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Interview with John Doe

Interview with John Doe

I kinda wanted to talk about the music industry, and I wanted to get into it by talking about the character you played in Georgia, because I’ve never been in a band, but watching that it seemed like the most realistic portrait of a real working band that I’ve seen in a movie. Playing bowling alleys and bar mitzvahs, but still being able to make a living at it, which is kind of a triumph in itself. I wondered: is it really that authentic, and is that what drew you to the project?

John Doe: What drew me to the project was working with [director] Ulu Grosbard and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham, and it being a great script. But I think it is accurate, to a bar band. Luckily, that’s the only time I’ve played “Hava Nagila.” Guaranteed. And I hope it’s the only time that I play it; not that it’s a bad song, it’s …

[Laughing throughout] It’s of a situation you’re not often in …

Yes. It sort of has a certain … je nais se quoi. [Laughs] But … the only thing that I don’t think a movie has ever captured in the music world is the speak that musicians have, the way that people are constantly capping on each other, and the banter that goes back and forth at rehearsal and just as they’re hanging around. I think that would be really difficult to script; you’d have to record it and then transcribe it. Even in Spinal Tap, it didn’t have that. I think of that sometimes in rehearsals and stuff.

The sickest part about doing acting is that then you find those same situations coming up in your real life. And then you’re wondering what’s real and what’s not.

Flashing back …

It’s just weird. Right around that same time when we were promoting Georgia, I was doing a tour on my own, and there’s this one place in Cincinnati called Sudsy Malone’s, which is a Laundromat-bar-gig.

One-stop shopping.

And it’s very popular with a certain level of musicians, because then they know that there’s one place they’re going to have clean clothes. And you can put your laundry in between soundcheck and the show and have it pretty much done. I’m sure that someone has probably gotten offstage while they’re playing so they can put it in for the …

[Laughing throughout] Put the fabric sheet in the dryer …

Right. [Laughs] I don’t think they’re worried about fabric softener with their jeans and t-shirts.

Your character had a line in that movie, something like “Look Sadie, things are really happening for us, and I don’t want you to fuck us up.” And to most people, for this band, nothing’s really happening; they’re playing bowling alleys. But for that band, to be able to just make a living playing is probably a pretty big deal.

Right, right.

They don’t have to worry about the day job anymore.

I think a lot of people would be better if they did have a day job. And in a way, acting has provided that for me, to do it for the right reasons; to do it because I love it, and because I need to do it, for creativity and stuff. And you can get—when you have a major label contract, you can get distracted, or you can get too far away from the reason you’re doing it. Because it becomes a job. And I think I was there—I was there with that Geffen contract, and I was there with kind of losing the reasons to write songs, or writing songs just for X, and it kind of came back after doing that Rhino record [Kissingsohard, 1995]. I’d collected a bunch of songs to do that record and then toured that, and then, just through personal life and things that happened, I realized I’d lost a sense of discovery, and a sense of searching for something and trying different things. Doing that Kill Rock Stars record [For the Rest of Us (EP), 1998) was—I tried to be innovative and tried to do different things, and carried it over into this one. It’s important.

Do you feel that you’re still “paying your dues”? Is there a point in your career where you thought “OK, I’m here; this can now be my job, I don’t have to worry about where the next paycheck’s coming in”?

Everybody has to worry about where the next paycheck’s coming in. Because everyone extends themselves over and above what they actually make. [Laughs] Everybody does.

This being America, after all.

Yes. Not just because it’s America, because you develop a lifestyle. I’m still having character-building experiences, let’s put it this way. [Laughs] You know, once you accept the fact that life is struggle, then you can embrace it a little bit better. My priorities are not security and comfort, although it’s nice to have in moderate amounts.

Well, you do have a family to help keep up—

I do.

—and that’s always a consideration.

It’s a great source of love, it’s a great source of happiness, and also it can take you away from what you really need to be paying attention to, which is a difficult balance. My wife is finishing school, she’s been going to school for five years, and so I’ve been taking the kids to dance classes and Girl Scouts and crap like that, and sometimes I have to turn down auditions, and say “I can’t do that, because I’ve got to be home.” And that can be really frustrating. Because you’re not paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing. But that’s part of the tradeoff. Continue reading →

Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues

I admit it: when it comes to this kung-fu stuff, I’m pretty much a novice. I know Jackie Chan and Jet Li and Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen, and innumerable viewings of Iron Monkey have even enabled me to sort-of recognize Yu-Rong Guang. That, my friends, is about the extent of it for me. Like any acolyte, I’m acutely aware of my lack of knowledge, and so I embrace both the masterpieces and the dreck as one who can learn equally well from either.

Godfather’s Daughter—or The Godfather’s Daughter Mafia Blues to give its original Hong Kong title—lands pretty neatly in the middle of those extremes. It begins about 15 minutes before it ought to and stubbornly tries to turn its perfunctory gang-war plot into a mini-Leone-style epic. The skinny: the good crime family, headed by Li Hwa-yu (Alex Man, playing the titular Godfather), is soon set upon by the bad crime family, headed by the young and ambitious Kuyama (Ken Lo). Anna (Japanese star Yukari Oshima), the Godfather’s daughter, tries to fight back on her proud and rather dithering father’s behalf, and is aided by new gang recruit Wai (Mark Cheng), ostensibly there to keep her out of trouble. Li is eventually killed, and it’s up to Anna and Wai to Even the Score.

There’s quite a bit more, including subplots about betrayal and embezzlement that chiefly serve to illustrate how ill-suited the elder Li is to lead an aggressive criminal enterprise, though the film plainly wants us to see him as a man of honor suddenly forced to contend with savages who don’t respect the rules. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Not to worry; we’re here for the fighting, and it’s worth the wait.

The star of the film, though she doesn’t appear until the 15-minute mark, is Oshima. Oshima is cute in a pert, unglamorous way; her Dorothy Hamil cut and fuzzy pink track suit seem chosen for their plain functionality rather than their stylishness. All the more satisfying, then, to see her turn into a writhing, ass-kicking dynamo about halfway through the film. A sexier performer wouldn’t have been as effective; unlike, say, Jennifer Garner in Daredevil, who’s so physically perfect her fighting skills seem just part of the package, Oshima looks like a gal who worked to be able to do what she does, and sure enough, she works her tail off in this movie. Her first show-stopping fight scene takes place in a health club, where she leaps and twirls around the equipment while fending off half a dozen attackers, getting thrown through the occasional wall or glass table in the process. Her fighting is balletic and yet laced with savagery; it’s Oshima’s anger in the action scenes that gives Godfather’s Daughter its most intense moments.

Fighting alongside Oshima is Mark Cheng, whose laconic presence keeps the movie watchable in its dull first act. Cheng’s fighting is cleaner and less wild than Oshima’s, but he’s still terrific to look at, a worthy action hero in his own right. His main role in Godfather’s Daughter is to show up and rescue Anna in the nick of time, a routine that got a bit tiresome after a while. Still, no complaints—this is definitely a duo that keeps your attention.

Ken Lo rounds things out as bad guy Kuyama, spending the movie in an array of rich gangster clothes with one conspicuous exception, the aforementioned health club fight wherein he appears shirtless and in tight sweatpants. Lo is strikingly good looking, and I assume the decision to show him fighting nearly naked wasn’t made on a whim. Fans of Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master II remember Lo, of course, as the kickboxing colonial stooge who kicks Jackie onto the bed of hot coals and then proceeds to nearly kick him to death; there was something downright scary in Lo’s fighting in that film, as even Jackie couldn’t quite anticipate where the next lightning-fast kick was going to come from. Sadly, nothing Lo does here compares to his work in that film. His chief role, as I say, is to look handsome and dangerous, and he certainly does that well enough. Even his climactic scene is a small let-down: he fights Cheng with a katana, or short-bladed Japanese sword, and the scene would’ve been more effective had we not just seen Oshima fight off another character wielding a chef’s knife in a claustrophobic Hong Kong apartment; the feral menace of that scene makes much of what follows an anti-climax.

Minor reservations aside, Godfather’s Daughter is a fine example of a pretty good HK action movie: nothing stellar, a little slow or silly here and there, but with enough great action and martial arts to make it worth your while. And the DVD, I must add, offers some great Chinglish. “Beat her as she brings us trouble!”