I recently watched a TV drama over the Festive Period, called ‘The Girl’, all about Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock, and his terrible abuse of a young, vulnerable actress. He basically terrorised her on set, sexually and mentally, during the filming of The Birds, and beyond.
It got me thinking of all the horrific stories I’d heard over the years from young girls, friends, who had suffered abuse, not quite at the Jimmy Savile level, but similarly, on their supposed way up from the casting couch – does that abhorrent, antiquated Old Hollywood scenario still exist? Aspiring to be an actress, still leaves scars, so it seems.
Audrey Hepburn had a tough time, as did Grace Kelly – I heard this through my friend Michael Guinzburg’s mother, New York actress Rita Gam, (who was at one point married to acclaimed director, Sidney Lumet) and was Grace’s teenage friend and bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Michael, a revered novelist, and film script-writer, now based in LA, told me stories to turn my hair prematurely grey.
One of my best friends, Joanna Pickering, has been plying her trade in the acting world since graduating from the Lee Strasberg School of Method Acting in New York City in the mid 2000’s, and I thought it would be interesting if I could get some of her stories or thoughts down into print.
Having known Joanna since her teenage years, I can surmise, I was dealing with the ultimate wild child – and there were lots of girls in London at the time, vying for that position, in the early 2000’s. For better or worse, most often worse, I have watched her crawl out of the pits of hell whether from a council flat in North London, or vacating the opulent environs of Kensington, under-cover of the night.
Gary Powell, Libertines’ drummer regularly appeared in my house at 4am with Joanna, in a red snoopy-dog jumper, as was his non-Libertines’ look at the time. On one occasion, I remember he relieved me of my treasured copy of Jennifer Clements’ Jean-Michel Basquiat biographies. I’ve never seen it since. He always referred to her as ‘Holly’. I think he’d been watching too many Hollywood tearjerkers, and perhaps watched her break into my house through the window, one too many times. I could never understand this, as she had a luxury studio-apartment five minutes from mine, up by Maida Vale Tube, on Randolph Avenue. It appeared she hadn’t been paying attention to monthly rent bills for some time. She was three month’s behind!
left: balcony in West End, Glasgow, photograph taken by Innes, 2012
“Oh, but why do I have to? She would opine.
Later, when her Trans-Atlantic passages became the norm, with visas running out, I became used to the random phone call – then the arrival at some ungodly hour, but always accompanied by a choice Malt. She was always very generous – I remember one time she sent me a bottle of Whisky online from Sainsbury’s, whilst she was a resident of Los Angeles, on my birthday!
left : cool as fuck, Joanna in Glasgow 2012
She didn’t need too much looking after, not really.
Access to a bath, was always a welcome requirement, to cleanse her from all the scum she managed to amass in numerous unsavoury NYC apartments over the months.
“I love the shadows from the veil curtains, can’t you photograph me?”
I cooked dinner nightly, and considering one so thin, I was always amazed at how much she could put away. I think this is when I started calling her ‘the giant termite’ – I would go to bed, there would be food in the fridge/freezer etc – next morning nothing was left, and I literally mean ‘nothing’– just like being swooped upon by a swarm of termites!
Left : Innes Reekie and Joanna Pickering, London 2011
Finally the night would end with some European Cinema – I would always try to think of procuring things she hadn’t seen, prior to her arrival. She always was well-sussed in the movie department.
I remember subjecting ourselves to massive Fassbinder evenings; attempting to watch Berlin Alexderplatz in its entirety – it may have taken a week – it is 23 hours of screening by the way. We’d get through Fox and his Friends, Veronika Voss, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. We watched Germany in Autumn, as she’d become infatuated with Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff, the whole Red Army Faction scenario.
We’d watch Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and cry; Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Odd Couple, and laugh; we’d watch everything – pretty much all of Abel Ferarra’s output in one night, then just look at each other, as if to say – what the fuck was that about?.
In a good way. But extreme. I showed her a lot of French films made before her time Le Souffle au Couer, Olivier, Olivier – she became fascinated with Beatrice Dalle’s character Betty Blue – that hit a nerve (and now her blog is written under that nom de plume (http://thebrownandskinny.blogspot.co.uk/).
We then poured over Passolini’s early movies, the madness of Jodorowski’s El Topo and Santa Sangre, and marveled at the scope of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. We adored Bunuel’s surrealist visionary method with, oh, almost everything he ever made, and Pedro Almododovar’s gay paens to a Spain, once controlled by Fascists, now made outrageously playful by a master of the game. We also loved Kiewslowski for his Eastern European short films about Loving, and Killing, and his three Colours trilogy; we loved the madness of Leo Carax and the young Juliette Binoche in Boy meets Girl….. Actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Isabelle Adjani. Her favourite actresses? Easy, she replies –
“Charlotte Rampling, Julie Christie, Tilda Swindon, Jessica Lange, Emanuelle Riva, Anna Karina, Francoise Dorleac…for today”
In response to her requests always for something “more disturbing!” – we loved Herzog, so therefore, his bizarre relationship with Klaus Kinski, although the recent child rapist allegations against Kinski would go well to change any admiration.
Latterly, we awaited every release by Michael Haneke with childish festive expectation, knowing we would be shocked, like the old Hammer Horror films did to me as a child on a Friday night. Then we saw Lilya 4 Ever, then Import/Export, and I am sure I’m right in saying ‘A Serbian Film’ certainly crossed the line – it was like horror/porn, and deeply disturbing.
We also loved old school, like Nick Roeg/Donald Cammel’s Performance with Jagger and Edward Fox; and new school copyists like Paul McGuigan’s Gangster No.1. We liked directors like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, but were totally ambivalent to substandard tosh being touted by the likes of Guy Ritchie at the time. Also Shane Meadow’s dark portrayals of urban British life on the streets of Nottingham was something that couldn’t be ignored.
Throughout, we listened to Patti Smith’s Horses, Television’s Marquee Moon and Richard Hell and the Voidoid’s Blank Generation. I introduced Ze Records into the mix - stuff like Cristina and James White/Contortions – It was then I got the impression New York City was calling. Piss Factory playing on repeat should have given it away as an early sign.
left : screen photo on set in NYC playing lead as Genevieve an escort girl
Years later, and Joanna has just wrapped filming on Alan Mcgee’s and Dean Cavanagh’s new experimental film, Kubriks, and is about to embark upon a remake of revered director, Strinberg’s Dance of Death, with award winning Swedish directors. Additionally, she has offers from interesting experimental independent projects from all corners of the world. What’s more, she has done all this without an agent.
The Alan McGee introduction to Joanna, and mine to her, actually, came about through one of these Kevin Bacon ‘six degrees of separation’ situations. I didn’t know it then, but filming and cinema were already on the agenda for ‘the girl’.
We met for the first time in the early 90’s. I was working for Loaded Magazine at the time, and many of us were caught up in what could be termed a ‘culture of extremism’ – then again it went with the territory if you were juggling money through journalism, and other things, in these dark days of relentless hedonism, unsure of when and where the car-crash would actually happen, and where it would end. I was having an on-off affair with a girl; one which had seen us evacuated from my third floor flat in Edinburgh one Sunday evening, by fire engine platform, after some idiot had set fire to the refuse bags on the ground floor – we only were made aware of this after finally hearing the screams below, and perhaps the sirens. Anyway, I digress, myself and the girl escaped unscathed, and probably carried on with whatever we were doing prior to this potentially life-threatening event. Following this, said girl did not seem phased, and had in fact then decided I should meet some of her friends.
left : Joanna Pickering : photo gustaf heden
I agreed to meet up in Glasgow with what I’ll call the three Joannas, although, one was in fact a Kylie. Alan McGee was DJing, Poptones was having an opening night, I had been invited, the girls were up for a night out! We booked into a Travel-Lodge near the Clyde, and headed out into the night.
Skirting over the early evening, Alan invited me to an after-party at a different venue. We showed up – no guest list, I argued we were on it. McGee finally shows up and says he thought I was taking the piss, me and three girls!! We go in, it was full of little Creation stripey T-shirt wannabe’s, then again, I was possibly one of them. As the night moves to its end, McGee invites us all back to his Malmaison Hotel suite. The girls all end up lounging like cats all over his bed-space – we talk about music for about six seconds, then we get onto movies, which was far more interesting – he drinks diet coke, I do the mini-bar – that was McGee’s introduction to Joanna Pickering. I tell him all three are in a band called The Volleyball Girls – he wants to sign them straight off to Poptones. Or so the chat goes. Joanna says she can’t sing. Mcgee says it doesn’t matter – who can? The night ends with the three girls tucked-up in the double bed, back by The Clyde, and me upside down in the shower. In the morning we go our separate ways.
left : at work : modelling in London
A few months later, I hear Joanna had at this time moved to London – of this I was unaware, yet I had landed there too in 2000. Around 2002, I had accompanied a South London band called Archive to Brittany, to Luc Besson’s castle/mansion and film/recording studios, having been appointed head of their PR. It was the setting of his Joan of Arc film, starring his then wife, Milla Jojovich, so was quite exciting, as we all had our own personal medieval cottage in the grounds. Archive were doing the Original Soundtrack for Besson’s movie Le Mans, and it was going to take a while, organizing a full orchestra in the studio over several days. One evening, the guys from Archive flew by helicopter for an appearance on a Paris TV show with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Charlotte Gainsbourg – I was playing pool with Luc’s mum, drinking Pastis, when I get a text from Joanna – she’s in France too, Cannes I think it was, perhaps Monaco, or maybe it was both.
left : day off in New York City, Coney Island 2012 Photo John Scrafton
“IS IT TRUE? YOU’RE IN FRANCE! I’M AT PARTY AT PIERRE CARDIN’S VILLA. CAVE IN CLIFFS. PLUS SHARK POOL. GETAWAY NEEDED. FANCY MEETING AT DEATH DISCO LONDON INSTEAD?
Ok, so, not your average invite out, but we now have contact.
Next day, I fly back to London in IE Music’s (the guys who used to manage Roxy Music, now Archive, and ahem, Robbie Williams’ management team) private jet, to Southampton, (wonderful, Champagne on the runway, two bottles, and neither of the other two are allowed to drink – well one is managing director – a recovering alcoholic, the other is the PA – she was not allowed to partake), but I get Mercedesed to central London from Southampton, and dropped off somewhere near Shepherds’ Bush, when another text comes through. It’s a beautiful, warm London evening, it’s cool being back, and I’m just attempting to put the last few days together, and find some kind of perspective, as it’s been a somewhat surreal week to say the least, then – Jesus Fucking H – Life will never be the same again!
left : down and out living in RV downtown NYC photo Gustaf Heden (probably the one showing it is parked in NYC in background better)
INNES! LETS TEAR THIS TOWN TO BITS, IT’S A FOREST FIRE – LONDON NEEDS A GOOD KICKING. LONDON’S BURNING!
My original memory of meeting Joanna that first night in London, is on Portobello Road, near to Notting Hill Gate, The Prince of Wales or something, nothing trendy, just a bar. That’s when we began our ‘occupation’ of Death Disco, Alan McGee’s club. It was originally called Radio 4, again after the Public Image song, along with his then record label Poptones. I DJ’d at Radio 4 a few times, and pretty sure it is where I first met The Hives, and Dan Treacy of the Television Personalities, who has since become a friend, and that is a story in itself. I managed bands in these days, so I was there every week, pretty much. I had Tigermoth and Junkbox playing every other week! I remember helping Tabitha and Mairead from Queenz of Noise upstairs with their records one night I was DJing.
It was mayhem down there in these days. Joanna was banned pretty early on, for some petty misdemeanor, and eventually for life – apparently, only Courtney Love and Bobby Gillespie had previously been banned for life, and since Joanna broke back in, it made things ten times worse. I was too – none of us actually did anything bad, just said the wrong thing at the wrong time, to the wrong person – because it was a ‘personality’ hot-bed, they were pretty precious about protecting their celebrity clientelle. Not McGee I may add – I think he welcomed it. In fact, he encouraged it!
I was living in Maida Vale then, Joanna was living in a posh apartment in Kensington, when not in South of France – the 31 bus serviced us perfectly as it ran through Kensington to Camden Town, via Notting Hill, and it skirted past Maida Vale on the Kilburn boundary. Then again, she never used buses, it was always taxis.
“Darling, please, I’ll pay”.
No queues, no buses – although she was more than happy to time her exit from Death Disco with the milk float at 6am and hitch from Notting Hill to Maida Vale, sitting in the back drinking her free bottle of milk, occasionally losing an expensive shoe.
One Wednesday evening, after only a few nights out, and before she has been banned, I get a frantic voice message that will stand out to this day in my mind
“It’s Joanna, I’m in the middle of some heavy shit. I need help to get out, do you know anyone who could come with a car, before dawn…no joke…”
This is when alarm bells first started really ringing, not for the first time, but now I couldn’t ignore them. But what does one do – I care for ‘the girl’, and want her safe, so I pull out all the stops to make that happen. I call round all the young kids in the bands I was managing at the time looking for a driver and car, and of course, they say they’ll be there to help out. One of them already has a missing front tooth from a night out in Miss Pickering’s company, not apparently her doing, and they are not put off. I return the call, and confirm all is well, and I’ve organized her moving – she can stay with me for a short period until she sorts it all out.
“Wonderful, daahling’”, she says “I’m all packed up and ready to go, tell you what – let’s all of us meet at Death Disco and then we can get them to drive over and collect my few cases on the way home, but first I’ll get you all some drinks as a thank you”.
Lovely gesture, but as usual, it was financed by some band’s drink tokens, and poor Danny Watson’s bar tab, regular DJ, driving home that night, and obviously not drinking. He certainly didn’t consume in excess of 20 Dark Rum and Cokes!
By now, in a way, she has become a legend in her own right, at Death Disco, and that’s where one chapter inevitably ends. She was hanging out with The Libertines, and all the other faces that were regulars at the time – Bobby Gillespie, Liam Gallagher, Bonehead, Sadie Frost, Jackson Scott, Har Mar Superstar, Rolan Bolan, Kings Of Leon, and even the small one from Take That had taken a liking to her – he came up to her waist…she’s about 6ft 4 inches in high heels. Meanwhile I’m happy to spend my time talking absolute nonsense with the effervescent radio presenter, Jane Gazzo, then with BBC 6 Music.
It gets to closing time, and as always, it’s that ‘”can’t we stay for one more, do we really have to leave.” Joanna had that look in her eyes. I looked at her, and said, “it’s your possessions we have to move – it’s after 3am”. “Oh that’s easy…it’s all ready. Let’s have one more, I’ll get them in”
And it’s not like I’ve ever turned down a drink before.
We finally left, around 5am. I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into.
It was a bloody mess, as only a girl’s flat can be. Beautifully situated, just off the opulent environs of Kensington High Street, yet I seem to remember we had to enter the first floor property by a ladder, and through a window. Something I thought was a bad idea, in our inebriated state. Apparently there were no keys. I was confronted by more clothes than I have ever seen, it was like a flea market, no less than 25 shoe boxes had been stacked by the door, nothing else had been packed. It was after 6am, there were clothes in the bath tub, the kitchen hob was covered in opened, or empty CD boxes, there was underwear hanging on the door handles, and still, she was adamant she was in danger from “shady types”, and by default, I was too! Bit by bit I started to see that, what could so easily could be bullshit on her part – this actually, could be real.
I shouted, Joanna “this is a disgrace, what are we doing” – she sat down, lit a Vogue cigarette, and said “have a glass of red wine darling, and relax will you, we’ve got until dawn.”
With Patti Smith’s Horses on at maximum volume, we got it done – 5 car loads of clothes, Japanese art, sculptures, CDs, and box after box of shoes – Joanna, emerges from her boudoir, giggling, wearing a feather boa, in some designer dress, and is giving all her possessions away – printers, fax machine, Chanel perfume, Dior handbags to these kids, some she has only just met, but have come to help, God bless them!.
“Oh darling, just have it…and I must come to your next gig! I’m simply having the best night!”
That was how I first fully got to know Joanna Pickering. She lived with me for a while, she was very quiet, she would lie up on the perch, my (elevated) bed in Maida Vale, and read every book I had, not coming down for week, month, maybe it was months. I don’t know really – the weeks did become months – she wasn’t too enthusiastic about anything at that time – just consumed in literature, and the odd gig and a film we could actually be bothered showing up for.
We’d been going to house parties in Bethnal Green, watching this band – and I remember going to some place in Royal Oak, Cherry Jam, to see The Libertines, think it was the night Rough Trade signed them. Things got bigger, after the first album, I remember hearing Can’t Stand Me Now on Rough Trade’s James Endeacot’s iPpod in the back of a Merc Taxi – it was all going off big time with The Libertines, and the second album was yet to be released. I recall Mcgee phoning me to ask something, then changing his mind. It transpired it was to help manage The Libertines, but he’d thought better of it, “You and Pete would be disastrous together.” And that was the ‘end’ of us messing it up in London – She had a vision, it was 2006, I’d lost my vision – She went to New York City, I shoulda gone to specsavers.
From then on, she has carved her own path, fiercely fighting for her own identity in art – wanting to do it on her own – from Death Disco in Notting Hill, to the Libertines days in Whitechapel, Bethnal Green and Kentish Town; her overnight flits in Kensington, to Maida Vale, Camden Town, Brick Lane, where she let the bath run and the ceiling caved in. Then it was Warwick Avenue, it was Primrose Hill, then further afield – it was Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, then as is often now, Edinburgh or Glasgow then again, for her, it has been New York City. It has been acting and it has been incredible writing, which amazingly has reminded me of Black-American writers like Charles Perry (Portrait of a Young Man Drowning) – they’ve both written wonderful accounts of living in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. He died in 1969, but unwittingly it seems, she’s picked up that baton – to tell it how it is, no matter how bad it is, and how white she is, and no matter how desperate – someone needs to commentate, and Joanna has that capacity.
left : Joanna Pickering : in apartment in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, 2009, photo Dustin McSwane
What follows is an interview based on my knowing Joanna throughout these adventures from Berlin, Barcelona, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York, and some of the many photographs I have from our times together – me always behind the lens, her upfront….
“Just take another one will you…”
London in 2004/2005 was a pretty happening place – bands were happening, new models were coming onto the scene, films were being made, it all gelled somehow – you and I managed to secure minor acting roles on Nathan Barley, a series directed by Chris Morris. It was a pretty vibrant time in London, yet, that is when you chose to leave. Can you put it into words for me?”
“It can’t have been that vibrant, as I remember very little of it! I do remember going to a lot of gigs, which were cool, mainly at The Brixton Academy. I saw Television, Iggy, The Stones, and Patti Smith live as well as all the new bands. I remember I took you to see The New York Dolls at The Royal Festival Hall and enroute, on the tube, you took a handful of Valium and Librium from a guy, in stilettos and tight leather pants, and they kicked in on the second strum of Sylvain Sylvain’s guitar. You were carried out over everyone’s heads, missed the whole thing, while I got to meet David Johansen – as Gary [Powell] was drumming for them. Shortly after that reunion gig, Arthur Kane died, and you were devastated. I remember sneaking in through the cracks in your windows with a 20 ft drop below whenever I’d locked myself out. I had great balance – luckily I was a ballet dancer when I was younger. But I don’t recall meeting any acting people Innes. Everyone was in a band, or just hanging around being fucked up – I realise now actors are pretty focused people, they like to get sleep and do stuff like breathe properly. No one was sleeping. It was The Libertines days. It was a mess. I was going to Filthy McNasty’s or, later, Gerry O’Boyle’s bar Boogaloo in Highgate, The Duke of Clarence. I block out The Rhythm Factory, it was a crack den. Oh, did I tell you – I had to go there to meet Texas Bob [TVPs] just the other month, as I was filming in London…turns out Pete Doherty was supposed to play, I couldn’t believe it, nothing had changed, everyone was in the back room completely comatosed, setting fire to themselves with burning fags, and he still hadn’t shown up, but they were still waiting, a decade on, just as fucked up. I lasted 3 minutes. Clearly 3 minutes more than Mr. Doherty.”
“I do believe at the beginning it was about the music though… London felt alive, and instead of loving music from a scene that went on, say in New York in 1970s, punk, or post-punk before I was born – and even now, knowing some of my heroes – say The Fire Engines, Russell [Burn] and Davy Henderson, I still missed it happen musically, but this for me was London right then. It was alive with energy and magic, [Laughs] and yeah, there were a lot of drugs going around. Looking back it was probably just a big bundle of every fucking disorder going, but at the onset it was about the music, and it was fun – we were always laughing, you know when we weren’t crying or screaming or being evicted – we were laughing. I spent my final earnings in a shit hole in north London doing absolutely nothing in months. I presume that must be a luxury to most. I remember Mcgee saying he had found the next greatest band [ie The Libertines] but the only problem was he would have to find a way to keep one of them alive. It descended into hell. It quickly became time to go elsewhere and do whatever you could to make life work and survive.”
So, we begin to piece it all together – the past, which is a difficult thing for friends to do – and the present, always easier with strangers, and the future, never easy on any basis – especially with a microphone running, regardless, we decide to continue.
I remember, Death Disco, was the place we gelled, as friends. I got banned as well, we weren’t that bad, but seemingly you broke in, what’s your story?
“Well I don’t think I had a balaclava and a pneumatic rock demolition hammer, if that’s what people mean! Things get exaggerated and out of context. The security were typical security, we’re all at their mercy. Who knows, I don’t care. It’s old news. I’ll agree I didn’t have much concept of the necessity of boundaries when I was younger, but not in a threatening way, in the absolute free spirited way. Now I know some order and constraint is very important for your own creativity to flourish fully. I just hope when I’m dead, I’m cremated. I’d hate to spend eternity in a box, dead or not. I hate planes, tunnels, and lifts. Anyway, the point is my life is 100 per cent different from when I was a kid obviously. It’s seems certain I had a whole shit load of fun, drama, I’d come and go, I don’t remember the specifics. It’s another chapter. Shall we discuss my acting?”
Absolutely, but just lastly on the matter – Joanna, someone who was banned for life from Death Disco in London, then had moved to Los Angeles, to work on model shoots, yet then lands the job of setting up Death Disco LA – how the hell did that come about?
“Because Mcgee is bonkers!!! But he knows what he’s doing. People were queuing to get in, even just to see what would happen. Amy Winehouse was there, not so known at the time, with Kelly Osborne. Mcgee DJ’d with Dia Becker. The police closed us down around 4am for noise violation but that’s common in LA. It was cool … right up until the money blew all the way up sunset strip in the wind at 6am. I hate the fucking wind in LA. We – me, Ryan Heffington one of LA’s top dancers and choreographer, Peter Macleod and Gustaf [Heden], who I had arranged to play – none of us could catch it quick enough. It was a breathtaking surreal scene. It happened in slow motion. The sun was just coming up and hundreds of dollars were blowing in the wind. We only salvaged about 40 dollars of it. We were staying in a dodgy motel on Sunset Blvd and I had to tell Mcgee the next day, and I thought this seriously looks like I just blew it. But Mcgee was cool. He’d just seen a UFO so he was preoccupied with that. The night was a one-off because I went to Mexico City after that. Not because I don’t love LA, because I do, I have a tempestuous love affair of LA – I adore it’s sheer vastness– from it’s plastic people in billionaire’s palaces, you know, wearing nothing but a fur coat to swim at their pool parties, yet wander a few blocks down into a dive bar and you can twirl your fingers in the bullet holes in the mirror. It really is truly so fucking superficial though, I was getting by on model jobs, but in LA it’s all plastic surgery 19 years up. I was happier in Mexico City. I suggested Death Disco there, but Mcgee said he couldn’t be responsible for that.”
Okay, jumping back a bit, before you moved to the US to be down-and -out mostly, you had a pretty comfortable life in Europe. Why did you leave the South of France where you were earning so much money, and had a rather luxury lifestyle?
“Same reason I didn’t go and make a million on Wall Street with a degree in mathematics, because banking isn’t algebra which is like art, because where there is millions to make, there is bullshit and corruption. To be able to express myself and try to be honest to who I am, mattered to me far more than anything else, say like money. I learnt this about myself by default by destructing whenever success was happening to me without also having complete freedom with it. That’s when I made the transition into the dramatic arts. I knew I wanted to be an artist. It’s a far more valuable option to me. You know, the South of France certainly isn’t just about the free flowing champagne. “
Can you tell me anything about that? It certainly sounded decadent - remind me?
Yeah well – champagne, and yachts, and oysters, and Naomi Campbell’s birthday party in a helicopter to Nikki Beach. You know it was beautiful and glamorous and easy and sure for the first part I had the best time of my life. But what are you ignoring for that lifestyle? When you really open your eyes? Huge cracks started appearing – I wasn’t a celebrity, I was selling yachts and fast cars – a car sales person in a rich place. I saw stuff going on every level. . I saw the richest prostitutes in the world – you name it, gambling, casino’s, money laundering, tax scams, corruption. When you can sell ONE car for a million euros, that’s the level of money, and at that level it can be used to buy anything or anyone, it can buy silence, it can make people say things they don’t want, and everyone is corrupted, all hooked in, making their money off it, no way out. And if you don’t tow the line with corrupt people, you are in the firing line. The London scene was welcoming while I planned how to move from modeling into acting, and it was how I became good friends with Mcgee – he was fascinated by the stories at the time. I think he thought those stories were more insane than what he was dealing with his bands. He helped me get things in perspective. He said go to America, and don’t come back.”
So, you had a maths degree, straight from South of France, yet were mixing with musicians, actresses, when in London – did this have any bearing on your choice of Lee Strasberg in NYC?
“No, actually the idea to do acting as a living and not just for fun was cemented from being in the south of France. I was at the Cannes film festivals, because for a short period I was living at The Ritz Carlton (I know sorry sounds dreadfully conceited doesn’t it, if it’s any consolation I’ve lived out of trash bags and boxes for about 6 years ever since) and people in the hotel kept asking me to be in their film. You know, Harvey Weinstein would be at the next table. Most assumed because of my abode I was a high-hitting actress and I got offers all the time.
I can be quite cynical, and I assumed, for right or wrong, most would really be offers of disrepute – you know the Cannes porn film festival is the week after, and I saw actresses falling for that all the time “I’m a film director at the festival, wanna shoot on the beach” but they don’t say they mean the other festival. But anyway, it gave me the idea that acting may be good for me. I had no idea if I would be good for acting! But I wanted to do it the proper way, not by being in a bar indebted to the right person. Since the only experience of acting I could think I had, was life experience, I thought I better do Method. I went to Lee Strasberg’s school, who was the pioneer of the method, you know he plays Hyman Roth in Godfather II and coached Marlon Brando and Pacino….Meryl Streep, who else?…Paul Newman. Anyway, the only schools were in New York – LA – so that was just perfect as it put the Atlantic between me and everything I was trying to put behind me.”
Was it difficult to get into Lee Strasberg ?
“Yes! You have to interview, audition, write an essay to show you’re a dedicated actor, plus send professional acting references. I was in London and meeting up with Johny Brown the playwright – you know Johny – The Band of Holy Joy – who I’d met through the Scottish thread of connections of, Kylie Brennan, Tam Dean Burn and Irvine Welsh – Johny has backed my ability to act from the very beginning before I knew I could do it myself. “I’d cry, I can’t do it Johny”..and he’d say, [puts on Geordie accent] “eeee…but Joanna pet you can…your a natural…your brilliant” and he’d put me on the radio, on Resonance FM, performing in his plays, and started it all up. He wrote a play called The Thief, and since I was now broke, on the dole, and pretty much down and out, I had to occasionally steal, you know, a sandwich or something, and when I got the script, I had my first experience of making my own real life experience apply to a make believe script and feeling its validity. I realised I could assess whether I was doing truthful work. You can feel when it is real. Confidence then comes from that. So, Johny wrote my reference and I went to New York and now I’m an actress. Johny’s writing something at the moment for London stage. I will be honoured to perform for him anytime anywhere in the future.”
On arriving in NYC and taking up your place at Lee Strasberg, you were absolutely homesick and miserable beyond compare – at which point did it start becoming easier, and kinda become a home of sorts?
“The first days were amazing, I felt significantly young, naive …nervous, kind of child-like. It’s always a treasured feeling when that happens. I was about to be knocked over by the traffic every fucking second you know, on the wrong side, and the noise, yeah it was totally cool, you know exactly how it should be, like in the movies. This dream of the Big Apple and Gotham, and all this hot steam blowing up over the streets. But I knew absolutely no-one. I soon felt I was lost in this giant frenetic concrete metropolis, I was wandering with no direction where everyone else had such pace. I tried to connect with my acting students on my course, but, on the surface it felt they had no …well I guess life experience. The teachers would be like “ok, so how does you character feel, say about kissing this woman” in a taboo scenario – and using sense memory, but everyone would be blushing and hiding saying they had none. Sense memory is pretty defunct if you can’t open up or live out something, and the teacher would be screaming “what, you’ve never even THOUGHT about kissing someone of the same sex… …”NO!” … “you’ve never even had an affair your not supposed to.. NO!.. “never even THOUGHT about having an affair…you’ve never had one illicit thought in your whole entire fucking lives? The teachers are great successful performers themselves, but yeah, I saw them as teachers, then myself…so I didn’t feel I connected with anyone at first. My only friends were bands coming in from UK or that I had met in the UK and were touring with their gigs in NYC, so I’d have the greatest time for a few days, and then everyone would leave again.
Then, I think Razorlight were playing their first NYC gig. Johny Borrell was snaking his way horizontally down the actual bar, off stage, in a pair of skin tight white jeans and his top off trying to be Iggy Pop. Really desperate to win over the USA. It was strange as USA audiences kind of just stand there, so all these drinks were going flying as he pulled out all the stops. In the UK the audience would have tried to set him on fire or join in. Anyway his press team were in town and Ritu Morton [607 press] – I remember she texted me saying ‘I’m buying shoes all the way down 5th avenue let’s meet’ …and she introduced me to Liz Vap [Feralcat Production]. I remember she said, “if there’s one girl you need to know in New York City, this is the one”. Liz and I hit it off and she invited me to all these amazing New York based events. Suddenly it was just the greatest place in the world – fast, lively, opportunity everywhere. In return I introduced Miss Vap to slippery nipples – the drink – which she has never forgiven me for, and then, I met my other close friend, Abbey Braden, at The Hives’ gig.
She was photographing the band, and I tripped over her camera case, and then we kind of arranged she would do my headshot. My school was telling me I needed about ten thousand dollars for a fucking photograph of myself, anyway, Abbey did a great one. I bought her a slippery nipple instead and it probably went free on a bar tab. People just finally came together. The whole scene was around The Dark Rooms in those days. Soon after, I worked out New York is just one tiny village, for real, you just bump into everyone, all the time. It’s a fucking nightmare.
Where were you living, with whom, and how did you deal with your day to day existence?
“I’ve lived all over New York. Starting first in Manhattan, uptown, downtown, and moving further out until I was living in Bedford-Stuyvesant a few years ago before proper gentrification. That was horrific for me. I’ve lived in an RV with no water and electricity downtown in East Village – hey, but it still picked up Wifi! Some idiot sprayed Lou Reed and Patti Smith all over the van and we had to scrub it off. I’ve lived with mice – but I prefer mice to cats anyway – and cockroaches, they are just so fucking vile. It’s been quite harrowing. To get by, I lived pretty much as described in “Just Kids” it’s not so unique, Patti Smith’s talent and the success is astonishingly unique, obviously, but the story of daily existence is just what any attempting artist does to get by in the city, you can read on my blog from years ago. Being down and out in another country is a fucking harrowing and hellish journey. Finally model work and European films have helped get me on my feet, but it’s only started to look up properly in the last year or so.”
You started off doing lots of low-budget films to break in?
“First I just made a load of mistakes. Fucking up auditions, I mean really badly. I had to leave LA where I was first doing auditions, as I literally learnt what to do in them. I seemed to get offered every job that required a full body shot, such is the overlap with model to acting. I got a role in London with some BBC directors in London and arsed it. I was cast to play a painters muse but had to be topless in the scenes, but there were no lines, even though they kept telling me it was a prominent role, so I had accepted.
But the night before filming I freaked out, and thought I’m not taking my fucking top off if I don’t even have a fucking line, so I mailed and said I need lines, and they said there was none, so I said I’m not doing it, and the guy, well within his right on my timing, wrote back and said I was the most unprofessional actress he had ever come across and I would never work at that high level (BBC) again, and I had screwed up the entire thing and my career was over. You know, I didn’t even know you can get your tits out on the BBC, or he was making his own project when not at the BBC, but it’s all true.
They were definitely filming me topless on set whether it was to be implied I don’t know – well obviously I don’t because I didn’t turn up. Looking back, maybe he didn’t even work for the BBC…how the fuck does any actor know anything starting out? There is the internet as a medium, and you post a photo of how you look to strange people online. An agent won’t represent you, not at the beginning, even though they could officially protect you and secure reputable auditions, but they won’t touch you until you have enough acting work to reassure they’ll make money out of you. It’s all they care about. The union won’t look after you until you are classed as a working actor – so you need a certain amount of time on paid jobs first before they consider you. So, what does that leave? General acts of kindness! And was it not Syrus who wrote – “beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere.” I’m not being a dick, it’s a 1st century BC lesson, and it’s better in Latin, but basically, to accept favour is to sell your freedom.”
“And see, now you’ve got me started, because even the legit jobs, what a load of commercial bullshit is out there! You have no idea! I got cast as a character called Lotte playing a Scandinavian in a feature film backed through an MTV company I recall called The Lesbian Vampire Killers but when I read the script – yeah like the title wasn’t enough – I thought it was soft porn. The final scenes were topless all girl mud wrestling – so I told them to fuck off too. And 5 years later I was flying from LA to London and I swear to god it was on my Virgin Atlantic inflight entertainment listing. I hadn’t eaten for 2 days and was excited for my plane meal and then I saw it and just felt ill. But fuck it…it was what it was, who’s heard of those actors since?”
Okay, a lot of disappointment, and hey, like journalism these days, a lot of time spent, effort etc, but no money. How did you break through this stage?
“By doing embarrassing things stuck in the age bracket of roles 19-24. Completely tedious. I should have gone for the older roles when younger, and totally ignored this bull shit and imposed paralysis about how we are told to view age. As soon as I stopped applying, or grew out of the cheer-leading college girl aged roles, everything got interesting and I got handed sides for characters that were real, with problems and imperfections – stories to tell. Sides that I could play with a passion and belief that to me is what I think acting is about. You know – not this send a fucking full body shot.
My cousin Stephen bollocked me the other day for giving too serious interviews – like I’ve done how many… but anyway, he was very emphatic. And I thought about it – seriously – and there’s no fucking choice. If anyone had any idea of the crap behind the scenes in the acting world, I mean mostly for woman/girls, as I know, there’s no choice but to show you mean fucking business and you’re serious about doing it your way as a professional. I give too long answers? Maybe that’s what he meant.
Anyway, I just wrapped playing a 48 year old mother this week, and had wrinkles added, that was a really brave move. When the pictures came out, all the wind-up jokes started, you know I’ll never work again, should stick to being a stripper…but the girl I was working with, Nicole Ekenroad is a true talent, she wrote the film, acted as lead, produced and directed the film – it’s more important to be surrounded by talent. I honestly think it may be incredible, I loved the concept, based on a girl who thinks she is constantly in a Lars von Trier film, so almost homage to his work within hers, and retaining his style. Next week I play a 21 year old girl with bulimia, age doesn’t matter, we’re just told it does.”
Okay, and since you’ve returned from Argentina, you are involved in Kubriks, an experimental movie, produced by Alan McGee and written and directed by Dean Cavanagh and his son - just after your Buenos Aires tenure, give me a run through how that came about.
left : First photograph after accident on foot – (by the by – wished to be naked apart from the scar and something that was a symbol of defiance to the vanity of the model acting world (guitar), Buenos Aires apartment, 2012, photograph Gustaf Heden
“I was doing a tiny scene for Svengali and yes, in my under wear, but at least in the name of comedy and I had lines. So I’d been in touch with Mcgee. He is the lead in Svenagli with Jonathan Owen. Mcgee’s an incredible actor by the way, the camera does not phase him at all. Anyway, I was in a dark place having had a really serious accident to my foot that the South American hospitals had completely arsed up, resulting in 29 stitches and God know what other hell. No one realises how bad it was, but yeah it was bad. I had the curtains shut for weeks.
The landline kept ringing which was strange as no one knew I had that number, apart from Mcgee from arranging Svengali, but I couldn’t get the crutches co-ordinated in the dark quick enough to make it to the phone. After a few days I finally got there and answered, and this Scottish voice which sounds ten times more Scottish when your in South America and with almost one foot off and the curtains drawn in the pitch black, and he said “forget Svengali, I’m making films, I’ve got a film company, we want you in.”
I didn’t know what to say – I was standing on one foot in the dark, thinking I can’t walk, I’m not even allowed on a plane, but I can’t turn this down. I was excited, nervous. I kept asking Mcgee what it was about, and Mcgee kept saying, just be yourself, just be you. To a method actor you’re a lot of yourself from all different times, but you need one concrete decision to play an action – yet a real person is an array of hundred and thousands of things over a grand spectrum at any given moment. I was thinking which part of me do they want in the film. How the fuck do I play myself. Mcgee thought he was making me relax, screaming “just be yourself, you’re perfect” which truly remains the only direction I received from start to finish. So, I said send the script. And he said there isn’t one. And it kind of went from there.”
“I’ve had so many people tell me, but really you can’t keep working like this. It’ll make you look like the bad actor in the finished product if there’s not a powerful script – and about getting this golden script, and I do know all this, but you see I have a dark sense of humour, I gravitate towards the absurd and the unconventional, and 9 out of 10 times, I find more talent there anyway. These things just keep coming my way and they appeal to me. I mean, of course, I may never be able to work again [laughs], but I’d like to work for Dean again. He’ll have heart attack reading that. He’s still recovering from my last email of suggested edits – it broke Mcgee’s Blackberry downloading. I would be disappointed if they listened, most was stuff I loved – but they asked me if I had any thoughts, and I had some. At best they think I am fanatical and at worst a lunatic. What’s new?”
You’ve been involved in a surrealist film, a friend of Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp, in Paris then Berlin and NYC, tell me how it came about?
“I applied to a casting by a young director making her first feature called Joyce Lainé. I saw the words ‘Dada’, ‘depressed’ and ‘Berlin’, and that was enough for me to apply. Even though it was so low budget. They saw my online work, I did an interview over the phone, and then they asked me to send something about my own life that might relate to the desperation as an artist similar to that of Baroness Elsa Von Freytag Loring. She’s a Dada artist and poet who was wearing tomato tin cans as a bra before Andy Warhol was even born. Her poems inspired Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and she wrote amazing poetry before she gassed herself in an oven in Berlin, so yeah, I really fell in love with her work in my research.
So I decided to write to them about living in the dark after my accident, as I was just saying. Yeah well. It’s all a bit embarrassing, as I got the role, but later on set, when we all knew one another and were having a good rapport, the joke was that they’d expected a sentence or something!! They said they’d never read anything like it in their lives. Bearing in mind they had sent me The Baroness’ work. I should post it on my blog. So yeah we all had a great laugh, well they all had a good laugh as I only pretended to have a great laugh, but fuck it, they then asked me to work on as second film focusing on the period in her life before she died, where she was in and out of asylums, and extremely poverty-stricken, having previously lead her life as a wealthy noble Baroness. In my research there’s one thing for certain, the Baroness was an amazing woman in her troubles, her work, her way of thinking. She was described as not futuristic, but the future. Then add filming in Berlin. It was a great shoot. That city is just so cool, yet does stress-free. I had time to see another original Caravaggio, and I went to the Stasi Museum.”
Where do you call home, being an itinerant, and why?
“New York …New York…definitely, my storage locker waits faithfully for me in hope I shall return and it shall have reason to be emptied.”
What projects do you have lined up for the future?
“I’m very busy, I’ve currently been sent a novel and script called Mersey Boys revolving around The Beatles before they were famous, and about a romance with their professor and a character called Ginny Browne. I have been offered the role of Ginny, and I am interested so far, mainly as it will also run as an Off Broadway play. I am absolutely dying to be on stage – very nervous…but dying to get back on stage. As a passionate actor, you give all your energy to the filming, but then its over, there’s nothing, no artistic input, and I find that very uncomfortable. The whole film is really made again in editing, it is completely at someone else’s discretion. You’re not involved, yet your face will be stamped all over those decisions regardless. An actor on stage, it’s the closest you’ll have to the final say and you can have the emotion to flow unbroken, as it is in real life, not this stop starting every 5 minutes which is the difference of a film set.”
“There’s a TV series about Shanghai we’re trying to raise funds for with a writer called Mick Lexington. The idea is I would play Simone Beauchamp a femme fatale. The script is an absolute goldmine, I really believe that. We have over a million in place already to film the pilot and access to studios in Hong Kong, so seemingly we only need another 8 million. Ha! mind-blowing isn’t it…well, if you know anyone…have them call me.”
“I’m also working with directors Fabian Svensson and Jens Klevje and Gustaf Heden again on an adaptation of a Strindberg play, again they are sourcing remaining funding, that’s indie budget – so if anyone has a spare 5 grand, we will hit budget! They just won the FEDEORA – film critics’ award for Europe and Mediterranean. I’m so happy for them, I tell everyone proudly and everyone says “Oh for the film you did with them”..and I’m like, “Oh no!” ..and it’s kinda funny…mmm…I guess you have to be there. But they’re super talented so this is a big thing for us.”
“Mcgee is producing a trilogy, so now as we have the official trailer coming out for KUBRICKS and editing is almost completed, we move onto The Dogstar – the location has already been purchased – a church in Wales…I’ve got a kind of Wicker Man scenario going on in my head, I think I’ll be burnt on the altar, hopefully at the end.”
“There’s really a lot of great ideas in the pipeline with cool inspiring people that make me feel small in comparison to their accomplishments, but therefore where I stand to learn lots of new experiences. I have fingers and toes crossed for a few things. It’s still early days – for me, for everything.”
You visited Legs McNeill, author of Please Kill Me and the guy who started Punk Magazine in NYC in ’75 during the Summer?
“Yeah, me and Gustaf [Heden, musician] went to visit Legs, what an amazing guy. We were listening to all his records and chatting over all sorts of interesting ideas, I read his new book material, you know in between him wanting to shoot turkey vultures that had taken over his roof. It’s called “Live Through This” – it’s pretty powerful stuff, from the porn research days for “Another Hollywood” [The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Industry] and covers his troubles with his girlfriend at the time who contracted flesh-eating bacteria. A very moving, disturbing story, but also some lighter moments from the madness that was Punk magazine – the material included a hilarious encounter with Burroughs. Leg’s house is insane – from pictures of Linda Lovelace to photographs of him and Norman Mailer, stacks of books to die for (I was ready to move in) and lots of skulls (not real ones you understand). Then there is the room with all The Manson files and recordings. It was a fascinating weekend.”
I noticed Anton Newcombe was initially down for Kubricks, what happened there?
“Yeah, it was on Kubricks online for a bit, I don’t know things must have changed. I recall BJM were touring like a hundred gigs all over the world when we were filming so it would have had to be officially quantum. You know I finally got to see my first ever BJM gig in New York City in the summer! Amazing! I love the new album. I had tried to see them play with Primal Scream in LA a few years before, and even though I was on the Primal’s list, the bastard security said that my UK international passport that I’d obviously flown into the USA with, was not recognised state of California ID, and could not be used as legal identification. Hilarious!
By time I had stopped myself going insane enough to bite my lip to get in, they’d finished, no disrespect to Bobby G of course, but I’ve seen them how many times – I so wanted to see that full line up. And now both bands are booked to play Tokyo Rocks in May!! You know….I rarely get to say this, but Tokyo… is one place I am yet to visit. I simply adore Japanese art, I collect it – it’s the only pieces of my life that have not yet been pawned, lost, stolen or damaged.”
Ok, so, lastly just while on the subject of BJM – can I have all my BJM CDs back?
“You’re not seriously asking me that here, are you?! Are you serious! You know damned well the answer – fine – they were lost in the mini Manhattan storage dispute, they were borrowed not stolen, I lost everything I owned too, apart from the Japanese art – Gustaf lost all his guitars, everything, – and it’s the one and only artist I fucking know with every single song online, so …give me a break…”
…and my Bahnof Meider T shirt?
No way! You definitely said I could keep that…. it was either that or I took it off there and then and you said that would be a fate worse than death. Listen, I’m going now… concentrate on the acting, and try and make me sound cool, if at all possible…
Suppose there’s no point in asking for my Suicide and Richard Hell T-Shirts….
I thought not. But either way, there’s no denying she is an extraordinary individual, with a true vocation, and a mission. Watch out for ‘This Girl’, she currently has 4 feature films in post production – you’re gonna meet her on the big screen very soon.
External Links
Follow Joanna on Twitter
https://twitter.com/joannapickering
Joanna Pickering website
Facebook fan page
https://www.facebook.com/JoannaPickeringActress
Kubricks Trailer
http://vimeo.com/58233958
The post “The Girl” – An interview With Actress Joanna Pickering appeared first on Louder Than War.