The headliners of the West Rocks party was Juliette Lewis with her new band the New Romantiques (No more Juliette & The Licks I guess). I have had a crush on Ms. Lewis as long as I can remember and during CMJ I saw her outside of Arlo & Esme. I had like a 10 minute conversation with her about miracle fruit and other randomness. She hugged me a lot. I sort of fell in love. After her band played I gave her my card as she was leaving and she remembered me which was nice, but I didn’t get to talk to her at all. These lesbian super fans who were there got pictures with her and stuff and were screaming the whole time. And these gay guys yelled out “You made me straight!” She has quite the cross over audience. It was pretty rad. The show itself was nuts. She is super crazy and it was a lot of fun. She was an amazing singer which I am not sure I expected. I expected her to be a great front woman, and she was but as an encore she did a blues song and she fucking killed it. I was standing back stage with a few people when it happened and we were all just staring at each other like “Holy shit.” But yeah, the whole West Rocks show was a lot of fun and I feel like if I am ever in London when their party is going down I will hit that up.

Check out all the Juliette Lewis photos out by clicking here. I don’t know about you, but I am kinda in love.

As far as I can tell Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero hasn’t really played much in the United States.  Most of their press quotes are from Canada and a lot of them are out of date.  When I saw the film at the Backseat Film Festival I was one of only four people in the audience and I got in for free.

Vampiro is a bad name for a documentary film about a Canadian born wrestler who became a star in Mexico.  It happens to be the name of the wrestler, but I would venture that with a name change, and a better publicist this film would be the talk of the town.  This should have played at Sundance.  Vampiro was easily the best film I have seen in 2009.  It was completely depressing that they couldn’t sell a few more tickets.  People need to be talking about this movie so I figured I would start.

Did you see the Wrestler?  I did.  It was great right?  Mickey Rourke was amazing…  Well you know who else was amazing in a film this year?  Ian Hodgkinson.  He is the man behind the make up.  He is the former drug addict, former stick up kid, former Milli Vanilli bodyguard turned Mexican Wrestling Superstar.  The movie is the story of Hodgkinsons attempt at starting a new promotion company on the eve of their first televised event.  As the film moves closer to the telecast it flashes back to the last year of his life that is setting up this one big night.  Also inter spliced are interviews with friends and former friends.  The story tells the tale of a man who despite a history of sexual abuse and living on the streets as a criminal and drug addict through sheer determination became one of the biggest stars in a country thousands of mines from his home in Canada.  He gave up a possible pro hockey career to try to make it as a wrestler which led him down a long strange path from Canada, to the streets, to Los Angeles and finally to the country he now calls his home.  22 years after he began, he is on the verge of retiring, trying to get into promotions so he can stop brutalizing his body night after night.  Not unlike in the Wrestler his doctor has told him he needs to retire or face an early grave.  Not unlike the Wrestler his family life is in big trouble.  But unlike Mickey Rourke’s character, Vampiro finds time to spend with his daughter and some how perseveres.  I would be very surprised if the Wrestler was not in some way inspired by either this film or just Vampiro’s life story.  There are too many similarities.  And as much as I love Mickey Rourke (Anyone have Barfly on DVD? Netflix hasn’t had it in two years.) I think Ian Hodgkinson could have had just as moving performance.  When the first tear drops from Vampiro’s face there was not a dry eye in the house…  All 8 of them.  This movie needs to be seen, it is a tragedy that it hasn’t been so far.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97clJGSHfD0&feature=related[/youtube]

Everyone has that one guilty pleasure they are really embarrassed about. They have that one CD in their collection that they keep hidden behind the others or that DVD that they hope no one notices. For me that DVD is the entire Viva La Bam MTV Series. I am nearly 30 years old, and yet I some how find a show who’s audience target audience is 14 year old pot heads fucking brilliant. I own all the CKY movies too. I don’t really talk about it. I was a big CKY2k fan back in the day, and when Jackass came out, I was pretty psyched. But after it blew up and they kept putting it on the air and I got over it pretty fast. The movies are fucking funny, but I didn’t rush out and see them the first weekend or buy the DVD’s. Wild Boyz bores me to tears and Johnny Knoxville was a little hard to stomach from the beginning. But for some reason, the CKY branch of the Jackass tree has stuck with me. There is something about Bam, Ryan Dunn and the completely underrated Brandon DiCamillo that have kept me around. Probably the hardest I have ever laughed in my life was on a deleted scene from Viva La Bam. I even downloaded the reality show about Bam getting married on iTunes… but don’t tell anyone.

So when my friend Doug told me his film festival was premiering the second fictional film from the CKY team, Minghags, I decided to use it as an excuse to visit my girl in Philly and check out the Backseat Filmfestival. If anyone has seen their first film Haggard, you can imagine how retarded this movie is. I mean, the film stars a high pitched midget made famous by the Howard Stern show (who was a pretty rad guy). It was ridiculously ridiculous and after watching the movie I couldn’t really tell you what the hell it was about. It was however pretty fucking funny at parts and some elements of it reminded me of early John Waters. There are some scenes involving Brandon Novak and Ruthie Margera that completely reminded me of Pink Flamingos and to some extent Desperate Living. I think that Ruthie could be the next Edith Massey. I am serious, she was brilliant. Someone needs to send the Minghags DVD to Pat Moran.

As far as the photos go, Bam, Ryan and the Margera’s showed up, as did a smattering of the familar faces. The Howard Stern show midget, Mark the Bagger was there as well getting hammered as fuck and just generally being fucking awesome. Ryan Dunn has the same multi-finger mustaches my girl Nicole has, although his Hitler stash is on his middle finger and she has hers on her pinky. April Margera and I had a conversation about how her and Phil have the same anniversary as my site. I should send them a card next year. Their 35th and my 10th happen to correspond, maybe we can do a joint party at Lit or something. Honestly it was a pretty good vibe for the film. It seemed like everyone was friends, I think only about 10 people actually paid for the movie, pretty much everyone else was on the guest list. That combined with free beer and good times were had. Jackassworld.com filmed the whole thing, so maybe try to check there to see more from the party.

After the movie there was a pretty good Strip For Pain, but I am going to put those photos up after I wake up. I have been slacking of late, but when I wake up I am going to have the extremely NSFW Strip For Pain shots as well as the shots from Cain that I just took. I will also try to work in a review somewhere of the best film I saw at the Backseat Film Festival, which is probably the best movie I have seen this year.

Okay, check out all the pictures from the Minghags World Premiere by clicking here.

Okay, so admittedly that title doesn’t make sense.  I realize that paparazzi is Italian and soy is Spanish… But I don’t speak Italian and my abilities in Spanish past the Taco Bell menu are suspect.  But I do know most of the lyrics to La Bamba and Richie Valens, No soy marinero, pero, soy capitan, soy capitan. So there for, this makes sense some how.

The point is I make for a shitty paparazzo.  When I had down time at Sundance it was usually only for an hour or two so it never made sense to try to see a movie or do anything outside of the downtown area so I would just hang out on Main Street and see if I could shoot some random celebs.  I just sort of practiced being involved with the paparazzi.  I met a bunch of the guys and shot some photos.  My shot of Amy Poehler got picked up, but didn’t sell, the rest I had no luck with.  I am just not cut out for harassing these people.  And these photographers told me to get shots that don’t even make sense to my esthetic.  Evidently they want full body shots and people waving at you and things.  I don’t know.  They were stalking people I have never even heard of, yet they had no idea who Rob Corddry was.  That is just not right.  I missed shots of Perry Ferrell and Paul Giamatti because I had my settings wrong and Michael Cera told me not to take his photo, so I didn’t.  It was sort of a disaster.  Running after Kristen Stewart from Twilight was pretty fun though.  I had no idea who she was but when everyone started running I got to jump over some stuff.  The shots I got of her sucked, but at least I got to make believe like I was chasing after Michael Jackson or something.

I did have a few good shots though.  I got some good ones of Wesley Snipes and Guillermo del Toro speaking in spanish to eachother.  I talked to Rob Corrdry about his show the Winner.  I got to briefly talk to Kelli Garner, who I spent an hour googling after I saw her in Thumbsucker several years ago.  I saw the only two funny cast members of SNL (Poehler and Bill Hader) and shot Sam Rockwell and Liam Nielson while talking to a friend who was working the door at the Gibson lounge.

The best shot I got (which I found hilarious, but evidently no one cares about) was of Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame hugging a bunch of small children.  This guy is a convicted child pornographer.  Okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but I am not sure why anyone would let him near their kids. The parents thought it was hilarious, as did everyone else.  When he saw me take the shots, he said “This is going to get me in trouble isn’t it?”  Well, evidently not.  No one cares enough about Joe Francis… But as far as I am concerned Joe, it was the shot of the week.

Click here to see my failed attempt at stalking celebrities for money.

PS.  This is the last of my Sundance shots.  It only took me three weeks to get them all up!  On to new adventures now… That is if I can get my gallery software to start working properly again.

Ashton Kucher had a movie at Sundance called Spread. There was an after party for the premiere at the Entertainment Weekly Loft. It was sort of a crazy event. I met a lot of celebs at Sundance but the only time I got star struck was at this party. I got a shot of Slash and Anthony Kiedis together. When I saw Slash I wasn’t that excited, and when I saw Kiedis I wasn’t that exciting, but something about watching the two of them talk took me back to my childhood when Guns And Roses and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers were two of the biggest bands in my world (along with Motley Crue, Run DMC and Bel Biv Devoe). It just blew my mind a little bit. During the party Ashton made a toast to the cast of his film and said some really sweet stuff about Demi Moore and how he couldn’t live with out her. Everyone oohed. Reeve Carney played some musics and the whole thing was streamed live via little web cams the a number of people had, including Demi. I had a sort of amazing conversation with Reeve and Alan Cumming. I asked Mr. Cumming why he had a stamp on his forehead and he told me it was because he was too cold to take off his gloves so he told the door person to put the entry stamp on his head. Amazing. I shot Paris again, this time with her BFF Brittany Flickinger. I swear Brittany was making eyes at me, but maybe it was just because I was holding a camera.  But really I think we fell in love for a moment there.  She is actually asked me if I wanted to get a shot of her and Paris. She was holding our absinthe but wouldn’t hold it up into the shot because Paris has her own liquor company or something, but Paris did grab about a dozen mini bottles of Tourment for the road.

The party was a lot of fun, but I got out of there early because I had tons of editing to do before I crashed. I didn’t take that many shots, but most of the ones I did were of celebrities. You can check them out here, it is mildly exciting.

Okay, I don’t know what it is with the photos I take at Cain, but for some reason, for the second week in a row, they have gotten super delayed.  That is a lot of probably unnecessary commas.  My gallery software is total bullshit and is in no way designed to deal with as many images as I give it, and once in a while for no reason it decides to rebuild itself which takes like 70 hours.  So it is just hanging out.  Just 30 hours left!  Fuck.  And while that is happening I can’t upload the Vice photos or the Webster Hall shots from last night.  Fuck.  In the mean time though I can get rid of some more of this Sundance stuff… Just 4 more galleries to go.

The first of the 4 remaining is from the makeshift Tao they build in Park City every year.  I have consciously avoided going to Tao in 3 different cities, yet somehow I got booked to shoot at the Utah Tao. Of course I was shooting for Le Tourment Vert absinthe and the idea was to get shots of celebs holding our drinks, or near our drinks, or near our sexy model dressed up as a green fairy.  This worked pretty well, but when I took a shot of Sting, he put down his drink before I took the picture and I got yelled at because he wasn’t holding the drink and the other sponsors would get mad or some insane drama like that.  It put me in kinda a bad mood, but in the mean time I got to meet Russel Simmons who is kinda a hero of mine and got to hang out with the fairy and one of the cocktail waitresses.  I met a cute girl from CSI named Cara Santana and her friend Aaron Paul who is on a few shows that I might watch if I had a TV.  The two of them have the same agent and he told them not to hook up with each other at Sundance, so they made me take a photo of them hugging each other looking all sexy like so their agent would think they were doing it.  Or something, they were cool kids.  I got off at 2AM and I was jut about to go upload photos when Paris Hilton rolled in.  My people told me to get the shot but her body guard was having none of it.  I was going to give up and I started to leave, but then I thought “Fuck it, I need this shot.”  I just sort of stayed in the back ground until she picked up a drink glass and toasted her friends with it.  That was it, our product was in the shot.  I took the photo and dipped before the body guard could give me shit.  Then I went home and spent 2 hours editing photos.  The end.

Check out all the shots here.  Oh, and I posted some of these shots before, so if you recognize them, it is from this post.

Before I went to Sundance my friend Leah emailed me about doing some pro-bono work shooting interviews for the Flavorpill blog Flavorwire. When I met her over 2 years ago she a contract employee for Fpill and now she is the managing editor Flavorpill New York. I am pretty proud of her. Anyway, that is not at all the point, the point was I didn’t know if I would have any time, but I thought it would be good to get them on my resume and get some celebrity shots in the process. I emailed the Sundance project head and told her I might be available… I never heard back from her. I talked to Leah later and she told me they had found someone.

When I got to Sundance I found out I was that someone. The absinthe I was working for loaned me out to Flavorpill to do some cross promotional shots. (Which is why you will notice some green hats in some of the pictures…) I have to give a shout of to my partner in crime the charismatic Bess Devenow who did all the interviews and wondered around Park City with me. I shot a lot of photos and obviously not all of them made the interviews so I figured I would post the best of the rest here.

Oh yeah, and two things to point out about the interviews.
1) During the Zach Gilford interview Paris Hilton decided take a break from whatever she was doing at the MySpace Cafe and come sit down next to me to have a smoke. It was the third time in 3 days that I had seen her. She was following me everywhere!
2) Bobcat Goldthwait is fucking amazing. I don’t think I have ever heard him talk without screaming. He still sounds the same, only less loud.

I know I posted these already but here are the links to the interviews:

Zach Gilford Interview

Lauren Lee Smith Interview

Mary & Max Interviews

World’s Greatest Dad Interviews

As soon as I got to Park City I had to get my press credentials.  One for Sundance and another for “The Lift” which was the area of Sundance that included private party areas such as Tao, The Entertainment Weekly Tent, and the Myspace Cafe (and free food!).  We made the mistake of getting the Lift pass first, because by the time we went to get my Sundance credentials they were about to close.  They told me I couldn’t get the pass until tomorrow, but I was scheduled to shoot the opening night event of the festival.  After some complaining they told me that if I waited around there might be a chance I would get mine, but they didn’t think it was likely.  About 5 minutes later they handed me my pass and thanked me for my patience.  Very odd.

Anyway, when we got to the event we had to wait around while it opened.  They were letting some VIP’s in and things but we just stood to the side.  At some point I made up something about how it was very important that I needed to get photos of our product before there was anyone inside the party.  They whisked us through the line and we got upstairs before the event even started.  The party was not the star studded gala you might expect.  It was however, very crowded.  I spent several hours shooting all manor of people drinking our product, Le Tourment Absinthe.  The Absinthe did it’s trick and by the end of the party everyone was pretty inebriated and people were dancing up a storm to some questionable DJ’s.  I met a girl named Laura who worked for Sundance and showed me the best places to purchase dead animals to eat.  I also got a milkshake with her on my last night despite it being winter… in Utah… in the mountains.  I ran into my friend Julius there who I did not expect to see, although maybe I should have.  We ran into each other pretty much every day I was there.  It was good to see a familiar face as I went up there pretty much knowing no one. As I mentioned before, the event was not exactly jam packed with celebrities, but I have to say I was pretty excited to meet the Dude himself, Jeff Dowd, who was the inspiration for the Big Lebowski.  I ended up having a lot of fun and stayed until they kicked us out.  So I opened the place and closed it down.

Admittedly, these are not the most exciting shots I have ever taken, and they tend to run a bit dark, you should check them out anyway.  It’s what the Dude would do, because the Dude abides.

So finally I have found a day to relax. I have been watching old Aquateen Hunger Force episodes, catching up on 30 Rock and The Office and watching the season premiere of Lost. Later my friend is going to come over and we are going to watch a movie. And I slept for 8 hours. I did wake up from a dream very upset that I wasn’t going to play in the Super Bowl, but I guess that’s just how it goes. I am going to Philly tomorrow for no reason at all, and I will be back in NYC, ready to start working on this site again on Monday. I have so many photos to get up, it is going to be nuts. I am shooting a photo booth at Cain next week and hosting Trash Friday. And possibly shooting a look book over the weekend. I can’t wait to see you kids again. Let’s fuck shit up.

I have had a bunch of my Sundance photos show up on the internets, mostly the photos I did for Flavorpill, but a bunch of stuff none the less. I figured I would link it here and continue relaxing instead of doing an actual update. So enjoy, and a nice photo of a still sexy 72 year old Robert Redford talking to Andie McDowell who I have had a crush on since I saw Groundhog Day for my 13th birthday party.

Ashton Kutcher On HollyScoop 

Bossip On Kim Porter And Russel Simmons (Here Too)

Pop Culture Madness Le Tourment Vert Celebrity Sightings

Zach Gilford Interview

World’s Greatest Dad Interviews

Lauren Lee Smith Interview

Robert Redford Photo