Colin was there with his manager as well, and Kourosh invited them both into another room and basically read them the riot act, even though nothing had even happened yet. We could all hear him through the door. “Listen, here are the rules,” he said firmly. “Just so we’re clear, Carrie is not getting out of her chair. She’s not bending over, taking her top off, or pulling down her pants. She’s not here to fondle anyone or be fondled. Do not mess with me or I will shut it down.” Colin and his manager appeared a bit freaked about Kourosh’s attitude, but they assured him that they were shooting for Fox and that Colin’s new image was about being more palatable for mainstream TV. Basically, the message from them was that this was going to be clean-cut and funny but not dirty. So there was nothing to be concerned about. Plus, they said Sully was a pretty serious guy and that this was probably going to be more of a straightforward interview.
Let’s just say the fear factor in the room was palpable. Usually, when you’re doing an interview with a big celebrity, you’re worried about making sure you don’t piss them off. Not today! It was safe to say that Colin and Co. were more worried about Kourosh and, probably, regretting the whole thing. So we start rolling, and, sure enough, the conversation between the three of us was totally vanilla because “Dad” had just yelled at Colin. Sully, who was pretty shy to begin with, had a rule of his own: He hated talking about his Wiccan religion because he was sick of being the poster boy for witchcraft. With not much left to talk about, the interview was playing out like a total dud and looking more and more like a fucked opportunity for both Colin and myself. Doing his best to keep fishing for something, and nervous about getting dirty and having to deal with the wrath of Kourosh, Colin turned to Sully and simply asked him about his dating life: “What do you look for in a girl?” When he answered with “funny” and “good personality,” making him dull as dishwater, Colin turned to me with desperation in his eyes, and feeling like the whole interview was going to shit, he asked:
“Carrie … so what do you look for in a guy?”
Without skipping a beat and in a moment of pure instinct, I blurted out:
“IT’S ALL ABOUT THE COCK!”
Kourosh dropped his clipboard. Colin dropped his jaw. His manager glared at Kourosh with an angry look that screamed, “You motherfucker, you set us up!” Of course, we hadn’t. Kourosh was in as much of a state of shock as anyone. Colin looked around the room in stunned surprise, not quite sure what to do next. There was nervous laughter. Then Sully looked at me and turned to Colin and said, “What show is this? What network are we on?” And Colin, seizing the opportunity to have a little fun now that I had opened the door, jumped right in:
Colin: This is for Fox.
Sully: What? You can talk like this on Fox?
Colin: Yup. It’s owned by Rupert Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch is all about the COCK!
Everyone started laughing and, just like that, we all went from being on the verge of a boregasm to off the nut! Thinking that since I had crossed the line all bets were off, and I was now cool with being toyed with, Colin decided to make a notorious but predictable move in our impromptu game of Sex Chess: sexual pawn sacrifice, doggie style. A smart yet bold professional maneuver with a high-risk/high-yield profile. That’s why I’ve always respected Colin. He was never afraid to roll the dice. So he started talking to Sully about my sexy black leather pants, and of course, Sully played along. He then asked his opinion on the sound leather pants make when they get slapped, thinking that I’d stand up, bend over, and let Sully have at me. Yeah, right! I guess Colin had forgotten that it was women who invented Sex Chess. And just as he was getting ready to stroke his bishop with glee, I quickly turned the conversation around with a Zwischenzug countertactic: Queen to Bishop 6, leaving him vulnerable. And, before he knew it, Colin was bent over, grabbing his ankles in the middle of the room, with rock star Sully Erna smacking dat ass! CHECKMATE!
That smack was so hard and so loud that it almost felt like Sully took a running start because the echo went on for days. I’m sure somewhere in the universe it’s still blowing minds. There are erotic flagellation symposiums celebrating its art and form. Without a doubt, it was the smack heard around the world. In the end, I quite inadvertently flipped the switch. It wasn’t planned. It happened organically when I was just being me. The “me” I didn’t know existed until that moment.
“It’s all about the cock.” In an undeniable stroke of irony, in this male-dominated business, those were the five words that brought me to life.
6
PUTTING THE F-U BACK INTO FUN
Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
—Charles Bukowski
It was an epiphany. A four-letter revelation. A momentary lapse of reason that led me to an inexhaustible and absolute truth. Kind of like how you should never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. You may say, “What’s the big deal? You said ‘cock.’ Women say ‘cock’ all the time; especially if they’re trying to get the guy to cum faster so they can get back to doing their nails.” I say one woman’s “Copulating Oblong Cavity Killer” is another woman’s road to Damascus. In an industry where women are expected to do a lot of plotting & planning, ducking & diving, running & gunning, slamming & jamming, moving & shaking, shucking & jiving, and blowing & going, I went from doing to being …
The second I stopped worrying about my surroundings and overthinking my words and actions, I became present. The moment I became present I stopped being a victim of the circumstances around me and I started to be in control of them. This was a defining moment, not just for me but for our company. What I would say, what I would do, and how I would do it would forever be inextricably interwoven into its DNA. If I played it right, I’d be Olivia Newton-John in Grease (a worldwide smash), and if I didn’t, I’d be Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2 (a film most people don’t know exists). So from that point forward, I started to really have fun experimenting during interviews. As it turned out, my independent spirt and potty mouth gave us the keys to the kingdom. There was nothing like us at the time, and as we braved forward, it became abundantly clear to me that being a girl at the center of this tornado was a unique privilege. I would have my share of prejudices to overcome in an industry that wasn’t terribly accepting of girls being dirty. But I saw it all as an opportunity to change the rules and redefine what girls should and should not do.
Not a day goes by since that fateful moment over a decade ago without me thanking my lucky stars that I found that opportunity surrounded by a creative, daring, and supportive team of incomprehensively filthy-minded people. It was and is an incredibly empowering experience being a woman in control and uncensored. Ask any of the women making waves today, from Amy Schumer to Lena Dunham, and I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing. But Voltaire once wrote: “With great power comes great responsibility,” so I needed to make it count and venture forward with purpose. I know what you’re thinking, and no, Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben did not say that first, it was Voltaire! And yes, by quoting Voltaire instead of Spider-Man you might get the emo-chicks you’ve been Tinder-stalking to actually swipe right. I would, however, suggest changing your profile pic to one where you’re not wearing a belly shirt that says MY SPIDEY SENSE ISN’T THE ONLY THING TINGLING while you’re pissing on your six-year-old nephew’s Green Goblin car. Just a suggestion, do what you will. Anyway, now that I had found my voice, and our company had found its reason for being as an uncensored and unfiltered media outlet … how would we define it? What would we do with it? What was our point of view…?
The answer was simple. We would search for truth, and our guides would be the best two F-U’s there are: FUN and FUNNY. I’ve always believed that you can talk about the most vile, ridiculous, and disgusting shit as long as it’s funny and you’re laughing. No Good TV was an exercise in joy and an escape from the ordinary. It was an opportunity for celebrities to be themselves: to just fuck around and laugh.
Giving the average person a chance to feel what it’s like to hang out with them and have a beer. In some ways, it’s a greater truth than any revealing interview that exploits their personal life for publicity. Swearing is the common ground that unites us all. No matter who we are, rich or poor, famous or not, when we’re with our friends and we drop our guard and start shooting the shit, we become the most authentic version of ourselves. No pretense, no bullshit, and no fear. That’s who we wanted to be and where we wanted to go in the celebrity world. To get there would require time, consistency, trust, and above all else, it had to be super fun for the stars. Because at the end of the day, in one form or another, everybody curses.
“Don’t be a cunt all your life. Take the day off and go see this movie!”
—Gary Oldman
I grew up listening to legends like Joan Rivers, Freddie Prinze, Sam Kinison, Roseanne Barr, George Carlin, Margaret Cho, Richard Pryor, Lisa Lampanelli, Denis Leary, and Eddie Murphy, who bled blue and funny. It was clear to us that there was an art to vulgarity, and it was the palette with which we were going to paint. Once we mixed in the funny, the colors became vibrant and dramatic. The trick was to get down and dirty. We figured that if you could get people to talk about anything taboo, make them love it and laugh about it, then you’ve got something. From that moment forward, our motto, our mantra, our mission, and our raison d’etre became “Putting the F-U back into fun.”
Much like the Bashophiliacs who follow Matsuo Bashō, a Japanese Haiku poet, and cannot achieve orgasm without the writing or reciting of his haiku poetry, we would not consider our interviews a success unless the proverbial F-U had been adequately tossed around the room and everyone had had an appropriate amount of the aforementioned fun. There were challenges. I have to admit, it wasn’t all roses, but our new format really worked—99 percent of the time. What we were doing was truly revolutionary, and that meant that every once in a while, we’d have a minor misstep. There were times when I’d interview a band and they’d get gun-shy. There were other times when, after a great and rowdy interview, the band’s manager or publicist would second-guess whether the world should see them being so unfiltered.
The first time it happened was with the band Queens of the Stone Age. Hard-ass rock guys who had a hard time being dirty. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it was an image issue. Maybe it was the fact that I was a girl being racy with them. Who really knows, but either way, it was fine. This wasn’t for everyone, and back then I was still getting my sea legs. I’m sure it was probably not as organic as it could have been. After our interview, they asked that we not air it, and while we were disappointed, of course we agreed not to. That was and has always been our deal with anyone nice enough to play with us. If it wasn’t the fun time we promised, it never happened. Our goal was never to embarrass or make anyone uncomfortable. We wanted them “in” on the joke, not the “butt” of the joke.
It’s strange how nowadays artists go out of their way to connect with fans on the rawest level, but back then, being unreachable was still a thing. Old-school PR was on the cusp of getting schooled by new-school PR, and I’d like to think we played our small role in that. Regardless, each rough patch gave us the chance to build trust with the bands and their reps, which would ultimately open doors in the years to come. What I’m most proud of is that after all these years, and thousands of interviews later, the number of people who weren’t comfortable with what we did and asked us not to use the interview is minuscule. To me that’s an incredible accomplishment, given what we were doing.
Another issue we were discovering was that sometimes musicians/bands who were killer onstage didn’t have personalities to match offstage and would give really boring interviews. It’s weird how they could be larger than life playing the rock star onstage but completely lost being themselves. It’s something that I’ve found to be common with some actors as well. They are chameleons on camera and a blank slate off. The sad truth is they weren’t all going to be fuel-tanker-crash-into-a-gas-station, tell-it-like-it-is, and restore-your-faith-in-rock-’n’-roll sit-downs like the one I had with Poison guitarist C. C. DeVille at the Viper Room. C. C. had stories for days and left no stone unturned. My favorite was his description of all the scars he had on his nut sack because he used to love smoking crack naked and would frequently drop his crack pipe in his lap. (Note to self: wear pants if you plan on smoking a glass dick.)
I realized that we’d need to figure out how to fill the dead space and make it entertaining, even when it didn’t look like it was going to be. Out of pure necessity, my personality really started coming out. I couldn’t just rely on the talent to give me a good interview. I was going to have to rely on my energy and preparation to ultimately dictate what was going to happen. The good news was that nothing offended me; I lived for spontaneity and had energy for days. And I fuckin’ loved it when an interviewee would think they were going to shock me or one-up me just to see if I could hold my own. My reaction to that was always to quote Roddy Piper’s genius line from the movie They Live: “Oh yeah, well, I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and guess what, I’m all out of gum!” As we figured out more of what we were going to do in the interviews, it was inevitable that we would also discover what we weren’t going to do … sooner than we expected.
So there we were, creators of this brand-new, uncensored format, making the daring move to take it out into the world and try to execute it in an EXTREMELY tame press environment. Yet, luckily, interview after interview, it was working. We were succeeding and rising up the ranks of the music world and getting away with murder doing these incredible no-holds-barred interviews. What could go wrong? Plenty! This was uncharted territory for everyone involved. There were lessons to be learned, rules to be created, and lines never to be crossed. After all, the word “uncensored” means different things to different people, and not everyone plays by the same rules.
The word “uncensored” is a complicated beast. I’ve discovered that the way men and women define “uncensored” is as vastly different as the way men and women respond to the mere suggestion of performing ass to mouth during sex! Men seem to be open to trying it, while women are more in the camp of “Are you fucking kidding me?! You ASSHOLE!!” It turns out when some guys hear a girl say “uncensored,” they immediately think, Oh, it’s porn and you’re getting naked. Sweet! Girls, on the other hand, tend to take a less rapey position and assume there’s going to be some foul language … followed by a request for them to get naked! So when I would show up to do an interview with a band made up of guys and tell them we were uncensored, there was a good chance that they immediately thought they had just scored a free pass to the Girls Gone Wild shower show. As you can imagine, this was going to be tricky at best. Almost as tricky as running into the guy you’ve been crushing on for six months when you’re buying Vagisil … almost!
There I was thinking “uncensored” was a path to freedom of speech without realizing that for some people it’s actually a silent activator of their dormant misogyny. It was an almost Pavlovian response. Go figure! It became clear to me that it wasn’t going to be easy being a girl fronting an uncensored format. It was going to be a ground war, and I was going to have to redefine the term “uncensored” interview by interview. Sort of like how the folks at Starbucks had to reposition their corporate logo to be perceived as a nod to Seattle’s nautical heritage, in spite of the fact that it looked virtually identical to the Siren from Greek mythology, who represented obsession, addiction, and death. Talk about a Freudian fingerbang! I definitely had my work cut out for me, and just like any good roller coaster, there would be screams, laughter, some harrowing moments, and more than my share of loop-de-loops.
Then came the fateful day we were invited to cover the legendary Vans Warped Tour. New Found Glory, Something Corporate, and Finch were the headliners, and I got to go on their tour bus to interview them. It was a total blast, and like out of a scene from Almost Famous, it erupted into an impromptu karaoke pa
rty with everyone singing “Africa” by Toto with the whole bus rocking back and forth. The conversation was filthy from moment one. It started with a light discussion about poop choppers and how the low-rent tour buses didn’t have them, meaning you had to take a dump in a plastic bag and take it with you. It ended with an insanely X-rated chat about sexual positions, as you’d expect with three huge young bands at the height of their fame and in the most rebellious and raucous state. It was awesome!!
Super funny and dirty, the interview continued rolling with me singing and dancing in the middle of twelve guys from three bands. Ken was doing his best to navigate the tight space with his camera, and Kourosh was standing in the stairwell at the entrance to the bus without a clear line of sight to me. As our interview proceeded, one of the guys said his favorite move was the dip.
“What’s the dip?” I asked naively.
“Can I show you?”
“Sure!” I said, thinking he was going to gallantly dip me in a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers manner. Let’s just say Fred and Ginger would be turning in their graves if they saw what happened next. In that instant, the excitement of the moment overwhelmed me, and I became an idiot. He told me to sit down on the floor so I did. He then told me to lay back and bring my knees up. The next thing I know he’s grabbed my ankles, pulling my legs up, and is maneuvering me around, getting ready to mount me. At that moment I started to panic and thought, Oh, no, oh, shit, here it comes. What the fuck did I get myself into? My back was on the floor in the middle of the tour bus, I was surrounded by a dozen dudes, both of my legs were spread-eagle in the air, and a strange guy started doing the dip maneuver. Basically reenacting some move I’m sure he’d seen in countless pornos. To his credit, Kourosh tore his way through the sausage party before the third dip and got me back on my feet. As much as it sounds like I was caught in the “ass-to-ass” scene in Requiem for a Dream, it was all quite innocent. They weren’t trying to hurt me. There was no double-dong. They just didn’t know what our boundaries were, and up until that happened, neither did we. Lesson fucking learned!
Everybody Curses, I Swear! Page 11