Tony Kay

Conan, what is best in life?

Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women!

With dialogue like that, you know you're not dealing with All About Eve. But then again, that 1950 classic's conspicuously bereft of head-lopping, stabbing, pillaging, and giant snakes; so there's some trade-off involved.

The Grand Illusion Cinema rings in October with some serious sword-and-sandal action beginning tonight. Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer--both showcasing the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the title role--play October 1 through 7, and red-blooded fans of action cinema owe it to themselves to take a peek.

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Conan the Barbarian's the keeper here, a fantasy epic whose blend of sturm und drang weight and good old-fashioned blood-and-boobs-laden action plays pretty damned well today. It follows the odyssey of the title character (Ah-nuld), a muscular warrior who leads a life of thievery while pursuing vengeance against the (literal) monster of a ruler who slaughtered Conan's family, Thulsa Doom (creepily played by James Earl Jones).

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Author Robert E. Howard's mythic melange of two-fisted sword-wielding warriors, monsters, and frequently-undressed maidens finds a perfect latter-day interpreter in director John Milius, a guy whose machismo previously manifested itself in screenplays for a couple of the Dirty Harry movies and Apocalypse Now. Milius and his co-screenwriter Oliver Stone treat this pulp universe with a little bit too much gravitas sometimes, but Milius leavens the weightiness with a thuggish sense of humor and plenty of rip-roaring battles royale.

Schwarzenegger was never much of an actor, but his charisma's undeniable here, and Milius surrounds the muscleman with an ace supporting cast: Sandahl Bergman's pure feline grace as Conan's ass-kicking dream chick; Max von Sydow has a field day as jovial King Osric; Mako brings his customary impish twinkle to his role as Official Exposition Carrier; and biker-movie stalwart William "Big Bill" Smith steals the first quarter of the movie as Conan's dad, a man so bad-assed it takes a dozen guys in armor, an ax in the chest, and two attack dogs to bring him down.

Add in a terrific orchestral score from the late great Basil Poledouris, still-impressive set design, and overt visual references to everything from Sergio Leone to Blazing Saddles, and you've got a spectacle that should still look pretty amazing on a genuine movie screen.

Conan the Barbarian brought in decent but not stellar box office returns, so producer Dino de Laurentiis crafted the sequel with a broader audience in mind. This meant toning down the violence and sex for a PG rating (boo, hiss), and making the sequel a half-hour shorter than its predecessor. Conan the Destroyer isn't all bad--there's a goodly share of swordplay, Mako's back, and the amusing shaggy-dog cast includes pro basketball god Wilt 'The Stilt' Chamberlain and a glowering Grace Jones. But it's unmemorably helmed by old hand Richard Fleischer (who did much better with 1958's lusty The Vikings), and a lot less entertaining than most of the original Conan's imitators. Give me The Beastmaster, The Sword and the Sorceror, or Yor, Hunter from the Future over Conan the Destroyer any day of the millennium.

If you want to see a seriously entertaining bad sequel, however, stick around for the Illusion's late-night presentation of The Howling II tonight and Saturday. It picks up right where the stone-classic 1981 original left off, with Ben White (the brother of the Karen White character from the first Howling) discovering his sibling's lycanthropic origins and jaunting off to Transylvania with a charismatic stranger (the unimpeachably awesome Christopher Lee) to battle Stirba the Werewolf Queen (played with scenery-chewing sexiness by B-movie siren Sybil Danning).

Don't look at the original as some sort of sacred totem, and The Howling II packs much schlocky enjoyment in its 91 minutes--exploding eyeballs, ridiculous transformation scenes featuring refurbished ape suits, rib-tickling dialogue, a comfort-food character actor cast (in addition to Lee and Danning, eighties beefcake hero Reb Brown plays the heroic Ben), a really cool theme song that sounds like Blancmange jamming with Bauhaus, and heaping helpings of gratuitous sex and violence. How gratuitous? Stick around through the (very NSFW) closing credits to see the same footage of Danning ripping her top off, replayed eighteen times. And yes, someone out there besides me counted.

With its hastily-set-up klieg lights, metal foldout chairs, card tables full of food, and a few sheets of white tarp separating the talent from aisles of Flatstock rock poster shoppers, the Fisher Pavilion Hospitality Room feels like a MASH unit, only with nicer catering...and way more stylin' residents.

Two dozen members of the Wheedle's Groove ensemble are converging in this makeshift space, and talking to various factions of broadcast, online, and print media to promote their set that afternoon at Bumbershoot. All of these seasoned singers and players somehow manage to look damned cool even amidst the sub-army-hospital lighting. It's as if a pinata full of sharp-dressed soul men has been burst open.

Happy Wheedle's Groove Day--literally. Mayor McGinn himself will anoint this day (Saturday, September 4, 2010) with that title soon, in honor of this thirty-piece groove collective. In the meantime, though, it's meet, greet, and interview time for these ambassadors of Seattle's golden age of R&B.

In case you've been living in a state of funk depletion for the last five years, here are the Cliffs' Notes: Indie label Light in the Attic Records put out Wheedle's Groove, a CD compilation of long-lost 1960s and '70s Seattle soul and funk singles, in 2005. It was a major revelation for a lot of Northwest music obsessives (yours truly included), unearthing a thriving and fertile R & B scene that all but vanished 'neath the long shadow cast by the Grunge Era.

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A terrific documentary of the same name surfaced earlier this year at the Seattle International Film Festival, providing an absorbing, funny, and powerfully inspirational oral history as accompaniment to the music. Since then, members of many of these vintage outfits (Cooking Bag, Black on White Affair, The Overton Berry Trio, and scores of others) have played live gigs around town, busting out originals and covers easily the equal of anything offered by Motown, Stax, or Muscle Shoals back in the day.

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That statement's not just whistling Dixie, either. My lucky draw of the interview cards puts me face-to-face with the creators of some of Wheedle's Groove's undisputed highlights: Curtis Hammond and Leonard Hammond Jr., former frontmen for seventies funk band Broham (dig their gem, "Nothing in Common"); pioneering keyboardist Ron Buford; and Buford's creative collaborator, soul shouter Ural Thomas.

Buford provides some of the Wheedle's documentary's most choice stories, but he isn't feeling terrifically talkative at the moment: five hours of preceding interviews are likely taking their toll. After a brief reminiscence about his past as a Bumbershoot performer (he's played the fest around a dozen times by his estimate), he grouses amusingly about the "corny" security presence and walks away, muttering under his breath like a be-bop Popeye the Sailor. It's a far cry from the animated guy onstage awhile later, coaxing swinging richness from his Hammond B3 as he rocks back and forth in thrall to the groove.

The Hammond Brothers and Thomas more than take up the conversational slack. They're as eager to talk as they are to sing and play, and they sing and play like no one's business during the 90-minute set an hour or two later: The Hammonds harmonize with a soulful clarity that only blood ties can bring; and the septuagenarian Thomas busts out dance moves ( and a primal R&B growl) that coulda caused James Brown to pop a Cold Sweat. Our chat proves a perfect aperitif to one serious platter of live soul.

I've been plugged into the Seattle music scene for over twenty years, and I thought I knew it all. Then I saw the Wheedle's Groove documentary, and heard the songs, and it was like opening the door to grandpa's attic and seeing all this wonderful shit packed in there.

Curtis Hammond: [Laughs] It was lost, and no one would've known about it, were it not for a few things...the CD, the movie.

Leonard Hammond, Jr.: If those things hadn't have happened, it would still be undercover. Which is a shame. But we're glad it got uncovered.

Has this movement led to reunions of the individual bands covered in the documentary, or has it been more of a collective?

Ural Thomas: I would say it's been more of a collective. A lot of the guys that I came up with are either dead, or too sick to even perform. A lot of the guys didn't even want to play anymore. Some of the baddest guys on the planet...they were just so talented and had so many openings for the soul, and then they said they don't want to do it anymore.

LH: For the big finale, you'll see about thirty of us at one time.

UT: And you'll see different ages, from 100 to one. A lot of the young guys, they're so knowledgeable, because it took them a long time to even realize what they were learning as children. And here we are, all together, it's just like magic. It's kids and grown folks together, sharing knowledge, and just sharing love.

CH: The range of the age is quite a bit when we're up onstage, and it feels good to know that there are young folks, and old folks. But once we get up there, we're equal. And we blend and when we play, we have to listen to each other. We have to, to perform right. We learned this, [Ural] learned this, and you have to listen when you're playing; so that means you're talking to each other. We're talking to each other as we're projecting out.

What's this blend of ages been like, collaboratively?

UT: Well, the process has been wonderful because I've met new people doing the same stuff we did as kids, it's like we passed our soul down to them and they shared it back with us. We're coming together. It's a wonderful movement that we've all hungered for, because for awhile it felt like we were gonna be pushed out and just rise above us; but they were so heavy with the stuff they learned from us, they're coming back and they want to do it with us. So it's been like that for me.

LH: It's a constant learning process. When we watched [Ural] play again, it's like, "Man, that's some good stuff!" So we're still checking it out, and still learning, absorbing things. And, like he said, I think when he was watching us, he was thinking, "That's cool!" and absorbing influences, too.

CH: It's a constant give-and-take, feedback.

LH: That's kind of the way music is. We learned that from our dad, and we've learned from Ural, and I'm sure that he learned from his mentors, [like] Ron.

UT: That's where a lot of the change comes from, because I don't want to stay the same. I want to be able to grow with the times, because time does not remain the same. People don't remain the same. The new kids, they've got a whole different concept of hearing the music. We had to learn notes to understand it. Today, you don't have to learn anything, except how to be a computer whiz [laughs] which is OK. There's nothing wrong with that. I can't work a computer. But I can play the real thing, and then when I run into guys that can do the computer thing, I try to get together with them, and we share knowledge. Time don't wait for you. If you think it's gonna wait, it's gonna come back and grab you, and say, "Come on!"

What do you draw from for influences, musically?

LH: Major old-school funk: Earth, Wind and Fire; Stevie Wonder; Cameo; Con Funk Shun...all that kind of stuff. All that music is deep within me.

CH: Me, too. I still listen to all that stuff, and I even go back to some of the stuff my mom and dad listened to when we were five, six years old: Miles, Cannonball [Adderly], Coltraine...That's what I go back to. Then I go back to the funk. Then some blues...

LH: Mostly going back to when we were young. When we were little kids in the house and we were playing with our cars, dad had Miles Davis and Mahalia Jackson playing in the background.

 

CH: We were probably beating each other up, but we had Mahalia Jackson playing. We probably didn't even know it, but subconsciously we were getting it. Music was always there. Music was always--ALWAYS--playing in the house. My dad was a musician, my mom was a singer...

UT: When I was coming up, it was heavy blues and heavy jazz. So we came along and at first a lot of the stuff we were doing was too heavy. They said, "That's not what Miles and those guys were doing!" They were playing the same chord structures, and we were doing a totally different rhythms on top of the stuff; different time signatures and stuff. Like Dave Brubeck. I got a lot of influence from that 3/4 timing. I'm a dancer, too; and I like movements in odd times. And I like it when a plan comes together [laughs]! That's what happens when a bunch of musicians come together from all different ages and stuff. Everyone's gonna feel it a little different. The horn player's gonna feel it different. They've heard it, but they still want to play it with their flavor.

Any plans to take Wheedle's Groove on the road?

C: There's been talk of it.

UT: Actually, it's not a done deal. Every time people get together, they say, "Man! We should do this!" It's a wonderful thing if something like that jumps up, I think it's past time for something like that to happen. A lot of the time, the young guys and the older guys come together just for the kicks. So it won't stick unless they want to do it.

LH: They have to prove to us that it's gonna be to everyone's benefit to be able to go to these places and do all these things. We have fun with it, but let's be real. You have to get a little from it; make a little money and have a little fun at the same time. Just doing this and not really getting anything back from it, though...We did that for years. We used to play for $25 a night, and believe it or not there are still guys in the city who are still making fity bucks a night...and they made that in the seventies.

UT: They want you to come out and play for nothing. They tell you, "Look, man, you'll get good exposure!" I've been exposed already! [laughs] Can I have some coverage?

LH: How about a blanket [laughs]?

CH: That hasn't changed. That'll always be the same.

I'd imagine that it's a bit of an issue logistically, too, with a pretty big combo.

LH: I think some of the talk is that we're gonna have to tighten up on that. Realistically, we'd have to tighten up a bit on that. But I think it can be done; done with taste and with flavor. And still everybody has a good time. We just have to come together and talk about it, which we haven't done enough of. But we're going to.

UT: We have different players coming out, and a lot of them live in different states, so they couldn't make it back. They had to get guys who were living here; or guys that came through town and said, "I love the stuff that you guys are doing!" They come through and do it for awhile, but there's no money in it, so they can't hang. So then next time, there's someone else playing. It's kinda hard to say that we're gonna take it on the road and that we have a solid package. It hasn't worked like that yet.

LH: That's why we're gonna get together and start talking about it.

CH: We have to talk about what Wheedle's Groove [is]...who Wheedle's Groove is. Right now it's a big collective, like you said. It's hard.

UT: It's a lot of work. And I think that Herman Brown [former Cooking Bag guitarist and de facto coordinator of the Wheedle's Groove live shows] has been doing a wonderful job. He's been gathering people together; working with them, and trying to find out who will and who won't...Who can and who can't. And that's a big job.

LH: That's a big job for a seven-piece group, never mind thirty. You're trying to please everyone and give everyone a shot. Herman Brown, he's the man.

UT: I just met Herman this year through the Wheedle's Groove people. I've come to know him as a wonderful man. I think that he, sincerely, would like for this to work. To find the right combination of people who want to stick with this. Right now, a lot of people are just interested in right now, not the future. If you want to do this and make this work, you can't just throw a bunch of guys together. We worked hard to put it together. Before I took my first gig, my band and me had been together for eight years. But it wasn't a job--I worked two jobs on the side. But when I got off work, we went to my house, or one of the other fellas' houses. That was one of the wonderful things about growing up and not worrying about the money. But as you grow up and stuff, you've got to worry about a family. So that's been one of the most important things for all of us, is to be able to say "I don't mind going from here to Canada, or from here to Alaska, if I can make enough money to leave, so I know when I come back home I don't have to worry if my family's gonna be OK.

When I was younger, they'd call me and say, "Hey, Ural, can you be up here for a gig tomorrow?" And I'd say, "Yeah!" And I'd get on my bicycle. I knew the guys when I got there...We'd been working together for years, never got a chance to rehearse. We had to go right onstage and hadn't seen each other in maybe ten or twelve years. So when we got there, we'd have to sit down and figure it out. "You know this one?" "I"ve been working on this one..." We'd end up with a set list, sometimes, with just ten songs. But we could stretch those ten songs out all night long. Through the process of those ten songs we came up with creative things in between--brand-new songs. And we had worked through the years and made it worthwhile to get together, because everyone was on the same page.

You kind of looked forward to it. You put some time in, trying to get that music together. And every chance you get, you want to get some of it. You want to share it with somebody. It's like, Ural made some new ice cream. Oh, hey, Charles is over there: He's got a whole bucketful of his own. Let's put it together, and we'll have some new ice cream [laughs]! That's how I look at it.

Will the Wheedle's Groove ensemble be recording some more in the near future?

U: Yes. I've got some great ideas for a lot of the older stuff, where I'm doing new words. To me, a lot of the music is not really changeable, but as I've grown older I've learned new things about the...things I already knew. And I've met people that I already knew and had forgotten. So we come together, and they bring up something fresh in my mind. Then I think, "Man, it sure is good to be together again! " And it's always been that way for me. When I get involved, I try to give as much as I can, to make it easy for someone to come up and mess with me any kind of way they want, just to make it complete. We never know exactly what we're gonna say, or do. To bring us back together was something...I didn't think I'd ever be doing these songs on a scale like this. I never thought this would happen.

One of the refreshing things about this appreciation of Wheedle's Groove and old-school soul and funk in general is getting back to the sound of human beings pouring their sweat and their hearts into real instruments.

LH: In real time...

CH: Thank you for noticing that, for caring about that.

UT: You see it, you know, and now you'll share that with somebody--like what we're doing now; sharing information and things that I didn't expect. I thought I'd just go in, perform, and be going home. Now I've been here about twelve hours [laughs]...

CH: And we haven't even started playing yet [laughs]!

UT: It's been so much fun. It's something I've been missing.

LH: It's like a family reunion. And nothing beats a family reunion.

UT: ...Except for a good hamburger [laughs].

The English Beat play Bumbershoot at 9:30 p.m. on Monday, September 6.

Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, dance clubs all over the world pulsed with a different backbeat as a small army of British kids picked up instruments and started their own scene. The movement became known as the second wave of ska, or two-tone, and it injected reggae and soul music with the do-it-yourself spirit of punk. Bands like Madness, the Specials, and Selecter gave clubgoers an upbeat alternative to punk’s strident rebel rallying cry by serving up butt-shaking, danceable beats with sociopolitical lyrics.

Even amongst that stable of great bands, the English Beat stood out. They knew how to get a crowd moving like any good dance group, could deliver lyrics as persuasive as any Gang of Four polemic (Exhibit A for the defense: the addictive and acerbic "Stand Down, Margaret"), and produced an incredible armada of classic pop songs over the course of their three albums.

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Dave Wakeling, the English Beat’s lead singer and guitarist, crooned his songs in a supple baritone that felt incongruous coming from a boyish white kid. And in addition to tackling topicality, his lyrics addressed the perils, joys, and comic absurdities of that old devil Love with disarming and welcome sophistication. If Cole Porter had grown up in Birmingham, England on a steady diet of Prince Buster and Motown, he’d have written songs like Dave Wakeling’s.

The English Beat folded in 1983, and Wakeling followed that up with a stint in the pop band General Public and various solo projects. Most recently, however, the self-described troubadour’s been on the road with a reformed English Beat for the last five years. He’s the only original member in the current stateside incarnation of the band, but he’s surrounded himself with a tight and empathetic group of young guns who help him deliver the old hits with a spark that sets the proceedings head-and-shoulders above your standard nostalgia act.

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My interview with Wakeling gets off to a shaky start: An emergency with the musical equipment at his gig that day offsets our conversation by an hour, and I’m forced to call him from work (my taping equipment only works on a landline, something I no longer possess in this shiny 21st century). Even after we finally connect, his cell phone drops out about twenty minutes into our chat, and when he calls my work to get back to me, he runs afoul of our very regimented receptionist, hilariously (more on that later). But it’s well worth it. You don’t get to talk to the Paul McCartney of dance pop every day of the year.

Over the course of nearly ninety minutes, Wakeling covers everything from his old bandmates to new projects to the Seattle music scene with candor, intelligence, and an infectious sense of humor. It’s an embarrassment of riches, interview-wise, so much so that I have to edit it considerably. As for the unexpurgated interview, I figure I’ll just save it for later.

Tell me a little about your current live show. This is your second time stopping in Seattle in just a couple of months.

We like playing Seattle as much as, if not more than, most places in the country. It's one of our favorite places to play, and I think in main part it's because we don't play there very often. When you're planning tours, Seattle can sometimes get missed out, unless you can make a loop out of it in between locations like Boise and Vancouver. In some ways, it may have worked to our benefit, because there are certain places in California where we've played so often that everyone knows all the words, and most everything I'm going to say [laughs]. We tend to play to big and excited crowds in Seattle: There's a good deal of anticipation because they haven't seen us in awhile. We only tend to play Seattle once a year.

What can people expect from your Bumbershoot set that they haven't seen in the past?

Well, there'll be some of these new songs I've been showing off about. We'll probably play "How Can You Stand There," which is an up-tempo ska rocker with an African lilt in the background. We'll probably play "The Love You Give Lasts Forever," which is sort of an English Beat power-pop model. It has a fabulous clap-along aspect, and there's a timely message, I think. That seems to be going down really well.

The current incarnation of the Beat is really tight instrumentally.

They are so tight, I started to get worried—we’re not becoming all slick now, are we [laughs]? Yeah, we’ve got the hang of it by now. We changed our saxophone player in the last few months, and this chap Matt Morrish is a winner. He has Saxa’s feel and style of play, and a wide repertoire of jazz tidbits and cameos to draw from.

The English Beat’s original sax player Saxa was amazing. His were huge shoes to fill, so I’ve heard that you’re pretty hard on your sax players as a result. Is that still the case?

Unfortunately, we thought we’d always be using this crazy Jamaican guy that drank too much rum, forever. He blossomed over the course of three albums: I think his solo on "Mirror in the Bathroom" ended up in a coffee table book of the 100 Greatest Jazz Saxophone Solos of the Twentieth Century. So it is quite a job for a young fella to take on board. Plus you want them to be able to express themselves as well. I don’t want nobody coming in, just playing someone else’s parts—‘cause that won’t work. I like them to learn the parts, then forget them. The lineup now is, I feel, the best it’s ever been; and I’m glad I got the team together for for some [new] recordings.

From what I’ve heard, you’re still on good terms with the original members of the band.

We seem to be getting on great right now. It’s had its ups and downs. [The few conflicts] are usually, I’d say, first instigated by people coming in to represent one or more of us. And in order to try and impress you, they sort of tread over lines and disappoint other original members of the band. That’s usually been the start of any trouble. Of course, a group only splits up when they start to become slightly distrustful of each another anyway, which is why reforming groups sometimes to me seems like about as much fun as trying to find the first five people you’ve had sex with, inviting them all to dinner, and expecting them all to just get on great [laughs]! I think what’s happened is it’s mellowed into a warm pride in the legacy of the group; of what we managed to achieve. Plus, the songs don’t sound [like] crap. Everyone in the [original lineup] is quite surprised that the songs still seem organic, and they still made a decent point. In fact, some of the political points seem even more pointed now than they did at the time.

Your songwriting with the English Beat revealed a lot of influences outside ska and rocksteady. Obviously you guys were listening to things like Desmond Dekker, the Skatalites, and Motown soul, but what influences outside of those made the strongest impressions on you as a songwriter when you started out?

Van Morrison; The Velvet Underground; Gene Pitney; The Buzzcocks; Elvis Costello; Nick Lowe; Dave Edmunds; The Monkees; Petula Clark; Burt Bacharach; the art of the three-minute pop single that would leave you longing for more as it fades out a bit too quickly and you find yourself singing the title by yourself, and you want to hear the song again straight away. That's what I like. I like that more than anything. I like it way more than albums.

It was the punk thing that opened the doors for me, because in the early seventies it was all pomp and glory. It seemed like groups were carved out of stone. Then I heard Devo’s version of ‘Satisfaction,’ and thought it sounded like ‘Satisfaction’ mixed with ‘Cherry Oh Baby’. I was like, "My god, if you can do that and make it sound as good as that, then I want to be in a group. And there were the Buzzcocks, who could have three perfect pop singles in ten minutes. And you wanted to hear all three of them again. I was like, yep, I want to be in a group now.

One of the bedrocks of a lot of your work is a really strong dance beat, which is especially cherished by people in these times.

It's really useful. It's as good as a massage during a recession, and it's cheaper, you know? And it connects you with other people.

I've always felt more comfortable in my own skin, and more comfortable in the world, when I was dancing. What struck me when I was a teenager and going to clubs was: You'd have songs that you liked, and then you'd hear them in a club and you'd be dancing to it; and it'd catch you at just the right moment. All of a sudden you've got all of the inferences in the lyrics--some of which had passed you by before. The next time you heard it when you were sitting at home, you haven't made it up just because you were full of the fury of the club. No, you'd caught something there that the songwriter had hinted at; that he was alluding to. But I would spot that very often when I was dancing.

I'm not a particularly good dancer [laughs], either, so I had to come up with a dance beat that people like me could dance to [hearty laughter]; a universal, "How irresistible is that?" sort of mixture between pop, reggae and soul beats that--if you're an accomplished dancer--gives you many opportunities to clear a space for yourself on the floor. And if you're not that much of a dancer, you can just join along with the pulse of the crowd, and your dancing becomes more exuberant as the show goes on. That can help you get over Hump Day...

I'm really glad to be a troubadour in these awful times, and to have picked that sort of music; the sort of beats and grooves that cheer up my heart. And it also gives me the opportunity to sing about stuff that's contentious. If I had the music as contentious as the lyrics are, I'd have people taking potshots at me.

The English Beat's material was sometimes very political, but it was never at the expense of the song. Was maintaining that balance between politics and pop melody a hard one for you to maintain?

Yes. Very delicate, once you realized that you were writing songs and singing songs that people were going to buy that included your political positions on things--which of course change like the seasons. So, yeah, it is a great responsibility, and you realize in the excitement of it to start with, that it's very easy to confuse the stage with the soapbox. You can see how you can actually put more people off of your message than you would attract to it if you come at it too heavy... You learn to insinuate slightly, so somebody'll go, "Hey, what does he mean there?" And then they start thinking, "What do I think about that?" Ah, good. Gotcha!

Your lyrics have a great grasp of emotional politics as well as global politics. How do you feel your songwriting has evolved over the years?

Part of it is: Well, you're getting older, number one. You're likely to have a slightly wider overview than you did when you were younger. You might write a song with one of the basic underlying themes being that you don't understand women, but you're not surprised about it now [laughs]. Whereas, it’s quite a shocker to a young chap. I grew up in an era where equality of the sexes was very important; you didn’t quite know how to treat girls like your equal, and of course not knowing quite how that was done, you treated them like they were guys, and they hated you for it [laughs]. So those sorts of things would make you write songs like "Save it for Later," where you’re just lost. Everybody thinks you’re a grown-up ‘cause you look like one, and you feel more and more like a child. Well, it’s a bit different now, so now you have a bit more of an overview.

For better or for worse, you are who you are. I’ve got one grandchild, and one on the way this week. With some water under the bridge, you have to draw the strands of your own story together and see how it continues on. I have a sense that we’re in for some massive change… You can see now how the twentieth-century conundrums that are facing us are not responding at all well to twentieth-century solutions. So there will be changes in things, and the [new] songs reflect some of that. I think that without compassion and community, we’re not going to make it.

There’s a real emotional honesty and directness to your songwriting that seems contrary to a lot of modern music.

I always [try to] find a confessional way of meeting people square in the middle, so that the love songs incorporate—as often as I can—those awful moments when you’re watching a thoroughly ludicrous soap opera, until one of the characters starts saying something that you’ve said [laughs]! [You think] Oh, no; they’ve got cameras in my head. And of course, that’s what draws us together. That’s our common bond. It’s our foibles, so I like to have that element in the songs. If you can find something that’s that deeply personal, which includes sort of a confessional element about letting yourself down; or how it takes two to screw up; it connects to people’s hearts. I don’t even have to go looking for that. That’s the meat and potatoes of a lot of my songwriting.

I read you've been working with the Thievery Corporation recently.

Yeah, I did. I went and stayed at their studio for a few days, and it was good. It was a different way of working--completely different. Normally, I have to sit there until I have an idea that forms into a whole sort of melody and poem and usually the music starts to extrapolate out of that. Working with them, you just play little bits and have fun, and giggle together. Then the engineer...captures all the best bits that you did and sticks them together. Then all of a sudden it sounds like you all really know what you're doing and you're ever-so good at it [laughs]. And everyone's still laughing and giggling. So you get a chance to play along to that.

I'd always been a purist, I suppose; in thinking I wouldn't even pick up the guitar and play it unless I've got something that moved me to tears that I wanted to write a song about in the first place. So this was a whole revolutionary way of looking at it, and I enjoyed it.

That ties in to something else I wanted to ask you...You started out working in that old-school organic fashion. You got your instruments, you got your singers; you sat down, and you bashed it out. Technology's really changed the orbit of that.

It certainly has. We've just recorded six tracks. We learned 17 demos of songs that I'd written. Some of the band has heard [the songs] as I've been writing them; some of them were completely new to them. We've worked them all up, and then we've made demos of them. Tidied them up; we went in the studio to record our favorite few. We just did them live. And then we did the same songs in a more technological way, to a click track, all playing along. We liked bits of what we heard in both.

It was a fabulous way for me to be able to use the best of what we do do well, which is playing ensemble. We do 170 shows a year. We do have that lovely kind of ESP that you get from the 10,000 hours, like somebody will do something, and all three or four other people will react to it immediately and nobody knew we were gonna do that, and it was great and we just did it; and we got away with it. So we have those sort of moments that we can now incorporate onto the overdubbing and recording of those drum tracks, because they're solid as a rock and they're as groovy as we can possibly get them, too. So I'm really happy.

[At this point Wakeling's cell phone call drops; through a series of convoluted circumstances--him calling me back unsuccessfully, me calling him back unsuccessfully, him finally getting back through to me via my work's main switchboard--we finally reconnect. In the interim, he's been dressed down by the front desk receptionist...to his great amusement.] 

When my call dropped, I just said, "I'll call the number straight away." Your dear lady friend answered the phone. And I was like, "Oh, you know what...I was phoning up for an interview. I didn't bother to check the message, or to double-check the name. Perhaps I should do that." And she said, "Well, that would be awfully handy, wouldn't it?" [hearty laughter].

I felt like my mother had just come back to life. [affecting haughty falsetto] "That would be awfully handy now, wouldn't it, David?"

Why do you think your songs hold up after all these years?

Well, I think the upbeat aspect of it counts for a great deal. That draws people’s immediate attention, ‘cause it sounds cheery. People think it’s happy music, but of course, its roots are reggae, which is survival music. You know, we’d better have a dance, because there’s no dinner. So it was a way to cheer yourself in times of deprivation. That’s always interesting to people. Then on the lyrics, I spend as much time and energy as possible trying to find the personal start of it. I try to dig down deep in myself for them. So I think the combination helps.

Were you ever bothered that the English Beat was pigeonholed as a ska band?

Oh, yes, totally. It bothered the heck out of us. We thought we’d made it very clear what we wanted to do from the start, which was to be part of the punky-reggae party. We were blending punk and reggae: I was mixing the Velvet Underground with Toots and the Maytals; and sticking Van Morrison on top of it if I could get away with it. But we signed with Two-Tone Records, and Two-Tone became a big phenomenon. The other bands [on the label] were more in line with ska anyway. So it just became a label. You get used to it, and you’re grateful that people love the songs, but after you have 100,000 people tell you that "Save it for Later" or "I Confess" is their favorite ska song of all time, you just nod resignedly.

That’s interesting because Special Beat Service sounds like a reaction to that perception. You had songs like "End of the Party," which has a Cole Porter feel; and "Save it for Later" is pure sixties pop with those chiming guitars…

[Ska] was meant to be a springboard, not a straitjacket, that’s what I always said in interviews at the time.

The English Beat and General Public were known for their strong originals, but charted big with a few covers, too. Are there any standouts amongst the artists you’ve covered? And what’s your take on some of the artists who’ve covered your songs?

I got to meet Smokey Robinson at a Grammy party; that was lovely. He knew of the version [The English Beat’s remake of "Tears of a Clown"], and we were pleased to meet each other. I told him that it was remarkable to me that I got to sing that song, to have it be my first single and launch me into the pop business, because as a kid I sang along to his records. I told him that I was convinced he had the voice of an angel, and that if I could sing anything like that, that I could be an angel, too. He gave me the biggest and longest hug… It was incredibly touching, and he looked at least twenty years younger than me [laughs]!

I got to meet Pete Townshend, too. He invited me to meet him backstage to his dressing room for a fifteen-minute audience. He said some very interesting things, all under the title, "Songwriters are the luckiest people in the world," and that I should always remember that; because it didn’t always feel like it. I was like, "Thank you…I think [laughs]…" It was great to meet him, he’d been a hero when I was a kid, and having him sing "Save it for Later" was stupendous.

And having Pearl Jam sing ["Save it for Later"], too…I got to meet Eddie Vedder just at the start of his career, and I liked him. I thought he was an incredibly genuine chap, had a lovely voice, and a heart most definitely in the right place. And it turns out I still have the same feelings about him now. He had to go through the shock-horror of superstardom, now he’s come out of the other end of that, still lending his voice and spirit to things that matter.

Did you follow the Seattle scene much in the early 1990’s?

No, not much. I mean, I was jealous because it had taken over from us [laughs]. There was also that fin de siècle, flirting with the poppy business that just seemed old-hat, really. I don’t know what it is about it; I think it’s because it’s such a great painkiller. People’s minds on opiates start to accept the grotesque as though it was normal. And life starts to take a sudden twist, and what had been fields of beautiful poppies swaying in the wind suddenly turns into somebody’s mum having to clean her son’s brains off the wall. So I never went for it, because I’d seen it all before. Most punks ended up as junkies.

How do you think you managed to sidestep that path?

Fear of needles, Tony. It’s as simple as that, mate [laughs]!

I don’t know, you’ve got to be careful out there. You can enjoy your rock and roll myths, but you’ve got to remember that they’re myths. Don’t start believing them. I was just sad because I lost lots of friends in other groups. These were people who were 24, 25 years old. The guitarist for the Pretenders…

James Honeyman-Scott…

Yeah, James. He was only 25 when he died. Then Pete [Farndon, the Pretenders’ bassist] passed on just a few weeks later. They both died just three months after we’d opened for them on our first American tour. That was a lesson right there.

I’ll be honest: I loved some of the [grunge] songs, but I refused to become too involved with the scene because it still smelled of poppies to me. And I don’t like the final results of poppies. So there was probably some fantastic music that got ignored by me because it got brushed aside. "No more heroin music about being angry about your dad [laughs]!"

Looking forward to seeing you at Bumbershoot.

I expect it’ll be fantastic. It’s a lovely crowd, and they’re so used to all sorts of different types of music, which is why we went down so well last time. We’ve got a little bit of something for everybody, and a bit of a dance to finish off the celebrations. You get what you give... How could you expect anything else with the performing arts, really? If it gets a bit too tense, I’ve always got the opportunity of hiding on the back of the bus, pretending I’m doing interviews. "Well, when’s he going to be free? We really need to make him feel bad about water…" "No, he’s doing an interview…" Or I might have a nap before the show... "Sorry, you can’t disturb him; Granddad’s having his nap [laughs]!"

The path of Rusty Willoughby's musical career has run parallel to the history of Northwest rock for the last 25 years. And often, that path's been a circuitous one.

In the mid-1980s he founded Pure Joy, a great (and criminally unsung) pop band whose British-informed atmospherics offered a sharp contrast to the Sabbath/Stooges/Sex Pistols trinity that seeped into the Seattle soil at the time. Then when Pure Joy folded, he bounced back as the principal singer/songwriter for Flop, one of the Northwest's greatest power-pop outfits.

Flop seemed poised to join Nirvana and Soundgarden at the vanguard of the Northwest music explosion of the '90s when Epic Records signed the band. The label allowed Flop's excellent sophomore platter Whenever You're Ready to die on the promotional vine, though, and Willoughby and bandmates were unceremoniously dropped.

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Such a setback would have flat-out killed most mortals dead, but at his own easygoing pace Rusty Willoughby has continued to put out some of the Northwest's best rock music since Flop's 1995 dissolution. Throughout all of his ensemble and solo work, Willoughby's calling cards—a knack for melody easily the equal of any pop classicist, a smart and sometimes self-lacerating lyrical sense, and one of the most distinctive schoolboy tenor rock voices this side of Robin Zander—have remained constant, and his versatility as a songwriter continues to flower.

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This normally low-key guy's been surprisingly high-profile lately. Indie label Spark and Shine Records put out his most recent CD, Cobirds Unite, on August 20, and many of the stellar musicians who backed him on the disc (Visqueen's Rachel Flotard, former Screaming Tree Barrett Martin, guitar wizard Johnny Sangster, and cellist-to-the-Northwest-rock-stars Barb Hunter, among many others) have joined him onstage in several well-received live gigs. Upcoming, he and Flotard join an all-star cast for the Hootenany for a Healthy Gulf fundraising show at the Moore Theatre on September 2.

Cobirds sees him augmenting his songwriting with roots touches, completely on his own terms. The pedal steel guitar, cello, violin, and vibraphone sprinkled throughout lend a cinematic cast to the proceedings--as though Lee Hazlewood wrestled George Martin from the Beatles' production chair. And the intertwining of Wiloughby's boyish croon with Flotard's duskily angelic siren song of a voice casts an intoxicating spell.

This Saturday, however, the former Flop frontman gets loud(-ish) with his most recent rock venture, Llama, at Darrell's Tavern in Shoreline ($5, 9:30 p.m.). He's got solid instrumental support from bassist Scott Sutherland and ex-Pure Joy drummer Jim Hunnicutt, as well as a slew of great songs that sound like a slightly less-hyper variation on Flop (in other words, really damned good). The SunBreak talked with Willoughby about his past and present music projects, as well as Pixies singer Black Francis' decidedly non-asshole tendencies.

How did Cobirds Unite come together?

It was total luck. It was around Christmas time, 2008...Rachel and I had been talking over [the course of] a year or two about doing something together, ever since she started playing with Neko [Case] and stuff. And then it just kind of didn't happen for awhile. I had all these songs and decided to send them to her, and I told her if she had time she could listen to them, and the timing worked out. She was getting back from the tour and was in town for awhile.

Then Barrett Martin, who we all knew from back in the Screaming Trees days, had gone down to New Mexico for awhile to paint and do music down there. He came back, literally, that month as well, and was kind of aching to do something. Rachel got back into town and wanted to start learning the songs, so it was just luck, really. Johnny [Sangster] had produced the last Llama record. He plays with Llama sometimes, and I've known him a long time. I always used to go see his bands when I was younger, but once he moved back from Denmark, I started getting to know him better. So it was just sort of natural to have him record it.

The production on the new record is really lush and atmospheric. How much of that sound was Johnny, and how much was you?

I would say it's everybody. A lot of it is Barrett, too...he played drums and bass on the record, and then he was like, "Hey! I've got an idea for vibes here," and he'd put down some really super-cool part. And then Barbara--who's played cello for Mark Lanegan and the Gutter Twins, people like that--had been recording with Visqueen, just because Rachel and her had become friends over the last couple of years. And so that was sort of a natural as well, since Rachel and her had already been playing together as well. I was kind of hinting at wanting a cello player and within two days, we had one [laughs]! I wish I could say it was all hard work, but we really just got lucky.

You and Rachel harmonize together really well. Was that a fresh discovery with the sessions, or was that something that you'd figured out previous to that?

I really don't know. It's funny, because Kim Warnick said one time that Rachel and I had similar voices. This was years ago, when they were both playing in Visqueen. And I was like, "Huh?" Then Rachel--before we started practicing--told me this funny story, where she was listening to my demos up in her sister's attic and her sister and her mom were laughing at her downstairs because they thought she was listening to a tape of herself [laughs]. And I'm like, "I don't get this..." First of all, I'm a dude, but then after we started singing together, it was like, we kind of do have the same kind of phrasing. And I find that I start gravitating toward the sound of her singing, and she'll do the same...it's just really natural, and whenever things feel natural like that, it's usually because it's right, or something's working; and you just have to refine it.

Several of the songs on Cobirds appeared on your last solo CD, Filament Dust. Was it always your intent for those songs to be more fleshed-out instrumentally, or was that something that arose from playing with this group of musicians?

It was really the intention. I'd started listening to a lot of be-bop jazz, and a lot of vocal jazz from the fifties; stuff with a lot of strings and really lush arrangements. I've always been a huge Scott Walker fan, so that stuff kind of started rubbing off on me, too....

One of the interesting things about your songs is how well they translate in multiple treatments. That really came through with "C'mon, C'mon," which started out as a rock song on the Llama record, then showed up on Cobirds as a gentle waltz.

It's interesting and fun to do that. I used to not do that consciously; just because, I don't know, maybe I thought it was some kind of rip-off if I were ever to put the same song on more than one record. But I think you grow up, and you realize that--first of all, no one cares [laughs]--and second of all, it's my stuff. I can do what I want with it.

Your lyrics are typically smarter than your average bear's, but as far as I know, you've never included lyrics sheets with any of your releases. Is there a particular reason for that?

It's probably laziness--I'd have to type all those words out [laughs]! We put out a vinyl version of the first Flop record, and [Frontier Records'] Lisa Fancher made me put a lyric sheet in there. I just hand-drew it. And I remember at that period, I kind of caved in; I said "Okay, it's no big deal."

I didn't really think it was good or bad to put lyrics in a record. Sometimes, I really love it, and sometimes I don't. But I just started kind of thinking more in terms of: I would rather have people figure it out, or try to figure it out, than just read it. It just seems like one more thing you're doing to say, "Hey, look at me! Look at my stuff! Read my words! Listen to my words and read my words at the same time!" [Including] lyrics to me just seems more narcissistic than I need to be, even though I love reading them on other [people's] records.

You seem like a very low-key and low-profile guy, but you've been a lot more visible lately in the wake of the Cobirds release. Are comfortable with that?

I have pretty bad bouts of stage fright, or at least I have in the past. I don't know if it's from taking too much acid when I was in high school or what [laughs]. But I think you get nervous, you start thinking through things...there are times when I don't play live for a year at a time. I don't look forward to the shows. But I think for me the big difference with this group is that...it's not a rock band, so there's no pressure to be cool or anything; it's just playing music. And everybody, especially Rachel, is so great...she's such a cheerleader for everybody. I start believing in myself if I hang around her enough [laughs]!

There's a really relaxed chemistry between you guys onstage.

She's so great in terms of bringing that out in people. We're kind of opposites in terms of personalities. She's just very outgoing; gregarious, I guess. She's just on top of everything, and I kind of live under a mushroom. It's good. I recognize the downfalls of my own living sometimes, and if I can take advantage of someone who draws out the things that I enjoy doing. I totally appreciate that about Rachel.

It's a real nice yin/yang going on there vocally, too.

It took us awhile to learn each other, because I think we'd both been fans of each other but we never hung out that much. We played a couple of shows last summer, really right after we recorded. It was mainly little shows at the Sunset--like a 4:00 show, that sort of thing. She used to laugh at the end of the shows and she'd be like, "You look scared of me!" I think I told her I was; "You're just like...it's like being onstage with Annie or something [laughs]!"

Right down to the freckles and red hair...

...and everything [laughs]! I think in the last year we've hung out much more and kind of figured each other out. That translates when we play together.

I saw you open for Black Francis at the Triple Door a week or two ago. What was he like?

When we first got there, we were all secretly thinking he was going to be an asshole....I just remember the period where the Pixies broke up, and him and Kim Deal were being assholes to each other; so I just expected that kind of person. And he was the nicest, most down-to-earth, regular guy.

When he came up after we played, he was like, "You were really great!" And he just kind of talked to us. And then Eric Drew Feldman was playing with him! That guy played on Trout Mask Replica--he played with Beefheart, with Pere Ubu...I had no idea he was gonna be there. And there I am, talking to Black Francis, and this other guy walks up next to us and says, "Yeah, you guys were really good," and he looks real familiar. Then I realize it's Eric Drew Feldman [laughs]! I was way impressed. It was funny to watch Black Francis snicker because he understood someone who knew who Eric Drew Feldman was, was in the room.

I've been fans of both of them forever...I felt a little awkward because I didn't want to be the superfan, but then Eric Drew Feldman asked me what amp I was using. Then I started talking about Black Francis' acoustic sound out of his electric guitar, and [Francis] was showing me the new pick-up that he got...we were geeks. Then he was talking about buying this amp from Guitar Center, and I told him he should buy from a local shop [laughs]. It was kind of like I was talking to my friends or something. It made it so easy, so inviting. It was great, and totally unexpected. It wasn't like we talked all night, but every time we'd pass each other it was very friendly.

You're playing at Darrell's Tavern with Llama on Saturday. Have you played there before?

Yeah. The first time we played there, it was like this...there was a band from San Francisco that was playing with the Tripwires; I can't remember their name. And they were supposed to do a Portland show or something that got canceled. So they were up here without a show. We were like, "There's got to be a place to play," It was a Friday or a Saturday. And a friend of a friend had just bought Darrell's. He was trying to get music in there anyway, and I guess Jim Sangster and some other people got together and kind of asked if we could do the show there. It was the one place that was trying to do music and didn't have anything booked. And so we just did it.

It turned out to be a super-blast. The staff there were all super-excited to have bands playing, and it's kind of nice. There's actually a parking lot...it's like you're playing out in the suburbs or something. It's not that far, but obviously people don't have much of a nightlife up there, so there were people just coming off of the street on Aurora; they heard it from their house or apartment three blocks away. So they came down to Darrell's to hang out and have a beer.

Will the Llama set feature any new material?

We have a small handful of new songs, but we haven't been able to practice them as much. It's just been one of those things. Jim just had a baby, so he and his wife, all summer, have been pretty much out of commission. He can barely get out of the house. Scott is getting married in November, and he's kind of available less and less these days, just because he's been playing with Paul Lynde Fan Club. We go through phases where we're fairly busy and productive, then we'll go five years without doing anything [laughs].

I heard that you had a second Llama record finished.

We had a second one that we recorded with Johnny. It's been done since 2007, but we just haven't done anything with it. Then we have probably another full record that we could record, but we'd have to finish it and stuff. We have new stuff, we just haven't been able to practice it.

When you reformed Pure Joy a few years ago, you added one or two Flop songs to your live shows. Will you play strictly Llama songs on Saturday, or will you be dipping into the Flop and Pure Joy catalogs? 

Probably just Llama. I don't think there's been any time where we've played any Flop stuff live. The later Pure Joy were pretty lame [laughs]! Maybe something good came out of it, but Lisa and Jim and I were talking about this. We were kind of out of commission for a long time from playing any music; and then we all sort of came back and started doing Pure Joy...I think it was just practice to learn how to play again. Then just when we got comfortable playing again, we split up again. Pure Joy's like nursery school for us [laughs].

Your songs have sported some very dark lyrics. Cobirds sports its share too, but sounds like it's been produced by someone who's more at peace with himself than the guy who sang "I haven't got no friends/Shit is a better companion" years ago. Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah. It's probably getting older and having more perspective, and not seeing everything so black-and-white. I can't believe how dogmatic I was in my teens and twenties about things like music and art, and ideas. [I'm] so much more open to different kinds of expressions now. It seems cliche and kind of trite, but if you think about it, it's kind of one of the most amazing things, to mature as this animal to the point to where you have all these abilities to think about the world around you. It's actually pretty incredible to get to be middle-aged.

"This is so bad for you; pure sugar," Mike tells me.

My half-Filipino pal's only exaggerating a little, I think as a perky Pinoy woman slides our desserts towards us. Mike's introducing me to halo-halo, a frozen cup of wonderful strangeness comprised of ice cream, shaved ice, coconut, sweet beans, candied fruit cubes, and other miscellany.

It's cold; it's so packed with natural sugars that it'd put your average diabetic into seizures; and it's oddly, wonderfully tasty. You know you're in for a treat if the food's so exotic that even your well-heeled tour guide/host can't identify the chunks of yellow fruit pulp bobbing in the cup's center (it turns out to be jackfruit).

"Welcome to Pinoy cuisine," Mike tells me as he jabs a spoon into the mixture and begins stirring with glee. Welcome to Pinoy everything, I think with a smile.

I'm joining Mike on this warm August 1 for Pista sa Nayon, Seattle's 21st annual celebration of Filipino music and culture. On this day, Seward Park's transformed into Ground Zero for the Emerald City's Filipino community, and it's no end of fun to be an onlooker.

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On the surface, Pista resembles any one of the scores of ethnic festivals hosted at the Seattle Center during the spring and summer months, only liberated from the sometimes-staid atmosphere of the shiny cosmopolitan Center. There's a relaxed vibe to things: Filipinos and Filipino Americans from every strata of the local topography waltz through the Park's grounds, eating, laughing, hanging out, and drinking deeply of their culture.

B-boys and elderly widows weave cooperatively past one another, bonded by little more than their mutual heritage, and that's more than enough on this inviting day. The wide-eyed experience sponge in me enjoys it heartily, and my Filipino ex-pat chum is reveling in showing me around.

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It's a fascinating window into Mike's homeland. The Philippines have always been considered the scrappy blue-collar sibling amongst eastern countries, a nation of remote Asian islands living under the dual shadows of Spanish and American influences. But like a lot of non-Pinoy, I've never seen how Filipino culture synthesized those western influences with its own hothouse exoticism, and short of booking a flight to Manila, this is the closest this outsider will come to viewing it.

For that reason, the succession of traditional dance demonstrations presented throughout the day mesmerizes me: Young women balance glasses of water gracefully atop their heads and in their palms like living shivas, two young people practice tinikling as they hop bird-like between two rapidly-manipulated bamboo poles, and four Filipino women perform flamenco-accompanied steps and pirouettes, pink dresses catching the hazy Sunday sun as their male partners smile and stand at continental attention.

The area surrounding the Main Pista sa Nayon Amphitheatre is peppered by merchandise and food booths. A local branch of Jollibee, one of the Philippines' most successful restaurant chains, makes its presence known. Corporate displays, meanwhile, trumpet connections with the local Filipino-American community.

Mike's a great, erudite tour guide through the labyrinth of food and business, but his Gen-X roots show when we pass one merch table covered with an explosion of loudly-colored caps, T-shirts, scarves, and bling that slam together Pinoy pride and American hip-hop style. Mike left the Philippines in the mid-eighties, when a surprisingly large youth contingent embraced college rock and Filipino bands like The Dawn and Afterimage packed venues in the island nation. "Nobody listened to R&B when I was there," he says with a grizzled ex-goth's bemused chuckle.

We're music nerds, Mike and I, so a good deal of the fun for both of us is hearing original and cover tunes from several part-or-full blooded Pinoy pop acts. An hour before our halo-halo, we stumble onto a teenage power trio-- average age fourteen--pounding out classic rock covers on the smaller Ihaw Ihaw Jam Stage. They play Santana's "Black Magic Woman," and the gawky young guitarist replicates the song's elastic solos with surprising skill. "Filipinos love their cover bands," Mike tells me affectionately before we hike up to the main amphitheater.

Teenagers performing top-40 dance hits bear Mike's statement out, and form the majority of the non-traditional presentations in the amphitheater area. These kids and pitch aren't exactly the closest of friends, but their exuberance more than makes up for their lack of technical chops. There's something charming--magical,even--about seeing a grandma dancing vigorously as her teenage grandchild covers Lady Gaga.

Soon after the girl does her number, grandma--a proud member of the Filipino-American Wives of Washington--gathers with her fellow widows to perform a drill-team-style march. After completing their drill, the Widows perform (I'm not kidding) The Chicken Dance. The thousand-plus onlookers carpeting the lawn (myself and Mike most emphatically included) roar in approval.

The most pleasant musical surprise of the afternoon comes in the most modest package. Agnes Ingarra, a Seattle-based singer of Filipino/Italian lineage, takes to the amphitheater stage in a blue polo shirt and black tights. She looks like she's about to go to work at the local IKEA; until she starts singing. Like most of the other acts the majority of her set is covers, but they're R&B remakes sung with a sultry easiness that blows the rest of the mainstage acts out of the water. She even sneaks in an effective original tune, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar as her keyboardist lays down sparsely effective percussion.

The audience goes nuts, giving her an ovation even more enthusiastic than the one they provided for the Chicken-Dancing Filipino American Widows of Washington. My jaded indie-rock-loving ass is mightily impressed: If Seattle clubs were more receptive to soul and pop singers, this kid'd probably have the town eating out of her hand.

I snag a plate of pancit noodles once Ingarra finishes. Several splashes of chile-pepper-infused sweet-and-sour sauce give it just the right heat level, and I devour this helping of phad-thai-gone-Pinoy enthusiastically before we wind our way back to the Ihaw Ihaw Stage. Mike's just received word that Glenn Jacinto, lead singer of Pinoy rock outfit Teeth, will play shortly, and my buddy's psyched.

Teeth remain obscure here, but the band were nothing short of arena stars in their homeland; the closest thing to Nirvana that the Philippines produced. Jacinto unintentionally reenforced the comparison by living a rock-and-roll lifestyle that nearly killed him, but he's led a quiet life in Los Angeles in the six years since the band broke up. His playing on this small stage during this ethnic festival is the Pinoy equivalent of Dave Grohl playing a bar mitzvah.

After a set by Soul Candy (an energetic, Anime-infatuated local quartet who's played more than one Anime convention), Jacinto begins performing. Low-key and shy, he plays for about a half-hour, backed by a pretty tight bunch of local players (sorry to say, I didn't catch the outfit's name). These guns-for-hire seem genuinely honored and elated to be sharing the stage with their hometown hero, lip-syncing along with the singer and all grinning ear-to-ear.

Jacinto's style hearkens back to early Foo Fighters and Dinosaur Jr., with a pinch of one of the Grunge Era's most underrated ensembles, California band Failure. I'm enjoying it a lot, but for Mike it's a religious experience. Teeth hit it big in the Philippines while Mike was in America, but he connected deeply with the angst and rock-and-roll abandon the band represented for him and a lot of Filipinos of his generation.

I watch Mike go from savvy grown-up to starstruck rock-and-roll-worshiping boy by the time Jacinto vaults into his biggest hit, "Laklak." The blistering ode to alcoholism sounds like a great lost Nirvana song spat out in Tagalog. It's a powerful moment to witness my friend so immersed in the music, in large part because I understand how homegrown rock-and-roll can liberate and excite the citizens of any country, even if they're not living in that country anymore. It represented, in microcosm, the connection that expatriates always know with the land of their birth.

That bond alone makes Pista sa Nayon not just fun, but absolutely vital to its patronage. That, and the cute little old ladies doing the Chicken Dance.

Seattle came through for the Grand Illusion in the last two weeks--the theater's managed to scrape together (barely) enough funds to keep its doors open for a while. And given the wonderfully unique programming they're busting out in the coming week, fans of left-of-center film fare can rejoice.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Trailer from Myriapod Productions on Vimeo.

Anyone who's ever marvelled at the alien wonder of insects in general should find rapture in Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, screening at the GI today through August 5. One of the most popular docs to screen at SIFF 2010, it's about the Japanese fascination with insects as a source of mythology, adoration, study, and (in at least one case) income. Director Jessica Oreck explores this synergy between man and invertebrate with a poet's eye, concentrating less on the science and mechanics of beetles and butterflies and more on their visual elegance and magic, and the visceral awe that those armored and winged oddities engender in their human cohabitants.

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If you're looking for a less zen and more overt avenue of strangeness, the Illusion's presentation of We Found It in the Basement (running July 30 and 31 in the 11pm late show slot) promises a heady dose of weird. The theater's volunteers raided the 16mm films stashed in the basement, and unearthed everything from a Disney-produced anti-drug flick to a British workplace scare documentary to an exercise in foot fetishism to Saul Bass's Oscar-winning short Why Man Creates to who the hell knows what else. There's no telling what's sitting in the theater's cabinet of curiosities, so this presentation promises to be a helluva trip.

The Grand Illusion sent out a Facebook post recently, with a humble but heartfelt plea for funds attached.  The venerable movie house (the oldest continually-running film theater in town) faces the very real possibility of closing its doors outright if they don't receive a serious cash infusion but quick, and that'd be a big loss to this allegedly movie-centric city.

The GI makes it a point to (almost) always screen films in glorious 35mm; the scruffy red interior and intimate auditorium possess a distinctive, funky warmth; and they program much more adventurous, expansive, and out-there fare than your average revival house. (Head over here to throw them a few bucks, for pete's sake.)

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This weekend's lineup reflects the theater's customary range. Johanna, an Hungarian import, is a surreal 2005 musical (!) about a bus crash victim who miraculously recovers from her injuries and begins curing the ill and injured in her recovery hospital. It screens tonight through July 15.

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Meantime, the Illusion maintains their giddily magical late-night programming with showings of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl tonight and tomorrow night at 11 p.m. Allegedly a cross between Twilight and Let the Right One In, VGVFG sprang from the same fevered minds behind one of the SunBreak's SIFF faves, RoboGeisha. And if it's one one-hundredth as insane as the latter, we're talking must-see territory (WARNING: The above trailer's a bit NSFW). 

Director Caroline Kamya is bringing her homeland of Uganda to the world, one screening at a time. Imani, Kamya's feature film debut, marked the first Ugandan film ever to screen at the Seattle International Film Festival. It gave SIFF audiences one of their best left-of-center surprises, and it's been reaping acclaim as it travels festivals across three continents. The movie follows three disparate Ugandans, each facing their own particular crisis: Mary (Rehema Nanfuka), a maid, is forced to make a wrenching personal choice in her attempts to bail her troubled sister out of jail. Breakdancer Armstrong (Philip Buyi Roy) finds his wild past catching up with him on the eve of a gig for his dance troupe. And young Olweny (Stephen Ocen), a former child soldier, leaves a rehabilitation center to reestablish his relationship with his parents.

Kamya takes what could be so much melodramatic pot-boiling and imbues it with a slow-burning unique rhythm and flavor. Her unobtrusive directorial eye presents this world with a documentarian's objective clarity, at an unforced pace with ebbs and surges guided by the hot, dry climate. Andrew Mark Coppin's camera finds unadorned beauty in Uganda's people, and in the slums and humble villages they occupy: men navigate the dusty streets of Kampala balancing sofas on bicycles, and poetic messages of affirmation emerge from ghetto walls like faint but persistent whispers to passersby. The screenplay (by Kamya's sister Agnes Nasozi) does its own gentle bending of cliche, bypassing hopelessness yet offering few easy answers to its protagonists, and the actors (amateurs, all) deliver utterly natural, affectingly real performances. In its own low-key way and on its own terms, Imani accomplishes what all really good movies should: it invites viewers to visit a unique universe.

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That universe is seldom seen by Western eyes, so talking to its driving force especially intrigued me, and the director does not disappoint. Kamya speaks of Imani like a proud mother, in a sonorous English-accented voice that never slows down; and her energy, brio, and mega-watt smile are genuine and infectious.

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How did you get started as a filmmaker?

I started getting interested in media when I was twelve years old, when we moved to London to study. And I just felt like the images I saw on TV didn't really reflect where I was living. So that frustration, I think, manifested itself in going to film school. I studied at London University, and started doing architecture and town planning. Don't ask me why; I didn't really enjoy it. Then I went to The Art School, which is part of London University, Goldsmith College. That's where I got my TV Documentary Master. [I] started working as a runner, as an AD on a fiction film that was being made in London at the time. And then I eventually set up a production company in Uganda about five or six years ago [and] started making short films and documentaries. Imani was my first feature film.

Prior to your forming this production company, what--if any--film scene was there in Uganda?

Very little. Most people working in the industry were making documentaries with missions, on malaria or HIV, that kind of thing, but I wanted to make independent films not based around that, so [a narrative film] had to be self-funded. A lot of people weren't willing to take that risk. Also, there are no film schools as such. Casting agencies don't really exist, so you don't have a pool of screen talent--actors or crew--that you can just go out and work with. So it was really building from scratch.

You've been working the festival circuit with Imani. What's the reception been like?

It's been fantastic. And I'm really happy, because I just wanted to make something that I would enjoy watching. For me, it felt like a good and honest way to start a project, rather than thinking, "What does the audience want to see?" Berlin went really well; the locals there really enjoyed it. We've done Tarifa, the African Film Festival--we won awards there. It went to Nigeria, to the African Movie Awards.... Although it's not a festival, it's an awards ceremony, we won there; so three festivals and four awards...I'm very happy with that. And then one of my actors (who played the breakdancer) is in Cameroon right now attending a festival. My sister went to Spain, and I am here. We're trying to get Imani out there as much as possible. Since Berlin we've been invited to at least two festivals a month until December.

There were many things that struck me about the film, one of which is that it's very (for want of a better term) very un-Hollywood, very un-mainstream. It has a very distinctive rhythm and flavor that really feels steeped in its country of origin. Also, I was fascinated by the uncompromising nature of it--not all of the intersecting story threads end happily, or with a neat, cut-and-dried break or conclusion. Was this outside-the-box construction something by design from the outset, or did it manifest itself from the screenplay?

I basically decided this is my first movie, so if I'm gonna break all the rules, I'd better do it now. I knew that the next one we do...if money comes through, there'll be people who control what we're doing. So I knew these stories manifested separately, and that I would keep honest about it.

Of course the characters are connected, but they don't need to meet for that connection to exist. So I used the tool of the newspaper, the National Voice (which truly means the voice of the nation) as the link. I thought, if each character reads that paper, that's enough for me. And then, in terms of why they end and nothing is resolved for most of the stories, it's because I wanted people to leave the theater and think about the film for themselves. I wanted people to get involved in the story, and feel like, "That could be me, or that could be my sister, my son, my daughter." So if I was to tidy everything up with a bow, then that would also not be really honest. I just kept it as real as possible from start to finish. And because I have a documentary background, I started with an assistant editor, but we ran out of money so I started editing at home. I'd leave work, rush home, edit; then wake up, go to work...and that was the cycle for seven months.

I knew I could tighten it up in post-production and just link it. You have people traveling through the slum, and you have the guy going to pawn the necklace...I just cut across. And the rhythm just gets faster and faster, so having that documentary background enabled me to play a little more in post-production, to really bring out that rhythm. A filmmaker friend of mine who came to watch it when I was cutting said, "You know, Carol, this is like music--it's just a different kind of music." So I really think you're right: it's a different rhythm, but once you get into the rhythm you feel it. But initially, it's like, the characters--are they going to meet? Are they not? And you start imposing your own ideas of what a film is. So I really appreciate that you noticed all of that.

And that was already built into the screenplay?

Yes...Those were all separate pieces that were brought all together.

The caliber of acting in the movie is very impressive. The performances are excellent, but they also feel incredibly honest and unaffected, and it adds to the almost-documentary feel that the movie has. Could you speak a little about the actors?

I'd love to, because I'm so proud of them. They're all non-actors. They had four days of training in Kampala, two days of training in Gulu.... We did breathing exercises, they learned about understanding the character, yoga, stretches.... At first they were like, "I don't understand--this is supposed to be acting training? [laughs] What are we doing here?" And what I did was, through a friend of mine, I contacted an acting coach who worked on The Constant Gardener, Keith Pearson, who works in Kenya. I flew him over and said, "I'll put you up in my sister's house; help me work with these actors." And he did.

Literally, I filmed sequences, we improvised...I basically tested out five, six guys for one role. I cast against type--that was very important for me. So the big guy that everyone expected to be the Ghetto King, he became the boyfriend; and I used the little guy to play the crazy psychopath; and even George the gateman--most people are like, "Wow, he's in his fifties," and most gatemen are probably younger than him. But I went with the best actor, and he is a brilliant actor. He had a slight limp naturally, and I thought he added something to his character. So I felt I had a good instinct for the cast, and I'm happy that it paid off, that I just went with my gut. Mary--Rehema is her real name--she's just amazing. She's actually flaky in real life [laughs], but when she gets in front of the camera she's the deepest, sharpest, most amazing person.

She just feels like such an anchor in the movie....

You know, I was just watching a program about Greta Garbo recently. And I swear, I feel [Rehema] has that, that magic, so that once you put the camera on her, she can tell you so much without moving: Her eyes just say it all. I wish she could be here to enjoy this attention. She went with me to Nigeria to pick up the prizes, so at least she's felt a bit of the accolades, but she's still astounded. She's got two awards already, and this is her first movie, so it's stunning.

The soundtrack makes great use of artists who aren't well known outside of Africa. Could you elaborate on the music of Imani, and the artists who contributed?

There's one artist, Tshila, who's the sister of a friend of mine, and she actually studied in the States then came back home. I met her and encouraged her to do music, because she was a computer programmer. She said, "I'm passionate about music," and I told her, "If you're gonna come home, you'd better do what you want to do--there are so many opportunities." Now she's one of the most well-known acoustic artists in Uganda. She's now...in Europe, touring. I loved her music, and ironically enough, it talks about these things--the hardships a woman has to face. So if you're Ugandan and you speak the language, when you hear the lyrics they're totally relevant as well.

Then the hip-hop artists, Sylvester and Abramz, they're just amazing young guys doing hip-hop in the local language. For a long time artists [in Uganda] only did hip-hop in English, trying to emulate Americans. They were the first artists who said, "We're going use Uganda, we're going to talk about social change using music," Maia Von Lekow: I think she's half-Swiss, half-Kenyan--also another one who studied abroad and went back home. She's performed with James Blunt or someone like that and toured with them. She's doing real well. I saw her in concert when I went to hang out on the beach with friends. She was the first artist where I said, "I have to meet this woman, I love her music, and I need to ask to borrow the rights for Imani." I paid for the rights for two tracks: The only two tracks on her album in Swahili, and for me they're very powerful.

Imani's a very human story, and so a lot of the political subtexts are really incidental to the interaction between the characters, but Uganda is also an area that's been through a lot of political and social upheaval. Was there ever an impulse in you to politicize what you did?

No, not at all. I thought that I was going to keep it to the original idea, which is: Let's show Uganda through the eyes of these three diverse characters in very diverse locations. And so I didn't want it to be issue-driven. The characters are the main thing, and then the rest is like the background--the wallpaper. So if you pick up on that, all well and good. If you don't, it's not a problem. I think there are so many political films made about the continent [of Africa] anyway, by filmmakers who are foreign, by local filmmakers as well.... For me, I just wanted to communicate those stories, and that's all.

The closest thing to a semi-Hollywood version of a plotline in Imani seems to occur between Simon the Ghetto King and Armstrong the breakdancer. I especially loved Vincent Ochen, the actor who played Simon. He perfectly plays a sawed-off Little Big Shot-type character...Were you influenced by any other narrative fiction filmmakers when you staged their big scene together? There's a bit of a western-type ambiance to it, a little Tarantino...

Yes, definitely. I can't help but be influenced by the time I've been out of the country, so it's inevitably going to affect me. I love character-driven independent cinema from all around the world, so if I talk about European independent cinema, we're talking about Luc Besson, Pedro Almodovar...there are not many women on that list, but it's those kind of films.... And when we were editing Imani, we did the sound in Lulea, in Sweden, during a very cold time in January. I was talking to the sound designer, and I said that I wanted to make this scene really dramatic. And he said, "What if we cut out all of the sound just before he gestures around the neck?" We did it, and I was like, "Yes! That's it!" We had this fan noise running, and then we just cut all the sound. So it has that element. I think we used as a reference, not Tarantino, but it was another film...What's his name, who's that director with the glasses and a beard [laughs]...

Coppola? Francis Ford Coppola?

Yes! That's where we got it from. [Kamya may be referring to a key scene in Coppola's The Conversation.]

Getting back to the fact that the movie's very honest in how it deals with the characters, there's a lot of melancholy in terms of Mary's final scene. Was that a hard moment to bring to life?

Not really, actually. When you're making a movie, it just becomes, "Go to this scene, go to the next scene...." Literally it's like, bang, bang, bang! First of all, when I was filming Rehema's performance, I knew there was magic in what she was doing. But the decisions her character has to make are decisions that happen for women a lot of the time--actually, in any culture, in a way. That's how I see it, and for her, it's like, she's made this decision but she's not a victim. I didn't want her to be seen as a victim. So it's a tough choice, but it's a means to an end. She does not see it as losing her...how can I say it...status, or....

...Or losing her dignity.

Exactly. She's actually a very strong woman who's made a tough choice for the benefit of her sister. And in the end, I think she made the right choice, personally.

It's interesting when you hit that point in the film, because the storyline just ends; your preconceived notions of what a movie should do are subverted. I think it was very brave of you to just end it where you did, and--as you said--let the audience mull over what's next after the credits roll. In a traditional Hollywood movie, afterwards maybe Mary and George would grow to love each other, there might be something else there, but you chose to leave it at this existential open end.

Thank you for noticing. I was just trying to be honest to the characters.

The areas that you shot weren't scenic, per se, but it seemed like you found a lot of beauty in the mundane corners of Ugandan life. I'm assuming that came from your documentary background.

Exactly. I worked with the locations. I loved the fact that we didn't have a set; we didn't have the money to build a set. But it worked. The ghetto where we had Simon's den, I had to shoot two locations because we didn't have the perfect one. And the graffiti on the wall, where Armstrong stands with the knife, there's an artist in Uganda who did all that. It's a positive message about getting yourself out of poverty, raising up, and as an individual doing it yourself.

There are many significant little motifs that a local would see, and we have a cityscape, and a city...I'm dropping it in there. It's necessary for me to have these scenes to tell the story, but it's not just to say, "Hey! We have that, and we have this!" We have a short shot where you have an egg being broken; that is a dish that's made on the streets. It's called rolex. It's like chapati, you make an omelet and roll it up--it's like a dollar or less. So the little details, for Ugandans, are all very relevant. But for global audiences it makes it more real. You might not understand all of it, but it's much more authentic.

I like that you don't go out of your way to explain those little things; you let the audience experience it...

It makes the experience of watching more genuine for the audience.

You were away from Uganda for a long time, studying and absorbing a lot of outside influences...Did you find it difficult to capture the regional flavor? Being someone away from the area for a long time, did you ever feel like a prodigal daughter returning?

Well, we always went home [to Uganda] for the holidays, so I was never completely away. And also, I think the outsider/insider part of me allows me to see details that people don't see when you just live there every day. You just take it for granted. But for me, a rolex is fascinating. Or a guy [balancing] a sofa on his bicycle is fascinating. Even when we had the screening in Uganda, people really enjoyed seeing that. They were seeing their country for the first time on the big screen, and they're seeing the little nuances that happen every day. So I think in some ways, it's actually helpful not to have lived in one place all your life in order to make a movie about it. You just see things that the everyday person would take for granted.

What's next for you?

My sister and I are going to work on the next feature film; she's working on writing it at the moment. Of course we've still got the festival circuit to complete with Imani, and I'll be working on documentaries. And I want to do more training in terms of direction--I think there's still lots to learn.

A detailed winter tableau from Marwencol.

Jeff Malmberg has me dead to rights.

"I saw you walking around outside," he tells me as our interview begins, "and before you even came near the hotel, I figured you were a movie guy." He relates this observation not with any condescension or derision, but with a sense of genial fraternity. Malmberg, you see, is a movie guy himself--and an observant one, at that.

His feature directorial debut Marwencol just may stand as the best documentary to screen at SIFF in 2010; this during a festival already packed stem-to-stern with great docs. Shot in a low-key verite style on hi-def video, it follows Mark Hogancamp, whose near-fatal beating at the hands of a gang of thugs leaves him without any memory.

To combat his demons and rehabilitate physically Mark builds Marwencol, a fictional town in World-War-II Belgium, entirely out of 1/6-scale action figures and Barbies. So, yeah, it's about a guy playing with dolls in his backyard. Except that it's not. It's much more about human creativity flowering through adversity--and about fleshing out its troubled but inarguably lovable subject--than it is about gawkery.

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Marwencol also celebrates Hogancamp's art; an incredibly detailed and beautifully-rendered world full of two-fisted heroes, buxom catfighting women, time travel, and Nazi skullduggery (you can see samples here, and even order a Marwencol storybook here). It's entirely telling that Malmberg spends nearly our entire interview talking about his subject, not about himself: And after seeing Marwencol, you can't blame him.

Marwencol director Jeff Malmberg.

This is such an amazing story, and you--very consciously, I'm sure--keep yourself out of it, and let Mark tell his story. How did you discover him?

I was looking for something to shoot. Editorial, documentary-wise, was just so much fun. It's almost like writing, it's like really trying to find the truth; and not forcing your opinion on it...but I thought, "Now, if I could just find a subject that I could go and shoot, then I could come back and cut it, and be in charge." As fun as it is to work with a director (and I very much love working with directors), you also, as an editor, kind of go, "Well, I don't agree," you know? [laughs] Especially where there's a subject that's rich enough that you can head different ways.

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I remember consciously thinking, "I want to find something really deep that'll be the hardest thing I've ever cut, and that has so many layers and factions to it, I'll get really confused, and [it'll be] a super-editing exercise. And it was totally that "Be careful what you wish for" thing, because about a week later I'd subscribed to Esopus magazine, which you see in the film. I saw those photos [of Marwencol], and I thought, "Well, here's a short film. This is amazing!" And then I contacted Mark.

I think he was at that point in his life where he really wanted to talk through what had happened, and we just kind of met on that level; me looking for something deep to get into, and him looking to talk to somebody about it. So it was just sort of magical...

It's very interesting, because it almost feels like you were there from the very beginning. How far into his recovery was he when you began the movie?

About six years, and a lot of my time was spent trying to talk to those people who were there, like Tom Neubauer, who lives near Seattle. [He] was there for the Q&A. He took care of Mark for a couple of years after the attack; kind of taught him a lot of new stuff--new to him, part of what Mark calls his Second Life.

One thing that Mark did early on was give me all of his diaries, because for him, his diaries really helped him. He was always, everyday, writing in diaries during what he calls his Previous Life. That really helped fill in a lot of the story for me. And also for him, because since he couldn't remember [his past], he relied on them.

I was really struck by what a strong artist he was before the attack: The sketches in his diaries are really impressive. Was that something he addressed with you?

Yeah, that was one of his primary frustrations in his Second Life, was that his hands shook too badly to draw. And he'll draw now occasionally, but it's just not as tight--that's how he refers to it. One of the producers who shot some of the film with me--Kevin Walsh--he's a big illustration guy. And I asked him how much of a difference is there between [Mark's] old drawings and his new ones, and Ken said, "There's a lot."

There seemed to be two things he drew in his illustrations before--either beautiful women or World War II stuff. And it's just interesting that there was sort of always this World War II story floating through his head. I remember at the hobby shop that you see briefly; one thing that Mark would do for money when he was an alcoholic before the attack, was he would make these 1/32-scale models--very intricate models--and sell them there. They were just breathtaking. I'd heard so much about them, but when I saw them I really understood why people were freaking out; because they were just perfect. Again, World War II, with mileage signs; the same thing that was going on in Marwencol.

I feel like he must've always been that guy who had to express himself. You always think of that guy in high school who was always drawing on his book covers in the back of class. To me, that must've been Mark. He was someone who just had to get it out.

This is a really unusual story, and it seems to me that it would've been very easy to descend into gawkery and condescension. One of the laudable things about the movie is that it does not do that.

For every doc, the form should fit its subject. And here's somebody who, right off the bat, the more I got to know him and even still today when I talk to him, is such a good, kind spirit. There's so much going on there that you don't initially see. I really wanted to shape my experience of getting to know him in the footage that I captured. So, what you learn along the way and how things are constantly changing--every ten minutes it sort of shifts up a little in terms of what it all means--that was very much a conscious decision. Not to necessarily use that narrative construct just because it was a good construct, but because that was my experience of getting to know Mark. So in editorial [decisions], the golden rule was always, go back to what it was like for you.

The only time I ever gawked at him was right off the top, when it's like, "Oh, here's a guy who plays with dolls in his backyard." Not that I found that to be bad, but you know, I wanted to kind of recreate that experience of understanding there was something deeper. I feel that's a really big, powerful thing in documentary filmmaking that you can do, is take a situation where it's like, "Oh, let's meet the guy who plays with dolls in his backyard and builds a World War II town..."

But that's just the first room. The idea being that--in life--there's something so much richer, that that's really just the waiting room to the real story. None of these things were really conscious, but as you met Mark you started to realize, think backwards and go, "Oh, my God, this is that example of that form of documentary," which is, let's look closer; let's realize that there's beauty everywhere; let's understand that everybody has things that they're dealing with, and that it's our job to meet them on a human level, and learn that those people that we might call freakish or whatever are actually way stronger than we could ever be.

It all just kind of evolved. It was kind of crazy. We became friends before I even really knew I was doing a feature. I thought I was doing a short, which I think really helped, when I look back on it. It wasn't as if I was thinking, "I'm going to do a feature about this guy; I'd better befriend him!" It would've just been false. We both thought it was one weekend when we first met. I think, within an hour of meeting him, I thought there was something good going on here. But I didn't declare it. I think we were past the art show and I didn't know I was doing a feature; I thought I was doing a short, still. The friendship and the understanding was there. He could tell I was very curious, and I think that's why he let me in. He could tell that I wanted to learn about it; that it was pure.

A lot of times, I wouldn't shoot. I would just talk to him. I'm not really that good at shooting [laughs]; I didn't have a light; I used my knee as a tripod. It was very ramshackle, but in a way I think that's also very intimate, and for an audience, I think they're willing to accept that roughness a little more...

That intimate feel to Marwencol, I think, is you making a virtue out of necessity.

Yeah, yeah! Thank you, I agree. It's weird; particularly in doc, if you decide ahead of time what you're doing, that's maybe when you falter--moreso than in narrative filmmaking. It seems like in narrative you're thunderstruck by some idea, I don't know. This is kind of that nice process where I don't know, and the power of saying, "I don't know," and wanting to learn, and having real life kind of fill in that hole. I was lucky enough to find a subject that is worth the time to figure out.

A lot of the peripheral characters in Mark's life appeared quite cooperative with you...

Yeah, they were all great. I think that Mark really attracts people who want to help him. He's a really kind soul, so I think everybody has their 'Mark stories.' I was really struck in meeting them, how fundamentally kind they all were. I really enjoyed realizing that these were all really good people; and that without any of them, Mark wouldn't be where he is. Tom took care of Mark, taught him how to walk. To some degree, he was telling Mark the rules of life. It was really a strange process, but he was doing it out of pure kindness. It's nice when you get to celebrate people being good. What about that person at the art show.... I don't want to reveal too much in case someone who hasn't seen it is reading...but every time I see that scene, I'm like, "See? It matters what you do in your day!"

That's an incredibly touching scene.

Yeah, and when you're shooting it, you don't know what the hell is going on. You're not like, "Here's a touching scene!" You're going with your feelings. Every time I see that scene, my wife and I are like, "Aww...bless you for doing that. You really made a difference in his life!" And they met for five minutes. And in the same way, to some degree, here's the story of five people [Mark's attackers]...look what happens on the other side of it when you put evil into the world. I always felt like, to some degree, I was making it for them, too. The half-life of that [assault] is really long, and Mark's really working hard to get rid of that; those feelings, and what happened to him.

Without addressing the movie's twist explicitly, it's a profound revelation that appears quite far into the movie. How far along were you in filming when you actually discovered it?

Not that far. [For] what it meant, though, really far. One of the last things I got was that audio that made me and Mark confirm...one of the reasons he was beat up. So when he first let me into that...it was pretty early on. What it all meant, I really didn't have a clue. He seemed really torn up about how he wanted to present himself the second time around. The art show was very much that for him. You see it in the film. He's very concerned about how he should present himself. That seemed important to me, but did I know why at the time? Of course not, and I think you'd be lying if you said you did. It's not like you're some mastermind. You're just trying to keep your eyes and ears open to try and connect with someone.

Has the positive critical reception to Marwencol been a surprise to you?

Yeah, a real surprise, absolutely. Truly, I thought I was making this for Mark. I mean, did I want to shape it back into the form of a film that other people can enjoy? Of course. But the number one thing--the only thing, really--was that Mark was going to see it. And that it was going to be this portrait of somebody that I liked, and that he would see it, and go, "Oh, yeah!"

We've got theatrical from Cinema Guild in October, and the fact that my little art project is going to play in movie theaters is really cool. The nice thing about all that is that it's just icing on the cake. Truly. I wasn't trying to do that. I thought that maybe it'd get into one film festival, and that means my wife'll let me make another one [laughs].

What it really means on a documentary level is: I'm the frame. Mark's the picture. You're trying to present something in a way that maybe he wouldn't have the distance to do. When there's an audience reaction like that, it's really a function of people reacting to Mark, and the beauty of Mark, and that is entirely rewarding. I think it's really them taking Mark into their hearts. One thing that Mark told me right off the bat is, "No one understands why I do this. No one gets this." So I remember writing on a little note card, 'No one understands'. And so now it feels like, maybe, some people do.

People connect with Mark on a very deep level. Anyone who feels like they've ever struggled with or stifled their creative expression for any reason is going to relate to him.

Exactly! I agree, and I think that's why it doesn't matter what 'the twist' is. I want to save that so that people can experience it, but it doesn't matter. And I've had people come up to me afterwards who've forgotten what the actual details of the twist were. And it's a totally valid viewpoint six months after having seen the film, because all that matters is that it is a struggle. It's whatever that struggle is, how you present yourself, how you want to be seen, how you're trying to get past your issues. It doesn't matter what the details are.

I found Mark's whole unrequited crush on Colleen to be very moving. What was she like, and did any of the awkwardness of Mark's crush on her ever seep in to her interactions with her husband, or her interaction with Mark?

Yeah, you see it a little in the film. She was the one character that I found to be the most gray, and I really could've gone further in terms of their relationship. I always asked everyone else about the relationship between Colleen and Mark, and everyone had different points of view. I really wanted to leave it where I leave it with the film, which is, she says her husband warned her to be careful. I think that, in a lot of ways Colleen was very helpful. I like that [their relationship is] a little gray. That's interesting to me.

There's a very strong, almost Errol Morris sensibility to the movie. Something about his documentarian style seems like it might've had an influence on you.

Yeah, and in my travels as an editor I've actually worked with him on commercials and trailers and stuff. I've been able to talk to him a few times. Any good doc, I think, takes someone where they don't expect to go, and then kind of questions why they expect to go there in the first place.

It's that same kind of experience on a filmmaking level, too. I thought I was meeting one person that I knew the story of, and then it turned out it was all these other things. I mean, what about this pre-judgment that I had prevented me from initially seeing all these beautiful things? And I think with an audience, too.... They think they're going to see a movie about a guy who plays with dolls in his backyard, and they have whatever judgments they have about that; but that there's something so much deeper and richer there. I always feel like that's a good documentary lesson. The good subjects always prove that out.

I think Errol Morris does that; maybe taking something that you might dismiss, and then turning it inside-out and going, "This person's way stronger than you will ever be, so be careful what you do." Those are the docs that I really gravitate to, like Marjoe...That was one of the movies I watched before I started cutting [Marwencol], because I felt like it was [the story of] somebody at the crossroads of "what am I going to do?" And that's such an interesting place to be as a character. Thank you for the compliment.

Amer's one-sheet poster art vividly evokes the giallo style.

I first saw Amer at a preview screening, two weeks before it made its bow as part of the Seattle International Film Festival's Midnight Adrenaline series, and it aroused some heated conversation amongst the critics and writers in attendance. Everyone acknowledged the film's beauty and technical brilliance; many dismissed its free-form disregard for stick-to-your-ribs narrative as all-style-no-substance. But the movie haunted me like the darkest and richest of dreams. I had to see it again.

The second time around (at its midnight screening), I fell wholeheartedly in love.

Amer, on its surface, pays homage to the horror sub-genre known as the giallo. Born in Italy in the mid-sixties, the gialli were essentially highly-stylized slasher films; visually sumptuous thrillers in which a shadowy killer dispatched (usually female) victims in creatively-staged, near-balletic death scenes.

In addition to the violence, the gialli were marked by intense eroticism (which, at its most extreme points, veered into misogyny), immaculately stylish art direction, surreal plot twists, and a paranoid, dream-like point of view.

More conventional slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th supplanted the giallo in the late seventies and throughout the eighties, but the sub-genre's influence resurfaced with a vengeance in the 1990s. If you've seen Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, or any one of several serial killer flicks of the last fifteen years, you've essentially seen a glossier, Americanized version of the giallo.

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Calling Amer a giallo, however, is like calling Inglourious Basterds a war flick. Elements of pastiche do surface--most notably in the use of 1970s-vintage music cues from giallo-versed composers like Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, and the decidedly post-psychedelic color scheme. But Belgium-based directors Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet have distilled everything primal and effective about the giallo genre into the purest sensory experience I've had at a film in a long time.

Amer follows a woman through three phases of her life--childhood, adolescence, and adulthood--as she gradually awakens sexually; and it immerses the viewer fully in that journey with rich primary colors, tight exploratory close-ups, an incredibly enveloping sound mix (all done post-production) and an erotic undercurrent that never feels cheap or misogynistic. Like Quentin Tarantino, Forzani and Cattet have sculpted a shopworn film genre into something new, exciting, and much more than the sum of its parts.

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Amer co-directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

 

During our conversation, Amer's co-directors demonstrate the same synergy in the outside world as they likely did on-set, frequently finishing each other's sentences and waxing eloquent on contrasting aspects of their personalities and artistic visions. It's no exaggeration to say that I could've talked to them for hours--a fact hammered home when Forzani briefly geeked out on the genre he and Cattet have mined so creatively.

What was the initial inspiration behind Amer's creation?

Bruno Forzani: The beginning was the subject; to talk about the discovery of desire, and sensuality and sexuality; and the best language in which to talk about that was the giallo language. Inside the giallo and the subtext you have all of the iconography and the cinematography that eroticizes the body. So the first thing was the subject, and the approach was the giallo.

Helene Cattet: We have made five short films together, and it's always the same approach: We treat personal subjects through the language of giallo, the giallo universe.

One thing I very much admired about Amer is that--while it pays homage to the giallo formula--it boils down everything that is giallo into the purest sensory language; so there aren't a lot of the silly sub-plots--the detectives, the comic relief--or the misogyny that sometimes surface in the genre. Was that by design?

B: Yes. The first thing was not to pay tribute to the giallo, but to talk about the subject; to just keep some aspects of the giallo; as you said, the sensory aspects of the giallo. We just kept what was interesting for our subject. So it's a very subjective point of view on the giallo: We have picked what we love in that genre, and so maybe for people who admire Amer, it's not necessary to be a fan of the genre.

As a directorial team, how was the work distributed? Did you each direct one segment, or did you both jointly direct all of the segments?

H: In fact, there was really no distribution [laughs]! We always do everything together, both of us. And in fact we have to prepare a lot together. We fight a lot during the preparation, and during the writing, too.... But I felt that this did work, the preparation, because we work well together, and we can work with the crew.

I ask because the film has such definite divisions between the three segments: And I was wondering if one person had done any more or less. But it sounds like it was pretty much equal.

H: That's true. But we wanted to have a very different universe for each of the three parts.

The one thing that does unite the three parts, aside from the overall theme of sexual discovery, is the very lush color scheme. It was very apparent to me that--without imitating--you were definitely inspired by the look of films like Suspiria and Tenebrae--very bright, vivid hues are used to convey a lot of the emotion. Did you show some of these films to your crew or cinematographer as inspiration or instruction?

H: We tried to show them many films [laughs]!

B: We wanted to show to the DP 'The Drop of Water' from Black Sabbath...

I was going to comment on how the first segment was reminiscent of Mario Bava's work...

B:...And Suspiria, for the colors. But, in fact, he didn't watch them [laughs]! He's more fond of things like Tony Scott than he is of giallo, or Italian cinema. But as we made four short films together, we have learned to work well as collaborators. We discovered monochramatic lighting through making our short films, so Amer wasn't the first time we worked with this DP.

The locations were beautiful. Where was it shot?

H: In the South of France; at the border between France and Italy. In fact, it was in the city where Bruno [grew up]...

B: ...The city where I was little. It's on the Riviera. In fact, when I watched gialli it reminded me of my childhood because I was trained in the seventies; and some of the gialli and the B-movies of Italy were shot in the region. So it always reminds me of when I was little. The way the women were dressed, and the color scheme, and things like that...and so I wanted to make something in this original area.

The house is just nearby the apartment where I Iived when I was a child. And it scared me when I was a teenager, because it reminded me of the house in Dario Argento's Deep Red. And when we had this project, to make Amer, I showed Helene the house when she came on vacation, and we wanted absolutely to shoot in this house because it is one of the last houses that still exists from that time in the seventies.

Has it been destroyed since filming?

B: No, but I think it may be soon, because it's been 25 years since it's been occupied.

Tell me a bit about your background in filmmaking. How did the two of you get started, and how did the two of you team up?

B: Ten years ago when we became a couple; one month after, we decided to do a short film together. It was like that. One weekend, there was a contest for a movie. And the film we made [for that contest] has been showed at several fantasy film festivals. Then we did another, and another...

H: We wanted to make cinema because Bruno is a big cinephile, and I was trying to find a way to express myself. I like to experiment, and to mix different things together to find a good way to express my ideas. That's why we like to work together; because we like to use cinematographic elements to express ourselves.

B: Giallo was the common point to mix our two universes, because there is entertainment and experimentalism. Me, I was the B-Movie fan, and Helene was the more experimental.

I was also very intrigued by your choices of actresses to play Ana. The actress who plays her in the final third of the film [Marie Bos] doesn't look like Edwige Fenech, or your typical giallo female; she looks like a normal young woman. Did you intend to cast someone outside the genre norm for the role?

B: Well, there isn't a lot of dialogue in the movie, so each time we met an actress, we were looking for someone that has an intimate universe--very strong, so that when you see them, you can feel something going through their faces, their eyes, without them saying anything. So each time, we chose the child, the teenager, and the adult like that. So it was...

H: ...that personal universe; that was most important.

Much of the film--especially the first segment--feels like a dark fairy tale. The first portion captures a child's-eye view very well. Were there any influences besides giallo in the look of the first portion of the movie?

B: There were two things. The first thing was to refine that universe where you're little, and you believe in supernatural things. The second one was 'The Drop of Water' because we wanted to make a gothic film out of her childhood. People say that [horror films] are fairy tales for adults. Dario Argento wanted to, I think, shoot Suspiria with little girls. And so we have chosen the genre to talk about childhood, and the whole fairy tale aspect.

There is a level of ambiguity to the first third of the film. You can interpret it as something supernatural, or as something that's going on in the mind of the child.

B: It was like free jazz, because the fantastic aspect of the story comes from the subconscious.

I've seen the picture with others, and it seems to me that the middle portion, which is very languid, arouses the most controversy. With giallo, I think fans expect shock and instant gratification.

H: It was the first portion we wrote, and we wanted to have a real contrast with the other universe, because for the teenager we wanted something very open...

B: ...where you can breathe. The first portion is very oppressive.

H: For us, it was important...to have erotic tension for this [segment]; not fantastic tension, or suspense tension like the other parts. More like a Japanese movie of the sixties, but with the look of a giallo.

B: ...Like The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh by Sergio Martino, or Seven Bloodstained Orchids.

H: The design is like that; the colors.

B: With the landscape, we tried to find natural colors that were very flashy, with the art, the sea, the shades of blue...

H: So we wanted another type of tension; somewhere where you could breathe.

B: We knew when we had written the script that this part would be a surprise for genre hardcore fans. Not typical, but a real surprise.

What is next for you? Are you working on another feature?

B: Yeah. We're working, at the moment, on a second one. It would still be in the giallo universe, but we will pick up other aspects of the genre. It will be more a male point of view. And we shot in Brazil this time. We're working on it at the moment.

The film is very carefully crafted. Was there anything that you were forced to leave out of the movie due to length or content considerations?

B: No. There were maybe six shots that we couldn't shoot in the taxi sequence. We didn't have time, and it was a very closed space.

H: It was the most difficult thing to shoot.

What you've done with Amer, I think, is spiritually akin to what Quentin Tarantino does; which is to take a very established genre and completely give it a new life...

B: Thank you! We're happy that the film is showing in the USA, and that it will be released in theaters and on DVD here. Here you have more culture and appreciation for this kind of cinema. I think fans of European B-movies can appreciate it.