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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
June 27, 2008 • www.GayPeoples Chronicle.com
TROY FERGUSON
Burlesque-esque indie pop
by Peter Galvin
A band that blurs the lines between spectator and sport, hunter and prey, the real and the imagined, Boston's Dresden Dolls are an all-encompassing machine, which is somewhat of a feat considering the band only has two people. Vocalist-keyboardist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione create a world entirely of their own, full of dress-up, independence, confused sexual orientations, loneliness, camaraderie and a bursting, uncontainable amount of heart all pounded effortlessly into the piano and the drums.
Having spent nearly two years on the road since the release of their second album Yes, Virginia, including with Panic at the Disco, the True Colors tour with Cyndi Lauper and the Gossip, and their own headlining shows across the country, the Dresden Dolls are just released their newest collection of songs, the mischievously titled No, Virginia. The album is made up of new songs, old demos and B-sides from the Yes, Virginia sessions. A startling companion album to an old fan favorite, No, Virginia is ripe with the incredible songwriting by which the Dolls are defined, and presents some of their best playing yet: Palmer's piano may literally be turning to dust from the strength she uses to bang on it, while Viglione's drums carry every melody on their sturdy snare snaps and chaotic cymbal crashes.
The Dresden Dolls will be playing select shows in support of No, Virginia later this year. In the meantime, Palmer will be playing a special solo show in her hometown of Boston with the Boston Pops in early June. Additionally, Viglione recently contributed his rhythmic talents to two songs on the recently released Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV.
Here, Viglione talks about his the rush of dressing in drag and what Gay Pride means to him.
Peter Galvin: You're not gay, but many of your gay fans look up to you for the fearless way you live your life. Can you tell them what Gay Pride means to you?
Brian Viglione: It means living every day of your life with dignity, self-respect, compassion, and courage in the face of
Savage
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neath all the slick veneers and glossy surfaces. But that is where Kalin stumbles, and not something to blame on his team.
Kalin is certainly not interested in implicitly judging his characters. This is a good thing, because it would be very easy to present these individuals as laughably ridiculous or pathologically evil. But some of the ways in which the characters are presented by both Kalin and screenwriter Howard A. Rodman-are difficult to process. Very often we are given such tiny slivers of information or psychological depth that many of the motivations of the charac-
discrimination. It's about celebrating love, regardless of gender.
Gay Pride is also a celebration of individuality, isn't it?
Yes. We're all taught, from a very young age, lessons on how to conform and what is right and wrong. Gay Pride to me is about celebrating people loving each other and loving themselves for who they are, not what society or a religion deems morally appropriate. Too often, fear and shame keep people locked inside themselves because they're taught that how they feel is "wrong." Pride is all about wiping that bullshit from the mirror, so that when you stand there and look at yourself, you feel good about what you see. That when you can love and believe in who you are, no one can take that from you.
What do you think about the recent ruling in California that allows gays and lesbians to marry?
I think its wonderful and long overdue. Hopefully the rest of the country, and the world, get the message and eventually catch up. My hope is that people still take their time to cultivate and nurture their relationships and don't rush into marriage just because they can. The most important thing is that people are taking care of each other, married or not.
Tell me about dressing in drag. What does that mean to you?
For me, it's about expressing a very uncomplicated side of who I am physically. I was nine years old when I first discovered I had a feminine side. I was with a cousin in a pool, and I had a mullet. When I got out of the pool, my hair was wrapped around my head. He said I looked like a girl, and I couldn't deny it. I felt empowered by it. I never possessed that brute masculinity that a man s supposed to have. I just decided to embrace my natural physique, which was sort of feminine. When I was 14, I discovered The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It had everything-rock and roll, sexuality, humor. All the things that seemed so vital. To me, Frank N Furter was self-evolved and empowered, a model for individualism. That was right in line with all the things I wanted.
And how did your parents feel? They were supportive, but they urged me to be cautious. It was the kind of thing where I might have wanted to go out in a garter belt
ters remain obscure and even unapproachable. This becomes particularly significant if Kalin wants audiences to empathize with his menagerie of fools, especially in some of their more barbaric impulses and actions.
As a result of this emotional and psychological shorthand, when Barbara fully seduces her grown son, and when he kills her shortly thereafter, we are left largely with a "who cares" attitude as opposed to a real understanding or catharsis.
The actors are uniformly superb and while their performances sometimes add to the distancing described above, neither the script nor the direction help them much in that regard.
Hugh Dancy is wonderful to watch-as always as the bisexual lothario who makes
Vocalist-keyboardist Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione
for Halloween, but they didn't want me to get beat up. They said, "Don't live in fear, but have your head about you." I grew up in the mid-90s, which was a pretty progressive era. I had grown up thinking that high school was going to be like The Breakfast Club, that people were going to beat me up all the time. But when I was in high school, it was cool to dress weird. Even before high school, I went in drag to one of my eighth grade dances, and the other kids were like, "Oh, man, you look awesome." They thought it was cool. They knew I was having a good time.
It's a stereotype that all men who dress in drag are gay. Have you gotten that? That happens to me all the time anyway.
a play for both Barbara and Tony. Dancy, who also played gay in last year's Evening, has been turning in performance after performance that make us look forward to his next work.
Stephen Dillane as the distant and disappointed patriarch, who eventually steals his son's girlfriend away from him, turns in a still yet effective performance. Dillane's nuanced work allows us to see both why Barbara would be deeply lonely with him around and why he would be motivated by her volatility to seek solace elsewhere.
Eddie Redmayne, relatively new to feature films, has a porcelain beauty and poise that is stunningly seductive in moments and alienating at others. His is a hard rolehe is often the weak character whether in relation to his mother, father or several lovers, and yet he cannot come across simply as a human toy. Redmayne is strong overall,
Dressing in drag hasn't increased the amount of times that people have asked me if I'm gay. Mostly, people are curious about the ways in which I'm able to uncover different parts of myself. People have said, "I thought you were a punk rocker" or "I thought you were a transvestite freak." I am I'm both! I like what I like, and I do what I want. You dress in drag onstage as well. Yes, but I'm not a drag queen. When I get dressed up for the band, it's because I feel like looking hot. I could wear a boring suit, but why not dress in an awesome gown and stockings? It's what I look better in.
and once again the script and direction stifle our ability to really connect with his plight and his eventual destruction.
The ever radiant and brilliant Julianne Moore has never looked better. Hers is a performance that runs the gamut of emotions from deafening silence to explosive theatrics and she makes each moment ring as true as the script allows her to. Sometimes, because the writing doesn't allow us greater insight into the characters and their story, some of the acting, including Moore's, comes across as more mannered than from the soul.
Still, Savage Grace is worth watching, despite its shortcomings. It tells a story in terms of human emotions and hubris that is both so contemporary and ancient all at once. And what we are forced to remember is that human truth is far stranger than any fictions possible.
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Kalin
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have certainly been associated with that tag. What do you think about this?
Ruby Rich coined that term in 1992 in the Village Voice. It's the media's concern. I don't think about it much at all. It is not a useful definition for me. I am not aware of much discussion about my films in terms of that label. I don't think of categories like that. Every film I make wants to move beyond those categories. These are things the media and journalists do to be able to deal with things, to comfort themselves. We don't refer to Spike Lee's films as part of early black cinema or early feminist films as women's films.
Well to a certain extent all cinema is about categories, isn't it? I mean we—and not just journalists-classify films by
genre or style or subject matter. We still associate Francois Truffaut with the French New Wave cinema. So categories are important, even to producers, financiers, audiences.
I want to move beyond categories. What about the classification of independent cinema? Does that resonate with you?
What does that mean to you?
Well, what I think isn't so important here. What do you have to say about that label?
It's a term. I don't really know what it means. It meant something more fifteen years ago in terms of budgets, story lines, et cetera. Today it is something totally different..
(At this point the cell phone signal was lost.)