You want commentary? Sure. Next month, HBO will release Phil Spector, which chronicles the murder trial against legendary record producer Phil Spector that concluded with his 2009 sentencing for a very long time. Today, HBO released a trailer showing Al Pacino (as Spector) and Helen Mirren (as his lawyer) chewing on all kinds of dramatic scenery, but the most notable thing is the assortment of truly garish wigs on top of Pacino’s head—which, along with the hammy delivery, make it seem like the movie could find its place in the pantheon of ironically watched movies for years to come. Or maybe it’ll actually be good, but really: Those wigs! It’s out on March 24. As follows:

1. Psycho afro (pictured above)

2. Increasingly irrelevant cool dad

3. Sideburn Spector

4. 21st century Mick Jagger

5. Bomb shelter chic

With his latest restaurant, Red Rooster, breathing new life into Harlem all over again with its multi-culturati scene, we were eager to sit down with celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, the cock of the New York foodie walk.

The first amazing thing we found out?

He’s not a celebrity chef, he says. He’s just a guy who loves to cook, who has more endorsement deals than knives: television shows, websites, social networking accounts, a hospitality group, and a self-designed line of shoes called MOZO Chef Signature, which look like a cross between skater shoes, high-end sneakers, and Italian driving moccasins. He’s an Iron Chef champ. He huffs for HuffPo. He’s cooked for the Obamas—their first state dinner at the White House. And he helped The Man feed the fat cats at a DNC fundraiser at Red Rooster in March (lobster salad and short ribs). He’s handsome and married to a model, Maya Haile. He’s a fashion plate, and we’re not talking starters and sides: Burberry, Acne, Dior, Valentino, “Brooklyn” Nikes, Ralph Lauren, and Vuitton bags to travel. He’s a philanthropist (Tap Project for UNICEF, World Childhood Foundation, CCAP) and an activist. And he has a biographical back story that James Frey or JT LeRoy wouldn’t have tried to float past their publishers: Ethiopian-born, orphaned at 3, raised in Sweden, three stars at 24, with a new concept of “fusion” cooking that seems to express not only his life, but a vision of a world on the edge of ethnographic change, forever.

What we learned from our talk:

Five of Marcus’ favorite words are: platform, conversation, proposition, journey, and community.

Why Rooster? Why Harlem?

“I thought, I live here. Why is it the case that there are more sodas than fresh apples on my block? What can I do in that conversation? Food is my platform, and I can bring that to this community. No one is coming to Harlem for anything. You have to create it.”

And:

“That’s the proposition. Create a magnet, create the jobs. If we hire just 60 people—some of these kids, maybe they worked in a fast food restaurant before, so when we serve and they meet the person who just graduated from school, they meet the Harlemite guy, you’re creating a new language. A new conversation.”

And:

“You have to separate yourself from the conversation in order to give your best. All of these people, they’re connected, they aspire. None of them would work at a four-star restaurant, a three-star restaurant—they would not actually have been spoken to. But they’re good people and they deserve a chance, and these standards that I was taught and trained by I got in my blood when I was 17 years old. Some of them are 19, some of them are 45—it doesn’t matter. They’re still going to get a chance. The restaurant was an opportunity to create a community and a place where people who go by say, ‘I’m going to work there.’”

The next trend is “local, authentic.” The last trend was “fusion, exotic.” But Rooster is authentically local because Harlem is exotically fusion. Two birds with one stone.

“The authenticity first is by the intent. We are here, and we are authentic because our staff is from here, and because of the conversation of the menu. East of us is the Harlemite from the Latin community—that’s why we have a big section of that [tacos and tostadas]. The center of us is the Trinidadian and Jamaican community [dirty rice and jerk beef]. And then you have the African-American community [mac and greens, fried chicken], and then you have the Jewish [braised short ribs] and Italian-American [asparagus with pine nuts, lemon chicken]. The menu’s laid out so that we are ‘a place.’ It’s not like, ‘I like foie gras, so let’s have foie gras on the menu.’ It doesn’t fit.”

What we love about Marcus: He’s put his money where his mouth is.

“When I was 21, I ate at a fuga restaurant in Japan. I was completely broke afterwards. I flew to Japan to do this and I did it, and I left with a smile. It was still fantastic. When I ate at Alain Ducasse the first time, same thing. Every year I took one trip that put everything in the red and saved up all my money and ate. It’s the only school. But I worked every weekend for it. You just work and you do it. Getting there—with your borrowed tie and pants, but getting there. Eating a tasting menu. Those are experiences.”

What Marcus tweeted the day we talked to him:

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.” —Rabindranath Tagore.

Was it something we said?

We’ve always harbored a not-so-secret obsession for actor Michael Shannon, and with Shannon Season fast approaching, it’s obvious we’re not the only ones. This fall, we’ll be enrapt by his baby-mama drama (with BULLETT babe Paz de la Huerta) as he reprises his role as Agent Nelson Van Alden on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. We’ll also be front row when he portrays a man with a serious mental illness in the psychological drama Take Shelter (costarring Jessica Chastain, another actor who’s having a major moment), and when he embodies a drug addict alongside Gerard Butler inMachine Gun Preacher.

In this exclusive video interview, the lovable oddball discusses conspiracy theories (which he endearingly calls conspiracy “truths”) and his thoughts on extraterrestrial life.

Take a tour with Top Chef master Marcus Samuelsson of his restaurant Red Rooster,found in the heart of Harlem, NY.

Celebrity sorcerer David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear. He’s walked through (yes, through) the Great Wall of China. With his trademark smolder, he even wooed supermodel Claudia Schiffer, to whom he was engaged for six years. The 55-year-old New Jersey native is the proud owner of eleven Guinness World Record, 21 Emmys, and a chain of 11 islands in the Bahamas. It’s safe to say he lives a, well, charmed life, which is why we were so excited when he invited BULLETT to hang out in his magic archive in Las Vegas.

Check out the behind-the-scenes footage in which our Editor-in-Chief Idil Tabanca, Creative Director Sah D’Simone, and Art Director James Orlando team up with the King of Magic to create images that are beyond enchanting. To see the results of the shoot, pick up BULLETT’s Cosmic Issue, on stands now.

Mary-Louise Parker could not be more ready for BULLETT’s Cosmic issue.

“I’ve been called an alien all my life,” she says warming to the topic. “They can’t get a pulse on me and for some reason I break electronics – like my computer and my cell phone. No-one knows what it is.”

Thankfully, today her negative ions are set to low, so digital pictures remain faithfully on SD cards while her words are recorded for posterity on an iPod.

We’re in Los Angeles, her home-away-from-her-NYC-home for three months a year while she films the hit Showtime series Weeds, chronicling the bad decisions and wild missteps of a mother/widower/dope dealer/gangster’s moll. It’s a role that’s given the 46-year-old both a regular gig, and the opportunity to indulge her love of theatre (she won a Tony for her Broadway role in “Proof“), cherry pick some choice film roles (Red, Solitary Man) and raise her two kids (seven-year-old William with actor Billy Crudup, and adopted daughter Caroline, five.)

She’s a lot on her plate, which could explain her croak of a voice, words propelled mere inches from her mouth by the slightest puff of her lungs before falling almost unheard onto the ground. Almost unheard…

At the end of the last season of Weeds, after years of getting away with it all, Nancy finally got caught.

Yes, she went to jail for three years. This is the first time the show returned after a break with a three-year gap in the story.

Did three years in the big house finally teach her a lesson?

No way. We wouldn’t have a show if it did.

How soon before she starts getting into trouble again?

About 20 minutes. Maybe more like 11.

Have you personally ever had any issues with the decisions she’s made?

No. I’m not like her. She’s really immediate, and I tend to worry more and think about the future and my children and the effect things will have on them, even down to what they eat.

America is still essentially a puritanical society: was it inevitable that she ultimately had to be punished for her crimes?

The writer and creator of the show wasn’t looking for something punitive to appeal to middle America: she’s more along the lines of wanting to shock people. I think she just thought it was good for the story.

Nothing in the name of moral duty?

No – I don’t think there’s much of that on the show.

Showtime has a rep for seriously flawed characters – Nancy, Dexter, Nurse Jackie, Hank Moody, Frank Gallagher – that at the same time seem very likeable. What do you think is the appeal?

I was the first one! I personally think there’s something lovely about watching a slightly more fictionalized ideal, like Leave It To Beaver. I’d rather watch that, but maybe people can’t live up to that, and it feels more subversive and voyeuristic to see something that is closer to real life.

Though however extraordinary her situation, her response is always relatively passive.

That’s because she feels, whatever’s happening, ‘Things will ultimately work out for me’. It’s not even being able to relate to the fact that it might not. That’s a hard attitude for me to relate to.

Has anything been difficult for you to film or deal with?

Honestly, driving was the hardest thing for me because I don’t drive.

So you’ve been beaten, sexually abused, kidnapped, gone to jail, attacked… yet driving has been the most difficult.

I would say so. I’m pretty bad. They had a gag reel one season that had seven takes of me trying to back out of a parking space.

Apart from forcing you into a car, has Nancy influenced you at all?

Just with her taste in jewelry. I worked for a long time to try and find her wardrobe and I really want her jewelry. I don’t dress like her otherwise.

You look pretty badass on the new poster, with your leather pants and chain.

I know – isn’t that silly! My kids saw it from the car – ‘Oh, it’s mummy!’ I think they think everyone’s mummy is on a billboard.

You’ve interviewed and written for Esquire: if you were interviewing yourself what question would you ask?

God… what a good question. I guess… why do you want to keep doing it? The answer? I don’t want to seem melodramatic, but in some ways it feels like this is what I have to be doing. My father just died, so that changes the way I feel about what I do.

Sorry to hear that – do you believe you’ll get to see him again in the afterlife?

I want to so badly. Nobody knows – everything is philosophy as far as I’m concerned. Or hope.

If there is an afterlife, where do you think you’re going and where do you think Nancy’s going?

Nancy’s going to a land full of shoes and jewelry. I’d just like to be somewhere I can see my dad again, and ultimately my mum and my kids.

When you were a kid yourself did you feel you had a purpose?

To keep people around me happy.

That’s a serious responsibility for a child.

It wasn’t in a mammoth way, not like some Dickensian-type thing. I was kind of a disaster socially, so I didn’t have a lot of friends, which in the end brought me all kinds of other things.

Do you believe in fate?

No. I believe in effort. And results. Effort counts, and that’s what I respect in other people. It’s like, ‘Why even bother? I’ll just sit here and let it all happen to me.’

Do you think there’s another version of yourself sitting somewhere in a parallel universe, and if so, what’s she doing?

I don’t, but if there is I wish she’d show up and let me take a nap.

How important to you is order as opposed to chaos?

I have to create order because there’s so much chaos in my head. I can’t have both.

If you had an opportunity to take a glimpse into the future 50 years from now, what would you want to see in it?

I’d have to know first that it’s true; otherwise I wouldn’t want to see it. If someone could say your children are happy and doing well, I might want to peek. But only if I was on my way to die.

How about just a year from now – do you think you’ll still be playing Nancy Botwin?

I didn’t think they’d even pick up the pilot so I didn’t think it would go a year. Now every year I’m like, ‘You’re kidding!’. Certainly I’d do another year after this – I’m happy to have a job.

What would you like to see happen to Nancy in the future?

I like the really extreme scripts, and I wish she’d go back to a suburban setting: I love the dynamic of her trying to fit in with other women that she should be able to fit in with and just can’t. She is one of them but she isn’t.

Do you think there’s a chance that ultimately we’ll see grandma Nancy dealing drugs?

Oh, quite possibly…

Watch our teaser for our print issue- ON STANDS NOW!

One of last year’s fastest rising talents and the star of the upcoming 50/50, Anna Kendrick enjoyed the tutelage of Parker Posey in BULLETT’s Fall editorial. Check out these images from Anna’s shoot, where she dons Missoni, Libertine and vintage Alaîa. You can check out the full interview and the beautiful editorial shot by Lauren Dukoff here.

Ashlee Simpson isn’t the only one swooning over actor Vincent Piazza. The Boardwalk Empire star has been a BULLETT favorite since his turn as a kleptomaniac named Earl in 2007’s Rocket Science. But he really sealed the deal when he stepped into the role of notorious mobster Lucky Luciano (“the father of modern organized crime”) in HBO‘s prohibition-era drama, where he holds his own among his formidable costars Michael Shannon and Paz de la Huerta (also BULLETT crushes).

For BULLETT’s Cosmic issue, Vincent Piazza was tasked to invent something that would change the world for the better. Thus was born the Negativity Neutralizer, a machine that turns complaints into a source of pure, renewable energy. We filmed Piazza as he tested his machine on the whiniest people in New York, a city of whiny people.

It’s almost apocalyptic, the sickly sky and the on-cue cacophony of construction. The weight of bulky chains clank and grate against the cement floor as workers heave-ho through what suddenly seems an obtrusive hallway. As Michael Shannon and I sit in the lightless offshoot hideout, the ground rumbles with pulsing vibrations, and the air fills with the staccato drilling of jackhammers. For all we know, the jarring dots and dashes could be a warning of the end of days.

It’s not the end of the world, but if it were, Shannon would have you know it’s not an act of God or mystical revelations realized: it’s science. “There are too many people,” he says. “The earth cannot sustain the amount of people that are on it right now. It’s just a fact. We use too many resources, and eventually, it cannot continue.”

An actor whose trademark is his ability to ooze intensity without sacrificing subtlety, Shannon reunites with director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) in the slow-burning (until it erupts) psychological thriller Take Shelter. The film follows Curtis LaForche, whose stormy apocalyptic visions are either premonitions or the first signs of mental illness. In his rising panic, he struggles to protect his family.

Leaning in close, attempting to conquer the chaos, he is focused. Gazing at the ground, fingers laced, the actor says, “The story resonated with me because I’m very anxious about the state of things in the world. I have a family, and I oftentimes have to try to figure out how to balance the anxiety about the world with being in a family. You don’t want to bring that into the family—you want the family to be a peaceful, calm thing. How do you block out that anxiety? You also don’t want to be oblivious to what’s going on, because that doesn’t seem to be the right way to handle things, either. It’s trying to find that balance. I think the storm is a metaphor for a lot of different things. Although recently there’s been a lot of horrific weather in the world, so it may not even be a metaphor anymore.”

–

When you signed on to make the film, was it discussed with Jeff Nichols whether or not your character was truly having premonitions?

It was really not something we spoke about. It wasn’t important for us to even agree on it. As much as we’ve been talking about this phenomenon and the end of the world, [the film is] actually much more about the relationships between the people, regardless of whether the outside circumstances are true or false. That’s insignificant. The fact of the matter is that your attention can be drawn away from your family by anxiety, by outside forces, and it’s ultimately about the best way to protect your family from that anxiety.

But if the audience concludes that Curtis is schizophrenic, or is in fact experiencing premonitions, it’s likely to color their opinion. Which point of view do you think they’d be more sympathetic to?

I don’t know. Some people have a lot of sympathy for people with mental illness and some people don’t. Mental illness has always had its skeptics anyway, because some people take it very seriously, while some people don’t really believe it’s a disease. Either way, whether it’s a delusion or whether it’s really happening, his issue remains the same—he’s still trying to protect his family from himself. There’s ambiguity in the film and it’s purposeful. I know Jeff tries not to talk about it that much because he wants people to have their own experience.

–

The inability to trust one’s own mind and the fear of losing control are familiar territories for Shannon, whose career is built on the exploration of human complexity. In HBO’s period drama, Boardwalk Empire, he plays Agent Nelson Van Alden, a corrupt cop in Prohibition-era Atlantic City whose religious fanaticism allows him to sacrifice his own morals in exchange for the punishment of those who revel in a bootlegged pool of sin. In some ways comparable to Curtis LaForche’s personal battle, Van Alden snaps under the burden of intention and compulsion, ultimately hurting those he means to protect. Shannon pinpoints this as a great irony. “It’s a question of intimacy,” he says. “How intimate can people really be with one another? You have the family, you have a relationship, but at the end of the day, how much do you really share with another person? Can people accept another person in totality, every little facet of them? I think that’s what we’re all looking for, and to give someone that acceptance is very hard.”

–

Is there a fine line between sane and insane, good and bad, in people? 

Yeah, I definitely felt that with Nelson Van Alden on Boardwalk. People would stop me and tell me they enjoy the show, and they’d say something like, “You’re really good at being crazy,” or, “Oh, I really hate him, he’s so evil.” It strikes me as odd because I actually think Nelson started out with very good intentions, and I think he’s a genuine person. The significant journeys that people take in their lives—they’re not just one direction in a straight line, you know? Point A to Point B. The journey of self-discovery, self-actualization, enlightenment or wisdom is not just a straight walk down the road. There are a lot of twists and turns, and sometimes you go back the way you came. It’s hard to figure out the right thing to do every day.

Are most people inherently good?

I do have faith in that. I think people who are really violent or harmful are not born that way. There are people who withstand a lot of negative activity and abuse, and that informs who they become. Any sort of atrocity that’s committed is usually sort of handed down through the ancestry of that person. It’s not just something somebody thinks up in the moment like that.

The term “losing control” has both positive and negative connotations. What does it immediately trigger for you?

I think control is an illusion, always. If you ever have control, it’s very isolated. You have control if you tie your shoes successfully; you’ve controlled that one small inner exchange between you and that object. But in terms of having control over something, like Curtis trying to have control over that situation—it’s absurd, yet it’s something that people really look for. It gives people comfort to feel like they’re “in control,” but it seems like an illusion to me.

–

In the flesh, Shannon dwarfs any potential adversary—an effortless way to assert control. He’s a towering presence that could easily nestle himself among the heroes of the Golden Age of Cinema, but as if to spite his on-camera intensity and strapping build, he also exudes a subtle boyishness. If not for his easy sense of humor, it’s likely the Michael Jackson moonwalking jokes he throws around on set would have been left hanging, woeful and lingering. In this dichotomy, he effuses a charm that is distinctly his own, at once simple and intricate.

The gloomy London afternoon is illuminated by Ewan McGregor’s arrival to the North London townhouse where he is set to transform into various, equally eccentric characters. The 40-year-old Scottish actor appears, cheerful and animated, sporting a mustache that suggests he is a proud graduate of Dali’s Academy of ‘Stache Twisting. After our initial introductions, the shoot begins. About an hour later, having relocated to the garden, I hear laughter coming from the studio. I run inside to see who tripped on the strobes this time, only to find the actor in tight pants, deliberately showing his butt crack while striking a mock-sexy pose for the camera. McGregor has the crew doubled over in laughter as I surreptitiously snap a photo.

A few hours pass before McGregor calls me out. “I wanted to ask you something,” he says. “Did you take a picture of my ass crack?” Busted! I feel mortified. He probably thinks I am going to sell it to TMZ. This is bad, real bad. He thinks I am a perv, a creep. “Yes,” I say, blushing. I’m already preparing a lengthy speech that would go on about my morals as they relate to privacy, and that I would never show it to anyone but I probably should not have done it anyways. I can actually delete it right now. Does he want to delete it himself? Would that make him more comfortable? Shit, should I throw the phone in the pool? Instead of reprimanding me as I’d expected, he says, “Can you send me that photo? I want to email it to my publicist as a cover option.” The accompanying photo shoot was never intended to showcase McGregor’s assets—besides, we’ve seen it all before to great effect in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book, and Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. Yet the peculiar exchange serves as an icebreaker, setting into motion the conversations that would reveal the true identity of this fascinating man.

It seems like just yesterday that I was in film school and my screenwriting professor distributed the Trainspotting script. He claimed that there were some movies, grand and full of spectacle, that feel like “the cinematography was done by God,” yet they don’t come close to exploring the real human condition. And then every once in a while there comes a film that, without such extravaganza, tells a story so honest and original, so affecting and resonating, that it reminds us about the true priorities of filmmaking. I knew exactly what he meant.

These humbly budgeted yet brilliantly written and acted films have the rare formula of bringing together organic aspects of filmmaking. And a desirable ingredient in this mix has always been Ewan McGregor. Beginners, a profoundly moving story inspired by the experiences of its director Mike Mills, is the most recent example. “I have a feeling about this film,” he says. “The subject matter makes you think and it gets in touch with your emotions, for sure. But also, just the way it looks and sounds and flows, there’s something very moving about it.”

Exploring a unique father-son relationship, the story follows McGregor’s character Oliver as he copes with his father coming to terms with his homosexuality following his wife’s death. Diagnosed with cancer at the age of 75, Oliver’s father has four years to enjoy this newfound sexual freedom. As Oliver watches his father rediscover life through the process of dying, a quirky French actress, played by Mélanie Laurent, helps him endure the cards he’s been dealt. The freedom to improvise and experiment with emotions in this year’s word-of-mouth champion allow McGregor to flaunt what comes naturally: innate, raw talent.

The iconic Joseph Campbell book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, which comes up during a brainstorming session between BULLETT and McGregor, inspires the visual direction of the accompanying photo. In his deeply philosophical masterpiece, Campbell deconstructs the journey of mankind through religion and mythology. George Lucas’ Star Wars (McGregor portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in the franchise’s revamp), is one of the many films that were profoundly influenced by Campbell’s ideals.

Campbell’s terrifyingly exhilarating theory is that every hero gets one “call to adventure,” a turning point in life that comes in many manifestations and serves as a formal invitation to fulfill one’s potential. Defined by its risks, the journey that follows is meant to initiate the most significant self-transformation in a hero’s life. To do this, our hero must leave home and take a journey into the unknown. Should one deny their call to adventure and remain still, Campbell claims, then they will be cursed for the rest of their existence with leading the opposite of what their life was meant to become—a mundane, nine-to-five existence.

The idea fit McGregor like a glove: the man doesn’t just walk on the path to his adventure—he runs through it like a crazed bull with a red cloth attached to his horns. His call to adventure came in the form of a passion and talent from within, so grand that it was impossible to contain. He started to take on one courageous role after another. The risks that any actor would take only once or twice in their career became a constant trademark for McGregor. He has immersed himself in characters as disparate as they are detailed. Gay, straight, drug addict, rock star, villain, leading man—musical, drama, comedy, thriller—he has done it all and more. “Heroes come in all shapes and forms, and no matter what your calling is, pursue it,” he says. That was the message. As we interpreted our own version of Campbell’s theory, the characters that McGregor suggested we explore were, in a way, alter egos that represent the other directions his journey could have gone in a strange parallel realm.

McGregor’s path has been neither straight nor narrow. When he first told his parents he wanted to act, they were concerned, especially his father, a P.E. teacher who was blessed with two sons: an athletic superstar and a drama kid. Recalling Tim Burton’s Big Fish and Mike Mills’ Beginners, two films that McGregor starred in, which explore in-depth father- son relationships, I was curious to know why he’s been drawn to the subject. He recalled his father’s fears of him not being able to support himself while running after his highly improbable dreams. “I tried,” he says. “I wasn’t very sporty, but my older brother, he was good at cricket and rugby. So he was more like my father, I suppose. And then he got accepted into the Royal Air Force and became a pilot, which is something that I think my father would’ve liked to do himself. So my brother was much more like my father. And he understood me less, because I was interested more in music.” After his first job, McGregor called his father and told him he booked the part (Lipstick on Your Collar) and would get paid £24,000. “There was a real moment of relief in his voice. I mean, he was always very supportive, but I think he was probably a bit worried that it wouldn’t work. And once he sensed that it would, he has since been great.”

In addition to his career, McGregor also assumes multiple roles in his everyday hurdles: doting father, loving husband, generous friend, notorious prankster, adventurous free spirit. Assuming the latter, he recently went on a journey of self exploration through Campbell’s highest recommended reboot recipe: wandering, the ancient method of simply going far, far away for a long, long time. The story comes up when I ask him whether he’s ever been to a fortuneteller. About seven years ago, McGregor and a friend took a three-month trip, traveling the world on their motorcycles. He regards the journey as an ultimate life-changing experience.

While staying in Prague, he encountered a psychic who told him he would fall in love during this trip. Happily married, McGregor briefly worried trouble was ahead. “I thought, shit… You know, I’m married. I’ve got two kids at home. The last thing I need to do is to fall in love with a girl. I took it with a pinch of salt. And then, on that trip, I met my daughter, Jamiyan, who we adopted from Mongolia. So the fortuneteller was right. But you know, it wasn’t the kind of girl that I’d been thinking about at the time.” Like heroes, love too comes in many shapes and forms.

With the expertise of a pro gambler, McGregor always puts his heart and soul into projects that don’t necessarily bring a fortune but surely produce acclaim. He has no boundaries, complaints, or excuses when it comes to his job. Whether the role demands him to pull down his pants and shake his penis, dive into a nasty toilet in search of a heroin baggie, or makeout with Jim Carrey, McGregor conquers each task gracefully.

While discussing the unexpected turns his career has taken, McGregor reveals that his astonishing portrayal of Curt Wild in Velvet Goldmine was an intimidating challenge as the character is based on a combination of two megastars: Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. I ask him if he tried the “method acting” thing, which unexpectedly brings up an epic memory. It will teach you to never drink and method act.

When Velvet Goldmine was in production, David Bowie—whom Jonathan Rhys Meyers‘ character was based on—did not want anything to do with the film. Iggy Pop, however, was supportive of the production. “Iggy Pop was very happy for us to use his music. I got to sing a couple of numbers. David Bowie didn’t want us to touch it at all because he felt that he didn’t want the insinuation that he might have been having sex with men.” A while after the film came out, McGregor was invited to a Versace event where Iggy Pop was set to play. He went with the hope of meeting the musician. When he got there, however, he realized he’d downed a bit too much of the sweet nectar. As Iggy started to play, he made his way to the front row. “I’d spent a long time with a choreographer working on his movements and studying his concerts and feeling like I had Iggy Pop in my bones while filming those scenes. So when I was watching him, I felt like some kind of kindred spirit between us, you know?”

After the show, McGregor went to his dressing room to bond with the musician, where it quickly became clear Iggy Pop had never seen the film nor had he any idea who McGregor was. “So this spirit that I felt we shared was shattered, and in my drunken state I went… I did him to him, you know?” He found himself dancing in Iggy Pop’s dressing room—as Iggy Pop. “The alcoholic fog sort of cleared and I could see myself doing it, and I went, What the fuck am I doing? And Iggy Pop was sitting there going, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, man.’ I didn’t know what to do. It was so embarrassing. I think I just shuffled out of the dressing room and got the fuck out of there as quickly as possible.”

Back at the shoot, the photographer calls out expressions to McGregor. “Funny, sad, pissed off, timid.” His face transforms through the roller coaster of emotions effortlessly. “Excited, disappointed… sexy?” He valiantly attempts a model pout, and then bursts into laughter, embarrassed, as if being sexy is the one thing he cannot fake—it just comes naturally. Someone throws “Christopher Walken” into the list of emotions. McGregor starts to speak like him. An Al Green song begins to play. He sings along in a lovely voice as his congenial companion, a rescue dog, Syd enters the frame again, his curly hair covered in lipstick from the adoring fans on set.

McGregor sits on a vintage suitcase for a picture. It makes a cracking sound and shakes. I gasp, but he doesn’t fall. Instead he gets up and apologizes for ruining the already decayed prop. So genuine and humble, it does not even occur to him that he is a star, and that obviously, we are concerned for his safety. When it comes to McGregor, there is no hint of entitlement or inflated sense of his own importance, unlike many of those who live in the public eye. He has figured out some kind of a secret formula for attaining the best of both worlds: pursuing his passion without sacrificing his authenticity.

McGregor has undoubtedly stamped his presence on some of the most iconic films of our time. His intrepid career promises to secure itself among the best while his courageous choices will forever be renowned for their quality. McGregor is a director’s wet dream—immensely talented yet without vanity. Having assumed numerous real life personas, he has mastered the craft. He can—and pretty much has—played everyone and everything.

But who would play him? What if the tables were turned and someone made a film about him, and he found himself in Iggy’s shoes? What genre would his life be and who would he want to play himself? “Cate Blanchett,” he says. “She could play me. That would be good, wouldn’t it?” He goes on to explain how such a film would be quite dull. “It’d be like a long, slow, indulgent French film about mood.” Surely enough, his humble response fails to calculate the vast interest an Ewan McGregor biopic featuring an androgynous Cate Blanchett spazzing out like McGregor spazzing out like Iggy Pop would generate.

Christina Ricci glides almost imperceptibly into the restaurant, making her subdued entrance exactly on time, almost to the second. “I’m never late, I don’t like to be late,” she says, sliding her 5’1” frame onto the leather banquette, resting those lantern-like green eyes on mine and smiling warmly. Time is obviously something Ricci respects—has she ever wondered how much time she really has, I wonder? Has she considered her mortality, in terms of years, or even days, left on this earth? “Never. I don’t like numbers,” she says, her voice lowering. “And you really shouldn’t worry about things like that too much—that’s a bad habit.”

We’re in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz, which Ricci has called home since the age of 19. Her home is nestled in the shadow of the Griffith Park Observatory, a stargazers’ paradise where James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause was shot, and where astronomers point giant telescopes at the Milky Way nightly. Twelve years since moving there, she still loves venturing up through the wild, dusty hills to the observatory—even though she doesn’t like being outside. “I dislike sunshine and earth,” she says. This explains her porcelain complexion, pale to the point of translucence.

This fall, Ricci is gearing up for a new phase of her acting career, with her first major television acting role in Pan Am. About the glamorous Pan Am air hostesses of the 1960s, it’s been billed as a kind of Mad Men in the sky, with some old-fashioned misogyny and espionage thrown in for good measure. When I ask Ricci if she knows that Pan Am had a waiting list for future flights to the moon, giving out “First Moon Flights Club” membership cards, she nods emphatically. “My mom got one in the ’60s. She still carries it in her purse!”

She’s moving to New York in a few weeks, because that’s where the show is being filmed. She and her Pan Am costar, Aussie actress Margot Robbie, have found an apartment in Brooklyn, which they will share for several months. “I haven’t had an apartment in New York in a very long time,” says Ricci, her shoulder-length, mousy hair perfectly flat- ironed. “It’ll be interesting. I’ll really miss my boyfriend and our home and our dogs.” She’s not worried about having a roommate, as she and Margot are very compatible. “I’m the kind of person who, if we have to be ready to get in the car at 6.30am, I set the alarm for 3:00am. And Margot will laugh and say, ‘Okay, Frank.’”

Frank?

“Yes, she calls me Frank. Long story. Anyway, she’s much more laid-back and relaxed than I am. I’m so high-strung, but she likes it because with me, it’s impossible to be late for anything. And Margot tells me to just look at her each time I feel anxious, which always calms me down. So we’re really a good match.”

If Ricci’s a nervous bird, she certainly does a good job of keeping it under control. There’s nothing fidgety about her demeanor in the slightest. In fact, she’s one of those rare beings who seems entirely unafraid to maintain steady eye contact. At first it’s unsettling, until you realize it’s because she’s actually paying attention to what you’re saying. Ricci agrees that she’s actually far more relaxed these days than she was in her teens and early twenties. “Back then, each day was like, ‘Oh, what fresh hell is this?’ And then you grow up.” Of course, there’s a part of her that’s nostalgic about her teenage angst. “The glitter and the combat boots and the tearing out sheets from Dante’s Inferno and pinning them on my wall? How amazing is that? I used to have this energy and anxiety, this need to constantly be making things happen or fighting for something. Now, even though I still have moments of being totally irrational and high-strung, I mainly just feel like I want to make the best of things and have a good time.”

Ricci’s skin is dewy and makeup-free, and she is wearing ballet flats and a demure blue dress. Her attire accentuates her trademark china doll aesthetic which, combined with a dry-as-bone wit, made Ricci a bona fide child star with her iconic performance as solemn little Wednesday Addams in 1991’s The Addams Family. She followed with a string of ultra-indie, Lolita-ish roles. Who can forget her tap dancing in that baby blue slip dress in Vincent Gallo’s cult classic, Buffalo ‘66? Or her as a 16-year-old pregnant femme fatale in 1998’s The Opposite of Sex? As Johnny Depp’s winsome love interest in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow? As a Barbra Streisand-obsessed artist in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? John Waters, king of transgressive cinema, cast her as Edward Furlong’s laundromat-manager girlfriend in Pecker, a film about a shitty photographer who becomes a darling of the New York art scene. When asked what the word “indie” means to her today, Ricci pauses for a long time. Then, with genuine curiosity, “Are there still independent films? I’m not really so sure.”

In the early 2000s, around the time she swapped the New York downtown club scene for her life in L.A., she ventured into more adult cinema territory. “I’m usually drawn to characters based on people who are labeled in our society in negative terms,” she says, nibbling on her whitefish. “I like knowing why that type of person might be the way they are.” She won acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos’ lesbian lover in 2003’s Monster; also for her role as the chronically depressed Elizabeth Wurtzel in 2001’s Prozac Nation (which was never actually released in the U.S.), and for 2006’s Black Snake Moan. Here, audiences saw Ricci at her most provocative, playing a young, pathologically-promiscuous southern woman who is chained up (and saved from herself) by an older, religious bluesman played by Samuel L. Jackson. A dark, serious film hopelessly mis-marketed as a sex romp (the poster read “Everything is hotter down south”—Ricci was furious), Black Snake Moan did poorly at the box office only to later achieve a word-of-mouth following, thanks to Ricci’s raw and courageous performance. “I’m so proud of that film,” says Ricci. As a spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the subject matter was close to Ricci’s heart. “That character was manifesting her own victimization as a way of trying to have some control over what happened to her as a child,” she says. “That powerlessness left her terrified to be alone, so she perpetuated her own abuse by being the ‘slutty girl.’ That’s what I mean about being drawn to certain roles—maybe people who watch that film will think twice about abusing, discarding, and disrespecting the girl they call the ‘town slut.’”

After more than 20 years in Hollywood, there’s no sense that her love for the craft is waning. Not even slightly. “Oh my god, I love working,” she says. “I love being on set. I love crews and the whole process.” She says film crews make fun of her because she is so excited to be at work. “I’m that weirdo who starts dancing in the makeup trailer at 6:00am, and everyone’s looking at me going, ‘Oh, my god.’” Her Black Snake Moan costar Justin Timberlake decided that if Ricci was going to dance in the makeup trailer, he might as well teach her some moves. “You know, Justin told me it’s actually impossible to pop and lock at the same time. I was like, ‘Oh.’ He tried to teach me. Then I realized that, no, I don’t think I am a dancer after all.”

Ricci’s a dichotomous creature—hyper-sensitive yet utterly poised; obsessively punctual but unwilling to measure time; excited to be an actress, but really into cutting. Not the sad, dysfunctional cutting, but collage—she’s obsessed. “Okay, there are serious artists, the kind who are going to revolutionize the art scene,” she says. “And then there are people like me, who are just really, really excited about sticking fun shit together.” One of the reasons she’s excited to move to Brooklyn is because of the abundance of art supply stores there. “It’s like craft heaven,” she sighs.

She pulls out a brown bag and inside is a birthday card, a collage piece that she made herself. It is kitschier than kitsch and charming, in an awkwardly rendered and very honest pre-school kind of way. Ricci has decorated it with glitter and a huge, blue paper heart. “I love blue hearts,” she says. “I don’t go for red hearts at all.” The card is for some friends of hers. They had asked Ricci, along with all of their friends, to send birthday wishes on personal stationery. She laughs, nodding with pride at the giant “XOXO” she had Sharpied at the bottom of the card. “I’m 31, but there’s no way I feel grown up enough for personalized stationery. I’m not sure I ever will.”

Dear Nancy,

I wanted to pass along some of the things you left in that white canvas duffle inside my garage: Forty-six postcards glued inside the pages of a spiral notebook. They seem to be from Judah? (I won’t comment on the inscriptions, but I would love a hint as to who Darci is. Also, why the references to some particular wheat field in Calgary? I am assuming the Sinéad referred to is not the bald one who incidentally, I think, became a nun.) One very worn men’s t-shirt from the Big Sur Lodge. Holes at the neck. Twelve pairs of platform shoes. (The orange ones really defy explanation—they are nearly four inches high. Jeez. Your knees must creak and pop like mad? I’d imagine that makes it hard for someone who spends a lot of time—oh, I am not going to finish that. It was lewd, and really, the pot shouldn’t go after the kettle, as they say.) A red velvet bag that houses a blue velvet bag that houses a gold mesh bag that holds maybe eight or nine gold chains, cleverly separated by twisty-ties. There is also a crystal champagne bottle box that was transformed into a jewelry box and holds seventeen pairs of hoop earrings, 11 rings, 23 bracelets, and some leather strap things that might be necklaces, or bracelets, or a fancy version of what you use to tie a turkey before you put it in the oven. A small photo album of the boys. More pictures of Silas than Shane.
I’m just saying.

A leather bag, brown, with silver and black braided-fringy things hanging off. It is filled with some items I will pretend I never saw, but I am sure you know the one I refer to. A giant Costco-size bag of Red Vines. A box of drinking straws, opened. About half-full. Various rare jazz LPs. Keely Smith featured heavily. A sort of crushed vintage champagne box holding seven thimbles that are definitely antique, some vintage buttons (fairly beautiful ones), and some of those things… What are they called? Bobbins.

I hope you are doing better than the last time I saw you. I can’t imagine you have changed much despite incarceration, fetching little recidivist that you are. You know I mean that with love. Certainly you are not evolved in any substantial way? Stay out there in the dark with only that parchment halo as some kind of tricky GPS. Your moral compass will always give you a fake speed limit. Use it. Drink up that narcissism juice and burn rubber, baby. Don’t ever change. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you grew a conscience, but what’s more, I have grown to love you. We have only two or three things in common despite sharing a body, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I don’t feel like quitting you just yet. Anyways, I am keeping your stuff safe. Send news.

Yours,

Mary-Louise

PARTY GIRL. I remember Daisy [von Scherler Mayer, the film’s director] coming up to me and asking if I could do something in one or two takes because there wasn’t enough film in the camera and they couldn’t afford to buy more. The pressure and excitement of working in New York was exactly what I wanted and exactly what I had wished for. That was a great part for me. I had vogued with drag queens at the Roxy on Saturday nights and I’d counted pennies in my apartment to buy pasta to eat, and I’d really enjoyed putting my stamp on that time and place in a movie. I thought it was really for kids who wanted to move to New York City and feel free to be themselves and to go out dancing. Like in movies from the forties, it was playful, fun, and generous. It was a 22- to 23-day shoot. I worked so hard, and I remember crying from exhaustion. My boyfriend at the time bought a pet iguana that I hated. I remember being really tired and crying and hating that iguana, saying stereotypical things that embarrassed me but that I genuinely felt, like, “I have nothing more to give! I feel like an acting machine! I am so tired!” I was 24 at the time, I think. Omar [Townsend], who played my love interest, wasn’t a real actor at all, but he was handsome. I could tell he looked at me like I was from another planet and was not attracted to me because I wasn’t a virgin. He asked me how to say his lines—fresh out of drama school. I really looked down on that and wished I had had a “real actor” to act with. I liked him, though. He was nice. And I ate so much falafel that I’ve never had another one.

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN is one of four movies I’ve made with Christopher Guest. It’s what he would call an “unscripted movie.” In other words, all the movies have improvised dialogue. It’s like jazz, but in movie style. There’s no rehearsing. After the first day of filming, I sat in the back of the van—we were all driving back together from Lockhart, Texas, into Austin, to the Double Tree Hotel—and my lower back was killing me. I was stretching it out, holding my knees to my chest. Eugene Levy asked me what was wrong and I said my lower back was sore, and he told me it was “from holding in laughter.” When I got back to the hotel I took a bath and I cried my eyes out because it felt like I had been thrown into unknown waters. There was no dialogue. It was about relying on your instincts, which felt really unreliable. But I had worked on the part and I had carried her history around inside of me, so it was just about being in the moment—for me, at least. Everyone’s process was different. Chris would say before a take, “This could really happen, you know. People are really like this.” And they are. People can get that carried away.

I was really scared to do SCREAM 3, but I needed the money. Today, starring in a B movie that makes a lot of money allows you to make indie movies with prestige. But back then, if you did B movies, it could show a lack of integrity and might hurt your chances of being perceived as a serious actor. I met Wes Craven and I’d expected him to look like a creep, but he turned out to be the ultimate father figure, soft-spoken and kind. I played an actress named Angelina (I think?) who is playing Gale Weathers, played by Courtney Cox. I was surprised that Wes let me get away with all the silly stuff I did in that movie, like mouthing Gale’s lines behind her back when she sees Dewey [David Arquette] for the first time—as if Angelina is so lost in her role as Gale that she can read Gale’s mind and know what Gale is going to say. I was curious to see if Scream fans were as nerdy as I’d hoped they would be. Would they catch all of this? Why else would anyone, especially someone as smart as Angelina, follow Gale around and into the situations that Gale throws herself into? People in horror movies are so stupid! Just leave! [Editor’s note: Posey’s character was named Jennifer Jolie.]

BEST IN SHOW was initially called Dogland. When I got offered the part, it really did seem as if people had stopped having children and started having dogs. Michael Hitchcock, who played my husband, and I had lunch one day with Chris [Guest], and he asked, “What if you two had braces?” I had just gone through a bad root canal and an ensuing Vicodin withdrawal, and I thought braces could be fun. The retainer Michael wore made him lisp, which worked for him, but I thought if we both lisped it would seem strange. There was so much backstory that didn’t make it into the movie. My character was a pill popper and a pot smoker, which was really fun to play. She was a Banana Republic–wearing businesswoman who’d lost herself by identifying way too intensely with her dog—she and her husband just bark at each other all the time. A lot of stuff gets cut in those types of movies, and afterward all the actors are really depressed and upset. I remember Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, and Catherine O’Hara were always harmonizing with each other on set. When we were all working together in the auditorium, there was a lot of singing. That’s probably where A Mighty Wind, Chris’ next movie, came from.

BROKEN ENGLISH was written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes, and we became friends during it. I was working on Boston Legal in LA when the financing suddenly came through. Zoe flew to meet me and we hung out for 11 hours, talking about my character Nora—who she is and what she is going through. I was staying at the Chateau Marmont and I remember sitting on the couch in my room with my hands on both scripts, completely overwhelmed, trying to soak the material into my system through a self-created osmosis. I shot the very first scene of the movie with Zoe’s mom, Gena Rowlands. I tell her how unlovable I feel, or something to that extent. After the movie came out, a lot of young women came up to me and said that it was their story: they drink a bottle of wine each night, take yoga or at least try to, and open themselves up to the depressing dating scene in New York.

There is a movie coming out with me and the wrestler Triple H called Inside Out. It’s my second movie with him. There’s a whole story about that one, too, but I don’t have time to tell it. Let’s just say his arm is the size of my thigh and he plays the love of my life.

FAMILY: My mom has a lot of philosophies about matchmaking and dating. I still reference them sometimes. Someone who has your weakness but more pronounced will often be a good match for you because it will draw out the strength that you didn’t know you had. It will force you to become the leader in that area. I thought that was interesting. I’m paraphrasing what I think her philosophy is. Also, you don’t meet the person who you end up with; you become those people together. My mother was, at various times, a social worker, an aerobics instructor, a schoolteacher, a dating service impresario—a matchmaker. But I learned more about being between worlds from my father, who was a ghostwriter and would assume different perspectives for each book. He would write one book through the eyes of Lee Iacocca, and one through the eyes of Nancy Reagan, and then through the eyes of George Stephanopoulos, or Magic Johnson. He would immerse himself in the world of the Iran Contra or basketball or liberal or conservative causes and become the voice of it.

WRITING: I think it probably made me feel very at home with the idea of immersing myself in something else, immersing myself in another perspective as a writer or as a character. What I feel most confident about in my writing is the very, very specific minutia of somebody’s voice. Why two people who seem to be very similar—how they would talk differently. That’s my favorite thing about writing. I started as a writer and still am a writer, and any other role I have comes out of that, comes out of imagining things the way a writer would. Acting has definitely helped my writing because I know what type of thing is false to give an actor and what kind of thing is incomplete to give an actor.

COMEDY: I did standup for about two years as my main focus in life before The Office. I absolutely committed 100 percent, foolishly. I thought I was going to be Jerry Seinfeld. As soon as I started, it was either going to be the greatest or a bust. Now it fits in a different place in my life. I think if someone is truly funny, they are doing something at a level that you have never seen before. They are tapping into some great truth about who they are or what life is like as a writer or an actor. It’s hard to make a smart person laugh, so if someone’s actually making you laugh, that’s the person. As a writer on The Office I have, like, 17 characters to write for and endless combinations of possibilities. But it’s hard. I laugh a lot in my office alone as I write. Other writers laugh at me for it. I go into my little room and they hear me crack up, and I don’t even notice I’m doing it. Sometimes I think I’m just forcing myself to laugh to see if I find it funny—being an easy audience on my writer to encourage myself. I would like to create projects that make some people insanely happy and a few that people don’t understand.

ALIENS: I believe that aliens exist, but I think they are failures, and I think they will never amount to anything. I would love for them to prove me wrong. I think they suck, and I think that’s why you have not seen them visit this planet, because they are losers. I don’t even think they’ve tried to get here and that’s why they’re such failures. You’re an even bigger failure if you don’t even try. “What are they doing in outer space?” Who the fuck knows? They suck. If I made a movie about aliens, I would like to be a very gentle, excited astronaut who doesn’t wear a helmet, and is just overwhelmed with love and excitement upon discovering the aliens and completely forgets all the protocol that he learned at NASA and is sort of adopted and raised by them… Not adopted and raised, because he is a very prominent scientist who received this mission in the first place. There’s no conflict in this movie. There’s no plot, really. It’s more a Terrence Malick tone poem meets a sort of trippy Sesame Street type of energy. Terrence Malick directing Sesame Street, taking place in a foreign world with lots of aliens. I am sort of what the humans are to Sesame Street. A few details would have to be worked out, but that’s basically the movie, and I’m looking for buyers.

THE FUTURE: In high school, we read a lot of books that dealt with utopias, and there was a lot of superior disdain for these 19th-century novelists who thought that a utopia was an idea worth considering. But I always thought that it made a lot of sense. Not that I’ll be there to see it, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the world were in some utopian state in, say, 300 years. Not surprised in the least. I think that if you look at where we are compared to where we were a few thousand years ago, it is so cynical and pointedly negative to focus on the advancements of war at the expense of advancements in moral progress and, secondarily, scientific progress. I think we could definitely have a utopia. But I won’t see it, probably. I think 1984 is not a good book, but Brave New World is. I think that, in terms of dystopia, the Brave New World route in which we, out of temptation, chase more and more authoritarian control over us because it is convenient and it enriches us in different ways… I think that could lead to a dystopia, an authoritarian hell. But I don’t think that it will be imposed upon us. I think that we will impose it upon ourselves. And you know what, we could also just be in the middle. Just a lot of traffic and cool new iPhones. That’s good, too.

DAVID CROSS: Hi, how are you? 

DAVID CROSS: Good, good. Sorry about the mess.

No worries. So, I thought I would start… Um, are … you’re recording this?

Yeah. No disrespect, but I’ve been burned a few times before with being misquoted or, let’s be honest about it, people just making things up. Shit I would never say. So, yeah. I record everything as well.

But, we’re the same…

I know, just playing it safe.

Okay, but… Well, okay, sure. Whatever. Should we get started? Let me turn this on here. [Into mic] “Check, check.” [Pause] Okay, looks good.

Me too. Hang on. [Into mic] “Check check. Check one, two, three. Mic check! Check, check… Mic check! Roger Sister Penguin check!” [Editor's note: this went on for several minutes.] Okay, we’re good to go. Would you like anything to drink?

Sure, water’d be great. Thanks. Tap is good.

I was gonna have a beer.

Oh! I’d love a beer. Cool. Didn’t think that would be an option.

Huh? Why? What do you mean by that?

Nothing. I just meant, you know, it didn’t occur to me is all.

Okay. Well, should we just go down to the pub, then? There’s a pretty great low key one just down Westbourne Park. The Prince Albert?

Yes! A pub, sure. I forgot that you—we are in London.

Yeah.

Working on series two of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret?

Yeah. More like “second half” rather than “series two.” The story ends with these six.

I have some questions I’d like to ask about that later, but I wanted to know—do you like London?

Oh, very much, yeah. I love it here. I mean, I get lonely occasionally, but all things being equal, meaning if my life, work, friends, et cetera were here, I would prefer to live here. I think it’s quite ideal for me. Especially at this part of my life.

Really? Over New York? I know you love New York City.

Yeah, I think so. I’ve become a little disenchanted with New York recently. In part because of where I live, in the East Village, which has changed tremendously in the last ten years, as it had in the ten years prior to that and ten years prior to that, et cetera. But a Subway Sandwich just opened up on Avenue B, and a large frat/sports bar is coming to the old Café Charbon on Orchard and Stanton, so it’s truly time to go. But I’ll move within the city. Depends on what my future wife’s plans are.

Future wife?

Off the record! Not going to talk about that. Come on, let’s go to the pub!

Thank you [David has handed me a pint of Greene King IPA]. Now, I’d like to get back to something you mentioned earlier when we were talking about London versus New York City…

Well, it’s not a contest.

No, I know, I just meant…

Sorry, I was being a dick. I know what you meant.

Okay. Um, so, yes. Earlier when we were discussing it, you said of being in London that it would suit you in “this part of your life.” Can you explain that?

Well, it’s got all the elements that I appreciate now in a city. I don’t feel the need—or desire is perhaps the better word—for all night stimulation with a just-around-the-corner-lurking- in-the-shadows sense of potential trouble that used to always appeal to me. Does that make sense?

To me, yes. It’s crystal clear. But you might want to clarify to the readers—

Of BULLETT? Who are the readers of BULLETT?

I don’t have a clue.

What is it? A fashion or art magazine, right? Something like that?

I really don’t know. I’ve never read it. I honestly didn’t know of its existence before I got this assignment.

Why would any BULLETT readers care about what I have to say, I wonder?

Well, who knows who the readers are? And for that matter, if they really read the magazine, or even retain the scant information they do read within it. They might just like the pictures.

Right. I imagine the readers are attractive in an “offbeat” way and consider themselves to be precious and describe their lives as “fantastic.” Up until the very minute they succumb to AIDS. Then, not so fantastic.

Now, that kind of harsh judgmental statement has gotten you in trouble before. And most of the planet, with the small exception of those who know you, think you are either a dick or an asshole, depending on who’s metering out the metaphorical genitalia assignments. And I should say, when I told a friend of mine that I was going to be interviewing you, he said, “I heard he’s kind of a dick.”*

I am well aware of my reputation. Deserved? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I will say that while I can certainly be less than open to singing “Chicken Pot Pie” to your boyfriend on his voicemail, it mostly just depends on A) your approach, and B) my mood. And whether I am engaged in an activity like ordering dinner or talking on the phone to someone. [At this point I received a call from the editors of BULLETT Magazine, who chided me for being pedantic and not-at-all a good interviewer. They wanted me to stick to the questions that Truman Capote, the inspiration for the self-interview, had asked himself— i.e., ask those same questions to David. I explained this to him, and after a bit of grumbling, he complied.]

So, David. If you had to live in just one place without ever leaving, where would it be?

Oh man, I don’t know. Do you mean one city? Or country? Can I say St. Martin? What if you hold me to just the French side and I can never go to the Dutch side?

I don’t know. That’s just what Truman asked himself. Next question—do you prefer animals to people?

Oh, that’s a good one. I would say that I prefer my dog to anti-gay clergy who rape kids in their spare time and those who help not only cover up their crimes but also allow them to continue. But I prefer all of my friends to dung beetles, so it depends, I guess.

Okay, next one. Are you cruel?

I don’t think so. I can be nasty and curt with a terse response to someone who perhaps doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment… yet. And I’ve certainly said things that upset friends or loved ones, which I truly regret. But outside of that, no. I don’t think so.

Do you have many friends?

On Facebook or real friends?

Well, I guess non-computer friends. People you’ve met and will re-meet, I suppose, seeing as Truman Capote died before the Internet.

Or probably home computers, even.

Yes.

Okay. How many is “many?”

I don’t know, I’m literally just going off of the questions he asked himself.

Okay. I’ll say yes, then.

What qualities do you look for in friends?

Jeez, getting a bit obsessive about this. I suppose a sense of humor. Quality of drugs. How big their cock and/or vagina is, and what the chances are that they’d buy me nice sweaters.

Are you often disappointed in a friend?

Enough! What’s with all the friend questions? Was he secretly trying to get back at someone in print who had done him wrong? Seriously.

I don’t know. That’s the question, though.

Well, no. Not “often.” Occasionally, sure. Again, that’s subjective, like “many.”

Are you a truthful person?

Oh, yeah. Too truthful, probably. I’m an open book. I’m very forthcoming about my feelings and opinions, and while that’s admirable in a standup comedian and writer, it’s not so great when company’s around and you’ve made a nice dinner.

Okay, last Truman Capote question. How do you like to best occupy your spare time?

“Best” occupy it? I guess getting ahead on work that needs to be done, but at a leisurely pace. Like, if I’m at my upstate house and I know that I need to put together a pitch for a TV show idea, but I have tons of time to do it, and I’m out walking in the woods by myself or with my dog, and I put my mind to it and jot down some ideas that lead to something, and then come back and start to BBQ some ribs, and those ideas lend themselves to a more fleshed-out idea, and then while I’m shucking corn they really coalesce into my next cool idea, then … that way. Or jerking off.

Okay! That’s it for the Truman Capote questions. But I have a couple more to ask—is that okay?

Sure. As I said before, I’m an open book.

Okay, so this has been bugging me for a long time. I gotta ask you—what happened that night at that house party in Seattle after ‘The Tinkle Show?’ When you tried to take a shit on that guy’s wall before Eugene Mirman and Megan grabbed you and hustled you out of there?

What?! How’d you… this interview is over!!!

*Actual quote from a guy who had come over to interview me for Maxim. For the record, he said—and again, I quote—that I am, “warm and polite, loves animals, and answers the door with a handshake and a hot coffee.” So there, America and parts of Canada!

BULLETT: What lit your fire as an artist? Was there a definitive moment where you realized that you wanted to express yourself this way?

ALIS PELLESCHI: Being part of the Myspace generation is where it all started, though I didn’t make the connection until recently between what I was doing then and what I’m doing now. When I was about 13 we moved to a new house, away from all my friends, and the result was that I spent a lot of time alone. I would spend hours dressing up and taking photos of myself, manipulating them and uploading them on the net. I never thought of that process as being an artist, and I never thought I’d be able to make a career out of it. I was just doing it. I sometimes wish I could go back to those times.

What’s the inspiration behind “3D SLUT 4EVA?

“3D SLUT 4EVA” was my little homage to both CassettePlaya [a fashion designer whose real name is Carri Mundane] and the sexy 3D GIF girls that kept popping up. CassettePlaya is someone I’ve been following for some time. I was excited when she agreed to lend me her pieces, and I decided to become a real-life version of the sexy 3D sluts of the Internet. I think these characters are so beautiful, and I love the fact that they have real booties and bums. If the photos had a soundtrack, it would probably be something like, “Let Me Be Your Fantasy.”

Zach Condon has circled the globe in the past, mining indigenous musical traditions from Eastern Europe to Southern Mexico, but with his new LP The Rip Tide, he’s bringing his sound a little closer to home. Here, he talks sleepless Santa Fe nights, weathering existential crises, and carving out one’s own corner of the universe.

BULLETT: Listening to The Rip Tide, I don’t get any foreign flavor or atmosphere. Where were your ideas with this album?

ZACH CONDON: I guess the easiest way to explain is that it felt like an album that was always in me, but I was just slowly circling around it until I got to the center. After all of these years of blatant influences and really wearing them on my sleeve, I realized, quite frankly, I had created a sound of my own, and it crystallized into something that made sense. I used to do things like, I’d have this one giant photo in front of the computer while recording, and I would always base it around these stories in my head. I started young, and as a teenager, and you never think your own story is very interesting. You’re always looking outside for inspiration. But there came a point sometime last year when I realized, Hey, it’ll probably be more fun to look inward this time around. I shook off some of the youthful wanderlust.

Your very first projects were electronic. What was it like to shift to acoustic and classical instrumentation?

Growing up in Santa Fe, I was already the outsider in the local scene. I think most kids from small towns could probably relate to this—it was entirely punk, hardcore, and maybe some emo. I think there’s an importance to that for every kid but it just never grabbed me, so the best way for me to work around not playing guitar, bass, or drums was to do electronic music. I remember one of the earliest things was I heard this Múm album, and they were throwing accordions into the mix. It was so warm and so moving that I literally called up my grandfather and asked if he could pull his accordion out of the closet and ship it over. That was the beginning of the end. I’m trying to write classic tunes, and you just can’t do that sometimes with too much modern technology involved.

As a child, what was your understanding of the universe?

When I was a young kid, probably around the age of ten or eleven, I started getting really, really bad insomnia. This kept up through my teen years, up until about the age of 21, and then finally started to calm down. I think a lot of that was a big deal for me creatively. I remember the first experiences of insomnia were endless hours of lying in bed, staring at the roof and letting your mind go to scary places like, What’s at the end of the universe? What’s the point? I spent so long doing that that I realized it’s no longer important for me to ask myself those questions. The insomnia was the start of it, and I never turned it into anything useful until I realized that I had to stop staring into the void and make something out of it. That blank period at night when you’re awake and no one else is and you’re completely alone doesn’t have to be a void, doesn’t have to be an existential crisis, doesn’t have to be wondering what color is outside the universe. By the time I finally sat down and started doing things at night, those vanished, and I reached a level of comfort that I had never felt before.

What do you feel when you’re faced with the unknown? What’s the unknown like for you now that you’re older and maturing?

I like to think you tend to ignore it more. As a kid, you’re kind of bashing your head up against it. Everything is unknown as a kid, but it’s kind of laid out for you, at least in a steady household. The unknown could be something as simple as, Why are you sending me to school every day? to, Why is the universe here? At some point, when you take control of your own destiny, it’s not such a big deal that there’s so much unknown out there, as long as you can wrap your head around what you’ve got in front of you.

Do you think that human life is insignificant in the universe?

I think that we’re incredibly significant. I was talking to a friend the other day, and for her, the fact that the universe seems to be infinitely large scares the shit out of her. But that doesn’t bother me at all because we’ve found our little corner of the universe. The fact that things can be infinitely small, too, all the way to quarks and string theory, bothers me. It drives me nuts that we can be broken up into smaller components, not like a unified self. That’s a scary thought to me. But I like to think, yeah, we’ve got our little corner of the universe, and we’re doing some pretty awesome things with it.

Best known for her futuristic photographs and installations that blend spirituality and science fiction, Japanese artist Mariko Mori has recently become an advocate for the preservation of natural resources and local cultures. In her latest work, Primal Rhythm: Seven Light Bay, Mori installed two massive sculptures in a rural area off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. The two pieces cast a sundial-like shadow across the bay during the winter solstice. For those unable to see the monuments in person, Primal Rhythm will be exhibited digitally through the Adobe Museum of Digital Media beginning December 6th. We sat down with her while the project was still being created.

BULLETT: Do you have any estimation about when Primal Rhythm will be complete?

MARIKO MORI: I started a foundation called Faou Foundation, which is going to present this kind of work and promote the relationship between nature and humans. This is our first project, and we were planning to finish in 2013 after the winter solstice. But, since we had an unexpected natural disaster, progress has been delayed. It should naturally fall into place when people are ready to receive it. But in dealing with nature, you can’t have a sense of a deadline. From a natural point of view, we don’t understand the reason of nature, or the reason of the universe. We could make a deadline artificially, but it might not be in line with the natural environment. I would just like to leave it as this. When the time is right, it will happen.

Did the recent natural disasters in Japan change your relationship to your work?

Of course. I was in shock when the earthquake happened. I was in Tokyo, and I had to delay my flight to come back to New York. I saw so many images that were really beyond imagination. But really, this has confirmed the idea of Primal Rhythm. When a human being is part of society, we are just following our needs and desires and not really paying attention to coexistence with nature, so we often overestimate our capability. We thought everything was the same, but it wasn’t the same. We underestimated the power of nature, and therefore, we are in this situation. With Primal Rhythm, I wanted to create a symbol of harmony with nature and society. I wanted to show that in prehistoric times, all humans had respect for nature and lived within nature. Somehow we lost the balance, and we are in a position that has created a Tower of Babel. So we have to step back and really think again about how we can respect nature.

How do you unify the natural world and the digital world in your art?

The digital work is really the continuation of how the work is going to create an effect. When the winter solstice sun goes down, from the beach, you see how the sun casts a shadow on the bay. On a human scale, you can only see this from a human point of view. But in a digital world, you can create other views—a scale that you can understand through landscape. I think it’s very important that the work has to be represented as not just “this is the work,” but that this is a gift not only for humans. It’s for the landscape, it’s for the earth, it’s for the universe in total.

Your early work used your own body and was focused on a human scale. Do you think that you still have a relationship to the human scale?

In 1999 I created a work called Dream Temple, which was an installation. At the time I wanted my own body to be the artwork, and from that point, there was a shift. It’s because I wanted to communicate and exhibit an idea that was more about an inner universe and connecting the outer universe within, rather than just the figure. I believe that the space within is much greater than what we think we have. I wanted to create a piece that was a reflection of that.

What is the relationship between ancient and modern in your work?

I have researched prehistorical cultures extensively, and I have come to the conclusion that, because they were really closer to nature, they had wisdom and knowledge of cosmology and rich understanding. I think this is the fundamental essence of our being. This was also before religion, so you have a universal idea—every human had a universal idea. Human beings, we are all same, and it’s very evident with what you see in pre-historical culture. Somehow we created difference, and we created a wall between us and nature. I wanted to bring this pre-historical idea of culture to take down the boundaries of difference.

Do you believe in life on other planets?

It’s not that I believe it or not. It’s that the universe is so large, and we don’t know everything about it. It could be parallel, it could be multiple universes. We only know a very tiny bit that we can explain. The point is that we live, we have life, and we have nature. We have to be aware of that, and we have to honor that, and we have to be grateful for that. We have to be really humble.

Is there any lasting message you would like to share about your work?

What’s happening in Japan is very sad. But the situation is not only a natural disaster; I think part of it is a human-created disaster. It happened in Japan, but it could happen in other places, as well. It’s like a wake-up call. I’m hoping that we wake up and really do shift and change the direction of how we create societies. We can’t just continue to contaminate beautiful nature. I’m pointing this out with the Faou Foundation. I really like to think that our generation can make a great change so that we have nature that can be inherited by future generations. It’s our responsibility to do that. If you don’t do anything, if you just leave it as it is, there’s obviously no nature for future generations. It’s really our responsibility now.

The idea that we should preserve nature just as we preserve art for future generations.

Yes. I hope to connect nature and human society through my art. I hope I’m linking the universe to the earth, and hope to connect nature to us. I want to remind you who you are.

She stands stock-still in the middle of a chock-full changing room. It’s teeming, practically heaving. As rotating faces scuttle in circles with strange offerings—a mile-high blonde beehive, disco ball dresses, the occasional Diet Coke—Debbie Harry is quiet. I had sidled in moments before with a bellyful of crackling nerves.

Snap back a few hours: I’d been sliding change across the counter, grabbing a morning coffee. My phone buzzed, flashed “Private.” I picked up and jumped when I heard the bark: “This is Debbie Harry, and I’m lost.” Already anxious to interview a woman so personally definitive, I nearly dropped the phone. It was a bit of a shock, not least because it’s always a frantic publicist—never the talent. After stammering out incoherent directions to an essentially unmarked midtown studio, I hung up and nearly heaved.

Snap back to set. She’s demure, and she’s assured. In the midst of the madhouse, she manages to get what she wants with real grace. No, she’d rather not wear those particular glittering heels, but thank you. They’re lovely. We begin the interview as she swaps out looks. The moment she sets her eyes on mine and shakes off as many fluttering fashion hands as she can, my anxiety melts. She’s curious and attentive, and she’s ready to talk.

This September, the iconic Blondie—original members Chris Stein and Clem Burke included—dropped a new record, Panic of Girls, their first in eight years; their ninth in thirty-five. Add in the five that carry Harry’s solo work, and toss out a rough estimate that’ll account for the dozens and dozens of other artists’ records she’s played part in (from the Ramones to the Jazz Passengers to the Heads to Fall Out Boy to—!). It’s staggering.

“I think David Byrne did the song ‘Stay Hungry,’” she says. “It’s hard to stay hungry. Being financially secure, it takes away a certain amount of drive for some people, so the concept of stay hungry is really good. But if you’re dedicated to what you do and enjoy what you do, that’s the heart of it all.” In typical Harry fashion, Blondie fashion, Panic of Girls is a product of brazen curiosity. It cast a wide net over culture (in the biggest, most vast sense of the word), and in the two-year slow drag back, it picked up bits of Spain. France. Brooklyn. There’s the old school new wave—it leans on that familiar reggae backbone at times. Others, it’s dressed up in slick new synth-punch duds. It’s stacked with homage—the album’s first single, “Mother,” is an upbeat electro-celebration of the defunct nineties New York club of the same name. A breezy cover of Sophia George’s 1985 hit “Girlie Girlie” brings Jamaica to the table, and a swelling, gentle rendition of Beirut’s “Sunday Smile” is a nod to modern indie darling Zach Condon (“Beirut’s so cool,” she says).

Decades after Blondie brought rap to the Billboard charts (“Well now you see what you wanna be / Just have your party on TV”), Harry continues to act as an antenna, channeling everything rousing in current pop culture. After so many years of keen scrutiny, she must boast a trove of knowledge that’d trump Trivial Pursuit. She shrugs lightly, as if it’s simply the norm. “It’s fun to fish around, search, pick things out,” she says. And after a thoughtful pause: “You know who I miss? I miss Missy Elliott.”

It’s not the norm, though, this constant questing for cultural currency—this thirst to evolve and produce and never stop. Too many artists fizzle and flop, or get bored. They get crammed into some winsome pigeonhole, or lose touch. Not Harry. “I’m proud of a lot of things, but I think the best thing I can say is that I keep improving,” she says, her speech easy but earnest. “Whether people think I am or not, I feel that I am. That’s what I’m most proud of.”

An impressive feat indeed, as most folks would struggle to pop up and out of the scene Blondie emerged from—a scene so often romanticized by the rest of the world. “I was just trying to survive,” she says. Those who showed face at CBGBs, who prowled Bowery and punched out panicked power chords and begged for simple, for tough and fast and loud, who pegged punk for the L.E.S and the country and the world— those folks landed, ultimately, branded: be tough be brash live fast die young. This legacy is interminable.

“It’s been idealized in a lot of ways,” she says. “It was a tough time in New York. The streets were much more dangerous in those days, so it was exciting in that way—you had to watch your back all the time. I don’t think that it’s like that anymore.”

These days, still—stroll around. Check the stick-thin, stone-tough blondes tipped against the crumbling mortar corners of downtown New York. They’re flipping their fringe, acting hard, but still dangling and dripping and languid. (“I’ve seen my influence in editorial, in fashion, more than I have distinctly in artists,” she says.)

This is power: creating a scene that 30, 40 years later continues to draw legions of prickly, heart-bursting junkie-wannabe dreamers to an idea, a city, a street. The droves keep flocking. They’re hunting the specter of a scene that physically trickled down the city sewers long ago (“It’s the end, the end of the ’70s/ It’s the end, the end of the century”). That original was ephemeral. It was fresh and it was special. And then it was Oi!. And it was new wave, it was postpunk, it was “Love Will Tear us Apart.” Streetpunk, skate punk, hardcore. Then, it disseminated, it diluted, it fell six feet under. Physically speaking.

In this quest for immortality—this perpetual tender quest for crisis—it’s a rare occasion that an experience-hungry kid will step back and assess what truly lasts.

Present for it all was Debbie Harry, is Debbie Harry. She took her scene, took this punk, and shook it till it suited her. She took these frenzied fifths, this desire for fast and easy, and injected more. More intricacies, more observation—all of it fearless, all of it her own. Blondie fused funk into the pop currency, dropped reggae into dance radio, and that was only the beginning. Still, after all of this, after decades, Harry seems to center herself as an artist, rather than an icon. She balks a bit when I ask where she’s seen her own influence manifest, and she’s not even so sure she’s ever been successful at communicating her message (don’t be afraid, be an individual).

Still, after all of this, she’s level, without even a tinge of the jaded, been-there-done-that noseup. Still, after all of this: “I don’t know if I feel like I’ve taken any risks,” she says.