Do You See What I See?

Here are some photos I've taken since the beginning of the year. There are more here. Have a happy 4th!

Portrait of the Artist with an Octopus

Night before last, I received an email from Molly Peck, a New York-based artist. The subject header read, "Susannah Breslin is happy," which definitely got my attention, as I am having a hell of a week.

In any case, there was an image attached to it, the one you see here, which is a painting that Molly made. The source material is here, and, yes, that's me. Molly, whom I didn't really know previously, had painted my portrait. Her email read: "I paint people who inspire me. Thank you for that."

I adore it. I think it's a scream. I especially love the small octopus that has entwined itself around my right wrist. Best of all, it's on its way to me. I can't wait to get it.

If you would like to see more of Molly's wonderful work, you can find her online here and here, and you can even commission her to do your portrait, or a portrait of someone else, or a portrait of your dog on Etsy for a very reasonable price.

Molly's wonderful bio:

I stopped painting shortly after college, because a boy I was dating made me feel bad about it.

Ten years later, I met a boy who made me want to paint again. Once I started painting again, he made me feel so happy about it that I did not want to stop.

I really love to paint people's faces... portraits, I guess. I fall a little bit in love with each person I paint while I am working on the piece... spending so much time intimately scrutinizing someone's features is pretty romantic. Don't worry, though-- it's not love in a creepy way, and it passes once I'm finished.

I have noticed lately that every single painting demands to be painted differently. I feel like I have to re-learn the entire process every time.

Thank you, Molly!

A Vintage Interview with Todd Phillips by Alex Godfrey

The other day, I wrote a post about GG Allin after I saw a documentary by Todd Phillips about GG, "Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies," which is floating around because Phillips directed "The Hangover," which is a pretty popular movie this summer.

Afterward, I got an email from Alex Godfrey, a London-based journalist, who, years ago, worked for Hotdog, a UK-based magazine that I wrote a few pieces for. In any case, Alex emailed me an interview he did back in the day with Phillips about "Hated" and a later movie Phillips made, starring Tom Green, "Road Trip."

Kind Alex agreed to let me repost the interview here. Thank you, Alex, for sharing it with the rest of us.

First off, I saw Hated a couple of years ago.

Did you see the real version, or did you see the British version, which has been censored, by the way. If you bought it in England through Exploited, that video’s censored.

Right, I saw one on the shelf in Virgin here yesterday, remastered and uncut.

Yeah, that’s the one you should see. It’s just taken out a lot of the great scenes, I haven’t seen the British version, I forget the specs that I got sent to me, which was what was getting cut out, but there’s some great stuff cut out of it. The DVD is what you should get ‘cause it has an hour of extra. That’s at Virgin also. So go ahead.

I had a GG bootleg from Germany and Hated wasn’t half as obscene as that.

It is though. You gotta get the real movie, I swear it is.

Why was it censored in Britain?

I don’t know, that happens a lot there, it really does. I don’t know why.

You’ve got Tom Green in Road Trip, who’s known as being kind of extreme and outrageous. What would you say the difference is between someone like him and someone like GG?

I think there’s a fine line. I think it’s more the times that have changed, I swear, you know you look at guys like Eminem and Marilyn Manson and you think, Boy, if GG was alive today I think he’d be on the cover of Rolling Stone, I really do. Or at least he would have two years ago, I think it’s over now but he’s a guy who could have broken if he’d stayed alive.

The mainstream didn’t want to know about him.

You gotta remember GG died before Kurt Cobain hit, he died before grunge became big. Not like he was grunge, but there was grunge and then there was Green Day and Rancid and all that crap. There could have been a window there for GG. Granted it would have lasted 45 days because musically he wasn’t all that talented, but there could have been a moment.

How much time did you spend with him?

A lot, I would say about six months. Not with him every minute, but he was in New York and I was just showing up and tagging along.

How did you get involved with him in the first place?

I met his brother Merle in New York. I was at NYU, I wanted to do a documentary on GG, so I met Merle, I told him I wanted to do a documentary, and Merle said “Well he’s in jail, write him in jail.” So I wrote him in jail and GG said, “Well I’m getting out of jail in two months but I’m on probation, I can’t leave Michigan, but if you send me a bus ticket, fuck it, I’ll just come.” So I said okay, and I got him some money and I sent him a one-way bus ticket, literally which is how the movie begins, and he showed up. And from that point on he was wanted. They were looking for him and they finally caught him in Texas and extradited him to Michigan where he served one year while we edited the movie. He got out literally three days before the premiere in New York. He showed up to the premiere, saw the movie, and he was drunk and he ruined the whole screening because he was throwing beer bottles at the screen, and hit a woman in the head in the front row, she was bleeding, we had to stop the premiere. He walks out. Three days late after that he died. So it was really weird. It was crazy.

Why did you want to make a documentary on him?

Same reason why I wanted to use Tom Green in Road Trip, I mean you say it’s such a difference from Hated to Road Trip, but really you know… Tom Green’s a big part of Road Trip and he’s just – to me, guys who are very enigmatic, guys who have that something, whether it’s exhibited on stage while he’s naked and cutting himself up, or exhibited by making funny faces and bizarre noises, whatever, they’re both extreme characters in what they do, and I’m drawn to that, and always have been.

How aware was GG of his impact on society?

I really think he wasn’t, he’s one of those sad cases where after he died it became like, wow man, if he was only around to see this, and you know, maybe that has to do with the fact that he died, but he wasn’t; he truly was that guy, he truly lived out of a paper bag-

He really didn’t care for money.

He really didn’t. It’s so funny because everybody… there’s so many people who will act like that and be like that. He was the real deal if anybody ever was, he really was. You look at a guy like Marilyn Manson who I appreciate because I appreciate stage-shows, and I appreciate that rock and roll exhibitionism, but that is calculated, that may as well be done, and I know everybody knows this, but it may as well be some big producer behind it pulling all the strings and making it happen, he’s a man-made product, he’s…

Trent Reznor created him.

That’s what I mean, he’s man-made, Trent Reznor created this product, right. GG Allin was the real deal. He was pure evil too, it wasn’t an act; he was a bad guy.

Was he insane?

I think he was insane, yeah. And he certainly had a split personality.

Really.

Oh, yeah. Yeah I mean because you could hang out with him and rent a movie, and watch a movie with him, and two seconds later he’s throwing a beer bottle at you for you to leave, for no reason. He was crazy. But I loved him.

I read a quote from you about the thrill of making a film, and the spectacle. That marketing the film is just as important.

Well at least 50% of a documentary is your subject matter, so maybe that’s what you’re referring to, or, I don’t know what the exact quote is, but I might have been high on cocaine when I said it.

At a screening of Hated in Kansas someone set fire to the curtains?

Yeah. And in a Minneapolis screening someone stabbed someone. And there was a riot in Munich.

And did you get a mental patient on stage to sing?

That was in this little German town. But there was a riot in Munich because the projector broke. Always happens. But anyway, yeah that’s just part of the fun. With Hated you’re dealing with extreme fans, you know, especially in Germany because GG was a legend there, he never made it over to Europe because he couldn’t get a passport ‘cause he’s been in and out of prison. So he was bigger there in a weird way because he was legendary, they’d only heard the stories, you know what I mean? So we got some rowdy people. But that’s why you make a movie, you make a movie for people to see it hopefully, or at least that’s why I do it. Filmmaking is far too expensive a medium for it to be a hobby. You know, you do it so people will come, hopefully.

Is it true that you were going to make a documentary on John Wayne Gacy?

Yeah, it was going to be Death Row: The Last Days of John Wayne Gacy, but he died. And fucking Geraldo Rivera paid the prison a kickback, a huge amount of money to lock him up, meaning lock up an interview with him, and not let him do other press, and then he never ended up doing it. But Gacy was onboard to do this other documentary with me, which would have been very fucking cool.

Sound like Natural Born Killers.

Yeah that’s right, that’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to break him out too.

Do you like Natural Born Killers?

I love it. I love it.

Apparently Stone wanted Geraldo for that Robert Downey Jr part.

Oh really? That’s funny. I never knew that.

Where would you put yourself on the map, as a filmmaker?

Well you know whether you’re doing documentaries or narratives or comedies, you know, you’re telling stories, you know what I mean, and you know… I did as much writing on Frat House as I did on Road Trip. As I said, you write these movies, the documentaries, or at least that’s the way I do ‘em. So ultimately it’s all storytelling. I don’t draw the line between documentaries and features like so many people do. So many people consider documentaries as the ugly stepsister to filmmaking. I love it, I think it’s a great way to express things I wanna see and show, so I love documentaries.

What would GG think of you now?

That’s a good question. I mean I still hang out with his brother. I think he’d still like me, I don’t know what he’d feel about Road Trip, but I know he would have liked Frat House. And I know he would have liked parts of Road Trip, but ultimately he would have gotten drunk and thrown a beer bottle at the screen and hurt somebody. I don’t think he would have made it through it.

--Interview by Alex Godfrey

Why Write for Free When You Can Pay to Write? [Updated]

This is a situation in flux, so if things change, well, fuck it, chalk it up to transparency.

Lots of people, most of whom you can find links to here, have been talking about whether or not one should write for free. Mostly, I agree with Doree, who says--Oh, shit. I guess it wasn't her. Well, whomever said most of the time you shouldn't, but some of the time you should, I agree with that person.

The truth is that writers take assignments for many reasons. Much of the time, one takes a high-paying assignment for money, and the subject is crap. I have done more than a few of these in my time. We like to call these "compromises," but really they are acts of "literary prostitution." The lube is the money. The integrity is nada. The feeling one gets left with afterward is the sensation of having been fucked in the ass without permission.

Other times, writers take assignments because they are awesome, or exciting, or enable the writer to go creepy-crawling into some crevice into which they have not crawled before. Many of these assignments do not pay well. Sometimes, they do not pay at all. Or, they may as well not, because the pay is so shitty. The payoff is that you get to have a really great time, you can tell the story of whatever wild and crazy things happened to you at the next dinner party you attend where everyone will listen to you in a state of rapt attention, and you can eyeball your well-worn copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and tell yourself that you have lived your own Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

Over the last few years, I have experimented with the "writing for free" phenomenon. I had a brief affair with the Huffington Post, which ultimately didn't really work for me. There was no money. I didn't really get the point of putting stuff up there I could post to my own blog without having some editor poke a pencil in its eye first. And, I don't know, maybe all those nasty Gawker posts about the redhead turned me off or something.

In another case, not long ago, I did a story for fray for free because I was a) bored, b) feeling hostile and looking for some way to pretend I was really hell-bent on "doing my own thing," c) they were putting together a "sex and death"-themed issue (it's not online yet) that was, you know, up my alley. I wrote about doing The Letters Project. So, you know, it wasn't all that hard. Maybe it took an hour or two. Sometimes having more freedom gives you an ego boost that enables you to slog through the other shit.

Last week, for the first time in some time, I turned down a paying assignment. I was sort of torn about doing so, and I still feel kind of conflicted about having done so. (Who the fuck turns down money in this economy? Assholes. That's who.) The pay was low for the amount of work involved, but it was also about something that I sort of consider to be, uh, precious to me, and I didn't feel like I wanted to "give away" that story for that amount. The story was worth more than that to me. The stories we hold in our heads, as writers, they have a kind of value, or weight, or gravitas that we imbue them with that transcends what the Wu-Tang Clan once so poignantly referred to as the "dolla dolla bill, ya'll."

Cash rules everything around us, and writers are whores or tricks, depending on the day, editors pimps looking to exploit their bottom bitches to the best of their abilities. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? At least, that's how I see it.

In any case, in April, I did something I have never done before. I paid to do a story. It's possible the pay for this story will change, but I don't know. Whatever. An experienced journalist knows it isn't what it is until the money is in your hand. All told, I shelled out [oh, I cannot bear to say it] to get this piece done. I also delivered it at some 8,000 words over what I had been enlisted to write.

I think somebody told me to do this, to do the story, to foot much of the bill myself, but for the life of me I can't remember who. (If it was you, thank you.) And, you know, it was about the smartest thing I've ever done. (Knock on wood. It's not online yet. And you never know, you know?)

I paid for my experience. I paid for my time. I paid to write what I wanted to write, and I was lucky enough to have an editor who didn't stop me--she let me. Of course, as Stephen Elliott writes, "To only write what you want is a luxury." What I let myself do was a luxury, indeed, a luxury I may one day in the not too distant future be no longer able to afford, a luxury I do not regret spending.

It was the best time I've had in years. It made me feel like I wasn't a whore anymore. It was worth it.

Update: Later, I got a note from a reader, one who has given me permission to reprint his email here.

Interesting post you wrote about writing and money. I made my living as a writer during those wonderful late 1990 and early 2000 days you mentioned in your first post. 45 cents a word for practically anything I wanted to do. Great time to be doing that, free money and easy work. I also made my rent money as a guitar player for a few years of my life. Obviously I didn't get rich, but I know what it's like to get paid for one's 'art' and to compromise it. It got depressing after a while, but the lifestyle was great and there were still the cool, great gigs I could enjoy. Call it turning tricks or whatever, I just used the phrase, 'You take the king's shilling, you play the king's tune.'

I spent the weekend in NYC doing a two day music workshop where I got to meet one of my musical heroes, and not just meet him but play with him. It was amazing, and reminded me of why I started music in the first place. There were probably 75 other people there, all or nearly all of them many years younger than I. They were almost universally talented, optimistic, and hell bent as making it in music on their own terms. They were the antithesis of the stereotype of the lazy musician, they already had indie labels they started, they were gigging anywhere they could get, and they were sure it was just a matter of time until it was their turn to get on the ride. I wanted to tell them, 'Just so ya know, it ain't gonna happen. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because you'll hate yourself if you don't, but just because you think you're choosing failure or death doesn't mean you won't wind up with both.' I wanted to tell them about my most accomplished guitar teacher, a guy I took lessons from when I was about twenty. He was a legitimately well-known jazz player who had seen so much failure, including losing two wives mostly because he refused to give up music as his living, that he actually had come to hate music. Not hate drummers who are late and singers who can't come in on cue and staying in awful motels to make $150 at 2 AM. We all hated that shit, but he hated music itself, for what it had done to him and what it had refused to do for him. I vowed that whenever I got close to that I'd find something else to do so I at least would still love music.

And I did. After washing out of both the music and writing rackets I program databases now. I still make my own music, people still seem to like it on the rare occasion it's heard, and I still write. In fact, I write for a blog run by some of my favorite writers in the world and I do it for free, because I know they're broke and need the money and I don't. So by scything my 'art' off from my money I've kept my art pure, and it's still fun when I do it.

On the other hand, my money is what's impure now. It comes from prostituting my brain to do something 8-12 hours per day that I don't care about. Financial reporting does not speak to my heart, I do not pine for more hours in which I can write SQL code. I use a mind capable of producing decent music and better than decent prose for digital greasemonkey work. So, I guess the moral of the story is that you're fucked either way, there just isn't a lot of purity to go around.

Love your blog,

[name redacted]

Punk & Porn [Updated]

[The content of this post is particularly graphic in ways somewhat more vulgar than usual. So, if you are a) a gentle soul, b) eating, or c) easily excitable, you may do best to click elsewhere. If not, read on.]

Last weekend, I watched "Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies," which Pitchfork is playing because the director, Todd Phillips, directed "The Hangover," which is, like, the hit movie of the summer or whatever.

Years ago, I saw either this documentary or another one like it, if there is another one, which I doubt. I can no longer remember. If you're unfamiliar with GG, he was born Jesus Christ Allin and went on to become a notorious punk rock, eh, artist, who was perhaps best known--ok, for sure best known--for crapping on stage during his live performances, and various other acts, including slashing himself up with razor blades and punching himself in the head. You know, the usual.

Because I'd seen the movie, I think, before, I wasn't really surprised by what I saw, although it had been a few years. Here's GG wacked out of his head on smack. Here's GG smacking himself in the head. Here's a bunch of people talking about what a fucked up motherfucker GG was. All in reverential tones, of course.

My favorite anecdote in the movie is told by GG's brother, Merle Jr., as I recall, who recollects how their father, Merle Sr., expressed an interest in killing the boys' mother, and himself, and taking out the kids, too. At some later point, the father reappears after having spent some time in the basement. What was he doing down there? Digging four graves.

In any case, GG grows up to scream punk rock lyrics, and poop on stage, and score press attention for his bloody, shitty antics. They even do "Geraldo," which is kind of awesome. The drummer, who is always naked and spectacularly out of his mind, rivals GG for most interesting character.

But one scene in particular captured my attention.

[This is the part where I'll remind you that you may not want to continue reading if you are, say, eating a bagel.]

There's this scene where GG's on stage, and I think he leaps off it, and then he squats down, and he takes a giant dump in front of everyone. The crowd is surrounding him in this semi-circle-jerk of fucked up adoration. Then, GG gets on all fours, and the camera work gets a little funky, but I think he sticks some of the shit in his mouth, and then he spits it out. Then, he throws some of it at the crowd. Everybody pretty much backs off. No doubt, it smelled like a beast in there.

So, GG goes on to just, like, completely smear his own feces all over himself. I mean, if you've seen it, you know what I mean. But this isn't like when Ozzy accidentally-on-purpose bit the head off a bat, and then spit it out, or whatever. This is full-on. This is full-tilt. This is Texas No Limit Hold 'Em Living.

And, watching this scene, I was kind of transfixed. I used to be more into this kind of well, shit. You know--we've all had our "Faces of Death" phases, haven't we? But there was something definitively, inarguably, authentically real about what GG was doing. Something more than wallowing. Something beyond what he appeared to be doing. Something deeply primal. Something more complicated than can be written off with a wave of the hand and a reference to nostalgie de la boue. Something, well, true.

Occasionally, I get these letters in which people say I'm, like, a horrible person, right? Which is fine. We are all entitled to our own opinions. Although, why people email me their opinions of me or what I do, I do not know. I could live without them. [NB: Please stop sending them.]

Sometimes, though, I feel like that, too. Like I'm wallowing in a pit of shit. Only the pit of shit I'm in is called "porn."

Of course, I am not alone in this opinion. This April, on the set of "Fuck Machines 5," director Jim Powers told me--well, here's an excerpt from the story that I wrote about it.

"Now, the market is saturated with porn, the Internet is pirating porn left and right, and the economy is in the shitter," Powers laments, looking like a spurned lover: heartbroken. "Porn destroyed itself," he moans. He gazes through the sliding glass doors at a fountain trickling pleasantly in the backyard. "2005 was the peak of shit." He shakes his head. "Now, we’re just living in piles of shit." He sighs, crestfallen over what has become of his profession. "It completely destroyed everything." He stares at the floor.

I hear you, brother.

Anyway, it occurred to me, while I watched GG dance around in a mask of his feces, that what separates porn from shit is the length of a perineum. More or less. If you know what I mean. In other words: Not much.

I have no idea what type of point I'm trying to make here other than perhaps finding kinship in GG Allin is better than finding no kinship at all.

Isn't it?

[My lengthy feature story on the adult movie industry and its currently decidedly shitty state is at this time in temporary editor limbo and will, I'm sure, be online in the, I hope, not too distant future. I'll let you know when it is. This just in: Looks like Zombie Radar Online removed my interview with indicted coprophagy and bestiality pornographer Ira Isaacs: "But Is It Obscene?" Bummer.]

Update: Tomorrow, I'm going to post a vintage interview with "Hated"/"The Hangover" director Todd Phillips on what it was like shooting with GG and other fun stuff that a kind reader sent to me.