Hollywood screenwriter Diablo Cody: take two

Happy Christmahanukwanzaakkah, ladies and gents! I’ve got a holiday present for you. A month or two ago, we ran an interview with screenwriter extraordinaire Diablo Cody. Well, we ran the first half of that interview, anyway: the second half had gone missing. I recently located the rest of the interview, however, and now I’m sharing it with you! In this portion of the interview she and I touch on various topics, among them Wes Anderson; teen movies in general; and the Monkees—only our favorite band ever. Enjoy… and see you in 2010!

Have you seen… there’s this tiny little movie; I think I’m the only person who even knows it exists. It’s by this super-underground cult guy who just died named Ray Dennis Steckler and it’s called The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!??.
I think I need to see that!

It’s super-low-budget, terrible acting, etcetera. It’s brilliant.
Movies like that can really be appreciated on more than one level. Have you seen The Room?

Not yet. Should I?
Please go see this movie! You need to go online, buy it immediately,—it’s called The Room; it was written and directed by this guy named Tommy Wiseau, and it’s the single funniest movie you will ever see as long as you live. And not intentionally.

You know, I just saw The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time, and I thought it was going to be a lot more solemn, but it was really funny.
Yeah, that movie is funny. Wes Anderson is amazing. But who doesn’t think that?

That’s the first Wes Anderson film I’ve ever seen, and now I want to see his others. He blended comedy and drama so wonderfully.
Yeah. You haven’t seen Bottle Rocket?

No.
It’s great. You’ve gotta check out the whole collection.

I really want to see Rushmore.
Rushmore is probably my favorite. It’s kind of the film where he found his style. And Rushmore was kind of like—I don’t know. I’m babbling. [laughs] I’m on this winding road to Malibu and the car is winding all over the place!

Aren’t you on your way to another interview right now?
Yeah. I’m going to be talking to Brendon Urie from Panic at the Disco.

So you’re interviewing him.
We’re interviewing each other. It’s like one of those weird mutual-masturbation sessions where they sit you down together and you… ask each other about your art. They contributed to the Jennifer’s Body soundtrack, so we’re going to chat about that.

That’s really cool. No, but I think the reason I want to see Rushmore so badly is I’m really drawn to the whole teenage coming-of-age kinda thing. I mean, I am a teenager, so I’m biased, but…
Oh, completely. And you have a legitimate reason to be interested, whereas I’m just a crazy old lady. I’m completely obsessed with teenagers. I don’t know what it is, and I wish I did because then maybe we could commiserate.

[laughs]
I just feel like there are these heightened emotions during adolescence. A lot of stuff feels like the end of the world, and then you get a little bit older and get some perspective and life just feels a little less romantic.

The thing about teen movies is there’s a sense of urgency that usually only exists in adult movies if there’s a gun.
Yeah. Exactly. For instance, in Jennifer’s Body, the friendship between Needy and Jennifer is so incredibly intense that Needy doesn’t even care that it’s become incredibly toxic. There’s like… it’s just… I don’t know.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Brick…
Oh, yeah! Not yet, but I’d really like to see it. I’ve heard great things about it and about the director.

It’s very good. In the commentary the director makes an interesting comment: “I know this isn’t what high school looks like, but it’s closer to how teenagers view high school than typical teen films because there’s this urgency in Brick. Adults often forget how urgent everything feels.”
Right. And that’s why John Hughes was a genius: because he made films like The Breakfast Club where their seemingly trivial issues were the end of the world.

Right. By the way, I wanted to ask you about your now-defunct blog. Back when it was still up, there was a picture of you very excitedly standing next to Micky Dolenz.
Yeah! I love Micky Dolenz.

I flipped out. I grew up on the Monkees.
I’m a huge, huge Monkees fan. When I was a little kid I used to throw a tantrum when I missed the show. Last year I was fortunate enough to meet Micky Dolenz at a screening of Head at the New Beverly, which is this amazing theatre in Los Angeles where they show stuff like Head, and it was so incredibly exciting.

That’s absolutely wild. The first thing I ever watched in my life was a VHS of two Monkees episodes, and the first thing I ever listened to was the Monkees’ Greatest Hits.
They’re such an underrated band, and the show was amazing.

I know! Whenever I bring them up there’s always somebody sneering “They aren’t a real band!” And I launch into like a tirade about how they wrote Headquarters all by themselves—
Yeah. And they played the instruments for Headquarters, too.

They don’t get enough credit. And even when they were fake they had the best songwriters the studio could hire.
Yeah. And Mike Nesmith was a legitimate talent as a guitarist. Whatever, people can hate on the Monkees, but they’re amazing.

Did you talk to Micky Dolenz about the Monkees? Was he chill about it?
Oh, yeah, he was super chill. We talked about the Monkees; we talked about… I guess he did this kids’ show in Britain called Metal Mickey… [laughs] But it was just incredibly great to be able to talk to him.

I’m so jealous. Did you know that Peter Tork has cancer?
I didn’t know that. That sucks!

He’s apparently going to be okay, but still.
Yeah. Wow. I hope he has a speedy recovery.

If anything happened… that would be like part of my childhood dying, man!
[laughs] Oh, god. That’s a bummer. Yeah, that would be so awful. I'm glad he's going to be okay.

Season 2 of United States of Tara will premiere March 22nd.
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Indie band fun.

Yes, their name really is fun., and their songs live up to that moniker: their debut album Aim and Ignite is bright, colorful, and joyful, and it brings cheer to all who listen. (Anyone to whom it does not, I suspect, isn't human.) Their songs, such as 'Light A Roman Candle With Me' and 'Barlights', are beautifully named; their melodies soar and their lyrics are touching. The Brooklyn-based band is the brainchild of Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost, and Nate Ruess, with the latter of whom I recently had a conversation. We discussed self-help; songwriting; stage performances; and a variety of other topics. Enjoy the interview.

Hi, Nate, how are you doing?
I’m good; how are you?

I’m good! You guys are Brooklyn-based, right?
Uh… yeah. Well, I’m Brooklyn-based, at least.

How did you guys form fun.?
I was in another band, the Format, at the time. We had all worked together in the past, and as soon as the band I was in had broken up I called those guys because I’d always wanted to work with them all at once.

What is that? There’s some sort of weird static on your phone; what—
Hang on; I’ll… Okay. Is it gone?

Yup.
I think it was the wind.

[laughs] So a lot of your music on your album is really… it’s very playful and inventive. How do you arrive at these lyrics and arrangements?
I don’t know. It’s not like we’re necessarily seeking out to do self-help music—or, like, self-help music to a lush background, I suppose? But I think that when I’m writing a song I usually have the whole song in my head, so it calls for that. And I think it was maybe right place-right time, as far as my lyrical mood was concerned, and it’s just sheer coincidence that the band name is [literally] fun.

Did you refer to the music as self-help music?
Chyeah.

How come?
Um… well, it was self-help for me!

[laughs]
And I think one of the cool things about lyrics is they become universal for whoever’s listening to them and wants to make them their own. And I guess with songs like ‘At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used To Be)’ that’s just inevitable. The goal is to put someone in a good mood.

Now that I’m thinking about it I guess it makes sense to call it self-help music: songs with titles like ‘Be Calm’ having lyrics like ‘Though it may feel like you are breaking down / I know it gets so hard sometimes / Be calm’… This is the first time that’s occurred to me.
Yeah. Well, when I was writing the lyrics at one point I just thought to myself “Oh my gosh, this is very self-help.” But I like that. I like that because it hasn’t always been like that to me, and there’s a larger motive of feeling pretty good and at least telling myself to try and have a more positive outlook about things. And I think I stuck with that and eventually ended up believing what I was writing.

That theme definitely does make sense with a lot of songs on the album, but I don’t know how you could classify, like, ‘Light A Roman Candle With Me’ as a self-help song.
Yeah. Well… I actually didn’t write the lyrics for that. That was one I didn’t write the lyrics for.

Well, that would explain why! [laughter]
I suppose so! That song was Andrew’s.

Do you guys keep to yourself when you write songs, then, or is it more collaborative?
It varies so much. A lot of times I’ll have whole songs in my head and then I’ll come to the guys and I’ll have lyrics and melodies and I’ll sing it to them, and I might have some idea as far as arrangements are concerned, but pretty soon it becomes their own thing and they’re so talented that they make it something it probably never would have been without them. Sometimes we sort of write together and then I’ll put lyrics and a melody on top of it. Then ‘Roman Candle’ was a song that Andrew had written that we just heard and thought was so beautiful that we wanted it as ours.

So what are some of your influences or fun.’s influences—musically or even non-musically?
Um… I was kind of listening to a lot of Van Morrison and Fleetwood Mac. I don’t think it came through so much, but it made me excited to listen to music. And there were two records that I just became really obsessed with, so much so that I just started listening to them all the time every second I got. And I think all of us were going to a lot of Broadway shows at the time, and we were kind of inspired by that as well.

I can see that, actually! I can see that influence a lot in your music.
Yeah, it’s definitely there. [laughs]

And, like showtunes, your music is a bit larger-than-life.
[laughs] We try.

Well, you succeed. Are there any non-musical influences, maybe literary or cinematic, that have also impacted your output?
Not for me. I’m not much of a Renaissance man. I either play video games or music. [laughter] It’s really bad. Lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with James Dean, but I haven’t really put that into song as much and I think I only referenced him once in Aim and Ignite. But I can see something like that really takes over.

Yeah… I feel like fun.’s music is more pop-art, Andy Warhol, than James Dean-y.
Well, that’s a very flattering compliment. Thank you.

I mean, it’s got a very bright, colorful sound that will engage with a lot of people.
Yeah. I think that we were all just so excited to be doing it and that’s why it ends up being like that. Everybody is generally an optimist, and I’ve never been in a situation where everybody was so optimistic. It really changed my outlook too, and I think that’s where the brightness comes from.

Are there particular places that you enjoy playing? Like I imagine people would react differently to the music in different locales. Like New York versus… Idaho.
I think so. It’s weird; I think a lot of States in general react differently. You might have the exact same amount of fans, but the crowd reaction when you play live will be different. For example, Nashville is such a wonderful place to play. And you sort of take on a much more serious mindset when you get onstage and really focus on playing with the band and sounding great because in between the songs the crowd sort of claps and then stops because they’re ready to hear more music, whereas in other places, like California, say, it’s more about the energy. And New York is just surreal, because… it’s New York.

[laughs]
So you have to take both of those things into account.

Are you from New York originally?
No, I’m from Iowa and I lived in Arizona for most of my life. I’ve only lived in New York for about a year and a half.

Oh, wow, so you really are… um… I’m a born and bred New Yorker, and it’s always funny to hear how non-native New Yorkers talk about the city. Because it’s interesting to see what they seize upon that people who grow up here take for granted.
Right. Right. I can totally see that, and I’m in such a new phase with New York that it’s still very romantic to me. It’s still very surreal. And so I’ve yet to have that moment where it’s just another thing. In the mornings I’m still like, “Wow, I’m waking up in New York; what is going on!?”

You’re still in the honeymoon phase. You and New York haven’t started bickering like hell yet.
Well, I mean, the parking situation… the traffic…

That’s why people in New York don’t drive. [laughs]
Yeah, well, this is a lesson that I’m just learning now. My girlfriend has always been a New York car person, so I thought that was how it would be, but… now… I’ve become a very city driver, but it’s still freaking me out, so I prefer to just stay in our little neighborhood and chill out there.

I mean, if you live in Brooklyn, a car kind of makes sense. But the second you go into Manhattan it’s just like—don’t—don’t bother. Don’t even bother.
I have gotten so many tickets, and I don’t even get that! I think Jack, who also lives in Brooklyn, is responsible for like 90% of all the tickets that I’ve ever had.

[laughs] New York traffic officers can also be pretty vindictive. This is another reason to avoid driving.
It blows my mind. That’s what I was going to say—that was going to be my biggest gripe. It’s unbelievable. But if that’s all they’ve got then I guess… I mean, the biggest problem I’ve got going on right now is that I live in front of a hydrant that doesn’t work.

There always seem to be cops there if you violate the most minor traffic code, but if you need to take the subway it’s like… prioritize much, city?
Yeah! [laughs] Totally.

I was wondering whether you, or maybe the whole band, have a life philosophy that you tend to adhere to.
Well, for us, it’s been a really marvelous couple of weeks regarding seeing how much the band has bloomed. And it can be kind of cliché, I guess, to think like “Oh, well, be nice to everybody.” But I think we have this very DIY work ethic and we prize treating the people working our concerts and everything with as much respect as possible—just trying to be really good people who are appreciative of their circumstances. And I think that’s going very, very well for us, and it’s my favorite part of the day.

I like that you mentioned having a DIY approach because for the rest of my life I’ll picture you guys putting together your music with brightly colored construction paper. And glue.
Some of us in the band do that! Andrew is very… very much like that. He is like Ready Made magazine.

Check out fun.'s excellent music on their MySpace or visit their website.

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NYC-based band the Postelles

This week we've got an interview with a band Albert Hammond, Jr., likes so much he has agreed to produce their first album. He's got good taste: the Postelles are retro pop-rock like you haven't heard since... well... since retro was modern. All four band members hail from New York City; they went to high school together in Manhattan, where they formed the Postelles, and half the band is still too young to legally drink! In this interview we chatter on, joke around, and have great fun. Enjoy.

So you guys are based here in New York.
DAVID DARGAHI: Yes.
BILLY CADDEN: Yeah, in Manhattan.
DANIEL BALK: In New York, yeah.

Born and raised?
JOHN SPEYER: Yeah. We were all born in the city. And we raised each other like a pack of wolves.
DB: You were raised by wolves.
DD: Speak for yourself. I’m a panda bear guy.
BC: I like koala bears.
DB: Oh, really? That’s a really cute upbringing.
BC: So David was raised by panda bears! That’s it. Officially.
JS: He was raised by dolphins.
BC: [laughs] Dolphins!

Three-fourths of the band had already been formed in high school… I know the all-ages music scene these days is really well-developed. Was that going on when you guys were in school?
DD: I don’t think we were as aware of it. It’s kind of hard to go and check out shows in New York City because everything’s over 21, and now that we’re playing the shows we can check out more bands because they’ll be opening us or we’re opening for them. But in high school I think it’s hard to check out the real up-and-coming things.
JS: But it was because we were playing shows that we got to—other people in our high school and other high schools weren’t plugged into the scene.
BC: We also weren’t allowed to stay in the clubs after certain times.
DD: Also, I think the blog scene is obviously getting better and better. Every year—like, I don’t think we went to Stereogum when we were in high school.
BC: Nah.
DB: No, not at all.
DD: I don’t think anyone went to Stereogum when we were in 9th grade.
JS: Which makes it easier to hear about shows too, now.

Right. Well, for example, among my friends I know a lot of the bands at different high schools know each other and there are far more all-ages shows now than there used to be.
DB: Yeah. It’s definitely—
JS: But a couple years ago it was a rare thing. It was really lucky—like if you got to play an all-ages gig that was really good.
BC: And the main place for that was the Mercury Lounge.

So how did you end up joining the band, Billy?
BC: I was in another band at that school. I was a year younger, and—

So you guys poached him.
JS: Yeah, pretty much.
BC: They kidnapped me.

You guys have a very… retro pop-rock sort of sound. What drew you guys in that direction?
BC: I think just our love and our passion for that kind of music.
DB: I don’t even think we realized we had it until we started writing it. We didn’t know we had it in common yet. Like, we didn’t know we had it in common and when we started writing the songs it just came out.
DD: I remember talking about it, though.
DB: No, yeah, we knew, but we’d never written it before, you know?
BC: That’s true.
DB: We started writing as the Postelles two years ago and that’s just what happened.
DD: After three or four songs it just kind of clicked.
BC: I think when we were in high school our band’s sound was more… we didn’t know what we wanted. We wanted to sound like all these other bands, and then when the Postelles started we left college and it was like— “This is it. Let’s do the music that we love, you know? Let’s not try to be like all these other bands out there.”

Yeah. I mean, it’s not really a prevalent sound, that throwback sort of retro-pop sound. You mentioned that a lot of your influences were the Beatles… Motown…
JS: Buddy Holly.
DB: Oh, Buddy Holly, yeah.
JS: All that stuff. For sure.

The Monkees?
BC: The Monkees? Well…
DB: ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ is a good song.
JS: Yeah. But overall I don’t know… they didn’t write their own songs.

Yeah, they did, after the first two—I’m a Monkees apologist.
DB: Ah. Yeah, well. [laughter]

No, but starting with the third album they did write their own stuff.
BC: I heard that Neil Diamond wrote a lot of songs for them.
JS: Yeah, he wrote a bunch of them.

Yeah. Neil Diamond, Boyce and Hart,—they had the best songwriters. The producers knew what they were doing.
DB: Yeah, for sure.

Well, now that you’re twenty-one and you can go to 21+ shows—
BC: Two of us are still twenty.

…Oh. Wow, really?
BC: Yeah, but we find ways.
DD: Now we know the bouncers because they know that we’ve played there, so they tend to say, “Oh, just go in!”
DB: You shouldn’t have said that. The cops are gonna come now.

I know there’s this one singer, Laura Marling—
DB: Oh, yeah, we love her. Laura Marling is so good.

Oh, yeah, she’s great. And when she was 16 she tried to play a gig at an 18+ venue and they wouldn’t let her in so she played her set on the sidewalk.
BC: Really! That’s really cool.
JS: Yeah, we’ve never had to do that.
DB: We almost played on a sidewalk, though. Technically it was a sidewalk café, but…

[laughs] That doesn’t count. Sorry. Nice try.
JS: [laughter] Zzzzzinger!

If you wanna give the Postelles a listen you can check out their MySpace.
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Brooklyn-based band Forest Fire

Forest Fire was divided between Brooklyn, NY, and Portland, OR, when they were recording their debut album Survival; as a result, it was assembled over a period of eight months. This forced them to spend a lot of time meditating on and perfecting their material between recording sessions, and this extra work shows: Survival is an intricate gem of an album that deserves to be heard by everyone. I'm thrilled, then, that Good Prattle has been given the opportunity to bring this great band to your attention by means of an interview with members Adam Spittler and Mark Thresher. Enjoy this article!

I know the band is kind of split up between the two coasts… with a setup like that, how on earth did you guys end up forming?
MARK THRESHER: Well, at one point we lived in the same apartment in Brooklyn, which is actually where we’re talking from right now, and only one of us—Adam—still lives in that apartment, but we would all sort of meet up to record here. When our friends were on tour we would see each other in this apartment and, uh, make recordings!

Now you’re split up between Brooklyn and Portland, which is—they’re both great cities for making music, so at least if you guys were separated you were in good cities all around.
MT: Yeah, absolutely. We’re actually not currently split anymore; we’re actually all for the most part here in Brooklyn. Our friend Nathan [made] the move out here in September and we [came] back shortly thereafter. So all of us are in New York right now.

Well, that’s good. Are you guys particularly involved with other Brooklyn musicians? I live in Brooklyn and I know there’s so much music going on here.
MT: Yeah, we certainly feel like outsiders, pretty much functioning within our own… we’ve got some friends who play music that we really enjoy, but we certainly don’t feel like we’re part of a scene or anything like that.

While you guys were separated, how did that inform your music?
ADAM SPITTLER: We just… we took a lot longer to make things, and when we did get together we worked really hard. I came up to Portland a few times over the course of the last year or two, and Nathan came to New York several times when Mark and Natalie were still here as well. We’d get together for two or three weeks at a time and just record really, really aggressively for as many hours a day as we possibly could, and then in the space between we’d mix things and send it back and forth and gradually work on it.
MT: It gave us all time to reflect and make sure what we were doing was what we actually wanted, instead of cramming into a studio and having to commit to something that we weren’t ready for.

In terms of your sound, what are some of your key musical influences?
MT: Not a lot of contemporary things that I can really think of. Predictably, a lot of classic rock records from the late ‘60s through the late ‘70s.

Yeah, I can definitely hear that in your music. What about influences in film or literature, especially for you, Mark, as a songwriter?
MT: My partner is actually a songwriter first and foremost, so I would have to say that she informs me in a literary sense more than anyone else.

While making this album, I know you kind of had to piece things together, but while you were doing that did you have a vision of the album as an entity or were you just playing it by ear?
AS: I think that we definitely had a vision; as we got closer to it, it changed a lot, if that makes sense. We originally wanted to make something that was recorded entirely live; we wanted to throw a microphone up—pick up everybody on the same microphone and get a lot of performances that had a lot of really unique character. Like, do it over and over again and find the one performance that we really liked, and not worry about the flaws and just try and capture a raw energy. And we did that, I think. We got things that we liked, although they were so deeply flawed that we had a lot of trouble figuring out whether or not we could actually use them. And then we ended up going pretty far from that, really elaborately correcting and overdubbing and putting things together and trying to make something that sounded like a real rock record. We sort of lost track of our vision, but…

What are some of your favorite places to play?
MT: I really like playing at a place called the Glasslands Gallery. I just feel like that place lends itself to performing in a way that suits our band. Also, you know, there’re always places like the Mercury Lounge. I haven’t played a lot of places, but I feel like that place has really good sound, which is always the most important thing.

[laughs] Word, but I was thinking more along the lines of different cities. Like, maybe people react differently to your music depending on in which city you play…?
MT: Well, we wouldn’t really know because we’ve actually—we’ve played a show in Connecticut, a show in Portland, and every other show has been in New York! So we don’t have a lot of experience playing outside of New York.

But you were in a very huge festival in August!
MT: Yeah, that was a pretty big thing for us. We were pretty overwhelmingly excited about that, and that was the first time we’ve ever done anything even remotely like that at all.

Check out Forest Fire's music at their MySpace... or listen to their album as a stream on the Catbird Records website.
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