Interview

Photo courtesy of Sony Classics

Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim returns to form this summer with his first full-length documentary since 2006's An Inconvenient Truth. This time around, the director (whose previous documentaries have focused on topics such as global warming, Barack Obama, and child prostitution) has turned his lens to a slightly less political subject: The electric guitar. It Might Get Loud, which opened at select theaters across the countries this month, interweaves the individual histories of guitar legends Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White, with a hall-of-fame worthy rock'n'roll summit in which the three hang out on a sound stage, talking, singing, and–what else?–jamming on the guitar. We spoke with the Guggenheim about working with some of rock music's greatest guitar legends.

LM: You grew up in a very film-oriented family. Had you always planned on being a documentary filmmaker?

DG: My father made documentaries in Washington D.C.  He taught me everything I know. But after I graduated college I knew I had to leave D.C. and move out to Hollywood and make it on my own.  You don't inherit a documentary film business.

LM: I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area as well, and I remember being really surprised when I went away to college in the Midwest and discovered that people didn't tend to care about politics in the obsessive, hyper-informed way that I was used to. Did you find that was the case when you moved to LA?

DG: Yeah, LA seemed to me to be a town that was swept up by business, a factory town.  But the factories happened to make things that I was really interested in.  There are good factories and bad factories, but the kind of discussions you hear in Washington would not happen here in LA.  If you talk about the civil rights movement, someone would say "Yeah!  Like in Mississippi Burning!"  If you started a conversation about something real, the conversation would turn to a movie about that. It would immediately go back to the movie business, and then maybe an actor, and then a deal, and then the person's next project.  That can be really fun and intoxicating for a while, but it's really empty.

MORE »

In 2003, at the height of the Iraq War and at a moment of tense international debate about the role of religion in politics, the best-selling and highly influential Senegalese griot singer Youssou N'Dour released an album called Egypt. The record was a personal and spiritual expression of N'Dour's reverence for Islam—a vast departure from his previous, pop material—and its release, during the holy month of Ramadan, resulted in a firestorm of national controversy: The conservative Senegalese Muslim community decried the notion of combining faith and pop music, and the album instantly became taboo. Ads were pulled from the airwaves with no explanation and street vendors sent back cassette tapes.

Elizabeth "Chai" Vasarhelyi, the filmmaker best known for her 2003 documentary about young Kosovars who came of age during the war, was documenting the singer as he performed the album to live audiences all over the world. The resulting film, Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, captures the initial outcry upon Egypt's release, and the album's ultimate triumph: Egypt won a Grammy; the Senegalese community revisited, and finally, embraced it. (N'Dour auctioned off the Grammy for cash, which he then used to donate to buying an ambulance.) I Bring What I Love opened in limited theaters this month. We spoke with Vasarhelyi about the malaria country, and patience.


LUCY MADISON: What inspired you to make a film about Youssou N'Dour?

ELIZABETH CHAI VASARHELYI: There are two things. I was frustrated by the images of Africa in the media, and I felt frustrated about my own inability to affect change, given the political situation at the moment. I thought that music was one way to look at Africa in a more positive light. A film came out at the time called Amandala, which looks at the events in South Africa through music, and Youssou's name comes up a lot. I wasn't interested in a biopic and I wasn't interested in a concert film, but when I saw him perform live, there was something almost life-affirming about the experience—and I'm not a religious person.  met him and he shared the Egypt album with me, and the moment I heard it I knew that there was a film that should be made.

MORE »

Photo by Lucy Madison

Last Friday night, at the venerable, trashy-fun Mr. Black, Fritz Helder & the Phantoms threw an outrageous, sweaty, over-the-top dance party for the release of their cheekily titled debut album, Greatest Hits, out now on Nelly Furtado's new Nelstar label. Rumor is that Furtado—who discovered this foursome on the ground in Toronto, then invited a few of them to tour with her as dancers—actually started the label specifically for these guys. (This is totally unconfirmed, but fun to believe!) The album is all catchy electro-pop party jams, which mainly address such Very Important Issues as sex, dancing, outfits, and sexy dancing outfits (which, given what they consist of—"Red coat, white stockings, black shoes and a little beret"—could have come out of a Prince video or the movie Heathers), so the release party was an appropriately serious matter. Nelly was there to introduce the band, and the four members (singers Fritz Helder and Pastel Supernova, keyboardist Diego Superstar and guitarist Silk Helder) were decked out in their signature leather straps, crazy eye makeup, and dangerous lack of anything else. It is no surprise that the enviable dance moves were in abundance, nor that, at some point during the course of the 11-song set, Fritz managed to lose not only his very fashionable jacket, but also his wrestler-reminiscent leotard-top.

Because summer's only halfway over and Fritz and Co. have to go back to Canada for awhile, the band has left us with a playlist of their favorite seasonal party jams. Just so we can keep things going until their next visit. Hopefully that will be soon.


Summer Party Jams
1. Malibu—Hole
2. Pull up to My Bumper—Grace Jones
3. Que Tal America—Two Man Sound
4. Automatic—The Pointer Sisters
5. Single Life—Cameo
6. Thong Song—Sisqo
7. Can You Feel It?—Jackson 5
8. Ready To Wear—Felix da Housecat
9, Burnin' Up—Madonna
10. Hot in Herre—Tiga
11. U Don't Even Know Me—Armand Van Helden
Encore Track
12. Summertime Girls—LFO

MORE »

Up until about six months ago, you probably knew Michael Welch, vaguely, from...somewhere. "Joan of Arcadia," maybe, or "The Riches?" "CSI?" "Star Trek?" "Law & Order?" The actor has, after all, been acting for a full ten of his 21 years, and he's worked on everything from happy-family fare to edgy premium cable series to big-budget blockbusters. And yet, until recently Welch had enjoyed that fuzzy ubiquity that comes with years' worth of small roles in film and on television.

But then came Twilight. On November 17, 2008, The Greatest Love Story of Our Time opened in theaters everywhere, and Michael Welch instantly forsook "Where do I know him from?"—level fame for the kind of face recognition one gets when one is in a record-breaking, heartthrob-making, teen-obsession-for-the-ages kind of movie. True, Welch doesn't get to engage in any Edward Cullen-style smoldering eye-gazing sessions—his character, Mike Newton, is known for his overly-friendly demeanor, pleasantly-popular social status, and hopelessly-enduring crush on Bella Swan (Need we say it? Kristen Stewart.)—but then, he's also not getting hit by cars. We spoke with the young actor while he was on a brief hiatus between filming New Moon and the saga's third installment, Eclipse, and he filled us in on a little behind-the-scenes gossip.  


LUCY MADISON: How's it going? Where are you? Are you guys done filming New Moon?

MICHAEL WELCH: I'm great! Right now I am in Silverlake, California. I'm outside and it's a beautiful day. New Moon is, is all wrapped up, and we're going to be doing Eclipse in August or September, I think, so we're knocking them out pretty fast.

LM: What are you doing in the meantime?

MW: I'm actually leaving Los Angeles in two days to go to Lexington, Kentucky to work on a film called Unrequited. It's a very intense little independent project, sort of a modern-day teen version of Misery. R-rated, though, so not for all of the Twilight fandom.

LM: Speaking of which... When you went into Twilight, did you have any idea what a huge success it would become?

MORE »