Published 7th July 2014 // Flaunt Magazine
Kirsten Dunst is so alarmingly unassuming that, at first, I don’t even notice her standing beside me in a fuzzy pink sweater and blue jeans. She is, perhaps, the kind of performer who can easily swing from red carpet premiere all the way down to our current location: an emptied rave maze in Stoke Newington, with its box office-style marquee that often reads something to the effect of “Nelly’s Dirty 30.”
First published in Flaunt magazine (14 November 2013) //
Concubines, Detective Work, and a Taste for Ibérico
I meet author Jung Chang in a classy Chinese restaurant atop a Kensington hotel in London on a Friday evening, 7 p.m. sharp. She’s ten minutes late and I’m having a beer with the barman, Vittor. He’s Italian but can speak smooth Mandarin, picked up from three years on cocktail duty. Vittor demonstrates by showing someone the toilet in what rings like true, learned dialect. I tell him I can’t speak a word of it, and he balks.
“What a lad,” he says, for the first time of many. I’ve got an Asian name and an even Asianer face. And Vittor’s the Asianest man at the bar.
First published on The Huffington Post (15th December 2011) //
Noah Cicero is a novelist, poet and short-story writer from Youngstown, Ohio. He has authored six novels, the first of which, his influential and widely-acclaimed small press namedrop The Human War (2003), has just been made into a feature-length film. Cicero’s work has been described as ‘angry’, ‘political’, ‘bleak’ and ‘absurdist,’ among other words. He is currently 31 years of age.
First published on The Rumpus (21st November 2011) //
A New York transplant working in LA, and son of the legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, Azazel has journeyed steadily through the independent film scene since his debut in 2003 with Nobody Needs to Know.
He arrived this year with Terri, his biggest feature yet, a droll and unsentimental portrait of a pyjama-wearing teenager, played by newcomer Jacob Wysocki. Carer for his ageing uncle (an impressive by Creed Bratton), Terri must also deal with high school, the assistant principal (John C. Reilly) and generally growing up. A well-documented fan of The Clash (he appears unofficially in the Strummer biography, The Future Is Unwritten), Jacobs once said that he wished all of his interviews were about the band. We sat down for a chat about both.
First published on The British Comedy Guide (3rd November 2011) //
Before turning to stand-up, Doc Brown (aka Ben Smith) was a successful rapper releasing three full-length solo records, and one other with the politically conscious London collective Poisonous Poets.
Since his departure from the UK rap scene in 2007, he has appeared on Comedy Rocks With Jason Manford before going on to perform critically-acclaimed shows at the Royal Albert Hall, the Soho Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival, picking up credits in The Inbetweeners, Miranda and Joe Cornish’s film Attack the Block along the way. All while co-creating the forthcoming BBC teen comedy-drama The Four O’Clock Club.
First published on Splitsider (25th October 2011) //
I don’t make it a habit to go meeting comedians, especially American ones who live far away, and especially funny ones who have the power to embarrass and slight me on my little voice recorder. But I made the exception for Eugene Mirman, a long-standing cornerstone of the New York comedy circuit. Because he was nearby, in the town of London, where I live.
As well as an actor in person (Flight of the Conchords) and in voice (Bob’s Burgers, Aqua Teen Hunger Force), Mirman is currently shooting his very own show, and will also soon be seen taking down The Dictator in Larry Charles and Sacha Baron-Cohen’s latest collaboration next year.
First published on Spike Magazine (August 8th 2011) //
Gerald Locklin has, in his lengthy career, alternately been called a “people’s writer”, a “stand-up poet” (co-credited for coining the term) and, by his friend and contemporary, Charles Bukowski: “one of the great undiscovered talents of our time”.
First published on Spike Magazine (October 5th 2011) //
First published on Spike Magazine (October 5th 2011) //
First published on Spike Magazine (August 1st 2011) //
Carrying the torch passed on by Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr, for many Dan Fante is America’s most vital writer. Interview by Declan Tan
Internet Present 