Tag Archives: interview

The Happy-Sad Tales of Tom Barbash

by cuppyteen Posted on September 10, 2013

Mother Jones

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“If this was only the start of the darkest part of his life, Timkin marveled at what he’d already been able to make of it.”

Thus concludes Balloon Night, one of the sad yet joyous stories in Stay Up With Me, a new collection out this week from Tom Barbash, former small town reporter turned fiction writer.

Timkin, the protagonist of Balloon Night, faces an onslaught of holiday revelers streaming into his Manhattan apartment for the Thanksgiving blowout party he hosts with his wife every year. Except she left him for good two days ago, with no way to cancel the festivities on such short notice. So he endeavors to drown her absence in booze and friends until, at the climax of the night, the desperate realization that she isn’t coming back sets in with an inexplicable wave of euphoria. “To Amy!” he calls out, toasting the poignancy of his pain.

The characters that populate Barbash’s stories are all hurting—some of them quite badly. But it doesn’t diminish their capacity for wonder. They collide with life, losing siblings and spouses, parents and children. They suffer bad stepfathers and endure the exploits of their sexually active offspring. The magic of the stories comes in the small, transcendent moments when the world crushing in doesn’t seem so bad.

Barbash has published two books previously: the award-winning novel The Last Good Chance, based on the years he spent reporting in upstate New York, and the New York Times bestseller On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11, a nonfiction account of the revival of the financial services firm after it lost nearly seven hundred employees in the Twin Towers. He teaches in the MFA program at California College of the Arts and lives in Marin County, Calif.

I caught up with Barbash to ask about class, clueless New Yorkers, and JD Salinger’s lost works.

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Why Americans Can’t Die With Dignity

by 0c4g78x Posted on September 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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As recently as the 1960s, “medicine did not routinely stave off death among the very old,” journalist Katy Butler points out in Knocking On Heaven’s Door, her new book about modern medicine’s tendency to overtreat, particularly at the end of people’s lives. Butler chronicles the deaths of her parents—her father’s slow decline after a debilitating stroke and her mother’s refusal to succumb to “Hail Mary” surgeries—and in so doing offers an unflinching look at the “perverse economic incentives” that reward doctors for procedures over humane care.

An expansion of Butler’s 2010 New York Times Magazine piece about her family’s attempts to get her father’s pacemaker turned off after a stroke leaves him increasingly incapacitated, the book deftly toggles between her family’s relationships and end-of-life struggles, and the history of our shifting attitudes towards death and rise of technologies that are meant to extend life but often lead to suffering. Butler also offers an antidote of sorts—a Slow Medicine movement that emphasizes “care over cure.” I caught up with the author to talk about her daughterly regrets and tackling a subject that most of us would rather to avoid.

Mother Jones: People are often told they should have these conversations about how they want to die before they are medically incapacitated. But what if they change their minds after the fact?

Katy Butler: I don’t think people ever were free of fear of death, but clinging to life and being so unprepared for it is a modern experience. Our ancestors actually read books about how to prepare for death. It was considered your moral obligation to be prepared for your deathbed and to able to face it with equanimity. We offer such false hopes to people that every medical problem can be fixed even when you’re starting to deal with an 80- or a 90-year-old body that is breaking down in multiple ways and doesn’t have that resilience. And so it doesn’t surprise me that someone who is completely unprepared for death may say, “Doc, do everything.”

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Why Americans Can’t Die With Dignity

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

by Olesiacei Posted on September 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Among artists who defy totalitarian regimes, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is both magnificently and horrifically situated to convey how art can be used to confront oppression.

Since serving a one-year prison sentence in 2010 for attempting to make a film in support of the pro-reform Green movement, the 40-year-old has lived a paradoxical existence. On the one hand, he is a renowned director, the recipient of two top prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and a Hamburg fellowship that allowed him and his family to escape the country. On the other hand, he is “a man whose head is chopped off from his body,” as he put it recently at the 40th Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

“My body may have been in Hamburg for the last few years,” said Rasoulof, “but my mind and heart—everything I think and want to feel—are in Iran. One thing I’m really afraid of is to be disconnected in that way for a long time. It’s the most fearful prospect I can think of.”

Rasoulof was in Telluride for the US premiere of his clandestinely made “Manuscripts Don’t Burn,” his fifth feature. It could easily land him back Tehran’s notorious Evin prison if he were to return home. The film is based on the 1988-1998 Chain Murders, when a series (or chain) of more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens were killed by government operatives for criticizing the Islamic Republic.

Mohammad Rasoulof

“Manuscripts Don’t Burn” is Rasoulof’s most realistic and directly political film so far, a significant departure from more allegorical and metaphorical movies like “Iron Island” (2005) and “The White Meadows” (2009). The story centers on a poet and novelist in Tehran who, in their quest to publish a book about one grizzly incident of the Chain Murders, are terrorized by a fellow intellectual turned state security henchman. The story is also about the working class purveyors of government terror, particularly a blank-faced man named Khosrow, whose day job as a murderer of dissident artists allows him to pay his ailing son’s hospital bills.

Rasoulof explains that the character of Khosrow was inspired by an experience in prison. Rasoulof’s habit is to get up every morning and drink a cool glass of water. That ritual ceased in prison. But one day, he woke and found his burning hot cell intolerable. Rasoulof rang the bell for the guard, asked for water, and was rebuked. When the next guard came on shift, he tried again. Not only did the second guard bring him a glass of water, he did so every time he arrived for work at the prison.

“I came to see that those working as the prison guards and executioners in this system are human, too,” Rasoulof said. “They don’t have horns. They aren’t animals. There must be some reason why they do what they do.”

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Meet the Man Confronting Iran’s "Chain Murders"

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The Guy Behind "The Fox"—The Summer’s Funniest Music Video—Talks About Going Viral

by Isela Harris Posted on September 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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That’s the music video for “The Fox,” an infectious, wacky, and exuberantly funny new song by Norwegian entertainment duo Ylvis. It was posted to YouTube on Tuesday and is already a hit. Gawker hails it as the true “Song of the Summer,” beating Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” BuzzFeed praises it as perhaps the greatest music video on the internet. The Week thinks it might be the “‘Gangnam Style‘ of 2013.” USA Today has weighed in, proclaiming it “the next viral music-video sensation.”

The video (directed by Ole Martin Hafsmo) depicts a man in an orange fox costume who dances and belts out noises a fox might make, including “gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!” and “fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!” As you can tell, the lyrics (posted below) get creative and sort of insane with its answers.

For the vast majority of Americans, “The Fox” will be their introduction to Ylvis, a musical-comedy act inspired by artists such as The Lonely Island, Tenacious D, and Flight of the Conchords. But the duo (brothers Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker) is an established act in Norway, where they have their own talk show. The music video was meant to promote the show’s new season, but to the shock of its creators, it’s taken on a life of its own.

“To be honest I am quite surprised!” Bård tells Mother Jones. “This song is made for a TV show and is supposed to entertain a few Norwegians for three minutes—and that’s all. It was done just a few days ago and we recently had a screening in our office. About 10 people watched—nobody laughed.”

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The Guy Behind "The Fox"—The Summer’s Funniest Music Video—Talks About Going Viral

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

by Thorzar Posted on September 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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No, you don’t get to see actress Alyssa Milano have sex. Yes, you get to hear some depressing bullet points on the bloodshed in Syria.

Early Wednesday morning, Funny or Die—Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s comedy website—posted a “leaked!” sex tape of the 40-year-old Milano (who’s famous for her roles on the TV shows Who’s the Boss? and Charmed). The video is, of course, a staged comic bit. Milano and a handsome man start getting it on right as their camera “accidentally” swivels to a TV broadcasting an evening news report on the crisis in Syria, and the Obama administration’s push for military intervention. The TV set is mounted next to a mirror, in which the viewers can see limbs flopping and a bed sheet moving.

“I think it was a really fun way to get people to realize that there are important issues our country is dealing with right now,” Milano tells Mother Jones. “If people end up learning something about the crisis in Syria that’s a good thing—even if I had to do a sex tape to lure them in.”

The video ends with Milano saying to her lover, “This is boring, change the channel, put it on the Swamp People,” referring to the History channel’s reality TV series that documents the lives of alligator hunters.

To promote the “Syrian sex tape,” Milano tweeted out the following on Wednesday:

Funny or Die’s Nick Corirossi, one of the writers and directors of the “sex tape,” is keeping up a similar act. “I was the tape’s finder,” Corirossi says. “Funny or Die every once in a while tries to purchase sex tapes…but this time it was more boring than ever. It was all about all this Syrian stuff. It’s the most boring sex tape debacle I’ve ever been involved in.” (Corirossi did say that he does not believe the video takes a political position on intervention, but does serve as “an update” on Syria news.)

Milano has dabbled in political fare before. Since 2003, she has been (along with a bunch of other celebs) a UNICEF ambassador, and has traveled with the UN program to Kosovo, India, and Angola. She’s voiced her support for same-sex marriage. And she starred in a 2010 Funny or Die video (Ron Livingston, Gillian Jacobs, and many more) urging Americans to vote. Funny or Die posts a lot of political satire and content—and has done fake celebrity sex tapes before, as well.

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

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Houndmouth Comes Alive

by d2wk58 Posted on September 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Jim Herrington

During the performance of a song called “Penitentiary” at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival last month, Houndmouth’s curly-haired guitarist and vocalist Matt Myers was very deliberate in his annunciation of the first line: “I hid a batch in Fresco/I couldn’t score a job/So I did the next best thing and I learned how to rob.” He’s referring to a Dallas suburb—not to be mistaken for Frisco, San Francisco’s out-of-vogue nickname.

“I thought of changing it to Waco,” Myers told me after the set, lounging backstage with bandmates Katie Toupin (keys), Zak Appleby (bass), and Shane Cody (drums), and sipping bourbon from a mug. “I know people from San Francisco don’t like to hear their city called Frisco.”

From the Hills Below the City, Houndmouth’s debut on Rough Trade earlier this year, features a dozen tracks of corn-fed middle-American roots rock. In addition to the Frisco/Fresco thing, it name-drops at least a half-dozen southern states, towns, and cities. The songs are filled with stories about hittin’ the road, ridin’ the rails, gettin’ thrown in jail, and comin’ back home—dropping all nonessential “g”s.

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Houndmouth Comes Alive

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

by Aigneis Gaskill Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Detroit, Michigan, is finally getting its monument to RoboCop.

Last May, photos began circulating online of a giant statue made in honor of the legendary cyborg law enforcer. It’s the result of a Kickstarter campaign by the Imagination Station, a Detroit nonprofit specializing in art and renovation. Three months later, the statue has finally reached Detroit soil.

The model, assembled at Across the Board Creations in British Colombia, arrived Wednesday afternoon in a crate. “Slow and steady wins the race,” Brandon Walley, director of development at the Imagination Station, wrote me earlier this week. But the statue’s journey began long before this summer. The story of how this RoboCop duplicate came into being is a complex two-year saga involving Hollywood executives, political division, gonzo art—and the actual star of RoboCop.

The statue’s origin is, in fact, entirely political. In early 2011, the Democratic Mayor of Detroit and retired NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing was promoting the Detroit Works Project, an initiative that called for community input to create a “strategic framework plan” for the city. He got the word out on Twitter, which earned him some thoughtful response—and the standard jest. One of the tweeted suggestions came from user @MT, who asked if the city would devote a chunk of its budget to erecting a statue to RoboCop, the eponymous protagonist from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 action film, which is set in a futuristic, chaotic, and ruined Detroit. (For the uninitiated, the film RoboCop satirizes the excess and horrors of the Reagan era. The character and franchise has since become an American pop-culture icon. A 2014 remake is on the way.)

This is all Mayor Bing had to say about @MT’s modest proposal:

…which spurred further discussion on the matter:

Bing did not entertain the idea of building a fully functional killing machine, either.

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

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Talib Kweli Stands His Ground

by rikkiqlyons Posted on August 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Earlier this summer, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, there were marches across the country. But the protests largely faded out, folding in on themselves before they had a chance to create any lasting change. One place that isn’t true is Florida, where a group calling itself the Dream Defenders took over the state capitol building, and called upon GOP Gov. Rick Scott to support the Trayvon Martin Act. The bill was an attempt to address racial profiling, the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, and zero-tolerance policies in schools that funnel kids into the criminal-justice system.

The Dream Defenders were able to gather a lot of national and high-profile support. Among the bigger names who turned out to support their cause was the Brooklyn-based rapper Talib Kweli, among the most enduring and successful “conscious” hip-hop artists of his generation. I caught up with Kweli last week for a chat that ranged from his new album (Prisoner of Conscious), to stop-and-frisk, feminism, and homosexuality in the hip-hop community.

Mother Jones: What made you want to go to Florida to support the Dream Defenders?

Talib Kweli: Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, “You can help by coming down here; you can tweet.” But I was like, “That’s easy, what else can I do?” What I like about Dream Defenders is they’re taking all the fly shit from activism—they’re taking the right energy from civil rights, from black power, from Occupy Wall Street, all these movements, the Arab Spring. They’re not protesting, they’re not demonstrating; they’re just coming with a plan for action and they’re not going anywhere until the governor addresses their plan.

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Talib Kweli Stands His Ground

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Gay Mayor of Vicco, Kentucky, Reacts to the "Best Segment of ‘The Colbert Report’ Ever"

by jogakatowicefitness Posted on August 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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It’s being called the greatest segment The Colbert Report has ever done.

On Wednesday night, the Comedy Central news-satire program aired the latest installment in its “People Who Are Destroying America” series. The segment is on Johnny Cummings, the openly gay mayor—and a part-time hairdresser—of Vicco, Kentucky, a hamlet of about 330 people. Vicco made news earlier this year when it became the smallest town in the United States to pass a ban on discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. (The ordinance passed by a 3-1 city-commission vote. According to Cummings, who introduced the ordinance to the city council, representatives from five other towns told him that they want to be the next ones to pass such a “fairness ordinance.”)

“Everything considered, I was remarkably pleased with the way the Colbert segment turned out,” Cummings tells Mother Jones.

“Russia‘s not the only place trying to defend its family values,” host Stephen Colbert says, referring to the culture war over America’s traditional “small-town morals,” as he introduces the clip. What follows is a touching, funny, and stereotype-pulverizing look at a tiny Appalachian town and how its residents feel about the anti-discrimination policy and their mayor. Watch it here:

“If God makes ’em born gay, then why is he against it?” a Vicco resident says, in the clip’s moving final moments. “I can’t understand that. I’ve tried and tried and tried to understand that, and I can’t.”

The night after the segment aired, Cummings told Mother Jones about why he agreed to do it. “We got a lot of attention after that New York Times article ran in January, and we got these offers from production companies wanting to do all this crap,” Cummings recalls. The “crap” here refers to how five production companies, including that of ABC, have recently shown interest in filming a reality TV show in Vicco. “So when some of them called, I was often quite rude to them…But then I got a call from The Colbert Report. I always watch The Colbert Report…To get your point across, sometimes you just gotta laugh. That’s how I look at it. So I thought, okay, The Colbert Report would be perfect.”

The Comedy Central film crew came to town to shoot footage last February. The show also featured a pastor named Truman Hurt, the lone voice in the segment raising objections to the so-called gay lifestyle. The pastor’s objections, as well as local confusion over the legal specifics of the ordinance, were framed by some media outlets (such as MSNBC’s Maddow Blog) as a backlash and controversy. In Cummings’ view, no backlash actually occurred, and the town has been overwhelmingly supportive. “The only negative response we really got was the local TV station that played it up…and tried to cover it as ‘backlash,'” Cummings says. “If you check out my Facebook page, there’s not a negative thing on there about this. But some people tried to create a ‘backlash,’ I guess.”

The 50-year-old Cummings has been praised by residents and others for leading efforts to revitalize the Kentucky town’s infrastructure. Cummings is a Democrat (as is the majority of Vicco’s population) but has switched between Republican and Democratic party affiliation. Aside from his mayorship and his gig as a local hairdresser, he plays the blues on his saxophone in his spare time. He is also a big fan of Josephine Baker, the jazz singer and political activist who helped the French Resistance fight the Nazis.

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Gay Mayor of Vicco, Kentucky, Reacts to the "Best Segment of ‘The Colbert Report’ Ever"

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Funny or Die Is Making Pro-Obamacare Videos

by John Basset Posted on July 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Monday, a cluster of Hollywood celebrities gathered at the White House for a chat on how they could help spread the word about Obamacare to young people in America. In attendance—along with some producers and writers—were big-name entertainers such as Amy Poehler, Jennifer Hudson, Michael Cera, and Kal Penn. (Penn served multiple stints as associate director for the Office of Public Engagement in the Obama administration, and delivered this speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.)

The meeting was run by senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who gave a presentation on health care reform and talked about pushing back against conservative memes surrounding the law. President Obama dropped in for roughly half an hour to mingle and hear some ideas from the attending celebrities and artists. Mike Farah, president of production and “ambassador of lifestyle” at Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s comedy website Funny or Die, was at the meeting with his colleague Jake Szymanski. “It was awesome,” Farah tells Mother Jones. “It kind of kicked ass…I was honored to be there and to hear from Obama directly.”

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Funny or Die Is Making Pro-Obamacare Videos

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