Trailer for Craig Zobel’s COMPLIANCE Starring Ann Dowd and Dreama Walker
The film stars Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy, and Bill Camp. Compliance opens August 17th.
Here’s the official synopsis for Compliance:
* You don't want to miss watching this masterpiece in the theaters. Supremely well-made psychological horror guaranteed to shake you to the core. In mold of Martyrs but far more involving, less creepy and will provoke much discussion afterwards. Pity the producers and distributors didn't see the box-office potential of releasing the movie in last week of October. Perfect Halloween treat.Becky and Sandra aren’t the best of friends. Sandra is a middle-aged manager at a fast-food restaurant; Becky is a teenaged counter girl who really needs the job. One stressful day (too many customers and too little bacon), a police officer calls, accusing Becky of stealing money from a customer’s purse, which she vehemently denies. Sandra, overwhelmed by her managerial responsibilities, complies with the officer’s orders to detain Becky. This choice begins a nightmare that tragically blurs the lines between expedience and prudence, legality and reason. Craig Zobel (his The Great World of Sound appeared at the Festival in 2007) returns with this riveting film, based on a true story. The cast delivers hauntingly authentic performances that make the appalling events unfolding onscreen all the more difficult to watch, but impossible to turn away from. Delving into the complex psychology of the real-life story under its sensationalized surface, COMPLIANCE proves that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
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Terry Richardson's Dark Room
by Phoebe Eaton
September 19, 200
Was it an act of God? Photographer Terry Richardson considered this. It was last Thursday, the day before his first major New York show in years, and a flood in a vacant lot on the corner had nudged the Deitch Projects gallery in Soho off its very foundation. The gallery now looked to be condemned, and so-presumably by the order of a higher critic-was Mr. Richardson's show Terry World .
Mr. Richardson knew how to dance the line when he was shooting for Gucci, Levi's, Tommy Hilfiger and Nike. Carolina Herrera had again hired him to juice her upcoming ad campaign with the notion that something fantastically illicit was in store for anyone who bought her clothes. And who in fashion hadn't heard about the spontaneous sexcapades that occasionally rattled Mr. Richardson's sets? Terry World would be Mr. Richardson's own reality show, but with the basic plot line varying little from episode to episode. Big on blowjobs, Mr. Richardson seemed to want everyone to know that he had more spume in him than a creature out of Melville.
A professionally grim Red Cross representative was on hand to relocate families from a cast-iron building next-door. Terry's team asked if they could rescue the 800 trapped teddy bears wearing Mr. Richardson's grinning mug that had been made up special.
"That's an Office of Emergency Management question," she said with a calculated perversity.
"If they could just get that hole filled," Mr. Richardson was saying. A plaid flannel shirt flung over his shoulder, Mr. Richardson, 39, loped back to his loft- cum -studio on the Bowery to finish a meeting with Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes.
"Terry was in deep shit with all of those first-year feminist types about eight months ago over at Deitch," Mr. McInnes said gleefully. A freedom fighter for fringe culture, gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch represents the likes of Vanessa Beecroft, Mariko Mori and Barry McGee. But after some of his artists heard that he'd huddled with Mr. Richardson, they threatened to huff off to other galleries, calling Mr. Richardson's work "misogynistic" and "exploitative," said Mr. McInnes. Mr. Deitch didn't need any Kleenex to wipe off his conscience: He stood his ground, and the handful of objectors in his employ were bought off with a month's paid holiday.
"Terry is one of the most charismatic figures in downtown culture"-a mood-swinging planet where, Mr. Deitch noted, thanks to the political climate and the fallout from AIDS, "things got very repressed in the 90's."
Given the flood, it was decided that Terry World would relocate around the corner, on Wooster Street, in a space with the ambiance of a high-school gym. Mr. Richardson was relieved.
"How old is she?" said Gavin McInnes, reviewing a number of photos strewn across Mr. Richardson's floor. "You think she'd mind if her tits are on display?"
The subject in question, Boonk, was a meth-head who finally flipped out and didn't come around the studio anymore. "There's something about her face," said Mr. McInnes admiringly. This fragile blonde faun made her money in a practice known in her neck of Jersey City as boonking : She would negotiate an incredible sum of money for some preposterous sexual act inside a john's Range Rover, then hurtle out the door before the performance could begin. Sometimes she didn't make it. Mr. Richardson had captured her blackened panda eyes with one of the archaic point-and-shoot Yashicas he buys on eBay.
"Whatever happened to Boonk?" Mr. Richardson wondered aloud.
"She's a born-again Christian and going to college," said Mr. McInnes.
Autre temps, autre muses . Mr. Richardson was an early graduate of the happy-snappy school of shooters who often turned the camera on their posse. Mr. Richardson's assistants Seth and Keiji may often be glimpsed in the margins of his work. They, too, affect that droopy convict mustache. Mr. Richardson calls them superstars.
His newest superstar was an intern with rock-chick hair now drying his dishes, a communications major at New York University named Alex, "a rich girl who wanted some culture," said Mr. McInnes.
Alex assisted Mr. Richardson on the Miu Miu campaign, but soon she was involved in what is known around the studio as "documentary work." When Mr. Richardson thought it might be cool to pose as the back end of a horse costume, it was Alex who went down below and urged him to the finish line. (The riding costume and crop she'd brought with her to work weren't required after all.)
Striving for something a little more ironic-Clintonian : Alex saw to Mr. Richardson under his desk. It was a cool summer job, and it looked like she might even earn some academic credit in the service of Art. The payoff came when Mr. Richardson would point to the pictures of her and call it some of his "most important work."
"My therapist is going to see the show and tell me about it next week," Mr. Richardson remarked. Like an athlete preparing for the big game, he hadn't had sex or even masturbated for a solid three days before the opening.
And what an opening it was: Thousands had tumbleweeded through the under-air-conditioned exhibition. The Japanese snapped pictures of each other in front of Alex fellating the Terry Horse and Alex fellating Terry from the kitchen trash can. ("It's Sesame Street !" Mr. Richardson explained with a chuckle.) A morose young hipster confessed he'd once been cast in a Richardson shoot: He was in his underpants and she was wrapped in plastic, but it felt way too porno, so he took off. At the time, he hadn't really known who Mr. Richardson was. Clearly, there was the prodrome of regret.
Because of the unstable buildings nearby, the cobbled street was now cordoned off and had turned into an impromptu block party. Vincent Gallo was looking very Wild Bunch in a leather cap. Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, director Wes Anderson and designer Cynthia Rowley all paid their respects to Mr. Richardson, shyly observing things from the very edge of the crowd. Matt Gubler, the bright-eyed ephebe in Wes Anderson's upcoming film, was performing magic tricks. People were buying "Model for Terry" T-shirts and Terry condoms, four for $5.
In his hand-stitched yellow Caraceni suit, Jeffrey Deitch was looking extravagantly pleased. In the show, Mr. Richardson's glasses often come in for a XXX drenching, and Mr. Deitch had changed into his own prescription Terry glasses. "You think these would look good with cum on them?" Mr. Deitch joked with Mr. Richardson's assistant, Melissa, who always wears a Virgin Mary medal around her neck. ("So gross !" she later complained.)
" Telly !" It was Charlie Brown, the Japanese karaoke maestro and publisher of the edgy magazine Dune . Mr. Brown had a cameo in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation , and he was here with a copy of Taschen's new Terry World coffee-table tome under his arm. Mr. Richardson signed it " Shaku-hachi!" ("Blowjob!")
"I want Terry to sign my chest," said Alex the intern, whose scrap of a dress was affixed to her bitty body with gobs of double-sided tape. A pair of policemen who wanted to see what the fuss was about inside were expelled back into the street. They were smiling.
"It's comedy," said Mr. Richardson merrily. It certainly wasn't pornography, everyone kept insisting.
"A lot of it starts with me saying to a girl, 'Do you want to do nudes?' And they're like, 'I don't want to be naked,'" said Mr. Richardson. "So I say, ' I'll be naked and you take the pictures. You can have the camera. You can have the phallus.'" Everyone, including the assistants, was always armed with a camera. Mr. Richardson liked to say he wouldn't ask someone to do anything he wouldn't first do himself: "And since I'm in so many of the pictures, aren't I objectifying myself a bit?"
"Some people think those images are funny and love them, and some people think they're degrading to women. And those are great reactions to get, because the same people who are saying that are secretly taking dumps on people or like to drink piss or whatever," said Mr. Richardson. "Everybody has their trips." And no one in his pictures seemed to be suffering though the experience, certainly.
Mr. Richardson was by no means a porn junkie. He was more likely to be caught with Cocaine Cowboys , Christiane F . or Pink Flamingos in his VCR than Yank My Doodle, It's a Dandy . The pile of Hustlers in the bathroom were there because a friend sent him a subscription. If he wanted to jerk off, he could always use the mirror, he said. He had never bought a porn movie-and anyway, too much of that stuff could scramble your circuitry.
"Once, a year ago, I'd been watching porn, and there was one where some guy was smacking this girl," he remembered. "So I'm with someone for the first time and I just slap her. She slapped me back so hard she knocked my glasses off! I was like, 'Whadja do that for?' 'Don't fuckin' slap me!' she said. 'I thought you'd like it,' I said. She's like, 'No, I like to get choked .'"
Mr. Richardson was sure that other photographers had collections of Polaroids and pictures that were something like his. It's just that no one had the guts to put them out there. Mr. Richardson's own dimensions were the subject of much fascination among both sexes. A solicitation for women willing to take it all off on his Web site had yielded much mail from gay European men. Mr. Richardson would sometimes spot a candidate at the Starbucks on Spring Street, but his stylist friend Leslie Lessin would be the one to approach.
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| Leslie Lessin |
Recently Mr. Richardson split with his on-and-off girlfriend of two years, Elite model Susan Eldridge. He'd been faithful, in his fashion: The pretty young flings offering blowjobs at the office were something Ms. Eldridge understood to be part of his job description.
The day after the show, Mr. Richardson was sitting around his apartment, having a smoke and mulling the why of it. Perhaps the show was about his finally getting clean.
His favorite drug had been heroin-snorting it, smoking it. He also drank. "Christmas Day three years ago," he said, "I was here doing ten bags of heroin, washing down a bunch of Valiums with a bottle of vodka and going to bed with a suit on by myself, just being like, 'Please don't wake up,' and then waking up and going: ' Fuck- I'm still here!'"
Friends staged an intervention.
"I don't think I'd had sex without being drunk or stoned in almost my whole life," he said. "All of a sudden, it was like, 'Wow-sex! This is incredible!'"
Mr. Richardson's father Bob was a well-regarded photographer-dude of the 60's. When Terry was 4, his father left his mother for Anjelica Huston, then 17. Terry's mother moved on to Jimi Hendrix, Kris Kristofferson and Keith Richards. When Mr. Richardson was 9, she was coming to pick him up from his child psychiatrist ("I was just really angry and hyper") and a telephone truck rear-ended her Volkswagen.
"When she came home, she was in diapers," he said. "It was very heavy. By the time I was 11, I was getting high every day on weed-just checking out, basically."
A redhead rang up from downstairs. She was dropping off Gummi Bears for Mr. Richardson. He plopped one in his mouth. "I feel like a lot of the women I've dated have been the same kind of person," he said. "I've been through a lot of relationships that were really just girls cheating on me or being quite sadistic. Because of this accident, my mother couldn't walk, and she was just very ill-tempered all the time-always screaming and yelling and throwing things at me and, like, totally unavailable as a mother." Young Terry stopped seeing his shrink, and the man jumped out his office window six months later. Two years ago, Mr. Richardson had a pensive image of himself as a child tattooed on his chest.
Terry was 10 when his father Bob started to bottom out; since then, Bob Richardson's life has been punctuated by repeated comebacks and homelessness. (Today, Terry's father lives in Venice Beach off Social Security and has been working on his memoirs.) Terry did it up on the SoCal punk scene and played bass guitar in several garage bands. He started taking his own pictures and assisting other photographers. He lived on Ramen noodles. In 1991, his father suggested they work together in New York as a team.
"It was comedy," said Mr. Richardson. "We'd be in Miami shooting beauty pictures for some magazine, and my dad would be yelling at the editor: 'Terry's going to do what he wants-and if you're going to get in the way, we're going to get on a plane and go home!' And we were just so broke, I was like, ' Noooo , we're in a hotel ! It's free food and free drinks and I want to stay!' Dad was really into tantrums and trying to emotionally devastate people. The 60's was a different time. You could get away with these incredible scenes."
For a spell, his dad was living in Terry's studio apartment. "And I would just go to sleep on people's couches every night, because I just couldn't handle sleeping in a bed with my dad every night," Mr. Richardson said. "I'd come home and he'd be wearing my clothes and hanging out with my friends."
The Richardsons had scored a job for Vibe magazine, but Terry told his dad that he wanted to go it alone. His father hung up on him. But the story won an award, and Terry's career took flight.
Mr. Richardson married model Nikki Uberti, and he compares their relationship to Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney. "We were together three months and we went to City Hall, and I was high as a kite and everyone was saying 'Don't get married,' and then we fought the whole time and after six months we almost got it annulled, and you know there were great moments," he said in a torrent. When Ms. Uberti was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29, Mr. Richardson asked for a divorce-or so the oft-repeated story goes.
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| Nikki Uberti |
Faux Pas is a short film Ms. Uberti made about their relationship, starring cats and stuffed animals. Mr. Richardson said he'd love to see it, only they no longer speak.
Many a hotel room has suffered at Mr. Richardson's hands. "To go from, like, not having anything to flying on the Concorde and just being a lunatic …. " he said. "I was working on a job with Polly Mellen, and she was just looking at me with tears in her eyes, saying: 'You don't have to do the same thing as your father. You're going to destroy everything.'"
Now people were calling him the heir to Helmut Newton. Famous people were always a kick, and he considered himself one, too ("Terry Richardson is an international celebrity," reads the first line of his biography on the "only official Terry Richardson website"-as if there were other aspirants to that role). "It's nice to get attention," Mr. Richardson said. He enjoyed being recognized on the street. Warhol had his wig, said Mr. Richardson, and he had his Confederate facial hair, Charles Manson T-shirts and 70's sit-com glasses. "Sometimes I think I'm turning into a caricature of myself," said Mr. Richardson, who was selling T-shirts he had printed with a caricature of himself.
Someone offered him a million dollars to make an arty sex film. While he says he loved his buddy Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny ("Some great heart-breaking moments, and the blowjob is awesome"), this is not what he wanted to do. "I wanted to make something really dark and heartbreaking and beautiful and funny that was more than penetration," he said. He's co-written a screenplay called Son of a Bitch , about a kid whose shyster father resurfaces in his life at 18, only to wreak havoc on his life.
"The whole sex thing-I'm kind of bottomed out on it," said Mr. Richardson. "Eventually I would just like to have kids and go into a different kind of place."
Mr. Richardson had a little side project that had been going on for years called "Breaking in the Carpet." As he explained: "I have hundreds of images of me just coming on different rugs in different hotel rooms." He suspected he'd jacked off at every room in the Marmont, he said. But he hadn't taken one of these pictures in almost two years. Or perhaps he just didn't want his Marmont guest privileges revoked.
He was now thinking he might want to get into what he called "real photography," as opposed to lo-fi snapshots. "A whole other part of me is that beautiful, romantic kind of picture I do, too," he said.
Mr. Richardson's post-show ramble seemed to sound an epitaph for yet another phase he'd survived. "The people who don't like me will hate me more, and the people who do like me will be like, 'There's Terry-he went all the way. Cool.'"
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Taylar Eliza Bunts in What's Your Number? (2011)
http://www.maxim.com/hometown-hotties/taylar-manhattan-ny#full_profile
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Kate Winslet reveals reasons she accepts film roles with nudity
Emmanuelle star Sylvia Kristel in hospital
Sylvia Kristel, star of the erotic Emmanuelle films, suffers a stroke and has cancer reveals agent. 
Dutch actress, model and singer Sylvia Kristel, posing as a "starlet" on the Carlton Hotel beach during the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel, known for her role as the eponymous heroine of the erotic "Emmanuelle" film series, is in an Amsterdam hospital following a stroke, her agent said.
"We don't know what the future holds," Henriette Hoogenboezem told AFP, adding that the 59-year-old also had serious cancer problems. "We are very worried."
She said Kristel had the stroke some three weeks ago after apparently successful treatment for throat cancer. She was also to have begun treatment for liver cancer but this had been put off.
Kristel became famous with her first movie, "Emmanuelle", which appeared in 1974 and described the erotic adventures of a young woman in Asia. A worldwide success, it was shown in a cinema on the Champs-Elysees in Paris for 13 years.
A series of sequels followed, also starring Kristel, with "Emmanuelle 2" in 1975, "Goodbye Emmanuelle" in 1977 and "Emmanuelle 4" en 1984.
NSFW... or your ears, really: Hear 'Aladdin' voiceover actor Gilbert Gottfried's hilarious squawking reading of Fifty Shades of Grey
Mummy porn never sounded so bad... Until you repeated the words 'mummy' and 'porn' to yourself and had a think
‘Mummy porn ’ novel Fifty Shades of Grey may be flying off the virtual shelves – but there may be a wait for the definitive aurally pleasurable version.
The saucy read - which has become the best-selling e-book of all time – has kept readers purring with delight across.
But a parody reading by voiceover actor Gilbert Gottfried is proving more of a treat for the funny bone rather than the ears… and certainly has none of the seductive and soothing tones that most fans of the book would hope for.
‘Mummy porn ’ novel Fifty Shades of Grey may be flying off the virtual shelves – but there may be a wait for the definitive aurally pleasurable version.
The saucy read - which has become the best-selling e-book of all time – has kept readers purring with delight across.
But a parody reading by voiceover actor Gilbert Gottfried is proving more of a treat for the funny bone rather than the ears… and certainly has none of the seductive and soothing tones that most fans of the book would hope for.
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Gratuitous Sex and Potty Mouths in the Movies: An Evolution of Viewpoints
Published by TJ Fink
Though it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, I used to be a timid, passive consumer of pop culture. I took a lot things at face value, and my superficial definition of “cool” was based largely on the herd mentality of my biased peers. (I mean come on, I had a Scarface poster in my freshman dorm room years before watching the goddamn movie. Guilty.) But over the past decade or so, my brain developed a spine. I evolved into a more thoughtful, critical observer, attempting to form my own opinions based on introspection and carefully weighed research instead of knee-jerk reactions and sensationalistic Internet blurbs.
While reflecting on this fact, I found that my tastes in movies—particularly those regarding sexuality and profanity—have changed drastically in the last three years; a lot of flicks I used to get a kick out of in college aren’t even appealing on a nostalgic level anymore. This makes sense, I guess, since everyone has to [allegedly] grow up sometime. But since I enjoy psychoanalyzing myself, it’s time to delve into the back of my frontal lobe, starting with my…
Childhood
Did anyone else grow up with conservative parents who took movie ratings literally? For those who didn’t, here’s the general breakdown:
G = “OK, sit still and learn about anthromorphized gender roles so Mommy can drink her special juice in the kitchen and forget about your hyperactivity for a while.”
PG = “Sure, you can watch it, but only if I’m in the room. Just because those teenagers are turtles doesn’t mean it’s OK for them to kick people in the face.”
PG-13 = “Last I checked, you’re still 12 for a few more weeks, mister. I’ll be sitting right here the whole time. What more do you need to know about the Titanic, anyway? Doug’s mom told me all about that couch scene, and if you think I don’t know how to work the fast-forward button on the VCR, you’re dead wrong.”
No boob for you!
R = “Not in my house.”
Fine, fine, this is all a bit hyperbolized, but you get the idea. And here’s the thing about demonizing stuff (especially movies) as a parent: if you’re not careful, your kid will only want that stuff more. There’s a fine line between “demonizing” and “glorifying.”
Anyway, from a very young age (i.e., as long as I can remember), I was taught that swearing and premarital sex were detestable practices under any and all circumstances. Fair enough; morals are morals, I suppose, and my mom had scripture to back up her rigorous censorship in spades.
But I didn’t know what gave those “dirty” words power. Not really. I only knew they were powerful. And forget about gratuitous sex or violence. The closest I got to either before middle school was that sword-fighting scene from The Mask of Zorro—with both my parents in the room. Woof, that’s a brand of eye contact I don’t want to make with my mother ever again.
Pictured: a Catherine Zeta Jones that teenaged Teej could never fully appreciate.
High School
Needless to say, I was behind the curve when adolescence hit, but eager/desperate to catch up. Not only was I underexposed to all the movies my super-cool friends had seen years ago (“What do you mean you haven’t seen Braveheart, dude?”), but during the process of high school socialization, socially-awkward TJ would happily side with his presumably knowledgeable peers if it meant avoiding the ridicule that came with admitting he’d never seen any of the Terminators at the age of 17.
Which brings me to American Pie. I don’t have any hard data to back me up here, but I’d say this flick set the pace for my generation’s sensibilities toward R-rated movies (at least in the sexuality and gross-out humor department). If it didn’t, try explaining away three sequels and four direct-to-DVD spin-offs, not to mention all the copycats in between (that’s Stiffler in Road Trip, right?). This franchise paraded all the taboos of my childhood around like a semen-and-dessert-covered banner, and by the time I graduated from high school, my friends and I liked our movies the same way we liked our Go-Gurts: colorful, synthetic, and sort of retarded if we thought about them long enough.
Admittedly, some of us were kind of late bloomers.
College
Of the many skills I picked up on the way to Diplomaville, learning how to read movies was one of my favorites. I’d never tried that before, but a few professors pushed me in the right direction. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. As I drank in films like Snatch, Pulp Fiction, Donnie Darko, Reservoir Dogs, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange, Cannibal Holocaust, Boogie Nights, Monster, and so on, I realized how much time I’d been wasting on superficial flicks like…I dunno, anything with pre-2004 Jim Carrey in it. I started to appreciate how violence can impact character development; how profanity can be used to organically punctuate monologues; how sex scenes can deliberately (and artistically) evoke discomfort as opposed to arbitrary titillation. In effect, I was retraining my brain.
Today
At present, my attitudes toward sex and profanity in the movies have evolved from ignorant titillation to thoughtful appreciation. If a particular sex scene contributes to an overall narrative, terrific. But come on, isn’t anyone else sick of the whole “unrated” trend with comedies nowadays? The same goes for vulgar language; profanity-for-profanity’s-sake can be annoying at best, detrimental to the script at worst.
“Just like the crap you saw in theaters, but with 6% more tits and F-Bombs. Huzzah!” —Hollywood
So have I come full circle? Worse, have I turned into my mom (the way my exes always said I would)? Hardly, but unless it serves a purpose, leave the swearing to my racist Uncle Mort, and the gratuitous sex to the broadband Internet I pay good money for. I’m trying to watch a movie here.
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Can you ever feel classy as a painted lady? As more middle-class women get tattoos, our writer discovers the VERY colourful reactions body art can provoke
By Beth Hale
At the grassy entrance to Henley Royal Regatta, a crowd of impeccably well-turned-out ladies and gentlemen is gathering.
The midday sun beats down and the air buzzes with the gentle hubbub of cut-glass tones as the throng waits to file through the gates.
And then, filtering just over my shoulder, I hear it. One word, uttered by a woman and at least an octave higher than the rest. ‘Hideous,’ it crows.Soon, ‘hideous’ is joined by a couple of ‘how awfuls’, before reaching a crescendo with a ‘ghastly’.
Marked: Beth Hale with her temporary tattoos
Why? Today I have adorned my arms with a collection of tattoos, more commonly associated with muscle-bound dockers and football fans. My left arm is a treat — a ‘sleeve’ decorated with bright, Japanese-style prints of fish and flowers on a patterned grey background that stretches from shoulder to wrist.
On my right arm, I am sporting two vivid blue birds and some more foliage, which perfectly complement the cornflower blue of my Reiss shift dress (favoured label of the Duchess of Cambridge, no less). But if I ever had an inner Kate, I’m not channelling her now. These Henley women are making me feel inferior and embarrassed. I want the ground to swallow me up. So why am I putting myself through this nightmare?
Beth's cornflower blue Reiss shift dress reveals showcased her tattoos during the Henley Royal Regatta
Of course, until recently, no decent, middle-class woman would dare be seen with a tattoo, such was society’s disapproval. But with growing numbers choosing to be inked, I decided to find out what it feels like to deface your body in such a way, and whether or not attitudes towards tattoos have changed.
One thing was for sure — I didn’t want my tattoos to be permanent. I wouldn’t dream of scarring my skin. So I put myself at the mercy of a renowned tattoo artist who could recreate the real thing with ink that would wash off. But even with the knowledge that I could get rid of my ‘sleeve’, I experienced an extraordinary — and strangely upsetting — 24 hours. My day starts in less-than-salubrious surroundings on the edge of London’s Chinatown. The tattoo parlour is called Extreme Needle, which is enough to fill me with extreme panic.
My tattoo artist, Kiko, tells me if this were real I would be facing at least 20 hours on the couch: five sessions, with two weeks between each to allow my skin to heal. I don’t even want to think about how much pain I would be in. So, four hours later, what do I think of Kiko’s work? Well, my tattoos are indisputably intricate and pretty works of art. It’s just that I like my art in more traditional forms.
Thanking Kiko, I step out on to the street and immediately feel the eyes of every passer-by fall on my arms. And, curiously, one thing becomes clear. While women seem openly repulsed by my body art, men seem to find it attractive. ‘Your tattoos are amazing,’ says one well-dressed man rather lasciviously as we pass on the escalator at Leicester Square Tube station. Another slightly tubby chap with a friendly smile says: ‘I love your tattoos, I’d love to get one’.
Growing trend: Joanna Southgate's heavily tattooed caused a stir at Royal Ascot
Beth says scores of beautiful celebrity women are proud of their ‘tramp stamps’ including Samantha Cameron (left0 and Cheryl Cole (right)
On to the Tube, I see horror on the faces of my fellow travellers. I sit next to one, who moves to another seat at the first available opportunity. An older woman sits in the corner, lips pursed, hugging her handbag close to her chest. Clearly the tattoos make me look like a thief.
Alighting at Knightsbridge, I try to adopt a confident stride as I walk into Harrods. I soon get the sense I’m being followed, and sure enough there is a security guard tailing me. At Cartier, I gaze longingly into a top-end display cabinet, but no one comes to offer help. No doubt the assistants assume that a woman with tattoos would not be interested in treating herself to diamonds.
I decide to leave, concluding that Harrods is no place for a tattooed young rebel like me. Back outside, I resolve to show people that I’m still a kind-hearted, middle-class girl underneath all the body art. I spot an elderly woman pulling an over-laden shopping trolley as her fluffy, white dog trots beside her. An opportunity for my good deed of the day arises when she flags down a taxi.
‘Please let me help,’ I say as she attempts to clamber into the cab. She takes one look at me and proclaims: ‘Oh my goodness, look at your tattoos,’ while brushing away my offer of aid. It is with growing apprehension that I head to my next destination, The Dorchester hotel, for afternoon tea. Yet here, cosmopolitan melting pot of the rich and famous, my tattoos barely raise an eyebrow (admittedly one of those eyebrows is that of former boxer Chris Eubank).
It helps restore my confidence and I’m actually looking forward to seeing what my boyfriend makes of my new look. He is perhaps a little too pleased for my liking, but makes a curious assessment of my demeanour.
Rihanna posted a photo of her falcon tattoo
On the train home, I have time to reflect. I look at the arms of the elderly woman next to me — they have clearly seen a lot of years and a lot of sun — and I wonder what my arms would look like at her age with tattoos on them. Does no one care about how awful their body art will look as their skin shrivels?
Although I’m no fan of tattoos and struggle to understand why anyone would choose to mark themselves in this way, the hostility and prejudice I encountered upset me. I couldn’t face life as an outcast and was desperate to shower and go back to being ordinary, conventional me. As the flowers, fish and birds wash off, I ponder what I have learned during my 24 hours as a painted lady, and only one thing springs to mind: when you have tattoos, people will always struggle to see anything other than the ink.
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Topless Lady Spotted On The Subway
With temperatures hanging in the mid-90s and wind blasts that feel like a blow dryer pushing on your face, it's not surprising that some people might have the urge to take off their shirts in public. Someone on Reddit spotted a young woman exercising her right to do just that on the subway today—and from what we can tell, it looks like it was topless activist Moira Johnston, a familiar face around the East Village. You can watch a recent NSFW interview with her by BreakThru Radio below.
A Brief Conversation with a Topless New Yorker About Her Outfit
for approximately two weeks now, according to EV Grieve. Yesterday, roving photographer Atisha Paulson happened to catch her in Union Square, where he conducted a Q-and-A with her about her ensemble. Here's the transcript he sent us, along with his photos.
OK, so what's your name?
Moira Johnston.
Can you tell us a little bit about your outfit?
I'm going topless today. It's to raise awareness that's it's legal for woman to be topless anywhere a guy can be without a shirt since 1992 here in New York State.
Is this something you've done before?
Yeah, I've been going topless for a couple weeks now.
And what's the response in general?
I get a lot of support. Well, there's mixed reactions, because people aren't used to seeing it in our culture yet.
And the rest of your outfit, where did you get your skirt?
I got my skirt at a boutique in Philadelphia.
And your shoes?
Um, I'd rather not say.
And your glasses?
Kmart.
And how would you define your personal style?
I would say I'm kind of artsy and, um, apparently my outfit today also has roots in social activism.
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Going Hollywood: Tinseltown’s Renewed Interest in Digital Content
Hollywood has long struggled with the challenge presented by digital content. The internet has at once been a source of consternation—with pirates abounding—and a source of endless new opportunities. Thanks to the success of streaming video at companies such as Netflix, Hulu, and TV Everywhere, Hollywood is finally starting to give digital content the respect it deserves. The movie industry realizes there is profit to be made and value to be had in giving the viewer what she wants, when she wants it. But is Hollywood really ready to change, or is digital delivery still just an after-thought?“Well that’s sort of the burning question of the day,” says Rich Hull, who advises many of the nation’s largest media and entertainment companies on content strategy, finance, and distribution, and who is a former film and TV producer as well as an EContent columnist. “People recognize that it’s going to be the future. … The reason is I think people have come to the mindset that we’ve gone from this culture of ownership to a culture of access.”
Hull explains that consumers used to own physical goods, such as movies on VHS/DVD—and those were easy to sell—but “now people want anything, anywhere, anytime on any device. It’s a different sort of mindset so I think people in Hollywood recognize that and they realize that’s where their business is going.”
Seth Shapiro—principal of advisory firm New Amsterdam Media, LLC, adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Cinematic Arts, and research fellow at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab—says studios can’t afford for digital delivery to play second fiddle. “It can’t be an afterthought anymore because there’s too much economic pressure on the alternative if Hollywood does nothing,” he says.
One of the risks Hollywood faces if it does nothing is piracy, notes Shapiro. “Of the top 15 global sites receiving traffic, maybe five of them are illegal download sites,” says Shapiro. “If the owner of Mad Men or Breaking Bad did not put [its content] up internationally, it would get there anyway—that horse is out of the barn. And so you’ve got to find more efficient ways of selling it.”
Hollywood needs to act quickly to avoid the plight of the music industry, which notoriously scuffled with illegal sharing site, Napster. “Everybody looks at [the music industry] and doesn’t want this to happen to them so I think everybody has been galvanized,” says Shapiro.
However, Tinseltown, according to Shapiro, is slow to change. “The alternative of ‘do nothing’ is sort of the standby in Hollywood—until the heat gets so bad people have to do something; and the heat really is that bad because of piracy,” he explains. “The only way to combat piracy, I would suggest, is by providing reasonable legal alternatives, which is exactly what the music business did not do.”
Streaming Done Right
Shapiro points to Hulu—founded in March 2007—as one example of a digital delivery success story. Hulu addresses piracy in its FAQ section, calling it “an industry wide problem.” The site adds, “By building a compelling service for end users that is easy-to-use and free, we believe that Hulu is a great platform for content providers who want to legally monetize their content online.”
Hulu, Shapiro says, is an example of NBCUniversal Media, LLC and FOX taking much-needed action by getting together and saying, “Well, we better come up with some sort of legal alternative to put TV content online that we can monetize.” He adds, “Hulu is an example of the industry [realizing it] can’t just sit there—it’s got to do something.”
Hulu adds that it is “fortunate to have a very strong relationship with our content partners.” It continues, “This connection provides us with exclusive content that other competitors don’t have. For example, Hulu and the network sites are the only legal online destinations that provide access to current season TV shows from top networks like ABC, Comedy Central, FOX, NBCUniversal, MTV and many more.”
Another well-known company that has benefited from “very close relationships for a long time with the content owners and studios” is Netflix, says Hull. “Netflix is one of those few companies … that’s ever been able to sort of move on a dime and create a streaming business without really cannibalizing their physical DVD business. And they, for the most part, pulled it off—who knows what they’ll look like in a few years, but this stuff is pretty hard,” he explains.
Netflix is an attractive option for film and TV studios, which have the opportunity to resell old content over and over. “It was really additional revenue without any costs. Basically, the job of the studios is really to sell everything that they’ve got again, again, again, and again,” says Shapiro, adding that Netflix “essentially started as a really attractive revenue, sort of a creative cash flow option.”
But it’s blown up since those humble beginnings. According to its website, Netflix is “the world’s leading internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows”; in fact, it has more than 23 million streaming members globally.
Netflix “came in years ago and just started backing up a money truck to Hollywood. They were just way overpaying for streaming rights for movies … and Hollywood was like, ‘Hello, come on in,’” adds Hull. He points out that Netflix addresses the only two things studios care about: “‘How do I get paid and how do you protect my content so no one rips it off?’ If you can solve both of those issues for them, they’re happy to do business with you.”
Streaming Originals
Many of the leading destinations for streaming services are also starting to dip their toes into the original programming waters. In this case, they’re taking a cue from many premium and basic cable networks (think Home Box Office, Inc. and AMC Networks, Inc.).
Earlier this year, Netflix launched its first original series, Lilyhammer, which stars Steven Van Zandt as a New York gangster who finds himself living in Norway as part of the witness protection program. In addition to Lilyhammer, Netflix is planning to roll out more original series over the next year. House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, is expected to launch in the fourth quarter, while Season 4 of the canceled FOX series Arrested Development is planned for early 2013.
Hulu has also jumped into the original digital programming fray with Battleground, a 13-episode series that focuses on the lives of workers in a fictional campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin. Disney is also getting into the mix, teaming up with YouTube to produce original content for the most popular streaming video site of them all: YouTube.
“Netflix and Hulu are essentially other networks ordering content from producers, which is good for the industry itself and hopefully gives consumers more choice,” observes Shapiro. “It’s an evolutionary change to the same underlying model of consumption on multiple devices—not an either/or proposition.”
Shapiro continues that he doesn’t believe a time will come when a streaming-only program will be more widely viewed than a TV show. “At best, it will have equal mindshare with traditional [distribution] at some point in the future,” he states.
Logan Mulvey, CEO of Santa Monica, Calif.-based GoDigital, on the other hand, says he does see a future where an original streaming digital program is more widely viewed. “I do [see it]; it’s going to take smart producers who understand marketing and putting together a project with a real budget that can allow people to make money,” he says. But his optimism comes with a warning. “We need people to understand that digital is still very small and will not realize its full potential for a while.”
As far as what this new trend in programming means for the future of Hollywood, Mulvey says, “I think the industry will wait and see how these made-for-digital shows play out,” and if they’re successful, “you’ll see a bunch of bandwagoners.”
Showdown: Digital Versus Traditional
Despite digital’s booming popularity, Hull says it represents “pennies compared to the dollars of traditional distribution.” However, services such as Netflix are catching up. “Roll up their 20-million-plus subscribers, and this is not the type of money that you generally see in traditional distribution … yet. It will totally get there; it will definitely get there,” says Hull.
In April, Bloomberg News reported that Providence Equity Partners, Inc. was looking to sell its stake in Hulu in order to invest in a new production company. The 10% share was reportedly valued at about $200 million, which represents a doubling of the firm’s money since 2007. Not too shabby.
Meanwhile, there has been a decline in overall DVD rentals. According to a March 26, 2012, piece on Deadline Hollywood, consumers spent $5.65 billion renting DVDs and Blu-ray Discs in 2011. That’s down 3.4% from 2010. In the last 3 months of the year, rentals were down 21.3% from the same period in 2010, as business at kiosks—including Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, which charges $1.20 a night—grew by 28%, notes Deadline.
Redbox, which generated $1.6 billion in revenue last year, also plans on launching a streaming service of its own, notes the Los Angeles Times. Redbox announced in February that it would be teaming up with Verizon to create a rental service that would offer digital delivery and compete directly with Netflix.
Blockbuster, LLC—which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 and had been criticized for failing to embrace digital delivery—launched its own streaming video service last year. Last fall, Dish Network, LLC unveiled a Blockbuster-branded service to watch movies over the internet and rent DVDs through the mail.
So far the results are fuzzy, says Hull. “It’s unclear what’s going to happen with Blockbuster’s streaming service still. At first, everyone thought it’d be a Netflix competitor … or killer. Now, the feeling is that it’ll just be a value-add for DISH subscribers only,” explains Hull. “In the big picture, there’s still room for more competitors in the streaming marketplace, especially one as well capitalized as DISH. But Blockbuster needs to get off their tail and make some bold moves soon. Every day that goes by is one more day that Blockbuster’s name is forgotten.”
The Importance of Being Nimble
Moving forward, studios and content owners have to be very careful, adds Hull, because “they’re walking this very fine line where they’re kind of planning for the future and also not cannibalizing their existing revenue model.” Consequently, says Hull, studios are slow to change. “They’ve always been that way; they’re always going to be that way. That’s just kind of how they’re built; they always resist change for that reason.”
Hull points out that it’s a bit of a misconception that everyone in digital media is getting rich. “You can pick up The Wall Street Journal any day of the week and people are talking about digital media, digital media as if everyone’s getting rich in it—we’re not quite there yet, particularly on professionally produced content. … We are getting there but we aren’t there yet.”
Mulvey says he thinks Hollywood is ready to go fully digital, but he cautions that “it takes a long time to get people used to the way new business is going to be done.” His company GoDigital works with premium independent films to make them available to the widest possible audience on all the major platforms, including iTunes, Xbox, cable, and video on demand through Time Warner, Cox Communications, Inc., or Comcast, according to Mulvey.
“The independent side has been more progressive than the studios because we are more nimble and it’s easier for us to make changes and convince filmmakers to try what’s been considered alternative styles of marketing and distribution,” explains Mulvey. “But I do understand that it does take a while to make a transformation to a completely new way of marketing and consuming.”
Just as independent filmmakers often push artistic limits, it seems that now they may be the ones to push Hollywood to truly embrace alternative distribution. As shows such as Lilyhammer or Battleground enjoy internet success, distributors phase out their DVD business, and customers continue to demand more access, Hollywood is going to have no choice but to step up and take digital distribution seriously.
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DogFart.com interview with French porn star Angell Summers
There's really no language barrier when it comes to interracial porn. We recently took Angell Summers to a gloryhole where some interesting things went down. However, we had to get inside this European whore's mind to find out exactly why someone would be into public anonymous sex.
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