The New And The Next: Punk Rock Love, A Sensible Scary Movie

Transcript

ARUN RATH, HOST:

From NPR West, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Arun Rath.

It's time now for The New and The Next.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RATH: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine Ozy. He joins me every week to talk about the new and the next. Carlos, welcome back.

CARLOS WATSON: Arun, I had to come down to L.A. and see you in person. Good to be here.

RATH: It's good to have you here in person. So, Carlos, even though we're a couple weeks away, Halloween is in the air. We're always getting into Holidays early, which is kind of weird here because there aren't really fall colors in Los Angeles. But you guys have an unusual horror movie trailer that you're featuring this week.

WATSON: We do. And this thing has gone viral. It's about a very cool director named Joe Nicolosi, basically spoofs all the horror films we're used to seeing and says, what if people actually acted reasonably in these things? What if there was logic?

(SOUNDBITE OF FICTIONAL FILM, "HELLO NO: THE SENSIBLE HORROR FILM")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Me and the girls were wanting to sneak into an abandoned mental asylum this weekend with our Ouija Board. Do you want to come?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (as Carlos) No, I don't.

WATSON: Very, very funny. You absolutely have to watch. Only three minutes long.

RATH: I mean, we've seen this movie so many times that when we hear a cop saying, you know what, I'm gonna call for back up.

(LAUGHTER)

RATH: It's just hilarious.

(SOUNDBITE OF FICTIONAL FILM, "HELL NO: THE SENSIBLE HORROR FILM")

UNKNOWN MAN #2: Kind of anticlimactic.

RATH: Even funnier, I think my favorite thing you guys have this week, you have a feature about a comic featuring two characters from the world of hard rock, punk rock, even. That's Henry Rollins, formerly of Black Flag, and Glenn Danzig. And these are kind of, sort of buff guys. They sort of corner the market on black T-shirts, kind of serious, very medalish. But this comic has them cast in a different light.

WATSON: So Tom Neal, you know, an artist, a couple years ago said, what if you took these two hardcore rockers, Henry Rollins, Glenn Danzig, they're known as tough, tough, tough guys. And instead of making them friends and buddies and sometimes competitors, what if you made them lovers? What if you made a cartoon out of it and called it Henry and Glenn Forever?

RATH: Here's a snippet of some typical dialogue between the two read by a couple of our staffers.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Glenn, you ever look out the city and think?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: About what? How black it would be if the lights went out?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: No. How there is someone for everyone.

WATSON: And while Henry Rollins laughed at it and kind of enjoyed it, Glen Danzig didn't find it quite so funny.

RATH: No, no.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: So it's...

RATH: Not really a sense of humor.

WATSON: You know, it's funny. Those guys have been good buddies and, you know, they've spent a lot of time together on and off the road. But I guess for him it, wasn't what he was expecting. But so many people have enjoyed it. And one of the interesting things that Tom Neely said is that there were talks for a TV show. But...

RATH: I want to see it.

WATSON: Well, you know, so do I. But I think Glenn's unhappiness with the story has put it on pause for the moment.

RATH: Another piece you have this week, it's a D.C. character. She's a humanitarian with a unique philosophy.

WATSON: Yeah, Sarah Holewinski, a 36-year-old woman, formerly was working on a lot of health policy. And she's taken over the Center for Civilian Conflict and has been an interesting and sometimes controversial figure. She said that we should count how many civilians are actually killed, hurt or injured. And you remember originally when we were in Iraq, General Tommy Frank famously said, we're not going to count civilian casualties.

RATH: You know, it's interesting. Actually, I know Sarah from interviewing her a couple of times for work that I've done looking into this. And she was - what's wild is that she did this work counting civilian casualties and then ended up working with the army.

WATSON: So Petraeus - General David Petraeus, when he was running the conflict over there in Iraq and Afghanistan, called her over to consult with her and ask whether or not there was a way that the American military and others can go about war that would have fewer civilian casualties. Now, supporters say it's good that someone's thinking about this. On the other hand, there are critics who say that anyone who talks like this is enabling, and that the reality is that there's not a cleaner way to do war.

RATH: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine Ozy. Carlos, great to see you again.

WATSON: Always good to see you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.