In this interview, Justin Long tells us about what it was like to work with Sam Raimi (Evil Dead!) in Drag Me to Hell. One could conjecture from all the “return to horror” hoopla that Sami Raimi is apologizing for Spider-Man. I can’t decide whether Justin Long, in real life, comes across more like he did in the Accepted movie or more like he does in those Apple commercials where John Hodgeman, who I love, plays a PC. What do you think?

My mama always told me to find something I’m good at and to then apply it in my day-to-day life. I’m one hell of a screamer. Throughout the years, I’ve developed a decent name for my screams on stage with my music, but one day my dream happened. A good friend of mine, Joseph Bishara (Rasputina, Marilyn Manson, 16 Volt, etc.) walked up to me after one of my band Satiate’s shows and asked, if he paid me, would I let him record me, audibly, for some horror movie work. His exact words were “how’d you like to get paid to puke?” I immediately was into the idea for a multitude of reasons. One, I’m a huge horror movie freak. Two, I’ve always wanted to work in horror movies. Lastly, how awesome would it be for someone to ask me what I do for a living and I can go “I get paid to puke and scream.” From this one conversation a few years ago, I get calls from time to time to come down to the studio and track vocals, screams, eerie voices and, yes, weird noises, like gurgling, gargling and yes, puking. Most of my work is featured in movie trailers and TV commercials, some of the more “known” work in my resume is: The Village, Amityville Horror (remake,) Silent Hill, and The Grudge 2. One of my latest treks into the studio was for the After Dark Films Horror Fest, 8 Films to Die For, The Gravedancers.

It’s very challenging work. The first half of the session was vocal pieces that range from simple choral to intense and powerful operatic type vibratos. I recorded pieces in several rooms with different microphones to get different natural analog textures. Then, I also was selected to do the voice for the ghost of Emma, the homicidal wronged lover hell-bent on revenge from the grave. A few of those takes consisted of me mic’d by sitting on the floor and pushing physically along my stomach. Then, comes the hard part, adding in the textures and the free run of ideas. This is the area that Joe tosses me a sound idea and we brainstorm and try to figure out how I can create it. Where the only rule is, the more unnatural sounding, the better. On the recording for this session, we mic’d me in his bathroom gargling first a watered down vanilla yogurt (which looked like a bukkake film gone wrong when we were done,) then beer. It was interesting to know that while moaning during the gurgling of the yogurt, you can get a wet slap of sound, and then while doing it with the beer, you got a hissing foam texture. Both pieces made it into the score to give the actual finished product this uncomfortable sensation.

Now came the hard part, waiting for this movie to come out. There were initial screenings, which got killer reviews. I got to see the work I did placed in the movie, finally. The movie opened and it had such a wonderful cast of characters. Three friends have a friend die. Two of the friends used to be lovers, and one of them is currently married creating tension between the two. The other one is flippant comic smart-ass. After the funeral, they go get drunk and notice a mysterious note telling them to dance for the dead. They blast their little boom box and start dancing, on people’s graves. Well, turns out, it’s a curse. The ghosts of the three graves the friends danced on are super pissed and proceed to haunt the living for a full turn of the moon (that’s 30 days people…) As time passes, the ghosts get stronger. The three ghosts belonged to three people buried in the “crazy” part of the cemetery. One ghost is a pyromaniac child. Another is a physically and sexually abusive man. The last one is the one I did the work for, a woman who’s married lover wouldn’t leave his wife for her, so she butchered them both with an axe. The three finally discover what all the creepy and insane problems are coming from and get help from some paranormal investigators. If you want more, you need to get the movie, but yeah, you get the idea. After being disappointed by so many horror movies, I was glad to see one that actual had me jump in a few moments. It made me so happy to be a small part of it’s magic. So here is a great movie, but no distribution.

Finally After Dark Film’s, Horrorfest 8 Films to Die For, was born. The Gravedancers hit the screen. Emma, what I consider my ghost, is now turning up in places I’d never expect (like in random MySpace pages and message boards) and I’m grinning inwardly, because I loved being a part of this evil ghost, even if it’s only a few minutes of voice or vocals. I loved the idea that these independent filmmakers were coming together to get GOOD horror movies to the people. Something that should be prevalent over the thousands of HORRIBLE remakes and corporate takes on what they think a horror movie fans should love. It still amazes me, that bumping into random people around town, they will start talking about The Gravedancers and how they loved the evil ghosts, when the subject of current horror movies get brought up. Nothing better to see people scream and jump when they are watching a horror movie, even the trailer, when it’s your scream that scares the hell out of them. I love making my mama proud. I get even more sick satisfaction out of the fact when she brags about my work she goes, “Yeah, my daughter gets paid to scream and puke.”

I would like to say that I was aware of Tucker Max long before he was ever in print. On account of how I’m such a spectacularly plugged-in girl on the interwebs. The truth is that there are massively high traffic sites which somehow never have audiences intersect. In actuality, I was stuck in the Phoenix airport when visiting my family and, strangely enough, the Phoenix airport actually has a pretty good Borders. Which even more strangely contained a book with a sleek black cover featuring a gentleman with an antisocial smirk holding, I believe, a bottle and a bottle blonde with her visage replaced with a Your Face Here sign. The title was the clever I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I bought it along with a stack of noir novels.

Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell chronicles the author’s drunken and salacious exploits. He came of age as the offspring of a South Beach restauranteur. From his writing, I gather his taste thus unsurprisingly runs to big-titted blondes with fit but not skinny bodies. Mildly Southern demeanor potentially a plus. Too bad for him that his intelligence level is off-the-scale brilliant. Tucker Max has raised hitting on drunk human sluts to the art form, or perhaps sport, of a more advanced species.

He comes across to some reviewers as a misogynist. He does tend to refer to women as filthy whores and mention that they owe him a rib. The following excerpt from a tale of a horseracing tailgate party drinking contest is a pretty representative exchange from his book:

1:58: She raises the first shot and gives me a toast, “Give me chastity and give me continence – but not yet . . . St. Augustine!” All her little friends laugh and cheer. Amateurs.

Girl: That was really sexist.”
Tucker: No it wasn’t, it was a joke. If I had said that women are nothing but life support for pussy, now THAT would be sexist.”
Girl: “Excuse me?”
Tucker: “If I had called her a hot mouth, that would be sexist too. Or, if I said that the only thing going for her is that she’s 98.6 degrees and has two wet holes, that would be very sexist. But I didn’t say those things, did I?”
Girl: “WHAT?”
Tucker: “Uh oh! Did I piss you off? Are you going to write angsty poetry?!?”

Women in the stories Tucker recounts also tend to say things along the lines of, “I can’t believe how funny I think you are and I’m a girl.” It is my opinion that they are either (a) easily manipulated chicks or (b) missing the fucking point. I’m not delusional, so I’m well aware that some people look at my own work and aren’t aware of anything deeper than quality photos of punk genitalia and gothic boobies, although there is more to it. But I do understand that sometimes pervy sex is the common denominator for a reason. Sure, Tucker regularly points out how much pussy he has thrown at him 24/7 and how great he is at acquiring even difficult pussy. His writing career started when he first launched his site as a dating application. Some chicks will always be attracted to a guy they believe other chicks want. Some guys will be impressed by any dude who claims to have laid miles of pipe. Although I went through a phase in the late 80’s where I liked to tie up blonde boys from good families, that was a long time ago, so some people will undoubtedly be surprised that I am such a huge fan of Tucker Max’s writing that I told my panelmates at the recent SXSW confab that I’d be late getting to the green room for our panel because I was going to watch Tucker Max speak at his first. Then again, readers who really got BLT, the antisocial punk rock humor zine I did in DC, well, I think they will understand the Tucker Max appeal.

The point is not that Tucker Max is a hard-drinking vanilla guy who has frequent sex with varied partners. The point is that his writing is brilliant, articulate, painfully insightful, and totally fearless and he is able to find the humor in absolutely anything. John Hargrave of Zug.com, the moderator of Tucker’s one man SXSW panel From Blog to Book called the author “a promiscuous drunken Tolstoy.” To give you an idea of the Zug perspective, my horoscope on the site today suggests I “Call a hardware store and whisper “stucco” into the phone over and over. “Stucco stucco stucco stucco stucco.” If they hang up, simply call back.” I used to manage an adult boutique where callers sometimes attempted this sort of thing. They might as well have been saying “stucco” for all the impact it had on folks who sold lingerie and vibrators, although only the serious submissives called back to speak with the manager, once I got through with them. At the end of the From Blog to Book panel, John Hargrave was kind enough to pour healthy doses of something called Tucker Max Death Mix. The ingredients of which are apparently Everclear, Lemon-Lime Gatorade, and Red Bull. No wonder so many Tucker Max Drunk stories entail such copious amounts of vomit.

Tucker Max claims to have little formal idea how to write properly. This is debatable as he went to both U Chicago and Duke Law. Both good schools. But he assured his SXSW audience that he has no clue how to use commas, confuses forms of the word ‘too’, and doesn’t really consider himself a writer. He says he tries not to consider his audience when writing, to just concentrate on telling his story in his own authentic way. “I write in my authentic voice,” he says. Oh yeah, and then he works on trimming the fat from his work. But the authenticity is key.

According to Tucker Max’s business card, the name of his company is Rudius Media. According to the Rudius web site, “a rudius is a wooden sword, given by the Roman Emperor to a gladiator upon attainment of his freedom.” It may be happy coincidence that this is probably also a play on the word ‘rude’, but whatever. The best thing about Tucker Max’s writing is the sense of abandonment, the extreme freedom. He’ll tell you his ferocious opinion of some lesser person that himself and he’ll tell you his dick is average in size, although a bit large to put in a midget or a small girl’s colon. He may be coy about whether he has ever done cocaine in Vegas, but he’ll tell you how much hostile fun he is on absinthe. He’ll detail how he drove a mildly inconsiderate girl’s car through the storefront of a donut shop. He’ll pressure all the law firms in Silcon Valley into raising their salaries for summer interns by posting sock puppet conversations with himself on Infirmation.com. He’ll tell girls he is in a Christian rap band and coerce his friends into playing along. He’ll get accidentally pepper-sprayed during the sex act. He’ll bring friends in Special Ops to a politically left wing cocktail party. He’ll get thrown out of IHOP. He’ll get thrown out of Denny’s. He’ll get thrown out of Mickey D’s. And he’ll pretty shamelessly tell you – and everyone else – about it. Although his book has been out for more than a year now, he says it is still selling a remarkable 2,000 copies a week to people like me who are just discovering him. He says he designed the flawlessly appropriate book cover himself too. Tucker Max challenges the SXSW audience to check his numbers on Bookscan because everything he says is true and this is one outlandish tale which is verifiable.

And why, you may ask, was I at the airport, while visiting my family, buying noir novels and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell? All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Actually, I have a pretty happy family, as these things go, but that just seemed like such an elegant literate way to close that I almost couldn’t help myself. Of course, now I fucked it all up with the disclaimer.