Brooding, dense and hypnotic, David Michôd’s feature debut, Animal Kingdom, opening Friday, enters the viewer’s bloodstream quietly, then completely, and leaves a concussive aftershock. Based loosely on real events in the crime world of Michôd’s native Melbourne, Australia, the story of one particular (fictional) thieving family unfolds in lurid detail against a throbbing thicket of sound created by Sam Petty. When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival early this year it claimed the Jury’s top prize and performances by the intensely menacing Jacki Weaver and Ben Mendelsohn, and by newcomer James Frecheville haven’t stopped collecting laurels ever since. And, oh yeah, the Aussie star Guy Pearce is amazing too.

We sat down with the breakout director to talk about myth, mafia and what to do next.

Chris: The film feels to me like a mythic saga—Greek, tragic, epic. Is that the way you intended it?

David: Yeah. I wanted to make a crime film and I wanted to make one of substance. Something weighty. I didn’t want to make a crime film that would disappear into the back shelves of DVD stores. I didn’t want to make something that was small and a little bit thrilling but ultimately unsubstantial. I wanted to make something of scale and classic, if not austere, and kind of terrifying at the same time.

Chris: Easier said then done. But it does resonate that way. It feels arch without the camp of, say, Tarantino or Guy Ritchie—both of whom you’ve pointed out as making the other kind of crime film.

David: I’m always at pains to make clear that my desire not to make a film like a Tarantino film is not at all about me not liking his films. I love them. I just felt like—especially in Australia, in the Australian milieu—I wanted to make something that took itself very seriously.

Chris: It is operatic. I mean, you are into Godfather territory here—those slo-mo sequences with the absolutely killer sound design are just chilling. Did those elements, the heightened, lyrical moments come during post or was that all drawn in?

David: Yeah. That stuff was quite—there was a lot of stuff that came alive in post—but that stuff was always the intention. I made a short that was in Sundance in 2008 that was kind of a style reference for Animal Kingdom in a way. I had at that time been having a lot of meetings with people, trying to get Animal Kingdom happening and I was describing in these meetings a crime film I hoped would be both very dangerous and raw and violent and yet poetic a beautiful at the same time. People either didn’t know what I was talking about or they didn’t believe I could do it. And so I made Crossbow to give a sense of that world—a seedy, dangerous world with dangerous people—but represented in a strangely beautiful way.

Chris: The young guy, our sort of cipher for this experience does in a way take a classic character arc—from near catatonic apathy to action, but there is something else at work here, as if the fabric of the family is the story—again as in a Greek saga.

David: The story, and certainly J’s story, is a very simple one. It’s a story about a young man, aimless and emotionally immature as so many young men are, letting his faith be determined by all of the forces and people around him, and coming to realize that, for his own survival, he needs to be the engineer of his own destiny. In the process it is also about a young man forming a moral compass in a morally upside-down world. What does it mean to be good in a bad world.

Chris: It is horrifying. He is almost inert in the first half of the movie and the audience kind of bleeds through him into the scenes. It is a great empathetic draw, his stillness.

David: Funny how some people—I came across this as I was writing it, the classic cinema template—think you need to have a central character who is somehow driving the story. In the course of the years I was writing the film a couple of times I tried to generate a character of that nature and every time it felt so inauthentic to me. It didn’t in any way mirror my experience of teenagers, specifically teenage boys, who are in a way defined by their inability to drive their lives forward. They find themselves dealing with whatever situation they find themselves in and also are so emotionally immature that they don’t know how to properly express themselves either and that can appear as a strange blankness that can appear dumb but is simply the external manifestation of a rich bubbling inner world that hasn’t found a way to express itself.

Chris: Then there is this context—this crime world that doesn’t smack of artifice. These aren’t cartoon villains. The whole movie plays as genuine.

David: I think it’s about—I think this is the work of all good cinema—making the characters feel authentically human. And in the criminal terrain they are still human they just live in a world where the stakes are much higher. Dangerously marginal lives which their human traits can manifest more extremely but at the core they have human frailties, human strengths.

Chris: These are desperate characters.

David: There is a lot of confusion. In a lot of ways I made a film about human confusion. All of these characters aren’t sure about what is going on around them or how to deal with change. All of them. The criminal family. The cops. And obviously the young man at the middle.

Chris: The crafting of suspense, both in the architecture of the film but in every scene is just stellar. Everything feels like a chapter with a growing sense of dread. How did you get such a polish in a first film—especially in a crime film where everything usually errs on the side of efficiency? How did you achieve this slow-burn pace, and maintain it?

David: I don’t know.

Chris: It’s impressive.

David: Thank you. That was the main challenge. Especially in the edit. I had a clear sense of the brooding menace I wanted to run as an undercurrent throughout the film. What I hadn’t counted on was how strong some of the more thriller elements would play. Such that what I had imagined would be a big sprawling crime story with some kind of menacing flavor became in the cut (whilst it is still kind of big and languorous) tighter. Then we suddenly realized—editor Luke Dolan and I—that we were able to build that tension so well (the menace was really palpable at some points) that it wasn’t in our interests to let it sprawl. So it became about finding a balance between the tension and the sprawl.

Chris: How?

David: You keep chipping away at it. You keep showing it to people. It’s a painful process. To be honest I hated it. Editing taxes me emotionally more than any other part.

Chris: More than shooting?

David: Shooting’s fun in a way. It’s totally anxiety stricken. You’re living on adrenaline, you’re out in the world, you’ve got a whole crew with you.

Chris: Tell me about casting. It would have been so easy to cast Pope as a big Alpha bruiser, but you went in the opposite direction and it ends up making him more wicked. He scared the shit out of me. But also with J—how do you find a first timer and get him to not act?

David: In a way the two central pillars of the thing to me were Jacki Weaver and Ben Mendelsohn and I wrote their characters for them. And I know what you mean about Ben and I could tell that was how some people were reading the character in the script—they’d see some kind of tattooed Alpha in that Pope character. And I always knew I wanted Ben because he doesn’t need the muscles or the tattoos, he’s just a force of nature. He’s this wildly charismatic, captivating, if not intimidating, personality. And we were very specific when it got time to talk about it during preproduction that we didn’t want Pope to have tattoos. He doesn’t need to advertise his toughness. What was frightening about him was all in his brain. It was challenging but fun building that character with Ben, this character who was scary in ways even he didn’t understand. We wanted him to look like he’d been dressed by his mother. His jeans are too big for him. He’s got bad shoes, a shirt from another era and a bad haircut—there is nothing aesthetic going on.

Chris: How long was rehearsal?

David: We had a couple of weeks. With the kids it was just about getting them comfortable, comfortable with each other, comfortable with the other actors, comfortable on set, comfortable with all this as work. With Jacki who is a very experienced theatre actor who has a very rigorous work ethic. She would come with questions, want to get the scenes up on their feet. And then you have something like Guy Pierce who didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse but never wanted to get the scenes up but just wanted to talk. We talked in detail about character. I think it was him trying to get a sense of the movie I wanted to make. On another level I think he was just sussing me out, getting a sense whether when he walked on to the set cold if he could trust my direction. With Ben we realized, after a few frustrating days of rehearsal, that we needed a lot of work, we needed to map the whole character beat by beat.

Chris: Kudos. It is really great. But, where do you go from here?

David: It’s really odd, that. I could not have hoped for this whole thing to unfold any differently, from the reception at Sundance, to the Grand Jury prize, to the way it opened at home, to some the reviews, I couldn’t ask for anything more. But it feels as though it has created a whole list of future problems.

Chris: I think that is a good problem to have.

David: It is a quality problem.

When denim dude Loren Cronk opened his eponymous Greenpoint storefront last night the entire hipster nation–attended by their high priestess Pamela Love–turned out to celebrate. Against the kooky backdrop of a TV cop show shoot on the corner, Cronk, a Levi’s alum and former designer at LIPS, showed off his range of wares from hand-picked vintage denim goodies to his own original collection created in-house. Guests including Simone and Amedeo Pace of Blonde Redhead sifted through quilted denim guitar straps made in collaboration with Heavy Leather Nyc, jean shoes by LOREN x Heutchy and LOREN x Keller, and super dope bowties made in cahoots with J. Cravata. In addition to the LOREN collection Cronk will also custom and repair services for the natty- and ratty-jeaned ladies and gents. Or he could just open up the shop as a location for film shoots.

LOREN, 82 Nassau Ave., Greenpoint, BK.

Above photo: Loren Cronk in front of his Nassau Avenue storefront in Greenpoint Thursday night.

Click “Read More” for additional images.

Cronk supervising the melee out in front of his Greenpoint store on Thursday night.

The Pace twins of Blonde Redhead and a friend.

Pamela Love and Maya Singer.

Los Hombres de Teamo: Cuevas (left) and Sànchez

Deep in Mexico City, where a group of interdisciplinary designers are working together to make their country relevant in the global fashion market, a movement is afoot. At the forefront of this loose-knit syndicate is Teamo (Spanish for “I love you,” with the space removed; pronounced tay ah moh), the design partnership of former couple Rafael Cuevas and Roberto Sànchez. For the past four seasons the funky label have presented their shredded-hem-chic collections at one of Mexico City’s four fashion weeks to wide acclaim and international attention—tastemaker extraordinaire Humberto Leon of downtown style mecca Opening Ceremony has called in with fanfare—and, with growing invitations from the states and an NYC showroom on the horizon, now look to take the thing worldwide.

Schooled in the more parent-friendly arts of “Communications,” Sànchez, from Cuernavaca, met Cuevas, from Guadalajara, in Mexico City via MySpace. The networking site proved an effective to for their marketing and DJing careers (respectively) and the guys so adept in its use they became ‘experts’. “In fact,” says Cuevas, “when MySpace was huge in Mexico they used to invite us to give talks about it.” The tech-savvy duo, whose latest collection “Skate Witches,” takes as inspiration “that girl in high-school whose a little bit skate and a little bit goth,” are among the first in the web-phobic nation, wary of unreliable domestic shipping, to have a fully-functioning site and retail in the US. In what seems to be de rigueur for their milieu Cuevas and Sànchez are both multi-talented and allow their side work to influence their label. Cuevas is a musician and something of a showman who likes to choreograph his catwalk shows with exacting detail. Sànchez’s drawings of Courtney Love, Mary-Kate Olsen and especially Kate Moss on the label’s tee-shirts have caused something of a frenzy with stores clamoring for exclusive rights to carry specific renderings (Bonadrag won out on the Morrissey shirts and sells all that are to be had worldwide). Nor are they afraid of creative collaborations—their latest collection, SS10, will be presented in a video directed by their friend, the editor of Nylon Mexico.

Like many of their colleagues in the budding fashion scene the boys of Teamo are under 30 and grew up with an immediate awareness of fashion with the runways of Paris and Milan a mouse-click a way on their desktop. As Cuevas says, “Online made everything immediate. With that awareness we are pushed to be more creative, to compete on a global level.” So, in what has become a worldwide trend for artists, chefs and others seeking to reinvent themselves while holding themselves to a standard of authenticity, the designers of Mexico City’s nascent avant-garde looked inward, to their roots, to their country’s rich textile heritage and sartorial sensibilities, and sought to re-imagine them in contemporary terms. By comparison, “Jean-Paul Gaultier did a line inspired by Mexico a couple of years ago,” says Cuevas, “but it was pretty ‘folkloric.’” So, he implies, in deciding to do native Mexican style justice, Teamo had found their manifesto: to use Mexico’s design legacy and, well, make it cool. “For example we did a collection about Day of the Dead which is very important here. It is about not taking death too seriously. It was kind of scandalous, doing all black and white for Spring which in Mexico is usually all color. But we made it go from black to white, from death to life and it was very cool.” Chloë Sevigny thought so—she picked up a lucite bangle bedecked with skulls from the collection.

Carla Fernández in her showroom

To give us a sense of what is happening on the vanguard of this scene Teamo took us on a tour of their friends’ showrooms. We met Carla Fernández, whose Taller Flora label, housed in a gorgeous Art Nouveau mansion, specializes in hand-woven geometric pieces designed for multi-purpose use. Indeed, each separate, huipil and scarf, sewn at one of the indigenous co-ops with whom she has exclusive contracts, can be worn in three or four different ways, as she showed us. Celebrating the native talent in her country Fernández has brought in some of the best tailors from London to work with the Maya craftsmen to whom she promises steady work engagements at a rate many times that which they would receive selling to a middle man. No surprise then that this forward-thinking designer, presenting real, sustainable progress for (at last count) more than 150 indigenous laborers in the Mexican countryside is putting together an installation based on the “emancipation of women”.

Manhes modeling Manhes Y Massun in Massun's house

Isabelle Manhes and Sophie Massun are partners in Manhes Y Massun, an elegant womenswear line inspired by Manhes’s love of Golden Era Hollywood and Massun’s stunning Art Deco mansion home. As Manhes modeled foxy graphic pieces from their latest collection (“Electric Storm”), striding down the grand staircase of Massun’s ‘30s house to ooohs and aaahs, she talked about Dietrich and Ava Gardner as touchstones to the label. Like others in this group of friends, Manhes feels a great forward-moving energy among the young designers but posits a final breakthrough in the future. “We are wondering what will happen,” she says. “With sourcing of fabrics and placing pieces in stores, which is really difficult right now.” Noting that her label does exclusively special order at present, Manhes cites the country’s dated practice of consignment as a hugely prohibitive, and perhaps final, block to young designers’ growth.

Andrés Jimenez’s Mancandy, as do many other young brands, survives in part on the sponsorship it receives from textile giant Caltex—that and Jimenez’s many sleepless nights. After being inspired by his friend Sànchez to come to Mexico City and try his hand at designing a line Jimenez worked for 15 days straight and on the 16^th presented the 20 looks of his first collection. Named after his own flip nickname—Andy Mancandy—the label aspires to dress “the man everyone wants.”  His second collection won him the prestigious Lycra award and stylists came calling to dress Uma Thurman and others for the Spanish-language Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. Three years and five collections in, Mancandy is known for its unisex vibe—think boyfriend pants—and retails online and at cool spots in LA and NY. Not surprisingly—once you get to know this bunch—Jimenez is also the designer of his own very sleek website, photographer of his own lookbook and a million other things besides.

Andy "Mancandy" in his live/work atelier

Many of the designers, including Cuevas, have congratulated the new Mayor, Ebrard, himself the son of an architect, on his celebration and support of the arts. “I finally feel like my country is behind me,” Cuevas said, “and it is really exciting to see all these boys—gay boys and straight boys—going into design. That is a big deal for such a macho country.” At their Juarez district storefront, beneath their second floor offices and a third floor atelier under construction, Teamo introduced us to a few more brands including Fou Fou Chat, a punky flea-market inspired line of jewelry, and Paola Hernandez, a sleek eponymous line of mens and womenswear by the Mexican designer educated at London’s Central Saint Martins.

Throughout our tour the theme stays consistent: A global generation of Mexico’s young designers, brought up online want to make clothes inspired by their country palatable without. And, like any self-respecting movement, this one has a hub. The art school CENTRO where a four year degree in fashion design (or interior design or cinema studies for that matter) involves deep historical background and professional training. Liza Niles, the director of the textiles and fashion program at the university has brought in lecturers from the top of the top of the worlds of fashion photography and design to give the students there an education on par with her alma mater where she also taught, Parsons. The resulting energy and attention places labels like Teamo in a mentoring position for aspiring designers fresh from school. “The younger generation looks up to us,” says Cuevas. With the inroads they’ve made into the world market, it’s not hard to see why. And, he concludes, of the younger generation for whom Teamo are pioneers, if not the entirety of Mexican fashion, “They follow right behind us.”

Teamo portrait courtesy of Teamo. All other photos by Carlos Giesemann courtesy of Mexico City board of Tourism

Watch the trailer of Tamra Davis’s new film about Basquiat, Radiant Child.

Today, only on Dossier. Opens at The Film Forum on July 21st.

At the center of Luca Guadagnino’s rapturous I Am Love, opening June 18th, Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton burns white hot as a wife imprisoned in a world of wealth and custom. The character’s Princess is trapped in a castle turret, but the actress’s performance is a gem set in an elegant and timeless brooch. Guadagnino’s narrative is lean and unfolds effortlessly as if in accord with the natural order of Story itself. Nothing twists or gnarls the plot which ends up tending toward myth. The randy housewife may be one of the oldest stories in the book, but tethered to the febrile nerve that is Swinton it never lacks for vitality.

The craftsmanship of the film is as precise as a watchmaker’s and the materials employed in creating the world of a mighty Milanese family are among the finest on Earth. Unfolding in some fantasy world dreamt up in concert by Brunello Cucinelli, Raf Simons, Andrea Palladio and Luchino Visconti, I Am Love brims with luxury and beauty. Dossier caught up with the Sicilian maestro in March to talk about Flaubert, the sexuality of cinema and the mercurial Miss Swinton.

In I Am Love Tilda Swinton’s repressed housewife is named Emma. How much of this was inspired by Bovary and Flaubert?

To be honest, I think something like Madame Bovary is part of the genetics of many people and myself too. But if I say that I named the character Emma after that and that I really wanted to do another take on Emma Bovary and Flaubert I would lie. I think that is part of a more general genetic memory of art and literature that I have. What was a direct influence, in terms of the literal influence and literature influence, was Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, a novel I read when I was very young and I kept reading—I’m still reading it—because I found it extremely fascinating. It is the story of  20 years of a family in Germany in the 19^th century. It’s about the decadence of this family that represents the mercantile class of bourgeoisie Germany. In this book there is a character called Gerta Buddenbrook, the wife of the patriarch who in a way inspired me for Emma because in that book Gerta is a very secret woman with a mystery for herself and I see Emma as a very mysterious character who you don’t get to know completely because of what you don’t get to know and because also she is Russian.

Interesting that you mention Thomas Mann as that makes me think of Visconti who directed the great Death in Venice from Mann’s masterpiece and, in so many ways, both celebrated and eviscerated the baroque and decadent behavior of the aristocracy. Is Visconti at all an inspiration for you?

I believe that Visconti in the recent decade has been neglected as a sort of academic director. I am a total cinephile and I really see movies as a source of life for me. When I decided to go back to study Visconti to understand the secret of Visconti’s cinema I reviewed all of his movies and particularly Rocco and his Brothers and Senso and I discovered—I was astonished to learn—that this master of cinema is still an experimentalist who is playing with the form and language of cinema, trying to show a sort of visualization of class struggle, love, through the form of cinema, and it’s very daring. So, yes, we regarded Visconti as a sort of indication of a way of being entertaining and classical at the same time as being experimental and subversive.

How did you approach making a film that is so explicitly sensual, but only rendered in two dimensions, a visceral experience for the viewer?

I would say, by being truthful to my personal vision of things and life. It’s about not denying the strength of your ideas and trying to speak to it. I believe very much in the sensual element of life. I think that we all are informed by sensuality. I am an old fashioned Freudian. I think that he was right. I believe if you tell the story of some characters you should go for a very deep analysis of their behavior that comes along through their bodies.

In the Freudian sense, what does the food in the movie symbolize?

I mean, I think that food is the thing. The thing can be played in different ways—it can be tamed or untamed. Food is a way of controlling others: You can see this in all these dinner parties where you have this pitch-perfect expression of a class through its rites and mores and manners and rule, and you see these people eating all the time and not really facing the food, the thing that food represents, the organism alive, but to create a web of power. And then this young man comes along and puts food at the center stage, and he puts food—to quote Burroughs—as a naked lunch. He puts the food in a position that completely destroys the idea of controlling the other but becomes a way of communicating to the other, becomes a dialogue with the other. As the shrimps have a dialogue with Emma when she eats them. And of course it is also a nutritional element and sensual element, an erotic element—it goes inside of you. It titillated your palate. It is something that can be extremely subversive. I myself am a cook and I feel as if sometime there are people who can be disturbed by the relevance you give to food.

I had a feeling while watching that shrimp scene that there was definitely some Freudian stuff going on. It was no coincidence she was having that experience with such a phallic food.

It’s not.

You’re a cook, do you also work within the other elements so lovingly rendered in the film—architecture, sculpture, design, fashion?

I can answer by quoting Bernardo Bertolucci quoting the Dalai Lama, “Everything is form and the form is empty.” I believe in form and I think the most beautiful films I’ve seen recently is the last film of the great Sidney Pollack, the film of Frank O. Gehry. I believe that the shape of things is extremely fascinating.

It seems as though the way you use the camera is almost architectural. Is that something specific to this movie or is that your style, how you naturally move?

I don’t know that I would say I have a style; I hope I don’t. I think it’s more about really trying to figure out the language of cinema for the story and the milieu and the behavior of character and the story that you are telling. I’ve said that I am old fashioned because I am a Fredian, I would also add that I am old fashioned because I believe in the language of cinema instead of tele-visual shooting of scripts and people talking, talking, talking in close-up. That is something that doesn’t fascinate me. I am more interested in figuring out where to put the camera—what’s the right angle for the camera. All the directors I love, from Eric Rhomer to Alfred Hitchcock, even to the Farrelly brothers, they know where to put the camera.

Is the opulent world of the family in this movie at all what you experienced in your life?

No. I was raised in Ethiopia. My mother is Algerian. My father is Sicilian. It’s a very simple family. My father is a teacher, my mother works in telecom.

When did you first fall in love with film?

I remember sitting in my mother’s lap when I was 3 years old watching Lawrence of Arabia. It’s true. I remember all the sand.

When did you know this was what you were going to do?

I think I’ve always wanted to be a director. It is something very urgent—it is something you have to do. In fact it is very lucky to be doing a job and to get to meet a lot of great people and to get paid for it. It doesn’t feel like a job. It won’t ever feel like a job.

Speaking of great people, tell me about your working relationship with Miss Swinton with whom you have worked several times. How did it come about?

I believe that we are kind of partners in this crime that is movie-making and life. We became friends when I approached her when I was 22 asking her to do a short that we never ended up making but we started to understand we were attracted to each other like a kindred spirit. I think she is really one of the most incredible filmmakers in the history of the world. She is really fantastic. It’s not the intelligence of Tilda, it’s not the amazing cultural heritage of Tilda, but it’s her warm, passionate curiosity for all the aspects of life. She is eyes wide open and that is fantastic.

Dennis Hopper was a giant. Throughout his life he kept company with the legends of the art world from Warhol and Schnabel to Ed Ruscha, and his own work is scheduled to be the subject of curator Jeffrey Deitch’s debut show at MOCA. As a film director Hopper was the crest on the American New Wave, and his Easy Rider can be said to have both revolutionized the studio system and launched the career of  Jack Nicholson. But as an actor he was an absolute original. In a career that spanned some 55 years he worked with all of the greats (including James Dean in two of Dean’s 3 feature films) and created iconic characters in classic films as varied as Blue Velvet, True Romance and Apocalypse Now.

Dennis Hopper, one of the last of the bad boys, one of Hollywood’s greatest talents, is dead at 74.

See the clip, “when he’s gone,” after the jump.

Last night our friend Scarlett Rouge presented her film Magic Trauma Sprinkles as part of drag diva Vaginal Davis’s ongoing residency at PS122, “Speaking from the Diaphragm.” Scarlett is the daughter of Rick Owens’s wife Michele Lamy and has known Vag’ since she was in diapers (Davis babysat her when she was a child). According to Scarlett last night’s proceedings “were a sexy/hot looney tune. And then there was an orgy.”

We caught up with the LA-born artist as she makes her way back to Cali from a 2-year stay in Paris to hear about the night, the motif of rebirth, and… well, the orgy.

I know you were expecting Vag’ to embarrass you with diaper stories. Did it get crazy?

Teasing was at a minimum. He was a bit drunk and seemed more in shock about how pretty I turned out. Which still made me feel embarassed and and red in the face.

I know the Rick-and-Michele questions are exhausting (and, I suppose this is one of them); did he ask you all about them?

The only mention of Rick and Michele was in his introduction, I remember as a teenager I would get really pissed about always being introduced as “Michele’s daughter.” It was almost my name.

It’s probably not fair to call you precocious but I’m gonna do it anyway: I remember when you were at CalArts you stopped me to explain that my use of the word revolution was incorrect, that “revolution, by definition returns you to the same exact place.” At the time you were studying… sacred geometry, I think, and we went on to have a long talk about regeneration. “Magic Trauma Sprinkles,” seems to be expressly about regeneration and rebirth. What is it about that passage that continues to inspire/fascinate you?

Good memory…

My friend Marco and I were talking about Ouroboros–a symbol of revolution/evolution–last night because he wants to get it tattooed… It represents self reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly recreating itself the etetrnal return. It can also represent primordial unity to something existing, with no beginnig or end, with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.

What fascinates me… Hm…

I think it represents so much about the nature of life or consciousness. The passage into the unknown, the moment we surrender and embrace change.  It gives life depth, but also reminds one that no matter is constant, so have fun don’t take the drama too seriously. Teaches us to live without fear but also to respect what is now, for no fist can grip tight enough to stop time.

It’s like that Dr. Parnassus film–the human drama loves to play the good vs. Bad game and part of the game is not thinking of it as a game. But really we live in a world of “married” opposite good and bad…birth and death…  I think I’m getting on a tangent…

What are you working on now? Wait, hold on, an orgy? Like, an orgy orgy?

Well, it wasn’t quite an orgy orgy–it didn’t get orgiastic.

Waris New York, by Sandro Kopp

“A lot of people say I’m East-meets-West,” says Waris Ahluwalia, sitting at a hundred-year-old farm table in his glossy new studio space off Fashion Avenue. “But I am more like past-meets-future.” The weathered furniture, reclaimed from barns upstate and strewn about the poured-concrete and glass workspace, seem to echo this claim, but the artist behind the much-fetishized jewelry creations from House of Waris is talking about something deeper. He’s talking about tradition spurring on innovation. He’s talking about an artistic leap forward from a trip back to one’s roots.

Waris’s own roots wind back to the Punjab region of India where he was born and lived the first 5 years of his life before he and his parents emigrated to Brooklyn. “I come from a family of professionals,” he says. “Doctors, lawyers, engineers, CEOs; my uncle was, at one point, one of the top ten mathematicians in the country. So there was a different road for me. It has been a transition for someone who didn’t know they could make things. I had a natural interest in people who were creative. No one told me I could make things. I didn’t know better—I didn’t know I could create.”

Early on he was fascinated by the arts. “I was drawn to it by the music,” he says, “and by the nightlife. I was just taking it in, surrounded by creative people and then, I was like, wait, I can work with these people. I can produce or… still not realizing that I could do this, I could make stuff.” At this point Waris tried organizing an arts magazine, but it didn’t take flight. He dabbled in filmmaking, art show curation, even restaurants and other indirect endeavors to scratch his itch—but he was already arranging people, already with the idea of a collaborative community in his mind.

All the while he was making the scene, an endeavor which, these days, gets a bad rap. In fact, in a 2009 interview with Page 6, his then girlfriend, Chiara Clemente, felt compelled to defend Waris’s heavy presence on the scene, shouting down a silent but not so subtly implied label of ‘socialite.’ Waris himself is in a unique position to defend the party circuit, which he calls, “The golf course,” i.e. that place where people meet to casually discuss life, business and potential projects while blowing off a little steam. As part of his practice as a Sikh he doesn’t drink, so there are no sloppy side effects of his nightlife, A, and B, just look at the results.

“Every one of [the artists with whom I’ve collaborated] has just been a friend,” he says, and nods his head to indicate the convenient example of photographer Andrew Zuckerman who has stopped by the new studio space to leaf through stacks of framed pictures and dig the rough draft of the floor plan. “Andrew—we’re working together now, but he is my oldest friend in New York. I always loved his work and I just happened to be doing birds, the Omnia Vincit Amor collection, inspired by wallpaper in The Raphael hotel in Paris, and then Andrew was working on this book, Bird, so, I thought, this might be our chance!”  Zuckerman’s book is made up of stunning color portraits of exotic birds taken in their natural habitats all over the world. Seeing both strength and fragility in the creatures, Waris selected several of the images—some dynamic and almost mythic, others lyrical—and sent them to his enameller in India who then shaped and hand painted a collection of pendants. The resulting pieces, part figurine, part fresco, are something new unto themselves. Like a successful film adaptation of a novel or, more accurately, a painting from a familiar photograph, the new work compliments and amplifies on the original. It has intrinsic value—and, in the case of these porcelain danglers, substantial monetary worth to boot—but really sings in unison with its partner, like the collaborators themselves. Of this partnership Waris says, “Working with someone else is an incredible chance to go deeper into the relationship with them. I know Andrew on this level, now let’s get it to a new level as well, to create something together. That’s all I want to do: make something. I don’t care about the titles—jeweler, whatever—I don’t care what it is, as long as I am making something beautiful.”

Of those deeper levels of himself, the ones he shares with his friends and collaborators, but to us remain shrouded in mystery, Waris says, “I think it is a combination of I am still exploring it and it is easier for the world to take you in one step at a time. Everybody gets confused. In general, people like boxes. People are utterly confused by me.” Here the sometime actor mimics a baffled chorus, “‘You are actually acting? In real parts? With respected directors?’ It’s the boxing-in. I have no fear of the boxing-in, but, you’ve got to slowly introduce what you are going to do to the world,” he says.  So are we witnessing an unveiling? Is there a grand plan? “Yeah, yeah,” he says, but then quickly changes tack. “I ended up here not by a grand plan, but just by the universe bringing me here. When doors open you’ve got to walk through them and you’ve got to decide at what pace and in what direction, but it opens doors for everyone.”

Indeed, there is an apparent Tao to Waris’s career path—an acceptance, a going-with-the-flow, that kept him open to new and even foreign pursuits. As he states it, “I didn’t pick jewelry. I can’t tell you how little I thought of jewelry, how insignificant it was in my life. There’s no reference in my life to it, prior to my starting it.”

As with all tales of auspicious moments, after numerous reiterations the story of Waris’s ‘discovery’ feels well-handled, as if it has developed a patina of fairy dust, so we asked him to relate it for us as he remembers it. “It’s just so simple. It was the recession, so I thought, ‘oh, I should wear diamonds.’ It is my tendency, my flaw, to go the opposite way. So, I had these rings made and I was spending a lot of time in LA because New York gets cold. I’m in Maxfield’s, I’m wearing the rings and [the store clerk] comes up and says, ‘nice rings.’ I said, ‘thank you.’ There was no reason for me to even imagine that I would sell to Maxfield’s. The second question was, ‘are they yours?’ She meant, did you make them? What would she think that? How many times that someone is wearing something is it something they made? That store just really knows their clients. Third question was, ‘do you want to meet the buyer?’ So I met Sarah and they placed an order. And then I had to figure out how much they cost.”

Portrait by Sophie Caby

For someone who fell into his profession Waris is exceedingly enthusiastic and still committed to his craft full-tilt. “It’s thrilling,” he says. “It’s an adventure every second. It’s a platform to create—I make the boxes, I work with the printer of the book, I work with every aspect. There is not one aspect of my operation I am not directly involved in.” He considers his personal touch his calling card. So much so that when the esteemed boutique Browns of London wanted to preview a collection before they would sell his wares and asked to see a lookbook he refused. He insisted that he arrive personally, meet the owner and buyer and have them hold the pieces. “These things have weight,” he says, and he’s talking more than that which appears on scales. He believes in authenticity, in artisans, and the honor of craftsmanship. He beams with an almost filial pride when talking about the award his same enameller, the young son of an Indian family that has been making enamel for several generations, won for the future-forward technique hand painting he now uses on Waris’s birds.

Waris is to jewelry what a modern-day Brooklyn butcher is to culinaria. He is slow food, organic, atavistic, and obsessed with his ingredients and their sources. In a world of mass production he still makes each of his chains by hand. He is going direct to the source of his gold in Africa—to meet the people who mine it, to get to know them (and be known in return), to be involved. He feels deeply connected to each of his collaborators, be it Zuckerman, Jean Touitou of A.P.C., director Wes Anderson, in whose films Waris is a regular player, or the man who makes his suits. And, in this irony-sodden age, his earnest retro practices are once again cutting edge, proving that values are valuable any time. Summing up his guiding ethic, Waris sounds more like a throwback to a poetic era than a businessman in 2010. “It’s all about romance, “ he says. “The whole damn thing. Romance in every sense: the physical, the emotional, the spiritual. Whether you’re talking Sufi poetry or Rumi or the ladies, it’s all connected. And the first person who has to be romanced is me. If I’m not sold…  If it doesn’t feel authentic… I can’t do it. It has to come from some place real. It goes back to the same thing—all I want to do is create stuff. Forget designer, jeweler, whatever; I wish my title was just, ‘maker.’”

Andre Royo in MovieMoney

As Bubbles, the junky trying to fly straight on HBO’s widely-lauded cops-and-robbers drama The Wire, Andre Royo was brilliance itself. Charming and heartfelt by turns, his performance could give an entire episode a glittering shimmer, a soul-crushing hopelessness, or, what was more frequently the case, both and everything else besides. Royo himself brims with an intoxicating energy that pings between brio, self-deprecation and a hard-won optimism, making it no wonder why casting directors across Hollywood are falling for him. With an eclectic quartet of movies due out this year Royo displays again his great range as an actor and gives us a glimmer of what we can expect from him in the future.

We had the chance to chat with Royo about acting, ass-whippins, and life after Bubbles.

Chris Wallace: When you walk into meetings now does everyone want Bubbles?

Andre Royo: They just wanna acknowledge the job I did. In LA, unlike the East Coast, they’re still catchin up. It’s not like they saw the show while it was on the air and they’re like, “It was a great show.” They’re like, “I just got season 3,” and we’ll spend twenty minutes talking about what a great character I portrayed and then it’s like, now let’s get ready to go to work. It kinda shows ya, because you’re like, with all that great character how come I ain’t get the job already? You know? That takes getting used to. I understand for a lot of casting directors it’s a hard sell. You know, when writers or directors come in and say, I want a lawyer or a doctor, I want a President, a cop, Bubbles isn’t the first thing that pops in their head. It’s kinda like, I get there, I get the accolades and then I have to convince them I am this other person. It was a wonderful experience but it does make it a little bit harder and a little bit easier at the same time.

CW: So, doors are opening? Or is everybody trying to send you the next junky script?

AR: I would have to say, due to the business and how it’s changed dramatically, it’s a little bit of everything. Before The Wire I did a bunch of indie joints and Shaft was my first big studio thing. So, before The Wire it was the basic young actor grind—a lot of theatre and guest-stars here and there. And then The Wire showed up and for five years, with its crazy schedule—HBO has a different way of airing your shows and you’re under contract—it’s hard to get stuff in between. Now, after The Wire, are more doors opening up? I guess so—I wasn’t used to any doors before. But after 5 years of playing a junky I’m on permanent detox. But it’s like being under water—while you’re waiting for that role, you might take something where you’re talking to the cops or you’re in the streets or whatever [as Bubbles did and was] just to put food on the table. This is a business that we all come into, that every actor comes into saying, all right, this is gonna be an uphill climb until it’s not a uphill climb no more. You know, The Wire, you’re talking about 25 great actors, all of us doing our thing. When The Wire ended all of us are looking for work. There aren’t that many black characters in Hollywood. Yet. With the success of Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels maybe there will be more characters written for black actors that will give us a more versatile experience. But, for now, it’s the Hollywood grind.

CW: OK, so with the four movies you’ve got coming out this year—Super, a comedy starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon; Remnants, which is like a strange horror movie; the Tuskegee airmen thing, which is gonna be a big deal; and then MovieMoney which sounds to me like an earnest indie drama—are you putting together a portfolio to showcase your range?

AR: Exactly. You know the rule of thumb, you’re only as good as your last role. So, I was real, real good and my manager and I talked about what to do next, and, you gotta go back to your indie roots because people who are really trying to make their movie and raise the money and doing it for the love is something special. I was born and bred in independent filmmaking so I love doin that. And I have an opportunity to show a range of characters.

Our beloved “Bubbs”

On Super…

With the Rainn Wilson thing, [writer, director] James Gunn was a fan of the show and he saw Bubbles in different ways and thought he had a lot of humor, as well as drama, and he said he wrote the part for me. I love comedy. I’m not some stand-up guy but I love Larry David; I love the ass hole aspect of being crazy and witty. (I was a huge huge super dad when I met Ellen Page, cuz my daughter loved her. So that was great to be able to get an autographed picture with her for my daughter.)

On Red Tails, from a story by George Lucas, about the famed Tuskegee aimen, the first African-American pilots to fly in a combat squadron during WWII…

After five seasons of The Wire we thought, a lot of us, that we’d never be apart of a project with so many great black actors again. So when the Tuskegee airmen thing came about from George Lucas, talking about the history and what these pilots went through, all of a sudden I was surrounded by my peers and other black actors. That was a great surprise. The Wire spoiled you, you wanted to part of something that entertains and educates and excites you all at the same time and hopefully with [director] Anthony Hemmingway and George Lucas that comes through.

On Remnants…

I grew up looking at horror flicks and you always wonder about that black actor who died first, what that felt like. So it was exciting to be in Remnants, and thank god for the era of Barack Obama, the black guy doesn’t die first. I get to run around and be scared a lot longer.

On MovieMoney…

When you’re an actor you’re kinda broke for most of your life. You’re just struggling, building the reel, trying to get that shot. I’ve met a lotta people along the way who helped me out, made sure I was taken care of, believed in me, so once I got on The Wire, it’s those people who still out there grinding and called me and said, hey, I would love for you to be in my film, it would good for me if you were in my film. It’s no questions asked. My agents and manager get mad, but, hey, I’ll jump in front of a camera for my friends and New York any time. I love what I do. My mother told me a long time ago to enjoy the journey. The finish line is there but you gotta enjoy the training, you gotta love the race. I love it and I’m gonna keep doing it, keep throwing things at the wall and see what sticks.

CW: What is the finish line?

AR: I want to tell great stories. When you get older you look back at your journey and when the bug first bit you, you wanna share the love. I love the whole aspect of filmmaking and I want to be in a position where I’m in charge of putting good quality out there. From my generation, to tell the elders thank you for Rocky and Raging Bull and to inspire my daughter’s generation so that they can fall in love with movies. I want to produce and direct. Producing is just a little bit more accessible to me now from all the connections and all the people who respect me from The Wire. It’s easier for me to put that puzzle together, you know, grabbing the money, grabbing the actors.

(Andre goes on to tell me here about an incredible project he’s producing and starring in, with great names attached, but we are not at liberty to share any details at this time. Let’s just say that if it makes it to the screen in its present incarnation it is, if not the role of a lifetime, at least potential Oscar bait.)

We rejoin the conversation already in progress on the subject of black actors…

AR: It’s a crowded lane. There’s a lot of actors out there—on tv, network, cable, movies—and it just shortens the playing space. You just try to keep moving, navigate your way through the bull shit and find the joy in the navigating. I look at my fellows, at my age, I have great actors in my circle—Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright, Terrance Howard—these guys are beasts, man. They do what they do and you just sit there and wait and wait your turn, you wait for everybody to say no or they busy or you wait for somebody to say, fuck it, I think Dre can do it.

CW: Tell me about growing up in the Bronx. When did the bug bite you?

AR: It wasn’t necessarily about being an actor but it was the first time I understood the power of the medium. My dad was a very strict dude and he was very serious and growing up I was a clown and just all over the place. I had the Napoleon-complex and I used to just do stuff on a dare, just to get attention, and of course that caused problems in school and in the neighborhood. And my dad was so strict but the only time I saw him for anything but an ass-whippin was when he was watching television. He’d watch Fred Astaire, West Side Story, John Wayne, and he’d sit me down and we’d watch all these great movies—The Hustler, Let’s Do It Again—and I knew then, anything that could make this man show any other emotion and could stop him from beatin my ass I had to be involved in. From that young age, acting was it.

CW: Why Rocky?

AR: I realized it was about more than just acting when I went to see Rocky. Rocky was kind of the first movie when I felt the power of the bigger picture, when I’m sitting in a movie theater in the Bronx, full of all these young black cats and we all love Apollo Creed, he was like Ali. He wasn’t a bad guy, he was just a bragadocious, I’ll-bust-yo-ass type of dude. But towards the end of the movie it felt so strange to me—not knowing why—we were all rooting for the white guy to win. The movie was just that good at telling that story, relating that, the dreamer—fuck the color—it’s about the guy wanting to go the distance. I think that’s how we all felt in the neighborhood. You know, we didn’t know if we was gonna be rich or whatever. All we wanted was to live, and go the distance. Seeing that movie do that I knew I wanted to create that but I didn’t know how. So I left it alone like a dream and went to college for Business Administration and Advertising but college didn’t work out for me because I was too crazy. So I started doing construction with my dad and we’d talk about movies and memorize movies and talking with the other guys and they were like, You know there are schools for that shit. You keep busting yo ass with this cement you gonna wake up and be 40 and it’s gonna be over. You need to really pursue it.

CW: So what’d you do?

AR: The pursuing part was weird. I didn’t really know the ABCs of it. This is one of those industries where there is no direct path to it. It’s also one of those careers—why everybody loves it and why they stay in the game even if they’re not working is because it’s the only career where it’s never too late. You can never be too ugly, too pretty, too smart, too old, handicapped, short, tall, whatever, it don’t matter. You’re always one role away from your whole life changing and that never changes. You could be 67 and book a series like The Golden Girls and you straight. You’re in the business. So, when I had the balls to tell my dad that I’m quitting construction—which was $21.50 an hour at the time, 18 years old—I started going to theatre schools, I started hanging out in Manhattan. That’s what really opens you up. You see all these other kids from different areas wanting the same thing you want and it creates a synergy and I just started to flow and be inspired and really believe something was gonna happen. My destiny just started clearing the path.

CW: And now?

AR: And now I love where I’m at. The Wire, that show, we realize now, that’ll be in the books forever. I mean, Barack Obama, telling me in Prague in front of my daughter, “Hey, what’s up Bubbles. I loved your character.” That stays with you forever. Now, not getting any nominations for anything, that stays with you too.

Courtesy TerritorioScuola

Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer in the second installment of the Iron Man franchise.

Ten years on from his show-stopping performance as a moonwalking maniac in the original Charlie’s Angels movie Sam Rockwell returns to his roots with two familiar roles–one evil and the other innocent–strikingly similar to those that made him a star. In next month’s Iron Man 2—playing what he calls “a cousin” to his Charlie’s hooligan—he again turns in a hot ember of stylized villainy in a blockbuster franchise, while presently he treads the Broadway boards as a simpleton hotel employee in Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane at The Schoenfeld Theatre. These are signature pieces, both of them, which fit snuggly into the Rockwell oeuvre if you will, and, according to him, make up the meat of his métier. “I think that I have made a reputation playing baddies,” he says. “But, also nymphs, you know, kinda innocents—characters that were really childlike.” He mentions a few of his movies that are in accord with this template, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Safe Men, to which we could also add Welcome to Collinwood (innocent), Galaxy Quest (innocent), and certainly The Assassination of Jesse James (innocent again). “But then there is The Green Mile,” he says, of the Stephen King-penned tale set in a death row prison, and his crazed convict character ‘Wild Bill’ Wharton, “he’s more of a rascal.”

Understatement notwithstanding, that brings us to the next tier of Rockwell’s career—the outlaw eccentric—something he first authored in The Green Mile, but which, in 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, as Chuck Barris’s (perhaps) fantasy self, rocketed him into a new echelon of film actor. Somewhere during the filming of that movie, under the direction of George Clooney on a highly touted Charlie Kaufman script, Sam Rockwell became a movie star. Witness the gritty, tough independent movies Choke and Moon he made subsequently. Even for all their heavy material and sensitive subject matter, they are patently star vehicles, albeit short of iron men or anything transforming. “I don’t really know what a movie star is any more,” he says, in casual protest. “I think a movie star is someone who is financially viable, so I guess I’m an independent film movie star, not a Tom Cruise movie star.” If by this he means not cartwheeling on sofas and mucking up the tabloids, we have to agree and confoundedly hand it to him. Yes, even though he dates a beautiful young actress (Leslie Bibb) the man keeps a low-ass profile. He’s not at the Laker games with Leo or even highballing with Clooney on page six and that goes a long way toward creating leeway for his on-screen mutability. But, if he means he’s not redlining it as hard as Maverick in every scene, we beg to differ. There is paint blistering in the background when he’s doing his thing and, clearly, when studio heads hire him now for a gig, they are buying in for the Rockwell brand. They want the searing Sam or the silly Sam. They want the baddie or the innocent and, let’s be honest, we do too. We wanna see Sammy dance.

But, he goes on, “I think of Phil Hoffman as a movie star—he’s amazing, he’s got an Oscar, you know?” Like Hoffman, Rockwell has that rare talent of so possessing a character you cannot even fathom another actor in the role. How does he do it? “I think there’s probably 30 actors who couldda played the part, you know, or maybe five, you never know. Everybody’s got some weird thing that they do—Chris Walken or Chris Cooper, or Phil. Everybody’s got some sorta stamp they put on it.” Whether it is an actor’s superstition or willful naiveté, Rockwell claims to have no grasp on his own ‘stamp,’ but offers to venture a guess. “I like to go for it, you know. I don’t like to pussyfoot around, don’t like to half-step, so to speak. Maybe that’s my MO.”

Actor/director Clark Gregg, when explaining why he chose Rockwell to play the sex addict with a god complex in his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, said that he had been so spellbound by a performance Rockwell gave in a play he couldn’t take his eyes off him—even though he too was in the show. Gregg cited Rockwell’s fearlessness and willingness to go all in and never repeat himself as reasons he cast him but Rockwell is quick to shirk the compliments. “I don’t know about that; I repeat myself a lot of the time,” he says, guiltily.

Rockwell’s fearlessness is displayed nowhere better than in Moon, a sci-fi mind-bender in which he is the only actor on screen the entire movie. What he describes as, “both a nightmare and a dream for an actor,” may be his most underappreciated performance to date. Rockwell plays several different manifestations of himself and, without giving anything away, breaks your heart, makes you laugh, and makes you shake your head in astonishment. “Yeah. Yeah, that was a blast,” he says, of the grassroots on-line Oscar campaign for his performance, which, though he doesn’t have a computer, he was made aware of.

So now, ten years in as a top-flight star, with at least one performance (Confessions) criminally neglected by Oscar behind him, what does Rockwell feel he’s missing? “There’s all kinds of stuff. I just did a reading of Streetcar Named Desire. That’s a part I’d love to play. I’d love to play Hamlet. I’d also like to play Darth Vader and Han Solo but those parts have already been taken.”

But in the meantime he’s keeping a cool head. “I’d just like to play some juicy parts. I bought an apartment for my mother last year. I have a mortgage on a beautiful loft. I’d like to buy an apartment for my Dad. I’d like to do more theatre, more often. The last play I did was seven years ago. Even if it’s in like Cleveland I’d like to do theatre more often in conjunction with films. But that’s really it. I don’t really have a goal—I just wanna keep working and changing and growing as an artist and trying to become a better actor and stuff like that.”

Wherever it takes him, we’ll be watching.

Rockwell with co-star Christopher Walken in A Behanding in Spokane at the Shoenfeld in New York.