in your face.

Lance:  Well thank you.  I have a long beard and scraggly hair right now.  I’ve been on vacation for ten days.

Sam:  Were you a Johnny Cash fan going in to this production?

Lance:  I was.  I mean I was enough of one that I knew a bunch of his songs and I could sort of do the voice.

Sam:  How about after taking on Johnny Cash.  Has it given you a new appreciation of his life and music?

Lance:  Sure.  But I’m playing Johnny Cash in 1956.  I can’t play Johnny Cash in Folsom Prison or Johnny Cash on television.  I have to play Johnny Cash in 1956.  He’s a little less colorful and a little less “John Waynish.”

Sam:  Have you any plans to do any more film or television in the next while or is Million Dollar Quartet what you’ll be doing for the next while?

Levis Kreis, Eddie Clendening, Robert Briiton Lyons and Lace Guest as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presely, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash in "Million Dollar Quartet": "If you have lousy scripts and work with horrible people it sucks. But if you have good scripts and work with good people...it’s great.

Lance:  Well I don’t know.  We’ll see.  I’ve been doing the job for eight shows a week since October 2008.   The first production was in Chicago, and the second production was on Broadway.  After fifteen months on Broadway we went to a theater Off-Broadway and kept that alive.  Now there is a tour that is going across the country, and there was an East End production in London which closed in January.  There is still a production going in Chicago.  It’s an entire franchise.

Sam:  Do you prefer stage over film and television?

Lance:  Well I used to say I did.  It’s hard to say.   If you have lousy scripts and work with horrible people it sucks. But if you have good scripts and work with good people, in either of those things, it’s great.

Although it is hard to imagine the Lance Guest of The Last Starfighter as the embodiment of Johnny Cash, upon meeting him you can see the legendary performer in his face.  Something about the sad eyes and the intense mood around Lance Guest leads no doubt that he can bring Johnny Cash back to life via the magic of the stage.  Million Dollar Quartet continues to run at New World Stages in New York City.  For more information visit http://www.milliondollarquartetlive.com/index.html.  Although the fans may remember him for many of his other roles throughout his career, when talking to Lance Guest I could tell that playing Johnny Cash was something that he was truly proud of.  If you are in New York this summer make sure to get tickets to see Lance Guest in the role of a lifetime.  The Last Starfighter may be in the hearts of the children of the 80’s, but Johnny Cash is in the heart of Lance Guest.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  I would like to thank Sean Clark of Convention All-Stars for giving me the time to talk with Lance Guest.  Sean Clark will be bringing some of the 80’s and 90’s biggest stars to conventions throughout North America this year, including the Motor City Comic Con and other Wizard World shows.  If you are interested in booking Lance Guest, or any of the many cult celebrities available through Convention All-Stars, contact Sean at http://www.conventionallstars.com/.

I’d also like to thank Jerry Milani of Wizard World Entertainment for his part in arranging this interview, and for his continued support and friendship.  Make sure to support your local Wizard World.  Visit http://www.wizardworld.com/ for more information for a Wizard World convention coming to your area.

The cover to Darkhrose Comic's new "Crime Does Not Pay" anthology includes an homage to the notorious graphic covers featuring the series writer's Bob Wood's real life act of murder.

In 1954 the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held an investigation on comics, leading to a series of hearings that brought the comic book industry to its knees.  As a result of hysteria, primarily pushed by Dr. Fredrick Werthem’s notorious book Seduction of the Innocent, it became commonly believed by a paranoid public that the increase of juvenile delinquency was due in part to violent and sexual content within comic books.  At the forefront of the investigation would be such titles as Black Cat, Phantom Lady, the legendary EC Comics line and, leading the pack, what was the world’s best selling comic of the era Crime Does Not Pay.  By the end of the hearing, the comic landscape would be severely altered, with massive censorship to the comic industry being regulated by the stifling Comic Code Authority, which would wipe out dozens of comic titles and even companies.  Crime Does Not Pay would be one of the victims of the Comic Code Authority, but as a result the book would go become infamous amongst comic scholars for its grotesque retellings of true crime stories and its garish imagery and extreme violence.  Long sought after by collectors for decades, Darkhorse Comics has acquired the rights to Crime Does Not Pay and is releasing each and every bloody issue in a special set of hard covered archive editions.  However, for the casual reader curious to experience the book had parent groups, church clergies and politicians so terrified is now available in a “best of” volume titled Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol Whipped.

Possibly the most violent comic book of the Golden Age of comics, "Crime Does Not Pay" was possibly the best selling comic book in publication with approximately six million readers.

The brainchild of cartoonists Bob Wood and Charlie Brio, Crime Does Not Pay was the comic industry’s first true crime comic, which popularity would spawn dozens of imitators during the post war comic industry.  Published by Lev Gleason Publications, Crime Does Not Pay “borrowed” the name from the popular film short and radio series, and began with issue 22 (taking over Silver Streak Comics’ numbering) on July 1942.  Each issue would tell three true crime stories, often narrated by a specter like figure named Mr. Crime, who would influence the creations of characters such as The Crypt-Kepper and Cain and Able, who would describe the details of the crime in every gory detail.  However, in the end the criminal would meet his demise, proving that “crime did not pay.”  It really was a way that the publishers could justify glorifying the criminal acts and violence during the story, arguing that the stories were, in fact, morality tales.  But, it is obvious that Brio and Wood were having far more fun creating lurid content and the point of the story was the crime, and not the paying part.  In fact, even the covers had the word “Crime” far more prominently displayed then the words “Does Not Pay.”  The covers themselves would be legendary for their images of decapated women, bullet ridden bodies and blood splattered killers which was unlike anything seen before in comic books (Crime Does Not Pay would predate the notorious EC Comics line by eight years).  In its hey day it was estimated that Crime Does Not Pay was being read by six million readers, easily outselling titles from the major publishers, including such heavy hitter franchises as Superman, Captain Marvel and Batman.  Some of the earliest comic stories to feature, sex, drugs and graphic violence, Brio and Wood had found the perfect formula to sell books, but in the end it would become so notorious that this formula would factor in bringing about the downfall of the entire industry.

Predating "Tales From the Crypt" by eight years, "Crime Does Not Pay's" narrator Mr. Crime would go on to inspire characters such as The Crypt Keeper.

Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped is an addictive read.  Once you pick it up you can barely put it down.  Twenty four stories are reprinted in this 221 page volume, featuring some of the title’s take on the stories of infamous criminals such as Charles “Lucky” Luciano and John Dillinger, and strips drawn by a surprising list of the Gold Age top names including Carmine Infantino, George Tuska, and Archie creator Bob Montana!   Above average art and narrative for the era, Wood (who wrote the majority of the stories) and Brio were less concerned about accuracy as much as they were about sensationalizing the criminal acts, leading to over the top shock value.  For instance, The Beast of Brooklyn lacks story or drama, but vividly describes the death of eleven men, women and children by burning in vivid detail. Since the stories are based on real crimes, in many cases I was compelled to research the crimes myself, which adds a whole other dimension to each of the stories told.  One of my personal favorites is the anthology’s first story Two-Legged Rats, about Oregon cult leader Franz Cheffield, aka Joshua the Second, whose story is well documented on the internet, including photos of him and his followers.  Brio and Wood play fast and loose with the facts, but it is fascinating to put together the history after reading the Crime Does Not Pay treatment.  Once this book is picked up it is easy to get lost in the fast and frantic stories glorifying the dangerous and perverse criminals presented within.

In an introduction as compelling as the reprinted stories, comic publisher Denis Kitchen outlines the true crime story of writer Bob Wood, who murdered his girlfriend three years after the final issue of "Crime Does Not Pay" was published.

However, one of the most interesting stories in Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol Whipped is not part of the reprinted material, but from the introduction by comic publisher Denis Kitchen who tells the entire gory behind the scenes story of Brio, Wood and their notorious book.  For those who never read the introductions, this is one introduction you don’t want to skip over.  In a tale almost too strange to be true, Kitchen tells the story of how Bob Wood himself was convicted for murder in 1958, three years after the final issue of Crime Does Not Pay was published, when he bludgeoned his girlfriend to death in a New York hotel room with a steam iron.  A strange and quiet man, Wood was a known alcoholic and often was seen abusing his female companions.  In fact, abuse of women was often featured on Crime Does Not Pay covers.  Kitchen outlines the details of the Brio case, and opens questions about Wood’s own death sometime in the early sixties.  Was it suicide, or was it murder?  Was there perhaps some truth to Dr, Wertham’s analysis of Crime Does Not Pay?  Probably not, but whatever the case, the stories in Crime Does Not Pay were written by a man with very violent tendencies, and is an interesting insight into Bob Wood’s demented mind.

Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol Whipped is an interesting read for scholars of the history of comic books and for anyone interested in the comic book hearings of the 1950’s.  This is one of the notorious books that shook up America and it is now available again in its brilliant gory details.  A true curiosity piece, Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol Whipped is a perfect introduction to the world of 1950’s crime comics.

To order your own copy of Crime Does Not Pay: Blackjacked and Pistol Whipped, visit your local comic book dealer, or click here.

Ultra-violent pulp hero "The Spider" is back in a brand new series from Dynamite Entertainment.

Over the last number of years Dynamite Entertainment has found massive success by bringing some of fiction’s most beloved pulp characters to the modern age and breathing new and dynamic life into them via some of the top writers and artists working in comic books today.  The Lone Ranger, Zorro, Tarzan, The Green Hornet, Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars and The Shadow have been amongst the pulp heroes to get the Dynamite treatment.  Now one of the more obscure, yet still beloved, pulp characters, The Spider, takes center stage in a brand new series by writer David Liss and artist Colton Worley.

Created by Harry Steegler for Popular Publications as competition to rival publisher Street and Smith Publications’ massively popular pulp character The Shadow, The Spider gained his own group of fans via his own magazine which ran from 1933 to 1943.  Yet, while many would think of The Spider as just a Shadow knock-off, The Spider became famous for his over the top villains, as well as for being the most violent pulp heroes of the era.  The alter ego of millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth, The Spider dished out his own brand of vigilante style justice in a post depression America.  He didn’t keep his enemies alive so they could battle it out another day.  He killed them dead, and branded their forehead with the symbol of a spider. Furthermore, his colorful villains weren’t just common thugs and gangsters.  They often caused mass murder and even genocide and the body counts in a Spider story were massive.  There was something a bit more extreme about a Spider story.

Award winning author David Liss, with artist Colton Worley, will be transporting The Spider from the 1930's to the current century.

Best known for his historical-thriller novels, including his Edgar Allen Poe Award winning book A Conspiracy of Paper, author David Liss has also found critical acclaim for his work in comic books, including his run on Black Panther, and creating a world of brand new pulp heroes for Marvel Comic’s mini-series Mystery Men.  Incredibly gifted at creating a feel for past time periods, Liss is an obvious choice at bringing The Spider back to life, but now faces the challenge of updating the classic pulp hero into the current century, while still maintaining the mood and the original concept of the character.  I had the pleasure to talk to David Liss about just why he chose to work on The Spider, and how he plans on bringing the character out of obscurity and back into the fold of Dynamite’s continuing series of pulp comics.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

ALONG COMES THE SPIDER:

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID LISS

"The Spider is not the best known of characters, but I think that’s really an accident of history rather than having anything to do with the quality of the character himself. I think his influence runs much deeper then most fans often realize. I think he’s shaped the contemporary superhero in a lot of ways."

Sam Tweedle:  What attracted you to do this project?  I mean, The Spider is not the most mainstream of characters.

David Liss:  Well, when I first got involved in comics I had some conversations with Dynamite right from the beginning and we were looking for a project that I could work on with them.  About a year ago I met with Nick Barrucci at E2C2 and we sat down and talked about various projects and various characters.  He said “What do you want to work on” and then he mentioned that they had recently acquired the rights to The Spider.  I said “That’s what I want to work on!”  I’ve always loved pulp characters.  There is something really primal about the original pulp characters in terms of what comic readers want in comic books.  I don’t want to suggest that there is anything wrong with the way mainstream DC and Marvel Universes have evolved, because it gets sophisticated and interesting and interconnected, and all of that is good.  But I think it comes at a price.  There is something I think that is really compelling about the lone guy who is out there on his own.  There is no network.  There is no fall back.  It’s him or nothing.  That kind of thing has always attracted me.  The Spider is not the best known of characters, but I think that’s really an accident of history rather than having anything to do with the quality of the character himself.  I think his influence runs much deeper then most fans often realize.  I think he’s shaped the contemporary superhero in a lot of ways.

Sam:  In which ways has he done that?

David:  Obviously he’s one of the most important prototypes of Batman.  One of the things particularly influential about The Spider is just the insane nature of the villains he fought, which had these proto-comic book style names.  They had outlandish names and wore outlandish costumes and would do outrageous, over the top things, so it wasn’t the standard pulp vigilante mobsters.  He was fighting people who were blowing up large chunks of the city, or taking over cities, or doing really extreme things.  Spider villains were not so much committing crimes, but committing acts of war.  There is a huge scale to the kinds of villains he faced.  If I were to describe The Spider to someone who knows just a little bit about comic books I’d say he’s an incredibly wealthy guy who uses a lot of advanced technology to fight crime, and has a close relationship with the police commissioner, but that might sound like somebody else.  So, the history is definitely there.

Originally created by a rival company as a character to compete with the popularity of The Shadow, both The Spider and The Shadow are now being published by Dynamite Entertainment: "(The Spider has) never just been a Shadow knock off...I really think the difference is that The Spider is a much more human and emotional character.

Sam:  The Spider was originally a knock off of The Shadow, who is also now being published by Dynamite.  How do you differentiate the two characters?

David:  Well, I think that has been overstated.  I think there is no doubt that The Spider began as a property to compete with The Shadow, or to get some of The Shadow’s readers, or to tap into The Shadow’s popularity.  But I think he’s always been different.  He’s never just been a Shadow knock off.  I think some of the things I’ve already talked about, just the nature of the kinds of criminals he faced, is really one of the main differences.  But I really think the difference is that The Spider is a much more human and emotional character.  He feels the pain of what’s going on around him.  He has fairly decent meaningful relationships with a lot of the secondary characters.  I think he’s much more approachable character then The Shadow.

Sam:  What was behind the reasoning to update the character into the 21^st Century, and has it been complicated to update him while still staying true to the original feel of the pulp version?

Colton Worley sketches of The Spider's alter ego Richard Wentworth: "Some aspects of his personality had to change because they might have made sense in the 1930’s, but they would not have made sense today."

David:  When we first started talking about it the publisher was open to doing it as a period piece, or updating it.  The first thing they [asked] was for my preference, and I really didn’t have one.  Obviously I love doing period pieces.  That’s my bread and butter.  But I also like the idea of the challenge of updating it, and if you were going to do that then what would have to change and what could be the same.  Ultimately it was Dynamite that decided they wanted to update it.  As far as the challenges go was that I wanted to capture the essence to who The Spider was without taking a time machine and bringing him a hundred years forward in time without altering him.  So some aspects of his personality had to change because they might have made sense in the 1930’s, but they would not have made sense today.  I made some changes about his personality and the way he lives to make him seem like a cool guy today instead of a cool guy then, because Richard Wentworth is cool.  That’s one of the things about him.  He’s a person people want to be around.  The other thing about the changes I had to make were with the secondary characters.  The major relationship that The Spider has is with Nita Van Sloan.  In the pulps he can never marry her because to marry her is to risk turning her into a widow because of the dangerous life he leads.  So you have these two people who are monumentally in love, but they are also eternally separated.  That’s great narrative.  The essence of character is creating obstacles, and that’s a good one.  But, in 2012 that doesn’t seem like a good reason not to get married.  That’s awfully patriarchal.  So I thought, “What would keep these two apart in 2012,” and the answer I came up with is that she’s already married.  So that’s one of the big charges.  Then there is his body servant Ram Singh, who was a Hindu with a Sikh’s name, which I never understood.  In the 1930’s nobody would be offended by what was obviously and Orientalist stereotype.  [The idea] of this ‘noble savage” brutish guy who is fiendishly devoted to Wentworth would be obviously laughable today, and offensive.  So now Ram Singh is a lawyer, and a sophisticated guy in his own right, and is Wentworth’s best friend.  He knows his secret and he’s somebody who helps him.

Sam:  That sounds a lot like the different problems modern writers have had when trying to figure out how to work with Mandrake the Magician and Lothar.

The Spider's companion Ram Singh has now gone from being his manservant to being a lawyer, and Wentworth's best friend:"These characters have been around for a long time, and what’s acceptable or normal or offensive is going to change invariably over the course of eighty years."

David:  Yes.  These characters have been around for a long time, and what’s acceptable or normal or offensive is going to change invariably over the course of eighty years.  So the trick is to look at these characters, and look at these relationships and not get thrown off by the window dressing, but to try to figure out what’s essential here.  What makes this relationship interesting?  Its not Ram Singh’s “noble savagery” or brutish nature, but that this is a guy who knows who Richard Wentworth is, and is a tough, powerful guy who will do anything for this man that he genuinely admires.

Sam:  With the updating of the character, is The Spider going to be heavily techy now, or is he still a man with a gun?

"I don’t think that The Spider has always been treated well as a franchise....So here’s five things you need to tell a Spider story, but those five things together don’t make it a story. The characters make it a story, and caring about what happens next makes it a story."

David:  The technology level will be roughly equivalent to the time period as it was in the 1930’s.  Stuff that’s kind of sophisticated for now, but not over the type.  In the original pulps Professor Brownlee was this guy that he went to for tech.

Sam:  Will you be continuing the tradition of the larger then life villains, and the large scale genocide type plots?

David:  Yes.  I felt that if I’m doing The Spider, I’ve got to do The Spider.  That means doing insane villains with insane schemes.  I felt that for the first story I wanted someone who was larger then life.  I didn’t want The Spider tracking down international arms dealers or money launderers.  That wouldn’t capture who this character is, and obviously we want Spider fans to read it, but we want new readers who don’t know The Spider to read it as well.  So yes.  Crazy villains doing crazy things, definitely.

Sam:  Are you updating one of his old villains?

David:  Needless to say I thought about it, but for the first story I thought it would be better to do something original.  So the villain is someone who would be very much at home in the pulps, but is a new creation.

Sam:  As someone who has an appreciation for the pulp characters, I am really looking forward to this book coming out.

David:  Well, I’ve now read the composites for the first two issues and I’m biased, but I think it looks pretty good.  The art is obviously fantastic and I’m really happy how this is coming together.  [Dynamite Entertainment] is really becoming the pulp label, and I think they are doing a fantastic job of it.  I don’t think that The Spider has always been treated well as a franchise.  Some of the different Spider stuff I’ve seen seem really just slaps together some of the elements of The Spider and presents it as a story.  So here’s five things you need to tell a Spider story, but those five things together don’t make it a story.  The characters make it a story, and caring about what happens next makes it a story.  I’m really happy Dynamites given me and Colton a chance to tell a Spider story instead of just hitting some Spider notes.

The first issue of The Spider is now at your local comic book shop.  Make sure to call today to have a copy put aside for you, or have your comic book retailer reorder a copy if they have already sold out.  In the first issue Liss manages to reacquaint readers with The Spider and his world, and sets up his battle with a mysterious villainess calling herself Anput.  Dark and moody, Liss and Worley manages to update The Spider while still keeping a sort of timeless look to the book which doesn’t take the character to far out of the confines of his pulp origins.  The Spider is another triumph for Liss, Worley and Dynamite Entertainment which you don’t want to miss out on.

In 1967 a new type of evil came to the popular daytime soap opera Dark Shadows.  When the series was saved from cancellation by the addition of Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins to the cast a year earlier, creator Dan Curtis sought to widen the mythos of the show by revealing the origins of his vampire anti-hero.  In a suspenseful flashback sequence that would last for months, viewers were brought back to 1795 where the same cast played different characters, and the heartbreaking and suspenseful back story of Barnabas Collins was brought to life.  In an attempt to soften the once brutish Barnabas so that he would go from the show’s villain to hero, Curtis and his team of writers spun a multi-layered story filled with lust, betrayal, death and horror that kept viewers at the edge of their seats and helped to turn Dark Shadows from an ailing daytime soap into a full blown cult phenomenon.  But with Barnabas as the program’s new unlikely hero, a new villain would have to be created.  Dark Shadows hit the mark for a second time with the introduction of Lara Parker, in the role of Angelique Bouchard.  As handmaiden to Barnabas’ bride Josette DePuis, Angelique was madly in love with the groom to be, and would do anything to make sure that her mistress would never have him.  Beyond her sweet smile and golden curls was the cold heart of a witch who would eventually put a curse on the man who scorned her, bringing death to the people that Barnabas loved, and forcing him to face eternity as a vampire.

The first major new character introduced to Dark Shadows after Jonathan Frid, Lara Parker’s addition to the series not only reinforced the supernatural element of the show, but also added a third party to a love triangle that would capture the imaginations of the growing audience.  Angelique was the scheming witch that you hated to love, but each and every viewer who had ever faced unrequited love understood the motivations behind her jealousy and lust for revenge.  For Angelique and Barnabas it was a case of fatal attraction, and a love/hate battle that would continue for centuries.  For viewers it was a gripping drama that they couldn’t tear themselves away from, and while viewers were supposed to root for the good girls, like Josette or Victoria Winters, Angelique proved that sometimes the bad girls could be a lot sexier, and a lot more fun.  Eventually Lara Parker would become a fan favorite and as iconic to Dark Shadows as Jonathan Frid himself.

Originally from Tennessee, Lara Parker studied acting in college and had a career in theater before coming to New York where she “lucked” into the role of Angelique in what would be her first professional acting job, and stayed on the program until its end in 1971.  From there she relocated to Hollywood where she had an active career in television and film, including a memorable role as a prostitute in the Academy Award winning film, Save the Tiger with Jack Lemmon, and the cult horror film Race with the Devil with Peter Fonda, Warren Oats and Loretta Swit.  But despite her success as a working actress in Hollywood, she would always be held close to the hearts of Dark Shadows fans as their favorite witch.

As one of Dark Shadow’s most prolific actresses, Lara Parker has maintained contact with fans through her continuous participation at Dark Shadows conventions throughout the years, and has written a pair of Dark Shadows novels: Angelique’s Descent, which tells the tale of Angelique Bouchard’s origins for the first time, and a sequel, The Salem Branch.  With Johnny Depp’s new version of Dark Shadows about to be released in theaters, Lara Parker’s books have gone back into print after nearly a decade, and she is completing her Dark Shadows trilogy with a third book, Wolf’s Moon, which is to be released later this year.  Furthermore, Lara Parker, along with Dark Shadows alumni David Selby, Katherine Leigh Scott and Jonathan Frid, came face to face with Johnny Depp’s version of Barnabas Collins when they made cameos in the new film.  As a new generation gets ready to fall under the spell of Dark Shadows for the first time, Lara Parker is standing at the sidelines reaping the rewards of staying true to the franchise for over forty years.

It was an honour and a thrill for me to be able to talk with Lara Parker about her career and her time on Dark Shadows. A passionate fan of Dark Shadows, it is a rare occurrence for me to be able to hold an in depth conversation about the program, so talking about the show is always a true joy.  A charming woman with a sweet voice and a good sense of humor, Lara Parker shared with me her stories about Dark Shadows and beyond, and took me to the set of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s new production, where she discussed the long time fan reaction to the comedic trailer, and told me about the day when Jonathan Frid came face to face with Johnny Depp.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

BLACK MAGIC WOMAN:

A CONVERSATION WITH LARA PARKER

"I took piano lessons, ballet lessons and singing lessons but I wasn’t very good at anything. So I decided that nobody really had to do anything to be an actress."

Sam Tweedle:  When did you first start acting?

Lara Parker:  I think I had an artistic temperament.  I took piano lessons, ballet lessons and singing lessons but I wasn’t very good at anything.  So I decided that nobody really had to do anything to be an actress.  (Laughs) I was maybe nine years old when I made that decision.  I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and they had a little theater and Saturday afternoon radio dramas that children could be in.  Anytime that there was anything to audition for, I’d audition, and sometimes I’d be cast.  I did quite a bit of work for the Memphis Little Theater.  Then I went to Vassar College and I did a few plays there and decided I wanted to major in drama.  I went to the University of Iowa and I was working on a Masters there, and I was lucky because I was cast in the very first play, and then the second, and then the third.  So I had a lot of support and reinforcement for my ambition.  I went back to Memphis and worked at what was called the Front Street Theater.  That was the local community professional theater.  Then I did some summer stock in Connecticut and one of the directors said, “You should go to New York.”  I was given the name of an agent in New York and had actually ended up sitting next to him at a play.  He said, “I want you to come back to New York and see if we can find you some work.”  Well this agent had just got his job, and he was looking for clients.  He was very interested in representing me.  At that point I had two children and I was married and we were living in Wisconsin.  My husband was an art professor and he moved around to where he could get jobs at colleges.  Well he got a job in North Fork, Virginia, and a couple of weeks after we moved I said, “Listen.  I’m going to go to New York for a week and see if anything happens,” which is ridiculous to think that anything could happen in a week.  Well, he said okay and I went to New York and I had been there for five days when I got cast for Dark Shadows.

Sam:  So Dark Shadows was your first major job!

"At the very end of the scene, after all my sobbing and cajoling and begging, I turned and looked at the camera and I guess they zoomed into my eyes and I held my gaze, and well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Lara:  It was my first professional job.  I was also cast the same week in a play out of town, but I couldn’t do both of them.  It was interesting because for five days I sat in my tiny hotel room, staring out the windows at the rain thinking nothing was going to happen.  But then I got the call to go to the audition and I got the part.

Sam:  So when you went for the part of Angelique Bouchard, were you aware of the magnitude of the fan following that it had?

Lara:  Well it didn’t have it yet.  Jonathan Frid had been on the show for a few months, and [Dark Shadows’ popularity] had picked up.  They made the decision to go back in time to tell the story of how he became a vampire, and of course they had to cast the witch.  As we went back to 1795, and told that story with everyone in wonderful costumes and all new sets, was the point at which it began to get a whole lot of fans.  There was that wonderful triangle between Barnabas and Angelique and Josette.  Dramatically it was gold.  It worked well and everyone loved it.

Sam:  What was the audition process like?  Were there many other actresses up for the part?

"My golden ringlets became a big deal too, which were not mine. They were kept in the studio."

Lara:  There was actually only one other actress at the call back.  I don’t know how many went into the original meeting.  But the only thing the casting woman asked me was, “Have you done any period drama, because this takes place in 1795.”  I said, “Yeah, I’ve done a lot in summer stock.”  She said, “Well, you need to have a little edge.  A little kind of British thing going.  It makes it seem a little less modern.”  I said, “No problem” and I think that’s what got me the audition.  For the call back I went up on the set and I was to read the scene with Jonathan which was the first scene where Angelique goes to his room and says, “We love each other.  You can’t abandon me.  We had this wonderful love affair. I love you deeply” and he says, “No.  It’s over.  I’m going to marry Josette,” who was Angelique’s mistress.  She is just heartbroken and clinging to him and begging him to love her and that was the scene.  Well we read for it, and Jonathan actually leaned in and he said, “I hope you get it.  You know, she’s a witch.”  Of course I had no idea that she was a witch.  I said, “Oh really?”  He said, “Yeah.  She’s a witch.”  So at the very end of the scene, after all my sobbing and cajoling and begging, I turned and looked at the camera and I guess they zoomed into my eyes and I held my gaze, and well, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Sam:  Well, I think what made Angelique so wonderful is that you could have such a sweet smile, but these cold eyes that were just so sinister.

Lara:  (Laughs) Well it is very easy to do, but it was kind of an inspired moment because it was a contradiction to what I had been playing in the scene, and it was kind of what I’d call a zinger.  I think that’s what got me the part.  I walked off the set and this funny little lady came up and started pulling on my hair and started saying, “What are we going to do with your hair?  What color is your hair?”  Of course it was then I realized that I got the part.  Nobody had told me that I had got it, but she was the hair dresser and she was trying to figure out how she was going to do my hair.  My golden ringlets became a big deal too, which were not mine.  They were kept in the studio.

The witch and the vampire - Lara Parker and Jonathan Frid as "Dark Shadows'" iconic "couple" Barnabas and Angelique: "He was very generous, and far more experienced than I was. He was also a stage actor so I think we understood each other from the beginning in terms of dynamics of performance. "

Sam:  You and Mr. Frid had wonderful love/hate chemistry on the screen.  What was your working relationship with Mr. Frid like?

Lara:  He was very generous, and far more experienced than I was.  He was also a stage actor so I think we understood each other from the beginning in terms of dynamics of performance.  The energy of stage acting is bigger and there was a tendency to play soap operas sitting around the kitchen table right after you have a nap.  They are very slow, or at least they were back then.  Our show was much more like theater.  It was dynamic and passionate and dramatic and heartbreaking.  There was high, high emotion.  We were expected to reach for a higher emotional level, and Jonathan was used to doing that.  He had done a lot of Shakespeare.  Well in the beginning [my character] did a lot of crying, and eventually Jonathan took me aside and he said, “You know, you’re not the heroine.” I said, “I’m not?” (Laughs) He said, “No.  You’re the heavy.  You’re the villain.  Don’t you realize that that’s a great part?  It’s much meatier than some sissy little ingénue with a broken heart.  You really should dig deeper.”  I said, “Well I don’t know.  I don’t tend to get jealous.  If a guy doesn’t want me I seem to figure ‘good riddance.’”  He said, “No, no no!  You have to dig deeper.  It’s there.  All the anger and cruelty and resentment that you are expected to play in this part.”  I don’t know if at that point I began to play Angelique differently, but I know slowly over time I felt more comfortable with her spells.  Also, many people have said that Jonathan Frid has a great deal of trouble remembering lines.  There are really two ways to learn dialogue.  One is to memorize the words, which means at any moment you can forget them.  The other is to piece together the actions that motivate the words, which follow one another logically.  If you do that you never forget your lines.  You may not say the words exactly right, but you won’t ever go up.  Well Jonathan went up a lot, and we had teleprompters and he would look over my shoulder at them, and I had always known that he had forgotten his line.  Often I would have to give him his line, or pick it up.  [Dark Shadows] was taped live, so we couldn’t go back and do it again, which is why there are so many bloopers and blunders.

Sam:  Well there is this famous story about how you once almost burnt down the set during filming.

Lara Parker's famous "house of cards incident": "Well I lit the candle and started the incantation and said it to the house of cards, and the whole thing went “Poof!”"

Lara:  Well, not the set.  It was the famous house of cards scene.  First of all I had to build a house out of very big playing cards, which was a trick in itself to do without it falling down.  Then we went to commercial and the prop man covered the cards with lighter fluid.  Since we were live on tape the commercials were cut right into the tape.  We sat there and had to wait until the commercial was finished.  Well there was another commercial and then the prop man began to worry about the house of cards not burning and he came over and squirted it again.  He squirted it three times with lighter fluid.  The scene was an incantation where I call upon the powers of darkness and what I was doing was setting fire to Vicki’s room so I could scare her out [of Collingwood Manor] so Reverend Trask would be able to grab her and say that she was a witch.  So I started this incantation and at the very end was the words “Burn burn burn.”  By then the house of cards should have been little flames in front of my eyes.  Well I lit the candle and started the incantation and said it to the house of cards, and the whole thing went “Poof!”  It singed my eyelashes and my eyebrows and, of course, turned immediately to ashes.  I still had this long incantation to say and at the say I said “Burnt burnt burnt.”  There was nothing left to burn!  I had to finger the ashes!  It was just ridiculous, and that happened to us a lot.  There was no turning back.

Sam:  They killed off Angelique during the 1795 sequence originally.  Did you know that you’d be brought back when the series returned to the present at that time?

Lara Parker came back as a brunette when she returned to Dark Shadows after the 1795 storyline: "Fans seemed to watch it more when Angelique and Barnabas were fighting it out. That seemed to be the most popular part of the show, so (Dan Curtis) brought me back many, many times."

Lara:  No.  Dan Curtis called me and said, “You’ve been great kiddo, but we’re going to kill your character.  Thanks a lot for everything.”  Of course I was very sad, but about two months later they called me and said that they wanted me back.  We were kind of the first team, and the fans seemed to watch it more when Angelique and Barnabas were fighting it out.  That seemed to be the most popular part of the show, so [Dan Curtis] brought me back many, many times.  I was on the set on the very last day.  It was a great experience for me, and I was very fortunate to get such a great role.  I went to New York to become a famous actress, and after that I figured my next option was to go to Los Angeles, so I came out to California to become a famous actress.  I didn’t realize until ten years later that, although I got a lot of jobs, that [Angelique] was really my best part.  I realized it more when I looked back.

Sam:  There is a real otherworldly, almost hypnotic, feel to watching Dark Shadows.  How did the cast and crew create that incredible dynamic?

"It was like opening night with no rehearsal every single day. I think that created, what I call, a tone. A tone of tension. We were all very tense. It was very hard to do, and the tension fed the scene in a very strange way."

Lara:  It was a situation where we were very under rehearsed, we’re trying to hit our mark and get in our light.  They just cut your lines, you’re trying to remember your cues, trying to play the emotions fully, trying to change costumes, trying to get over to the other set.  All of this [was what we did] and it was like opening night with no rehearsal every single day.  I think that created, what I call, a tone.  A tone of tension.  We were all very tense.  It was very hard to do, and the tension fed the scene in a very strange way.  I used to think, when I watched Jonathan Frid go up, that he had egg on his face.  I had never seen such a terrible performance.  There would be panic in his eyes, his face would screw up, he’d be gasping, he couldn’t even catch his breath, he’d be stuttering.  But we’d watch the episode the next week and we’d get to the scene where Jonathan missed his line, and he’d be mesmerizing.  Why?  Because he was tortured.  That was his part.  That was his character.  He was tortured.  He was miserably unhappy because he was a vampire and he couldn’t have the woman he loved.  He was frustrated.  He was agitated.  He was searching for a way out.  So the way the actor felt fed the scene perfectly.  We had to do these very difficult scenes a lot of the time.  We’d have to run over to the chormakey set, and make sure you’re the right size so you can appear and disappear into a room, and then run back so you can be in the room and then fire starts at your feet, and then you knock over the set, or a door swings open, or a painting falls off the wall.  These things were just constantly happening, and we were rising to the occasion and playing it like theater.  And we were playing these absurd situations.  Corpses that would return to their grave, and telling ghosts to leave, and vampires calling girls to give them comfort and we were expected to play these situations with complete and total conviction.  We never played it arch.

Sam:  Let’s talk about Night of Dark Shadows.  That was a strange film.  None of the actors were playing the characters from the show.

Lara Parker starred opposite David Selby in the second "Dark Shadows" cinematic release, "Night of Dark Shadows," which is set to be released on DVD with 45 minutes of additional material:

Lara:  Yeah.  I’m not really playing Angelique.  I’m not playing a witch.  I’m playing a ghost and not my real character.

Sam:  How did the changes affect the fan reaction?

Lara:  It didn’t do as well as [House of Dark Shadows] but I think the reason for that was because Dan was forced to cut it.  He had to cut forty minutes out of it because MGM said that it was far too long.  So it really didn’t end up gathering the kind of suspense that it needed.  I think that it was a much more understated film.  I was in a lot of scenes that didn’t make it into the film which were haunting.  It was pretty scary.  Ghosts can be pretty scary.  They kind of stuck to the relationship between Kate Jackson and David Selby and the kind of gathering fear that the movie had when they shot it.  You know, they are going to re-release it with all the cut scenes.  They just have to find someone to do Grayson Hall’s voice.  We’ve all gone in and redubbed the soundtrack [to the cut scenes].  Because of the [new movie], it will be released this year.

Sam:  After Dark Shadows you did a lot of memorable television work through the 70’s, such as your appearances in The Incredible Hulk and Kolchak, but probably the most highly acclaimed film you made was, Save the Tiger with Jack Lemmon.  What was Jack Lemmon like?  He does such an intense performance in the film.

Lara Parker appeared in the Academy Award winning film "Save the Tiger" with Jack Lemmon, despite a difficult audition: "I had this feeling that something weird was going to happen. I don’t know why. There was another girl there, and a photographer and I just got the feeling that I was in a bad situation."

Lara:  He was wonderful.  On a movie set, the director says, “Let’s go” and the AD says, “Quiet on the set” and then the guy who was running the sound would say, “Speed” and then when the director feels the moment is right he calls, “Action” and then you start to play the scene.  Well right after the sound man would say, “Speed,” Jack Lemmon would say, “Magic time.”  He’d say that underneath his breath.  Thinking back to him saying that, it gives you goose bumps and makes you think, “What a wonderful thing to be doing, making a movie.”  (Laughs)  You just can’t believe you’re on a set making a movie.  Jack Lemmon made it such a thrilling thing.  He was wonderful to me.  I had a little problem doing the scene in my underwear and the director wanted me to do a couple of thing with the other actress in the scene, and I felt very uncomfortable.  Well the next day Jack Lemmon took me aside and said, “I just want you to know that none of that will be in the picture.”  I said, “Really?”  He said, “Yeah.  You shouldn’t have been treated that way and that was really not necessary.”  He was a good person.  He stood up for me.  It’s unbelievable how I even got that part. My audition was in someone’s apartment and the director was John Avildsen, and he wanted me in my underwear during the audition and he gave me some grass.  Well I had this feeling that something weird was going to happen.  I don’t know why.  There was another girl there, and a photographer and I just got the feeling that I was in a bad situation.  I had four or five changes of clothes, and all my make-up and I said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”  He said, “Okay” and I picked up my coat, left all my clothes and my make up and all my jewelry and my shoes, walked out the door barefoot, down the street, hailed a taxi and I went home.  My husband went back two hours later and said, “I came for my wife’s stuff.”  I couldn’t handle it, but I still got the part.  Save the Tiger was really the reason I came to LA.  I came out to shoot it, and by then my children were nine and ten and I just thought maybe Los Angeles would be a better place for them to live than New York City.

Despite promotional rumors, no real cultists were used during the making of "Race with the Devil": "They were just a group of actors. It was pretty lurid though, wasn’t it?"

Sam:  Another film that you did in the 70’s, Race with the Devil, is, in my opinion, one of the coolest films of the era.

Lara:  Oh.  You really think so?  (Laughs)

Sam:  That was a cool movie.  I didn’t say it was a great movie.  I said it was a cool movie.  It was very 70’s. Very unique.  You create a real sense of much needed paranoia in the film, which Peter Fonda, Warren Oats and Loretta Swit weren’t able to portray.

Lara:  Well, I had done a lot of it on Dark Shadows. (Laughs)

Sam:  There is a rumor that they really used a satanic cult for the ritual scenes.  Was that true?

Lara:  No.  They were just a group of actors.  It was pretty lurid though, wasn’t it?

Sam:  Yeah.  It was really eerie.  But my favorite image is Peter Fonda on the top of the Winnebago shooting satanist stunt men on the highway.  There is something so 70’s about that scene.  It’s a sequence that sticks with me.

Warren Oats, Loretta Swit, Lara Parker and Peter Fonda in "Race with the Devil": "I was the paranoid one. I was the one who sensed it. I don’t know why nobody else chose to play that."

Lara:  There was a lot of interesting things about working on that picture.  It was shot in San Antonio in the middle of winter, so the bleakness of the film as a setting says a lot for it.  Then I never realized that stunt guys had specialties.  They had a stunt guy to drive the Winnebago, and stunt guys to do all the dirt bike scenes.  Of course Peter Fonda wanted to do as many of those as possible.  Then they had a guy who could flip a car, and a guy who could drive a car on two wheels.  (Laughs)  They were all different people of course, but they were all supposed to be the same person.  It was a lot of fun watching them do the stunts.  I thought the ending was lame.

Sam:  Well, during that time open ended endings in horror films were sort of a standard clique.  It was very trendy.

Lara:  Well, in my opinion, they should have all woken up in the morning and my character, Callie, should have been gone except for a pile of my clothes that are left behind.  Because I was the paranoid one.  I was the one who sensed it.  I don’t know why nobody else chose to play that.

Sam:  Well, after a while you bring that film forward in a certain way via your paranoia.

Lara:  Especially in the swimming pool scene, and with the snake scene.  The teamsters wouldn’t even come on the set during that scene.  That was supposed to be a two character scene but Loretta Swit refused to come on the set with the snake.

Sam:  So why were you willing to work with the snake?

Lara Parker wrestles with a rattle snake in "Race with the Devil": "I had to hold the snake by two ends and put it in my face and scream. I loved that. After being on Dark Shadows, that just cooked for me. I just thought that was great."

Lara:  Well they didn’t scare me.  The snake handler pulls the fangs, and they milk the glands and you can see all the poison going into a glass.  So the snake has nothing to bite with.  I was perfectly okay.  I was more worried about hurting the snake. (Laughs)  Jack Skerritt, who was the director, wanted me to take the snake and whip it across the room and slam it against the counter.  I couldn’t seem to do it, and I gently lifted it up into the air and put it on the counter.  He’d go, “Throw that sucker.  Come on.”  At one point he said, “Can you get the tail that’s rattling and the head with the tongue coming in and out both into your close up while you’re screaming?”  I had to hold the snake by two ends and put it in my face and scream.  I loved that.  After being on Dark Shadows, that just cooked for me.  I just thought that was great.

Sam:  Now in recent years you have turned from acting to writing.  Due to the new Dark Shadows movie the Dark Shadows books that you wrote a number of years ago are going back into publication.  What lead you to write Angelique’s Descent?

Lara Parker's "Dark Shadows" novels are now back in print after over a decade: "My books are going to be sold now in five European countries! They are going to be translated into Italian and Hungarian, not because of me, but because of Johnny Depp! I just can’t believe my good luck."

Lara:  Well an editor from Harper Collins got in touch with me and said, “We’d like to start a series of novels.”  I think what they had in mind was more like the Buffy novels.  Little TV tie in novels that if you were quick and well organized you could knock one out in a couple of months.  I said, “You want me to write a novel?  I don’t know how to write a novel.”  She said, “Well, we’d really like to use your name, so if you can do the best you can we’d have a real writer come in and rewrite it. That’s just what William Shatner does.  He doesn’t really write them.  He may come up with the idea and dictates a few things.”  But I said, “I’m going to go through all the trouble to write a novel and then someone is going to rewrite it?  I’m not interested.”  So she said, “Why don’t you put together an outline.  Do you have any ideas?”  So I started thinking and I came up with an idea for Angelique’s childhood and I sent her that.  She said, “I love it.  Just write fifty pages and we’ll see what we think.”  So I wrote the first fifty pages and she said, “This is absolutely wonderful.  Send me another fifty pages.”  She kind of made me write fifty pages at a time.  Well the outline I sent segwayed into the actual show, and when I got to the last hundred pages she said, “You’ve got to wrap this up” so I just went into the show and told the story as it was done there.  Fans loved it.  It sold really really well, but then Harper Collins decided not to do any more.  So I took it back because it belonged to me.  So when I wrote the second book, The Salem Branch, in order to get through that one I went to graduate school.  I got my MSA in creative writing, and one of the projects was to write a novel.  I actually had input from literary writers who were my professors, who were very intrigued by the idea of a horror novel.  But I did a tremendous amount of research for both of the novels.  For Angelique’s Descent I spent months reading about the slaves and sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and the uprisings and all the different tribes and voodoo.  It was a huge amount of research.  It is unusual for a TV tie-in novel.  I think I did it much more intelligently.  I told this story about a little girl and how she became a witch.  With the Salem Branch I did a huge amount of research on the Puritans and what their ministers were like and I talk about the devil and the Salem witch trials, which has been done to death, but I put my own twist on it.  In my book the woman, Miranda, really is a witch.  Here they are jailing and hanging these poor women who aren’t witches, and here’s one in their midst who truly is a witch and trying very hard not to let anyone find out.

Sam:  You have a third Dark Shadows novel in the works.  Is it a sequel to The Salem Branch?

Lara Parker's third book in her "Dark Shadows" trilogy, "Wolf's Moon," will be released this fall and will focus on werewolf Quinton Collins.

Lara:  Well, it starts where the Salem Branch ended, but you don’t have to have read it [to understand it].  It’s mostly about Quinton, who has a painting which keeps him young and keeps him subject to the werewolf curse.  In The Salem Branch, Barnabas steals the painting and hides it in a crypt, and when Quinton doesn’t have it he starts to age. When the full moon comes he turns into a werewolf.  It’s mostly about Quinton’s desperate attempt to find the painting and not go through the metamorphosis.  David and Jackie end up looking for the painting and they go back to the 1920’s during prohibition.  Again, [I had to do] tons of reading about the twenties and looking at the language and the dialogue and the habits and attitudes and the dress because Quinton is the same age, and he is in love with the young Elizabeth, who is nineteen and a flapper.  It turns out that she is the love of his life.  When he lost her he became a womanizer.

Sam:  There is a lot of anticipation for the new Dark Shadows film which has sort of put the franchise back into the mainstream.  I’ve seen some beautiful shots that were taken of you, Jonathan Frid, Kathryn Leigh Scott and David Selby that were taken during the filming.  I know by now you’ve probably heard the negative fan reactions to the comedic tone of the trailers.  What are your feelings on Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s vision of Dark Shadows?  Do you think the fans that are screaming foul are overreacting?

The comedic trailers to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows" film caused controversy amongst long time fans: "I would not, in a million years, criticize it or find fault with it or put it down because I think it’s absolutely amazing that we made something that long ago that captured the fantasies and imaginations and creative efforts of these people...Whether the movie is successful or not doesn’t depend on the Dark Shadows fans. It depends on the Johnny Depp fans."

Lara:  Well, first of all, I think the choice moments are the jokes and that they ended up in the trailer.  I think a lot of the movie will be more serious.  I knew from the very beginning, before I even was on the set, that knowing Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, it would be a “tongue in cheek” kind of take on it.  It’s inevitable with their personalities and the aesthetics which they share.  They are soul mates in terms of a sense of satire and a sense of the absurd and they are both extremely talented.  The fans don’t all hate it.  A lot of them love it, but the ones that do hate it feel betrayed.  The seriousness of the show was what they loved.  In my opinion, [Dark Shadows] would not work in today’s world.  I’m often asked why Dark Shadows was such a success and I think it had a lot to do with the time [it was made].  It was a much more innocent time where people accepted the dramatic moments more easily.  I think there is a lot of cynicism now.  Audiences today are just so smart.  They always see ahead.  They always get what’s coming.  It’s not like it used to be when you could surprise them and scare them.  But I am amazed that people of that caliber want to do a movie based on our show.  I would not, in a million years, criticize it or find fault with it or put it down because I think it’s absolutely amazing that we made something that long ago that captured the fantasies and imaginations and creative efforts of these people.  The fans that are still Dark Shadows fans are a very small number compared to Johnny Depp fans.  Whether the movie is successful or not doesn’t depend on the Dark Shadows fans.  It depends on the Johnny Depp fans, and it’s a whole new group of people, and it’s a huge, huge following.  My books are going to be sold now in five European countries!  They are going to be translated into Italian and Hungarian, not because of me, but because of Johnny Depp!  I just can’t believe my good luck.  We’ve been going to Dark Shadows conventions every single year for thirty-five years to keep the show alive and to [meet fans].  It’s a wonderful handful of people who love Dark Shadows, but if they’re unhappy it’s just human nature.  It’s human nature to moan when anything gets changed.  It’s a certain group of people who don’t like when things are different.

Sam:  Well, it’s also natural for fans to complain about changes.  That goes hand in hand with fandom.

Lara:  I just think they’re all Republicans.  They just don’t want anything to change and they want to find fault when actually it’ss something to be celebrated. It’s an absolute miracle that this film even got made.  I never thought it would get made.  They talked about it for years and years and years and I went, “Oh yeah, right.”

Sam:  Well, through all the screen captures and publicity material that I’ve seen, it just looks to good to be bad.  Fans also seem to forget that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are fans of Dark Shadows as well, and I think they love the series too much to screw it up.

The original "Dark Shadows" cast meets the new players: (left to right) Jonathan Frid, Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker, director Tim Burton, David Selby and Jonny Lee Miller as Roger Collins.

Lara:  Well even if they do screw it up they are so good at what they do.  They have the most gorgeous sets I’ve ever seen.  They rebuilt the town of Collinsport.  They rebuilt the harbor with real water and real boats!  I mean, they built Collinwood Manor with a stairway that’s three stories high and a chandelier that’s three times bigger than [the original Dark Shadow’s] set!  Huge paintings and sculpture and the balustrades of the stairway are all hand carved wood.  It just takes your breath away.  The production value is just amazing.  And they have Alice Cooper!  Of all of the rock stars throughout history, he’s the perfect one!  The guy played the devil on stage!  He’s the sweetest guy!  A sweetheart!  He’s from Phoenix and plays golf, and here he is sitting in this exuberant make-up with the black lines through his eyes and having a great time.  There’s a lot to be said about the ambiance on the set.  The atmosphere on the set was just so happy.  All of the actors came and talked to us.  Chloe Moretz came and hung out for hours. She had her best friend with her, and they were so excited to meet us because they’d been watching the original show in the makeup room.  They’d been laughing at all the mistakes that we made.  Helena Bonham Carter has been quoted as saying that [Dark Shadows] was “transcendently awful” but she also said, “We all love it.  We’re all hooked.”  Michelle Pfeiffer said that she loves the show, and loved doing the film and she hopes there will be a sequel.  She expects there to be a sequel.  I think its going to be fun.

Sam:  Did you get a chance to talk with Eva Green about being Angelique.

Eva Green as the new Angelique Bouchard: "I guess I always thought that the character belonged to me, but Eva Green came out of her dressing room and sauntered over and I thought, “Oh my god. It belongs to her now.”"

Lara:  Yes.  I had a long conversation with her and she said that, “The part is a gift.  It’s multi-layered.”  She didn’t ask me for my advice, and I didn’t give it.  Obviously it’s her take on Angelique and [she does the] classic “nasty, sexy witch.”  That was never my take on Angelique.  My take is that she had deep reasons for the way she was.

Sam:  What is it like to hand your character over to another actress?

Lara:  I had a feeling about Angelique that I didn’t expect.  I guess I always thought that the character belonged to me, but Eva Green came out of her dressing room and sauntered over and I thought, “Oh my god.  It belongs to her now.”  It was kind of hard for me, but at the same time I think [Eva Green] is so vibrant and so gorgeous and a great choice.  I am so glad they chose her.  She is really remarkably vivacious and a powerful actress.  She loves to play evil roles.

Sam:  What is your impression of Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins?

Lara:  I think Johnny Depp looks transcendently beautiful in that white make up and the deep set eyes and those finger nails.  It just blows my mind.  Johnny Depp is not playing it for real.  He’s putting a spin on it, because if they played it for real, it would not work at all in today’s world.  The main thing is that [Johnny Depp and Tim Burton] couldn’t do it any differently being the people they are.  Those two people would not have done it like Twilight.  Not in a million years.  They just have a different take on the world.

Sam:  Now what was it like to see Johnny Depp and Jonathan Frid come together, and what was Mr. Frid’s reaction to coming face to face with another man in the role of Barnabas Collins?

Jonathan Frid, David Selby, Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott together for the last time during filming of "Dark Shadows." Jonathan Frid would pass away on April 13th, 2012, a month before the opening of the film.

Lara:  Well, we had to sign a paper that said we would not take any photographs or divulge anything that had happened on the set.  But there was one moment when the two were standing face to face, and I was standing looking at their two profiles.  Jonathan is almost ninety years old and suffers of dementia and he didn’t really want to be there.  He got up in the morning and went down to the front desk with his suitcase and told them he wanted to go back to Canada and to get him on a flight right away.  I don’t even think he knew who Johnny Depp was. (Laughs)  But anyhow, we finally got him on the set, and Johnny Depp said to him, “This is such an honour and a pleasure,” and he swept his arm around to the hundred member crew and everything, and said, “None of this would be happening if it were not for you.”  It was such a generous thing to say.  I thought that I wish I could have photographed those two profiles face to face.  It will be a picture I will always carry in my mind.

Lara Parker, David Selby and Kathryn Leigh Scott at the opening of "Dark Shadows" at Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theater.

When movie fans go to see the new Dark Shadows film this summer, one major player in the Dark Shadows family sadly will not be among them.  A few weeks after I conducted this interview, Jonathan Frid passed away at the age of 87.  Did he pass the curse of Barnabas Collins onto Johnny Depp in an exchange of energy during their meeting on the set?  We’ll never really know, but it is a strange footnote in Dark Shadows history.  Thankfully Lara Parker was there to witness this special moment in time, and share it with Dark Shadows fans.

The new Dark Shadows will bring a new Collinwood, a new Collins Family and a new Angelique Bouchard to film audiences, but Lara Parker’s portrayal of Angelique will always be the most bewitching to me.  After our interview was finished, my face began to hurt because of the ear to ear grin that was permanently on my face during our talk.  What can I say?  Although she may not really be a witch, Lara Parker had her own unique ability to put a spell on me.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  I would like to send out a special thanks to Jim Pearson for helping to arrange my talk with Lara Parker, and for Stuart Manning for leading me in the right direction.  Thanks to you both, as a fan and a professional, for helping this memorable moment of my career happen, and also for the hard work that both of you do to maintain the original Dark Shadows fandom alive.  Us old school DS fans would be lost without you both and we all owe you so much.

America Idol has gone from being a mean spirited karaoke contest to a showcase of today's most talented young singers. Each one of these performers deserve a recording contract,

Confession time.  I am totally emotionally invested in American Idol this year.  Seriously.  It’s been nearly eight years since I’ve watched the program, but the show that I once deemed a mean spirited Karaoke contest has reinvented itself into what is always sought itself out to be – a showcase for the most talent young singers in America.  Season 11 of the popular reality show has often been difficult to watch because everybody on the show truly deserves a recording contract, but eventually, all your favorites, will go home one by one.  As of this writing, all of my favorites have gone home.  But careers don’t stop when a contestant goes home, and as I am starting to discover, the music doesn’t begin the day that the contestant walks into the audition room.

North Haven's Gabi Carrubba: The American Idol that got away. Thankfully the music doesn't stop during Vegas week.

Take Gabi Carrubba for example.  When Gabi stepped into the audition room this year in Savannah Georgia, the pretty sixteen year old with a cute smile and a voice like golden butter grooved her way into the judge’s hearts with her rendition of Maroon 5’s Sunday Morning.  Randy Jackson told her “You were born to do this,”  Jennifer Lopez compared her to Luther Vandross,  Steven Tyler said “This may be your magic moment” and for me, watching at home, I pegged Gabi Carrubba as one of the contestants to watch.  She became the youngest of my personal top three contestants in the early days of America Idol Season 11.

Unfortunately, Gabi also was the first of my top three to be eliminated.  Plowing through the brutal Hollywood week with barely a scrape, and even making it through a difficult first round in Las Vegas, Gabi was the first to be eliminated, with absolutely no explanation, in the second round of the Vegas performances.  Viewers barely got to know Gabi Carrubba.  The girl was obviously a young powerhouse of sound.  Something just seemed wrong about it.  I felt ripped off.

Gabi Carrubba wowed the judges in Savanah Georgia with her rendition of Maroon 5's "Sunday Morning." Randy Jackson said to her "You were born to do this."

But to be honest, it wasn’t American Idol that made me a real Gabi Carrubba fan.  While I first heard of her through the show, it was while doing a search for her on YouTube that I discovered a live performance from this year of Gabi singing At Last  as a tribute to the recent death of Etta James.  It was that performance that made me sit up and really listen.  As Gabi tackled the song seemingly effortlessly all I could think was “Wow.  Little white girls do sound like that.”  That’s when I knew that Gabi Carrubba was something special, and if she is not the future face of music, then she should be.  The music industry needs more talent like Gabi Carrubba.

Tracking down Gabi to her home in New Haven Connecticut, I had the pleasure to recently had a chance to talk to her about her American Idol experience, and to talk about her future plans in the music industry.  But I was surprised how much American Idol downplayed her previous career.  Having been dancing since the age of one, Gabi has worked in professional theater, has been taking voice lessons for a decade and has been singing on stage for most of her life. Now seventeen and applying for New York based theater and art schools, life didn’t end in Las Vegas for Gabi Carrubba.  We are just finally getting to know her.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE PRESENTS

AT LAST:

A CONVERSATION WITH GABI CARRUBBA

"Being on the stage was better then anything I could ever ask for. Being on stage every night was a dream come true."

Sam:  As I wrote to you, like most people I became aware of you watching American Idol.  However, when I was doing research for this interview I was really surprised by how much American Idol downplayed the career that you have already had in music.  You’ve been a professional since you were a little kid.

Gabi:  Yeah.

Sam:  When did you start performing professionally?

Gabi:  I was a dancer first.  I started dancing when I was one year old.  I was in [what they called] “the diaper dancers.”

Sam:  Wow.  At age one had you even developed memory yet?

Gabi:  Probably not.  I was just doing shovel step and just dancing around.

Sam:  How did dancing graduate to singing?

Gabi:  Well my dance studio also had some singers there, and I’d hear them and think “Oh.  I like that.”  So I’d just be humming along with them and then my Mom said “Gab.  You can kind of sing!”  So I tried out for Annie at the local theater, and I got in as one of the extra orphans.  Not a name character.  Just one of the ones that came on for Hard Knock Life and scrub the floors for a little bit.  So I just loved to do that.  Singing and dancing has been a part of my life.

Sam:  Now your production of Annie was a big deal, wasn’t it?

Gabi:  It was the national tour.  We stopped at Madison Square Gardens.

Sam:  What was that like for you?

Gabi:  Annie was eight months of seventh grade.  Being on the stage was better then anything I could ever ask for.  Being on stage every night was a dream come true.  But coming back was when it was hard.  I mean, girls are rough.  They didn’t really like me when I came back.

Sam:  Really?

Gabi:  Yeah.  It was hard because nobody understood, and nobody really understands now.  It’s hard to explain music to anyone who doesn’t appreciate it as much as I do.

"It’s hard to explain music to anyone who doesn’t appreciate it as much as I do."

Sam:  Do you come from a musical family, or a performance background?

Gabi:  Not really, no.  My Dad can play the guitar very very well, but he can’t carry a tune.  No offense.  I love him to death.  And my mother…oh God no.  Nobody in my family sings.

Sam:  Well I look at the stuff that you have done on YouTube, and I’ve read about some of your musical influences, and you seem to have a love for good performers and great songs.  Where does this influence come from?

Gabi:  Well the songs that I like are the songs that I know I can move to.  Dancing has always been such a strong influence.  Plus, my Noni has been humming around me.  I think I’m an old soul.  I love old bluesy music.  I think that’s a major interest.

Sam:  Now I read that you were the winner of “The American Idol Experience.”  I’ve never heard of this.  What is that exactly?

Gabi:  “The American Idol Experience” is an attraction at Universal Studios in Florida.  Anybody can try out.  The winner gets to go to the front of the line at the real American Idol audition.  Thank god I won that because waiting in that line would have been horrible!

Sam:  Now you auditioned in Savannah, right?

American Idol hopefuls in Savannah, Georgia: "I was the ninth person of the whole day. Thank god. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t get that place in line, I don’t know if I’d even tried out."

Gabi:  Yeah.

Sam:  Were you one of the first people through that door?

Gabi:  I was the ninth person of the whole day.  Thank god.  I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t get that place in line,  I don’t know if I’d even tried out.

Sam:  Before that had you been singing on stage beyond theater?

Gabi:  No.  I had been doing theater my entire life.  I think that’s also why I could have gotten eliminated on Idol.  I’ve been taking singing lessons for ten years, and I’ve just been doing Broadway.  During the “American Idol Experience” I sang a Broadway song.

Sam:  What did you sing?

Gabi:  I sang Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas.  I was fourteen.  So I’ve been doing that my whole life.  So singing for myself…well…I was just winging it the whole time.  So when I go back to Idol I’m going to be more prepared as my own artist.

Sam:  So you will be trying out for American Idol again next year!

Gabi:  Yes I am.

Sam:  American Idol’s producer Nigel Lythgoe went on twitter and said that he was sorry to see you get cut.  He obviously really liked you.  Were you ever given a reason why you were cut?

Despite a show stopping performance of Bobby Day's "Rockin' Robin" in Las Vegas, Gabi Carrubba was cut from "American Idol" just short of making the live broadcasts: "They didn’t give me any reason. What they showed on TV was exactly what happened in real life."

Gabi:  They didn’t give me any reason.  What they showed on TV was exactly what happened in real life.

Sam:  And as a viewer looking in, that was painful to watch.

Gabi:  Yeah.  It made me seem like such a little diva.  I did freak out a little bit because I was really stressed and completely exhausted.  I had known the people I was with since early July, so I could be brutally honest with them and tell them it wasn’t right and they would completely understand it.  It was all to help each other, you know?  It was never anything to be mean or to hurt them.

Sam:  How hands on were Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson when it came to the contestants.  Did you just see them at the performances or did they offer any additional guidance during the process?

"American Idol" judges Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson: "I saw them at the performances and the auditions, but we really got to be close to the executive producers...The executive producers basically call the shots on everything."

Gabi:  I saw them at the performances and the auditions, but we really got to be close to the executive producers.  That was who we were close to.  The executive producers basically call the shots on everything.  They are great.  Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick are amazing. I am so thankful to have met them.  And all the judges were never looking to discourage anybody.  They truly do want what’s best for you.  They give you criticism because they know you can take it.

Sam:  What I’ve noticed this year, compared to others, is that there is a more nurturing and positive energy to the judges compared to when Simon Cowell was on the show.  It’s all about building people up, and I think that brings out much better performances.

Gabi:  Right.  I wish I could have sung for Simon though.  I really do.

Sam:  How about your experiences with the contestants.  Were there a lot of friendships built?

Gabi:  Yes.  Oh my god yes.  I still talk to everybody.

Sam:  What about the other end of it?  Was there any jealousy or rivalries?

Gabi Carruba with Eban Franckewitz, Ariel Sprauge, Jeremy Rosado and David Leathers: "We were all so focused and we didn’t want to deal with that drama."

Gabi:  Well, you could always tell that there was, but I always stayed close with my group of friends.  The younger kids.  I am so glad I met them.  We were all so focused and we didn’t want to deal with that drama.  It was just so amazing.  I miss it so much.  That’s why I want to go back.  I really need to meet more people.  I loved meeting everyone.  But with the adults there was definitely some bickering, but the younger kids stayed completely out of it.  We’d laugh at everything.

Sam:  Well looking back at the group numbers you were in, those performances always went very smooth compared to some of the older groups, and were always well welcomed by the judges.  Was this because of the lack of drama?

Gabi Carrubba and David Leathers Jr: "He was one of my best friends during this whole thing, because anytime I was crying or freaking out he would just laugh at me."

Gabi:  Well, in Vegas there was a little drama but we were all laughing.  Do you remember David Leathers?

Sam:  Yes I do.

Gabi:  He was one of my best friends during this whole thing, because anytime I was crying or freaking out he would just laugh at me. He would just straight up and laugh, and then I’d laugh and feel better.

Sam:  In retrospect, how do you feel about the way you were let go from the competition.  Do you feel that they cut you loose too early?

Gabi:  I don’t dwell on it.  American Idol has put a fire under my butt and every single day I say that when I go back there that I want them to say “There she is.  That’s going to be the next American Idol.  That’s the next winner.”  I want them to think that the moment I walk in, and I want them to say “Wow, Gabi.  I can really tell you practiced.”  Nigel e-mailed me and said “Gabi, as bad as this sounds, I’m actually kind of happy you got eliminated because you know what you have to do in order to be better and to definitely go farther in the competition.  You need to find yourself more as an artist.”  I’ve taken that criticism and every day I’ve been trying to be more creative and trying to cover more songs and put my own twist on them.  Every single day I think about that, and that’s my motivation.  That’s what’s driving me and keeping me positive.

Sam:  Are you still watching the competition?

Gabi:  Yes.  I have to watch it on YouTube because I am always dancing and singing or something.

Sam:  Who is your favorite to win?

Gabi Carrubba with "American Idol" favorite Colton Dixon: "I just love Colton so much. I love him. I love everyone. I don’t know. It’s so hard."

Gabi:  Well, oh my gosh.  I love Jessica Sanchez and her Mom.  I love Joshua Ledet.  He is like a soul train.  A walking soul.  The model of American Idol Season 11 is when Joshua would sing “Someone say Jesus!”  He would always be singing that.  But I can’t believe Colton Dixon is gone.

Sam:  That was hard to watch, but at this point of the show it’s really just the painful reality of watching these amazing performers go home.  Everyone deserves to win at this point.   It’ll keep getting harder as it goes along.

Gabi:  I know, but everybody has to go eventually.

Sam:  This must be even more emotional for you to watch because you actually know these people.

Gabi:  I just love Colton so much.  I love him.  I love everyone.  I don’t know.  It’s so hard.

Sam:  So let’s talk about what comes next.  You said you are developing yourself more as an individual artist.  Are you composing music?

"I’d rather be playing my own music that I love to do for ten people then doing technological crap that I don’t enjoy singing for five million people."

Gabi:  Yes.  I am working really hard on creating an album of my own style.  Really, my music is very simple.  It’s me on a piano.  I’m not one for all the techno crap.  I want it to be real.  I want it to be me.  Just me.

Sam:  Are you collaborating with someone?

Gabi:  I’ve been working with some people, but some people don’t understand what’s new, and what’s upcoming.  I’ll be working with some people in New York.

Sam:  Now I don’t want to sound old here, but I don’t understand music on the radio anymore.  Do you know what I mean?

Gabi:  Yup.

Sam:  It doesn’t even sound like music to me.

Gabi:  Nope.

Sam:  Do you get frustrated with the trends in the modern music industry?

Gabi:  Yes.  Totally.

Sam:  What are you hoping to do to help make the musical landscape?  What is your vision of what music can be?

Bon Iver (aka John Vernon): "I aspire to be just like him. He is successful, but without being on the radio and without auto-tuning his music."

Gabi:  I think that people need to start appreciating real music.  Music that people are playing with their real hands and not on a computer screen.  One of my favorite bands is Bon Iver.  [Justin Vernon] is so creative, and nobody really appreciates his creativity.  I aspire to be just like him.  He is successful, but without being on the radio and without auto-tuning his music.  He is himself and he is loved by so many people.  I’d rather be playing my own music that I love to do for ten people then doing technological crap that I don’t enjoy singing for five million people.

Sam:  When you have been given the talent you have, why would you want to sing something you don’t enjoy singing?  You don’t need to be auto-tuned.  You’re in tune already.  What is the next step in your career?

Gabi:  I’ve been doing auditions for college.

Sam:  Oh!  What are you applying for?

Gabi:  I’m doing musical theater for now.

"American Idol has put a fire under my butt and every single day I say that when I go back there that I want them to say “There she is. That’s going to be the next American Idol."

Sam:  Obviously someone is going to let you in.  They should be falling over themselves for you.  Who have you auditioned for?

Gabi:  I auditioned for NYU, Pace University, Marymount Manhattan and American Music and Dramatic Academy.

Sam:  And who have you heard back from?

Gabi:  I’ve gotten [accepted by] Pace, Marymount and I’m still waiting for AMDA and NYU.

Sam:  And you’ll be starting in the fall?

Gabi:  Yup.  These are all right in New York City, which is perfect too.

Sam:  So although you are going back to American Idol next year, no matter what happens you will still be continuing your career in music.  Do you still get recognized or media attention wince you left American Idol?

Gabi:  Yes.  It’s so weird, but I like it.  I went shopping with my best friend the other day and I went in line to get a hot dog and she sat down with some other people and they looked at her and said “Is that Gabi Carrubba from American Idol?”  She said “It is” and I sat down and they were so nice.  They said “You got robbed!”  It’s funny that people recognize me.

Let me tell you something I really like about Gabi Carrubba.  I have done a lot of interviews with musicians, and when it comes to the topic of what is right and wrong with the music industry today most musicians tend to try to stay liberal about the topic despite what their true feelings are.  Perhaps it’s her age, or maybe it’s her confidence, but I found it really refreshing that Gabi has a firm idea of what she wants and does not want out of a music career, and that she is willing to bluntly call out what is phony and fake about the modern recording industry.  The sad truth is that in the modern music industry it no longer takes talent to be a star.  That’s why when someone is born with a voice like Gabi Carrubba, not to mention all this years contestants on American Idol, it is tough to watch some of the pop acts that rise to the top of the music charts, while other kids with real talent fall through the cracks.  An emotional and artistic turn around needs to be made in the music industry today.  We need to support talent over image instead of the other way around.  Recording companies need to sign people who can sing instead of people who can look good.  American Idol seems to be on the right track again, and as Gabi Carrubba goes back to the auditions next year I know I’ll be watching her next American Idol adventure.  But no matter what happens in Season 12, I know this kid has a brilliant future in the music industry.  She was born with a true gift, and she is a real talent.  She has the drive, the enthusiasm and the confidence to have an incredible career in the entertainment industry whether she becomes and American Idol or not.  Gabi Carrubba is an example of what our future music stars should be, and knowing that there is a world of talented kids like her throughout America reassures me about the future of the recording industry.  We just need to discover these individuals and give them a chance to be heard because they are the face of the next musical revolution.

To follow Gabi Carrubba on the next leg of her musical journey, follow her on facebook, twitter and YouTube, and visit her web-site at http://www.gabicarrubba.com/home.html.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  Thanks to Tom Cavalier for helping to connect me with Gabi Carrubba.  I appareciate your help in allowing PCA to further promoting the future of this incredible performer.

The Street Fighter (1974) – With the martial arts craze in full swing, and Bruce Lee’s untimely death a year earlier leaving a hole in the world of kung-fu films, Sonny Chiba picked up the mantel as the world’s most famous martial arts movie star in The Street Fighter.  However, The Street Fighter would be unlike other martial arts films brought to North America during that time by presenting the audience with a brutal anti-hero, Terry Tsurugi.  But securing its place in cult film history is the fact that The Street Fighter became the first film to ever receive an X-rating for its graphic violence giving it an instant notoriety.

Terry Tsurugi is a modern day mercenary for hire.  If you have someone you want to rub out, rescue, protect or a dangerous job of any kind, Terry is your man.  However, there is nothing heroic about him.  Able to kill with his bare hands, Terry is an extremely cold and cruel individual who only believes in taking care of one person – himself.  When mobsters attempt to hire Terry to kidnap an oil heiress, Terry refuses when he discovers that they are members of the Yukuzah.  Now, with the mob out to kill him for knowing too much, Terry must fight to stay alive.  But if he’s going to fight, he might as well get something out of it and offers his services to protect the oil heiress himself.  Soon Terry finds himself in over his head when his enemies hire a martial arts master out for very personal revenge against Terry.  As the body count grows, it eventually becomes unclear just who the real good guys are.

Sonny Chiba makes his international breakthrough in the role of cruel mercenary Terry Tsurugi in "The Street Fighter."

While the violence is fairly tame compared to today’s “extreme Asian” genre, The Street Fighter still manages to live up to its reputation.  This is one bad ass film.  Before The Street Fighter came to American cinemas, the fight scenes in kung fu films were still artistic and obviously choreographed.  The Street Fighter offered a far more brutal form of action in which skulls are shattered, bones are mangled, eyes are gouged, throats are torn out and, in one memorable sequence, Sonny Chiba castrates a man with his bare hands.  It was unlike any sort of action based violence yet seen by most American audiences.  Released the same year as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, famous for its violence and gore which helped change the horror genre, the American sensors signaled out The Street Fighter as the more violent of the two films.  The reason mainly had to do with the fact that the violence in Texas Chainsaw Massacre primarily took place off screen and was only implied while Sonny Chiba was crushing and maiming people right on the screen before the eyes of the startled, and/or thrilled, North American audience.  To say the least, The Street Fighter would help change the martial arts genre in a similar way that Texas Chainsaw Massacre changed horror.  Due to it’s extreme violence, The Street Fighter was issued an X rating, which prompted the film’s distributor to cut sixteen minutes out of it.  The edited version was the one that most American audiences saw during the time of its release, but the fact that a more violent version of the film existed became a thing of legend amongst martial art film fans who longed to see the full version long before VHS tapes were commonplace.  Although bootlegs of the full version would float around by the mid 1980’s, the full version of the film was not officially released until 1993.  The Street Fighter is also notable for its higher quality of production than most previous marital arts or grindhouse pictures of the time.  The film looks good, has imaginative use of film editing, holds a decent pace due to non-stop action and is even dubbed well.  Still today The Street Fighter manages to hold up as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time.

Sonny Chiba not only helped fill the void that the death of Bruce Lee left in the kung-fu film industry, but gave audiences a darker and more brutal anti-hero.

If Bruce Lee was to martial arts films what John Wayne was to westerns, then Sonny Chiba is easily the Clint Eastwood of the genre.  Sonny Chiba is one mean son of a bitch.  While he may not be as fast or as graceful as Bruce Lee, his fighting style is more severe and his beatings more brutal, creating a whole different sort of dynamic on screen.  He hisses as a cobra before striking deadly blows to his rivals who explode into pools of blood.  Chiba’s character, Terry Tsurugi, is unlike the marital arts heroes before him.  Gone is the sense of honor that previous heroes had.  Terry has no morals and his actions are mainly motivated by greed and arrogance.  The film quickly establishes Terry’s brutality by the inhumane way he treats his rival, Tateki’s, younger siblings, completely washing away any thoughts in the viewer that there may be a heroic man inside Terry’s tough shell.  Don’t fool yourself.  There isn’t. Terry Tsurugi is an evil, heartless bastard.  However, in order to get the audience to route for such an unmoral character, the writers quickly establish which side is good and which side is bad.  Terry happens to be working for the side of good.  This doesn’t make him good, but he is fighting the good fight…for a price.  Terry is motivated by greed while his “enemy,” Tateki, is motivated by revenge.  In the end it all comes down to who the audience feels the lesser of two evils are.  At some level it’s obvious, but on others the shades of grey start to meld into one another.

Goichi Yamada, in the role of Rakuda, not only provided "The Street Fighter" with much needed comic relief, but helps humanize Sonny Chiba's character, helping the audience route for him.

Breaking up the intensity of the film is Terry’s comical sidekick Rakuda, played by Goichi Yamada.  The jolly and plump Rakuda seems a bit out of place with the cruel and angry Terry, but he is completely loyal to Terry and is his only companion.  Rakuda is a much needed character in the film, not only bringing good nature d humor relief to what is basically an intense and nasty film, but also adding a sense of pathos to the story and giving the audience a truly likeable character to care about.  As the film unfolds, the connection between Terry and Rakuda is revealed, and, eventually, the audience is able to see through Rakuda that Terry does actually have feelings beyond rage.  In a strange way, Rakuda humanizes Terry, allowing the viewer to see that there is still a feeling human being somewhere beyond his anger, greed and arrogance, allowing the audience to accept Terry despite his undesirable characteristics

Whats that in Sonny Chiba's hand? Trust me...you may not want to know. "The Street Fighter" would make film history by being the first film ever to get an X rating for its extreme violence.

Upon its North American release, The Street Fighter was not only successful but spawned two sequels of its own as well as had two separate film series spun out of it, Sister Street Fighter and Karate Warriors.  Most importantly, The Street Fighter helped establish Sonny Chiba as an international star.  Although he began his career over a decade earlier in Japan, to a certain extent it was Sonny Chiba that helped fill the void that Bruce Lee’s death left in the Asian action cinema genre, and as a result gained an entire cult following of his own.  Bruce Lee may be the legend, but Sonny Chiba became the hardest working man in Asian cinema during the 70’s. The Street Fighter is a perfect introduction to the incredible world of Sonny Chiba.

Marcia McBroom (far right) graces the poster to Russ Meyer's cult classic "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

To movie fans, Marcia McBroom will always be remembered as the Carrie Nations “Soul Sister” drummer Petronella Danforth in Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  With her dark hair, big eyes and wide smile, Marcia McBroom played one of the straightest girls in Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert’s psychedelic cult film, securing her a place in the hearts of film fans everywhere.  One of the seventies’ most beautiful African American models, Marcia McBroom appeared in movies, magazine ads, album covers and television commercials.  However, what many of her fans may not know is that there is a far more interesting and inspiring woman beyond Pet Danforth’s funky drumming skills.  For Marcia McBroom, her real life stories are far more interesting than anything that could be put on screen.

The daughter of early civil rights activists, Marcia McBroom’s father was a liaison for Eleanor Roosevelt and worked alongside Martin Luther King.  Her mother was a United Nations secretary and entertained Malcolm X in the afternoons.  Marcia was surrounded by many of the most prominent figures in African American history from her earliest childhood. With activism running through her blood, Marcia has spent her life trying to make people aware of social issues in Africa, and to do her part in making things better for people nearly a world away.  Through her work with groups such as UNICEF, La Leche League and her own organization, For Our Children’s Sake, Marcia has used her passion and unique experiences to make a difference in the lives of women and children in West Africa.

But Marcia’s strength would come into play in the 1980’s when she abandoned her modeling career when her mother, Marie Lee McBroom, was taken into custody by the Nigerian government during a military coup.   With the American State Department unwilling to get involved in investigating her mother’s disappearance, Marcia gave up everything to fight for her mother’s life.  Marcia McBroom’s harrowing tale of perseverance and strength is not only more powerful than any role she could have been given on the screen; it is an inspirational story about how three sisters wouldn’t give up on getting their mother back, and made enough noise until the government listened.

With her acting and modeling career behind her, today Marcia McBroom has taken on a career far more rewarding to her than that of a cult movie actress.  For over twenty years Marcia has been teaching US and global history at  the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School in New York City.  With an interest in human rights and African politics, Marcia’s various projects have helped open the minds of an entire generation of students to social issues a world away.

Actress, model, activist and educator, Marcia McBroom’s story goes way beyond Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  It is an epic tale all its own.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENT

FOR OUR CHILDREN’S SAKE:

A CONVERSATION WITH MARCIA MCBROOM

Sam:  Now I’ll admit to you Marcia, that my main interest in doing this interview was your role in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but as I’ve been researching your life I’ve come to realize that you have gone way beyond Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  Now activism has run deep through your family. .  Does activism run through your blood?

Marcia McBroom (center) with her sister Dana and father Marcus McBroom Jr.

Marcia:  Yes.  Definitely.  My father, Dr. Marcus McBroom Jr., went to Columbia University in the 1940’s.  My Dad came from a farm family in Ohio and he was one of thirteen children.  But although he got the opportunity, his family didn’t trust him as a young man so they sent him off with twenty five dollars, but gave the money to an older man that was traveling with him to [take care of] it, and needless to say, the older man squandered it and my father came to New York penniless.  He had to use his wits and work as a waiter to get by and to get through school. He succeeded and was invited to go to the White House. He acted as a liaison for Eleanor Roosevelt who was trying to integrate the army at that time.  He always told us that he was a friend of hers, but I am really sorry that he didn’t sit and talk to us more about the work he did with her.  But I remember after he died that I had been looking at a newspaper article about him and it said that he had been wounded in Burma and that Eleanor Roosevelt had him lifted out because she was worried about him. Also, Stokely Carmichael was a cousin, and my Mom used to work for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkens and she was secretary for WEB DuBois.  Our whole lives were always tied up with activism.

Sam:  I read that your father was often paired up against Malcolm X in formal debates.  Did he ever talk about these debates to you?

Marcia McBroom's parents were associates of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and Marcia herself had a meaningful encounter with Dr. King as a child: "I just remember that I was little and Dr. King leaning over me."

Marcia:  Well this is what I am talking about.  We knew he did things like that, but he never talked about it.  But Malcolm X was a good friend of my Mom’s, and he’d come to our house in the Bronx and they’d have debates.  He’d send her postcards, and she gave my sisters and me each two of his postcards.  But she would say “He used to send me all these letters, but I threw them away because who would have thought he’d become so famous.”

Sam:  Were you aware and involved in civil rights and activism from an early age?

Marcia:  Yes.  For example, I remember meeting Dr. King when I was a little girl.  There was a big benefit given for him, which they often gave at big armories around New York City, and I was so impressed that Dr. King came over to me and asked how I was doing.  I was so deeply impressed because Dorothy Dandridge was there, and Harry Belefonte, Sidney Poitier, Alan King; and just the fact that he came over to me to ask how I was doing was so moving.

Sam:  Well it just gives you an indication of the sort of soul that this man had.  How old were you?

Marcia:    I don’t remember.  I just remember that I was little and Dr. King leaning over me.  Because of my parents and what they were doing, I was always surrounded by celebrities my entire life.  When I think back, there were so many opportunities when I could have taken pictures with this one or that one.  I just never even thought of it.  I still have some pictures of me with a few, but there are so many others.

Sam:  Who are some of the ones that you wish you had taken your picture with?

Amongst a plethora of celebrities and political figures that Marcia McBroom has encountered, one she actually got a photograph taken with was Muhammad Ali: "When I think back, there were so many opportunities when I could have taken pictures with this one or that one. I just never even thought of it. I still have some pictures of me with a few, but there are so many others."

Marcia:  A friend of mine was once singing at Disneyland with Duke Ellington, and she invited my Dad and me to come and hear her.  Well we met Duke Ellington afterwards and I sat on his lap and gave him a kiss and I said, “I guess you get a lot of women kissing you” and he said, “Well, you know, this thing has to have some privileges.”  But later I thought, “Wow, it would have been great to have a picture of me sitting on Duke Ellington’s lap.”  But now I just have the memories.  I have lots of stories like that.  For instance, I have a BA in Anthropology from Hunter College, and we did a semester of field work in Aruba.  Again, I’m talking decades ago.  Well we were getting on a plane to come back to the States and who is on the plane coming back from Venezuela but Muhammad Ali.  Well of course he sees me and he immediately wants me to sit next to him on this little plane.  Well we have this little flight from Aruba to Puerto Rico and there is no way I’m going to tell the champion of the world that I’m not going to sit next to him.  So I sit next to him and he entertained me all the way to Puerto Rico by reciting his poetry and it was really a ball.  Well, as we were landing he said to me, “If you don’t mind, I’ll tell them you’re my wife so you can get through customs without any hassle.” Well I say, “Oh, sure.”  So he tells them that I’m his wife and I just walk through customs with him while, meanwhile, my teacher and everyone else had to wait and go through all the proceeds.  Well, of course, he gave me his number to call him but I never did because I thought it was too deep for me.  But when I told my girlfriends what happened, they were trying to get me to give them the number, and even buy the number from me so they could call him.

Sam:  Did you keep the number?

Marcia:  I did, but I don’t know where it is.

Sam:  Do you know how much you could sell that for on e-bay?

Marcia:  Well you never know.  I may go through my papers and come across it one day.  But I ran into him another time.  It was a special breakfast for the Jackson Five.  A girlfriend of mine was taking pictures at the Plaza Hotel, and she invited me to come and it turned out that he was there.  I did get a picture of us that time.

Sam:  Did he remember you?

Marcia:  I don’t know, because with men like that, they’ll always tell you they remember you whether they do or not.  So I would take that with a grain of salt.

Sam:  Now at what point in your life did you start performing?

Not quiet the opera, but still a keynote of 20th century pop culture. Marcia McBroom appeared on the cover or two Van McCoy albums in the 1970's. The album "Disco Baby" would include the original recording of "The Hustle."

Marcia:  Well, my Mom was a concert pianist and she used to play piano for Harry Belefonte before he became rich and famous.  So I was always surrounded by entertainment.  When I was eleven I was taking dance lessons from a woman named Anne Garnett, and she was very much into getting African American children into the arts, so she would put on these little productions and what not, that we would perform.  Then, later on, my Mom met the famous African American chorographer Katherine Duham.  My Mom had an idea for a Broadway show, and she wanted Ms. Dunham to do the choreography.  That’s when I was fifteen.  I had been studying ballet with these African America twins called the Facey Twins.  But it was unfortunate because people were saying to me, “Why are you learning ballet?  There is no room for African Americans in ballet.  You should get into ethnic dance and jazz.”  So I was just about to learn how to dance en pointe when I was dissuaded from continuing what I was told, at that time, would be a dead end.  Well Ms. Dunham told us that she was asked to do choreography for Aida at the Metropolitan Opera House.  It would be her own technique which was very Afro-centric.  She said if we were willing to study with her she would prepare us to audition in the fall for Aidia.  It was extensive studying; eight hours a day for six days a week. So in the fall I got to audition and I got in.  I got to dance for five weeks at the Old Met, and that was an incredible experience.  You could imagine for a teenager in high school, to be running from school to put on my make up to be on stage with all the greats; Leotyne Price and Birgit Nilsson and Nino Rota and all of these people.  I never thought I could get so into opera until getting on the stage with all the pomp and circumstance.  My sister and I had such a crush on Franco Corelli because he was so gorgeous, and that voice.  So we learnt how to say in Italian that his “voice was like an angel from paradise,” just so we could have something to say to him.  It was so crazy.  But we were always surrounded by the arts.  Max Roach was a cousin, although I didn’t have much contact with him.  So was Connie Kay, who was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet.  He used to invite my mother and I to go and hear them when they played at the Carlisle Hotel.

Marcia McBroom's official head shot as Petronella Danforth for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" was taken by Playboy photographer Pompeo Posar

Sam:  What an impressive beginning!  But how did you go from dancing in operas to modeling?

Marcia:  Well somebody said, “Have you ever thought about modeling?”  It had just then started to be ideal to have dark skinned models, so I went to an agency called Black Beauty Modeling Agency and they started getting work for me immediately.  So the opportunity to do some acting came up, so I started studying acting.  I studied with Wynn Handman from the American Place Theater.  Then the opportunity came up to do Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  It was so funny when my agent said, “Ah, there is this character, Petronella Danforth, and they are describing you to a tee.”  So when I walked [into the audition] I walked in as I thought Pet would look.  So when Russ Meyer saw me he said, “This is Pet.  Here she is.” What was so funny is that Russ would always tease me by saying that I had the smallest breasts of anyone he had ever worked with.  He said, “You know I didn’t hire you for your boobs.”

Sam:  What was Russ Meyer like?

Marcia McBroom on set with director Russ Meyer, and the girls of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls": "Russ would always tease me by saying that I had the smallest breasts of anyone he had ever worked with. He said, “You know I didn’t hire you for your boobs.”

Marcia:  Oh, he was always so sweet.  A gentleman and I always pictured him as a big teddy bear.  He always had this little sinister smile he would give us, and on set we would always be fighting with him about some of the lines that he would give us.  He was trying to explain to us that his and Roger Ebert’s intent was to put every corny line that anybody has ever heard in any movie into this film.  But it was funny because he was known for all his soft-porn stuff, and when the movie came out the audience really didn’t know how to respond to it.  I find that people enjoy the film much more now than they did then, because then people were in a total state of shock.  I’ll never forget that, when the cast went and saw the first screening of it, we were laughing our heads off but we could feel the tension in the audience because the people were wondering, “Are these people serious?  What is going on on the screen?  Oh my God!”

Sam:  One thing I find interesting in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is that the characters that you and Harrison Page played were not like other African American characters in Hollywood films from that era. It is very refreshing for viewers to see black characters that aren’t just some sort of racial stereotype.

Marcia McBroom with "BVD" co-star Harrison Page: "It was very progressive...I felt that it was cutting edge, because they were presenting an upscale image of African Americans that people weren’t used to seeing."

Marcia:  That’s also what I thought was very interesting about that film.  It was very progressive.  [Harrison’s character Emerson] was studying to be a lawyer and [Pet] was the “goody two shoes” of the trio.  I felt that it was cutting edge, because they were presenting an upscale image [of African Americans] that people weren’t used to seeing.  I wrote to Roger once, and I asked him about that and he never responded to me.  But [at the time ] I didn’t know that his wife, Chaz, is an African American.  But [in the movie] I do have a fling with the fighter, and if you notice at the end, I only get injured.  Russ was very into how puritanical the American public was.  He said that a character who had really transgressed had to die when the film was over.  Well since [Pet] had a small transgression and repented, I only get injured and we have the triple wedding at the end.  It was all very carefully calculated.  Even the sex scenes, you may have noticed, were all in places that would be uncomfortable to have sex, like in the back of the car, or on the beach, on bed springs, or like with [Harrison and I], on hay, which is like needles.  All of this was tongue in cheek also, and Russ was dealing with the prudishness and the sexuality of America.   But you know what else is really scary about that movie?  The real lives [of the actors] became a mirror of what happened in the film.  Acting is a very interesting profession because a part of you becomes a part of the characters you are playing too.  That’s why there are certain things I would never do because it is just a little bit too scary.

Sam:  I’ve probably seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls nearly a hundred films.  It is one of my all time favorite films.

Dolly Read, Marcia McBroom and Cynthia Meyers make up "BVD's" fictional girl group The Carrie Nations: "you know what else is really scary about that movie? The real lives (of the actors) became a mirror of what happened in the film.""

Marcia:  Well I am surprised how many people I meet, even now, who are still avid fans of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  People from all over the world and a whole entirely new generation are totally into it.  A few years ago I got a phone call from a professor in Illinois who said, “Is this Marcia McBroom?”  I said, “Yes, the one and only.”  Well he said, “I am calling on behalf of Roger Ebert because he is running a film festival called The Overlooked Film Festival and he would like to invite you and a guest to come and get a “Thumbs Up Award” for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  So my husband and I flew out and saw all these incredible films and got to connect with Roger and his wife Bess and it was a really really beautiful week.  It was such an honour.

Sam:  Someone mentioned to me that it was you who brought Pam Grier onto the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls set where she made her film debut.

Marcia:  Oh yeah.  Pam and I were roommates.  She got in because I was on the set and they put her in the party scene.

Sam:  Another spectacular film that you were a part of was Jesus Christ Superstar.  Every time I watch that movie I think to myself that everybody looks like they are having so much fun.

Marcia McBroom with Ted Neeley and Yvonne Eliman in "Jesus Christ Superstar."

Marcia:  Well we filmed in Israel for four and a half months.  We had a lot of fun, but the joke was that most of it was filmed in the Negev Desert, and one of the things I remember was everyone always yelling for water because we were all so thirsty.  Every Rosh Hashanah I think of Jesus Christ Superstar, because we were just winding down filming during that time of year and one of the Israeli crew members invited me to his family’s home for dinner. At that time fighting was just resuming and we could actually hear the gunfire in the distance.  By that time everybody was ready to go, and we had this English make-up artist, who said, “That’s the only cue I need.  I’m getting out of here.”  He got on the next plane and got the hell out of there.  Norman Jewison’s daughter, who was about twelve at the time, was so fascinated with me that she invited me to stay at their home after the filming because her Dad had to stay in Israel for some post production work.  Well I said to her, “You can’t just invite people to your home.  You have to ask your parents first.  So she asked them and they said I could spend some time at their house.  So I went with her and her mother, and I remember having a lovely time with them at their home in England.

Sam:  Next time I’m watching Jesus Christ Superstar, where can I see you?

Another of Marcia McBroom's LP covers was Freddie Hubbard's aptly titled album "The Black Angel."

Marcia:  Well, let me tell you a joke.  I had just done Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but this was the first film for a lot of the people in [Jesus Christ Superstar].  So a lot of the time people were fighting to get right up in front of the camera, but I said, “As long as I have a film credit, I don’t care.  I’m going to just enjoy myself.”  A good time when you see a good shot of me is in the cave where Mary, Jesus and I sing Everything is Alright.  Another shot of me is at the end when we are screaming “Crucify him! Crucify him!” I’m out in front in a brown outfit.  In the dancing scenes I’d have to show you.  It was a large cast, but in every scene I would always change my look so I was different characters.  In my scene with Herod I’m wearing a feather top and a skirt.  I tried to have different looks for each scene.

Sam:  Now in Africa you’ve achieved a certain amount of iconism as a spokesperson for breastfeeding.  How did that come about?

Marcia McBroom's UNICEF poster promoting breast feeding is still being used after thirty years: "The way I designed it is that it is a timeless look, and breastfeeding never changes."

Marcia:  Well in the late 70’s I had done this commercial for Lux Soap, and it was to be shown in Nigeria in West Africa.  It was a very unique thing they did.  Lux had created this character for me named Suzie Martins.  Suzie was supposedly a singer who was famous in London and different places, and I’m on a show.  Meanwhile, I don’t sing really.  So they show me ending a song on the TV show, and the white host of the show hands me a bouquet of long stemmed roses, then I go back to my dressing room and casually hand the roses to my white hand maiden and then I go to the back to get into my luxurious Lux soap bath and I am admiring my Lux soaped skin.  And then I have this black manager, and it’s left ambiguous in the commercial if he is a manager or a boyfriend, and he’s waiting to whisk me off in a white Lamborghini.   Well at that time Nestle was pushing instant formula, and I was against this because they were getting a lot of poor women in lesser developed countries to use this formula, and was actually giving them free formula in the hospitals.  They’d give them just enough until their own milk dried up, and then here they are condemned to get formula for their children, which would cost a lot of their family income, so the mothers were diluting the formula to try to stretch it.  Well the water wasn’t purified and they would kill their children with parasites.  So I was outraged and I said that I would design a poster using the character Suzie Martins, because I thought who better than this woman, living in a world of luxury, being seen breastfeeding?  So I was about to have my second child, who was born in 1982, and I called UNICEF, because they were encouraging mothers to breastfeed, and I said to them that I’d like to create a breastfeeding poster. So they said, “We’ll call our Legos office to see if they are interested.”  So they called Legos and people were going crazy saying, “Oh, Suzie Martins will do a breastfeeding poster!  Yes!”  So two friends of mine shot the poster right in my bedroom and it was a big hit.  It was such a big hit that UNICEF sent the poster all over the world.  It took on a life of its own.  I was invited to speak out in California for a La Leche League Conference.  It was a great opportunity and I got to meet all the women who started La Leche League, and women would come up and kiss me from Honduras and Zimbabwe and say, “You don’t know what that poster meant to us, because you showed breastfeeding as a glamorous thing.  Not as just some mundane woman out in the bush.  That this was a very wonderful and elegant thing.”  Then I got a letter from the New York State Department of Health asking if they could use the poster to put in all the clinics, and of course I said yes.  Do you know the poster is still there?  The way I designed it is that it is a timeless look, and breastfeeding never changes.  So here I am, a high school teacher, and sometimes my students will come to me and say, “Oh Ms. McBroom!  I can’t believe it!  I went to a clinic and I looked up and said, ‘Oh my God!  There’s my teacher!” “

Sam:  Well I’ve seen the poster and it is gorgeous.  It is really something to be proud of.

Marcia:  Yes, but what people don’t realize is that I wasn’t just the model.  I created the poster and then donated it to UNICEF.

Sam:  When was the first time you traveled to Africa?

Marcia McBroom in the role of glamorous singer Suzie Martins became a popular advertising spokeswoman for Lux Soap in West Africa.

Marcia:  Well my mother had a job as a secretary at the United Nations and she was, therefore, invited for several independence celebrations for different African countries.  But she would say, “I can’t go if I’m not with my children.  I have to bring my children.”  So my mother was bringing us to all these different countries in Africa when we were little girls.  If I’m not mistaken, my first trip to West Africa was in 1960.  I remember this one time when we went to the Cammeroons and stayed there for a month, and my sister Edith was only five at the time.  We were coming home via Paris and we’re at the airport and Edith starts crying.  Well my mother asked, “What’s wrong with you?” and Edith said, “You promised us that you would take us to Africa and we’ve been gone for a month and we haven’t been to Africa.”  Well that’s when I realized that with all the brainwashing that people had with their Tarzan movies that she already had a preconceived notion in her mind as a five year old of what Africa was supposed to look like, and that was scary to me.  That was when I became committed. That no matter how small the effort, I was going to do something positive for the continent of Africa when I grew up.  I’ve been involved ever since.

Sam:  You had a very active career as a model and actress through the 70’s, but by 1984 you had disappeared from the radar.  Why is that?

Marcia:  Well, unfortunately, this is such a horror story.  In 1984 UNICEF was planning on sending me on a five state tour of Nigeria because of the popularity of my Suzy Martins commercial.  I was all ready to go on the trip, but just when the trip was about to happen, Nigeria had a military coup.  My mother was in Nigeria at the time on business, and I called her and said, “Mother, get home right away.  There has been a military coup and you can always go back after my tour.”  But she refused because she was very hard headed.  She said, “Why would anybody worry about me?  I’m an American citizen.”  She wouldn’t leave, and that was the last we heard from her for thirteen months.  Soldiers came to her hotel and they were wondering, “Who is this American woman and why would she be here when we had this military coup?  Maybe she is a CIA operative or involved with a corrupt leader.”  So they grabbed her and held her. So I cancelled my trip because my mother disappeared.  That suddenly changed my life.

Sam:  So what did you do?

When her mother, Marie Lee McBroom, disappeared in Nigeria during a military coup in 1983, Marcia McBroom cast her successful modeling and acting career aside to focus on efforts to find her mother, and have her returned safely to America.

Marcia:  Well I called the State Department to tell them my Mom was missing and their attitude was amazing.  They said, “Well citizen.”  I love it that they call you citizen.  “We understand why you are upset because it’s your mother, but you must understand that over two thousand Americans disappear overseas every year, so for us it’s just one case in over two thousand.”  I was shocked because I didn’t know that two thousand people vanish every year.  I mean, you occasionally hear about one or two, but you don’t hear about two thousand people vanishing on their trips abroad.  But they continued, “We try to explain that it’s a very dangerous world out there but if something happens, all we are responsible for is to get you a morning newspaper. So, basically, you’re on your own, citizen.  That’s what you get for leaving our shores.”  So I spent the next thirteen months trying to get my mother out alive. Now because people in Nigeria knew me as Suzie Martins, I would get these cryptic calls at one in the morning claiming to be General so and so and they needed a ransom of one million dollars if I wanted to see my mother alive again.  I would say, I don’t have anywhere near that kind of money, and even if I could raise that money I’d never give it over to criminals like you. I am a Unitarian Universalist, and I sent out an appeal letter across the US and Canada to our churches asking people to question government officials about what happened to Marie Lee McBroom.  Our whole senate started getting swamped with letters from all the different states asking what happened to this woman.  Well that’s when the state department got off their butts and started taking the case seriously.  I must say that I give great credit to Senator Bill Bradley and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who really went above and beyond in terms of tracking down where she was.  Then Amnesty International got involved because one of the women being held with my mother was released.  All the women gave her one phone number to call when she got out so at least family members would know where they were.  It became very cloak and dagger.  I went on the Charlie Rose Show to talk about my mother’s case, and I’ll love Whoopi Goldberg forever, because she just read about it in the papers and attended one of the fundraisers for my mother.  She said, “This could be anybody’s mother.”  Once my mother was released from the prison, Whoopi invited her to see her one woman show on Broadway.  Ashford and Simpson made a donation so we could send a journalist over to Nigeria.  Mick Jagger and Boy George signed our petition asking the State Department where this woman was.  It was very beautiful to see the people who came forward.

Sam:  After thirteen months did the new Nigerian government ever give any reason for keeping your mother?

During Marcia McBroom and her sisters' campaign to save their mother from Nigeria, they received support from high profile individuals such as Ashford and Simpson, Mick Jagger, Senator Bill Bradley, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Boy George and, especially, Whoopi Goldberg: "I’ll love Whoopi Goldberg forever, because she just read about it in the papers and attended one of the fundraisers for my mother. She said, “This could be anybody’s mother.”"

Marcia:  It was totally bogus.  They were accusing her of trying to smuggle oil out of Nigeria although she didn’t have a refinery.  Their big thing was to brag about holding an American.  They weren’t saying that they were holding an African American grandmother.  They just bragged that they had an American and if they found her guilty then they were going to execute her before a firing squad.  That became so sensational that it just gave us more attention to get people to jump on board to help us.  An international lawyers group got involved because they were trying to charge her under laws that were put in place after she was arrested, which violates international law.  It was a very exciting time too.  My Sister Edith was in Atlanta and she met with Senator Ted Kennedy and gave him a package about my mother, and my sister Dana and I were interviewed for Time Magazine.  It was overwhelming.

Sam:  How was your mother when she returned to America?

Marcia:  Well, she was thin as a rail.  It was unfortunate because all these different companies wanted to buy her story, but she was so traumatized by the whole experience that she never really followed up.  Even Whoopi wanted to do a movie about it.  But there was also a lot of ambivalence because [my mother’s story] might say something bad about an African country.  But I had to turn away from my career to get her home alive.  That was thirteen months out of my life.  The business is very fickle and once you step out for over a year, I’d have to start up all over again.  All my wind was taken out of me, and I had my two young children, so I just let it go.

Sam:  So how did this lead to a career in teaching?

Marica McBroom with students from Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day School, where she currently teaches global history.

Marcia:  I belong to the Community Board No. 6 in New York City, and at that time Mayor Ed Koch had sent a letter to all the board members asking us to think of ways to have more multi-culturalisim in our cities.  Well I thought that I would like to start a human rights committee based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  I would go through the declaration and have a forum based on that.  So I did one on education and there was a liaison from a local high school that came and he was very impressed by it, so he invited me to his high school and asked me if I would be interested in doing some workshops for them.  So I did these workshops and he asked, “Have you ever considered teaching?”  I said, “Not really, although I’ve always been an informal teacher through my church school.”  Well I went and got fingerprinted and realized because of the university credits that I had that I was qualified to teach history.  So I’ve been teaching at that school for twenty one years.  I love teaching.  I love the students.

Sam: Are your students aware of your history in activism and social justice when they enter your class?

As part of Marcia McBroom's charity organization "For Our Children's Sake," she and her students send packages to Africa through the One Thousand Boxes of Hope project. For more information on For Our Children's Sake and how you can help support Marcia's charity projects visit http://www.focsf.org/

Marcia:  They know about my activism now.  I’ve actually raised money in the past for students to go to Africa with me.  I also have a project that the school assists me with called “A Thousand Boxes of Hope,” where I send boxes of material aid to our For Our Children’s Sake chapter in Malawi, and I send shipments to Sierra Leone where I have a friend building a school in Freetown.  We collect the items that people request of us, be it school supplies, shoes, clothing, toys and we ship them out.

Sam:  How did you start up For Our Children’s Sake Foundation?

Marcia:  Well in 1989 I had an idea through my involvement with South Africans to have an apartheid awareness contest for high school students.  My girlfriend took me down to the board of education’s social studies department in New York City, but she said, “I’ll just warn you that they are very bureaucratic and I don’t know if they’ll accept your idea on a city wide contest to have young people learn more about apartheid and how it affects young people in South Africa.”  But we went down and we made the presentation and they said, “This is so exciting.  We’d love to be a part of it!”  My girlfriend and I were dancing down the hallways.  We could not believe that they said they’d help us create it and help us promote it.  This was so exciting.  So we were able to involve UNICEF and the United Nations Association and the Foreign Policy Association.  I sent a letter to literally every US mission asking if they could give us gifts to give to the participants, and we also asked if they would have speakers so that they could tell students what their country was doing to end apartheid.  The student had to submit a written piece, a graphic art piece or a performance art piece.  One young lady did a wonderful one act play about a woman who was homeless and people were waiting for the bus and so she was telling them about what was going on in South Africa but people couldn’t escape her or they’d miss the bus.  Then there was a Chinese student who did a graphic of a very powerful African man who was stuck in a little tiny box with a white guard standing outside of the box with the African on a chain.  Well we ended up going to Zimbabwe and met the first lady Mrs. Mugabe. She read about us in the newspaper and invited us to spend a week with her so the students could see what a first lady of Africa was doing.  So that was quite an honour. I told the kids, “Listen.  This is very unusual.  You don’t have First Ladies of any country spend a week with you so consider this a deep honour that we have.”

Sam:  Now do your students realize that you were also an actress?  Have you ever had a student come to school who has actually seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?

"I don’t talk about (my previous career) at school because I want to deglamourize all of that. We are in an age where everyone wants to be a rap star or a model and I have to tell them that it’s very hard work, and it’s not an easy career choice. They see it as an easy way out and a way to have fame, but it’s not."

Marcia:  Some of them have looked me up on the internet and they get all excited and say, “Oh my God!  Ms. McBroom was a star,” but I don’t talk about that at school because I want to deglamourize all of that.  We are in an age where everyone wants to be a rap star or a model and I have to tell them that it’s very hard work, and it’s not an easy career choice.  They see it as an easy way out and a way to have fame, but it’s not.  For example, when we did Beyond the Valley of the Dolls we had a beautiful layout in Playboy Magazine.  To me, one of my most beautiful headshots is the one from Playboy.  But on the release I wrote that they could only use this shot for this one time for this article for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  They sent one of their best photographers to take pictures of me.  I’ll never forget it because his name was Pompeo Posar and he was begging me to please do a centerfold for Playboy.  I kept saying to him that I just was not into that, no thank you and I’m flattered. He kept asking me over and over but I thought, “I don’t want men all over the world looking at my naked body.”  It would just change the perspective of who I am, and that’s not who I am.  Now, knowing my children, if they knew I had done that they would be so horrified.  So I think as a teacher now, could you imagine my students finding my picture as a Playboy centerfold?  In the long run it was the best decision.

Sam:  You have done so much in your life.  You have done far more than most of your fans initially realize.  Where do you get your good energy, and where do you feel that it goes?

Marcia:  Well I have always felt that each person has a reason for being here.  As I said when I was traveling to Africa as a child, I am going to do something to make a difference. I hope that I still have a lot more in me to give that will continue to make a difference.

I’ll be honest.  My original interest in Marcia McBroom was due to her role in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  As one of my all time favorite films, I have interviewed many of the people who participated in the film, and Marcia’s key performance made her someone with whom I wanted to speak.  But as I researched her life, it was very clear to me that her role in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was just an odd factoid, a strange footnote in the life of a very diverse and fascinating woman.  But even the research I did could not prepare me for the number of wonderful stories and experiences that Marcia had to share with me.  The story that I captured in our conversation doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the stories that Marcia McBroom has to tell.  She has a thousand experiences and each one of them more potent than the next.  If there is someone who really should write a book so that others can learn from her experiences and words, it is Marcia McBroom.  She has had extraordinary experiences that have not only shaped her, but she has created experiences that have shaped the lives of others.  Sure, to me she may always be Pet Danforth, but to her students, her associates and her family she is so much more than that.  She is truly an incredible woman, who has transcended beyond cult movie stardom, and has emerged a true inspiration and role model for people everywhere.

For more information on Marcia McBroom’s For Our Children’s Sake organization, visit http://www.focsf.org/ and http://www.marciamcbroom.com/index.html.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  I’d like to send all my love and eternal devotion to the wonderful Siouxzan Perry of Girlwerks Media for arranging my visit with Marcia McBroom.  Not only do we all have Sooz to thank for many of PCA’s interviews, but also for working so hard to keep Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on the cultural radar.  It is truely a gift that she has contributed to the pop culture journey.  Thank you Sooz so much for all you do.

Ed the Sock: Canadian Icon

He is an angry cigar chomping piece of wooly footwear.  She is the geek goddess of the Great White North.  Together, Ed the Sock and Liana K make one of the most unique, and smartest, comedy teams in the history of Canadian media.  Accumulating cult followings, both separately and together, via television, podcasts, comic books, YouTube and convention appearances throughout North America, Ed and Liana have become two of the most fearless media personalities in Canada, who cut through the red tape of political correctness, and do what they want and say what they feel.  As a result, they have often scared their big business competitors, while creating a loyal and devoted fan base.

When I last spoke to Ed the Sock he was just rising out of the flames of darker days.  After being tossed out in the compost by ultra-conservative media forces that have recently taken over Toronto, Ed was deemed redundant by a network that feared his crass, off the cuff and honest humor.  Picking himself off the floor, Ed made a valiant run for political office, and he and Liana created their own late night TV program, This Movie Sucks,  at the only station in Ontario still brave and free thinking enough to air them, CHCH-TV11 in Hamilton.  The result was golden, and Ed and Liana were back on the Canadian culture radar when they won the award for Best Comedy TV Series at the Canadian Comedy Awards to the delight of their fans, but to the shock and dismay of their competitors who learnt that you can’t keep a good sock down.

Liana K: "Geek Goddess of the Great White North"

This Wednesday Ed and Liana come back to CHCH with their brand new television series, I Hate Hollywood.  Their first time on prime-time television, Ed and Liana are calling out North American media, and in the process are exposing the manipulations and shenanigans of the media machine.  Combining comedy with in-depth research and cultural theory, Ed and Liana both say the things that we think but wont say, and often say the things we’ve never thought of before.  The result could be their most intense, and most controversial, project yet.

If you read only one interview this year, this is the one to read.  Ed and Liana say the things that the major networks don’t want you to hear, and they are about to change the way you think about media forever.

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

I HATE HOLLYWOOD:

CATCHING UP WITH ED THE SOCK AND LIANA K

Riding high on the success of "This Movie Sucks," Ed n' Red return to CHCH-TV11 with their brand new show "I Hate Hollywood" premiering May 3nd at 10:30 pm, and repeated on May 6th at 5:30 pm.

Sam Tweedle:  So I want to give you the opportunity to be smug.  Do you want to be smug?

Ed the Sock:  Smug?  I don’t know what that is.

Liana K:  It’s like when a video game character turns into a real bad ass and says something quippy.

Ed:  I don’t play video games.

Sam:  Is that because of your lack of hands?

Ed:  Its part lack of hands, and part lack of interest.

Liana:  We strapped a Wii controller to his head once.

Sam:  How did that work out?

Ed:  It was heavy and I had a sore neck.  I sucked at tennis.

Sam:  So you won the Canadian Comedy Award last year for This Movie Sucks.  How did it feel to slap that in the face of CTV, who tried to tell you that you were no longer relevant?

Ed:  No.  CTV didn’t tell me I was no longer relevant.  CTV said that they could not “rebrand me” for the Comedy Channel because I’ve only done comedy for years, and I’m only known as someone who does comedy and they had a hard time figuring out how to rebrand that.  This is the same network that takes willowy VJ’s and makes them into news anchors.  That they can rebrand, but someone who is known for comedy across the country for a comedy channel…they just didn’t know how to do that.

Sam:  So how did it feel feeding that award to CTV afterwards?

In 2011 Ed the Sock and Liana K won the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Comedy TV Series for "This Movie Sucks" after, ironically, being told by CTV that he couldn't be "rebranded" for The Comedy Network. Ed the Sock: "I could have dropped a few pins and heard them. They were not pleased that we won."

Ed:  You know, I didn’t.  That award came because it was an on-line voting thing and we have an audience out there who likes us and respects what we do.  Basically I felt good that the audience helped to democratize the contest by taking the award away from which would have otherwise gone to some other corporate project.

Liana:  And you could feel the tension in the room.  It was really an awkward experience.

Ed:  Yeah, because nobody was happy we won.

Sam:  When you say nobody, who do you mean?

Ed:  I mean nobody.

Liana:  Most of the people in that room were from two or three major network groups.  We weren’t one of them, so we had no cheering section.

Ed:  I could have dropped a few pins and heard them.  They were not pleased that we won.  Listen.  I’ve been doing this for twenty five years.  I started on TV in 1987 and have done national TV and been considered an icon across Canada but I’m still not considered acceptable for polite company.  There is still an elite eschalance who do not wish to validate what I do because I did things that blew in their face of what should be done and how it should be done that was more successful then their projects.  What I represent is something they can’t understand and they don’t want to.

Liana:  And then I doubled down by saying it would be great if there was more women in writers rooms because it is a lonely, loney place.  The three women writers in the audience were nodding and clapping, but the rest of the room was stone quiet, because it is so competitive.

Ed, Liana and friends on the set of the award winning "This Movie Sucks." Liana K: "I didn't want to sit on the couch anymore."

Sam:  So why did you decide to end This Movie Sucks despite its success?

Ed:  I didn’t want to watch bad movies anymore.

Sam:  That’s a good reason.

Liana:  I didn’t want to sit on the couch anymore.  That couch was nasty.

Ed:  Liana was convinced the couch smelt really bad.

Liana:  It had mites.

Ed:  It is possible because it was purchased at Goodwill.  It is possible that someone was once deceased on that couch.  That’s the kind of couch that someone would be dead for a few days and nobody would have noticed because they didn’t have any real loved ones.

Liana:  I don’t know about that, but to me it smelled like someone was conceived on that couch.

Ed:  But mainly [we ended This Movie Sucks] because I wanted to go do [I Hate Hollywood].  When I left Much Music I figured that somebody would take over media literacy and media criticism.  That somebody would take over pointing out the obvious manipulation and lies and hidden messages that are coming through the media, and unfortunately nobody did.

Liana:  Well they think they’re doing it.

Ed:  Who?

Liana:  Well they call themselves comedy shows.  The Daily Show does it to an extent.

"I Hate Hollywood" offers viewers a different type of look at the media, as an alternative to media hype programs such as "Entertainment Tonight" or "E Talk Daily." Ed the Sock: "Ben Mulroney doesn’t lie to you. Ben Mulroney seems very excited about things that I don’t think he is very excited about."

Ed:  But that’s the thing.  Nobody in Canada picked up the mantle.  In fact, it went the other way.  Everything was purchased by corporate companies and they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.  They’re spending a fortune for these TV shows that I make fun of.

Sam:  So you’re saying that Ben Mulroney lies to us?

Ed:  Ben Mulroney doesn’t lie to you.  Ben Mulroney seems very excited about things that I don’t think he is very excited about.

Liana:  I don’t think they give him enough substance to actually manage a lie.

Ed:  There is nothing wrong with being incredibly happy about media.

Liana:  Some people are.

Ed:  But then there’s us.  I get offended by the stupidity that I see and the obvious obvert messaging and cultural programming that goes on.  There is nothing wrong with that stuff existing.  What’s wrong is that there is nobody out there saying “Hey, by the way, this stuff?  It’s all crap.  It’s okay to enjoy it.  It’s okay to like crap, but its all crap.”  There’s nobody out there pointing out the problem.  So when you’re putting out crap before people and their accepting it as if its actually representative of some kind of objective reality there’s a problem.  So I Hate Hollywood is like the tone of Formage, where we took music people to task, but now it’s all of the entertainment business.

Sam:  Well you two have been around the block.  You two know what you’re talking about.  So what do you consider today to be the crappiest crap of the crap?

Ed the Sock on 'Reality' Programs: "A reality show that covers normal people doing what they’d usually do is a “reality show.” A show where you change your life because there is a camera there is not a reality show. So Storage Wars – a reality show. The Kardashians in New York – not a reality show."

Ed:  To really pick out one thing is to leave out too many other things.

Liana:  Well reality shows are too easy, unless it is done well.

Ed:  There are good reality shows.  I have no problem with Storage Wars.  Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets mocked, and its people doing what they’d normally do anyways.  See, a reality show that covers normal people doing what they’d usually do is a “reality show.”  A show where you change your life because there is a camera there is not a reality show.  So Storage Wars – a reality show.  The Kardashians in New York – not a reality show.

Liana:  I can talk about the shows that disappoint me but I can’t say they’re actually bad.  Like modern sit-coms.  The art of the sit-com is to make it, at least for me, smart but mass appealing at the same time.  Stuff like All in the Family was incredibly well done.  Sanford and Son is still a great show.  I watch it and laugh my head off.  But the shows I watch now are always based on people being shallow and mean.

Sam:  Yeah.  I never thought about that.

Liana:  Everybody says “You must love Big Bang Theory.”  No.  I don’t.  There is no one on that show that feels like me.  There is no one on that show who I can relate too.  There is the occasional sprinkling of geeky dialogue.  There is the occasional comic book reference or computer reference or a Dungeons and Dragons reference.  But they are not geeks.  They are mean, catty, nasty people.

Ed:  Have you been on X-Box Live?

Liana K on "The Big Bang Theory": "They are not geeks. They are mean, catty, nasty people."

Liana:  No.  That’s the thing.  I live the actual nerd nastiness and you could never capture it on a sit-com because the language is off the charts.  But, Penny drives me crazy.  The one half way decent character on it, played by Sarah Gilbert…?

Ed:  I don’t know.  You’re looking at me if I actually watch it.

Liana:  Well she was an alright character but they couldn’t make her “interesting enough” so backgrounded her.  It’s just a bunch of guys being jerks to each other every episode.  That’s not funny to me.

Ed:  You sure you haven’t been on X-Box Live?

Liana:  There is some funny stuff on X-Box Live.

Ed:  Well so far there’s been no tea bagging on Big Bang Theory.  It’s probably off camera.

Liana:   Every time Sheldon is in a scene there is implied tea-bagging.

Ed:  Okay, but does he tea-bag, or does he get tea-bagged?

Ed the Sock: "The bite that is in sit-coms now is not a smart bite. It’s the bite of a school yard bully. There is no cleverness to it. There is no art to the joke. Its all blunt objects."

Liana:  It depends on how he’s feeling that day.  But Two and a Half Men is the same way.  I’m trying to find something not done by Chuck Lorre.  Almost all the sit-coms on TV now are done by Chuck Lorre.  But it started with Friends.  That was the downfall of the sit-com because it was so successful and everything had to model itself off of that.

Ed:  There is nothing left.  The bite that is in sit-coms now is not a smart bite.  It’s the bite of a school yard bully.  There is no cleverness to it.  There is no art to the joke.  Its all blunt objects.

Liana:  It’s just not the bite.  It’s the authenticity of it.  I was always amazed with Roseanne.  They used to fight on that show, and I never saw anything like that on a sit-com.  Coming out of Full House where everything was awesome and great, [Roseanne] fought and they went at each other, but it was real.  It made sense.  Sit-coms are too glossy now.  Sit-coms are full of pretty shiny people, and you can’t get comedy when everybody’s this close to perfect, but they might be OCD or be geeky.  “She plays Age of Conan.  She must be a geek.”

Ed the Sock: "If you want to watch a cop show or a drama that deals with race relations, for example, then you should put on an episode of The Rookies or Mannix in your DVD player..."

Ed:  You know, its not just sit-coms.  Cop shows, dramas; they are so in love with themselves.  They all think they’re doing something groundbreaking and relevant.  If you want to watch a cop show or a drama that deals with race relations, for example, then you should put on an episode of The Rookies or Mannix in your DVD player, because they didn’t do special episodes.  Just woven into the actual experience was the fact that there was racism in America, and they dealt with it realistically.  There was just so much veracity to the stories, and they didn’t carry themselves as if they were doing something that was ground breaking.  And with these shows, if you watch them now, they still hold up in so many ways.  If you take a lot of the shows that are being made now, give them thirty or forty years and they are not going to be hold up.

Liana:  But if you did a show like that today, that would be the big, bad Liberal media.  That would be preaching.  The Muppets can’t make a movie without someone saying that its left wing because the bad guy was an oil guy.

Ed:  Well they didn’t have assholes like FOX News back then.

Liana:  But that’s the problem.  It’s tilted everything, and it’s made everyone afraid to just tell an honest story.

Sam:  Now how are you going to explore this sort of topic on I Hate Hollywood?

Ed:  Well, believe it or not, the program is a documentary, as opposed to shows in the past that were driven by whatever we wanted to talk about.  This show is driven by a particular topic that is investigated and researched, and Liana makes sure that its triple sourced, and so the facts are there.  Its information, but done funny, like how you would talk to your friends about something that was stupid.

Liana:  As much as you can on prime-time.

Ed the Sock: "Entertainment Tonight, for example, doesn’t break any scandals. Its all part of the hype machine...They will not end a career and not change the way you look at somebody."

Ed:  Yeah.  This is our first prime-time broadcast TV show.  We were prime-time on Much Music, but that was cable.  This is prime-time broadcast TV.  A big market.  And not only that, it’s being rerun on Sundays at 5:30 pm.  When people are done church and finished their lunch they can watch us.  The notion of having to do dirty stuff and having to make porn [jokes] all the time is done.  Now they make references to porn in sit-coms.  We know we broke ground there.  It’s broken.  We have new things to do with the increased coporatization of media, and the increase synchronization of media that owns newspapers and television shows, and the fact that there are Canadian networks that buy American TV shows, and then they have entertainment shows that they do to pimp the American TV shows.  Entertainment Tonight, for example, doesn’t break any scandals.  Its all part of the hype machine.  It’s all part of keeping people’s faces in the media without being critical.  The stuff they point out is not a scandal.  They will not end a career and not change the way you look at somebody.  We’re trying to do something smarter.  I know that it’s terrible to say that we’re doing something smarter because people all of a sudden will start to glaze over, but it’s successful because we speak vernacular.  We speak like people.

Liana:  There is a lot of inherent humor in this stuff, and some of the things that are interesting are that these are not new phenomenas.  Look at, for instance, the circus around a celebrity funeral.  You can find instances of that going back to the 1920’s.

Thousands gather in Hollywood for the funeral of Rudolph Valentino. Liana K: "Some of the things that are interesting are that these are not new phenomena. Look at, for instance, the circus around a celebrity funeral. You can find instances of that going back to the 1920’s."

Sam:  Oh sure.  Look at all the mythos around Rudolph Vanlentino’s death.

Liana:  So these scandals are not new.  We’re trying to place it in a larger context.  Hollywood has always been this way.  We’re just much more aware of it now because the cycles are shorter.  I mean with all the media consolidation that we got, it’s almost gone back to the studio system indirectly.

Ed:  Well you know what happens.  Apparently all matter gets drawn into a very small center and then it explodes again, like the big bang.  That’s what happened with the studios, and I don’t know if it will happen again.

Liana:  And then we get massive field technology and massive effect drives and then we get a really awesome video game.

Ed:  That’s her video game story.

Liana.  I like video games.  A lot.

Sam:  What are some of the topics that you are covering?

Ed the Sock: "We’re covering the way that the media will treat a celebrity like a freak and a pariah for years, and the moment their heart stops beating all of a sudden their angels and saints."

Ed:  We’re covering the way that the media will treat a celebrity like a freak and a pariah for years, and the moment their heart stops beating all of a sudden their angels and saints.  These are the same people that were assholes to them in life, but now they are weeping.  We’re covering how Tupac can have more albums out after he died than before he died, and how that happened and where it goes to.  It’s not where everyone thinks.  That’s the thing we discovered.  We thought we’d know where this information would go, and it went another way.  Sometimes people were better then we thought they were.  Sometimes they were worse.

Liana:  That’s the cool thing that I like about this show.  With Formage you had to go hard and you had to go negative.  With this we sometimes chased a story and realized we were wrong in our preconceptions.  We can use that.  There is always a way to turn it around.  That’s what we’re trying to do.

Ed:  We’re also going to talk about promosexual; celebrities who will use any aspect of their personal life no matter how shameful, use any charity they can exploit, use any political buzz, just to stay relevant a little bit longer.  Celebrity religion; the weird religion that celebrities believe in in Hollywood such as Sciencetology and Kabala Centers, and we look at Buddhism, which is not a weird belief system, but the way Hollywood does it is sometimes a bit odd.

Liana:  It’s the Diet Coke version of Buddhism.

Liana K: "The beauty industry would lose millions every year if women developed a healthy self esteem. "

Ed:  Where going to look at court dramas.  We’re going to look at body image problems that are projected onto women.  It’s always assumed that it comes from men’s magazines, but there is very strong evidence to indicate that they are the smaller end of the problem.  I mean you’ve got a skinny, sexy girl on the cover of Maxim.  Who’s on the cover of Cosmo?  A skinny sexy girl.  The stories are Maxim has a picture of a girl, but the story is about how the guy is a butthead, and he does something stupid in motor sports.  The stories in Cosmo are “How you can please your man five more ways.”  They are very different.

Liana:  The beauty industry would lose millions every year if women developed a healthy self esteem.  People are injected poisons into their faces in their twenties.  That’s crazy.  Why?  Because someone determined that forehead lines are a bad thing.

Ed:  Yeah.  Without forehead lines, where would they have come up with aliens for Star Trek?

Liana:  But what people have to realize is that what’s beautiful is determined on what is most expensive at any given time.  When food is expensive, fuller figure women are in.  When cheap food makes you fat, you get the size zero paradigms.  I mean, there is no mystery where this stuff is coming from, but it gives people the ability to allow people to go back and watch the stuff they already watch and already like in a more informed and healthier proactive way that allows them to engage or indulge in media without media controlling themselves in the world.

Ed:  And we hit all the big names.  Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston.

Sam:  But are there really stories about these people?  I mean there are a million headlines, but no real story.

Ed:  Yeah, but that’s the story we’re doing.

Liana K: "These people aren’t people at this point. Modern celebrities are our society’s version of heroes. Not heroes as in good guys. Heroes as in these larger then life people who went in to do these feats."

Liana:  These people aren’t people at this point.  Modern celebrities are our society’s version of heroes.  Not heroes as in good guys.  Heroes as in these larger then life people who went in to do these feats.  People don’t realize that the heroes of old were flawed characters and that those stories are very similar to the modern celebrity myths.  If you can build people up so that they can fall, and then build them up again, and the story is not interesting if it doesn’t keep going.  So you see certain things getting turned into way more then they should be, because sometimes you have to make a story out of very little.

Sam:  Let’s turn this around.  What do you two like?

Liana:  I like video games!

Ed:  I liked John Carter.  That was a good movie.  I like Arrested Development, but that got cancelled.

Sam:  Well they are making the movie this summer.

Ed:  Yeah, but that’ll be a movie and then it’ll be over.  I like a lot of DVDs of old TV shows.  That’s mainly what I watch.

Sam:  You guys have interviewed so many people.  Who were some of your favorite people to interview?

Ed:  Stan Lee.

Liana:  Stan Lee was so cool.

Ed:  Getting to drive one of the actual TV Batmobiles with Adam West was pretty cool.  Conversely, going to Burt Ward’s big estate outside of LA…he was one of the biggest assholes we ever interviewed.

Liana:  I was impressed by how naturally gifted Christina Aguilera is as a singer.

Ed the Sock with Avril Lavigne. Ed the Sock: "people would do an entire day of press where people would be asking them the same question and here I come and I’d ask them not a single thing they were asked all day."

Ed: Christina Aguilera was always fun to do interviews with.  I don’t know how many interviews I did with her, but it was a lot.  Christina Aguilera would only do the Much Music Awards if she could get another interview with me.  She was always friendly and fun.  Hilary Duff was always great to talk to.  Avril Lavigne was fun.

Liana:  The Black Eyed Peas were fun.

Ed:  Yeah, The Black Eyed Peas were fun.  You see, people would do an entire day of press where people would be asking them the same question and here I come and I’d ask them not a single thing they were asked all day.  [I wouldn’t] put them on the spot but just let them talk as people.  It was more fun, and I found the big names rolled with the punches.  It was the little people, like Vanilla Ice, who said “I can’t believe I’m talking to a sock.”

Liana:  People are not just constructions.  It takes a lot of work to get to that level of Hollywood.  Just the scheduling is grueling as anything and the media machine is incredibly dehumanizing.  You really do need to put your nose to the grindstone and do it day after day after day.  As much as we take shots at celebrities, I don’t take that away from the major players.  They work hard and they have grueling hours and they are treated far less then people every day of their lives.  I tip my hat to that.  It’s the machine that we are focusing on and its not necessarily individual players.  You just have to go harder for people because their image may be abhorrent, but they may not be completely in control of it.

Ed:  Yeah…so….that’s the show.

Ed the Sock and Liana K could be two of my favorite individuals in Canadian media.  With fast paced intelligent banter, they not only challenge me cerebrally.  I honestly respect their intelligence and the way that they combine media and comedy.  And beyond that, they are just good people to know.  With years in the business, Ed and Liana have interviewed some of the world’s biggest icons, and seen the highs and the lows of business.  That is why they are the perfect pair to bring a program like I Hate Hollywood to television.  Although it is only available in Canada now, this is a series that every North American should be watching in order to become self aware of the way that we see media, and to be able to laugh at it, and ourselves.  Ed is right.  A lot of the media that we current digest is crap, and for better or for worse, we give into it.  Ed and Liana are providing a quick and funny way to expose North American media for what it really is.  I Hate Hollywood premiers on CHCH TV11 on Thursday May 2^nd at 10:30 pm and will be reran on Sunday at 5:30 pm, and for more fun with Ed and Liana, visit http://www.edthesock.com/about/ to access their podcast, videos and more  Don’t miss the next stage of the Ed n’ Red revolution.

Timothy Dalton is James Bond in "License to Kill" (1989)

License to Kill (1989) – The sixteenth film in the James Bond series, License to Kill, Timothy Dalton’s second and final film as 007, hasn’t gone down into Bond history as being one of the classics.  In fact, it often gets overlooked entirely.  But being being closest in tone to the modern Bond films, License to Kill has become the overlooked gem of the James Bond series, and is in desperate need of being reexamined by fans.

James Bond goes rouge in a very personal and different type of adventure.  When long time friend and associate, CIA agent Felix Lieter, is attacked by a South American drug lord Franz Sanchez on his honeymoon, Bond seeks revenge for the murder of Lieter’s bride and Leiter’s vicious maiming by a shark.  But upon leaning of Bond’s plan to go after Sanchez, M shows up in Key West and suspends Bond from MI6 and revokes his license to kill.  Never to be told what to do, Bond boldly breaks MI6 custody and declares his own personal war on Sanchez and his drug trade.  Recruiting CIA agent Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), to his cause, the pair go undercover into the Republic of Isthmus where Bond infiltrates Sanchez’s organization as a hired assassin and begins to uncover a much larger operation involving Sanchez’s attempt to establish a drug trade with Asian crime lords.  What results is a series of action packed assaults by Bond on Sanchez’s operations, including a death defying race with flaming oil tankers, as Bond seeks to avenge his best friend and his slain bride.

Violent and darker, Timothy Dalton's Bond was closer to today's version played by Daniel Craig. However, audiences weren't ready for it yet, making Dalton ahead of his time.

When License to Kill came out the Bond franchise was in a state of flux.  Having used all of the Ian Fleming novels and short stories available to them, the studio was forced to create an original story for the first time.  Although they did borrow elements from previous Bond stories, like Felix Lieter getting fed to the sharks, License to Kill proved to be the first all original James Bond film.  As a result License to Kill has a far darker tone then previous Bond outings, which not only reflected the feel of the original Flemings novels, but also matched Timothy Dalton’s personal take on James Bond.  Shedding the quirky charm of Sean Connery and side stepping the wit and humor of Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton approached Bond with a darker, more serious tone.  Timothy Dalton’s Bond was easily the deadliest Bond up to that point, and as a result License to Kill was the first of the Bond films to get a PG-13 rating while all other Bond films previously, surprisingly, were rated PG despite sexual innuendo and violence.  Timothy Dalton had finally grown into the role of James Bond with this film, and could often be seen on the set reading and rereading the original Ian Fleming novels as reference to his character, once again, setting the darker and more violent tone to the film.  Furthermore, the personal plot motivation seems to add a certain amount of depth to License to Kill that other Bond films often lacked.  The result is a far more satisfying action thriller. Furthermore, Dalton’s take on Bond is closer to the approach that has been taken by Daniel Craig.  While Craig’s portrayal of Bond has helped breath new life into the franchise, in 1989 fans were not ready for a darker Bond, proving that Dalton was, in retrospect, ahead of his time.

Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto co-star as "License to Kill's" 'Bond Girls.' Lowell's role, as CIA agent Pam Bouvier, could be the first liberated Bond girl.

Of course a Bond film wouldn’t be a Bond film without beautiful Bond girls and License to Kill provides Bond with two beautiful and compelling female companions.  Carey Lowell, in the role of CIA agent Pam Bouvier, was easily Bond’s most liberated female companion up to that date.  As an equal partner in the operation, Bouvier fights Bond on his chauvinism and also doesn’t stand by idly when he makes time with another woman.  Although she does break down in tears at one point when she seems him embraced with another woman, she is not the sex starved bed warmer of previous Bond outings.  Bond also finds himself entwined with Sanchez’s girlfriend Lupe, played by Talisa Soto, who immediately gains the sympathies of the audience when they are introduced to her being beaten by Sanchez.  Living as a virtual prisoner in a loveless relationship, her treatment at the hands of Sanchez only heightens the audience’s hatred for the villain, and she becomes a useful aid to Bond as a contact on the inside.  Throughout the film the audience is kept guessing which of the two women will capture Bond’s affections, leading to a satisfying conclusion to what becomes a tense love triangle at times.

Desmond Llewellyn takes Q out of the laboratory to play a much larger supporting role in "License to Kill," giving what was often a grim film much needed humor relief, yet being subtle enough not to take away from Dalton's darker tone.

While many fans were critical of Dalton’s lack of humor in his portrayal of Bond, fans are treated to Bond regular Desmond Llewellyn as Q in a larger and more prominent role then in previous films.  Defying M’s orders, Q joins Bond and Bouvier in South America, and not only provides Bond with his unique brand of special gadgets, but also some well needed humor relief.  While Q’s other appearances were always brief, yet beloved, vignettes removed from the plot of previous Bond films, License to Kill takes Q out of the laboratory and gives him much more involvement in the plot.  Llewellyn, who was in his seventies by that point, adds the quirky flavor that the film was lacking, but does it subtly enough to not take away from Timothy Dalton’s own unique interpretation of James Bond.

With the cold war long over, Robert Davi plays a more realistic villain as South American drug lord Franz Sanchez.

Although he lacks the colorful distinctiveness of previous Bond villains, Robert Davi provides a menacing foe for Dalton as drug lord Franz Sanchez.  Sanchez is very much a criminal element of the era.  With the cold war being over, Bond no longer was caught up in enemy agents or politics and in 1989 the South American drug trade was a larger, if not more realistic, threat to society.  Instead of world domination, Sanchez’s main concerns are money and power, and Bond’s motivations are revenge.  It becomes a more realistic struggle for a modern audience.  Other notable villains in the film include a very young Benicio Del Toro as Sanchez’s menacing knife welding thug Dario; future Twin Peaks co-star Everett McGill as a DEA official who betrays Felix Lieter, and a surprisingly appropriate role for singer Wayne Newton as a televangelist who plays a large, and clever, role in Sanchez’s drug operation.  Rounding out the familiar faces in License to Kill is former Three’s Company co-star Pricilla Barnes as Felix Leiter’s bride Della.

"License to Kill" would not only be Dalton's final James Bond film, but proved to be an end to the classic Bond era, being the final film for many of the franchise's key players.

In many ways License to Kill was the end of the classic era of Bond films.  Following the completion of the film, legal issues over the control of the James Bond franchise prevented MGM from going into development of another Bond film right away.  It would be six more years before a new Bond film would go into production, but many of the regulars from the classic days of Bond would not return.  Dalton had decided to leave the franchise after License to Kill wrapped up, but this film would also be the final film to feature David Hedison as Felix Leiter, Robert Brown as M and Carolyn Bliss as Ms. Moneypenny.  Furthermore, Bond’s producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who had been with the series since Dr. No and be considered the heart and soul of the Bond franchise, would step down, although he would work as a consultant on Goldeneye in 1999.  But Goldeneye, along with the rest of the Pierce Bronson era of Bond films, seem to lack the same charm and sophisticated sense of adventure that made the previous Bond films unique by giving into political correctness, slap stick comedy and sacrificing imagination and intrigue for explosions and car chases.  As a result, License to Kill would be the last watchable Bond film until the revival of the Bond series in 2006.

License to Kill is rarely breathed in the same breath as such Bond classics as Goldfinger, Dr. No, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Octopussy or Casino Royale, but it should be.  It is better then most of the Roger Moore films, all of the Pierce Bronson ones and even a few of the Sean Connery classics.  In many regards it was truly ahead of its time and it is a pity that Timothy Dalton did not go on to make more Bond installments.

PCA reviews the latest graphic novels, for people who wait for the TPB.

Afeter a shaky publication history, "Jinx," J. Torres and Rick Buchett's reimagining of the classic Archie "filler" strip, is finally available in an assessable collected edition!

Anybody who ever bought an Archie Digest has read a  Li’l Jinx comic.  She is the precocious little girl in the four panel gag strips that fill in the page count of the popular digests.  Not really an Archie character, Li’l Jinx strips have always seemed a bit out of place, but oddly familiar at the same time.  Created by cartoonist Joe Edwards, Li’l Jinx originally appeared in Pep Comics in 1947.  Jinx, her father Hap, neighborhood bully Charley Hawse, boyfriend Greg and rich girl Gigi was Archie’s answer to the Little Lulu or Little Audrey strips that were popular during the era.  However, by the early 1970′s Li’l Jinx was discontinued, although her strips would be recycled as digest filler to this day.  Well Li’l Jinx is back for a new generation.  Last year, as part of Archie’s 70^th anniversary celebration, J. Torres, Rick Burchett and Terry Austin recreated Li’l Jinx’s world by not only making her and her friends older, but putting them in a realistic world which today’s kids can actually relate to.  After what proved to be a shaky publishing history, the four part Jinx series is now finally available in one accessible collected volume!.

Lil' Jinx was created by Joe Edwards in 1947 for "Pep Comics" and a ran until the early 1970's.

Archie Comics announced last year that Jinx was going to be a four issue mini-series, and then it was slated to move to the extremely popular Life with Archie series.  However, after the first issue was published in Life with Archie #7, the rest of the series was banished to digital format.  Fine for the minority that have moved to that format for reading comics, but for traditional fans that want a comic book in their hands, the Jinx series went basically unseen.  As a result, collecting Jinx in a TPB form is the first time that most readers have actually been able to get their hands on the updated Jinx series, and it’s been a long time coming.

J. Torres successfully reimagines the original cast of Li'l Jinx by still keeping them the characters that readers remember, while Burchett makes them look like real teenagers, while still making them recognizable to the original character designs.

J. Torres has always had a knack for writing all ages stories featuring teenage characters.  From his creator owned projects like Alison Dare and Sidekicks, to his Johnny DC runs on Teen Titans Go and Legion of the Superheroes, to his superb work on the Scholastic series of Degrassi: The Next Generation graphic novels, Torres has become the expert at writing intelligent and fun stories aimed towards kids, but that are creative and thoughtful enough for adult readers to enjoy.  This is not an easy balance to achieve, but Torres just has this special ability to find a realistic voice for adolescent characters.  As a result, Torres is the perfect creator for the updated Jinx project.  Torres obviously took a good look at the source material and carefully lifted the original characteristics and inter-relationships of the Li’l Jinx characters and used it to flesh out Jinx’s world.  What helps Torres dramatically is the fact that Li’l Jinx comics were usually a single page, although on the rarest occasions ran for seven pages.  As a result there is little continuity or mythos to the series to stay true to, allowing Torres to have a much wider space to play with when reimagining the characters.  However, in most cases, the characters in Torres’ Jinx are very much the characters that readers remember, just older and, in many ways, far more endearing.

Still a head strong and clever tom boy, Blachett's facial expression for Jinx are priceless.

Each chapter in Jinx is a stand alone story, although it is loosely linked at the end with a continuity creating cliffhanger.  The book chronicles Jinx’s first two months in high school, going from Labor Day to Halloween.  Within the four chapters Torres reintroduces readers to her cast of characters, and establishes love triangles and relationship problems that manage to connect back to the original Li’l Jinx stories.  But what the new stories have is a sense of depth without ever getting too intense or dramatic.  What really is refreshing about Jinx is that while Torres decided to go down a far more realistic route then even the Archie series, he still keeps the Jinx stories light hearted and fun.  He doesn’t delve into the “heavy handed” issues like teen pregnancy or drugs or suicide or bullying that many teen publications feel that they have to get into.  There is enough platforms for such topics to be discussed in other forums, so it is refreshing that Jinx’s world doesn’t get any more melodramatic then trying to join the football team, kissing a boy and fighting with her friends.  Although the plots may sound trite, Torres is able to bring them out in a fast and fun way making them enjoyable for a wide range of readers.

Torres manages to recreate the inter-relationships of the Li'l Jinx characters in his new version, with special attention made to the father/daughter dynamics of Jinx and her single father Hap.

Possibly the best thing that Torres was able to do was reestablish the same relationship between Jinx and her father which appeared in the original comic.  One of the early single Dad’s in comic history, Hap always was forced to be stern by Li’l Jinx’s antics while the two tried to outwit each other, although the end result was often a bewildered amusement from Hap at Jinx’s ultimate cleverness.  Torres reestablishes this dynamic but adds a more realistic third dimension to their relationship, with Hap having to now face the new challenge of raising a teenage daughter and trying to be a supportive and understanding father while Jinx continues to be as headstrong as she was as a child.  Although the two are at odds throughout the series, the true closeness between father and daughter is beautifully captured by Torres as Hap confronts Jinx’s new found teenage angst in some of the books strongest moments.

A big part of what helps Torres’ stories keep their charm is the fantastic artwork by Burchett.  Burchett successfully updates the Jinx characters to look like real awkward teenagers while still being recognizable as teenage versions of the original Li’l Jinx characters.  Greg is tall and lanky, Mort has zits, Charley is ugly and Roz is plump.  It’s great to see kids that actually look like kids.  The confusing members of the cast to me is Gigi, who is suddenly turned into a Asian character and Russ who is just a little too well tailored for a jock.  But then we come to Jinx herself, who is the same spunky, wide eyed, tom boy from the original comics.  Burchett’s facial expressions, conveying a range of emotions, are simply classic and he makes the character far more endearing then she had ever been before.

Now I’ll be honest.  I have never been a fan of the original Li’l Jinx comics.  Even as a kid I found them to be sickening sweet and juvenile.  However while Torres, Burchett and Austin’s take on Jinx and friends is also sweet, it is in all the right ways.  I absolutely love their version of Li’l Jinx!  At the end of the book it states “The End…for Now” and I hope that Archie Comics keeps to this promise.  With three books being recently discontinued by the company could a regular Jinx book be on its way?  If not, then Archie Comics should at least put out additional volumes of Jinx graphic novels.  Perfect reading for today’s kids, and enjoyable for the adults that remember the original Li’l Jinx comics, this is a charming little book which leaves me wanting more.  Torres has breathed new life into what was a dead franchise, and Archie Comics should hold on and run with it!  The comic industry needs more all ages books like Jinx.

To order your own copy of Jinx click here.