march madness guide!

Transcription

March 2. 60F0R7EE
Vol. 15, No
Eva
Mendes
ntertainment Monthly
Atlanta’s E w.insiteatlanta.com
ww
MARCH
MADNESS
GUIDE!
WE
TALK
TO
on her new film and being
careful in hollywood
Interviews
Alicia Keys
Jim Carrey
Kevin Smith
It’s the right time to start!
2 1
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on one account,
with only one initiation fee of $149
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ANSLEY MALL | 404.249.6463
1544 Piedmont Ave. NE
ATLANTIC STATION - NOW OPEN!
800.730.9957
261 19TH St., Suite 1140
AUSTELL | 770.432.4262
1025 E. West Connector #2
BUFORD | 800.730.9786
Upcoming Sports Club - Join Now!
1600 Mall of Georgia Blvd. NE, Suite 858
CAMP CREEK | 404.344.1248
3755 Carmia Dr. SW, Suite 700
DUNWOODY/PERIMETER PT.
770.350.4951
1155 Mount Vernon Hwy.,#600
EAST COBB | 770.973.3370
4400 Roswell Rd.
KENNESAW/TOWN CENTER
770.427.9668
2801 George Busbee Pkwy.
LENOX/BUCKHEAD | 404.233.8311
3232 Peachtree St.
MIDTOWN | 404.249.6404
75 Fifth St., NW, Suite E
NORTHLAKE | 770.414.0651
1990 W. Exchange Place
PEACHTREE CORNERS
770.797.2661
7050 Jimmy Carter Blvd. #118
ROSWELL WEST
678.494.6464
4801 Alabama Rd.
SNELLVILLE | 770.979.1288
2279 Pinehurst Rd.
SOUTHLAKE | 770.960.0393
7057 Mount Zion Circle
HOLCOMB BRIDGE | 770.640.8137
1475 Holcomb Bridge Rd.
SUGARLOAF | 770.822.2533
1860 Duluth Highway
JOHNS CREEK | 770.623.9433
11720 Medlock Bridge Rd.
TOCO HILLS | 404.248.2998
2880 N. Druid Hills Rd.
ONE WEEK
REDEEM BY
03/31/07
SPORTS CLUB PASS FOR TWO
Come into LA Fitness® Sports Clubs and redeem this Seven Consecutive Days Pass.
Must be 18 years of age or older, a local resident and show valid I.D. One pass per
person, per year. Pass activation hours 8am to 8pm. *Extra charge for some amenities. Sales presentation tour required. Other memberships may be presented.
Redeemable by non-members only. Facilities and classes vary from club to club.
Leagues extra. Not available for resale or redeemable for cash. 03/07
GEORGIA: Membership offer based on the purchase of a new Easy Start monthly dues membership with a one-time initiation fee of $149 for the first person and $34.99 monthly dues per person. Each person must pay first and
last month's dues to join. Monthly dues must be paid by one account and deducted by automatic transfer from checking, savings, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover or Diners Club account. *Extra charge
for some amenities including Kids’ Klub and leagues. Membership includes basketball court use. Membership valid in state of enrollment only. Facilities may vary. Photos herein depict a typical facility, some locations will vary. Monthly dues membership may be canceled with written notice (typically 60-90 days). Offer not available at our Elite locations. Offer is not available in combination with other discounted rates. Call
club for details. Advertised rates may be subject to change. © 2007 L.A. Fitness International, LLC. All rights reserved.
Wild
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CONTENTS • MARCH 2007 • VOLUME 15.6
INTERVIEWS
12
12 JIM CARREY
13 EVA MENDES
14 ZODIAC AUTHOR
15 BILLY BOB THORNTON
19 KEVIN SMITH
23 ALICIA KEYS
27 3 OF 300
13
29 COMMON
35 SEVENDUST
35 GRANT HILL
FEATURES
11
EAST ATLANTA
Some places to check out in this hot community
12
TAPAS
Atlanta restaurants offering these small plates that
19
are great for sharing
30 STEEPLECHASE
Thousands of Atlantans converge at Kingston
Downs on April 14
31
MARCH MADNESS
Great places to enjoy some food while taking in
the excitement from the games
COLUMNS
23
06 ON TAP
07 UNDER THE LIGHTS
08 AROUND TOWN
16 MOVIE REVIEWS
19 BOOKS
20 CONCERT CALENDAR 27
22 ROAD WARRIORS
24 ALBUM REVIEWS
26 VIDIOTS
34 MARCH MADNESS
37 FANATIC
38 HOROSCOPES
38 WANTON DISTRACTION 34
www.insiteatlanta.com
PG 4 • insiteatlanta.com • March 2007
#54 “THE ANTAGONIST” Quadruple distilled and triple filtered for exceptional quality and smoothness. www.SKYY.com SKYY Vodka® 40% alc/vol (80 proof). ©2007 Skyy Spirits, LLC, San Francisco,CA.
LOCAL EVENTS
On Tap for March
EMAIL EVENTS TO [email protected]
March 2 - 3: Southern Culture
on the Skids
Long the bards of downward mobility, Southern
Culture on the Skids have always embodied countrypolitan and the group is headed for a two day stint at
The Earl. Recently described by Dwight Yoakam (in
Filter) as "really on the outside, like Dick Dale meets
Hank Thompson," SCOTS have mixed high and low
culture for decades, endlessly touring, serving up
moonshine martinis and poultry picking for fans
everywhere. For info, head to: www.scots.com
March 3: Patterson Hood
Patterson Hood of Drive By Trucker fame heads
to Andrews Upstairs for a one night event. In
2004, Patterson decided to make Killers and
Stars "officially" available by releasing it on New
West Records (also home to DBT). The album
is somewhat quieter and spookier than DBT's
releases, but it shares some of the same vibe
and humor. Killers and Stars has 12 songs, simply featuring acoustic guitars, mandolin and
harmony vocals. Patterson's second solo release,
MURDERING OSCAR (and other love songs),
is nearly finished. For more info, head to:
http://www.pattersonhood.com
March 10 - 18: AJC International
Auto Show
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution International Auto
Show will celebrate its 25th Anniversary when it returns
to the Georgia World Congress Center on March 10-18,
2007. “The Atlanta show has definitely grown and prospered since its first event at the Congress Center in
1983,” said Shayne Wilson, “Our show floor is almost
four times larger than it was 25 years ago. The Atlanta
show is now one of the 10 largest shows in the United
States, with over 600 new vehicles on display from 39
different manufacturers.” For more info, head to:
www.ajcautoshow.com.
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LITTLE FIVE POINTS SANDY SPRINGS
428 Moreland Ave.
(404) 523-0100
5964 Roswell Rd.
(404) 255-5578
$3 OFF
any purchase of
$10 or more
March 15 - 18: St. Patrick's Day
Parade & Festival
Whether enjoying free, live entertainment or the fabulous food
and vendor market, the St. Patrick’s Day Festival at
Underground Atlanta has something for everyone. The festival
will be packed with Irish entertainment featuring live music in
both Kenny’s Alley and Fountain’s Plaza, including the popular
U2 tribute band, Desire. The festivities will encompass a variety
of traditional favorites including green beer, Irish dancers, and
green fountains along with a vendor market and children’s activities. For info, head to: http://www.stpatsparadeatlanta.com/
March 16: Nickelback
The Arena at Gwinnett is the place to find Nickelback
in March. Canada's Nickelback started life as a cover
band in Hanna, 215 kilometers northeast of Calgary.
Eventually, they tired of playing other people's songs,
and singer/guitarist Chad Kroeger put together a collection of original songs, borrowed money from his
stepfather, and went to Vancouver to record the band
in a friend's studio. From there, the group released
many chart topping albums and singles. For tickets,
head to: www.ticketmaster.com
March 17: Lucinda Williams
• insiteatlanta.com
• April
2005
PG 6PG
• insiteatlanta.com
• March
2007
Do you like your music soulful? Catch one of
America's best kept secrets at the Tabernacle.
Lucinda Williams is an American rock, folk, and
country music singer and songwriter. A threetime Grammy Award winner, she was named
"America's best songwriter" by TIME magazine in
2002. In 2006, Lucinda recorded a version of the
John Hartford classic "Gentle On My Mind,"
which played over the closing credits of the Will
Ferrell film Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky
Bobby. For tickets, head to: www.ticketmaster.com
March 2007
Volume 15.6
INsite Magazine of Atlanta
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website insiteatlanta.com
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© Copyright 2007, Be Bop Publishing, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Under The Lights
THEATER PREVIEW
What’s Happening on Stage in Atlanta
UNCLE GRAMPA’S
HOO DILLY STORYTIME
CINEPROV!
Saturdays through April 28
Sketchworks
Alliance Theatre
RE YOU ONE
OF those diehard
Mystery
Science
Theater 3000 junkies
still going through
withdrawal, or just a
smart-aleck know-itall who loves making
fun of films? Either
way, you're sure to dig
this weekly Thursday
night fixture at Decatur's Sketchworks, in
which improvisers make a merciless mockery of movies ranging from the great
(Empire Strikes Back, March 29) to the
godawful (Leprechaun, March 15) and
everything in between (Logan's Run, March
8). Their special Friday night show on
March 23 will feature Britney Spears'
abysmal Crossroads, with half-price admission for anyone dressed in a schoolgirl outfit and free admission if you let cast members shave your head on stage. Though poking fun at poor Brit may be like shooting
fish in a barrel these days, it's all for a good
cause, as all acceptable hair will be donated
to Locks Of Love, a charity that collects the
locks to make hairpieces for kids with cancer. Sketchworks, 3041 N. Decatur Rd,
Decatur. 404-914-4579. www.cineprov.com.
STORY OF LIES, GREED AND
BETRAYAL. Just another day at the
office. Rounding out the Hertz season is
one of the all-time classics of the American
Theater. When you look at the touchstone
plays of the twentieth century, situated next
to Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar
Named Desire is David Mamet’s shocking
tragicomedy Glengarry Glen Ross. Few
theatrical experiences can rival this 1984
masterpiece. Fans of the classics like those
mentioned above will appreciate the virtuoso writing, while aficionados of more
intense contemporary classics like
Topdog/Underdog will be thrilled by the
roller-coaster intensity of this searing verbal tornado. Only the strong survive in
David Mamet’s scorching masterpiece of
big-money schemes and high-stakes deals.
Set in the ruthless world of real estate, a
group of salesmen lie, cheat and connive –
all to close the big deal. As the play twists
and turns between liarity and fury, the desperate wheelers and dealers vie for the top
prize in a no-holds barred sales contest.
Things go shockingly awry, leaving the men
to scamble for top dog position. Cast
includes Brik Berkes, David de Vries, and
Neal A. Ghant. Alliance Theatre, 1280
Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta 404-733-5000
www.alliancetheatre.org
March 8, 15, 23 and 29
Dad’s Garage Theatre
T
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
HE GLEEFULLY
goofy spirit of
'Pee-Wee’s Playhouse'
is captured in this
kooky kid’s show from
the madcap masterminds
at
Dad’s
Garage. Combining
live actors and puppetry with the anything-goes spirit of
improv comedy, zany
recurring characters such as charming host
Larry Lederhosen, the irreverent Phineas J.
Monkey, and the ridiculously silly Foolio
act out a different classic fairy tale every
week. The story is chosen by a child's spin
of the wheel, then acted out with LOTS of
unpredictable new twists in an engagingly
interactive format that completely breaks
down the stage wall to maximize audience
participation. It’s weird, wacky and wilder
than any Saturday morning cartoon you’ve
ever seen, with clever humor that works on
multiple levels to entertain both kids and
the adults who brought them.
Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St,
Suite C-101, Atlanta. 404-523-3141.
www.dadsgarage.com.
A
March 16-April 8
A
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&
present
Best
Bartender
Atlanta 2007
Who Will Be This
Year’s Winner?
2006
Winner
Anto Hogan
from Fado
Nominate your favorite
Bartender by emailing
[email protected]
Check out INsite in upcoming issues
to vote on this year’s bartenders
RESTAURANT PROFILE
Taste of the Month-Tapas
Where to find Some of Atlanta’s Best!
Eclipse di Luna
764 Miami Circle 404.846.0449
www.eclipsediluna.com
When Eclipse di Luna opened in 1997, it was a
trailblazer setting a trend in Tapas style restaurants that has grown exponentially over the
years. This funky and festive restaurant located
at the end of the Miami Circle’s antique and
design district still packs them in.
steak skewered with chimichurri. Also try the
Bocadillos de Carne is a shredded beef sandwich
with sweet & sour onions.
There are several seafood dishes to choose
from including the Gambas al Ajillo which is
sautéed shrimp & garlic with calabes pepper.
For mussels fans, try the Mejillones en Salsa
Roja served in a spicy tomato broth with plum
tomatoes.
Eclipse di Luna has won several awards from
various magazines that include “Best
Appetizers”, “Atlanta’s Top 100 Restaurants” and
“Best Tapas”.
Mezza
2751 Lavista Rd. 404.633.8833
www.mezzabistro.com
With over two dozen Tapas to choose from,
there is something here to please any taste. The
Tapas is priced affordable, mostly between $3.95
and $4.95, to encourage multiple sampling.
They offer several that are cheese based. These
include the Quesos Espanoles, a tasting of
Spanish cheeses with assorted accompaniments.
The Tortilla Espanola is a Spanish style omelet
with potatoes, wild mushrooms & onions in a
roasted garlic cream. And the Pimientos
Rellenos con Queso de Cabra which is a herbed
goat cheese tomato sauce in crispy piquillo peppers.
Eclipse features two chicken Tapas including
the Pollo a la Parilla, a chicken breast grilled and
marinated with red pepper salad and avocado.
The Pollo al Ajillo is a braised garlic chicken in
its own broth.
You have more choices on the beef side. The
Brocheta de Bistee is a red wine marinated skirt
Mezza…lebanese bistro and bar offers one of
the most characteristic elements of Lebanese
cuisine. Much like Tapas, mezza is an array of
small hot and cold appetizers. At Mezza you
will find the authentic home made Lebanese
Tapas, great wines and enjoy belly dancing and
Hookahs in their new expanded lounge.
Located just a few miles from the Emory campus, Mezza has become a neighborhood
favorite. The restaurant offers the largest
Lebanese tapas menu in the city.
Of the twenty or more vegetarian items on the
menu many of which are vegan. Some of the
more popular are the Baba Ghannouge which is
baked eggplant pureed with sesame seed paste
(tahini) and lemon juice garlic. Also try the
Muhammara which is a mix of ground red bell
peppers with walnuts, pistachios, lemon garlic
and cayenne pepper.
Some of the more unique beef dishes are Beef
stuffed grape leaves, served with rice and a
blend of spices accompanying plain yogurt and
the most popular dish Chicken Shawarma,
chicken tenders baked with tomatoes, onions
and spices served on a bed of rice and topped
with tahini sauce.
They offer a few seafood dishes including the
shrimp, salmon kebabs and the cilantro fish
which is baked and topped with cilantro tomato
sauce on a bed of vermicelli rice.
In addition to its food menu, Mezza also has
the largest Lebanese wine list in the city, with
some of the best wines of Lebanon.
Over the years Mezza has garnered great
reviews from the city’s food critics. They were
voted 2004 Best Mediterranean restaurant by
INsite readers, are the top rated Lebanese
restaurant in Zagat Survey six years in a row
and a critic's choice for the best 50 restaurants
in Atlanta by AJC Fall 2004, as well as one of
Atlanta Magazine’s top 100 restaurants in
Atlanta.
Sweet Devil Moon
980 Piedmont Ave. 404.347.3600
www.sdmatlanta.com
Sweet Devil Moon serves authentic Peruvian
Tapas. Original artwork adornes the walls in
this cozy yet classy restaurant. Located in the
heart of Midtown, they offer a great enclosed
patio to enjoy the view. Inside you will find a
Wine Bar with an excellent selection of wines
from around the world.
They have Tapas ranging from seafood, chicken, veggie and meat lovers. Popular veggie
Tapas include Grilled Portabella, Plantano
Frito, and Tofu skewers.
Sweet Devil’s exotic Seafood Tapas includes
Pulpo a lo callo. This is bite sized octopus flavored with herbs and olive oil. The Choritos a
la Chalaca are big mussels covered in a spicy &
chunky combination of red onions, corn, and
jalepenos. The Machupicchu Rice is paella
served peruvian style with shrimp, calamari,
mussels, and veggies.
Of their chicken Tapas try the Yuka Rellena
which consists of mashed yuka filled with
chicken, raisins and onions saute. The Arroz
con pollo is traditional cilantro-infused rice
served with chicken & pico de gallo.
Meat lovers should try the Lomo Saltado, a
saute of steak strips with onions, tomatoes and
French fries. Or the Asado, a Peruvian style
pot roast served over rice.
Loca Luna
114 6th Street 404.875.4494
www.loca-luna.com
Rumba. Salsa. Tango. They have it all at Loca
Luna, where you'll find live Latin music nightly
and great food. The happening bar is open till
3am with a wide selection of exotic cocktails,
top shelf liquor and many wines to complement
a good meal or a night of dancing. Loca Luna
boasts a tropical theme which is centered
around their fountain and pool containing tropical fish in the large interior courtyard. All the
exotic recreations add to a sense of escape from
Midtown and makes a great spot for large gatherings among friends.
Loca Luna has been ranked the best mojitos,
late night venue, patio, appetizers and girls
night out, among others, by both local and
national publications.
NEIGHBORHOOD SPOTLIGHT
East Atlanta Village
Local Neighborhood Continues its Evolution: Guide to Popular Destinations
T
HE HISTORY OF EAST ATLANTA
dates back through Columbus, as the
area was used as a trade route for Native
Americans. More recently in 1981, the East
Atlanta Community Association was founded
to bolster a sense of community in the neighborhood and work to improve the quality of
life. Many improvements have been made in
the last 25 years including a major renovation
ending last year which built new pedestrian
friendly sidewalks and tree lined streets.
The vision for East Atlanta Village is a neighborhood-oriented commercial node reflecting
the diversity of adjacent neighborhoods. The
Village includes unique restaurants, unusual
retail merchandise, with a mix of residential.
Delightful streets are enlivened with sidewalk
cafes, street trees, sculpture, murals, colorful
shops, and pedestrian activities. At the historic core of the Village small-scale business
are located along Flat Shoals and Glenwood
Avenues. Residences are also provided in rehabilitated historic structures and on upper
floors throughout the Village.
The New York Times has taken notice. In a
recent article on the unique and defined
neighborhoods in Atlanta they noted “And
now Atlantans are quickly adding another cultural hub to their list: East Atlanta, home to a
lively sprinkling of quirky shops, restaurants
and nightspots that's reaching the crest in
what has been a steadily rising wave of cool.”
In our January Issue, writer Bret Love wrote
“..at the heart of this hip epicenter is East
Atlanta Village, a retail development located at
the intersection of Glenwood Avenue and Flat
Shoals Avenue, where almost all of the area’s
shops, boutiques, bars and restaurants are
located. ‘the Village is hip and funky, fun and
friendly,’ says Fuqua, ‘with lots of one-of-akind boutiques, great music venues, a Sohostyle coffee shop, an old 50’s-type barber shop,
a tattoo parlor and a great furniture and accessories store. The Village is really what makes
the area attractive.”
It seems the best is yet to come for East
Atlanta, as more people take notice of the
great shopping opportunities in the Village
and desirable way of life for its residents.
Traders
485 Flat Shoals Ave 404.522.3006
www.TRADERSatlanta.com
Traders is a unique retail space with a mixture of furniture, home accessories, gifts and
novelties. They carry Rowe upholstry, Zocalo
and Sitcom case goods (end tables and coffe
tables). Here you will find a wide selection of
lamps and decorative vases, sconses and artwork. They carry several scented candle lines:
Votivo, Archipelago, and Zinnia unscented
candles. There is also a great children’s baby
section full of toys, puzzels and plush animals
for that special child. The baby section has
books for new Moms and Dads, Onesies,
Dishsets and much more.
Traders also has many Body and Bath lines
including: Archipelago Milk, Morning, Mint,
Pomegranate and Sugar. They have a wide
selection of Pre de Provence French soaps.
Plus Thymes eucalyptus, lavendar and ginger
milk.
Part of the store is devoted to fun novelties
mostly based in political and sex humor.
These include a dancing and singing George
Bush doll and a strip tease kit.
Traders opened
ten years ago in
April 1997 across
the street in what
is now the Eye Too
space. The current location is
approximately
4,000 square feet
of floor room
making it the
largest retail shop
in East Atlanta.
VOTED BEST CAJUN - 2006 Insite Magazine
VOTED BEST NEW RESTAURANT & BEST NEW CAJUN
- 2006 Creative Loafing
Grant Central East
1279 GlenwoodAve. (Glenwood @ Flat Shoals)
Grant Central East is located in the heart of
East Atlanta Village on the corner of
Glenwood and Flat Shoals. It is the sister
restaurant to Grant Central, the 14 year old
original restaurant residing in Grant Park.
The original was named after Grand Central
Station for its NY Style pizza.
Here you can find great pizza, subs and sal-
ads. The relaxed atmosphere is reflected by
the friendly tattoo-adorned staff. They have
an open kitchen so you can check out your
pizza as it comes out of the oven and there is a
large dining area with plenty of tables to accomadate large groups.
After residents of surrounding areas have
called it a night, expect to see locals trickling
into Grant Central East from neighborhood
bars to get a slice before heading home. If
you dropped most your cash at the bar across
the street don't worry, because $1.65 will get
you started with a slice, and for under $10.00
you can get an assortment of salads, sandwiches, and pizzas.
Grant Central East gives its customers the
option of customizing their pizza, even when
only ordering a slice. For an extra $2.00 you
can get a single piece of pizza with any four
toppings, and three bucks buys a slice of their
house pizza, the Cardiac Arrest (pepperoni,
spicy sausage, meatballs, ham and extra
cheese), which is every bit as good as it
sounds. So if you're in the mood for great
pizza or just hungry after fa nite out at the bar
next door, head over to Grant Central East.
The Earl
488 Flat Shoals Rd. 404.522.3950
www.badearl.com
An East Atlanta institution for great live
music. Anything and everything can be heard,
and the crowd varies with the bands. They
also are a popular restaurant with a surprisingly ample menu. Here you can find anything
from their award winning burgers to grilled
salmon or great salads and appetizers.
The Earl celebrated their 10th Anniversary
last summer and will sure to have another
great line-up of bands this year. Popular acts
of the past month include JONATHAN
RICHMAN and the band WHAT MADE
MILWAUKEE FAMOUS. This month don’t
miss their ST. PAT-PRICK’S DAY PARTY
March 17 sponsored by Prick Magazine and
HELLA on March 25.
NEW ELEVATION BEDROOM SUITE
Queen Bed $699 Matching dining table available
ANNIVERSARY
APRIL 2007
TRADERSatlanta.com
We’ll be having special
in-store events all month.
Come in and see us!
JACKSON SOFA
Starting at $899
PG 13 insiteatlanta.com March 2006
FILM INTERVIEW
JIM CARREY
The Man Behind the Mask
BY ALEX S. MORRISON
C
AROL BURNETT ONCE SAID,
“Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
And whether it’s Richard Pryor
being raised in his grandmother’s brothel,
Damon Wayans getting mocked as a child for
his clubbed foot, or Margaret Cho’s Korean parents abandoning her to the care of
strangers for the first seven years of her life,
the biographies of many comedians attest to
the truth of that statement. It’s a widely held
belief that tragic childhoods produce the
best comedic minds, and anyone who spends
much time on the standup circuit knows that
the mask of humor often hides a past (or, in
some cases, present) full of pain.
cies the rest of the day. But his adolescence
took a turn for the worse when his family
was forced to relocate from their cozy hometown of Newmarket to the Toronto suburb
of Scarborough, where they all took security
and janitorial jobs at a factory, with Jim
working 8-hour shifts after school let out.
His grades and morale naturally suffered as
a result, and things got even worse when the
destitute family had to live out of a Volkswagen camper van after quitting the factory. It
was not long afterwards that Carrey dropped
out of high school, made his comedy debut
at a local Toronto club, and headed off to Los
Angeles at the age of 17 to seek his fortune.
It took 15 years for Carrey to make the
climb up the ladder to the top of Hollywood’s
SOME DAYS I JUST WANT TO BE THE SMALLEST SPECK IN THE
UNIVERSE INSTEAD OF THE BIGGEST. BUT MY JOB IS TO TAKE
PEOPLE AWAY FROM (THE REALITY OF) LIFE, OR MAKE THEM
IDENTIFY WITH IT, AND I LOVE WHAT I DO.
Few people would have accused Jim Carrey of possessing such depth when he first
broke out in the early ‘90s. Initially known
as the rubber-faced white guy on FOX’s
sketch comedy hit In Living Color, in 1994
he unleashed a trio of gleefully sophomoric
family films (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The
Mask and Dumb & Dumber) that collectively
earned well over $300 million at the U.S.
box office alone. Making the transition from
outrageous TV goofball to big screen physical comedian, Carrey established himself as a
manic talent willing to do virtually anything
in his quest for a laugh. According to the
45-year-old Ontario native, that desire for
approval began when he was very young.
“For years, I was the entertainment,” he recalls with a bemused smile. “It was almost a
slavery situation, where I’d get a knock in the
middle of the night and my parents would
say, ‘Get your tap shoes on, because there’s
company!’ So I was always doing shows and
was always the center of attention. I got that
from my father. When I was a little kid I
remember we had family get-togethers, and
I’d watch him captivate the room and be so
animated. I thought, wow, so that’s how you
get over the world! I was always trying to be
like him.”
Though reluctant to talk about his childhood early on in his career, Carrey has
become increasingly revealing over the years,
particularly when it comes to honoring the
memory of his father, Percy, an accountant
and aspiring jazz saxophonist. “My father
was an amazing character,” he continues
warmly. “He was worse than I am, with
all these crazy old jokes turned into new
things. He was an amazing guy– so funny, so
creative and also my champion. When I did
something creative, he didn’t go, ‘What are
you doing that for?’ It was like, ‘Look what
Jim’s doing!’ He encouraged it, so he’s huge
in my heart.”
This encouragement led Jim, the youngest of our children, to become an incurable
extrovert, granted a few minutes to perform standup routines for his classmates at
the end of each school day in exchange for
agreeing to reign in his class clown tendenPG 12 • insiteatlanta.com • March 2007
A-list, but once he did, he became the
most successful actor in the world. He had
two more blockbuster comedies with Ace
Ventura: When Nature Calls and Liar Liar,
and shocked the industry by earning his first
$20 million paycheck for The Cable Guy.
But then a funny thing happened on the way
to the bank: Carrey decided to get serious,
making three dramatic films (The Truman
Show, Simon Birch and the Andy Kaufman
biopic, Man On the Moon) that forced
audiences to reconsider their preconceived
notions of him as a grinning goofball whose
comic shtick was just a half-step up
comedy’s evolutionary ladder from the
Three Stooges. He won two Golden
Globes for his efforts, but the Oscar
nominations most industry insiders
anticipated would follow never
materialized, and Carrey was
notoriously indignant at being
overlooked by the Academy.
Now, he seems to take such
snubs in stride. “I don’t think
there was a conspiracy,” he says
diplomatically. “There’s a lot that
goes on with voting for Academy
Awards. I don’t think there’s
an accumulation of people out
there saying, ‘Let’s talk about
what we’re gonna do with Jim.
OK, maybe [we’ll give him an
Oscar] in 10 years, but not
now!’ I just don’t think they’re
doing that.”
Asked about his recent
tendency to veer between
serious dramatic roles like the
emotionally devastating Joel in
2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind and scene-stealing fiends such as the cunning
Count Olaf in family-friendly
fare such as Lemony Snicket’s A
Series of Unfortunate Events, Carrey
explains that, “I think it’s important never to
look a gift horse in the mouth and never to
overlook your talents. I really don’t consider... whether it’s dramatic or comedic. It’s
like a child-like fascination. How different
can I look? What characters can come out of
this at the end of it all? You really don’t know
when you start, but you take the chance and
take the shot in doing it. So what I find is
that if you go full bore into it with faith, it
always ends up surprising you and you just
go, Wow! It’s really kind of a feeling of giving
birth to something.”
And whether that something is this
month’s thriller The Number 23 (in which
he plays both a likeable family man and a
noir-ish detective with equal aplomb) or his
next project, voicing the elephant lead in an
animated version of Dr. Seuss’ classic Horton
Hears A Who, Carrey seems determined
to love each and every one of his creative
offspring with everything he’s got.
“I don’t want to get uppity,” he says with
his trademark hearty laugh. “The danger for
me is to start choosing all my parts because
they’re good for an Oscar. I like to be funny!
I never decided at
one point, ‘OK,
I’m going to
be a serious
actor now.’ I
want to do
everything
I can–
many
different characters
and pictures. I like
to get down
and dirty and
do comedy. It’s
a way of throwing
the hounds off the
trail again
and just
having some fun... period.”
Truth is, despite the $20 million paydays and
the adoration of millions, fun is something
that Carrey’s life off-screen has often seemed
to lack. From his teenage homelessness and a
messy divorce from his first wife to highly
publicized relationships (and subsequent
breakups) with co-stars Lauren Holly and
Renee Zellweger and a recent period in
which he acknowledged taking anti-depressants, the series of unfortunate events that
make up Carrey’s personal life are enough
to make the comedy god seem... well, almost
normal.
“I’ve had a couple [of setbacks] here and
there that I’ve tried to blow up into something bigger,” he admits with a half-smile,
“but for the most part it has just been a
pretty amazing ride. To me, it’s a matter
of staying in a place and realizing what
everything is really worth. I know we try to
mythologize every thing in Hollywood, so
everything is blown out of proportion, but
as far as I am concerned, I make movies that
make people feel good for two hours. That’s
my thing in life, and I’m OK with that.”
And what of the fame and adulation he’s
been working so diligently for since the age
of 17? Was the journey worth the effort, and
the cost one must pay when cameras track
your every move á la Truman Burbank? Despite the drawbacks of worldwide celebrity,
Carrey seems to think so.
“People need their dreams,” he insists earnestly. “People need to believe in something.
That stuff is important to us. That’s
why movie stars are important to us.
That’s why it’s not good for me
to complain too much about the
things that are negative in my
life. If I complain about what a
bummer it is to go to the beach
and get recognized, it’s something people don’t want to hear.
Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt,
frankly, but I’m the luckiest guy
in the world and I know it. I get a
lot of people who want to love me.
Some days I don’t love myself. Some
days I just want to be the smallest
speck in the universe instead of the
biggest. But my job is to take people
away from [the reality of ] life, or make
them identify with it, and I love what
I do.”
COVER INTERVIEW
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Eva Mendes Watches Out For Hollywood Wolves
BY B. LOVE
C
UBANAMERICAN CUTIE EVA
MENDES IS HOTTER than a
habañero pepper. But despite roles
in high-profile films such as Training Day, All
About the Benjamins and Hitch, she’s never
delivered that one breakout performance that
would elevate her to the A-list status of peers
like J-Lo, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.
Her latest film, the comic book adaptation
Ghost Rider, isn’t likely to change that, though
Mendes does her best to inject life into her
thinly drawn reporter character. We recently
sat down with the lovely Latina to discuss
comic books, true love and making deals with
the devil.
How much did you know about Ghost Rider
before they approached you to do the film?
I didn’t know a thing about it except Nicholas Cage was doing it, and I’ve been dying
to work with him. And that Mark Steven
Johnson, who I’ve also been a fan of, was writing and directing it. Sony just happens to be
my favorite studio, so with those three things
combined I just figured...
Damn, brown-nose much?
No, I promise you it’s not! I’m not your
suck-up kind of girl. At first, I was a little
worried that Roxanne in the script wasn’t...
I had a meeting with Mark and I was like, “I
love the idea. I love the comic book,” because
I obviously did my research and looked at the
comic book. I love the idea of selling your
soul to the devil, because I k feel like I do it
a little every day in this business. I sat down
with him. It was hysterical. We just had a
really great time. I said, “OK, now that all the
laughs are over, I know I love you as a person.
But this character, I just don’t want her to be
‘the girl.’ I want her to be something. I want
her to have a real struggle and stuff.” And he
was like, “It’s not there right now, but I promise you it’s going to be there.”
Were you a fan of comic books when you
were growing up?
Not so much of comic books, but I’m a fan
of the idea of good versus evil, and obviously
always having good prevail. I went to Comic
Con. I’ve been there twice now, actually.
It’s so cool. I love it. I love when people are
passionate about something like that. I love
people dressing up their little kids. It’s so cute.
How have they responded to you playing the
character so far?
So far, so good, because they really haven’t
seen the movie yet. I hope after they see it,
they’re still good. I think it’s a great time
because, in the comic book, Roxanne is a
blond-haired, blue-eyed woman, which I’m
obviously not. I was really worried that the
hardcore fans might think, “Who is this exotic little creature playing Roxanne Simpson?
It doesn’t make sense!” I realized that, in the
comic book, Roxanne is also very voluptuous
and has massive boobs. I don’t know if you
can tell, but I actually added a little weight
and grew in the fun areas. I said, “I’m going to
get to the hardcore fans one way or another.”
So I let myself go a little bit more voluptuous,
and it was very easy because I just skipped the
gym and ate whatever I wanted.
What was it like getting to work with Nicolas
Cage after you’ve been wanting to for so
long? What did you expect?
I expected the unexpected, and that’s what
I got. As an individual, he’s so unique and
it comes through in his work. You prepare
for a scene and you’re getting ready for that
next day, and you obviously go and you have
your lines memorized. You have an idea of
what you want to do, but obviously you stay
open and you see what happens. Every time
he would get me, because he does this great
thing where he turns things upside down and
doesn’t play it the obvious way. He doesn’t
play the line or the scene in the obvious way,
which really kept me on my toes. I was like
“Oh, cool, what are we doing today?” He just
kind of flips it. Then he can make the most
mundane sentences sound really heavy. I was
like, how do I do that? I actually made heavy
sentences sound mundane. I was like, I need
to reverse that.
Can you elaborate on your character’s struggles and what Mark added that sparked
your interest more?
Basically, I wanted every woman to be able
to relate to her. I think we did that because
not too many people sell their soul to the
I think it more exists in.... No, I don’t. I
was trying to be creative right now and be
philosophical. But no, I don’t believe in that. I
believe people can be evil.
Are you religious?
I don’t talk religion or politics because I’m
not the brightest girl around and I tend to get
myself into trouble. So I make a choice– no
talking about politics or religion.
You seem to have a fairly cynical view of
Hollywood.
I think it’s realistic. I just watch out for the
wolves. There are a lot of them, but there are
a lot of great ones as well. I’ve actually never
had a bad experience, but I’ve heard about
them and I’ve seen them with other people,
so I steer clear away from them. Sometimes
you can’t help it, but you attract what you put
out there.
I CAN BE A CYNIC AND ACT LIKE A SMARTASS AT TIMES, BUT
I’M ACTUALLY REALLY OVERLY SENSITIVE. I’M VERY
MUCH A BIT OF A ROMANTIC.
devil like that and have their head on fire.
But there are problems in every relationship, and there’s just so many obstacles that
can complicate a relationship, and I think
people– women especially– can feel when we
aren’t honest in how we deal with that. I just
wanted to bring that human nature into it and
represent women and what we go through
sometimes. The way we did that was just to be
as realistic as possible. I play a reporter and
I play a career woman, but I also play such a
girl. I love that in a sense. I say she’s still like
that 15-year-old girl [who] is still inside of
her, waiting for him in the rain. It’s a heartbreaking scene in the beginning. It’s that girl
who believes in true love so much– that girl
who just went on and did her thing as a career
woman, but still wants to believe in love.
Is that kind of like you in real life?
Yeah, I think so. I know I can be a cynic and
act like a smartass at times, but I’m actually
really overly sensitive. I’m very much a bit of
a romantic.
What else are you up to in your busy professional life?
I’ve had a really great year. I think I’ve kind
of stepped it up creatively. I finished a film a
few months ago with Joaquin Phoenix, Robert
Duvall and Mark Wahlberg called We Own
the Night, which is my first real dramatic role.
I’ve played dramatic roles before, but not in
lead situations. I play Joaquin Phoenix’s love
interest, a girl named Amanda. It’s a really
heavy film, which I’m really excited to see.
That should be coming out next year, and
then I produced my first independent film
and starred in it. Fingers crossed! It’s really
interesting. It’s called Live, and it’s a commentary on where we’re going with reality
television. I play this executive hired at a
network to bring the network back up and
compete with those other networks that are
kicking our butt because of the trash they
have on TV. I come up with a way to put
Russian roulette on television. I find this legal
loophole. It’s actually really well written and
really cool. It makes a major statement, which
I’m really excited about. Hopefully we’ll be
doing the whole film festival circuit next year.
It’s a really interesting topic to me because I
feel pretty passionately that we’re dumbing
down America.
Do you believe in something like the devil?
Have you turned down a project based on
that?
Yes, I did. It hasn’t come out yet. It’s been in
the can for two years. It’s cool. Not cool for
them, but cool for me that my decision was
based on something.
Where did that instinct come from?
I don’t know. I think we can see smoke
signals. I think we choose to ignore them
sometimes, but I think we know and I have a
really great team that is very protective over
me as well. I’ve been fortunate to have that.
How would you classify Ghost Rider? Part
horror? Part action? Obviously there’s some
romance in it.
Yeah, I think for me it’s a little bit of everything because it’s funny at times, too. I love
that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Nic is
so great at making fun of himself. I think it’s
such a visual treat, with emotional connection. I don’t even know how I would go about
labeling it. It would be unfair to the movie.
Does Nic’s sense of humor come out a lot of
the set?
I think he’s so into what he’s doing. He’s
such a professional. It was kind of funny
to me, because I know this is going to look
amazing, but there’s no real bike. This is
weird, but I just had to grow up. That’s where
I just become really silly. The thing that I
would do is I would start laughing, and me
and Nicolas called it “gigglerama.” We would
go into gigglerama mode and I just couldn’t
stop. You remember that moment when
you’re in church or something, and you can’t
stop laughing? He’s talking to me as Ghost
Rider and it would be funny sometimes. I
would let it go and he would start laughing.
Are you signed up for anything else besides
what you told us about earlier?
Yeah, I’ve got a couple things going, but I’m
so superstitious. I don’t talk about it until I’m
on the set. Literally, like with my own family
I’ll be like, “Oh, mom, I’m going to New York
tomorrow to start a movie.” She’s like, “What
is it?” I won’t even answer her: “So, yeah, if
you want to come over and say goodbye, I’ll
be here packing.” The trades have reported
things before their time, and things fall apart
so much, it just hurts too much to deal with
the disappointment.
WRITER INTERVIEW
��
AUTHOR ROBERT GRAYSMITH ON HIS
OBSESSIVE QUEST TO FIND A SERIAL KILLER
BY B. LOVE
D
AVID FINCHER’S NEW FILM ZODIAC IS
obsessive about realism. No characters are blended,
almost none of the names are changed, and it follows a strict timeline of the quest to capture the elusive
killer. But right now it doesn’t get any more real than having
the man who lived through it sitting across from me. Portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal in the film, Robert Graysmith is
a man who, at great personal cost to himself, continued the
pursuit of Zodiac when few others would.
So having lived through it, were you impressed by the recreation of the setting?
Well I went into [director David] Fincher’s office and he
showed me the blueprint for the old San Francisco
Chronicle office and the computer technology is
3-D. And when I went through the set, which was
a block long, you open the desk drawers and there’s
notepads, pencils, the phones work, the pnumatic
tubes work. And I look up at the ceiling and
something that nobody in the world would
know: he’s recreated the light patterns.
It was the most eerie thing I’ve ever
seen in my life and nobody would
have known if he messed it up.
He set up obstacles and I think
that [producer] Brad Fischer
didn’t like it but he
would say “I
must do this, I
must do this,
I must have
these guys,” and
at every point there was a very
good chance that David Fincher
would not make the film. I was
very lucky to be there when they
were writing the script so I have all that
down.
Being sufficiently distanced from this, are you able to
analyze why this obessession overcame you?
I’ll tell ya, if anybody here starts getting into that case,
there’s something about it. It’s so tantalizing. I was a
political cartoonist and unfortunately I was trying to do
funny cartoons and serious stuff is what I should have been
doing. It occurred to me sitting in the middle of the press
room during the letters, that nobody’s gonna write a book
about this. And I said that using that book, using the killer’s
symbols, make a political cartoon where you get all the
information from various departments that wasn’t forthcoming and get it out there and the public will solve the case.
Zodiac seems very conscious of his own image so why do
you think there haven’t been more copycats?
Yeah, he’s created his own trademark, his own costume.
But there have been [copycats]. There was one in New
York who was an exact copy. He believed he was Zodiac.
And I went there and went on the air with other and we
said “You’re not Zodiac. You’re an imitator.” And then the
murders stopped for five years and then they finally came
back and caught the guy. Then in Japan, I go downstairs one
morning and on HKTV, all the way from Japan. They got a
guy there who’s imitating Zodiac. He’s signing like him. So
it’s really eerie. I don’t know of another situation where you
had imitators of imitators.
For a case that had so much obsession seeping into it, did
you see that obsession overtaking the filmmakers as well?
Absolutely. Just yesterday, they were making corrections
on something that’s not even going to be in the film. There
drive now is a DVD extra which is really a timeline and all
new witnesses, handwriting and
geographical analysis. You’ll
think it’s a historical document.
They got the detectives talking. I
think I’m looking forward to that
more than anything.
spot; real unusual places in the word.
Did they ever bring in a profiler?
Yeah, Dr. Murray Myron of the Syracuse University. He
did a really good profile. I worked with Dr. Lundy at Stanford. We pretty much
came to the fact that he’s
a sexual sadist. Intertwined love
and hate. Sex
for him was an
expression of
violence.
IT OCCURRED TO ME SITTING IN THE
MIDDLE OF THE PRESS ROOM DURING THE
LETTERS, THAT NOBODY’S GONNA WRITE A
BOOK ABOUT THIS.
And you really believe that the
Zodiac was Arthur Leigh Allen?
Well, look at this way: he meets a lot of the requirements
(cryptogaphy, and so on). You come out the front door and
there’s the International House of Pancakes. You could
take a pebble and hit it. Who’s working there? Darlene
Ferrin [one of Zodiac’s victims]. And I find this friend of
Allen’s who said that he really liked this waitress (he
doesn’t like women normally) and he’s looking
at her. Well in my book, Darlene Ferring quits her job because she’s being
badgered by some older client. Now
Terry’s is only restaurant I ever
mentioned. So how this guy would
know this. So he’s
a suspect in that
one. The guy
that came to her
party was known
as “Leigh”. He was the
janitor across the street from the
first victim, a young black girl. Now
the third murder is up at lake Mariessa. I’ve been there many, many times.
Finally I go the day of the murder and it’s
deserted. We were able to salvage that there
were ten people at the lake: the two victims,
three college women, father and son in a boat, and of
course, Arthur Lee Allen was there an hour before the
stabbing. And now they did the measurements and
impaction tests show that the man who walked in those
steps was 220-230 lbs; was wearing a size ten-and-a-half
shoe which was Allen’s size; he’s wearing wing-walkers
which are only available at naval bases which his father was
a naval commander. There’s just one thing after another and
he fits so well. I’m satsified.
Can you talk about the moment you came face-to-face with
Leigh Allen?
Well that is odd because I laid the groundwork for it. I
had my friend go in and buy things and she’d try to get him
to print things and he wouldn’t print them. And finally I
had pretty much had it and so I came into the store. And I
looked across the room and in my book we changed it to a
yacht store because we couldn’t say his name at the end of
the first book. But at that moment, it’s like someone struck
a bell and it was like “That’s him.”
I mean Zodiac said, “I have bombs in my basement.” They
get a search warrant, look in Allen’s basement, he has all the
clippings on Zodiac, the bombs he made. So many of the
things fit in this case. But never say never. There are some
new things that Fincher’s found like geographical profiling and looking at the printing on the letters, like where he
breaks the syllables and they have maybe a hundred samples
of Allen’s printing and he breaks his syllables in the same
Do you think he committed other murders than
the ones you chronicled in your book?
He had his trailer in Santa Rosa after he moved
there. You have Santa Rosa State. And at the other
end of this long road you have the Franz Valley
Road where a number of co-eds were found dead in
layers and layers and layers. So they know it was
the same guy because they were rolled down the
same spot. And in the center, they were held somewhere between the time they got in somebody’s car
and went down the hill; like a missing two days or
so. So he has his trailer. I’ve always suspected him.
[Zodiac] said they were gonna look like accidents,
they were gonna be different and these were strychnine and strangling and somebody experimenting.
How do you reconcile some of the things that have
gotten him off the hook?
Well, I like the handwriting. But the lie detector:
he was loaded with meds. He had saved them up.
One of the things I’ve always been disturbed by is
that the man at the lake was seen smoking and Allen doesn’t smoke.
Did they do DNA?
This is intriguing because
in 1978 they folded all the
letters into a cardboard box
and had some inspector
drive it up to Sacromento
in the 112 degree heat.
Left it on a Sheriff ’s desk for
about ten years and drove it back.
And then the letters vanished from the
police department and went into private
use for the TV show. I just talked
with them directly and they took
samples from the front of one,
the back of one, and the flap of
one and mixed them together
and got a print that was so faint
they couldn’t run it through
IVIS or any database. So I don’t
know what it means. I do know
that when he was in prison, he
would mail letters within letters,
seal the letter and stamp, and
then have his friends post
it. He was a clever guy.
FILM INTERVIEW
THE MAVERICK: Billy Bob Thornton
Blazes His Own Hollywood Trail
BY MATT GOLDBERG
B
ILLY BOB THORNTON
enters the room and he has
a big smile on his face. It’s
the day after Superbowl XLI, and
he’s a Colts fan. Some actors are
less guarded when they’re in a bad
mood and feel the need to vent, but
from the moment we start talking,
it’s clear that Thornton is a man
who doesn’t care for safe, well-rehearsed answers. Speaking with
him, it’s clear he shares the rugged
independence and zero-tolerance
for bullshit of Charlie Farmer, the
character he plays in his new film,
The Astronaut Farmer. Over the
course of the interview, it also
became clear he had very little
tolerance for fools, studio math and
self-aggrandizing introspection.
You’ve said that every actor has a
list of films they want to do and
that this film is a Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington-like movie that the whole family can enjoy (as opposed to family films that the
adults hate). What other films are left on your list?
I’d like to make a documentary. I love documentaries. I could do that. Epic Period Drama…
that’s the hardest thing to talk a studio into doing. I could walk into a studio tomorrow and say
“I want to play a rapper who turns a bowl of soup into a spaceship.” And they’d make it just like
that.
Do you think we’ve become too cynical?
I think we have become too cynical. Our society doesn’t encourage dreamers or much of
anything really. We’re all about power, money, control and fashion. And that’s pretty much all
that’s left of our society and the entertainment business is about fashion more than anything.
When I was a kid I would see a movie like this and I would come out and think “Hey! I can be
this!” It’s an encouraging movie. I like that about it. But I think we’re a little too cynical right
now. Well, not “a little”.
need to make it. Studios will only give you money if you’re making big movies. They’ll give you
$200 million but they won’t give you $30 million for a drama because there’s too much talking.
Here’s the main problem: if they’re gonna give you $30 million, they’re gonna want a bunch
of movie stars in it and that’s gonna take up most of your budget. With a five-million-dollar
movie, you can get away with not having so many movie stars. And with a $200 million movie,
they don’t have to have a bunch of stars. They have one or maybe two and the movie star is the
movie. It’s all the special effects and people turning into jelly and all that.
A lot of your characters have sort of a quirky confidence. Is that something you bring to it or
something you look for in a role?
Honest to God, when actors talk to you about their “process” and when people ask me what
my process is, I have no idea. I think good actors are people who have a lot of life experience.
That’s what I really believe. That’s the real answer to any real question about any character.
What did I bring to the character? What did I get out of it? What do I want people to see? I
don’t know. I really don’t know the answer to most of the questions people would ask me. I
don’t even BS. I just tell people like I just told you that. I don’t say, “Well, it’s an interesting
thing about me…” I usually read the screenplay once. I don’t read it again until we start. I’m severely dyslexic. I have my assistant read my lines to me before I got to set. The only way I can
learn them is by hearing them. And I get there and I go into the scene. I don’t think about my
puppy when I was nine. I think about the scene we’re doing. In that sense I’m a Method Actor
because my method is I go in there and do it as if I’m that guy. That’s why I don’t play Charles
de Gaulle. I don’t have a clue what French people do. I play roles I know I’m the best guy for.
Most parts I do I go in there and I know that it will fit like a glove. The ones I don’t think they
fit…well people ask, “Do you really turn down parts if they offer you all this money?” And yeah,
I do. I swear to God I do. I’ve turned down big movies for a whole bunch of money because
they were stupid.
Most of the character you play seem to be not quite there and I think people love that about
your roles.
Well if you look at most of the characters I play, at first they seem like they’re not quite there
but in reality at the end of the show, you realize they were the one who knew what was going all
along: A Simple Plan, Sling Blade, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Monster’s Ball, this one. Even
Bad Santa! Bad Santa ends up realizing there’s a real Christmas and ends up having a heart.
I’ve only done one movie where the guy didn’t end up showing you that he was the guy; the one
with the heart and the conscience and that was School for Scoundrels and I didn’t care for that.
Do you think the media has contributed to this cynicism?
I’ll tell ya—the lunatics are running the asylum. Like actors, when Jimmy Stewart, Cary
Grant, Clark Gable: the only time you saw them was when you went to a movie. Now there’s no
mystery about actors anymore. That’s why I don’t go anywhere unless I’m here talkin’ to you
guys or working, I don’t do anything. The Superbowl and the World Series are probably the
only two social events I attend. You haven’t seen me in the Enquirer lately because I don’t go
out of the house.
Do you miss the freedom of doing regular, every day activities?
Oh sure, but fortunately the paparazzi aren’t as interested in celebrities as they are in celebrity
couples. So when you’re not part of a celebrity couple, they don’t hide in the bushes. But if you
do go out, there will always be something. But the good news for me is I go to one supermarket
and one mall, and both are within two minutes of my house and everybody knows me there.
That’s where I take my little girl and do what I do. Occasionally we’ll get snapped but it will be
something stupid like, “What’d they do? Oh, they’re buying a pumpkin.”
I THINK WE HAVE BECOME TOO CYNICAL. OUR SOCIETY DOESN’T
ENCOURAGE DREAMERS OR MUCH OF ANYTHING REALLY. WE’RE
ALL ABOUT POWER, MONEY, CONTROL AND FASHION.
Do you think people would respond better to this movie if it were a true story?
I don’t think the audience would be any different. I think when you do a Q & A after a screening it would be a lot different. They wouldn’t ask so many stupid questions.
Like what?
Oh, some stupid stuff. There’s always a scientist in the audience. One woman asked the
other night, “Wait, if you lost all your money, how’d you buy that ride at the carnival?” You’ve
never bought anything when you were broke? That’s the point! And then some other guy said,
“Well. when the retro-rockets-something…” It’s a fantasy! It’s a movie! But they’ll make some
stupid science-fiction movie where no one questions the process or the rules about the world,
like, “Wait a minute! If you were all-powerful, why didn’t you just kill everybody! Why are
you fighting this one guy? Why are you fighting Spider-Man? Why not just kill everybody? I
thought you had all these powers and could make things dissengrate and melt,” but no one ever
questions that. But you try to make a real movie and do something decent and someone is like
“Well, my Dad works for Levis and they didn’t have ‘em in 1965.” Okay, sorry about that. I’m
sorry about that. Next time you make a movie I want to come to your Q & A.
Any plans to direct another feature film?
Well I want to direct the Floyd Collins story. If you guys could call studios and put in a good
word, I’d appreciate it. It’s a great story. [Collins was a great cave explorer who was trapped
in 1925; he was found by a reporter and survived for a week but eventually succumbed to exposure]. I’d play Floyd Collins and the real lead of the movie would be the reporter and I know
who I want for that part too. They’ll make the movie. They won’t make it for as much as you
ENTERTAINMENT
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Apparently Billy Bob Thorton is so upset about Brangelina that he wants to shoot himself into space. Check out
Thorton in “The Astronaut Farmer.”
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FULL OF IT:� ��
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HANNIBAL RISING:� ��
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IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS:� ��
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– B. Love
MUSIC AND LYRICS:� ��
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NORBIT:� ��
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“TWO
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-R
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ICHARD
OEPER AND
EVIN
MITH
UEST
®
RITIC
“Funny and dark,
and really sexy.”
-RICHARD ROEPER, EBERT & ROEPER
“…THE FIRST GREAT
FILM OF 2007.”
-AIN’T IT COOL NEWS
“…a smart, compelling
film with powerhouse
performances.”
-STEVE OLDFIELD, FOX-TV
THE QUEEN:��
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STARTS TODAY!
DIGITAL SHOWING
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– B. Love
“ON A PAR WITH ‘JAWS’.’’
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STARRING SONG KANG-HO, BYUN HEE-BONG, PARK HAE-IL, BAE DOO-NA, KO A-SUNG /
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Frank Miller’s latest graphic novel to make the jump to film is “300,” starting several relatively unknown actors,
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RENO 911!: MIAMI:��
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FILM INTERVIEW
LESS “ACTION!” MORE TALK:
KEVIN SMITH ON ACTING
BY MATT GOLDBERG
K
EVIN SMITH IS ONE ELOQUENT
BASTARD. He’s so good at talking
that he’s been able to make two DVDs
of him just answering questions for hours on
end. Ironically, his biggest acting gig previously
was the character of Silent Bob in his own films
(with the exception of Jersey Girl). But this year
Smith takes a break from writing and directing to play characters in films such as Catch &
Release and Die Hard 4 who do more than just
pantomime thoughts to a dim-witted cohort.
We spoke with Kevin about his new career
path.
Unconventional...
maybe.
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having her hand up your ass, and her working
your mouth.
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So is this going to make you think about acting
more full time?
I wound up acting more at the end of last year
than I thought I was doing. I did the Die Hard
thing, and then I did this thing for Showtime
called Man-Child. It’s fun and it’s kind of
interesting, but at the same time I’m limited.
In acting, you can hand someone the iambic
pentameter and they can go off. I can do one
thing fairly decently, and that is play myself...
I wouldn’t call that acting. Some people will
come to me and be like, “Hey, we want you to
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IF I REALLY WANT TO TEST MYSELF OR PUSH MYSELF, I’D TRY
AND MAKE SOMETHING COMPLETELY OUT OF MY SAFETY ZONE.
[Writer/director] Susannah Grant says that
you tend to denigrate your own talent. Why do
you think you do that?
I’ve grown up fat, so it’s always the steal the
thunder attitude for me– the idea of making
fun of yourself before someone else can. Of my
entire repertoire of stuff I’ve done, Jersey Girl
takes a beating like a redheaded stepchild
because it’s always easier to be like, “I
made Jersey Girl and it sucked,” than to
have somebody say it to you first. That
way, they’re sitting there waiting to tell
you, and they’re like, “Oh, he already
knows? Alright...”
But for every Jersey Girl, there’s a
Chasing Amy and Clerks.
And for some of us, even
Jersey Girl. I like Jersey
Girl. It’s just easier to
make fun, and it’s hard
to take the whole thing
serious, which is good
and bad. It’s good
because it kind of
armors you, but it’s bad
because people tend not
to take you serious. But
that’s fine; I haven’t made
any serious movies. But I
don’t know, it’s always the
way I’ve been. It would be
tough to change at this point
to be like, “Hey, I’m pimp! I’m
good, aren’t I?” Believe me, I say
that behind closed doors when it’s
just my wife and kid, but not to
strangers. And oddly enough, my
wife and kid are the only ones who
don’t believe it.
Susannah also said you didn’t deliver the lines
the way she wanted them.
But not because I don’t
respect Susannah’s writing. I just learned so
quickly that I’m not a good actor. A good actor
can take what’s written on the page and not
change a fuckin’ word, and make it sound like
they’re coming up with it off the top of their
head. I would try to do that, but how bad was I?
Susannah would be like– cuz there’s that director move where you’re supposed to lead the
horse to water, to make the actor think they’re
discovering it for themselves– “Well, you want
to say it with a bit more emotion here, like you
feel like you’re an Emu in the scene, and all
these people are lions,” or something like that.
And finally I’d be like, “Susannah, just say it,
and I’ll say it like you say it.” And so she loved
it, cuz that’s shorthand. It’s one step away from
do something that you haven’t done,” I’m like,
“You’re out of your mind.” I’m very, very limited.
So it’s fun when someone offers you something
cuz you’re like, “Well, I can do this! This is fun,
and it fuckin’ pays well!” So that’s cool. But
pursuing it like this is my new job? No.
How was it being a guest critic with Roeper?
It was pimp when they asked me to be on
Ebert & Roeper, and then I saw the other people
they asked and I was like, “Shit, they’re asking
everybody!” But it was still cool; I grew up
watching that show, back before it was Siskel &
Ebert, when it was just called At The Movies on
PBS, and before that when it was called Sneak
Previews. When I was a kid I watched that
show, and they were always referred to as
“the fat guy and the skinny guy” in our
house, and I grew up to be the fat guy,
so it was kind of cool. But it was nice,
and there’s a lot more work to it than
you think. You actually have to write a
review, which I never really thought
about. They kind of sit there and
deliver to the camera before they
get into cross talk, and they
never mess up; that’s because
they’re reading from a
teleprompter. And it’s your
opinion, so no one can
write the review for you.
You have to write it, and
that was the challenging
thing. You have to write a
200-word review and, as
you can tell, I’m not good
at keeping it short. So that
was tough.
Do you have a different opinion now on film criticism?
I really did walk away with
more of an appreciation for critics. Cuz it’s very easy to demonize them in my position– to
villainize a critic and be like,
“This fuckin’ asshole’s responsible for my
fuckin’ 63% on Rotten Tomatoes when I could
have been 70%! Why am I not certified fresh?”!
It’s not like curing cancer or laying brick, but
it’s a tough job. You’re forced to go see movies
you have no interest in seeing, and you have to
come at it fairly, then write something about it
clever in a way that nobody else has before and
shit like that.
What’s next for you?
I don’t know, it’s kind of coming down to me
wanting to do this comedy and me wanting to
do this horror flick. I feel like I should do the
horror flick because I’ve done seven comedies
in 12 years, and I don’t feel like a filmmaker
most days; I just feel like a guy who makes
those movies set in that universe. So if I really
want to test myself or push myself, I’d try and
make something completely out of my safety
zone. That said, I’ve never tested myself, so why
would I start now?
Unique...
definitely.
��
��
Kevin, is this a new career direction for you?
Every role that Jack Black says no to... pretty
much. It just feels like the industry is saying,
“Look, stop directing! Go be in movies if you’ve
got to be involved. Just be in ‘em, fuck directing!”
��
��
��
��
Book Reviews
HOLLYWOOD STATION
by Joseph Wambaugh
BY JOHN B. MOORE
Joseph Wambaugh has been writing about police– the LAPD in particular– since the early
1970s. But any assumptions that yet another
novel set against this familiar backdrop would
be simply paint-by-numbers storytelling are
unwarranted.
With Hollywood Station, Wambaugh pulls
together a motley crew of old school and
newbie detectives reporting out of the Hollywood precinct, all under the watch of the aptly
named Sergeant Oracle. Comprised of single
moms, wannabe actors, a couple of surfers and
bitter veteran officers, the station handles everything from bizarre murders and costumed
freaks shaking down tourists on the Walk of
Fame to meth-related crimes. Though his protagonists are interesting, Wambaugh devotes
his greatest character-creating skills to the
criminals that haunt Hollywood, writing up
sketches of Russian jewel thieves, counterfeiters and, of course, desperately tweaking meth
addicts.
Three decades ago, Wambaugh created the
seminal TV detective drama (Police Story),
and his debut
novel, The
New Centurions, helped revive the police
novel. With
Hollywood Station, the author
proves he still
has plenty of
ideas left in
him. Don’t be
surprised if
someone picks
up the TV/film
rights.
Grade: B+
THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE
TO CLASSIC MOVIES
by Lee Pfeiffer
BY B. LOVE
It’s a sad reality that, even
among avid film fans, classic films made before the
maverick era of the ‘60s
counterculture (see: Coppola, Kubrick, Scorsese,
etc.) tend not to register
on the pop culture radar of
people under the age of 40.
Even those of us familiar
with the works of legendary directors such as John
Huston, Howard Hawks, David Lean and Sam Peckinpah have huge gaps in our knowledge of film history. But Lee Pfeiffer– author of The Essential James
Bond, publisher of Cinema Retro magazine and film
history instructor at NYU– has assembled a 350-page
crash course virtually guaranteed to beef up your film
trivia quotient and add dozens of titles to your Netflix
queue.
From 1915’s controversial The Birth of a Nation
through Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film, Modern Times,
the book’s opening chapter summarizes more than
20 classics from the silent film era, adding facts, trivia
and behind-the-scenes stories in Pop-Up Video-style
sidebars to provide additional info along the way.
That approach makes the book an easy but lively read,
as the author covers genres ranging from romances,
comedies, musicals and animated gems to crime sagas, war movies, westerns and detective films. And
while any film fan worth their weight in celluloid will
have seen at least a few films in each category, there
are loads of lesser-known films here that are worthy
of discovery.
There are also five appendixes here– the American
Film Institute’s Top 100 Films of All Time, AFI’s Top
100 Film Quotes, Top 10 Box Office Stars 1950-1969,
Useful Internet Sites and Further reading– sure
to help broaden your knowledge of history even
further, making it a perfect book for any film lover’s
library. Grade: A
CONCERT CALENDER
��
�� Unzipt
�� Crop Circle, Life The Great,
CunninLynguists
�� Clutch
�� Julie Gribble, Crash Davis
�� The Phyics, The Brethren
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Dear Enemy, Dark New Day
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�� Bain Mattox, Tin Cup Prophette,
Lindsay Mac
�� Coy Bowles & The Fellowship
�� Gym Class Heros,
K-OS, POS, RX Bandits
�� Zydefunk
�� Sun Domingo
�� Yo Mamma’s Big Fat Booty Band
�� G. Love & The Special Sauce
�� Moe
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��
�� Patterson Hood
�� Kelsy Davis & The Radical Soul
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Trey Boyer Band
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A New Effect, Code Atom
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Asphalt Valentine, Hottboxx
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Ariya, Angelspit
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Across Five Aprils, xDeathstarx
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OVER 45 STORES
IN 16 STATES!
��
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Earl Greyhoun
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The Rocket Summer, The Verdict
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ATLANTA
www.samashmusic.com
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2999 Cobb Pkwy • (770) 818-0042
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Noxious, Bullhead Clap, Crazy Anglos
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Cory Branan
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Maudlin Ash, Rise of Pompeii
�� King Johnson
�� Reckless
�� Bradley Cole Smith Band
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30 Seconds to Mars at��
(3-13)
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�� Taste of Chaos Tour:
30 Seconds to Mars, The Used, Senses Fail,
Saosin, Aiden, Chiodos, Evaline
�� Matt Ulmer’s Southern Rock Open Jam
�� The Autumn Defense
�� Cadillac Sky
�� That One Guy
�� The Hoods, My Children
My Bride, Furious Styles
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�� Al Smith Open Mic Jam Session
�� Big Meat
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�� Faris Family, Peachtree Station
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�� Pepper with The Mad Caddies
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��
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Three5Human
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�� Dumpster Dive Records Spring Concert
�� Don Dixon Band
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�� Donnie
�� Nickelback
�� Hopsing Project
�� Liquid Jungle, Trees In Season,
Dead Stick Landing
�� Jackson County Line, Arlington Priest
�� Perpetual Groove After Party
�� Ford & The Pure Imagination Tour
�� Axis of Audio, Frequence,
Papa Luigi Project
�� Electomatics
�� Blackberry Smoke
�� Tribute to The Last Waltz
�� Perpetual Groove
�� Grayson Manor
�� Darryl Worley
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�� The Sin Hounds, YOU,
The Kevin Lewis Experience
�� Father Peter
�� Groovy Blue, Blue Flashing Light Band
�� The Rock City Dropouts, Soda Jerk,
The Hot Rods, The Grinder Girls
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�� Perpetual Groove After Party
�� Dysfunktional Funktion,
Charlie Wooton, Count M’Butu, Yonrico Scott,
Dick Smith
�� The Luenskies
�� Love Rush, The Charities
�� Trotline
�� Josh Groban
�� Albert Hammond, The Mooney Suzuki
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�� Screwtape & Wormwood
�� Barbara Cloyd, Jessica Urick,
Olivia West, Connor Rand, Eric Measle
�� Vast
�� Ralph’s World
��
�� The Selmanaires
�� Tommy Sands
�� Lily Allen
�� Ken Andrews
��
�� The Liverhearts
�� Hit the Lights, All Time Low,
Valencia, The Secret Handshake
�� Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
�� RJD2
��
�� Snow Patrol
�� Patrick Vining Band
�� Charlie Wooton & Friends
�� The Black Lips
�� Matthew Kahler, Caroline Herring,
Bo Bedingfield
�� The Haunted, Dark Tranquility,
Into Eternity Scar Symmetry
�� Whole Wheat Bread, Rory,
Against All Authority, The Summer Obsession
�� Old Ceremony, The Dream Team
��
�� The Good Good, Amanda Ray,
Jody Raffoul
�� Contagious
�� Youth Group, Aqueduct
�� Uncle Earl, Crooked Still
�� Mother Vinger
�� Pensive, Xzamen, Helios,
Ignorant Misfortune
�� Horse The Band, Special Olympiad,
Heavy Heavy Low Low, So Many Dynamos
�� Loose Chain
�� Open Hand
�� The Avett Bros.
�� Plain Jane Automobile
��
�� Hudson Road
�� Sazon
�� Francine Reed & The Shadows
�� Lindsay Rakers Band, Hightide Blues
�� James Calvin, 10 Degrees Off,
Warm in the Wake, The Eyes, Exit Clow
�� Bird
�� Hackensaw Boys with Michelle Malone
�� The Brilliant Inventions
�� Stand Alone, A New Effect,
Senona
�� Autumn Offering, Hell Within,
Autumn Black, Draped in Sorrow
�� Lola
�� Zoso
�� Hobex
�� Dean & Britta
�� Cold War Kids
�� Mark Wills
East Atlanta Village www.badearl.com
Fri, Sat - Mar 2&3
9:30pm
Fri - Mar 9
9:30pm
Sat - Mar 10
9:30pm
with Cassavetes and Cory Branan
Rob Crow (from Pinback)
with Monotonix and Mouth of the Architect
The Mary Timony Band
8pm
with Beach House and Birds of Avalon
with Georgie James (ex Q and not U
and Lesbian Afternoon
OK Productions presents:
8pm
Wed - Mar 21
9pm
Thr - Mar 22
9:30pm
Fri - Mar 23
9:30pm
Sat - Mar 24
9pm
Sun - Mar 25
9pm
Mon - Mar 26
9pm
with The Singleman Affair
St. Pat-Prick’s Day Party
with The Rock City Drop Outs, Soda Jerk,
The Hot Rods, The Grinder Girls
Hosted by / live freak show by The Enigma
The Black Lips
with The Ponys
��
�� The Producers Swap Meet
�� Paul Geremia
�� The Shut-Ups
�� The Chicago Afrobeat Project
�� Dean Dollar Band
�� Spring Garage Sale
�� The Beggar’ Guild
��
�� Appetite For Destruction
�� Reci Semien
�� Ben’s Bones
�� Turtlefolk, Kinetic Trek
�� Hope For A Golden Summer
�� The Colour, Gringo Star,
The Changes
�� The Draft, Some or Fire,
Tim Barry, Wrister
�� Mudcat CD Release
�� The Velcro Pygmies
�� Augustana
�� Blueground Undergrass
�� Pabst Fest II
�� Los Amigos Invisibles
�� Keith Anderson
��
�� Tim Brantley
�� Jaspects
�� Francine Reed & The Shadows
�� Poolstick
�� Homemade Jam, Summer Bergeron
�� Tribute To The Who
�� Don Conoscenti, Catbird Seat,
��
Saturday, Mar. 3
TREY BOYER BAND
John Frank • Derek Clegg Group
Friday, Mar. 9
BIG 10-4
20 Minutes to Park • Blue Flashing Light
Saturday, Mar. 10
PASSER BY
Curb of Leona
Friday, Mar. 16
HOPSING PROJECT
Saturday, Mar. 17
FATHER PETER
Friday, Mar. 23
HIGHTIDE BLUES
Lindsay Rakers Band
Youth Group
Saturday, Mar. 24
Bird
Friday, Mar. 30
Aqueduct with The Preakness
(feat. Mark Burgess from The Chameleons UK)
with Rescue Mission and Tiger! Tiger!
Bishop Allen
THAT 80’S BAND
Bedhead
BEN’S BONES
Saturday, Mar. 31
POOLSTICK
with +/-, Say Hi To Your Mom and Parade
Hella
with Dirty Projectors and
Who’s Your Favorite Son God?
The Black Angels
with Vietnam and Six Parts Seven
Tickets available at
Criminal Records & badearl.com
��
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Nachtmystium, Averse Sefira, Legion X
�� Sun Domingo
��
�� Charlie Wooton & Friends
�� People Noise
�� Justin McRoberts, Christopher Williams
�� Nod Factor
�� Josh Kelley
�� G3: Joe Satriani, John Petrucci,
Paul Gilbert
NO COVER Tuesday –Thursday
The Autumn Defense
Prick Magazine Presents the 7th Annual:
Sat - Mar 17
��
�� Pretty Ricky
�� The Black Angels
�� Rickie Lee Jones
The Moaners
Mon - Mar 12
Tue - Mar 13
��
�� Talkin’ The Blues Series
�� Well Strung
�� Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers,
The Bittersweets
with Malamondos (Fri) SSM (Sat)
The Rosebuds
9pm
��
�� Sweat
�� Delta Moon
�� Pete Yorn
�� Bedhead, That ’80s Band
�� Green Lemon, Jango Monkey
�� Bishop Allen
�� Ellis Paul, Chuck Pyle, The Bittersweets
�� The International Groove Conspiracy
�� To Whom (CD Release)
�� Cartel, Cobra Starship,
Boys Like Girls, New Atlantic
�� The Futurists, Lola Ray,
Army of Me, The Honor Roll
�� Fourth Annual Chicken Raid
�� The Wrong Way
�� Squat
�� Aaron Lewis
�� Mutemath
Southern Culture on the Skids
Sun - Mar 11
8pm
Pete Yorn at�� (3-24)
��
Every Wednesday
GARETH ASHER
Saturday, Mar. 3, 10 & 24
THE BRIAN WILTSEY BAND
��
Thursday, Mar. 8
��
��
Friday, Mar. 9
�
��
��
��
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��
��
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TEXAS HOLD’EM POKER
Open Daily 4pm
Ask About Atlanta Room for Private Parties
1578 Piedmont Ave.
404-875-1522
www.smithsoldebar.com
STEVE Q & CHRISTIAN
SCOTT LITTLE &
SHAWN ARNOLD
Thurs. & Fri, Feb. 15 & 16 & 29
GARETH ASHER
& NAKED
Saturday, Mar. 17
4TH ANNUAL SHAM JAM
SHACK FEST FEAT. THE
BRIAN WILTSEY BAND
LIVE MUSIC ALL DAY
$5 TO GET IN, $5 ALL-U-CAN-EAT
OYSTERS 2P-3A
Thursday, Mar. 22
ALEX ORANGE OF ATHENS
Friday, Mar. 23
JOHN THRASHER & MATT MAUTZ
Fri. & Sat., Mar. 30 & 31
MIKE LEE & BRIAN WILTSEY
��
For Booking Send Press Kit To:
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Road
Warriors
This Month’s Hottest Shows
while the comparisons to the Velvet Underground
have been beaten into the ground, there’s a lot of
that, too in last year’s Hallelujah Sirens.
BY JOHN DAVIDSON
3/04 THE ROOTS
Tabernacle
Is there anything stranger
than the career
path of the
Roots? Loaded
with
talent
and backing it
up by actually
playing instruments, few hip
hop acts are as
distinguished
yet so comparatively underrated by consumers. Last year’s
Game Theory was their heaviest yet, another vivid
collection of soundtracks to our lives and so here
they are, out on the road and bringing it to life. Go
see these guys.
3/04 SPARKLEHORSE
Variety Playhouse
If Sparklehorse can still play venues the size of
the Variety Playhouse, then maybe there’s hope for
the music industry. Mark Linkous and his collaborators (Tom Waite and Danger Mouse, among others) offered up Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly
of a Mountain last year, and it was as consistently
good as anything he’s ever done. Jesse Sykes & The
Sweet Hereafter and their rootsy countrified rock
make a surprising if excellent opener.
3/05 DIRTY ON PURPOSE
The EARL
Brooklyn’s Dirty On Purpose mine from the jagged guitars of the alternative 90s—think Pavement,
Sonic Youth, and Yo La Tengo—with a sense of
adventure matched only by the Flaming Lips. And
3/07 HARRY CONNICK JR.
Fox Theatre
It’s date night and basically if the smooth New Orleans jazz of Harry Connick can’t get the romance
cooking, then you need to get a new companion.
Sure, you’d rather be seeing him in a small restaurant with linen tablecloths, but look up at the Fox
Theatre and let the stars allay your fears of failure.
Plus, the eatery situation in Midtown has never
been better.
3/09 THE THERMALS
Drunken Unicorn
The Thermals are one of those radioactively hot
political bands that, in different times, would have
been labeled punk. And punk they are, with rafter-rattling volume paint-peeling energy. But they
also draw a lot from noise groups like Sonic Youth,
which makes them more interesting than your average Warped Tour participant.
3/11 THE ROSEBUDS
The EARL
The fun of the Rosebuds has been their lighter
side of indie rock, that magical place where you
don’t have to feel guilty for having a sunny melody
and optimism bound tightly together in three luscious minutes. The new album, Night of the Furies,
is a move in the right direction for this husbandwife team of erudite popsters, who always seem a
few songs short of greatness.
3/13 THE AUTUMN DEFENSE
The EARL
The part of Wilco that never gets much attention—bass player John Stirratt and guitar guy Pat
Sansone—has a side project called The Autumn
Defense and for the most part it is successful in
nicking Paul Simon. The sweet harmonies, sweet
melodies, and sweet arrangements never get the
heart racing, but they are competently entertaining
and ensure that the guys won’t quit their day jobs.
3/14 BADLY DRAWN BOY
The Loft At Center Stage
Oh, the height that Damon Gough has fallen.
Once the recipient of arguably Britain’s most
prestigious award (the Mercury Prize), he’s spent
the past seven years on a rapid path towards irrelevance. Nobody’s quite sure why he’s lost his mojo,
but on the strength of his debut album (The Hour
of the Bewilderbeast) we’re still rooting for a comeback.
3/17 ALBERT HAMMOND, JR.
Coca Cola Roxy Theatre
As a guitar player for the once legendary Strokes,
Hammond has spent most of his time supporting
his singer’s songwriting. Although his dad is a bit of
a famous singer/songwriter, we were still shocked
at how good his solo album, Yours To Keep, comes
off. He needs to bring stuff like this to his real
band.
3/17 LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Tabernacle
Williams
latest album
West is pretty
much like all
the rest of her
back catalog—
spare, roughhewn country
ballads sung
by a woman
who sounds
like she’s lived
them. Seems
like a big venue
for a performer who shines on her own, but we’ll
assume that she can fill the joint adequately with
her storytelling. An added bonus is the Heartless
Bastards, whose heavy rock songs will add much
some needed weight.
WE
GOT
NEXT
BE YOUR
OWN PET
Latest Project:
Why You
Should Care:
For Fans of:
BY JOHN B. MOORE
W
ITH RECENT NATIONAL AT
TENTION from bands like The Pink
Spiders and The Features, Nashville is
finally living up to its rep as Music City USA. The
spastic punk rock of Be Your Own Pet is probably
one of the most satisfying exports the city has
sent out into the world in the past few years, finally helping to make up for all that dreadful neon
cowboy music the city has been pumping out.
Rebuilt from the scraps of the defunct band
Night Shift Nurses, Be Your Own Pet is com-
Drunken Unicorn
Dreamy vocals sung in both English and Japanese,
shimmering guitars, and a wad of memorable melodies to boot, Asobi Seksu have all the makings of a
buzz band. Still out in support of the excellent Citrus, they return to our fair city knowing that more
and more fans will be waiting. Monday nights at a
club don’t get much better than this.
3/21 THE BLACK LIPS W/THE PONYS
The EARL
Still one of
the best live
shows in Atlanta,
the
Black
Lips
celebrate
their new live
album with
another local
show before
they head out
on tour in
earnest. The
Black
Lips
would be a good enough reason to get out, but
adding the post-punk flamethrower of the Ponys
makes this show even more essential.
3/23 COLD WAR KIDS
Vinyl At Center Stage
Although the Cold War Kids come off as postpunk revivalists, who doesn’t these days? Better
still, the band has good songs to show for it and if
the hype is even half-right about their live show,
they’ll be worth your bucks. The quirky pop of Tokyo Police Club pick up the slack as openers with a
similarly cool vibe.
3/30 SMOKE OR FIRE
Masquerade
Remember when punk-rock was more than a $50
vintage Thriller t-shirt and carefully applied eyeliner? Virginia-based Smoke or Fire plays gritty, posthardcore street punk with just enough melody to
make crusty punks like Paul Cook and Mike Jones
want to jump back into the pit. The fact that The
Draft and Tim Barry are also on the bill just makes
life that much sweeter.
Artists on the verge
of making it big
Be Your Own Pet (Ecstatic Peace/Universal)
Based on the strength of one downloaded single, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore tracked down the group
and signed them as the very first band to his new record label.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Deerhoof, The Pixies, The Stooges and Sonic Youth
prised of guitarist Jonas Stein, frontwoman Jemina Pearl, bassist Nathan Vasquez and relatively
new drummer John Eartherly. The band earned
a huge fan in Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who
ultimately signed them to his new label Ecstatic
Peace last year.
sic festivals and made their national TV debut on
Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Jonas took some
time recently to talk about the band’s background,
playing punk-rock in Nashville and the whirlwind
that was 2006.
PLAYING AMERICAN FESTIVALS COACHELLA AND BONNAROO
(LAST YEAR) WAS PRETTY CRAZY. PLAYING ON LIVE
TELEVISION WAS VERY SCARY FOR ME.
But the members are no strangers to the
world of music: Jemina’s father is guitarist (and
well-known rock photographer) Jimmy Abegg,
Nathan’s father is guitarist Raphael Vasquez and
Jonas’ pop is music manager Burt Stein, who’s
worked with everyone from Motley Crue’s Vince
Neil to Nancy Griffith.
Although barely out of high school (their
average age is 18), the group manages to play
seasoned noise-pop reminiscent of groups like
The Stooges and The Pixies. Thanks to a little
help from the BBC, the band took off in the UK
in a big way in 2004, but it wasn’t until the past
few months that US audiences started picking
up on BYOP, when the band finally released
their self-titled debut. Produced by Redd Kross
founder Steve McDonald, the record brilliantly
crams in 15 tracks– each a powerful sonic blast of
energy– in just over 30 minutes.
Last year was a big one for BYOP. They finally
released their first record, played a handful of mu-
3/19 ASOBI SEKSU
Let’s start at the beginning. Gow did the band
first get together?
(Original drummer) Jamin Orrall and I were
rockin’ with some ideas and we asked our friend
Jemina if she wanted to sing in the band. All of
our first few songs, except for “Extra Extra,” were
written as a three-piece, then the next year I
found Nathan. He sat in front of me in Spanish
class. He tried out, we liked him a lot and we later
became Be Your Own Pet.
Along with you guys, The Features and Pink Spiders have been getting a lot of attention. What is
the music scene like in Nashville now?
It seems like everyone is playing in a band. A
lot of good projects are coming out of Nashville
right now.
How did you guys first connect with Thurston
Moore?
David Newgarden, our manager at the time,
knew Thurston and recommended that he pick
up our single. He liked it and then got in touch
with us through David.
So what made you decide to sign with his label
over others?
It was such a sweet situation. (We) get to work
with really cool people from
Ecstatic Peace, and then have Universal’s financial
support.
You guys started getting a big following in
London before breaking through in the US. How
different are the two markets?
The cultures are pretty different when it comes
to music. We are more mainstream there, I suppose.
Were you inspired by anything in particular
when you were working on the record?
Getting to work with Steve McDonald was
awesome.
I bet. You guys had a lot happen in 2006, from
the release of your debut to playing on Conan
O’Brien’s show. What was the biggest moment
for you?
Playing Coachella and Bonnaroo was pretty
crazy. Playing on live television was very scary
for me.
What are the band’s plans for 2007?
We’re writing for record two right now. We
hope to follow with recording it, then possibly a
release in 2007, if everything goes as planned.
FILM INTERVIEW
From Grammy-Winner to Ass-Kicker
BY B. LOVE
W
ITH HER ARMLOAD OF GRAMMY AWARDS,
near-constant referencing from American Idol
contestants and even a name-check in Bob Dylan’s
latest single “Thunder on the Mountain,” Alicia Keys has
seemed damn near ubiquitous in recent years despite the fact
that she hasn’t released an album of new material since 2003.
She’s about to get even more in-your-face, with her debut
film role as an ass-kicking assassin hunting Jeremy Piven in
Smokin’ Aces and a role in the forthcoming The Nanny Diaries, an adaptation of the best-selling novel. Keys was certainly
smokin’ in her own right as she sat down for a recent press
conference in Los Angeles.
This was a surprising role for you. Was it easy for you to see
yourself as a pistol packin’ mama?
The minute I read the script, I knew that it was so out of my
element, so out of my normal character, so out of what people
probably expected of me, I knew it was the right thing for me
to do. I wanted to totally break away from
anyone’s expectations. I
wanted to do something totally
Alicia Keys is Smokin’
unexpected and dive into myself in a way that I’ve never, ever
done before. To be surrounded by such incredible actors was
truly inspiring. The entire cast and Joe Carnahan were so motivating, I think I’m totally spoiled, and anything I do after this
probably will not compare.
Does that giving up of your comfort zone come easily to you?
Well, I don’t think anything that’s worth it comes easy,
exactly, but to work for that was completely worth it. With everything that I do, I want to give up that comfort zone. I don’t
want to stay in the same place, where I know myself. I want to
get out of that area and challenge myself, and I think my best
work comes from that.
What kind of relationship did you and Taraji Henson have?
Did she give you any kind of guidance since this was your
first acting experience?
Taraji and I hit it off immediately. She’s a wonderful lady
and an incredible actress, and Joe actually brought us together
very early in the process, long before we filmed our first scene.
We went to the movies together, and she fell asleep! So we
definitely hung out, because we wanted the relationship to be
authentic, and it was. I did learn a lot from watching her and
listening to her, and we developed our characters’ back stories
together– where we came from, where we were going, why we
were doing this together. So she definitely was a great inspiration.
Can you talk about developing that back story a little, and
about the relationship between the two women?
I think my character, Georgia, and Taraji are very close and
have obviously been through a lot of very heavy situations
together. In our back story, we definitely knew each other
for years. I’d been uprooted from where I originally grew up
and came to live near her, so she kinda showed me a lot. Her
character was like the older sister I never had, showing me
the ropes and that kinda thing. I think as friends, Georgia was
probably aware that their were feelings on her side towards me
that were a little out of place, but she didn’t pay it any attention because they were busy doing other things and she didn’t
want to make a big deal about it. As you see in the movie, it’s
becoming a little more uncomfortable as Taraji’s character is
a little more crass about it, and I’m starting to wonder what’s
really going on. There was a whole scene taken out in which I
confront her about it.
I remember to talking to Halle Berry about her role in
Monster’s Ball, which was so different from who she was as
a person, and she talked about how hard she to fight for the
role because the producers couldn’t see her as anything other
than Halle Berry. You mentioned how different this character
was for you, so did you have to fight for it or was it given to
you?
I have to say that it was mutual between myself and Joe.
From the beginning, he had a very clear vision that he wanted
to use fresh people, and that’s one thing he spoke to me about
a lot. He came to see my show in Anaheim and he came
backstage and asked if I’d read the script yet. I hadn’t, and
he said, “This is not a punk you’re gonna be playing. This
is not just some pretty love story.” Just that alone made
me very intrigued because, as anyone on this planet
knows, if someone tells you about something you
shouldn’t do or wouldn’t normally do, you want to
do it.
How do you feel about the heavy use of the
n-word in the film, with it being such a hotbutton issue right now?
I made a conscious decision not
to use it. I substituted more fun
words like “motherfucker”
or “shithead.”
Is success everything you thought it would be? Were you
prepared for it?
I define success as a personal happiness. I feel that I am happiest when I’m able to express myself and do things that are my
choice, whatever that means. It’s especially rewarding for me
when other people enjoy it as much as I do. I call that success.
Who was it that nurtured you as a child to really believe in
yourself?
As a young kid I had two wonderful women in my life that
helped to raise me. One is my mother, who was a single mom
and a very strong woman who showed me everything about
being a woman. The second one was my grandmother, who was
very intelligent, very compassionate and very giving woman.
I would say the two of them were two of my greatest inspirations.
Was there any particular advice they gave you along the
way?
“Get ‘em, girl!” (Laughs)
This Bob Dylan album is doing great. How did you first hear
about him mentioning you in his song?
It’s pretty amazing! I could not believe it. The first person
who told me was John Mayer. He said, “You’re never gonna
believe this: I just heard that Dylan has your name in his song!”
I totally never expected it, obviously, but it was a huge honor
and I couldn’t wait to hear it. He’s such a lyrical genius, such
a storyteller, with so much history, and as a writer myself I
admire him greatly.
There were two singers nominated for Golden Globes this
year, Beyoncé and Jennifer Hudson. What are your thoughts
on that, and do you aspire to that sort of achievement in your
own acting career?
I think it’s wonderful. They’re two very talented young
women, and I think Dreamgirls is gonna be incredible. I can’t
wait to see it myself. It’s very exciting, because I think many
of the great artists have been triple threats and were able to
do it all. I think going back in that direction now, to be able to
encompass so many styles and do it with so much class, is just
fantastic.
You’ve known Beyoncé for a long time, right? Did you ever
dream of being on these awards shows?
We did meet each other when we were both on Columbia
Records. They’d do these retreats and show all the different
artists that were coming out, so we got a chance to hang out
then. We didn’t meet young enough to do the hairbrush in the
mirror thing together, but I do think we both feel the same way
about being able to express ourselves.
You’re a triple threat now, too. You’ve got this production
deal with Disney, you’re in The Nanny Diaries, you’re singing... How would you like to be thought of in the future, as a
singer who acts or an actor who sings?
As an artist.
There was another film I heard you were doing that was a
little closer to who you are as a person. What happened with
that project?
That film is gonna be produced by Halle Berry and it’s about
a woman named Phillipa Schuyler, who was an incredible
bi-racial classical pianist in the 1940s and 1950s. Obviously
the challenges at that time for a woman of mixed race to even
be able to play classical piano were more than I could ever
imagine. That’s what intrigued me about that role, because it’s
going to be a historical period piece, and her story is very deep
and moving. The relationship between her and her mother gets
very strained, and she decides to move to Europe and pose as
a Spanish woman in order to be able to play and live a more
normal life. It’s very interesting the places we feel we need to
go in order to do what we love, and where that leads us, and
that’s what the story was about. I knew that would never be my
first film, because I got involved with that movie so early in the
process. But something like that is definitely in my future.
What’s it called, and when will it be released?
As of right now it’s called “Compositions in Black and
White,” based on the book of her life. Right now we’re still in
the first or second draft of the script, so it’ll be at least a year.
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MUSIC
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By B. Love, DeMarco Williams, John Davidson, John Moore, Tom DeFreytas & Andrea Hatter
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HELL RAZAH- RENAISSANCE CHILD (Nature Sounds)
The second coming of Wu.
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SON VOLT – THE SEARCH (Sony)
Jay Farrar soldiers on.
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ALKALINE TRIO - REMAINS (Vagrant)
Morbid trio with sense of humor make even throw away
songs sound great
!!! – MYTH TAKES (Warp)
Doing the white man overbite
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SQUAT- SELF-TITLED (Namaste)
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Jazzbos stretching their creative wings.
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BLACK MILK- POPULART DEMAND (Fat Beats)
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Producers steppin’ their game up.
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FALL OUT BOY - INFINITY ON HIGH (Island)
Chicago pop-punks still know how to write hits
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SLY & THE FAMILY STONE - THERE’S A RIOT GOING
ON (Sony Legacy)
The legendary recording facing the forces of time
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APPLES IN STEREO - NEW MAGNETIC WONDER
(Yep Roc)
A five year hiatus hasn’t changed much
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MONEY MARK - BRAND NEW BY TOMORROW
(Brushfire)
Bob Dylan and Elliot Smith’s long lost love child
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THE BLACK LIPS – ARRIBA TIJUANA! (Vice)
Psychedelic power trash
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Vidiots
This month’s DVD
& VHS Releases
BLOOD DIAMOND – Leonardo DiCaprio chews up the scen-
ery as Danny Archer, a smuggler of “blood diamonds,” whose profits
fund brutal battles in war-torn countries such as Sierra Leone. Djimon
Hounsou is a proud fisherman captured and sent to work in the diamond mines, where he stumbles upon a massive rock he manages to
hide as military forces invade the slave encampment. Archer promises
to help the man reunite with his family in exchange for half the profits
from selling the stone, and the two hook up with a feisty journalist
(Jennifer Connelly) looking to blow the cover of major companies who
deal in blood diamonds. It’s not hard to imagine this as a direct-tovideo B-movie starring, say, Steven Seagal. But what in lesser hands
might come off as thinly drawn caricatures are rendered full three-dimensional characters by the talented cast and director Edward Zwick.
This is a heavy political story disguised as a romantic action-adventure,
and it makes one hell of an impact despite its flaws. Grade: B+ –BL
CASINO ROYALE – In this prequel to the 007 franchise, James
Bond (Daniel Craig) is eager to prove his worth, making the free world
a safer place while shagging exotic chicks, snagging tailored suits and
driving futuristic cars. Sounds like all the other Bond flicks, right?
Wrong. Based on Ian Fleming’s first book from ‘53, this film finds producers reinventing things. Craig is manly, gritty and approachable. Unlike past Bonds, his makes mistakes, gets kicked in the balls and falls in
love. The mysterious Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) has James shaken and
stirred, but director Martin Campbell doesn’t seem to know when to
shout “Cut!” And that’s too bad, because this one could’ve been special: Mads Mikkelsen is super as the creepy baddie Le Chiffre, Jeffrey
Wright is terrific and Craig– the new jack so many Bond fans worried
about– never flinches. Grade: C+ –DW
ERAGON – Eragon is Star Wars if it took place in Middle-Earth.
You have Luke Skywalker (read: Eragon) as a boy who discovers not
only the same hair-stylist as Luke but that he can use the force (read:
Dragon Magic) and then finds a Jedi (read: Dragon-rider) named Brom
(read: Obi-Wan Kenobi) who will teach him the ways of the dragons so
that he can join the rebellion and defeat the evil empire, thus avenging
his slain uncle. The film’s secret hope is that with its PG rating, it will
get kids too young to see the parallels. Unfortunately, parents will be
less fortunate, and as they grind through a film with atrocious pacing
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NORAH JONES - NOT TOO LATE (Blue Note)
Still doesn’t quite feel like home.
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PICKS OF THE MONTH
THE BEST OF THE FLIP WILSON SHOW
– Long before Eddie Murphy
donned drag, there was Flip
Wilson’s Geraldine, who helped
make this TV’s highest-rated
variety program. With no flashy
production numbers, elaborate
sets, or even a regular cast,
Wilson would invite the coolest
celebs of the day on for a unique
blend of hilarious monologues,
sketch comedy and live musical
performances. This 3-DVD set
collects six of the show’s best
episodes: From sports stars such
as Joe Namath and Bill Russell to
music titans like Johnny Cash and
Ray Charles, the guests are all legendary and up for anything. But
the best reason to check out this DVD is the top-notch comedy, as
talents ranging from Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx to George Carlin and Phyllis Diller stop by to do their thing. This is the kind of
comedy shows like Saturday Night Live aspire to today, but rarely
achieve. More than 30 years later, there’s never been another show
like it. –BL
BORAT – Borat Sagdiyev–
Sacha Baron Cohen’s clueless,
sexist, racist, homophobic faux
Kazakhstani TV reporter, whom
he originated in sketches on
HBO’s Da Ali G Show– is
impossible to ignore. Sent to
America to film a documentary
about the good ol’ “U.S. and A,”
completely unaware of our
nation’s rules of etiquette, Borat
is the prototypical fish-out-ofwater. When he discovers Pamela
Anderson via Baywatch reruns,
he heads to Cali hoping to woo
her. Along the way he interacts with a broad spectrum of unwitting interview subjects and tackles every taboo subject you can
imagine, and the results will leave audiences literally crying with
laughter. Make no mistake: Borat is rude, crude, at times sophomoric and almost always offensive. But it’s also the funniest mockumentary to come along in years. –BL
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SHADOWS FALL – THREADS OF LIFE (Atlantic)
Hard as a sledgehammer to the skull.
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they’ll try to let their minds escape to a long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away. Their minds might occasionally snap back into place, but
will have gone back to white noise by the time the Darth Vader clone
is spouting “You have failed me for the last time,” to one of his orcs.
Grade: D+ –MG
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS – It’s just adorable that
people still believe the American Dream, and want to make you believe
it as well. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is a single father after his wife
(Thandie Newton) leaves him. He has a crap job selling useless medical
equipment, but he takes a chance on an internship at a brokerage firm.
See, Chris is tenacious and smart, and though it’s going to be a lot of
hard work and sacrifice for him and his son (Jaden Smith), you get the
feeling that Chris is gonna make it in the end. While the film may be
trying to tell me the origin story of the one black guy at every Republican National Convention, it still allows for Will Smith to give his best
performance since Ali. If there’s a reason to see this film, it’s the moving relationship between a father and son. But because it brings nothing unique to that narrative, the weaker and more divisive economic
story subverts the personal into propaganda. Grade: B- –MG
ROCKY BALBOA – Apollo Creed. Mr. T. Captain Ivan Drago. All of these were great challengers, but this time Rocky (Sylvester
Stallone) faces perhaps his greatest challenger... himself. Time finally
catches up with an older Italian Stallion, now retired, widowed and
running an Italian restaurant called Adrian’s. Rocky has anger and resentment in his “basement” (soul), which he needs to release. A natural
born fighter, Rocky defies all attempts at reason from his friends and
family– including Paulie (Burt Young) and Rocky Jr. (Milo Ventimiglia,
of Heroes fame)– not to fight in an exhibition bout with the current
undefeated champion, Mason “The Line” Dixon, who is on his way out
of the sport. In the end, both fighters come out winners. And for diehard Rocky fans who have weathered the last few mediocre sequels,
hoping to get a glimpse of the Italian Stallion we first saw in the ‘70s,
your wait has ended. Grade: B –TG
SHUT UP & SING – During a 2003 London concert, the Dixie
Chicks made an anti-Bush remark that radically changed their careers.
Veteran documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple brings us this multifaceted look at the incredulity and determination with which the
Dixie Chicks responded to the ridiculous public outcry against their
political views. Much of the film’s behind-the-scenes footage centers
around efforts to “re-brand” the group to a new audience, since they’ve
been rejected en masse by the country music industry and a large segment of its fans. Scenes depicting the gleeful smashing (even burning)
of Dixie Chicks CDs inevitably call to mind the anti-Beatles hysteria
that ensued after John Lennon’s infamous remark about being more
popular than Jesus. By the end, we realize that, like the Beatles, the
Dixie Chicks will be around long after the controversy has faded away.
Grade: A –RH
MUSIC INTERVIEW
leave us alone, and they wouldn’t want to change us
for a second. It has been really great. Actually, the
one thing we said we’d compromise was that if they
wanted to radio edit us for the radio, we didn’t care.
As long as the album is the version we want, we
don’t care. We get final approval, but that’s it.
Have the other bands in your scene been excited
for you as your momentum has shifted upward?
Everyone has grown a little in a way, too. It’s really
great because we’re all still friends, and every little
success that anybody has is a success for everybody.
Like, when we did David Letterman, everyone was
really excited. It was taped a week beforehand, and
we were driving from Portland to Dallas and it was
nuts, a blizzard in Texas. But it was great because
once it aired, we started getting all these phone
messages from all these bands in L.A. People were
freaking out, and that’s the sort of support that we’ve
come up in. That shit just doesn’t change because we
give it and get it, too. It’s just very important to us,
and going to see our friends bands and supporting
them is something that we love to do. Competitive
natures just don’t last too long among our friends.
Silver Lake Success Story
CALI’S SILVERSUN PICKUPS
BY JOHN DAVIDSON
L
OS ANGELES HAS LONG BEEN A
breeding ground for popular music, a huge
metropolitan area largely defined by sprawl
with an epicenter of celebrity incubation. The Silversun Pickups sprang from the artsy Silver Lake scene
a few years ago and immediately started making
waves with their guitar-and-fuzz heavy slabs of rock,
a sound that recalls the oft-mentioned Smashing Pumpkins in their early years. Carnavas was
released last year to widespread acclaim, and before
the band knew it, they were hearing themselves on
the radio and seeing their fan base grow exponentially. We recently sat down with guitarist/vocalist
Brian Aubert to discuss the secret of their success.
I guess the past 12 months have really blown by.
Has it been an easy ride or has there been a lot of
trepidation involved?
It’s been longer than that, actually, that we’ve
started to grind our heads into this and it organically grew. It’s been on that sort of course, and so
you don’t really notice it because you get busier
and busier and it’s greater and greater. It constantly
has kind of moved up and it’s sort of hard to see it
happen. We’re kind of on a break now, so we’re getting a chance to look at it. Our heads are out of the
sand and when we walk down the street, people say
they’ve heard us on the radio. We’re on the radio?
Before, we’d do radio shows and it never really hit
BREAK OUT
us. But how the hell did it ever all happen? Or Letterman, or any of that shit.
Was it your expectation?
There’s no equation on how this works. I know
bands and people have these things where they say,
“I’m gonna do that and that and that and that…” but
basically all that’s a bunch of bullshit. You’ve just
got to really enjoy playing so we just wanted to do it
either. We never really listened to mainstream stuff.
We typically listened to college stations and underground stuff, so those parts weren’t in our radar at
all. Now that they’ve kind of caught on, it’s nice. We
think it’s so strange, that a band that has six minute
songs is on the radio. People told us that we had to
do this or we had to do that, and we always had to
tell them that we weren’t trying to be on the radio.
We were just trying to be ourselves.
IT’S SO FUNNY THAT ANYONE’S EVEN TALKING ABOUT YOU AT
ALL THAT YOU DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT NEGATIVE REVIEWS.
right or at least the way we wanted to do it and the
way we liked it. And whatever happens, happens.
And yes, our expectations were nowhere near what
is happening. All you really want is a chance to be
heard, and to make a record that people will want to
hear. If it’s 2,000 people then that’s fantastic. That’s
all we really wanted. We didn’t expect it to go this
way. We didn’t expect radio to play us or MTV.
They weren’t even on our radar, and granted, we’re
not the kind of snobs who say, “Screw it” to all that
Some bands have had to compromise here and
there to get to where they are. Do you feel that
way?
Not even for a split second did we have to compromise. That was never going to be the case. Our label,
Dangerbird, they picked us and we picked them.
They knew exactly what kind of band we were,
and the kind of stuff that we did on our own. They
knew there was no point in changing it and that
we weren’t sort of the radio hit band. You have to
FASHION FOCUS
Insights from a Hairstylist
Aveda’s Global Creative Director tells of the Do’s and Dont’s
BY MARGO AARON
"T
HERE ARE TWO THINGS YOU NEVER WANT A
DISCOUNT ON: PLASTIC SURGERY AND A
HAIR CUT," says the global creative director for
Aveda, Antoinette Beenders. "Hair is a piece of fashion you
can't take off" she explains. After having been in hair for almost
20 years she used her experiential expertise to put together an
approach to making the hairdresser-client relationship a perfect
one: Ten Questions to Ask Your Client. "A hairdresser and a
client need to be like a match; if you don't trust them don't go to
them." Beenders points out that it is not a client's responsibility
to have the knowledge a hairdresser has, but encourages clients
to ask the questions before going in. "Clients must not forget
hair to do what it does not want to
do. Make the best of what you've got.
If you like your hair and it is not split,
then why cut it? Ultimately, hairstyle
reflects your personality more then
trends." She advocates molding the
trends to work for your personality
and your lifestyle. In a charming
accent, Beenders spoke of her reason
for coming up with her recommended approach to clients, "most of the
time [a bad haircut] is a miscommunication as opposed to the ability of
that the hairdressers
gives a service and it is
our duty to find out
what's right for you."
She goes on to warn
against being pressured
by what is trendy. "You
shouldn't force your
So many people move to L.A. to get discovered or
make it big. I don’t think that that motive is wrong,
but it’s hard to understand (if you’re not from L.A.)
how so many transient people wouldn’t make for a
very competitive, jealous scene.
I think it’s such a massive city that it’s true in certain parts. L.A. is like a bunch of good-sized cities
tied together. We’re from Los Angeles, and one of
the reasons that the culture of the city is so strong is
because of exactly that: it’s a bunch of knuckleheads
from all over the world trying to make their dreams
come alive. I used to hate that sort of cultural
description of the place, but it’s such an amazing
cultural place that you can’t help but to notice that
it’s going on. People say, “How can you guys be from
L.A. It’s so weird!” I always say that there are millions and millions of people living there. I’m always
amazed anyone comes out of anywhere else, like
New Mexico. And there are just as many bored kids
here. There are suburbs and sprawls everywhere.
And the thing is, if you’re a musician and you try to
work hard to make things happen then you’re lame.
But if you make it, you’re the greatest person on
earth! Even your parents…I have a friend who’s an
actor and a musician, and his parents had such disdain for what he was doing until he got a job on TV!
It was probably the worst acting job of his life, and
they were so proud of him. It’s a weird dichotomy
that this city has to deal with a lot.
What’s been the biggest surprise since Carnavas
came out?
Well, things like Letterman. Touring with awesome bands like Wolfmother and Snow Patrol
seems natural and normal. The media attention is
the thing that really sticks out. The whole media
culture…MTV, radio, SPIN, Rolling Stone…we kind
of wonder if people think we pulled some kind of
joke over their heads. That’s stuff that you sort of
don’t associate with an indie rock band like us. It’s so
weird. It’s so funny that anyone’s even talking about
you at all that you don’t even care about negative
reviews. I know people who people who get all bent
out of shape about that stuff, but we just don’t care
at all. If there’s something really negative, we kind
of giggle about it, because why would we care? How
cool that they even know who we are! The fact that
people even talk about us at all is just mind-blowing.
the hairdresser and these 11 questions eradicate that" Beenders
is a living example of how it is what you do with your talent that
is what matters. She is a visionary in every sense of the word.
Having found her love of hairstyling at the age of 12, Beenders'
passion for her craft and professionalism are embodied in her
every movement and utterance, "I don't think I'm that absolutely amazing, I just do what I do." So next time you make an
appointment, make sure you consider the following:
11 Questions to ask Yourself Next Time you Step into a Salon
Aveda’s Antoinette Beenders
1. What do you currently expect from your visit today?
2. How open are you to a change of hairstyle.
3. How tall are you? "I can look taller with shorter hair"
4. How much time do you spend daily on your hairstyle?
5. Do you like to look groomed or messy?
6. Do you need your hair to look versatile?
7. What do you currently like about your hairstyle?
8. What don't you like about your hairstyle?
9. Which hair products do you currently use?
10. How long do you expect your hair cut to last?
11. Would you like to look more: Feminine-Sporty-Classic
Fashionable-Trendy-Elegant-Sexy-Natural
FILM INTERVIEW
3 Out of 300
MEET THE FUTURE
STARS BEHIND THE
LATEST FRANK
MILLER ADAPTATION
BY B. LOVE
ZACH SNYDER
Director/Co-Writer
Zach Snyder is not afraid of challenges. He brokeout in
2004 with a shockingly good remake of George A. Romero’s
classic Dawn of the Dead. Now he’s back and adaptating
Frank Miller (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns) unique
and memorable graphic retelling of the Battle of Thermopolyae, 300. As he sits down, I immeadately ask about
his next great challenge, the adaptation of Alan Moore’s
seminal superhero deconstruction, Watchmen.
So what’s happenin’ with Watchmen?
We’re trying to get a budget together now. I feel like the
movie is in a cool place. I’ve been talking to some actors
(but I’m not going to say who). It’s cool because you can
get real actors. I’ve been drawing away. They have been
talking about shooting in the Summer.
What’s the delay because ten years ago it was Joel Silver
picture.
I’m so glad they haven’t it together yet! I think the delay
is that they haven’t known what it was. I set the movie in
1985 and I have the luxury of being far enough away from
1985 so that that is a viable idea. I think what happened
in the past was that when you’re only five years away from
1985, it’s a weird time to make a period piece that took
place three years ago, but studios don’t get that. There has
been a push I think on the other scripts that exist about
trying to update the movie or trying to make it take place
in present day and things of that nature. I think by setting
it 1985, by having the Cold War, having Nixon, having all
that stuff, you sort of reinvigorate what the story is about.
It allows all the metaphors to sort of erect. But, if you set
unique experience just like this one. You literally don’t
know what’s goin’ on so there’s no control and actually it’s
hard to build a character like that so it’s basically put the
actor in a position where you’re in the moment and from
the script, which is not long before you start shooting. It’s
a kind of lost feeling. “What’s going on?” You don’t know
and that’s the beauty of this experience.
Are you going to get a flashback episode?
Yes. But I can’t say a word man. If I say a word, I’ll have
to kill you.
How did you come to join Lost?
I met a producer, Jack Pinker, for Alias, two years
ago. I was shooting something in Brazil and I could not
I’VE NEVER QUITE ENCOUNTERED A CHARACTER AS POWERFUL AND INTENSE AND
AS CHARASMATIC AS THIS GUY. HE’S A BAD ASS! HE’S A FUCKER!
the movie in modern times, you’re basically saying it’s the
war on terror right is the thing. Then the movie is asking me, “oh Zack, what do you think of the war on terror?
What’s your take on it?” Who gives a fuck about what I
think about the war on terror? That’s not why people go to
the movies. I think that what Alan in his book, the comment he’s made about authority and government and all
those things. Maybe if you make that movie right and what
that has to say makes people think about what’s happening
maybe now or in their own lives. That’s my hope for what
the movie could be.
RODRIGO SANTORO
Xerxes I
I’m sitting next to a man who’s about to become a megastar…again. Already huge in his native Brazil, Rodrigo
Santoro is now poised to break out in a big way as he’s
joined the cast of TV sensation Lost and plays the King
who fancies himself a God in 300, Xerxes I. During our
interview, I do my best to gleam any info I can about Lost
and a career that’s about to explode… again.
You recently joined the cast of Lost. What’s that experience been like?
It’s great, man! I’m living in Hawaii. Lost is another
do a guest role he offered me. And he brought up my
name when he joined Lost. I had two meetings with J.J.
[Abrams], Carlton Cuse, and Damon Lindelof.
You’re very well known in Brazil, but now with this and
Lost, are you prepared for Hollywood?
I don’t know, man. I always thing about what I’m doing
right now so if I start to think about that stuff, it’s just too
overwhelming. I never make a choice thinking about the
result. I’m never gonna pick a role or play a part where I
think “What could this bring me?” because you’re not in
control of anything, really. So I just get the material, do
the work, and make good choices on what I feel. The rest
is just really a consequence you have to deal with. What
I’m thinking is that I hope people see this movie and I hope
it’s not just people who are into graphic novels. I think it’s
a very original, unique ride.
GERARD BUTLER
King Leonidas
Before the interview even begins, Gerard Butler has
already scared us and put us at ease. Radiating charisma,
the huge Scotsman begins to sit down but before he can, he
hears Zach Snyder in the hallway. He bounds for the door
and bellows “Hey! Shut the fuck up!” He then quietly sits
down with a grin on his face and is ready for questions.
Between jovial and fearsome, I can’t help but ask about his
leading character of 300…
How do you prepare for a role that exists between history
and myth?
I am between history and myth myself. That’s a good
question. There’s always an element of balancing that has
to go on. It’s a balance between many things without getting too caught up in the technical elements. I’ve never
quite encountered a character as powerful and intense and
as charasmatic as this guy. He’s a bad ass! He’s a fucker!
And yet you know you have to rise that element where
it goes past even ethic and becomes comic-book but at
the same time. But to only do that and never get to the
heart and the soul, then the whole thing means nothing.
It involves choosing your moments. For me, I focused a
lot on becoming as big and as strong and as confident as I
could possibly. Even doing a lot of working ou just before
the takes. Every time it made me feel more like a Spartan,
more like a King. And that fire is burning inside you. I literally walked around Montreal [where they built the film’s
digital backlot] with my shoulders back and my chest out.
Just that feeling of real inner confidence. And yet then
you can have fun with the other things. There’s a lot going on there. There’s a confidence there, there’s a humor;
there’s a drive; there’s a compassion; there’s a certain air of
humanity. There’s all that and then there’s this guy who’s a
nutjob. He’s crazy! To try and get all those in with a man
who really doesn’t talk that much was a challenge. And
then to do it all on a green screen was another challenge.
In terms of creating a character, was it harder to be behind a mask like you were in The Phantom of the Opera?
I’ve had to play characters where there’s a difficulty
of expression. But that’s what I like to do. For me, the
biggest thing, when I started acting, people were always
saying “Great, but bring it down.” And the more I brought
it down and the the more I could trust what I could genuinely feel and what I could say, then suddenly, roles like
The Phantom became a beautiful thing to do where I was
trying to say so many things while wearing a mask means
you have to say a lot with the eyes. Leonidas is the same in
some ways. He can’t be expressive in a modern way. You
lose all of that. To me, if there was one moment where he
seemed weak, then the character came apart. So no matter what else you were trying to express, it’s always going
to have to come from a foundation of absolute power and
solidity.
FILM INTERVIEW
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
BY B. LOVE
B
ORN LONNIE RASHID LYNN, COMMON IS FAR FROM THE FIRST MC EVER TO
parlay his fame in the world of hip- hop into a film career. From the Ices (Cube, T and Vanilla) and
Snoop to Ludacris and Mos Def, you can’t swing a stick in Hollywood these days without hitting
a rapper. But he is arguably the rapper-turned-actor who has most quickly found his way into high-falutin’ thespian company. In his debut film, the action-comedy Smokin’ Aces, he stars alongside Hollywood
heavyweights like Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Jeremy Piven (who pushed to get him the
role). Then, later this year he’ll appear alongside Tinseltown titans Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington
in director Ridley Scott’s eagerly-anticipated American Gangster. Meanwhile, the 35-year-old MC will be
in the studio, feverishly working on his seventh album, “Finding Forever,” with the help of close friend and
mentor, Kanye West. We recently sat down with the Chicago native in Los Angeles, where he conducted a
press conference alongside Piven and discussed the myriad careers he’s currently juggling.
You must have been a man possessed when you auditioned to land a spot in “Smokin’ Aces.”
I was so passionate and enthused about the movie after I read the script. More than I have ever been.
The writing is so creative and unique. I really wanted to be in this movie bad, so when I auditioned, I knew
I had to raise my game to another level, especially with the talent around me. The director, Joe Carnahan,
brought me back in for a second look, and a few days later I got the call. Man, I was jumping up and down
on my bed like a little kid. Being able to work with so many actors that I respect means the world to me.
What was life like on your first movie set?
I was pretty nervous. I remember the first time the director shouted “camera right” - I had no idea what
was going on. I was like a little kid - so innocent, just looking around wondering what was happening.
Did Carnahan get aggravated? Or even worse, did Jeremy Piven or Ben Affleck bust your chops?
Just the opposite. Everyone was very supportive, and many of them pulled me aside to give advice. One
of the first days of shooting, I got to my trailer at 7 a.m., and I was so excited and ready to go. But I ended
up sitting there until 7 p.m., and when I finally got to the set [Piven] could see I wasn’t there mentally.
He was like, “This is how it goes in Hollywood. As an actor, you always have to be ready and prepared,
regardless of the time.” I was grateful he shared that with me.
SOMETIMES THEY JUST SHOVE ARTISTS IN MOVIES TO DRAW
A BUZZ. BUT AFTER WE STARTED FILMING, PEOPLE SAW
THAT I WASN’T JUST THERE BECAUSE I COULD RAP.
It’s not always that way. 50 Cent has talked about how stereotypical some actors are about working
with rappers.
A few people weren’t originally happy that another artist was brought in after Alicia Keys was cast. I
can see where they’re coming from. Sometimes they just shove artists in movies to draw a buzz. But after
we started filming, people saw that I wasn’t just there because I could rap.
Common
Breaks into
Hollywood with
the Help of
His Friends
We’re artists, and I respect her as a woman and as an artist. When the time is right, we might connect
like that. If she had a song, or if I had a song, I would be down for that.
What does acting give you that your music does not?
For me, it’s just another way to express myself as an artist. I had to battle with myself for a minute about
wanting to establish myself as an actor. I don’t want to be seen as this rapper/actor, but I realized that if
you’re an artist, you’re an artist. You can express that through music, through painting, through photography, or through acting. This is just another way for me to express myself. Overall, as far as artistry goes,
it is a similar expression. Alicia answered it when she said that you basically discover other things about
yourself that you probably wouldn’t have, just writing songs sometimes.
You’ve also got some children’s books and your own hat line, Soji, coming out. Any concerns that you
might be spreading yourself a little too thin?
My mom said, ‘You’ve got to multitask.’ I said, ‘It’s creativity. I can’t just flip switches.’ An album is my
child, and I have to give it the proper attention. But I’ve learned how to give two, even three children
love. I just hope I don’t become one of those fathers who plays favorites..
Joe Carnahan wasn’t the only one to take notice, huh?
I just have to thank God for the chance [director Ridley Scott] gave me to work with [Denzel Washington] and [Russell Crowe]. “American Gangster” is an incredible movie– a true story of Frank Lucas,
the Harlem drug lord of the 1970s. Denzel plays Lucas, and I’m one of his brothers. They story unveils
an emotional side of crime people aren’t used to seeing. I’m so fortunate to be around so many talented
people right now.
Careful, your boy Kanye may be listening!
He knows I love ‘em. He’s opened my eyes to a lot of things. He encourages me to take pride in my style,
and I’m really excited about the new record, “Finding Forever.” Ya’ know people have the ability to do
some amazing things while they exist on the earth. They can accomplish Feats that will be remembered
long after they’re gone. Musicians like John Coltrane, Marvin Gaye and James Brown made timeless
music. Their music made you dance and at the same time made you think. That’s what this new record is
all about.
Are you going to be able to back up your producer’s album-of-the-year prediction?
I love when Kanye says things like that. It really makes me want to shoot for the sky. It creates a serious
buzz. Ultimately, you have to put your music where your mouth is. Up to this point, I believe we have,
and I have no reason to doubt we’ll continue to do so. But honestly, Grammys aren’t pinnacles. You have
people out there starving. Helping them is more important than any awards.
So commercial success isn’t all that important to you?
I’d be lying if I said I don’t want to sell millions and become a household name, but I won’t lose myself
to do it. I see a lot of people in hip-hop who don’t love the music. It’s become the new dope game—
they’re in it to make money. If they could obtain that same kind of money or fame by dancing on one leg
like a fool, they’d be doing that.
It’s that kind that of talk, coupled with your socially conscious lyrics, that sets you apart. Even Jay-Z
acknowledges that on the song “Moment of Clarity.”
For him to go out and say that he respects my style and what I’m doing changed a lot of people’s view of
me. I mean, here you have one of the greatest of all time paying me a compliment. I think a lot of people
were like, “Hey, if Jay respects Common, why don’t we?”
And if Jay-Z didn’t help your profile, I’m sure the Gap commercials did.
[Laughs] People were coming up to me on the streets and were like, “You’re the guy in those TV commercials, right?” They had no idea who I was.
What did you learn about acting that will inform you now as an artist?
I just learned to be a freer artist. I think that acting made me more comfortable with myself because
I started getting more in tune, by doing roles or even just being around people. That gave me a certain
confidence and I started digging into parts of myself that I had probably ignored, and don’t really get to
express because Common is an artist that is conscious and is aware and is trying to put a positive energy
to the world. Being able to be acting and doing other things has opened me up as an artist, even from a
visual standpoint, as far as writing goes.
After having worked together on this film, do you and Alicia Keys have any plans to do anything
together musically?
I’ve been blessed to perform some shows with Alicia, and I was also featured on her Unplugged album.
Atlanta Steeplechase
THE BEST LAWN PARTY IN GEORGIA!
T
HE ATLANTA STEEPLECHASE, THE REGION’S
premier spring social event, combines unmistakable
style and entertainment with the thunderous and exhil-
arating sport of steeplechasing at Kingston Downs each year.
The quiet Northwest Georgia countryside comes alive with
thousands of spectators enjoying tailgate parties, Jack Russell
terrier races, an air show, hat contests, and the running of some
of the finest and fastest steeplechase horses in the country.
A Day at the Races
Steeplechasing mixes the
speed of Thoroughbred flat
racing with the precision of
jumping to create a hybrid-like
hurdle event in track and field
where the premium is on
speed over jumps. Every year,
the finest professional owners,
riders and trainers in the
country bring their horses to
venues throughout the Eastern
United States to compete for millions of dollars in purse money.
The real winner in steeplechase horse racing is the fan.
Spectators get a show rivaling college basketball for excitement,
baseball for history and a Broadway play for class. All while providing the perfect social backdrop for any occasion. Altogether
it is a full day of fun, food, fashion, and the goose-bump thrill of
thundering hooves crossing the finish line.
Most steeplechase days
include five to seven races.
Spectators arrive a few hours
before the first race (usually
10 am to noon) to set up their
picnics, watch the traditional
terrier or fox hound exhibitions, and peruse the vendor
tents. With a typically ovalshaped track, the spectator
has many vantage points; you
can watch the field break
away at the gates, stand next
to a hurdle, or catch the rush
to the finish line. With the first chase taking off at a post time
of around 1 pm, each takes about 30 minutes to run, award prize
money, and accept a trophy.
Around the Downs
The Steeplechase is the event to see and be seen. As spring
heralds in warm days and sunny skies, every fashion statement
from designer dresses and showy hats to flip flops and halter
tops can be seen at Kingston Downs. The people-watching is
absolutely at its best all day long. To celebrate all the "fashionistas," there are hat contests with prizes for best women's, children's and whimsical categories.
Gourmet food and tailgate parties are the staple of the event.
Tailgaters set lavish tables complete with linen, huge bouquets,
candelabras, and out-of-this-world centerpieces.
SPRING HAPPENINGS
Beneficiaries
This year’s event is especially exciting, as the Atlanta
Steeplechase announces two new beneficiaries.
Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for
chronically and seriously ill children and their families through
both in-hospital and out-patient programs. The Foundation's
Atlanta chapter, created in 1989, offers many social and educational programs in more than 25 hospitals and 20 agencies
throughout Georgia. Over 35,000 children are served each year.
Founded in 1946, the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine
promotes the art and science of veterinary medicine through
the education of tomorrow's veterinarians, research in animal
diseases, and service to the public. Last year, over 16,000 animals were treated at the teaching hospital and 135,000 were
seen in the field.
Celebrating 42 Years!
The Atlanta Steeplechase is celebrating 42 Years. On a warm
Sunday in March 1966, the first Steeplechase was run on sandy
bottom land at Horseshoe Bend on the Chattahoochee River.
Over forty years later, the Atlanta Steeplechase is attracting
more than twice as many attendees with record breaking attendence expected this year.
2007 Activities & Race Schedule
9:00 a.m. Gates Open
10:30 to 1:00 p.m. Terrier Races and Pig Races - Infield
10:30 to 1:00 p.m. Carriage Rides and Pony Rides - Infield
11:45 to 12:15 p.m. Hat Parade and Contest
12 p.m. Air Show and Sky Dive Demonstration
12:15 p.m. Parade of the Shamrock Hounds
1:30 p.m. Race 1: $30,000 Sport of Queens Hurdle
2:10 p.m. Race 2: $20,000 Maiden Claiming Hurdle
2:50 p.m. Race 3: $25,000 Sport of Kings Maiden Hurdle
3:30 p.m. Race 4: $75,000 The Georgia Cup
4:10 p.m. Race 5: $25,000 Sport of Kings Claiming Hurdle
LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT
March Madness!
Where to Head to When the Tournament Tips off
O
H YES! IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN. Spring is around the corner, flowers are beginning to bloom, as mass hysteria hits the country in what is known
as MARCH MADNESS! This year has added significance as Atlanta hosts both
the SEC Tournament and the Final Four. As you settle in for the Big Dance, we at INsite
would like to suggest some terrific places in Atlanta to watch the games, enjoy some
great food and take in the excitement from the games.
Chicago’s Nancy’s Pizza
3167 Peachtree Rd. 404.320.1258
265 Ponce De Leon 404.885.9199
www.nancyspizza.com
The name Chicago conjures up images of
some of the best pizza in the USA.
Unfortunately, Atlanta never had great
Chicago style Pizza until now.
Since 1974, when Rocco Palese of Nancy's
invented stuffed pizza, (Rocco is recognized
as the official inventor of stuffed pizza) the
Chicagoland pizzerias have been serving
deep dish pizza along with it's very popular
thin pizzas. The company developed a revolutionary conveyor pizza oven that cooks top
quality deep dish pizza in just 13 ½ minutes…. less than one-third of the usual 45
minutes required. Nancy's offers thin and
deep dish and take and bake pizza, appetizers, sandwiches, and their signature salads.
Mike Glover opened the first Chicago
Nancy's in Atlanta on Ponce in 2003. With
great word of mouth, the location became an
immediate success. As Mike explains, “We
commit ourselves to the customers being
happy and make sure to thank them for coming to Chicago Nancy’s.”
Soon after opening the orginal location on
Ponce, Mike sought out to find a new larger
location that could offer an upscale dinning
area. He found it in the Buckhead Shopping
Center anchored by Jeannie’s Gym. The new
location has a large dinning room along with
outside seating. It boasts six 48” flat screens
on the walls all of which will be tuned to the
basketball tournament. The new location
also has a full bar which makes it great for
watching the games or for private parties.
Both locations offer take-out and delivery.
Loco’s Grill & Pub
3167 Peachtree Rd. Buckhead
404.233.1989
With a great deck overlooking the view on
Peachtree and a new dining inside, Locos is
the place to be for March Madness this year.
They are located at the North End of
Buckhead Village and their outdoor seating.
Here you will find some of the best chicken
wings in the city. Whether you want them
Hot, Mild, Honey, BBQ, Lemmon Pepper,
Teriyaki, or Honey Mustard; Locos has you
covered!
The wings at Locos are so outstanding that
many forget how amazing their sandwiches
are. One of their favorites is the “Moose”,
affectionately named after their mascot. The
Moose is lean roast beef under melted
Monterrey jack cheese on an onion roll
topped with horseradish sauce and cole slaw.
If you’re looking for the taste of Locos wings
but want to keep your fingers clean, try their
Spicy Chicken Sandwich, a fried chicken
breast tossed with the famous Locos hot
sauce, served on an onion roll with mayo, lettuce, and tomato.
This Buckhead location showcases plenty of
TV’s including HD projections and plenty of
new plasmas. You will find also 24 different
drafts to choose from among their full bar.
Also check out the Wheel of Beer that spins
every Saturday. Wherever it lands, that beer
becomes the house beer for that hour. So
come out, get a prime table, and enjoy the
Madness!
Moondog’s
3179 Peachtree St. Buckhead
404.231.4223
Fado’
3035 Peachtree Rd. 404.841.0066
www.fadoirishpub.com
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t all that will be going
on at Fado this month. After serving as
Atlanta’s viewing destination for the World
Cup this summer, Fado is getting ready for
America’s biggest tournament.
Fado offers many flat screen TV’s throughout their cavernous bar and has a large projector screen to feature the main game. Here
you can hang out all day as they have a great
pub menu and of course the best beer in
Atlanta. Fado also houses Atlanta’s Best
Bartender, Anto Hogan, winner of the 2006
Best Bartender of Atlanta competition.
This always happening party bar will be the
place to be during the biggest games of this
year’s basketball tournament.
To go with there multiple rooms that include
pool tables, tables for card games and dart
boards they offer 5 brand new HD Big
screens and a total of 9 TVs in house.
For the Thursday games they open at 7pm
and then at 8:30pm on Friday and Saturday.
They don’t close each night until 3AM so
there is no need to head out to the party after
the game; you are already there.
Moondog’s can be found just north of
Buckhead Village adjacent to The Peachtree
Tavern and Hole in the Wall nightclub. Their
bartenders have one awards in several publications and Moondog’s has been voted Best
college Bar by INsite and Citysearch.
Mo’s Pizza
3109 Briarcliff
404.320.1258
You may know about
the burrito chain with
the same name, but the
original Mo’s resides on the
corner of Briarcliff and
Clairmont Roads. They have
been serving up great pizza for
over 25 years.
Mo’s menu isn’t limited to pizza either:
sandwiches, subs, wings, nachos and salads
ensure that anybody who comes here can find
something they like. They don’t buy their
ingredients in bulk because as owner Kevin
says, “the freshness of their pizza is more
important than saving a few bucks on a case of
lettuce.“
Come to Mo’s to watch all the tounament
action. They have a great deck to hang out on,
and plenty of new plasma TVs to watch the
games. Mo’s is one of the longest running
pizza joints in Atlanta, come in and see why
they are one of the best!
Famous Pub
2947 N. Druid Hills Rd.
404.633.3555
With 6 big screens and over 40 TV’s showing every NCAA Tournament game, Famous
Pub is your home for March Madness. In
addition, there are 11 pool tables, foosball, air
hockey, darts and numerous video games.
Famous Pub offers an expanded menu that
in addition to favorites such as wings, sandwiches and wraps has a variety of steaks,
salmon and steamed vegetables. Daily lunch
specials are always available.
Famous Pub was voted Best Sports Bar by
INsite readers in 2006. There is never a cover
charge, and ample free parking.
With all of the changes going on, now is the
time to see for yourself how Famous Pub &
Sports Palace is bringing back the concept of
a high-end restaurant and bar with a neighborhood feel.
Advertising in
INsite sounds
great to her!
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
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CALL STEVE
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404-315-8485
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404.888.9200
March Madness!
Where to Head to When the Tournament Tips off
The Red Door Tavern
Savage Pizza
- Continued from PG 31
Smith’s Olde Bar
3180 Roswell Rd. (1 Block N of Roxy)
404.846.6525
484 Moreland Ave. Little 5 Points
404.523.0500 www.savagepizza.com
Now in their third year, The Red Door Tavern
has quickly become a favorite watering hole
among locals in North Buckhead. They are
located on Roswell Road, one block north of the
Roxy Theatre and they tend to get packed during
nights of Roxy shows.
1578 Piedmont Ave.
404.875.1522 www.smithsoldebar.com
If the Incredible Hulk were to break down the
walls of your house to deliver a pizza, he’d be
carrying one of the original recipes from Savage
Pizza. With a huge reproduction of a Silver
Surfer comic book cover greeting you at the
door, the mild-mannered folks working the takeout counter and the outdoor patio dining area
must be concealing some powerful secret identities judging from their outstanding pizza.
At Smith’s you will find total entertainment.
The downstairs bar is divided into three rooms.
The Game Room features five Pool tables, Dart
boards and Golden Tee Golf. Adjacent to it is
their Dining Area. They have plenty of seating
where tables can be combined for large parties
and generous booths surrounded by large screen
TV’s. During the tournament, Smith’s will hang
the brackets on the wall to keep track of your
favorite teams. They have a full menu, but what
are most popular are their wings, chicken fingers
and burgers. Another favorite is their BBQ
brought in exclusively from Fox Brothers.
During the tournament ask for their March
Madness specials. Next to the Dining area,
holds one of the most impressive bars in the city.
The room is surrounded by booths and new
plasma TV’s for those looking for the perfect
seat to watch the games. After the games have
finished, go upstairs to watch some of the best
live music Atlanta has to offer. There is live
music 7 nights a week. Everyone has played
here, from your favorite local band to David
Bowie.
The Red Door Tavern features a large outdoor
deck in the front of the tavern that offers a great
view down Roswell Rd. into Buckhead Village.
They have “Bucket Specials” of Bud, Bud Light
and Bud Select. They also have a “Draft Tower”
a glass featuring 120 ounces of beer. On St.
Patrick’s Day they will feature green beer and
Irish drink specials as well as an actual dancing
Leprechaun on the bar.
The Red Door is a favorite among Bulldog fans
but with the Final Four in town there will be fans
from all over. They open from 2pm to 3am
every day and closed on Sunday. During the
tournament, they will open at noon to catch
those early round games. So if you’re looking for
a great place catch the tournament action in
Buckhead this year, look no further than The
Red Door Tavern.
Savage’s hand-tossed crusts are thrown with
real hands and get enough air to make Tony
Hawk jealous. Available in whole-wheat or traditional, these crusts can be topped with any one
of Savage’s SIX sauces! Ranging from your standard Red Tomato sauce (a slowly simmered
marinara) to Garlic White sauce (mellow and
creamy) and Salsa Fresca (fresh tomatoes, red
onions and cilantro), choosing a sauce for your
pizza adds an entirely new dimension to deciding on toppings.
Open for lunch and dinner, Savage is a popular
take-out destination and offers delivery for those
in town. So call Savage before inviting friends
over to watch all the tournament action.
In addition to the tournament action Texas
Hold’em is held four times a week. Game times
are Tuesday and Wednesday nights as well as
Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Wednesdays
offer tribute to Widespread Panic, where
patrons are encouraged to bring their bootlegs
and jam in the Atlanta Room next door. The
Atlanta Room can also be reserved for private
parties if you are looking to get fellow alumni
together to watch in your own private room.
Thursdays offer Team Trivia at starting at 9PM.
So whatever night you come, there is sure to be
something happening at Smith’s Olde Bar.
Stool Pigeons Coop & Grill
949 Peachtree St. Midtown
404.888.9200 www.stoolpigeons.biz
Nearly three years ago, Stool Pigeons opened
its doors underneath Metropolis in Midtown.
The Coop has been a favorite of both locals and
visitors alike, and remains the premier place for
food, social gatherings, sporting events, and more!
With their mouth-watering menu, daily drink specials, and a state-of the art audio/visual system,
Stool Pigeons offers something for everyone.
Catch the all the tournament action on their
multiple plasma screens behind the bar and
throughout the Coop. On Wednesday’s they feature live music and hold Open Mic on Fridays.
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Steam
Bowls
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MARCH MADNESS
BASKETBALL
GREAT SUBS,
SANDWICHES, SALADS
& WINGS Since 1980
CARRYING THE SEC & NCAA TOURNAMENT
ON MULTIPLE PLASMA SCREENS
$3 OFF
Large 2-Item Pizza
One Coupon Per Offer
Offer Expires 4.15.07
Not valid w/ any other specials.
Just off I-85 @ Clairmont (Corner of Briarcliff & Clairmont)
3109 Briarcliff Rd. | 404-320-1258
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EXPLORE THE NORTH END
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Visit www.peachtreetavern.com
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March t
SPORTS PREVIEW
Glory
Think Downtown Atlanta traffic is bad? Wait ‘til you get a look at the congestion 65
teams driving towards the final four parking spots at the Georgia Dome can make.
BY DEMARCO WILLIAMS
M
ARYLAND, INDIANA, OKLA
HOMA AND KANSAS all
maneuvered their ways around
the bracket racket that is the NCAA Tournament to get to the Georgia Dome for the
2002 Final Four. Just five seasons later, college basketball’s grand finale has returned
to the city too busy to use H.O.V. lanes. It
wouldn’t surprise anyone if Kansas, with its
terrific trio of Mario Chalmers, Brandon
Rush and Julian Wright, directs its way back
to Atlanta. ’02 champ Maryland and the
runner-up Hoosiers -As fate would have it,
current Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson was
Oklahoma’s coach back in ’02- will get into
the dance, but no one’s expecting either to
have much gas. As for this year’s directionless Sooners, it appears their season’s run
its course. And that’s probably for the best,
because 18-wheelers named Florida, Ohio
State and UCLA are destined to flatten
road-kill like OU this postseason. Here are a
few other things we’ve been pondering lately
while sitting in brutal I-285 traffic…
tournament: Butler.
Kevin Durant, Texas - The Sports Illustrated cover boy deserves all the hype he’s getting
and more. Simply put, he’s the most exciting
player not on an NBA roster. Enjoy the Garnett-on-training-wheels in March, because
he’s likely on to the League in April.
Roy Hibbert, Georgetown - While the Hoya
center isn’t one much for lighting up the
scoreboard (just five games over 20 points),
he’s definitely the reason Georgetown is rejecting thoughts (11 games with three blocks
SHORTCUT TO NOWHERE
Their names are familiar, but don’t be
fooled by all the hype and neon lights.
Duke - No, it’s not the wisest thing to
count out a Coach K-led team under any
circumstances. And yes, Josh McRoberts and
DeMarcus Nelson are talented enough to put
up 20 on any given night. Still, there’s just too
much gray area with these erratic Blue Devils.
Indiana - Besides Florida’s Noah, Hoosier
D.J. White might be the most expressive big
man in the land. With that said, you do not
want to be around the 250-pound junior in
those first few moments after they’re upset
the first weekend of the tournament.
Memphis - It’s teams like the Tigers that
break an office poll bracket. During most of
the regular season they’re amazing (25 wins
at the end of Feb), but come the Big Dance
they stumble over their own feet because they
realize that most of their impressive victories
came against inferior teams.
Alabama - Actually, at press time the Crimson Tide were on the bubble for a tourney invite. They’ll likely get it and people will likely
pick them for a couple of wins. We won’t be
one of them. We saw how unpredictable they
were during the SEC season.
Creighton - Alas, the old “Cinderella” pick.
Maybe the Jays are this year’s feel-good,
George Mason story. INsite’s skipped ahead a
few pages and we can tell you that Creighton
star Nate Funk’s collegiate chapter ends long
before midnight.
CRUISING TOWARDS
ATLANTA
Only a bracket scheduling quirk (or
complete mental breakdown) will keep four
of these five from meeting up in the Peach
State.
Florida - The defending champs won’t have
an easy road to becoming repeat champs,
but with the emotive Joakim Noah and explosive Corey Brewer behind the wheel, we
think the Gators will cruise to the Final Four.
Ohio State - The Buckeyes are the Demi
Moore/Ashton Kutcher of college basketball—the perfect blend of experience (junior
Jamar Butler) and youthful exuberance (Greg
Oden and Mike Conley Jr.). Yeah, but have
they learned to handle the jockstrap-wearing
paparazzi?
Wisconsin - We haven’t given the deserving Badgers much love all season (we picked
them No. 14 in our preseason poll), so we’re
going to change all of that: Alando Tucker’s
bunch is the truth! Just ask the Buckeyes,
Marquette, Pitt and whichever unsuspecting
eight seed they see in the NCAAs.
UCLA - Living on the east coast, you miss
out on a lot of things like eating In ‘n Out
hamburgers, watching 10A.M. NFL games
on Sunday and seeing the Bruins in action.
That’ll change in March when Arron Afflalo
and Josh Shipp show the rest of America
how Cali balls.
North Carolina - Talent-wise, the Tar
Heels are No. 1 on any list. Brandan Wright
is the truth. Ty Lawson is a blur. Tyler Hansbrough is in the NBA next year. Sadly, UNC
is two and out if it shows the same indifference it sometimes did during the regular
season.
TOP ATTRACTIONS
Ride shotgun with any of these sensational players and you’ll get to the Sweet 16.
Aaron Gray, Pittsburgh - The Panthers are
a good team without Gray (an ankle injury
has limited play of late). With the 7-0 fort
posted under the goal, they’re a serious
problem to any school without a consistent
outside game.
A.J. Graves, Butler - Honestly, overall,
Graves is a bit inconsistent. But if he puts
together a March like he did in January
(he averaged 22 ppg during one five-game
stretch), we’ll know exactly who killed in the
or more) of an early NCAA exit.
Acie Law IV, Texas A&M - Were it not for
Mr. Durant playing in the same conference,
there would be no doubt this amazing Aggie
would be Big 12 player of the year. No biggie
for Acie. Final Four MVP has a better ring to
it anyway.
LITTLEKNOWN DETOURS
411: The NCAA Basketball
Tournament kicks off this
month. Atlanta will host the
Final Four at the Georgia Dome
between March 30 and April 2.
Top pic: Corey Brewer
Left Center: Kevin Durant
Right Center: Tyler Hansbrough
Bottom: Aaron Afflalo
Don’t be shocked if one or two of these
under-the-radar squads ends up in the Elite
Eight.
Southern Illinois - The school’s mascot is
the saluki, a canine held in the highest esteem
by the Ancient Egyptians. The school’s best
player is Jamaal Tatum, a fiery guard the Missouri Valley Conference couldn’t keep a hold
of. This mid-major is a major threat.
Washington State - Sure, they’re ranked,
wisenheimer! But can you name the Cougars’
leading scorer? No, well how about the team’s
head coach? Get ready to put the kinetic Derrick Low and rookie coach Tony Bennett on
your tongue because State is primed to make
a name for itself in ‘07.
Stanford - The reason you’re seeing double
is two-fold: 1) Freshman 7-0 twins Robin and
Brook Lopez are certified ballers; 2) The Cardinal have gotten their game together at just
the right time to advance to the tournament’s
second weekend.
Winthrop - Another middie that can play
with the biggies, the Eagles beat Mississippi
State, Old Dominion and lost by just three
to Wisconsin. Don’t expect to see streaky big
South Conference reps in Atlanta, but expect
to see their names more than once in the
bracket.
Georgia Tech - One of the more up and
down teams, the Jackets know they play with
the best of them. But wins against Duke,
Memphis and UConn aside, the Javaris Crittenton-sparked squad has got to show more
heart. And they will—just as long as they’re
given a chance by the NCAA selection committee.
SPORTS INTERVIEW
MUSIC INTERVIEW
SEVENDUST’S SECOND ACT What’s Next For
Grant
Hill?
E
BY JOHN B. MOORE
LEVEN YEARS AFTER BURSTING onto
the scene in a barrage of distorted guitars,
machine gun drumming and thunderclap bass
riffs, Atlanta-based hard rockers Sevendust
have managed to be radio-friendly, selling millions of
records without sacrificing their heavy metal heritage.
There have been some missteps along the way. The
band left longtime label TVT a couple of years ago
to sign with Winedark Records just before that label
imploded, forcing Sevendust to self-finance their fifth
record. They’ve also trusted their careers and money
to others, and wound up exploited on both ends.
Frontman Lajon Witherspoon is quick to admit that
the band has made mistakes, but he’s just as resolute
when he insists that they are finally in full control
of their destiny. Now
working with a new
Warner-distributed
label, the band is about
to release their sixth
album, Alpha, with an
aggressive sound that
harkens back to their
earliest efforts. Calling
in from Wisconsin just
days into their headlining tour, Witherspoon
was remarkably candid,
ruminating on past mistakes, the inspiration
behind the album and
the future of Sevendust.
When you guys first got together, had you been playing in other bands around town?
I had been in a band in Georgia called Body and Soul.
We played around Atlanta and were pretty big. We
had a following and I had some really cool players. We
were the youngest cats on the scene. Morgan (Rose,
Sevendust’s drummer) and them would come out and
see my band. You know, I always felt like I was destined
to do something in music, but I never would have
thought it would have been like this and lasted so long.
Really? What did you think it would end up being?
I don’t know, man, because I started doing kind of
R&B stuff, and rock ‘n’ roll was always my passion.
We’ve definitely gone through some trials and tribulations, some hard times and some loss. When people
say, “Man, you guys have had it bad,” a lot of times I say
back to them, “You know what, man? We don’t have
it that bad because we’re still able to do it.” Even in the
worst of times, not having any money, I’ve still been
able to survive, so it hasn’t been that bad.
When you first got together with this lineup, did you
think you’d still be doing this 10 years later, playing
this kind of music with this same band?
You know, I didn’t. It’s been such a long time now.
But I wouldn’t go anywhere else. Right now it’s like
we’re at the beginning again. We’re signing this new
venture with Warner Music Group, and what we’re
doing is like a new start. The single, “Driven,” is in the
Top 20 and the album isn’t even out yet. It feels great.
Let’s talk for a minute about what’s been going on
recently with your label situation. Was your split
with TVT amicable?
We were able to make a move, and it was time. TVT
was great. Thank the Lord we had them at the beginning, because we sold albums. They put us on the map.
But I think, as with anything, it was time to change.
Like when you change to a new job [because] you feel
like you might need to get a promotion. That’s where
we were. We were able to make this change when we
thought we had a great deal with Winedark. But it was
too good to be true, and we knew it. That fell through
and put us in a situation where, “Oh my God, now we
don’t have a label again!” So we really had to focus and
figure out what we wanted to do. In that time we had
off– seven months to a year– we needed it. We were
able to get home to our families and be dads, and that’s
what helped this album. We were just determined, and
look at it now! We’re back, we’ve got a label behind us
and it’s time to go.
With the recent signing of your label to the Warner
Music Group, it would seem like you have the best of
both worlds– a small independent label funded by a
major label.
There you go! It feels like home again. Everyone’s
excited, and it looks like things are going to be good.
Was there a time after the Winedark deal fell apart
when you guys said, “Let’s think about whether or not
we want to move forward with this band”?
Oh, no. Sevendust has made a career out of this.
For us just to stop... what the hell am I going to do
now?! It just made us work harder, because ultimately
it’s all about the music. But I do have to say this to all
the young artists out there: Be an artist and love your
passion, but you have to also be a businessman or
businesswoman in this industry, because it’s so jaded.
That’s something that took us a while to learn. I was 21
when we signed our record deal and I was like, “Who
cares, man? We get to leave Atlanta and go to other
places!” When they put us out [on the road] for two
years straight, we didn’t think anything about it.
That’s just something you
should always keep your
hands on. It just makes
it better for everything in
the end. With this venture [with Warner Music
Group], we have Seven
Brothers Records. In the
future, we plan on signing
bands and not putting
them trough the hell that
we went through for so
many years. Actually letting them see that you can
do this the right way.
Can you talk a little bit
about the negative stuff that you went through?
We were on the road so much and had different
people at organizations who were handling things, be
it bad financial handling or management. We just had
to clean house and get the right people in there. A
lot of things were overlooked until it was too late, and
then it was like, “Damn! So that’s where he got that
lake house...”
So you feel good that you’re in a situation now where
that’s not going to happen again?
Shoot yeah! We know where every cent goes. “Who
just bought that hat? How much was it?” We’re in
control of everything now.
Let’s talk about Alpha. It definitely has some dark
themes to it. Was there anything in particular that
inspired this?
I can tell you that the song “Driven” was written
about Morgan’s father, who was sent to prison. There
are definitely a lot of personal things that are going on.
We can’t write about anything else but what’s real to
us. When we do that, we find that we’re not different
from anyone else going through things in their lives,
and people interpret songs the way they need to. A lot
of times they are so close to what the song is about that
it’s awesome. We all go through the same shit. We are
able to put this all on this album. The people who we
don’t like, we talk about, and I’m sure a lot of people
will know exactly what the hell is going on once they
hear the whole album.
Did it take a while to write?
It was pretty effortless. We came in prepared. That
makes everything easier.
How does this album compare to your others?
I feel like you can’t help but grow in the music industry, as long as we’ve been playing. This album, even
though I think it goes back to the heavy stuff, it’s definitely more mature. We’ve grown. I’m very impressed
and excited about it. People love the heavy stuff, but I
still put the melody on it, so we’re all happy.
Was that a conscious decision to get back to your
more heavy sound?
Oh yeah, definitely. What’s cool about it is that the
fucking catalog now is a thousand damn songs. Each
night we’re able to paint a different picture, and that
to me is the most important thing. We’re not just a
heavy band; we’re a rock ‘n’ roll band. We can play with
a band like Creed, then go out with Slipknot. That’s
what I like.
For a metal band, you guys have made an effort to
always include some melody into your songs.
That’s what songs are about. Everything doesn’t
always have to be the heaviest in the world. I’ve got a 7year-old daughter, and everyone in this band has little
girls. We’re nice guys!
BY ANDREA M. HATTER
G
RANT HILL WAS AN IDOL WHEN I WAS
younger. Duke was the bane of my existence,
and still I loved the heck of that guy. He led the
school to back-to-back championships, making the Blue
Devils the first college since ’73 to win consecutive titles,
and gave Christian Laettner his career. He was the first
player in ACC history to rack more than 1900 points,
700 rebounds, 400 assists, 200 steals and 100 blocked
shots. How do you like them apples?
Even more, my mom loves him. The son of two professionals – his father, four-time Pro Bowl running back
Calvin Hill, graduated from Yale and his mother from
Wellesley, he’s clean cut, collects art, a stand-up family
man, and an all-around nice guy.
Why does it always happen to him? Even now, at the
time of this writing, he is out hurt for a sprained MCL.
A knee injury. This guy’s plagued with bad luck.
So when the Magic played here in January, I had to talk
to him. I wanted to know how he’s dealt with all the ups
and downs in his career and what he’s been doing in the
meantime. A lot of ideas can pass through one’s head
when they have as much downtime as he’s had.
The waiting was numbing. He’d been tucked away in
the trainers’ area icing his knees for quite a while after
the game. And unlike the Hawks’ colorful pad, the visiting facilities are gray and dank. It puts you in the mind
of a locker room in an underfunded high school. His
teammates slowly disappeared until only a few trainers,
a team rep and I remained. All the other writers had left
the sweaty locker room by the time he eked from the
showers 20 minutes before bus roll. His creeky-kneed
waddle reminded me of other NBA vets like Dikembe
Mutombo and Vlade Divac, a far cry from the player I
grew up watching as a teen. But he’s been through 11
the slide from being the go-to-guy, to a supporting role.
“I just think when you’ve been through what I’ve been
through, every time you have the opportunity to play
and be healthy, it puts things into perspective,” Hill said.
Perspective has come in abundance. Following a string
of failed attempts at a comeback, in 2003 he nearly died
from a 104.5-degree fever and convulsions caused by a
staph infection from a recent surgery. That same year
his wife, R&B singer Tamia, was diagnosed with multiple
sclerosis, a chronic inflammatory disease that erodes the
central nervous system. The couple appeared on EXTRA two years later to tell the world about her diagnosis
with the illness.
In our talk, he told me she’s fine. Modern technology
allows them to have medicine that can encumber its
progress. Still, there is no cure.
“It’s something that you kind of learn to live with.”
The ordeals of the last almost decade has really conflated their family. They’ve learned to lean on each other
through the adversity, so the Hills are managing as well
as possible in spite of things. Quite a bit less has pushed
others over into the depths of depression, though. How
did he maintain good attitude amid all that was happening (to) around him?
“While I was out, I had an opportunity to do other
things. Kept myself busy. For one, we started a family. I
spend time with my daughter, my wife. I was dabbling in
some other things, putting together another tour, learning more about real estate, just continuing to try to grow.
Trying to keep my mind working, as opposed to sitting
around feeling sorry for myself, moping. I try to get out
and be somewhat productive.”
The aforementioned tour is the collection of art he
started in 1990, as an extra-curricular interest to serve
as another chapter in his life. It has since grown to
I TRY TO KEEP MY MIND WORKING, AS OPPOSED TO SITTING
AROUND FEELING SORRY FOR MYSELF, MOPING.
years of ball, something like six operations, and a nearly
fatal hospital experience. Still, he manages to have a
good sense of humor.
When I asked about how many injuries he’s had, Grant
Hill grinned.
“Ohhh, we don’t have enough time to go through all
of them.”
“You looked good out there though,” I said. “You think
the doctors got everything worked out?”
“I hope so,” he chuckled.
His jinxed years coaxed an assertion in 2006 that he’d
consider retirement if he had to have another surgery,
which is sad since he still manages to get the stats of
an uninjured pro. In spite of all the pains, his “pointforward” skills still draw close to 20 points per game,
rebounds, assists, blocks, and even a steal or two. It’s as
much a waste of talent as Barry Sanders playing in Detroit, although understandably his DNPs and seven-year,
$93 mil contract have his team hung by the nads. A year
ago, Sports Illustrated writer Mike McCallister penned
a fictional letter to Hill pleading for his retirement.
Instead, he keeps coming back.
From his website, he writes, “Ultimately, it’s the love
and desire to want to play…I want to be able to retire
at peace with my decision…I don’t want to
look 20 years down the road and regret
not giving my career one last try – or
maybe a fourth or fifth last try.”
Several have chastised his returns,
labeling it a madness that keeps subjecting his body to the pressures of ball,
even calling him a curse to his team. A
look in the other direction, though, and
you find a certain conscience in it all. Too
many players to name have left their teams
with phantom injuries, money in tow, never to
be seen again. But here’s a guy who’s really hurt,
yet he still comes to every game, offers advice
to teammates from the sideline, and incessantly
tries to live up to the contract he was awarded 7
years ago.
True, in uniform he’s not quite the Grant Hill
we knew from Detroit, however each attempt
gets enough respect that he’s an A-list support
man. I remember interviewing Penny Hardaway
– another good player haunted by injury – when
he’d returned to the Phoenix Suns active roster.
The most rousing part of it was his distaste with
being kept on the bench, an entirely debatable
decision at best. But it made me wonder about
46 works, visited approximately seven cities, and was
depicted in a book entitled, Something All Our Own:
The Grant Hill Collection of African American Art. He
champions the pieces, and art in general, as an integral
part of personal education and growth.
“Young people should be as familiar with [Romare]
Bearden as they are with Jordan and O’Neal. They
should know the stories, the journey behind each life.”
Then there was more good news: his daughter Myla
turned five.
“[Being a father is] great, it’s a lot of fun. A lot of work,
but very rewarding. She keeps me young.”
Every bit the proud papa, Hill admitted that having
a child in the midst of all the travel requires some
maneuvering.
“It’s tough. I went through it on the other end, to a
degree, ‘cause my dad played football so I was a child of
that. But it’s hard to be away. You miss out on so much.
My wife is in the music business, so she travels quite a bit
as well, so it requires – on both our parts – a lot of planning, organizing, having nannies and grandmothers to
help out. But our daughter is the star in the family. And
she knows it,” he reported grinning and wide-eyed.
That face. I had to fight back a random
memory of him playing piano and singing in
a commercial. One of the endorsements
from his glory days of the 90s. Maybe one
day he’ll return to that level of notoriety. I
certainly hope he does, because I feel he
deserves it. He’s one heck of a player.
On the other hand, if he retired, maybe
he could be one heck of a coach…
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FANATIC
BY MATT GOLDBERG
“Everywhere he went, he won,” said Hall of Famer Bill
Walton who teamed with Dennis Johnson on the ’86 championship Celtics. “Isn’t that the measure of greatness? And
he was the reason they won. He was the reason they won
in Seattle. He was the reason they won in Phoenix. “I have
never been so disheartened and embarrassed in my life that
Johnson is not already in the Hall of Fame. It’s a travesty.”
–Hall of Famer Bill Walton on the former Boston Celtics
great who passed away
on February 22
The Duke Lady Devils’ 29-0 regular season
is certainly worthy of
praise on the eve of the
NCAA tournament, but
if you’re thinking the
Lindsay
Harding-led
team is going to walk its
way into Cleveland for
the Final Four, you’re
greatly mistaken. Defending champ Maryland, a back-to-elite
UConn and a Courtney
Paris-anchored Oklahoma should all make
solid runs. But the
team Fanatic believes
will stop Duke and trim
the nets is Tennessee.
The Lady Vols, led by
all-everything Candace
Parker and Hall of Fame
coach Pat Summitt, ran
through the SEC and
have an air about them
that states it’s only going
to continue in the postseason.
A Monthly Sports
Wrap-up
remarkable is that Martie also has the second (New York Islanders, 37 wins), fourth (Philadelphia, 34) and fifth (Montreal, 33) most wins… Oh, and Brodeur also played in his
60th game of the season recently, giving him a record 11
consecutive seasons of playing in 60 or more contests.
“Every day, every round just wears you down a little bit. In
the end, you’ve got nothing left in the tank. And still, I managed to find some on the back nine today.” –Henrik Stenson, after winning the prestigious Accenture Match-Play
Championship
and
becoming the world’s
No. 5 golfer, the highest ranking ever for a
Swede
Though it’s pretty
much a forgone conclusion that the 0607 NBA champ will
come out the West, we
shouldn’t overlook that
the Detroit Pistons
are putting together
a very good campaign
themselves in the East.
All-stars Rip Hamilton,
Chauncey Billups and
the recently-acquired
Chris Webber are gelling at just the right
time and the Central
Division leader’s 10-1
mark in February reflects as much.
We belive the Lady Vols have what it takes
to stop the Duke Lady Devils
“First of all I’d like to apologize to my teammates, coaches,
Lakers management and Lakers fans for initially lying about
the circumstances of the injury to my shoulder last weekend…The truth is that I hurt myself in a fall while snowboarding. Being young and sometimes immature, I initially
panicked and made up a false story about how I hurt myself.
However, over the past few days my conscience has been
bothering me terribly. I am not a dishonest person and
could no longer live with this deception.” –Lakers forward
Vladimir Radmanovic
“This is crunch time, there’s no question about it. This is
a big move by Atlanta. They’re putting in on the line with
me coming there. I expect to go in there and do the right
things on and off the ice. We just want to get in the playoffs.
Once you get in the playoffs, anything can happen.” –New
Thrasher left wing Keith Tkachuk, on Atlanta’s hopes of
making its first playoffs in franchise history
And speaking of the puck, on February 23, New Jersey
Devils goalie Martin Brodeur won his 38th career game
against the New York Rangers, giving him the most by any
active goaltender against a single team. What’s even more
“There’s nothing
you’ll ask him to do
that he can’t do. Nothing. He makes such
beautiful throws on the curls and the comebacks, like an
outfielder hitting the cutoff man perfectly. And his touch
is so good. He throws it short with touch, deep with touch.
Every throw looks so natural.’’ –Quarterback consultant
Tom Martinez on potential No. 1 NFL draft pick JaMarcus Russell
And finally…
The February 22-25 Mayakoba Golf Classic was the first
official PGA event ever to take place in Mexico…Cactus
League baseball has a $202 million impact on the Arizona
economy every Feb/March… Quick: Name the three guys
leading NCAA college hoops in double-doubles this season.
Of course, Texas’ Kevin Durant and Nevada’s Nick Fazekas
are on the list. But No. 3? How about Arkansas-Little Rock’s
Rashad Jones-Jennings… $100 to anyone who can explain
why Bernard King (just 655 points shy of 20,000!) isn’t on
the list of NBA Hall of Fame finalists… Talk of Colorado
Rockies first baseman Todd Helton going to Boston have
quieted but don’t think for a second they’re dead… Don’t
be surprised to see Grant Hill in a San Antonio, Miami or
Detroit jersey next season… Doesn’t the new Will Ferrell/
Jon Heder ice skating comedy Blades of Glory look kinda
stupid?
SPORTS NEWS
Must-See TV
Top 5 Games This Month
NCAA Men’s
Tournament
1
March 15-18 (Various times, CBS) From
noon to midnight, there’s virtually non-stop
basketball the tourney’s first four days. Hoops
fans exhale only during commercials.
2
NCAA Men’s
Final Four
3
NCAA Women’s
Final Four
4
Opening
Day
5
Miami at Detroit;
Dallas at Phoenix
March 31 and April 2 (TBA, CBS) With so
many talented teams to choose from in the
field of 65, no matter which four end up
in Atlanta, we know the match-ups will be
must-see sports TV.
April 1 and April 3 (TBA, ESPN) Ohio’s
Quicken Loans Arena has been sold out for
months. With UT, Duke, UNC and UConn
looking so money, it all makes sense.
April 1 (8:05PM, ESPN) The Series champion
St. Louis Cards start their title defense
against the team, the NY Mets, many think
is capable of snatching it from them in ‘07.
April 1 (1 and 3:30, ABC) The winners of
this Sunday afternoon double-header could
be on a collision course for one another in
the NBA Finals.
CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Wanton
Distraction
Skewed Views on Entertainment News
BY MATT GOLDBERG
make us monarchy of whores; and after counting down to the medical examiner’s report, the
result being “Uh, I need more time.” This month
has been like mana to the 24-hour news-media.
There was the Aqua Teen Hunger Force nonterrorist threat in Boston, crazy astronaut lady,
Anna Nicole Smith giving us all of the death
and none of the grief, and now Britney Spears
gone even more mental. Boy, we sure are lucky
that there’s absolutely nothing more important
that should require our attention.
LINDSAY LOHAN was
spotted partying at Hollywood nightclub “Teddy” the
night before her stint in rehab
was set to end. So, if you’re
planning on super-expensive
rehab that probably doesn’t
work, Lindsay Lohan and I
recommend the Wonderland
Center in the Hollywood
Hills.
PAULA ABDUL recently
told Us Weekly that “I’ve never
been drunk. I have never done
recreational drugs. Just look at
my 20-year career.” American
Idol executive producer Nigel
Lythgoe supported Abdul’s
saying, “She certainly doesn’t
do social drugs or even drink.”
Lindsay Lohan attends rehab during the day and
They both went on to say that
clubs like “Teddy” during the Night
Paula is employed part time as
news,
pretty
much every social benefit proa nun and spends her vacations
in Narnia where she likes to ride unicorns with gram will lose money under President Bush’s
new budget in order to fund the War in Iraq
Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
and to give the ultra-rich another much needed
BRITNEY SPEARS checked herself back tax-break. But Britney Spears did something
into rehab after shaving off all her hair. It’s not crazy, so clearly, that the better news because
the Wonderland Center so it has a chance of we didn’t already know that.
working. At the very least, we won’t have to
ANNA NICOLE SMITH is dead. Best part
be reminded daily that Britney Spears wanted
the curtains to match the drapes (this joke has of the coverage (tie): Geraldo Rivera calling her
been brought to you by humanity). In other “America’s Princess” (which would officially
The Columbia Journalism Review has cited
NBC Dateline’s TO CATCH A PREDATOR as
creating the news more than reporting it, and
has changed the face of news magazines like 48
Hours and Primetime Live to report on a crime
because nothing else will sell like it. I disagree.
I think nothing sells like a detective asking a
suspected pedophile, “Astroglide: is that some
sort of sexual lubricant?” It may not be “journalism” but it is “Punk’d…for Grown-Ups!”
INDIANA JONES will return to the big screen
on May 22, 2008. This is a great relief to people
who didn’t like Indiana Jones because he wasn’t
old enough, surly enough, and completely unfit for the role. But thanks to the wisdom of
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison
Ford, we will all be blessed with Indiana Jones
and the Labyrinth of Medicare!
SONY PICTURES has decided to help Sony
Computer Entertainment of America (those
guys who have a big $600 system that nobody
wants; my suggestion: allow it to make pizza
CAPRICORN
TAURUS
VIRGO
Capricorns are known for their
practicality. Though your life may
not exactly seem cheerful this month,
be careful nor to let your feelings
overwhelm your sound judgment.
Venus enters your sign midmonth, bringing peace, love and
harmony in her wake. Singles on the
prowl should step up their search, while
taken Taureans mat fall even deeper.
Though it’s in the nature of
Virgos to analyze details and act with
utter discretion, you may be surprised
this month by how good it feels to take a
stand and be uncompromising.
AQUARIUS
GEMINI
May 22nd thru June 21s
Sept. 24th thru Oct. 23rd
This month’s two eclispses
highlight your financial axis, so changes
in financial status are to be expected.
Whether it’s a windfall or cash-flow crisis,
the change is sure to bring excitement.
The eclipses this month will
likely impact your home and family life,
even if the changes don’t take effect for
months. For better or worse, whatever
happens is meant to be.
March will be a difficult month
for most of the zodiac, but Libras can
expect many happy events. With Venus
in your relationship zone, you’ll have
plenty of friends and admirers.
PISCES
CANCER
Dec. 22nd thru Jan. 20th
Jan. 21st thru Feb. 19th
Apr. 21st thru May 21th
LIBRA
SCORPIO
Oct. 24th thru Nov. 22nd
This is a great time for bold
moves that could completely transform
your life. Jupiter’s presence in your
lifestyle zone will ensure that the choices
you make will be positive ones.
Simmering issues could reach a
boiling point this month, so do
your best to distance yourself from any
and all sources of stress. If you can’t fix
it, you’ll be forced to endure it.
ARIES
LEO
SAGITTARIUS
If you’ve been feeling a little
drained of late, don’t worry: When the
sun enters your sign later this month,
you’ll burst forth with the fiery energy of
an active volcano.
This may prove a testing time
for a key relationship, whether via
internal or external forces. Whatever
passes the test is meant to last; what
doesn’t isn’t worth crying over.
Jupiter transiting your sign
makes this a very positive period of
development. The opportunity to achieve
your ambitions is knocking; don’t be too
passive to open the door of desire.
Been sitting on the fence,
unable to make up your mind? The
eclipses will help introduce push to
shove, helping you make decisions on
matters of the heart... or the wallet.
Mar. 21st thru Apr. 20
July 24th thru Aug. 23rd
Nov. 23rd thru Dec. 21st
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WODELL ASSOCIATES is the PR firm behind the marking of Jim Carrey’s latest film
(and supposedly the one that motivated him to
fire his agent), THE NUMBER 23. The way to
market this film seems obvious. And yet there
is a fine line one should not cross when trying to sell anything. Wodell Associates crossed
the line, defecated on it, and then called it a
variety of ethnic slurs when it sent out a press
release with a news link. Just a link. No context, no commentary, no nothing. The link was
to a story about a father who murdered his 23month year old daughter by putting her in a
freezer. Wodell Associates in turn used this
to sell a movie. Maybe they can speed up their
bullet train to Hell by trying to use 9/11 to market the new Batman movie.
Finally, WARNER BROS. has made the bold
decision to destroy all of their major superhero movies. Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Firefly) stopped writing the script for
Wonder Woman, talentless hack Shawn Levy
signed to direct the adaptation of The Flash,
and two guys with no previous writing credits
will now write a movie for the Justice League
of America. Basically, if you’re a fan of DC Heroes, now would be a good time to stop being
a fan lest you have your soul crushed by films
where The Flash gets a duck or a huge family
for a sidekick.
Aug. 24th thru Sept. 23rd
June 22nd thru July 23rd
Feb. 20th thru Mar. 20th
rolls) by producing a film based on the popular videogame franchise, Metal Gear Solid.
For those unfamiliar with the game, you play
a secret agent who sneaks around and then
has long college-freshman-level philosophy
discussions about the nature of war while the
player tapes down the “X” button and goes to
microwave some pizza roles (if the PlayStation
3 made pizza roles, it would save a trip to the
kitchen). Look for this to stay in Development
Hell where it belongs all with all those other
unnecessary videogame-to-film adaptations.
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march madness guide!

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