In advance of the Tim And Eric & Dr. Steve Brule (aka John C. Reilly) 2014 Tour stopping in Philly on Friday for two sold out shows at The Keswick, we got Temple alum Eric Wareham on the horn. DISCUSSED: Their new show Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories, Twilight Zone, and the horror of the every day, Bob Odenkirk, Emmet Walsh, John C. Reilly, Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifanakis, Three Stooges, Dr. Steve Brule, Darkside, Fishtown, White Rainbow, and Philly soul.

PHAWKER: The two episodes of Bedtime Stories, your new show on Adult Swim, that I watched were very funny and really, truly unnerving. I’m not a big horror guy.  I’m not easily scared, I usually just roll my eyes. But in the ‘Hole’ episode, Tim is just frightening. The ‘Toes’ episode is a little more surreal, but I’m just wondering if on this show you guys are riffing on the horror of the everyday a little bit more? Like the suburban dad hardass jock guy? I find those people terrifying.

ERIC WAREHEIM:  Yeah. You couldn’t have said it better. Each of these episodes is really based on the horror of everyday life, and what’s really going on. For example, the ‘Toes’ episode is not far from plastic surgery. In Los Angeles, we see insane things: people injecting concrete into their butts, and to me that’s not too far off from being like, ‘Ah, yeah, toes are disgusting. Let’s get rid of ‘em.’  And with ‘Holes,’ I just feel like most of life is a nightmare. Just walking around and encountering people who are assholes, and your neighbors are freaks. I remember growing up, and there were a couple people in my neighborhood that I didn’t really see very often that I kind of imagined what their weird lives were like. I also had neighbors that my parents would quarrel with, and I kind of developed these little stories in my head because of the nightmare worlds in their homes, and that’s what it’s based off of. It’s also based off of this dream I had, which was the worst dream I’ve ever had in my life at this point, where everyone turned on me. Like my girlfriend, all my friends, Tim and my parents disowned me. All of this happened in one dream. It was so heavy, that when I woke up, I felt it. That’s kind of what we want to do in the show. We want to make you laugh, but we also want you to feel all of these other emotions that are part of life.

PHAWKER: Yeah, and it’s funny, but it feels like a bad dream afterwards. You sort of shiver a little bit.

ERIC WAREHEIM: Yeah, totally.

PHAWKER: I wanted to ask you about Twilight Zone, which seems to me to be a direct influence on Bedtime Stories. I’m assuming you guys are fans.

ERIC WAREHEIM:  I remember watching as a kid and being really freaked out by it. There’s this one episode, I can’t remember the name, but it’s a man that wakes up and he realizes he’s the last person on the planet. He walks through the town, no one is alive. Everyone has truly disappeared. I remember that freaking me out so much, and not being able to talk to any of my family and friends again. I was like, ‘that’s awesome.’ And next week there’s a whole new story that it’s after. That’s sort of how we modeled Bedtime Stories in a way, like a sort of anthology series. Tim and I get bored really quickly of popular characters, so we like the idea of every week it’s a new tale. But they’re sort of in a little globe of what their sensibility is, for sure.

PHAWKER: The episode you’re talking about isn’t ‘Time Enough at Last’ with Burgess Meredith, where he’s a bookworm and never has time to read books, and there’s an apocalypse, he’s the only one alive and he finds himself at the main library in New York, and he’s like ‘Time enough at last to read the books I always wanted to read!’ And then he drops his glasses and steps on them?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Oh, yeah. That’s not the one I’m talking about, but I love that one.

PHAWKER: Yeah, that’s my favorite. Bob Odenkirk is always great in anything he does, and the ‘Toes’ episode is no exception. I wanted to ask you about Emmet Walsh, who is one of those great faces in character actors. Tell me about working with him, why you chose that, and I’m wondering if you got any show biz stories out of him—specifically about working with the Coen brothers.

ERIC WAREHEIM:  Yeah, I mean, we asked the producers to get an Emmet Walsh-type character, and they were like, ‘We can probably get him.’ And we were like, ‘Holy shit!’  We got him, and we’re big fans. He’s just like an old-time guy, classic Hollywood grumpy actor, but he’s a total sweetheart deep down, you know? He comes on set, makes fun of everyone. And he hands everyone these old pennies. He has these old pennies from the twenties, and he gives everyone a penny. He’s a grandfather. He’s really funny.

PHAWKER: No Coen brothers stories, though?

ERIC WAREHEIM: No. I do remember talking to him about the Coen brothers, but I don’t recall exactly any good tales.

PHAWKER: I’m gonna read between the lines there and I’m gonna assume he told a really juicy story that you can’t tell without being sued .

ERIC WAREHEIM:  I wish. No, I would tell you that. I can’t remember.

PHAWKER: Any other cool faces show up in future episodes that you can talk about?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Yeah. We have Jason Schwartzman starring in one, John C. Reilly stars in one with Laurie Metcalf. It’s a whole new character for him. Zach Galifianakis is in a few episodes. We have a pretty all-star cast that makes it really cool.

PHAWKER: Speaking of Zach—he’s in the pilot, which seems like a completely different direction than the two episodes that I saw. Is the pilot more of the outlier, or are the two episodes I saw the outliers.

ERIC WAREHEIM: The two episodes are more of what you’re gonna see. Zach, Tim and I have developed these insane Three Stooges characters, and we just love doing it so much that every now and then we’re gonna pepper in the very comedy classic character within this series. Because some of them are so dark, that we wanted to have a little joy here and there. Even though the keeping them in a haunted house thing is kind of a nightmare, it’s still more lighthearted than some of the other heavier episodes.

PHAWKER: OK. Jumping forward to the live show, which is half the reason we’re talking here. Tell me, what can we expect?

ERIC WAREHEIM: It’s new in that we’re co-headlining with Dr. Steve Brule. It’s gonna be half Tim and Eric, half Dr. Steve Brule. We have a brand new show. We do all new characters. It’s very interactive. It’s very anti-comedy show.

PHAWKER: How did you get hooked up with John C. Reilly, and how did the character of Dr. Steve Brule come about?

ERIC WAREHEIM: He did a voice on our cartoon, Tom Goes To The Mayor, and he sort of just liked our vibe that we had at the office. He was like, ‘I’d love to do a character with you,’ and we had a married news team, who are these crazy news correspondents. He was like, ‘What if I was a correspondent?’ Together, we came up with this character, and how messed up he was.  Over time, that developed into his show.

PHAWKER:  You know, I envy you for being pals with John C. Reilly. He cracks me up on sight. He doesn’t even have to open his mouth. Just makes me laugh.

ERIC WAREHEIM: Yeah, we are all his friends now, and touring is pretty fun. Fun to hang out with as well, he’s the greatest. We’re having the best time. We’re in Austin right now. We’re having the best time on the road doing this. It’s really fun for us as well.  We started as musicians doing kind of experimental performances in Philly. To us, it’s like going back to our roots.

PHAWKER: I have to ask you the obligatory question: What do you miss about Philly?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Oh my God. Number one is my friends, I lived there for so many years. I have two days off, and I’m gonna hang out with them. They all moved to Fishtown. There’s lots of good restaurants, and good food. My favorite places are in Philly. Just the whole soul of it.  You don’t have a lot of soul in Los Angeles, but when you come to Philly, it’s there instantly.

PHAWKER:  You’re also very indie-rock identified. You had a band called The Science Of when you lived in Philly. Then were in the krautrock-influenced Sola. You’ve done a bunch of very cool videos over the years. What are you digging right now?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Musically? I love Darkside, and this band White Rainbow. They’re probably two of my favorites right now.

PHAWKER: Do you have any other music videos in the can or that’s coming up soon?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Yeah, one in November starring John C. Reilly that’s gonna be the best one I’ve ever made.

PHAWKER:  For?

ERIC WAREHEIM: Mr. Oizo, French musician.

TIM & ERIC & DR. STEVE BRULE PERFORM TONIGHT @ THE KESWICK THEATER

Tonight at the PHS Pop Up Garden, the Philadelphia Film Festival, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts, will present a free screening of The Elephant Man, directed by David Lynch and starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt.  The film begins at sundown.

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WARPAINT L-R: Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa,Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman by ROBIN LAANANEN

BY CLAYTON RUSSELL Warpaint is four L.A. ladies from the canyons of their own self-discovery, constantly morphing and re-inventing themselves, veering between straight up rock, atmospheric art rock and hypnotic dance music. For the past year they have been criss-crossing the globe in support of their acclaimed four-years-in-the-making self-titled sophomore LP,  which was produced by Flood (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, NIN) and mixed by Nigel Godrich, aka Radiohead’s George Martin. In advance of their Union Transfer show tonight with Guy Blakeslee of The Entrance Band opening, we got Stella Mozgawa on the horn to get the lowdown.

PHAWKER: Why is the band name Warpaint?

STELLA MOZGAWA: There’s no one real easy explanation for that, there’s no real unified philosophy behind it. Its a band name and its a good band name. No M.O .necessarily

PHAWKER: Is Warpaint a rock band that detours into electronica or an electronica band that detours into rock?

STELLA MOZGAWA: Definitely neither of those, I think that the thing about our band is that we don’t quite define ourselves as either or those things. Or even anything because thats kind of limiting i think in general. Plus, it’s four people that make music together, and you can’t really funnel the personalities of those into just one kind of genre. I mean, if people think that we’re one or the other then that’s fine, but we just don’t think about that kind of stuff.

PHAWKER: Why did you choose Flood to produce the new album? And how did the experience of recording the new album differ from recording The Fool and Exquisite Corpse?

STELLA MOZGAWA: We made a conscious effort to bring in somebody who has a lot of clout and has worked with a lot of different people. We were taking that risk in working with somebody who to some people could be considered as having a sound or having a character. I think the risk definitely paid off. He’s such a chameleon and the fact that the work he’s done over the last few decades has such a variety to it, I think he doesn’t approach things with a unified vision. He’s very malleable in terms of this is the band, and this how the band works and ‘I’m gonna try and cultivate the good things about this band.’ It was very personal and kind of intimate which definitely works for us.

PHAWKER: Did he share any good stories of working throughout the years with bands like U2, Depeche Mode or Nine Inch Nails?

STELLA MOZGAWA: I was more interested in stuff he’s done with Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and artist like that. Yeah, a lot of stuff came out, I definitely shouldn’t and wouldn’t say anything, that would be very uncouth. He’s not that annoying guy that’s like ‘I’ve been around the block,’ you know “I’ve done so much stuff and I’m gonna regale all my stories.” It definitely always came from a such a humble and interesting place. It’s always interesting to hear how other people do things to get to the same place. It was definitely a very nice glimpse into a few different artists’ world.

PHAWKER: War Paint has been compared to acts as disparate as Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell, and Siouxsie and the Banshees? Do you think the comparisons are accurate?

STELLA MOZGAWA: It’s difficult to say because we don’t make music that intentionally sounds like someone’s music. But we all listen to those artist and hundreds of others, so there’s stuff that gets under your skin and comes out in different ways. You can’t really pinpoint it and say absolutely not, we are totally individual on our own little perch. We are just music lovers, that try and kind of absorb a lot of stuff the way that anyone else does that collects records and listens to music. And when you write something thats personal you kind of utilize the vocabulary that you’ve learned through listening over time.

PHAWKER: Who would you say some your inspirations are? I know you all come from different paths, but are there any mutual inspirations at all?

STELLA MOZGAWA: The Talking Heads and Aphex Twins, its really hard to explain the kind of stuff that brings us together. It’s usually something that has some sort of seductive quality to it, whether its rhythmically or emotionally. There’s interesting things we’re all drawn to, a lot of it is usually electronic or heavy in someway. I think that the best way to describe how we all meet in the middle.

PHAWKER: You ladies have been working non stop since this started, you’ve been on tour since January?

STELLA MOZGAWA: Yea actually we kind of been on tour since we mastered the record, which was in September of last year, so we started playing shows in late October or early November. We were in Russia and Europe and parts of the U.K. So now I think we probably at the year mark and we still have another few months to go. It’s been pretty crazy.

PHAWKER:  What bands or artists are you excited about at the moment?

STELLA MOZGAWA: Well, I’m really obsessed with Caribou at the moment. I have kind of developed a love of house music and techno and just electronica music in general since I first heard Swim when it came out in 2010. So Caribou is my current crush.

WARPAINT + GUY BLAKESLEE PLAYS UNION TRANSFER TONIGHT

FRESH AIR

In the 1950s, four people — the founder of the birth control movement, a controversial scientist, a Catholic obstetrician and a wealthy feminist — got together to create a revolutionary little pill the world had never seen before. They were sneaky about what they were doing — skirting the law, lying to women about the tests they performed and fibbing to the public about their motivations. “They absolutely could’ve been imprisoned for some of the work they were doing,” journalist Jonathan Eig tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “These guys are like guerrilla warriors — they’re always having to figure out ways to do this thing that will attract the least attention. … They can never really say they’re testing birth control.” The four people who created this revolution were: Margaret Sanger, who believed that women could not enjoy sex or freedom until they could control when and whether they got pregnant; scientist Gregory Pincus, who was fired from Harvard for experimenting with in-vitro fertilization and bragging about it to the mainstream press; John Rock, who was a Catholic OB-GYN and worked with Pincus to conduct tests of the pill on women; and Katharine McCormick, who funded much of the research. In the ’50s, selling contraception was still officially illegal in many states. But Sanger and McCormick, a feminist who had been active in the suffrage movement, wanted women to enjoy sex — without fear of getting pregnant. After McCormick’s husband died, McCormick got in touch with Sanger. According to Eig, McCormick said, “What’s the most important thing we could possibly work on?” “Sanger said, ‘The best thing we could possibly do is work on this pill, this miracle tablet … something that would give women the right to control their bodies for the first time.’ And McCormick said, ‘I’m in: Whatever you need.’ ” MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: As you have no doubt heard by now Ben Affleck and Sam Harris/Bill Maher got into a shout-y, headline-making debate about Islam on the latest installment of Real Time With Bill Maher. You can watch the exchange below, then read Sam Harris’ parsing of what went down.

SAM HARRIS:  After the show, a few things became clear about Affleck’s and Kristof’s views. Rather than trust poll results and the testimony of jihadists and Islamists, they trust the feeling that they get from the dozens of Muslims they have known personally. As a method of gauging Muslim opinion worldwide, this preference is obviously crazy. It is nevertheless understandable. On the basis of their life experiences, they believe that the success of a group like ISIS, despite its ability to recruit people by the thousands from free societies, says nothing about the role that Islamic doctrines play in inspiring global jihad. Rather, they imagine that ISIS is functioning like a bug light for psychopaths—attracting “disaffected young men” who would do terrible things to someone, somewhere, in any case. For some strange reason these disturbed individuals can’t resist an invitation to travel to a foreign desert for the privilege of decapitating journalists and aid workers. I await an entry in the DSM-VI that describes this troubling condition.

Contrary to what many liberals believe, those bad boys who are getting off the bus in Syria at this moment to join ISIS are not all psychopaths, nor are they simply depressed people who have gone to the desert to die. Most of them are profoundly motivated by their beliefs. Many surely feel like spiritual James Bonds, fighting a cosmic war against evil. After all, they are spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth—or they will die trying, and be martyred, and then spend eternity in Paradise. Secular liberals seem unable to grasp how psychologically rewarding this worldview must be. [...]

After the show, Kristof, Affleck, Maher, and I continued our discussion. At one point, Kristof reiterated the claim that Maher and I had failed to acknowledge the existence of all the good Muslims who condemn ISIS, citing the popular hashtag #NotInOurName. In response, I said: “Yes, I agree that all condemnation of ISIS is good. But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight’s show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.” I don’t think I’m being uncharitable when I say that neither Affleck nor Kristof had an intelligent response to this. Nor did they pretend to doubt the truth of what I said.

I genuinely believe that both Affleck and Kristof mean well. They are very worried about American xenophobia and the prospects of future military adventures. But they are confused about Islam. Like many secular liberals, they refuse to accept the abundant evidence that vast numbers of Muslims believe dangerous things about infidels, apostasy, blasphemy, jihad, and martyrdom. And they do not realize that these doctrines are about as controversial under Islam as the resurrection of Jesus is under Christianity.  MORE

MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY: Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited by both state and non-state actors to legitimize beheadings. And two major aspects of decapitation in an Islamic context should be noted: first, the practice has both Qur’anic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition. Second, in contradiction to the assertions of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, these beheadings are not simply a brutal method of drawing attention to the Islamist political agenda and weakening opponents’ will to fight. Zarqawi and other Islamists who practice decapitation believe that God has ordained them to obliterate their enemies in this manner. Islam is, for this determined minority of Muslims, anything but a “religion of peace.” It is, rather, a religion of the sword with the blade forever at the throat of the unbeliever. [...] Increasingly, Islamist groups conflate “unbelievers,” “combatants,” and prisoners of war, which, coupled with their claim to Islamic legitimacy, provides them with a license to decapitate. MORE
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NEW YORK TIMES: There are countless churches but not much openly gay life in this city by the banks of the Tennessee River. So when Benjamin Newbern, a onetime field organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, convened gay residents and those he calls “straight allies” for dinner one recent evening, it was a radical act. Over pizza in the back room of a local restaurant, a college student, Jacob Ezell, said his mother worried “it would destroy our family” if his father found out that he is gay. A nurse who gave her name only as Cassandra said she feared being fired if her bosses discovered she is a lesbian. A high school senior, Landon Montgomery, recalled coming out at 13 — and being forced to leave the small Bible school he attended.

“No one would talk to me,” he said. “It was like a disease.”

The dinner, one of 11 Mr. Newbern has organized at the behest of a national gay rights group, seemed at times like a support group for gays in New York or San Francisco from decades ago. But here it was a tentative step in the next chapter of the gay rights movement: a push for equality and acceptance in hostile territory, especially the Deep South. The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday not to take up a same-sex marriage case was a tacit victory for the national gay rights movement and paved the way for gays to be able to marry soon in 30 states and the District of Columbia. But if the decision suggests a country heading inexorably toward marriage rights nationwide for gay couples, parts of the South seem like a world apart.

As a result, gay rights leaders are turning their attention to “low equality states” like Alabama, where religion is woven deeply into the fabric of life and gay people who come out often split from their families and churches. Legal protections remain practically nonexistent. Advocates’ goals are to elect gay candidates and to prod city and state officials to enact ordinances banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. But first, they say, they must get people in places like Florence to live more open lives.

“It’s hard to pass laws that change people’s hearts and minds,” said Steven Elmendorf, board chairman of the Victory Fund, which works to elect gay candidates. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and the only way to do it is to remember what it was like in Washington and New York in the ’80s and ’70s, when people came out and were visible.” Even after Monday’s Supreme Court decision, there will be about 20 “low equality” states, which “lack almost any kind of basic protections” for gays, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a group based in Denver that tracks the progress of gay rights. In such states, gay people can still be fired or denied housing, and there are no marriage or adoption rights for same-sex couples or laws against bullying in schools. Advocates worry about what will happen if gays gain the right to marry without other protections. MORE

Crash, aka Christopher Richard, may be named like a demolition derby king, but he sings like an angel. His day job is celestial back-up singer/percussionist for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes but his nights belong to Crash. Earlier this summer he released Hardly Criminal, his debut solo album, on Community Records. You don’t need to read his bio (SEE BELOW) to grok the sad-eyed beauty of this song, but it sure explains a lot, not the least of which is this: A NOLA native having fled Katrina, Crash was literally living in a cave in Laurel Canyon when he met up with the Edward Sharpe peeps. Discuss.

“I hope my songs evoke the same laissez-faire I grew up witnessing and am always jonesing to be around. My lyrics are simply a diary telling the story of my history; boating in Lake Maurepas in the pouring rain, listening to George Jones and eating chili beans in muddy clothes, hearing Robicheaux sing the blues from the sidewalk, gutter-punks busking anti-war folk standards on Royal, Baptist gospel healings, the erotic passions of Bourbon Street and Storyville, hearing that riverboat calliope up and down the Mississippi all day long like a wind chime in the breeze…”

Crash’s story unfolds with that particularly Southern swagger and wit, a tale of a Louisiana boy bred on Waffle House breakfasts and monster truck rallies, local rodeos and the flicker of family bonfires. As a youth he pulled slingshots and shot bb’s at the Popcorn trees, swam, fished and stomped his feet to the tune of his own Pawpaw’s country band.

As adolescence crept in, Crash found he had an itch for singing, passing through the French Quarter to learn at the feet of the New Orleans’ legendary street performers, a young man searching for inspiration among the sodden Voodoo alleys of America’s most soulful city. Later, he would steal his Mom’s car to play the open mic nights at The Neutral Ground Coffeehouse, or to sneak into Nick’s on Tulane, or shoot pool at Dixie Tavern. He started a folk act, a punk group and finally, just after high school, started singing on the regular and was appointed “Congregational Song Leader” in a Southern Louisiana Gospel Choir, which had him performing for hundreds at a time.

There was college for a hot minute, there was a move to the Irish Channel, there was the soaking in of all that is New Orleans, wet heat and Sazeracs, the wailing horns of jazz funerals, the teetering handmade floats of Mardi Gras, crawfish and etouffee and howling at the moon. There was work where he could get it, toiling as a PA on the studio sets, Hollywood coming south for the tax credits. 
It was on these film productions where Crash earned his nickname, something to do with a questionable work ethic and repetitive tardiness (he admits you’d have to ask one Ms. Rita Wilson for the real deal details). And yet despite his reputation (or perhaps because of it), he was anointed “assistant” to Johnny Knoxville during The Dukes of Hazzard’s run. (One can only imagine…)
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Photo by MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ

Upon hearing my first genuine ‘woop woop’ last night at the Electric Factory, it dawned upon me that everything about the Insane Clown Posse following is completely genuine. Each juggalo and juggalette was clownified with black and white facepaint and it was clear there were certainly no restrictions on age, race, or gender. In fact, some of the youngest decked-out ICP fans stood front and center, barely able to peek over the barrier, but sure to have the most interesting story to share at show-and-tell in the morning. Disregarding the prevailing sewer smell, gobs of loogey on the ground, and the fallen juggalos and jugalettes who lay passed-out on in beer and junk food comas, an endless amount of carnival-style food was purchased and consumed. A number of times, individual juggalos/lettes single-handedly hyped up the crowd with a ‘woop woop,’ from which, as if almost on cue, a chant of “fam-i-ly” would erupt, signifying the undying bond between the ICP faithful. Yeah, Manson had a family, too, and we all know how that ended. The clown-faced rap duo of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope rode onto their carnivalesque stage set on a sticky tsunami of Faygo. Supported by a team of masked clowns and backed by their trademark horror-core beats, ICP drenched the crowd non-stop with bottle after bottle of ghetto pop for an hour and a half without pause, like some white trash baptism. And what exactly were ICP rapping about? The usual: Proud ignorance, glue-sniffing stupidity, gratuitous violence, rampant misogyny, and general cancerous nonsense. Representative song title: “Fuck the World.” Representative lyric: “Fuck everyone who went down with the Titanic.” There’s a reason ICP and its dedicated followers — an overbearingly idiotic hillbilly chain of humanity that is slowly being wiped out by natural selection — aren’t tolerated anywhere but gatherings such as the one last night. Standing on the ledge of the crowd barrier for a moment, being just a foot or two higher than the rest of the crowd, and basking in the sugary-scented wave of Faygo will either go down as one of the most liberating experiences of my life or yet another supposedly fun thing I will never do again except at gunpoint. – MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ

The groundbreaking television phenomenon, Golden Globe® and Peabody Award-winner TWIN PEAKS will return as a new limited series on SHOWTIME in 2016. Series creators and executive producers David Lynch and Mark Frost will write and produce all nine episodes of the limited series, and Lynch will direct every episode. Set in the present day, TWIN PEAKS will continue the lore of the original series, providing long-awaited answers and a satisfying conclusion for the series’ passionate fan base.

RELATED: David Lynch Explains The Unified Field

On September 10th, 2014, David Lynch gave a press conference at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to promote DAVID LYNCH: The Unified Field, the first major retrospective of his paintings in an American art museum. The retrospective is something of a homecoming for Lynch who studied painting at PAFA from 1966-1967, back when the City of Brotherly Love was a desolate hellscape of fear, violence and despair after years of white flight, industrial collapse and seething racial animus. From 1965-1970, Lynch lived in a section of the city that has come to be known as The Eraserhood. It was in Philadelphia that Lynch first transitioned from painting into filmmaking. In 1970, he headed to Los Angeles to begin work on Eraserhead. At the press conference, Lynch talked about how he drew inspiration from the horrors he witnessed during his days in Philadelphia, and expressed his sadness that the city is no longer a soot-stained miasma of crime and despair, that his malevolent Rosebud has been rendered harmless and ordinary by gentrification. The short film you are about to watch is a compendium of Lynch’s remarks about filmmaking, painting, smoking, and the nature of art. Filmed and edited in high Lynch-ian style, this short film incorporates David Lynch’s music, paintings, and films along with his charm, wit and insight into the creative process. A must-see for fans of his work.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally posted on September 23rd, 2011.

BY MIKE WALSH Like millions of Americans, I was fanatical about Twin Peaks when the show originally aired on ABC in 1990. I rearranged my schedule, so I could be home to watch it. I recorded it on VHS tape when I couldn’t. I debated the identity of Laura Palmer’s murderer with friends and strangers. I had dreams about Bob, the malevolent demon that haunts the show.

So when Netflix made Twin Peaks available for streaming recently, I immediately added it to my queue. I started watching in August and every night I came home from work looking forward to another 45-minute episode. It took me until Labor Day to finish all 30 episodes of the two seasons. When it was over, I went through some serious withdrawal. But a day or two later I remembered that there was a movie follow-up, Fire Walk with Me, so I got a copy from a library and watched that too.

Twin Peaks was the brainchild of David Lynch, whom Mel Brooks once aptly described as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars,” and TV producer/writer Mark Frost. The idea started with a suggestion by Lynch’s agent that he direct a TV movie about Marilyn Monroe and somehow that evolved into a surrealistic murder mystery about a dead prom queen set in the seedy underside of small town American life where virtually everyone has a secret, is involved in some kind of nefarious plot, is having an affair, or is just plain nuts. It’s very similar to themes Lynch explored in the highly acclaimed and controversial 1986 film Blue Velvet, which also starred Kyle Maclachlan, and earned Lynch an Academy Award nomination for best director.

From the beautifully-lensed opening credit sequence of the pilot and the infamous line delivered by Eraserhead star Jack Nance (“She’s dead, wrapped in plastic”) to the middle of the 2nd season when the murder is solved, pretty much everything about Twin Peaks is perfect. And shockingly enough, it found a mass audience in primetime. American TV viewers were enthralled by the unprecedented blend of horror, mystery, soap opera, screwball humor, industrial-strength surrealism, and enigma-wrapped-in-a-riddle plot twists — providing proof to the network suits that there was an audience for shows that were smart, risky, even bizarre. Viewers back then wanted more than just the same old cop and lawyer shows that dominated the TV schedule. Re-watching the show, my first reaction was astonishment that such a show actually ran on network television–in primetime! Nothing like it had ever appeared on TV before or since.
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Tune-Yards has confirmed a string of December dates including 4 intimate nights at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on Dec. 4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 7^th and a performance LA’s Wiltern Theatre on Dec. 10^th. Cibo Matto set to open all December dates. A limited ticket pre-sale will begin Tuesday, 10/7 at: http://tuneyards.com

PREVIOUSLY: Merrill Garbus has this weird obsession with eating babies. It comes up a lot, and she doesn’t even try to hide it. For example, there’s a spoken-word track smack dab in the middle of the highly anticipated new tUnE-yArDs album, Nikki Nack (4AD), called “Why Must We Dine On The Tots?” that goes, in part:

What good were those kids before they were our food?
Outrageously smelly, impulsive and rude
Plus you know very well that the fresh produce rots
So clearly we’ll dine on the tots

Years ago, before tUnE-yArDs even existed and she was working as a puppeteer in Vermont, Garbus mounted a Punch & Judy opera based on Jonathan Swift’s child-chomping manifesto A Modest Proposal that she called Fat Kid Opera. And before that, she created an experimental theater piece called Kinder Munch, which in English means “munch kids.” And this from a woman who once worked as a nanny in Martha’s Vineyard. Right now, however, she’s munching on Thai food, not kinder meat. She’s ordered the flame-thrower-hot green curry with vegetables because she likes it hot. Like, Pope-Of-Chili-Town-hot. I puss out and order the merely volcanic red curry. We’re sitting on a bench in the Lower Pacific Heights section of San Francisco, a few blocks away from the legendary Fillmore, where tUnE-yArDs is staging a triumphant two-night hometown stand in the midst of a standing-room-only national tour in support of Nikki Nack.

These days, tUnE-yArDs—at core Garbus and BF/bassist/songwriting partner Nate Brenner—is living pretty high on the hog, relatively speaking. In the bad old days, the starving-artist days of the early-mid aughts, the curry did not flow like ambrosia. Food stamps only went so far; there’s only so many nights you can eat popcorn for dinner. So, Garbus would improvise. Some nights she’d dumpster-dive, or when all else failed, she’d shoplift some sustenance. “The organic shop was my favorite (dumpster-diving spot),” she says. “Because I could get organic whatever—Brussels sprouts—and know I was getting something for free that would have just went bad and costs, like, $12. There’s something very satisfying in that.”

As for the shoplifting, “It was only twice because I’m such a wuss,” she says. “I was such a goody-two-shoes, straight-A student, so it did not last long. It was just kind of, you know, in moments of—I say desperation, but again, it’s like, there’s no excuse for that. And, you know, oftentimes I’ve felt like a complete asshole because there are real homeless people doing the same thing. And that’s a theme in my life, that there’s this kind of overwhelming privilege that’s an umbrella over my poverty. You know, I have a Smith College education, I have parents who, as much as I don’t like it when they lend me money, had lent me money. In a lot of ways, mine was a chosen poverty.” MORE

WALL STREET JOURNAL: One film, two masters. That’s the easiest, most direct way to describe the power behind “Inherent Vice,” the much-anticipated stoner noir film that had its world premiere Saturday night as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film is loaded with all sorts of familiar Hollywood faces, but the biggest stars of the project are its director and screenwriter, celebrated auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, and the author whose novel served as source material, great American novelist Thomas Pynchon. The two were the buzz of the red carpet Saturday night, even as the likes of stars Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin and Owen Wilson made their way to the gala presentation of the film. “I read the novel first, and then I read the script, and Paul was very — he feels that you just channel the novel,” said Martin Short, who plays deranged, lecherous, drug-addled dentist Rudy Blatnoyd. “I just love the insane, specific feel of it. I was 21 in 1971, so I knew the era, and I thought it captured its insanity perfectly.” MORE

TIME: Set in the fictional Gordito Beach (standing in for Manhattan Beach, the raffish Los Angeles suburb where Pynchon lived in the early ’70s), IV offers a time capsule of attitudes from that precise moment when the Flower Power of hippie culture wilted under the anarchic forces of Vietnam turmoil, the incendiary rhetoric of the Black Panthers and the psycho-killer exploits of the Charles Manson gang. (In a weird fluke, this weekend’s horror movie Annabelle also dips into Manson Family values.) And don’t forget Nixon. It’s a time and town where paranoia is just common sense. As one cop tells Doc, “Any gathering of three or more civilians is considered a possible cult.”

Pynchon threw all those elements into a private-eye pastiche that takes its cue from Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, the cynical knight on a ’40s crusade to cleanse the mean streets of Los Angeles. Like Marlowe, Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) wanders through all levels of L.A. society, from high Hollywood to beach bum, from angry cops to shyster lawyers and plutocrats with secrets. And like Chandler, who confessed that he couldn’t explain one of the deaths (the chauffeur’s) in The Big Sleep, Pynchon doesn’t bother tying up his plot’s loose ends. He wants audiences not to worry about the destination, just to enjoy the ride. For cultural touchstones, consult a Netflix roundup of ’70s post-noir crime movies. IV has inhaled portions of Klute (the nexus of prostitution and big business), Chinatown (property swindles that key the growth of Los Angeles), Night Moves (a sleuth flummoxed by missing daughters and multiple deaths) and especially The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman’s deconstruction of the Chandler novel — and of any hero who tried to make sense of a world spinning into incoherence. MORE

METRO: There are many obvious films that flash in the brain while watching “Inherent Vice.” It’s “The Big Sleep,” another film where the impenetrability of the plot in no way lessens the entertainment of each and every scene. It’s “The Big Lebowski,” with a perpetually toking lead — here, Joaquin Phoenix’s wild-haired, mutton chopped Larry “Doc” Sportello. Being a film by Paul Thomas Anderson, it boasts bits of his onetime employer, Robert Altman, including “The Long Goodbye,” which dumped a mumbly Philip Marlowe into pot-hazed and boob-sprinkled 1973. The humor, though, is closer to “Brewster McCloud”: zany, wacky, almost alienatingly eccentric.

“Inherent Vice” is all of these films and more. And yet — like Anderson’s “The Master,” as well as “Punch-Drunk Love” — there’s nothing remotely like it. Actually, there is: It’s a lot like “Inherent Vice,” the Thomas Pynchon novel on which it’s based. It’s a faithful adaptation, or as faithful as one can be in 148 minutes; to write the screenplay, Anderson first transcribed the entire thing verbatim into script form, then hacked it down from phone book-size. He chucks key scenes, whittles down certain characters into one-off cameos and loses some of the better jokes. (Also gone are the songs Pynchon namechecks, though gaining Can and a Jonny Greenwood score is nothing to sneeze at.) But it plays like Pynchon: a highly digressive, absurdist alternate reality that delights in confusing anyone trying to “solve” it as pure, cold narrative. It’s just Pynchon filtered through another, almost equally oddball voice. MORE

DAILY BEAST: In 1969, Southern California was enveloped by a gloomy, suffocating haze when Charles Manson and his followers committed a series of brutal murders in Benedict Canyon. The events left an unending chill over Los Angeles; the innocence of the ‘60s had officially been snuffed out. If Manson and his lunatic fringe represented a shockingly abrupt finale of peace and love, then Inherent Vice might be considered its death rattle—a universe looking to hold onto the last strands of an era that has long since passed. MORE

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON’S INHERENT VICE OPENS DECEMBER 12th