Work For Hire

learn it. love it. live it. - Issue 15 / scion.com

staff

Scion Project Manager: Jeri Yoshizu, Sciontist Managing Editor: Eric Ducker Music Editor: Jeremy Dillahunt Creative Direction: mBF Art Director: Ryan Di Donato Production Director: Anton Schlesinger Graphic Design: Kaitlin Lavery Copy Editor: Stefanie Schumacher Automotive Editor: Stephen Gisondi Automotive Copywriter: Martina Chaconas Automotive Photographers: Dave Folks, Jeff Li Contributors: Interviews: Hywel Davies, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Caroline McCloskey, Monk One, Evan Shamoon, Adam Shore, Richard Thomas Photography: Chris Granger, Austin Hargrave, Joseph O. Holmes, Alan McFetridge, Craig Weatherby Illustrations: Gilbert Hernandez

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WORK FOR HIRE The thirteen individuals profiled in this magazine have distinguished themselves for decades with their vision, risk-taking and creativity.

But what really unites them is their adaptability. They are not just game changers, they can change with the game. By finding new angles and hustling HARDER, they’ve managed to stay relevant and stay sharp in everything they do. We wanted to find out where this talent came from, so we’ve had them retrace the influences and philosophies that shaped them from the start. Read and learn.

VOL.15

Musician, Visual Artist, Co-Founder of Devo LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

INTERVIEWED BY EVAN SHAMOON PHOTOGRAPHY BY Austin Hargrave

I was seven years old, and I knew somehow that things weren’t going right. Second grade was almost over and we were about to go into the summer break and I got detention. I had to stand in the corner almost every day because I didn’t fit in. Somebody said, “We should test his vision,” and then they were like, “He’s blind!” I got fitted for a pair of glasses and I remember we came over the hill and I saw the rooftops of the houses. I lived in a housing development and I only knew what a house looked like when you were incredibly close to it. I saw smoke coming out of smokestacks. I saw the tops of trees. I only knew the part of the tree you ran into if you didn’t see it coming. I saw clouds and birds flying, and I saw it all at once. I was like, “This is amazing,” so I started drawing pictures.

My second grade teacher had been trying both corporal punishment and humiliation on me. We were doing artwork in school and a couple days later after I got my glasses, she said to me, “You draw trees better than me.” That was the first nice thing a teacher had ever said to me. I remember I had a vision that I was going to be an artist when I grew up.

I think I’m a fairly normal average person in a lot of ways. I think the things that inspire people come from a lot of the same places. Love is inspiration. Bad dreams work really well for me, bad dreams and congested traffic. In traffic I get bored enough that I start writing songs in my head.

Because of my day job, I’m writing and creating music every single day. And I’m always under the gun. Somebody comes in with a movie and they say, “We tried to score this already with blah blah. Now we only have two weeks, so you have two weeks to get this film done, but you only have to score 55 minutes in two weeks. Can you drop everything else you’re doing and get that done?” I get those kinds of jobs, which I think help keep my ability to create on-demand work.

I think eBay really helped me, because I don’t have time to go out. When I was a kid I used to love to poke around in junk stores and flea markets. When Devo was traveling, I’d go into odd parts in little towns in Portugal. I’d always take an empty suitcase when I toured to bring back stationery supplies. But eBay brought all of that stuff to me. But it was maybe a little too much of it. I’m gearing up for a major de-acquisition, because there’s about five or six storage facilities that are very familiar with me, filled with electronic music things and kitschy art and weirdo things and collectible stuff.

Mothersbaugh’s minimoog used on tour for Devo.

Ian Lynam 1980 was the year my cousin went “punk.” Being older by a few years and infinitely cooler due to being a Californian, she had always had status in my life. On one fateful summer trip, she showed up at an upstate New York campground wearing granny sunglasses, sporting an asymmetrical haircut and pitched a customized pup tent bearing four off-kilter painted letters: D-E-V-O. It took all of one listen to a dub of Devo’s music on her Walkman for me to get the bug and get it hard.

My interest in Mark Mothersbaugh’s projects has sustained itself throughout the following 20-plus years. He’s a person who can look at popular culture sideways and synthesize his observations into original, challenging work while simultaneously channeling it through an array of signature styles. Mark Mothersbaugh makes one proud to be weird.

Ian Lynam’s art appeared in Scion’s Installation 5 tour.

Learn more at scionav.com/art/installationtour.

When I was a kid, I got an early Minimoog because I had some friends that were my age that had gone to Vietnam. They wanted to start a band, but none of them played instruments. I didn’t own any equipment, but I would read an ad in the paper that said, “Local band needs someone who can play piano.” So I’d end up in a cover band, and I’d do that for a while until I couldn’t take it any longer.

I remember going to the factory in Buffalo, NY where they made Minimoogs and seeing stacks of them.

Now you could blindfold me and say, “Smart patrol… The rising reverse saw tooth two oscillator sound…” And I’d be like dededledleed… I know all the switch moves and all the settings. The Minimoog would be the keyboard that I’m most familiar with and it’s probably the instrument that is kind of my instrument. It’s my M16 rifle.

Filbert

Postcard and rug art by Mark Mothersbaugh, and the novelties that inspired them.

To see more of Mark Mothersbaugh’s art, go to scionav.com/lifestyle/scionmagazine.

Sean Penn’s signed shoe from his role as Jeff Spicoli in Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

INTERVIEWED BY CAROLINE MCCLOSKEY

PHOTO: Austin Hargrave

I thought movies came out of the TV set and that they were made by genius men somewhere. The idea that people worked on them and that a female from the Bronx could do any of that stuff was just unheard of. When I was in high school, this boy who used to copy off me all the time said that he was going to make movies, and I was just like, “But he copies off of me! How is he going to make movies?” And then I thought, “Oh, so it’s allowable to want to do this.” And that freed me up.

My father was not a big fan of me being in film. He did not think it would ever happen—it never had happened for a girl and he was a practical man. Even though he didn’t believe in it, one day he bought me this book, Classics of the Foreign Film. I didn’t know what all these movies were. I would seek them out at the Museum of Modern Art, The Elgin Theater and then maybe every now and then at four in the morning on TV. You had to really chase them down, and I chased them down. I read about them before I saw them and read about them after I saw them. By the time I got to NYU, I had already seen all the stuff they were screening.

Mad magazine has been there my whole life. I have a gazillion of them, and I’m going through them all again and putting them in plastic bags. I don’t remember not loving it.

Mad was the kind of thing that was in the candy stores and you’d whine to your mother until she got it for you. The thing that I really loved was the movie satires. They were so funny and got at the root of what the films were, and then messed with them. I realized that the ones that I loved the most were all drawn by Mort Drucker. He’s in his eighties now, and my whole life I would open my Mad magazine and hope that there was some of his drawings in it. In the past couple of years, I actually wrote him a letter and sent him some candies for Christmas. He wrote back to me and sent me all these pictures and drawings and stuff. He’s out on Long Island, I don’t think he’s far from where my mother is, and he’s still doing it.

When you’re young, there’s a lot of stuff in Mad that is too hard to read, because you’re just learning to read. But little by little, as you read more and see more movies, it’s something you can grow into. I still have a subscription.

nick catchdubs

I’m not sure what it says about me that I get so obsessive with my teen entertainment: all John Hughes’ iconic ’80s joints, My So Called Life‘s brief-but-amazing run (bury me with the box set), modern classic (yes I said it) Can’t Hardly Wait, Marissa Cooper-era The O.C. Yet the mother of ALL their styles was Amy Heckerling, who re-invented the teen flick with Fast Times at Ridgemont High back in ’82. Simultaneously bittersweet and comic, feather-light at points. but deeply affecting, it paved the way for almost 30 years of my favorite movies ever.

Plus: Phoebe Cates!

Nick Catchdubs is the co-founder of Fool’s Gold Records.

Listen to Scion CD Sampler Vol. 22: Fool’s Gold Remixed at scionav.com/music/scioncdsampler.

PHOTOS:Austin Hargrave

PHOTO: Craig Weatherby

An uncle who played guitar turned me on to

music when I was about seven. He lived on a

ranch in Montana and he’d show up in Brooklyn

for the holidays with a handlebar mustache,

driving a ’54 Ford pickup with a 750 Norton

in the back. He’d play guitar and mandolin

around the house and wore those little

round glasses like John Lennon’s. It just blew

my mind that someone could be that cool.

(singer for The Black Angels) Dave flew down to Austin to visit us in our hometown before we began working on our record. He told us that night that he wanted to make the most psychedelic/heavy record of the new millennium. He took the words right out of our mouths. Dave quickly became the religious motivator and observer who helped us formulate our music. Along with our shared taste in records, we have similar taste in books. We both read The Road by Cormac McCarthy around the same time we worked on tracking this album. It’s great to be able to discuss a specific geographical location or scene in a movie to inspire the mood of a song. Conversations were like, “Remember that part in There Will be Blood when Daniel Day-Lewis falls down the 30-foot hole? Let’s try to get the vocals for this song to sound like an echo reverb grunt just as Daniel is falling down, and we would be recording the echo from the top the oil shaft.” “Cool,” Dave would say. “Let’s try that, but let’s make it sound like shaft is revolving at 1,000 MPH too.” “OK, let’s go get a shovel.”

The Black Angels’ third album, produced

by Dave Sardy, will be available soon.

I taught myself how to play guitar by watching Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which I would religiously stay up for. My parents had this tiny, orange-rimmed, rounded-back, black and white Panasonic TV that was small enough to tilt up at an angle. I would put the fretboard up against the screen and wait for them to show a shot of someone playing guitar. I’d spend the week messing around with what I learned and then the next week it was something new.

There were two things that really turned me from just being a musician into being more obsessed with the outer edges of creativity. One of them was a friend who passed away, Vince. He was a self-taught, kind of savant artist who, at 11 years old, would say things like, “You know what we’re going to do this weekend? we’re going to make some recordings” or “Let’s make our own bible” or “Let’s make a tunnel that goes as far as we can go underground.” Just the craziest stuff you can imagine. He was one of those guys whose candle burned twice as bright, but for only half as long. We were best friends.

The other one is a radio station in New Jersey called WFMU, an insane free form station down at the left end of the dial. They would never tell you what they were playing, but it was always mind blowing. It was the antithesis of commercial radio. Everything they played I’d never heard before, and they didn’t play anything twice. You’d have to call and get one of the DJs to find out the name of an artist if you were obsessed enough.

I learned how much music was out there that I wasn’t getting exposed to. In 1976 or 1977 there were not a lot of places to discover Gamelan music, or music from Nairobi or field recordings, which is one of my musical obsessions. They did radio as an art form. For an eight-year-old kid to be suddenly listening to an Alan Watts lecture was really inspiring.

I never had much of a desire to be a rock star, I always had more of a desire to be a songwriter/producer/ musician. Being a rock star seemed to mean always being the tail, not the dog. If I wanted to be a rock star, I never would have been in a band like Barkmarket.

PHOTO: Joseph O. Holmes

When I was 30 I decided to stop playing in Barkmarket and see how far I could go with the production thing.

By then I had made the most left-of-center music I could make and wanted to see what I could do for other people. After a while I learned that it’s just as hard to make a pop record as it is to make an art rock record, if not harder. When you throw your work into the commercial world, then you’re dealing with metareaction, and getting a positive response on that level is a lot harder than being underground.

I’ve managed to survive being a freelancer from age 22 to 42. That’s twenty years without really having a boss or a day job. Last night I was in the studio working on a psych record, today I made my son a lunch and dropped him off at school, now I’m writing an orchestral score for a zombie movie all day. It’s a dream life.

INTERVIEWED BY HYWEL DAVIES I was already in the clothing business and used to work for other, mainly large, brands that had a throwaway attitude towards clothing. I discovered hemp and natural fibers and thought they were a great option. I was disappointed to find that a lot of buyers thought it was too expensive or that the public wasn’t interested in those issues. I decided to start Maharishi, which literally means “with vision,” and the vision was to have a environmentally sound line.

I started off exclusively with natural fibers. We managed to put Maharishi into a couple of stores, but it really wasn’t that well received. One of the reasons was the fact that hemp was in such an early stage in the cloth industry. It really wasn’t that available. What I was offering was vegetable-dyed, meaning it ran in the rain, was difficult to wash and quite itchy. It wasn’t really appealing, aside from conceptually.

Jupiter Desphy Military influences are huge in terms of what I design and what I’m interested in. When the military design something, there’s zero aesthetic in a fashion sense. The theory is pure function.

With that simplicity you get a lot of pure thoughts and concepts. Borrowing or reverse engineering from what the military spends millions of dollars developing, you’re able to come up with something interesting—whether it’s a bag, the way a seam is created to make a hood or the way a material is utilized. As a civilian I’m not going to use one of their garments to the fullest extent of what it was designed for, but there are day-to-day aspects that can be used. You can appropriate it to your own life. To me, the presence of the military force is so powerful it’s going to be a forever influence in fashion and product design.

Jupiter Desphy has designed for companies including Stüssy, Fresh Jive and UNDFTD. He also co-designed Scion’s Release clothing line with Blue Davis.

I expanded the collection to use recycled military clothing. There is so much army surplus on the market, and it’s made extremely well. It fits in with the Maharishi design ethics of utility, durability and functionality. If I can take it and make some amendments with the cut or add some kind of embroidery or print and reissue it, for me that’s something to be more proud of than making a garment from fresh.

By recycling something, it’s even less impactful on the environment than making something out of a natural fiber.

It’s really through the trading of military clothing that I became aware of and really passionate about camouflage. I started to discover that there were so many camouflage patterns, and each country had its own one and each country had been through many generations of their own patterns. There are literally thousands and thousands of patterns. I became obsessed with collecting them. As camouflage became more and more part of my life, I began to question why it was so popular and why so many people’s perception of camouflage was different. I began to form an idea that people were subconsciously attracted to camouflage because it achieved its goal. In some way, it was a representation of nature. Even on a subconscious level, it seems that we all have some desire to connect with nature.

Flyers for raves promoted by Estopinal.

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Tommie Sunshine Donnie is the best promoter in the States, hands down. The parties at State Palace Theatre were legendary, and no one threw parties like that before or since. I never saw such unhinged abandon on a dancefloor like what occurred there in New Orleans. I spent the last days of the American rave scene playing for Donnie and wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else as we burned it to the ground.

Tommie Sunshine has DJed at many Scion events and recently appeared on DJ Haul’s Kitchen Sink Radio on Scion Radio 17. Listen to Kitchen Sink Radio at scionav.com/music/radio17.

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ew Orleans was basically the catalyst for all the raves to go off. People were driving 20 hours to go to the shows. Without New Orleans and everything that comes with it—the art, the music, the grimy vibe—the parties wouldn’t have been the same.

I could hire the craziest people to work at the shows. I would go out on a Monday night and see this 90-year-old magician with a voicebox, and I’d think, “This would be cool to put into the show.” I would have so much stuff going on that people wouldn’t even notice. I had a float go through and they were carrying this girl and throwing fruit. No one ever mentioned it! That was just part of the party.

Have you ever heard of Mr. Quintron? He created his own drum machine.

He played the organ and his drum machine and he would sing. He had a club in his own house called Spellcaster Lodge. His wife was Miss Pussycat, and she would come and do these really freaked out puppet shows where she’d make her own puppets. Those are two great New Orleans characters.

I definitely had them come and play, thinking, “People have to see this!

This is amazing! People are going to freak out!” But people were like, “It was just part of the show.”

This one time I had this guy who was always coming around and asking if he could help, and I was like, “What do you do?” and he said, “I’m in a choir.” I said, “You wanna help out? Bring your choir down here at three in the morning.” And of course first they came at three in the morning on the day before, but anyway, the next day they came back at three in the morning with their robes and stuff. We stopped the music, turned on all the lights and they started singing “Amazing Grace.” People didn’t know what the hell was going on. That was a really good night.

I had the Rebirth Brass Band come through the party like a parade. I had Fred “Re-Run” Barry come down and we stopped the music and he made the whole crowd do The Hokey Pokey. Anything stupid that would put a little exclamation point on the night. I would never put any of it on the flyer, because then you really have to do that stuff.

LONDON, ENGLAND Producer, Engineer, Dance Music Pioneer

Interviewed by Monk One PHOTOGRAPHY by Alan McFetridge

We’re in Jersey City, A1 Storage,

where I’ve had a storage room for about twelve years.

I probably could have bought a condo in Florida with the money I spent on it.

I used to have a storage unit that was literally five times the size of this.

You definitely get inspired by your surroundings, more than by any artist.

I’ve never been one to have idols.

There were no rules back then with the music we were making. We did what felt right.

It was new technology. Everything was coming along fresh. Kids now have 30 years to look back to, and ultimately fall back to. It’s a lot of information and a lot of

influences you can rely on.

I don’t hear anything new being created.

I don’t think we’re going to see new forms of music.

I’m not saying it’s all been done before, but it has all been done before.

There are people recreating old stuff that sounds really good,

but it’s still recreated old stuff.

When we did it, nothing like that had been done before really.

I never played in a band and I was a bad DJ.

When all DJs had were 45s and albums,

you had to be very active, quick and just patient on the turntables, which I wasn’t. I just wanted to

make records.

My ego was such that I thought,

“I can make records as good as those guys.” I had a little bit of

engineering training, so I would always look at the producers names.

I figured that producers were just as much the artist as the

people they were recording, because they were the ones writing the songs.

Once I made that connection, that’s what I wanted to do.

Back then there were no rules or history to guide you,

we just did what felt right and made our jobs up as we went along.

Monk One’s Top Six Most Interesting Things Seen

in Arthur Baker’s Jersey City Storage Unit 1. Unreleased 1986 multitrack of Biz Markie with the Sugarhill Gang band.

2. Studio partitions from the old RCA Victor studios at 1133 6th Avenue.

3. Jimi Hendrix multitracks from circa 1975.

4. Hundreds of complete New York City newspapers from the early ‘80s, including the day Reagan was shot, the day Lennon was killed, etc.

5. A box overflowing with Boston sports memorabilia.

6. A pair of Karl Kani boots (“I loved these boots, man!”).

Monk One hosts Wax Poetics Radio on Scion Radio 17.

Listen to it at scionav.com/music/radio17.

Tapes, reel-to-reels, floppy discs, test pressings and other detritus from Baker’s storage unit.

Blu Jemz

As far as DJing, the record that really got me into Arthur Baker’s stuff is New Order’s “Confusion.” It was one of those records I found for 99 cents and I thought I had come up on this crazy find that no one knew about, but of course everybody knew about it. When I finally saw the “Confusion” video, it became one of my favorite videos. The best part is when Arthur Baker takes the reel-to-reel from the studio to Jellybean Benitez at The Funhouse. That time in New York looks so natural and cool. My group, Da Hardy Boyz, did an homage to, or biting of, the video’s whole idea. Holy Ghost! just did the same thing. We were with them at the club the other night and Alex from Holy Ghost! said, “Did you ever see the video for “Confusion” by New Order? We did our video like that, shot-by-shot.” We’re talking about having double video release party with them.

Blu Jemz hosts Turntable Lab Radio on Scion 17. Listen to it at scionav.com/music/radio17.

He also curated the compilation Blu Jemz Presents: Beat Machine, available at scionav.com/music/scionavremix.

Dig deeper into Arthur Baker’s discography at scionav.com/lifestyle/scionmagazine.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Artist, Co-Creator of Love & Rockets

Interviewed by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Original Illustrations Courtesy of Gilbert Hernandez

One of the things that got me started wanting to do comics, was just liking comics. The second reason was probably the most important one: I didn’t want to get a job. I had stories in me that came from different sources other than comic books, so I thought I’d give it a try. I’m really lucky that it worked out.

By the time I was in my early twenties, I’d outgrown superheroes as something I wanted to continue drawing. I got into the punk scene because it was so vital at the time. The first wave was really influential because of the energy and the fun. I wasn’t all that crazy about becoming an adult. I still had that youthful energy. While all my friends were turning into doddering old fools, I was still out there having a good time.

I was still in Oxnard, and oh boy, there was nothing punk going on in Oxnard at the time. I was on my own.

When it came to doing comic books, I wanted to do something new. Punk dealt with subjects that belonged to the real world, and that was something I was conscious of. People’s lives were just more interesting than what was going on in comics at the time.

Films were a great influence on my storytelling— dramas or romances or even Westerns to a degree, but mostly it was B movies and monster movies. I would watch every monster movie I would get a hold of as a kid. I grew up thinking how cool it would be if there really was a Frankenstein and develop a story from there.

Eventually I’d drop the Frankenstein angle and just use the rest, the mystery.

If you know you want the story you’re telling to reach an adult, intelligent audience, you can bring in those cheesy aspects if it’s in the context of reality, like the characters are going out to watch a B movie or are watching one on TV. If you’re going to present it in the way of an intelligent character doing something goofy like all normal people do, that’s where it works.

But I won’t try to reach an adult audience by having aliens come from the ground, although people are accepting a lot these days.

I just like drawing women. It’s just more interesting to me. I‘ll draw guys and it will take me just a few minutes, but a gal, I’ll stop and think about. How would she stand in this story? How would she turn her head? How would she sit? It’s more of a challenge. Also, when I started the subject of women in comic books just wasn’t common. Guys weren’t into developing women characters as human beings. That presented a challenge.

Early issues of Love & Rockets from the mid-1980s with covers illustrated by Gilbert Hernandez.

Franki Chan

The first issue of Love & Rockets I ever saw was when I walked into my first comic book stores in Bloomington, Indiana when I was around ten years old. I was lucky enough to live in a town whose comic book stores very much embraced the more alternative side of comics. I liked how the people in Love & Rockets would look like the people on the streets, or the people in the comic book shops or the people who were going to shows. It was people I could recognize and relate to. The stories are fantastic when it comes to the stuff I consider the meat of the comic book world, the stuff that legitimizes it. Love & Rockets has played a huge role in that.

The

Frankie Chan is a DJ, artist and founder of the indie label IHEARTCOMIX. He co-hosts IHEARTCOMIX Radio on Scion Radio 17 with labelmates Acid Girls.

He also curated and mixed Scion CD Sampler Vol. 21: IHEARTCOMIX Remixed. Listen to them at scionav.com/ music/scioncdsampler and scionav.com/music/radio17.

MZK

&

It’s been a long time, but Gilbert Hernandez still surprises the public and also comic writers like me. I’m sure that Love & Rockets is real life, not a comic story. Time goes on, and more and more youngsters would love to live with them in their bidimensional black white world. I keep hoping, someday, to trip to Palomar and meet them all.

MZK’s art appeared in the São Paolo group show at Scion’s Installation Los Angeles gallery, scionav.com/art/installationlosangeles.

We were pretty much raised by mom. Our dad died fairly young, so it was just mom and six kids. We saw how she dealt with the world.

She also had a lot of sisters who lived close by.

There’s always more women than men in our family, something about our genes. It’s weird.

In 1981, ’82, you couldn’t go see a movie starring a Jennifer Lopez or a Salma Hayek.

When we came out with Love & Rockets, we started putting Latinos in our comics and there was a little bit of interest, but then it started to develop in other areas. A lot of young people probably don’t know that there was a world when you didn’t see a lot of black folks or Latinos on TV doing their thing, but then young people started growing up seeing blacks and Latinos and people from different cultures being creative. That coincided with what was going on with Love & Rockets.

Documentaries suit my personality because I’m kind of a procrastinator and I need deadlines and I need a reason to do something. I will never have a free Saturday and sit down and feel the need to “be creative.” With documentaries, you become involved. In the case of my first film, Hype!, you get in over your head. You start filming interviews and shooting and all of sudden it’s, “Oh my God, there’s no turning back. Everyone in Seattle thinks I’m doing this movie. All my friends think I’m doing this movie. I can’t just walk. I think I’m doing this movie.” I unwittingly ensnare myself in projects to the point where there’s no return, and then I fall in love with them. And because I’ve spent so much time on it, it has to be good.

With documentaries, you search. You’re on a road trip. You’re searching and collecting and shopping for things, and falling in love with little things and hating others. Over the course of two or three years, it crystallizes into this finished edit.

And that’s the script. You spend three years arriving at what the movie is. Screenplays for narrative features are the exact opposite. You have this towering, shining object.

The perfection is in the beginning. That script has to perfect, because you can’t make a good movie out of a bad script. Documentaries are more of a long-term creative process that’s born deep in the darkness of an editing room. I love that.

When we were editing Hype!, we got so lost. We didn’t know what we were doing. I didn’t know how to construct a 90-minute documentary. I looked at the credits of The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II, and called all the editors on that list, like, “You’ve got to help me. I’m trying to imitate you and I can’t.” This guy Earl Ghaffari, who was one of the editors on that movie, joined us for six weeks. And the guy was brilliant.

He taught me so many great little editorial tricks of how to work with dialogue and music, and how to essentially take an interview and a song and completely fuse them together so it’s perfect.

I have three much older brothers. I was by far the baby of a family of four boys. I grew up seeing them go through the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I was always just fascinated by all those different trends. I had a lot of exposure to culture and I was endlessly fascinated by the question of “Why?” Even in my interviews, my favorite question is just, “Why?” It’s the best question there is. It’s what I ask whenever I’m stuck.

I’m inspired, literally, by my subjects.

I’ve been this way my whole life. I hold a simple belief that every human being is worthy of a film, and that is reflected in my work. This is why I end up committing to my films a few months in, and this is what keeps me going while making them. In a way, it’s who I’m making the film for. This might explain why I keep making movies about creative people, regardless if they’re famous or unknown, successful or struggling.

My curiosity about what motivates them ultimately motivates me. My films end up being, to some degree, celebrations of other artists, or people who’ve lived their lives creatively— people I wish I could be.

Roger Gastman

I was always interested in film and documentaries, because it was so similar to what I was doing in telling stories in books and magazines. I had the opportunity to work on a street art documentary called Infamy that was put together by Kevin Lewis, who wanted to bring in Doug Pray to direct it. Doug was very experienced with doing as much research as he could on subcultures and telling the true story, not exploiting it. He realized that by teaming up with me, the authenticity and authority would be there. He was very upfront about what he did and didn’t know. I really enjoyed the whole process because I was learning, and at the same time I was teaching people. I was really happy with Infamy and was really happy with people’s response to it who didn’t know anything about the subject matter. I’m working on two documentaries right now and the main lesson I took from Infamy was keep your core audience happy by letting them learn something they didn’t know, but keep a broad audience in mind.

Magazine editor and author Roger Gastman was the supervising producer of Infamy, which appeared in Scion’s Route film series. He also directed the film Pigeon Mumbler, which appeared in Scion’s Easy Ten film series. Learn more at scionav.com/film/easy10.

Learn Doug Pray’s editing tips and tricks at scionav.com/lifestyle/scionmagazine.

Stills, behind-the-scenes images and production notes from Pray’s films including Hype!, Scratch, Art & Copy, Big Rig and Infamy.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Notorious L.A. Party Promoter, Event Planner

INTERVIEWED BY ERIC DUCKER PHOTOGRAPHY BY Austin Hargrave

I was a really disciplined kid. I competed for America as a figure skater. I had very rigid rules and I ended up here in Los Angeles to train.

I was always really infatuated with people and nightlife. I don’t know where any of this came from.

I grew up on the north shore of Chicago, my parents didn’t have strange friends. From a really young age I was obsessed with what was considered odd—all the things growing up in the Midwest you’re not supposed to be interested in, or even know about.

I wanted to live in fantasy, and I saw people doing it. Like Bauhaus. I used to say to my friends, “Look how spooky these guys are, and they’re totally cool and amazing. And listen to this record, have you heard anything like this before?” The idea that these people could make music, could dress in a certain way, and they had nightclubs where they could play the records they were making and they could perform, that seemed reasonable to me. I

didn’t know anyone who was doing that, but I said to myself, “If they are doing that, and they are working class in a country that doesn’t applaud that type of thing, then I can do that. I can totally do that.”

You drive down the street in Los Angeles and you see donuts that are a story tall, or you see pictures of women that are three stories tall. I love the idea that I live in a place that’s based on pop culture, which is always changing.

I don’t want to relate. Why do I want to go see something that’s just like me? I don’t want to see some guy in a baseball cap. If it’s art, I want it to be extreme. What else is art supposed to do? If I want to relate, I go to the grocery store.

It’s really not about you. When you own a nightclub or are running an event, they’re not there to see you.

You’re there to create that format. You’re there to make the introduction and get lost.

Matt Goldman

I worked a 40 to 60 hour job for two years while doing the party thing. My personality is not the walking up to a door and expecting to be on the list type, it’s more of not walking up at all because I don’t want to not be on the list. I didn’t know DJs, I didn’t know nightlife, and I think that was a huge advantage because I didn’t have a bunch of preconceived notions of what a party should be. Dance Right was based on my friend’s birthday party where he put on a bunch of ’90s dance music and we danced all night in the living room. I said, “Let’s do this all the time. Let’s figure out how we can do that.” We literally, wholeheartedly just wanted a place where we could go and have fun, and the fact that that was genuine is what made that party. It took eight months, and for eight months we didn’t realize we didn’t have a particularly popular party. But then it became really popular. We stuck with it because we were having fun.

Matt Goldman promotes the staple Los Angeles events Dance Right, Control and Swimming with Sharks, and is also an accomplished graphic designer who does banner ads for Scion Radio 17. He was recently interviewed on DJ Haul’s Kitchen Sink Radio on Scion Radio 17. Listen to Kitchen Sink Radio at scionav.com/music/radio17.

Ice skate from when Rabin competed as a teenager.

Black suit and white gloves designed for Rabin by Rick Owens, jewelry designed for Rabin

by Michael Schmidt, sketch for Rabin by artist Kembra Pfahler and her book Beautalism.

Diamond Dog sculpture designed for Rabin by Kenny Baird.

Art and clothing by Stephen Sprouse, and an invite for a party Rabin threw for him.

Details magazine founder Annie Flanders and Details nightlife columnist Stephen Saban

Artifacts from the careers of Malcom McLaren and Bow Wow Wow.

INVENTOR OF THE STEADICAM, TECHNICAL ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Chester Springs, PENNSYLVANIA

Invention is mother’s milk in this country. We invented our way through almost every obstacle that this country has faced, but for some reason people now see inventors as loony failures—the guy who invented the malfunctioning rocket as opposed to the Wright Brothers. Interview by Jeremy Dillahunt

We have never needed inventors more than we need them now. We’ve got to invent our way out of all the trouble we’ve caused this world. The squids and the whales just don’t have the chops to do it for us.

People aren’t used to thinking that if there is problem in front of them that there is also a solution. I have a feeling that fire was discovered thousands of times, that the bow and arrow was invented thousands of times, by people who do what homo sapiens do best:

solve problems.

I got into the movie industry because I had a love of movies and an old 8mm Bolex. The first thing I did was read all the books in the Philadelphia Library on filmmaking, we’re talking late ’64, ’65. The problem was that those books were from the 1940s and ended up teaching me how films were made pre-World War II. I learned studio filmmaking while the entire industry was poised to go on location, but I started a production company anyway and the first thing I did was buy a bunch of cheap, out of date equipment. It was a horrible way to go about it, but ultimately the best thing I did as far as my career was concerned.

On the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, plus Brown’s inventions in various stages of completion.

Opposite: On the set of The Shining.

On the set of Return of the Jedi.

On the set of Rocky.

Tony Stone Ingmar Bergman said that the dolly shot was the “holy perspective� because it was a locked movement. In The Shining, Kubrick uses the steadicam like Bergman used the dolly. The camera becomes a ghost perspective, a fluid motion that follows the characters around and wills their movements. What do ghosts do? They float, and that is what the steadicam is designed to do, float in space. For the most part, steadicam shots are overused and boring in film today.

The steadicam is very good at introducing chaos into controlled environments such as a set. A director with a strong vision can create a scene and send a steadicam into the heart of that scene.

Tony Stone is the founder of Heathen Films and director of Severed Ways and Out of Our Minds

On the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The thing that was missing was very obvious to me because I had a horrible way to move a camera: a 12-pound Bolex and an 800-pound dolly and 30-feet of rails. To move my camera I would have to break down all of the equipment, load it into a pickup truck, drive to a new location and set it up again. It was a huge incentive to disconnect the camera from that kind of gear and it sent me searching for something like the steadicam.

Once I had it finished the steadicam, I had a new problem. I had to sell it.

We set out to make 30 impossible shots for the pitch reel: running, jumping off three-foot high walls and, luckily, running up and down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. John Avildsen, the director of Rocky, saw that footage, called me and said, “Where is that and how did you do it?” Six months later I was chasing Sylvester Stallone up and down the same steps.

You would think that after that I would work every day for the rest of my life, but for the next year or so I just worked here and there. It taught me another valuable lesson: it’s the bold people that spot it, understand it and go for it. The herd sits back and waits for the stampede. I also learned something else very interesting: if you invent something that is very unique, the best thing you can do is teach lot of people in a hurry how to use it.

If you were the only violin player in the world, you would end up in the circus,

but if you are a great violin player in a world full of them, you’ll get the $1,000 per-diems, the tuxedos and the crowds.

Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never give up.” Which is kind of stupid advice, because you can end up spending all of your money and be ruined. But you might succeed on the fourth or fifth “never” as well.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA COSTUME DESIGNER, STYLIST

Interviewed by Caroline McCloskey PHOTOGRAPHY by Austin Hargrave

My career has three components: I’m a costume designer for film, I’m a stylist for straight-up fashion, and then I work with artists like Madonna and Lenny Kravitz.

Most costume designers don’t do styling and most stylists don’t do movies.

They’re very different jobs, they just happen to have clothes in common.

I was born in New York, but I was raised in Northern California. My parents moved to Northern California to live an alternative lifestyle. They were very politically active—it was the ’60s and the ’70s—and part of that movement was anti-establishment. One of the things we did not have was television, and as a kid I became obsessed with pop culture, especially TV. My dad was a jazz musician and very academic and a professor, so we didn’t have contemporary popular music in our house, so I was also obsessed with popular music. I was exposed to a lot of art—my parents took us to the opera, they took Costume for Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Ju le s Ki m

Costume and sketches for Hedwig

and the Angry Inch.

I became familiar with Ari anne Phillips’ work because she’s costume designed some of the most fabulous movies and styles artists like Madonna. Th ese are opportunities to presen t new styles from emerging design ers, and she’s done an amazin g job presenting those concep ts to a larger audience. She’s tak en iconic underground sub jects and brought them to the full-screen. As someon e at her level, she sees it’s important to play her role in the system and showcase designers like my self. A lot of my stuff is avant-garde, which is no t easily consumed by ma ss media, but once the con cepts are launched into the mainstream, they are mo re easily absorbed.

Jules Kim is the owner and designer of the jewelry and accessory line Biju les.

us to the theater, most of our friends were artists— but in terms of mainstream popular culture—like The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, the kind of stuff that I craved—I got that from kids at school, spending the nights at friends’ houses, reading teen magazines.

I was particularly captivated by The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My cousins had seen the theater piece in L.A. and told me about it, but I didn’t see it until it was a movie. And that really blew my mind.

I went to a screening without my parents knowing, and this was before they did midnight screenings. It was kind of shocking to me. In the hormonal state of a young teenager, it was hard to understand, yet it was really beautiful. Designing the costumes for Hedwig and the Angry Inch is my personal Rocky Horror. It came at a seminal point in my career.

I felt like I could creatively work on something that had the potential to make an impression on people’s lives, like Rocky Horror made on my life.

And it has. I’ve gotten to judge Hedwig costume contests at midnight screenings, in the same way that I used to dress up when I went to Rocky Horror midnight screenings.

Sketches for 3:10 to Yuma and eight years old. sketches from when Phillips was

Larry Tee medallion, plus artifacts, albums and clutter in Larry Tee’s Williamsburg apartment.

I hit this point where I was really struggling creatively—trying to reinvent myself, find new music, find a company to put out my record and trying to make things happen. I saw this Andy Warho l documentary and Andy wanted to be good friends with Robert Rauschenberg and his boyfriend. They were fine art guys and Andy was the number one illustrator in America. He had done this amazing work and people said, “Andy, it’s not going to happen. They’re fine art. They can’t hang out with you, so get over it.” And Andy gave this response that was so inspirational that I wrote it on my fridge. It was, “So what.” When you can’t believe you’ve hit a wall, you just have got to go, “So what.”

Roxy Cottontail

Every time you throw a party you are taking a risk. I try to plan mine out not to fail. The music has to be on point and a 50/50 girl to guy ratio is ideal. You can get sponsors to give away stuff, but for a party to be really successful it needs something special to make it memorable.

It doesn’t have to be overly complicated, but just something different enough to let the people know you made some extra effort. And maybe most importantly, you have to change things up because your crowd is always changing. That’s something I learned when working with Justine D, Bugsy and Larry Tee—they brought me in to bring a younger, newer crowd to their parties. I do that now as well—find new hosts that are a part of a different, younger or newer crowd so they can bring their scene to the party. You have to keep the kids in mind with whatever you are doing, because that’s your core audience.

Roxy Cottontail is a party promoter and vocalist living in New York City.

I hit my adolescence in Hotlanta, when Michael Stipe was in Athens, Georgia.

I used to stay at his house all the time.

RuPaul and Lady Bunny were just starting their trade and both of them did their first shows at the 688 Club, where I was the DJ. Everybody came through that place from Boy George to The B52s. But after a while I wanted to get away from the new wave scene and I started DJing at a club called San Susi that had DJ competitions.

San Susi was all early hip hop, which I loved—even the name Larry Tee was inspired by Spoonie G. I won every time except once because I was this skinny little guy with my nasally voice going, “Throw your hands in the air, show your underarm hair.” When I started Celebrity Club we took anything we thought was hot: Grandmaster Flash, The Smiths, Kraftwerk…

I left Atlanta for New York City in a van with RuPaul, if it sounds like the movie To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar it’s because they took our story. When we arrived, however, New York was in mourning, the entire gay community had been devastated by the AIDS crisis. We showed up in all beautiful color and the city was in black. It made it easy for us to get to work right away and I started a party called Love Machine, trying to recreate the scene in Atlanta, but bigger and better. RuPaul and Lady Bunny swapped as MC and every week it was a different celebrity: Sinead O’Connor, Tom Hanks, the Linda/Naomi/Christy supermodel cluster. From that party we ended up in Milan for fashion week and that’s where I got the idea for RuPaul’s “Supermodel.”

Gay-only clubs have always bored me and that’s why I make my parties for everyone. It’s part of what attracted me to electroclash and inspired me to throw the festival. Electroclash had a very strong female voice, which you don’t see a lot of in electronic or dance music, and it was political.

When Miss Kittin sang about the VIP room in “Frank Sinatra’s Dead,” it was commentary about the culture at the time. As was Fischerspooner’s riposte of celebrity culture. I don’t remember anyone talking about female sexuality in the ’80s the way Peaches does. It

was an amazing scene because you had all these different people bringing their style to electronic music, breaking down the walls built around techno, house, trance and all the rest. I thought, “Who is going to champion this? I’m the champion of the freaks, who is going champion these guys if I’m not willing to champion them?” I took out an $80,000 loan and ran up all my credit cards and made the Electroclash Festival happen. It was two weeks after 9/11, I lost it all. But that was OK because I was really alive while I was doing that because of the music.

During electroclash there was not a place on earth you would rather have been than Williamsburg. It was the spiritual home of dance music at that time. Right now the place to be is the Panorama Bar in Berlin. From time to time that bird of inspiration lands on New York and that’s why people always look to it to see what’s happening. It might not be on right now, but will be again, and probably soon.

Larry Tee’s new album, Club Badd, featuring Princess Superstar, Roxy Cottontail and Perez Hilton is available now on ULTRA Records.

Take a tour of Larry Tee’s apartment and copious collections at scionav.com/lifestyle/scionmagazine.

Selections from Larry Tee’s cape and glasses archives.

SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

ART DEALER, GALLERIST

INTERVIEWED BY ERIC DUCKER

I came to Santa Monica in ’79 for a weekend, never thinking I would stay here, but it’s been a long weekend. I opened up a little gallery off Main St. selling old master prints and contemporary master prints. What happened was that I was inundated by young, really good artists who would bring in this work that amazed me. I was very attracted to the urban flavor of Los Angles, of the Chicano art movement, of the muralists, of the painters who would do expressions of civil disobedience.

In the early ’80s, when I had come back from five years in Europe and had already opened a gallery in Santa Monica, I was able to see that in the East Village of New York, something special had happened. There was a rebirth of energy—artists were making good art, artists were trading and showing and holding auctions in nightclubs like I was doing. Some of these artists are still talked about today in renowned language and their art lasts. I was really happy to bring back shows from New York and show them in Los Angeles.

Saber

When it comes to art, there are two sides: making art and selling art. As an artist, selling art isn’t something I focus on. I focus on the creative process. Having Robert Berman on my side really helps gain that edge on the business part of things. Berman is a fast worker and he moves on opportunities. If it’s not going to work, he’ll tell you it’s not going to work. If it’s going to work, he’ll make it work. He brings a blunt sledgehammer to the art table, but it’s encrusted with diamonds. When he sees new talent, he’s going to go for it. And the minute you get through his door, that raises your bar up. I’ve worked with galleries around the world, but Robert Berman has been the most prestigious for my career. I’m honored to be in his gallery. Working with him has made my career better, straight up. I have Berman’s back.

Saber’s art has appeared in many of Scion’s Installation tours, scionav.com/art/installationtour, and he curated the Superiority Complex show at Scion’s Installation Los Angeles space, scionav.com/art/installationlosangeles.

Retna

There was an issue of Juxtapoz magazine where they gave Seventh Letter the whole magazine. After that, Brett Aronson, who works as a curator mainly in San Francisco, brought up doing something with us to Robert Berman. At the time there weren’t a lot of people showing us in L.A. We ended up doing a group show at his gallery last year that Brett curated. Robert obviously has a pretty long track record, he just really knows what he is doing. He’s not overtly a street art gallerist per se, which I think for us is cool because it broadens the audience for us.Being that we were on hiatus for a while from the L.A. art scene, he was one of the only ones that was actually willing to give us an opportunity. We’ve always been here putting in work, but it took someone who understands that there is something there and was willing to put his name on it and guide us through. For the show we did with him, there was a pretty big turnout, over three thousand people came.

RETNA’s collaborative show with The Mac will appear at the Robert Berman Gallery later this year. His art has appeared in many of Scion’s Installation tours, scionav.com/art/installationtour, and he curated the Iron Eye show at Scion’s Installation Los Angeles space, scionav.com/art/installationlosangeles.

Also see the art car he designed for Scion at scionav.com/art/artprojectcars.

I remember standing in front of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s doorway for hours, waiting for him to come out. I convinced Keith Haring to come to Los Angeles for a show.

By then I had a very small space called B1 Gallery, but it had a back area and a very interesting courtyard. He came and was very disappointed with me when he saw the size of the space, but then in walked Timothy Leary and then in walked all these other LA celebrities, and the size of the space didn’t matter. It got so packed that you couldn’t walk through, there were literally thousands of people there.

I would always go to Leo Castelli’s gallery in New York.

That was a gentleman who was out in the front of the gallery, always ready to meet you, always ready to greet you, always being there. Here’s this icon, this art dealer that’s bigger than life, not hidden behind five or six layers of people to get to. He was always gracious to his artists, he was always gracious to the public.

You could tell he didn’t like being in the back. He wanted to be in the middle of his exhibition. He wanted to be in the middle of where the art was hung so he could feel it, and that’s where I like to be.

At our Santa Monica Auctions, you don’t know what’s going to happen. That Faile could be the hit of the auction, or nobody could buy it. I’ve got Picasso etchings, and they may or may not sell.

That’s the fun part of it for me, to not know if it’s going to be the year of the outsider street artists or if it’s going to be the year of the old masters. I’m trying to train the collectors to like the auctions. You want something, you’re going to bid as high as you can bid. You have to fight for it. It’s a very democratic form of buying, as opposed to a back room deal. An auction stimulates the whole market, it drives the market. If art is going to be a commodity, you might as well make it a commodity and not hide it, which is what everybody is trying to do.

Ron English

I think that the definitive moment for me was when I did a show with the guys from Sonic Youth, Gibby Haynes, Mike Watt and Daniel Johnston. We had a party the night before when everyone’s band played, and Robert got on stage with Raymond Pettibon’s band and played the horn with him. It made me realize why I like Robert. A lot of times an art dealer is a business person who might not be that into art, it’s just as a good way to make money.

But it was at that moment that I realized that Robert is one of us. He’s there to be part of the artistic community. It’s hard to find an honest art dealer, and he’s an honest, courteous, on-the-ball art dealer. He’s a rare thing.

Ron English’s art has appeared in many of Scion’s Installation tours, see it at scionav.com/art/installationtour, and watch a video about the art car he designed for Scion at scionav.com/art/artprojectcars.

Paper Shapers show Scion Installation LA

Klever Scion Metro Kansas

12th Planet House Party LA

Discobelle DJs House Party LA

1000 Days show Scion Installation LA

MZK S達o Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

Brutal Truth Scion Metal Show LA

Blu Jemz Days show, Scion Installation LA

Gary Baseman, Baixo Ribeiro, Calma S達o Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

Dopplereffekt House Party LA

Cosmo Baker, Pyramid, P Thugg of Chromeo, Nick Catchdubs Scion Miami

Richard Sweeney Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

guests watch artist Ryohei Tanaka in action Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

Michael Rea with his work 1000 Days show, Scion Installation LA

DJ Mehdi, Dave1 of Chromeo, A-Trak Scion Miami

Nadastrom House Party LA

Lair of the Minotaur Scion Metal Show LA

Caleb Weintraub 1000 Days show, Scion Installation LA

Calma, Mazik, Rolland Berry and friends S達o Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

Polly Verity and Ana Serrano Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

Mu Pan Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

Sammy Bananas Scion Miami

Shin Tanaka Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

crowd at São Paulo show Scion Installation LA

Heartsrevolution Scion A/V Kitsuné Pioneer Tour

Matt Phillips 1000 Days show, Scion Installation LA

Drop The Lime, The Captain, Star Eyes Scion Miami

Giant Robot’s Margaux Elliott and Eric Nakamura Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

São Paulo show Scion Installation LA

guest interacting with the art 1000 Days show, Scion Installation LA

Calma São Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

guests 1000 Days show, Scion Installation LA

Franki Chan Scion Miami

guests watching film by Calma São Paulo show Scion Installation LA

guests create their own robots Paper Shapers show, Scion Installation LA

Jokers of the Scene, Nacho Lover and friends Scion Miami

Titi Freak São Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

Ramon Martins São Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

Rusko House Party LA

Zezao, Eduardo Saretta, MZK São Paulo show, Scion Installation LA

AC Slater House Party LA

Kill the Noise Scion Metro Kansas

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