Nomadic Massive!

We’re not on it…yet. BUT!

Congrats to Waahli and the Nomadic Massive crew for landing #1 in the “Best Hip-Hop” act category in the Montreal Mirror’s Best-Of-Montreal readers’ poll…as well as the cover!

Congrats also to the following rabble rousers:

• Lickety Split smut zine! #3 in the Best Maga/Zine category!
• Nora Rohman! #4 for Loudest Activist!
• Audio Smut! Honourable mention for Best Radio Show!
• Faggity Ass Fridays! For Best Club Night!

…Plus others I prolly have missed so far!! Yay!

JT LeRoy. If you know the name, you probably know the story: a young literary wunderkind who wrote two celebrated works; a novel (Sarah) and a book of short stories (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things). The raw, sordid material, which included the ins & outs of male and female prostitution at truck stops, was supposedly autobiographical. A couple of years ago the New York Times outed LeRoy as author Laura Albert, but not before Albert and her sister-in-law (wearing a wig and sunglasses) had fooled the literary establishment, hipsters on the lookout for edgy truthiness, and a bunch of authenticity-worshipping celebs. Asia Argento made a movie.

Now, Kidnapper Films, an enterprising and piss-taking company of Montrealers, has turned this literary hoax into a very funny movie. Who is KK Downey? lampoons indie musicians, rock journalists, cause celebres, art students, and the excesses of fame, and keeps the laughs coming practically beginning to end.

I chatted with two of the movie’s stars, Pat Kiely (who plays pompous blowhard rock critic Connor Rooney) and Darren Curtis (mascara’d musician Terence Permenstein, lead singer of fictional rock band Black Guts). Both also directed and had a hand in writing the script.

-Shawn Conner

Pat Kiely plays "CD reviewer guy" Connor Rooney. Ouch!

SC: I think my favourite movie line of the year so far is, “Do you think Julian Casablancas was working in a helicopter factory when the Strokes recorded their first album?”

Curtis: The line came out of rehearsals. I think we wrote it in because Pat is a big fan of the Strokes and there’s nothing that makes him happier than making fun of Julian Casablancas.

SC: There’re a few Montreal in-jokes in the film. Have either of you ever worked at the Montreal Mirror?

Kiely: No, but we hang out with some of the reviewers.

Curtis: We hear a lot of the gossip. There’s a lot taken from the neighbourhood we lived in, the Plateau-Mile End, with the ridiculousness of the scenester scene there.

SC: How did you arrive at the look of Connor Rooney?

Kiely: We were always talking about this crazy white jacket he would wear that would be super loud and outlandish. But in terms of the hair, we just went to the hairstylist and said, “Go as crazy as you want. The most pretentious, ridiculous hipster haircut.” Luckily the rat-tail wasn’t real, that was an extension.

SC: One of the things I liked about the movie was the inadequacy white suburban kids feel when confronted with something authentic.

Curtis: That’s us, that is exactly us.

Kiely: That’s our lives, yeah.

SC: One of the extras in a scene looks like Margaret Atwood.

Kiely: That was a Montreal School of Performing Arts person. Those people did not know what they were in for. That scene was taking place at 4:30 in the morning and they had no idea it was going to be a really dirty scene.

SC: I love the crazy montage scenes.

Curtis: The scene where they’re in the hotel room partying, with that Bobby Bare Jr. song ["Terrible Sunrise"], is always the part where I go, “I can’t believe we actually put this together. This feels like a movie.”

Kiely: Our one regret with that is not having anyone’s breasts out. But that costs more to show, to pay someone to take off their top, and we didn’t even have enough money to do that.

SC: There’s nearly as much coke in this movie as pot in Pineapple Express.

Curtis: I think at one point when we were writing the script we were like, “Let’s try and put cocaine in every single scene.” I think it’s just from watching  a lot of the types of movies that this story sort of feels like—Goodfellas, The Doors. Sort of rampant drug use scenes. Plus, it’s a very cheap prop.

SC: Were you ever worried the source material, the hoax, was a little too insider-ish to reach a general audience?

Kiely: In the early stages, we were just trying to write something that was funny. I don’t know, there’s been a lot of movies about literary hoaxes.

Curtis: Even last night I got a bunch of emails. Apparently, there was a Law & Order episode based on a fake author and a street prostitute, and a murder.

SC: That damn Law & Order. They always get there first.

(Who is KK Downey? opens in Vancouver today, Dec. 12, at the Granville 7.)

Entrevue avec Scott C.

ICI!!!!

Et de plus, son top 7 de la semaine.

Seven reasons I still get the hi-hat: (Sept raisons pour lesquelles j’ai encore un chapeau haut de forme????)
1. Nas “Nigger” (CDR)
2. Tom Trago “Ale Zus” (RH)
3. IG Culture “Black” (Freedom School)
4. Azymuth “Montreal City” Volcov remix (Far Out)
5. The Roots “The Show” feat. Common (Def Jam)
6. Zaki Ibrahim Eclectica (Episodes in Purple) (Sony)
7. Payz Play “Hip Hop Is (Really) Dead” (Anubis)

So yeah, we’re super excited to start the tour tomorrow! In the meantime we’re reading the Montreal Mirror’s Best of Montreal issue (Lickety Split zine ranked #3 in the Best Magazine/Zine category!) which also has a review of Nightwood’s Big City E.P.

At our day jobs we’re listening to the Midnight Poutine podcast (their 75th!) which includes artists like Mixylodian, Postcards, Boohoo and Nightwood!

Lots of love to you all! xo

I find myself thoroughly enjoying the cover of this week’s Mirror, featuring the boys behind Nu Ravers On the Block! We’ll be at the one year anniversary, taking snaps of your cute faces, so here’s hoping you’ll all be making it out there!

Read the article by the fantastic mr. Jack Oatmon here to find out more about the boys’ day job.

And check out these photo albums for photos from previous Nu Ravers parties! We’ve been going to these little shindigs ever since it was back at Vinyl, living it up with glow-sticks. One of the most memorable moments was the night (pre-shut up you twit), where I lost my camera. The very same one that I have now. I’m just goddamn lucky. Enough reminiscing, here’s some pics:

With Mr. Flash at Academy

Another night at Academy

With Castle Vania

And a few more on flickr, by various lovely people, from before this blog, the ones I took are under the account name mariliscardinal. See you folks Saturday at the SAT!

Look at that! A conceptual photo!! Read THIS article by Mirror Columnist, Jack Oatmon, to find out why. Here I am, looking confused, representin’ Shut Up You Twit, with my sort of mom/sister/daughter Laura from thefriendattack, and Julien and Jo from Superlaser! Sucha big happy family right?

And again, here with Saad, the vision behind saadvision:

On a more personal note, one of my photos also made it in that issue, a shot that I took of The Winks (minus the mustaches, here) and in this week’s, a photo of the band Think About Life, in a great article about the Distroboto machines.