Mike Russell‘s comic-strip interview format is concise, involving, intriguing. Here’s one with Waking Life director Richard Linklater that went up yesterday. I tried to find other movie-type interviews from Russell but the navigation options on the right margin are too oblique. Why doesn’t Russell offer a link that just says “previous movie-type interviews with head-trip directors, writers, actors, etc.”? Maybe he hasn’t done any.
As I was reading the Linklater thing I was saying to myself, “Does Linklater drive a shitty car with empty coffee cups and cigarette packs lying on the dashboard”? Then I read that the interview was done over the phone, and soon after I began to conclude the drawings were probably inspired by the milieu in Linklater’ s Waking Life.
I also like what Russell wrote about the Frat Pack a while back. “A while back, I suggested that the half-funny, half-cliche Wedding Crashers was just lazy enough that it might signal the cusp of a decline” of Hollywood’s new comedy mafiosos — Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, et. al., “Specifically, I asked: ‘How long until ‘Hollywood’s funniest clique’ [as described by New York Times writer Sharon Waxman] pulls an Ackroyd and starts to reek of smug, louche decay?” (Webster’s defines “louche” as ad adjective meaning “questionable taste or morality; decadent.”)