Журнал Andy Warhol's Interview Россия Interview № 2 | Page 175

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Now named in honor of 1940s Hollywood diva
Lana Turner and Ford’s Del Rey automobile, Grant
could reach the stars: her songs have been listened
to by tens of millions, heard in cars and shows by
designer Christopher Kane, while evil tongues are
eager to gossip: why does she need silicon lips? In-
terview spoke with Lana Del Rey on the eve of the
release of her long-awaited debut album.
HARALD: Did you suspect that the song “Video
Games” would change your life?
LANA: Basically, yes. Now it seems that an eter-
nity has passed. I remember when I finished it, I im-
mediately went to my friends and said, “I just wrote
my best song!” And they said, “Well, cool.”
HARALD: Did you make the video for the song
yourself?
LANA: Yeah. In the grand scheme of things
I have made three clips, all the rest are unofficial,
made by completely unknown people. I started
making them when I was about 17: it all began with
a collage of moving pictures that I placed over clas-
sical music. Then I began to write my own songs,
and for those I also started to cut up pictures. It was
a pure experiment, and I didn’t plan to share my
“living pictures” with a million people. Now I’m
done with it.
HARALD: Your persona provokes either bound-
less admiration or sharp rejection. People that you
have never seen hate you.
LANA: There’s nothing I can do about that. No
one finds particular fault with me, I always am kind
and glad to help. Ugly rumors don’t make me evil,
because I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should
I get upset? It’s only words.
HARALD: But your image is real, it lives inde-
pendently from you, and you can control it only to
a certain degree. You can’t be indifferent to it, just
because it is a new experience?
LANA: It’s all a new experience, that’s for sure.
But I never thought about what kind of influence
I can have on others. In the end, I’m just an ordinary
singer from Brooklyn.
HARALD: And you performed in tiny clubs?
LANA: Yes, in front of friends, random au-
diences. I never expected anything from these
concerts.
HARALD: In the song “Blue Jeans” you mention
that you grew up on hip-hop. Is that true?
LANA: That’s right, I grew up on hip-hop: I lis-
tened to Eminem and the rest. There is this type that
I sing about in this song and whom I met; he was
from California and listened to surf and punk rock.
A contradiction, which was only a small part of our
relationship.
HARALD: In the clip there is a scene of Tupac
Shakur. But I read somewhere that you were more of
a fan of his rival Biggie Smalls.
LANA: Sure, I’m from New York! Biggie was al-
ways the hero of the East Coast. Tupac ended up
in my video because he best represented the energy
of my relationship with my boyfriend at the time.
That dude was no treat, and Tupac reflected that
well. And so I’m on Biggie’s side. Of course he was
a gangster, but he could also be the kindest.
HARALD: But then Tupac was handsome.
LANA: Just please don’t write that I said Tupac
was handsome! Those are your words.
HARALD: Let’s talk about a couple more people
you’re associated with.
LANA: Sure.
HARALD: David Lynch.
LANA: Yeah, I hear that constantly. My music
reminds people of Twin Peaks. This is probably be-
cause neither my songs nor his series have straight-
forward narratives. Honestly, I never even watched
that show.
HARALD: Really?
LANA: I’ll catch up; I was promised a disc of the
series. Judging by Lynch’s other films, he consciously
cultivates the dark side of his world. And my gloom-
iness is determined by very natural things. My dark-
ness is organic. You know, I really don’t try to be
gloomy and sullen, the opposite, I adore happy end-
ings. I’m a happy person, downright sunshine! And
in Lynch films so much complicated shit happens.
No, wait, I didn’t express myself very well. Well,
I don’t know, Lynch is a really strange one.
HARALD: Don’t you find sad songs to be more
seductive and generally more interesting?
LANA: No. Elvis is my favorite singer, and he
didn’t have a lot of sad songs. And Nirvana didn’t
have many.
HARALD: Aw, c’mon!
LANA: Nirvana is not sad at all!
HARALD: I think so.
LANA: OK, well, maybe a little. If my songs are
also sad, then this is only because that’s how people
take them.
HARALD: Obviously, every pop star needs not
only songs, but also some kind of story.
LANA: Well, maybe so.
HARALD: How do you live with the fact that
the public writes your story for you?
LANA: No idea.
HARALD: Among other things, they write that
you are a fake thought up by music producers.
LANA: I write my own songs, shoot my own vid-
eos, make all the decisions—there’s no one more real
in pop music than me. There hasn’t been anything
fake in my life.
HARALD: However, you took a glamorous
pseudonym.
LANA: So what? What’s more important is that
I’m really not a pop singer: I had nothing to do with
the pop business before my songs were on the radio.
I’m a composer who wrote songs for myself for eight
years, and had no audience, only my creative work.
I didn’t aim for show business. I never wrote a ballad
in the radio-ready format of 5 minutes 22 seconds.
I really like this hairstyle, this kind of make-up, ex-
actly this dress and not others, and on stage I move
this way and not that way. This is my way—and the
dear public is free to decide if I’m interesting or not.
HARALD: Can you explain why record compa-
nies didn’t notice you for so long?
LANA: They only understand that they have
found something special after the public decides it is
special.
HARALD: You sound disillusioned.
LANA: But that’s the way it is. Recording studios
have no extra money. They don’t have the resources
to track down and cultivate talented artists. They are
only interested in those who can be successful—if, of
course, it’s not a 13-year old talented winner of mu-
sic competitions.
HARALD: How great that the internet is always
at hand!
LANA: Yeah, really. But the internet was not
created to distribute music. We need it so that we
can share information faster. A network draws peo-
ple together. That’s what the internet is for, not for
downloading music and videos.
HARALD: But without it we wouldn’t be
sitting here.
LANA: No we wouldn’t. But I still don’t care.
ANNA
MIKHALKOVA
p. 120
by SERGEY SHNUROV
“What do you want more than anything in the
world?” “A crocodile” without hesitation six-
year-old Anya Mikhalkova answered her father’s
question in the documentary film “Anna from
6 to 18”. In the 30 years since that conversation
Mikhalkova has produced half a dozen indepen-
dent Russian pictures (including “Russia 88”),
played two dozen supporting roles—bringing
a breath of fresh air regardless of the quality of
the films—and one leading role in the underrated
debut film by Dunya Smirnova, “Connection”.
The second leading role in her filmography is the
ailing, refined researcher at the St. Petersburg Kun-
stkamera in the movie “Cococo”, which the same
Smirnova has just finished filming. Anna’s lead
character decides to give refuge to a low-class repre-
sentative of the masses (played by Yana Troyanova).
So as not to let Mikhalkova relax after a difficult
shoot, and partially to fulfill her childhood dream of
meeting a crocodile, Interview asked Sergey Shnu-
rov, the composer for the film “Cococo”, to talk with
Anna about her new film. Once again the conversa-
tion turned out to be about Putin.
SHNUROV: The elections are a magic show.
Earlier, four years ago, a conjurer arrived, took off
his hat, pulled out a rabbit, and—fucking voil à !—a pi-
geon flies out. Now the magician has arrived drunk,
and the rabbit has already crawled across the table
with the hat on its head. And we say: what are we
paying you for, magician? Oh you magicians! And
the people protest, “Fuck us, bastard, but gently.”
This is the entire protest. What a dirty trick. Enough!
Put the fucking rabbit in the hat and pull it out the
usual way. Therefore, the demonstrations are just
a dead end. Like a friend of mine says, this is
“a dream about a wiener”. That is, it’s just a dream,
but not a real wiener.
MIKHALKOVA: What can I add? You couldn’t
say it better.
SHNUROV: That’s the thing! There is no real
wiener—so let it be a dream! And there’s a great ad-
vantage in this: if a person at least dreams about it—it
means that he either is hoping for something, or has
not lost all feeling, or simply remembers that there is
a wiener.
MIKHALKOVA: Before he fell asleep.
SHNUROV: Exactly.
MIKHALKOVA: You know my last film shoot-
ing disturbed me. And you know why? I really love
people, they interest me, every person is a discovery
for me. But at some point I hate everyone. I sud-
denly become so aggressive, it’s ridiculous. I’m pay-
ing by card in a store, and they ask for my passport.
Then they say, “You signature here isn’t like it is on
the card.” And I explode inside—but I don’t say any-
thing outloud. But I begin to argue with myself,
“What do you mean, I already gave you my passport,
you recognized me. Are you doing your duty or
something? Of course there are procedures, but...”