INTERVIEW MAGAZINE

is often puzzling to me. Though it was THE scenester's bible in the early 80's, it often seems like the "up-and-coming" stars they feature never go anywhere and you get the idea that these "stars" are getting coverage because their publicists took Interview's editors out to better restaurants for pitch lunches. Still, Ellen von Unworth and Greg Gorman do take some great photographs and the format of candid dialogues can be fascinating. It can also be rotten.

In their PIN-UP issue, I was thrilled to see that the mag excerpted Ava Gardner's new biography, LOVE IS NOTHING by Lee Server. Lypsinka claims that this book glosses over Ava's alleged bisexuality. I don't know whether she was bi or not, but what a smoldering sexpot is she! Who wouldn't want her? And she got what she wanted. She and Lana Turner both dated the fascinating Dominican-born (ie: horse-hung Hollywood playboy Porfirio Rubirosa and both also dated bullfighters, even flying there to shack up with them occasionally. And Johnny Stompanato, the mobster who Lana's daughter killed when she saw him beating mommy, was also a third-legged horse man. Love it! Bi-sexual Hollywood size queens with a penchant for swarthy lovers! I think I could run with 'em!

But how on earth did I get onto to the topic of giant cocks? Anyhoo,I know it was the style of her era, but it's tough to look so tempting in such short hair! But she does.





She's so alluring and suggestive that these pix I found online where she attempts to smile sweetly don't seem true to her public image.





Still, you have to give points to any publicity portrait which features a frilly umbrella, right? The new biography details her love affair with Frank Sinatra. Though they divorced in 1957, Frank continued to speak of her as his true love and was happy to foot her medical bills in her dying days. And speaking of "foot", how about this juicy quote from the bio. Ava was introducing Frank at a rally for democrat Adlai Stevenson, and someone approached her backstage an said "'Hey Ava, Sinatra's career is over, he can't sing anymore...what do you see in this guy? He's just a 119-pound has-been." And Ava says, very demurely, no venom, just very cool, in the most perfect ladylike diction, "Well, I'll tell you--19 pounds is cock.'"


This interview also has a fun interview between the creators of WONDER SHOWZEN and SOUTH PARK, an excellent pairing. But can someone explain why anyone would think to pair artsy folk singer Devendra Banhart with Lindsay Lohan for a chat? Senseless! You almost can't like one without hating the other! In the table of contents, This is how Interview describes their chat: "

THE RED HOT BOHEMIAN

DEVENDRA BANHART BY LINDSAY LOHAN

"With his hippie hair, experimental songs, and romantic flair for countercultures of yore, he's a bell-bottomed beacon in music's sea of assemby-line blandness."

Oh, so pick the blandest assembly-line diva brat to interview him! Good idea. Which yields illuminating discourse like this:



LL: You have such nice writing. It looks like the writing on your record.

DB: I also brought you a book of drawings that came with the reords I made.

LL: Did you do them too? They're very Yoko Ono.

(Great! Where's the trash can? This dumb book can't fit in my Fendi bag!)

DB: Oh, I love her.

LL: Let's see, what do we want to start with? I came up with some fun pop-up questions.

DB: I like the whole "What are you thinking right now?" thing.

(No, like the how long is this excrutiating interview going to bore me in my earnest but cool Lindsay the journalist mode?)

LL: I like that too.

(I imagine both are cringing at the lack of comraderie by this point.)

DB: That's fun. Okay, what are you thinking right now? Just whatever pops into your head.

LL: I just walked into the Mercer Hotel...

DB: An image. It doesn't matter. It could just be a thing.

(Lindsay's probably thinking "Like ew! I thought I was supposed to be interviewing this freak, not the other way around.")

LL: I see you smoking a cigarette?

(Asking, as she obviously can't conjure an image or have her schizzy mind focus on any one thing. So she turns it around on him Stop, bitter Bunny! Let her grow beyond the Lindsay you know!)

LL: What are you thinking?

DB: Red backpack.

LL: Why red backpack?

DB: I don't know. It was just the first thing that popped into my head.

LL: Did you see someone walk in with a backpack?

(Read: Paparazzi! There's probably a camera in that backpack! Get my make-up artist to check my nose to see if it needs powder. Or if there's any powder residue near my nostrils.)

DB: I didn't.



Doesn't that seem like a vital discourse between two future soulmates? To their credit, the interview does improve, and Lindsay even surprises by "not subscribing to any one religion" and agreeing with Devendra that Bush is the worst president ever. So I give her points for that. And as they progress, he opens up with longer answers and he seems like an entertaining international kook. So maybe that was the trade-off. Have Lindsay the star pump up this freaky folkster's career and give him a little mainstream push. He's handsome enough for mainstream. I'm backing off now. But do you catch my drift at all? Was the excerpt of their chat not painfully awkward? Would that be the reaction anytime Lindsay interviews someone outside her set? Or is all this Interview's joke on us? Are they begging to be called the emeror's new magazine while they happily keep raking in the high-priced ads and providing pretty pictures to a dumber and dumber and ay less cooler readership?