I just put lots of new work on there, it’s looking dope if I do say so myself;

www.greggarry.com

Check out my final and best cover story for Complex, where we go hard on the Bieber;

http://www.complex.com/music/2012/03/justin-bieber-cover-story

Good times!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garry/post_2547_b_1018077.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garry/the-drums-go-for-broke_b_933173.html

suicideblonde:

Amy Sedaris

that’s an old shoot of mine with Chris Buck!

(via bohemea)

Check the whole story out, shot by one of my favorite photographers, Thierry le Goues!

http://www.complex.com/music/2011/07/beyonce-cover-complex-august-september-2011-issue

Read my story and see my great shoot from this month’s Complex, where I interview one of my favorite singers

http://www.complex.com/music/2011/05/little-dragon-yukimi-nagano-hot-complex-gallery

Margaret Cho is back on TV, and this time she’s in control

By Greg Garry

Anyone who has watched Margaret Cho over the years knows that the comedienne has worn many hats: brash funnywoman, passionate activist, and even board member for sex toy company Good Vibrations. Luckily for Cho’s fans, her new VH1 reality series, The Cho Show, puts all of her varied talents to ample use every week.

Described as a scripted reality sitcom—whatever the hell that means—the show mirrors Cho’s life and stand-up act as it follows her exploits in Hollywood, with her parents, squad of stylists, and 3’10” assistant Selene Luna along for the sometimes wild ride. Cho jokingly calls her new project “gay candy,” and with it she threatens to dethrone even Kathy Griffin as television’s foremost fag hag.

Cho holds nothing back from the cameras, from bleaching her sphincter to painting her naked body for the red carpet (there’s a very good reason it airs at 11 p.m.). The show seems ripe with bits for Joel McHale to sample and ridicule on E!’s The Soup. Cho, no stranger to harsh criticism, will surely take it all in stride and good humor.

Cho rang Radar just before a gig in Tennessee to discuss the finer things in life, namely politics, periods, and pooping your pants.

RADAR: The Cho Show is good old outrageous fun. Do you feel it has healed the wounds from your ’90s sitcom debacle, All-American Girl?
MARGARET CHO: Yes, it’s so awesome. I look forward to people seeing it. VH1 gave us so much artistic freedom. It’s pretty heavily scripted. We figured this was the right thing to do. A lot of my stand-up is confessional and pulled from real life, so my comedy is already a form of reality TV.

In the first episode, you receive the “Korean of the Year” award. You said you’ve felt ostracized by your native people in the past.
I’ve had some difficulty, because at the beginning of my career I talked about sex, queer stuff, weight issues. It was very troubling to older generations of Koreans. When I did my ABC sitcom, they threatened to boycott and picket. I never fit their image of what a Korean American should be.

It was sweet to see your parents beam with pride at the ceremony. That’s my favorite bit of the show. It’s also great to see how much you all love each other—and to see them in the flesh, especially after years of seeing your spot-on impression of your mom.
She’s so funny. It’s nice to get to work together, which we’ve never done.

You and VH1 are paying Mama well, I hope?
She does alright. I’ll garnish her wages every now and again. They’re fun, they’re hard workers, and we all enjoyed it.

It’s great to see them interact with Selene Luna, the tiny burlesque queen.
It’s so funny. They project any feelings they would have for a grandchild onto Selene, as if she were my daughter. It’s adorable.

People assume that you’re a lesbian, but I’ve met your husband, Al, who’s a really cool guy and an artist in his own right. Why isn’t he on the show? Is he shy?
We want to stay married, okay? That’s our life, no one else’s. We want that to remain private.

You really lay it all out there in the series. You even went for anal bleaching. How did that work out for your pucker?
It’s great, but a slow process. You have to dab a little bit on every day and it gradually whitens, like Crest asshole whitening strips, so I didn’t keep up with it.

Who has the goddamn time?
People do it. I actually think it looks very nice, I’m just not that … anal!

Who cares about what color it is—you don’t have to look at it! You also had the “G-shot,” where they pump collagen into your G-spot.
That was horrible, actually!

You weren’t walking around having orgasms all day long? At Starbucks? On the treadmill?
No! It made me not want to have sex for like four months. My vagina was swollen and painful and gross. It was horrible!

You campaigned tirelessly for gay marriage for a long time—you must be very proud of California.
I’m now a certified wedding minister. I’ve been working for years for marriage equality, so now to switch gears and perform ceremonies is really profound and gratifying.

Lets talk a little about sexism in the comedy world. Christopher Hitchens famously said in a Vanity Fair essay that women cannot be funny, then the magazine backtracked and did a “Women in Comedy” issue as penance.
I don’t know why anyone would think that women aren’t funny. That makes me sad for him that he’s missing out on a whole lot of funny. My favorite comedians are women. Wanda Sykes is a fucking genius!

Amen to that. Hollywood keeps making the same unfunny movie with Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, and Mike Myers.
Funny women are always the second banana. We don’t get given the opportunities since it’s all so male-driven. Give us the chance!

Hitchens argued lamely that women don’t need to be funny because they have boobies and are pretty.
I think men should be pretty and women should be funny.

That brings us to your new stand-up show, Beautiful. I heard you got the idea when a radio interviewer asked you how it would be if you woke up one day and were beautiful. I hope you smacked the son of a bitch.
He asked, “What if you woke up tomorrow and were beautiful?” I was like, “What do you mean, what if, bitch?” He said, “If you were blonde, blue eyes, 5’11”, 100 pounds?” I was like, “I probably wouldn’t get up because I’d be too weak to stand.” What the fuck kind of shit is that? That attitude is so stupid—and you’re missing out on so much beauty if that is your ideal. It’s boring. The show is about that, but it’s also really funny and really raunchy. As I get older I just get raunchier and raunchier.

You use your blog to come to the defense of the indefensible. You declare your love of Tila Tequila, for instance.
She’s like my daughter. I said hello to her at the Bravo A-List Awards. I think she’s great. She’s adorable, like my spiritual daughter. She’s Asian, queer, tattooed, and funny. I love what she’s doing. It’s hilarious to see lesbians and straight men fighting over her, all while eating pigs’ vaginas.

People took you to task for defending Britney walking around in her bloody period panties.
Okay, that has happened to me and every other woman millions of times. It was disgusting that someone took a picture and tried to make it all about Britney’s character. Bitch, that happens to everybody.

Oh, come on! She was asking for it, displaying it for the paparazzi. She wasn’t wearing any pants at the time!
So? So what! Whatever—big fucking deal. I don’t care. Leave Britney alone!

I’ll give you this—there is a little sexist schadenfreude going on there, because you know that right now Justin Timberlake has skid-marks in his tighty whities. He’s just not offering the world a glimpse.
You know he does! He likes to paint the town brown just like everybody else. Sometimes we all need some baby wipes, honey.

from RADAR 2008, photo by Austin Young

in case you missed this, my HuffPo chat with the brilliant and hilarious Miss Sandra Bernhard;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garry/sandra-bernhard_b_871326.html

I am in love with this country…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garry/lollapaloozers-guide-to-c_b_839124.html

UPDATE: RIP Sweet Jeanne Bice-you will be missed

The fashion world wishes it was having as much fun (and profits) as Quacker Factory’s Jeanne Bice;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garry/jeanne-bice-quacks-me-up_b_836528.html

Paul Verhoeven

By Greg Garry

The most shocking thing about Black Book, the new film by Hollywood’s most subversive sci-fi and smut peddler Paul Verhoeven, is how old fashioned it is. There’s none of the stylized bone crunching of Robocop, the fascist fly swatting of Starship Troopers, or the gynecological glories of Basic Instinct and Showgirls, perhaps the last true camp classic.  Instead this beautifully made WW2 yarn harkens back to the features Paul made in his native Holland in the seventies, like Turkish Delight and Solider of Orange.  The plot deals with the story of Rachel, a young Jewish woman who literally em-beds herself with the Nazis to spy for the Dutch resistance.  It plays like a John Wayne war epic crossed with a Joan Crawford weepie.  That said, I doubt Mommie Dearest would’ve submitted to the full frontal pubic hair bleaching scene, or the scat-astic shot of ingénue Carice van Houten’s naked torso being doused in a shower of shit.  That’s the Verhoeven I love!  Hopefully that evil genius pops up again in his next project, the cold war noir The Winter Queen.  We chatted recently about Black Book, poop, and politics.

****

Flaunt-So, you went back to Holland to make Black Book.  Have you gotten fed up with Hollywood’s bullshit?

PV- I was looking for a project to do and couldn’t find the right story.   I’ve been talking about the kernel of Black Book for nearly 20 years with my longtime screenwriter Gerard Soeteman.  It didn’t feel right until we decided to make the protagonist female, like a Mata Hari.

 You’re a genius at casting-giving big breaks to Rutger Hauer, Peter Weller, Sharon Stone, and, um, Elizabeth Berkeley.  Where did you find Carice van Houten?

I had only seen one Dutch movie of hers, Minoes, in which she played a cat, so I wasn’t thinking of her for this (laughs.)  She came in and tested and she was Rachel.  Without her I couldn’t have made this movie.  

You put her through the ringer in this one. Did you use real shit in the prison scene?

She so dreaded doing that, and unfortunately we had to do 3-4 takes.  It was made of chocolate, cotton and water-it looks good enough.  But it still smelled awful and she vomited once I think.

How are relations with Joe Esterhasz?

We still exchange Christmas cards, he sends me photographs of his children. We’re not enemies-there’s no animosity left.  There’s even a possibility we will work again, because we have something very special together. He’s a very strange fellow!

What did you think about the Basic Instinct 2?

I was asked to be involved but I felt it needed an actor on the level of Michael Douglas to play opposite Sharon, to pull that performance out of her.  But they didn’t have the money to hire a George Clooney type-Sharon got it all!  It was a pity I was right-it didn’t work.

I trust you’ve heard they’re making a Showgirls musical?

I heard about that!  It has nothing to do with me though-I don’t write showtunes.  MGM is prepping a tv series based on Showgirls,  and I was asked to be involved a few weeks ago.  For a movie that was so hated initially, people seem to like it now.  When I accepted all these Raspberry awards, Worst Movie, Worst Director…

Wait just a minute-you actually showed up to receive them?!  Wow, you’re a good sport.

Yeah, why the hell not.  At the ceremony people recited all the lines!  It’s a strange movie in the middle of my work.  At the time it was received so badly but in retrospect it really works, and is a lot of fun.

It’s an American trash pop masterpiece. Once last question: How surreal is it that your Total Recall star is your governor now?

I loved working with him.  He’s very good with people-very social.  That makes for a good politician!  His politics are quite different than mine, but that has nothing to do with my admiration for him.  He’s doing some great things for California, like stem cell research, the environmental issues.  Not so much in education though.

Does he give you a big tax break?

No- unfortunately he can’t do that.  

Photograph by Emily Shur (who has a Robocop painting over her bed)

My interview on HuffPo with the great PJ Harvey, talking about her album LET ENGLAND SHAKE:

Peeking at photographer Naomi Harris’ balls-out new book America
Swings is like watching an Animal Planet channel show on the mating
habits of gorillas, albeit ones with receding hairlines, beer guts and
cellulite. For five years, Harris documented the horny hijinks of
people involved in the “lifestyle,” and all kinds of bizarre couplings
are on vivid display in her simultaneously hilarious and horrifying
images. In swinging reality, sex is seldom Hollywood pretty, but Naomi
is quick to praise their hygiene. “They may have hairy backs, but when
it comes to cleaning out their bits, they are waxed and meticulous,”
she defends.  ”They’re forever douching and brushing their teeth.”

Harris’s lens has the gaze of a dirty Dorothea Lange or Diane Arbus.  One
drunken couple fucks in a bathtub while a sausage pizza rests greasily
on the nearby toilet seat.  A librarian-looking lady wipes jets of jizz off
her eyeglasses and into her mouth.  A rather large woman with saggy breasts
is chased by a golf cart with a huge blowup penis attached to the front.
In the most Arbus-ian moment, a camping nude couple enjoy the sun, a
box of Franzia wine and a bowl of cherries.  ”People asked if I set
that shot up-but life is weirder and better than you can fake!”
Sometimes God is the best art director.

How does a good Jewish girl from Toronto find herself embedded in
America’s sweaty sexual underbelly? While at a nude beach in Miami
she had a chance encounter with a swinger named Roger, who took her to
her first swinger party, and she found her naughty muse.  ”It was the
funniest thing I’d ever seen.  Naked people lined up around a massive
buffet, eating piles of roast beef and potatoes, and then twenty
minutes later having an orgy.  I’d never seen anyone besides myself
have sex before.  Here I was in the room with all these average mom
and dad types, just going at it.  I’d never seen an extensive project
just on swinging before, so I thought I’m doing this!”   Harris
traveled all over the lower 48 to as many parties as she could, with
names like Swingstock, Charliewood, and the Mandingo Club, where white
housewives line up to be pounded out by super donged black men while their husbandswatch.  Harris plans to do a documentary on this extreme sub-sect of an already wild scene.

Naomi’s photos did cause some family tension.  ”I didn’t speak to my
Dad for eight months-my parents were not happy and wish I did a nice
girl project instead.  Once I started getting acclaim for the photos
and had a piece on London’s National Portrait Gallery, they came
around. They hate the subject matter, but they’re thrilled that I have
a book!”  Her father didn’t need to worry too much because aside from
the wife and fluid swapping, Harris found the people were inherently
decent.  They’re usually married and from traditional Christian
upbringings, but just happen to take glee in breaking the tenth
commandment ad infinitum-thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
Harris was also impressed by the sense of community. “It’s not just
about sex-it’s friendship.  There’s a deep level of intimacy, knowing
each other in the biblical sense.  I heard one couple’s house had
burned down and they all got together for an old fashioned barn raising to rebuild it for them.”

It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops.  She did fear for her well being
a few times, especially when the parties were deep in Florida’s
swamplands or when she encountered ass-grabby drunken guests.  ”I
would text my editor and friends the addresses in case they never
heard from me again.  I pictured them finding my skeleton in 25 years,
still clutching my camera!”  Her vanilla eyes were opened to a few new
sex acts she’s yet to try.  She saw anal and vaginal fisting, people
zapping each other’s junk with mini tazers called violent wands, and
skin branding with wire hangers heated on stoves.  ”The worst thing
was once I slept at a party since I shot all night, and when I woke up
there was a used condom at the foot of the bed.  I was like, this is
so not my life!”

Naomi, a pretty brunette and Catherine Keener doppelganger, found all
the furious humping put her own libido on ice.  ”Its slowly coming
back.  I used to think I could be one of those people that could do
group sex, from this project I’ve decided I’m a one person monogamous
creature.  Besides, a lot of the people I saw looked a little bored by
it all.”  That said the no longer naïve Naomi does want to add one
pussy parlor trick to her boudoir repertoire.  ”I really want to learn
how to squirt,” she laughs, referring to the elusive art of female
ejaculation.  ”I’ve seen a few girls do it and wish I could too!”
That sounds like a book, too.

America Swings, with an introductory chat between Naomi & artist Richard Prince, is out now from Taschen Books.  

www.taschen.com.
www.naomiharris.com.

I’m a cutie, cutie patootie