all hollow pilot issue
Post on 15-Jul-2015
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www.allhollow.com
ediTor in ChiefBArnA nemeThi / barna@griffon.ro
ediTorsmAriA desmireAn / maria@griffon.ro
VlAd fenesAn / vlad@griffon.ro
AndreeA ioniTA / andreea@griffon.ro
PhoTogrAPhyBArnA nemeThi
VlAd fenesAn
ConTriBuTing fAshion ediTorsoAnA VAsilAChe
BiAnCA nAumoViCi
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˘‚
‚
´
5 /
All hollow
´‚
We come in peace. Which is surprising, given the fact
that we come into a strange strange world. as a whole and
as an industry; creatives and consumers; publishers and
buyers. Somehow, the stranger and odder the ground shifted
under our feet, the faster we adapted and regained balance.
We quickly came to terms with the weird and we got used to
it. So, in time, we left ourselves at the mercy of the cynical.
Today, everywhere we look we see the cuts beneath the cover.
it’s all become a big flying rug —aladdin would be jealous—
with issues cramped and hoarded under it. miraculously, it
still flies. all of us crowded on that small rug we call creative
industries, we move forward barely touching the ground. But
at what cost? is it worth it? To be consumed by perversion
for fake rewards and strained relationships? For some time
now, our wits and minds have sharpened our tongue to call
out through the smallest of cracks and the biggest of gaps.
We criticize first, ask questions later. a nation of critics that
somehow passively accept the very precise things they dread
and continue to live with them side by side. Let’s face it: we
are all corrupted that way. i’m the first to admit that.
But above all, we are bored. So very bored. it almost makes
no sense to lift up our heads, raise our arms and actually
do something that matters, to make a contribution. not
something exceptional, life-changing-never-done-before
fictionalised nostalgia, but something merely interesting.
Just wake up and create something interesting, something
weComein PeACeBArnA nemeThi
6 /
´
that puts you out there, puts your heart on the table, for the
vultures and wolves to feed on. Bother us with something
that will tickle our minds again.
But there’s always the satus quo. Why should anyone think
otherwise? Why try? it’s hard. it’s a waste of time. Where’s
the return? Where’s the money? Why bother when no
one will appreciate or even acknowledge? But after all the
whining unleashes, while browsing through all the excuses
that ring in our minds, over all this bickering, the impulse
of intrigue emerges. The need for fascination. The desire of a
slip. Revealed in new beautiful meanings —of the same old
stories— they will want it once it’s out there.
We are the hollow men. The straw men. The empty men. We
want you to fill us, make us whole again. and we won’t stop
until we are overflowed. There have been enough excuses,
enough shout outs, enough demands for better. This magazine
is our leap of faith from the anguished neurotic bystanders
hoping for a quick fix of creative work to the trust that
you will fill us with meaning. as one little hobbit said to
mr. Gandalf: ‘i wish the ring never came to me, i wish i had
money and i worked for interview and dazed, i wish i were
surrounded by rich and talented people, i wish it were easy’.
‘So do all who live to see such times, but it’s not meant for us
to decide. all we can decide is what to do with the time that is
given to us’ said the wizard. and we have decided. We’ve gone
to print. and most importantly, we’ve made a promise never
to go back, back to the comfy shelter of good enough and
that-works-why-try-harder.
So things got well underway and we started to work. once
the veil lifted a lot of amazing things happened. We met
people, we learned things, we sweated, we hurt and we started
to see that all was not lost. We met with cristi Lupsa and
the wonderful team at DoR, who deliver, against all odds,
impeccable journalism in a country where media and news
are either ridiculous or malevolent. They write their hearts
out, issue after issue. This is also why they were the best host
for our pilot number and have our full support for anything
they ever want to try to achieve. We met stylists and designer
willing to go out on a limb with us and try something new,
experiment. We met musicians willing to risk not playing the
same chords and we met people with the joy to dance on more
than just one bitrate. We met writers and photographers
that are ready to use their tools honestly and fluently who
are eager to create.
Because in the end, that’s what it’s all about: local content.
our content. We want to build a playgound for all talented
designers and stylists out there, publish their work and ideas
that are too experimental or unfitting for today’s print. We
want to work with the other magazines, trying to push the
industry forward together. We want to talk to the doers
and makers of our creative industries and make this a place
where they can say what they truly believe, without just
answering the same rotation of boring questions. We want
this magazine to be the aggregator of beauty, fun, knowledge,
experimentation, entertainment, and above all, everything
that is interesting and relevant.
once our eyes opened we also saw a city with so much to offer.
This city i live in, this country i live in, this region i live in,
and this time i live in have plenty to give if you are not so
angry and bitter. We believe that Bucharest can be the new
hotspot for what’s interesting, creative, cool, and innovative
for the entire region. That’s why we write in english, because
very soon we will bring you what’s relevant from our neighbor
creative communities and also we proudly want to share the
local content generated here. in Bucharest. Romania.
So where is the rider? Because what we have here is his horse,
with the stamina and the nerve for the long run. We are blowing
the horn here. come and ride. Let’s join the best hearts and
minds of our creative industries and emerge together with
curated local content. put Bucharest on the map.
an elusive man once said you campaign in poetry but you
govern in prose. All hollow contains a lot of promises, a lot
of poetry. and it is required that we prove ourselves through
content and not through empty words. all that is hollow is
meant to be filled, and things must fall into place. With no
pressure and no fear. ignorance is not bliss. innocence is bliss.
it’s the prose that has to follow and we are well aware of that.
every time we’ve done something that didn’t feel right, it
ended up not being right. and this feels so right. We are the
hollow men. The straw men. The empty men. and this is how
we unfold, not with a bang but with a whimper.
weAreThehollowmen.ThesTrAwmen.TheemPTymen.
7 /
‚
The suCCess of VeroniCA PAsCu, one of The
mosT in-demAnd models in romAniA righT
now, is noT AT All surPrising. if you’Ve seen
Any of her work, we’re sure you were sold
And mesmerized By her BeAuTy. if you’Ve eVer
seen her in reAl life, you CAn douBle The PAin.
like mAny models, VeroniCA sTArTed her
CAreer As A Teen And now, AT 30, she ConTinues
To Commission AdVerTising CAmPAigns And
Be feATured on CoVers And in ediToriAls
for fAshion mAgAzines, BoTh romAniAn And
inTernATionAl. she hAs Been inVolVed in
CreATing sPeCTACulAr Volumes of imAgery;
she’s A risk TAker, A Thrill seeker, And An
hAuTe ViVAnTe.
The firsT Time we worked wiTh VeroniCA wAs
on seT for A musiC Video we did; oBViously,
she PlAyed The loVe inTeresT. no need To
sAy ThAT The whole Crew And CAsT Couldn’T
sToP looking AT her; eVery liTTle moVe she
mAde wAs gAzed AT By more ThAn 200 PeoPle. iT
wAs jAw droPPing To see her on CAmerA so we
wAnTed The sAme rAPTure for The reTinAs in
PrinT. needles To sAy, she wAs gAme.
1 0 /
photography / BArnA nemeThi
VlAd fenesAn
lusT in BlACk
‚
‚
´
moniCA BirlAdeAnu lefT romAniA BACk
when TABloids feATured PeoPle whom you’d
ACTuAlly heArd of. she moVed To lA, Took uP
ACTing ClAsses, And hAs sinCe sTArred in BoTh
Big ProduCTion moVies And fesTiVAl-worThy
indie films. This june, AT Tiff, she ATTended
The Premiere for Tudor giurgiu’s of snAils
And men, where she PlAys mAnuelA, A single
And Confused 30 yeAr old seCreTAry liVing in
romAniA in 1992. we meT moniCA on A PhoToshooT
for The PosTer of ThAT Very sAme moVie. she
CAme in wiTh A fresh AmeriCAn ViBe – skinny
jeAns, denim shirT, Biker BooTs, messy hAir.
hoT As hell. goT us hooked righT off The
BAT. we sTArTed TAlking ABouT PhoTogrAPhy
(she hAs The mosT AmAzing leiCA CAmerA),
hiPsTAmATiC, her loVe for Books And leonArd
Cohen, her fAsCinATion for sundAnCe And her
TAke on The emerging Chinese film mArkeT.
moniCA dAzed us wiTh her ChArmh And we
insTAnTly knew we wAnTed To shooT her And
show her The wAy we sAw her – lAid BACk,
fresh And ridiCulously BeAuTiful. A week
lATer, she wAs Pledging AllegienCe To The
flAg, we were Pledging AllegienCe To her.
3 8 /
i PledgeAllegiAnCe
To The
photography /
styling /
BArnA nemeThi
oAnA VAsilAChe
BiAnCA nAumoViCi
´
˘ˆ
ou liVe eVerywhere - lA, Bucharest, ny, iasi; you are
a citizen of the world. how do you cope with that? how do you
sleep? how do you eat?
it is true that i get to live everywhere; to such an extent that
i tend to call home any hotel room where i spend more than
3 days, and that worries me a bit. i also tend to have my own
time zone that is never the same with the one of the country
i’m currently in. and i eat room service food. Too much of
it... So it shouldn’t surprise you if i tell you that when i'm in
Bucharest i often wake up at 4 am and want to reach for the
phone to order a chicken avocado sandwich on wheat bread,
no fries and no onions (i have my own perfected recipe).
When i'm on set i crave junk food a lot, especially chocolate,
of any kind, if there’s no red velvet cupcake around (i have a
serious addiction to it). When i’m about to go on long travels
i think i got to the point where i'm able to pack my life in
two pieces of luggage. However, this made me seriously ask
myself lately what home truly is: a locked apartment under
your name somewhere in the world? nameless hotel rooms?
or actually something i have work on, in order to have it?
Are you friends with actors? or do you avoid the breed alto-
gether? how is it in classes, when you have to put your heart
on the table and willingly or not, you become friends?
Yes, of course i’m friends with actors. i guess once you’ve
worked with them, somehow you can’t avoid it. i personally
believe that actors make a special breed of people who walk
around with a FireWire to their souls, and when they work
they just plug into each other's hearts for a deep, direct con-
nection. and they had to develop it only because sometimes
you might get on set and be introduced to a gentleman who’s
going to play your husband starting the next day (and you’ll
have to do a super emotional scene too, by the way). So what
tends to take months, maybe years, for other human beings
to work on (and i’m talking about friendship or intimacy
with another person), sometimes actors have to compen-
sate and find solutions to create it in 24 hours. and when
the connection is created, it feels really good, mostly because
it’s safe - you put your heart on the table in front of some-
one who does the same, and you know he’s not going to take
advantage of that, because it’s all done within the frame of a
professional environment. it feels so good when you want to
hang on to it even after the shooting is finished.
The common ground of pain or problems is the most known
way of bonding between people. i still go to classes every
time i’m in Los angeles and find new generations of actors
every time i go back, only because everybody is pretty much
like me: working all over the world, traveling... after a few
days of watching scenes i feel i might not know the names
of all my classmates, but i certainly know something that’s
essential about them after seeing them perform. and that’s
because it feels as if i’ve seen into their souls when on stage.
ivana chubbuck, the coach, never lets you get away with su-
perficial work on anything. You either give all you've got and
tear your chest open, or she’ll send you back and make you
do it again in a couple of weeks.
at the same time, there are many methods of acting. Some of
them require an individual process, creating an imaginary
world similar to the character’s, in which you live for a while.
That’s why some actors avoid any connection before shoot-
ing. i’m cool with whatever method my partners work with.
i have backup tricks to use in emergency cases anyway.
Tell us an actor you adored when you started acting. feelings
still there, or is he like a high school crush?
i think i missed quite a few classes in high school to go and see
the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair over and over again
because i truly thought pierce Brosnan was pretty much the
most seductive thing i’ve seen on screen up until that time.
i loved his character too - the sleek bored businessman who
offers himself the experience of stealing a piece of art from
the met for his amusement and then falls in love with an ex-
quisite woman who happens to be the detective assigned to
his case. i dreamt for years of being the catherine Banning
to his Thomas crown. Then, about 5 years later, TV mania
magazine featured me on a calendar attached to their christ-
mas issue. i bought it, looked at my picture (my face slashed
by the words may-august, by the way), and when i looked
on the other side, there he was: mr. Brosnan himself sharing
the poster with me. i laughed until it hurt 'cause i guess my
dream had just come true: i was on top of mr. Brosnan or he
was on top of me, depending on which side you’d hang the
calendar. Regardless, i liked this very much and felt this was
the climax to my personal affair with mr. crown. Since then
my cinematic education has improved and my taste in men
evolved in a different direction, far away from the sleek-suit
wearing, perfectly shaven mr. Thomas crown, so he’s now a long
forgotten crush. and i know that because i bumped into mr.
Brosnan while he was waiting for his luggage (like all mortals
do, shocker! [big laugh]) in LaX and watched him for about
5 seconds before looking away and getting on with my life.
y4 2 /
,
Quick. last 3 movies you’ve seen. sell us on one of them.
Beasts of the southern wild, Take shelter, looper. all three
of them are excellent films. neither Beasts of the south-
ern wild (the 2012 Sundance winner and camera d’or/
Un certain regard prize in cannes), nor looper are out yet.
They’ll get released in September, if i’m not mistaken. But
you can definitely look for Take shelter to see it, an amaz-
ing film about mental deterioration that’s borderline pro-
phetic. an excellent performance by michael Shannon that
gives you real shivers of fear in a very Hitchcockian way. it
plays off the fear of losing your mind one day, or just being
taken over by some mental disease. i won’t go any further
so i won’t spoil the film for you, but i highly recommend it.
we know you read your reviews because you posted a few.
how’s that going for you, being exposed like that? how do you
take the hits? how do you take the 6 seconds of glory?
Honestly, i have yet to read a review where i’m personally
slashed by a film critic. They might’ve slashed some of the
movies i was in, but somehow, i got away untouched. The
movies where i was under expectations (do you like my eu-
phemism for bad acting?), or just new to this world and very
inexperienced, were insignificant enough to not be reviewed.
So that’s how i got away.
But i don’t fear a film critic’s sharp tongue as much as i fear
myself when watching a film i was in. if there were a chance
that they would let me get away with doing half-ass things
on screen, i wouldn’t allow it myself. i’m the most fierce
critic i’ll ever have.
and when they shred to pieces a movie or just criticize a
few things, i think i have the necessary discernment to
understand if there’s anything to learn from that. it could
also be that the author of the article was really not in the
mood to see this type of movie and therefore it didn’t land
well with him; or that he makes a good point and i agree
with him, because often i know pretty much most of the
movie’s weaknesses.
But if i learned anything from past experiences is that a
movie will get very different reviews in different countries.
and the very thing you’ll be criticized for in a Sunday’s re-
view in an italian newspaper, might get you awarded in an-
other country.
in the case of francesca where, after the Venice Festival pre-
miere, we were reading quite frequently that people wanted
to see close-ups of my character, see closely how she registers
all the things that happen to her.... and there i was, months
later, getting an award for best actress at Bursa Film Festi-
val in Turkey for transmitting emotions even when my char-
acter had her back to the camera. at least that’s what the
jury said their motivation was.
Truth is, you can’t make movies for reviewers, bloggers or
compulsive Facebook followers. and trying in your movies
to please the crowd who had negative things to say about
your last movie would be a big mistake.
i won’t be a hypocrite and say i only enjoy the process of
filmmaking without the praise that comes with being part
of a good movie. But i have to say there’s a certain type of
praise that makes me purr like a cat: when people come up
to you to share something personal about the film, wheth-
er they’ve been touched by it, or made them think or feel
anything in particular. i enjoyed it so much when a wom-
an approached me at Transylvania Film Festival after the
premiere of snails and men and told me that she felt that
in the movie i was somehow her sister, because she had a
similar job as my character’s and saw in me some of the inse-
curities she had at the time. She said if she hadn’t seen this
film, she would’ve never had the courage to come talk to me.
Because no matter how much you aspire to get the approval
of your peers, it’s the people that pay for the ticket and let
you tell them your story that matter.
Therefore, dear moviegoers out there, we’re no different
than you are: we have bad hair days and tons of insecurities
too. We just put them to work instead of letting them work
against us!
So please come talk to us after seeing a film. We love to hear
your thoughts.
4 8 /
i won'T Be A hyPoCriTe And sAy i only enjoy The ProCess of filmmAking wiThouT The PrAise ThAT Comes wiThBeing PArT of A good moVie.
them who they are in the script.
i think there is an osmosis between my work and my per-
sonal little discoveries about myself. That’s because now i
can’t say if i’ve understood some things about who i am as
a person through some of my characters; or if i understood
some of those characters exactly because i found out some
answers about myself. and this kind of work changes you
in silent ways because you wake up one day having much
more understanding for people’s fears, aggressiveness, in-
securities or simply loving humanity a lot more. i know
for a fact that my transformation is quite palpable: from
being attracted to sleek-perfectly dressed-swiftly moving-
inscrutable-Thomas crowns to rather introspective dam-
aged-self aware-still looking-for-answers-kind of people.
i’m the biggest fan of people: i love watching them think,
laugh or react to things; i love watching discrepancies be-
tween body language and discourse; i love to speculate a
great deal about them and re-construct their biography by
their choice of words, clothes or the way they eat...and i
steal shamelessly from them. i even turn paparazzi on peo-
ple in airports or supermarkets if they happen to wear or
do something that i could use as inspiration for a character
i’m currently working on. i’m a big time thief and when
working on something, i have a blast stealing people’s Face-
book pictures. i download them, file them and use them as
reference when i talk to the director or costume designer
for a specific project. Facebook is an absolutely endless re-
source for documentation.
oh and since we’re on the actor/thief topic, maybe it’s time
to blow up a major cliché that i hear actors and interview-
ers use so often (i myself did it in the past as well). i don’t
believe an actor ever enters the skin of a character and this
phrasing is starting to scratch my ears whenever i hear it.
Because yes, he may train himself to walk differently for
a character, twitch his face in a way he never did before or
practice gestures he stole from an acquaintance, but the
emotions, the drive to act as his character does, are abso-
i’m The greATesT fAn of PeoPle: i loVewATChing Them Think, lAugh or reACTTo Things; i loVe wATChingdisCrePAnCies BeTween BodylAnguAge And disCourse.
would you ever do a remake of a film? Tell us about it.
i won’t jump at the classics if that’s what’s expected, but i
would say that i’d love to be in a remake of murmur of the
heart by Louis malle (i’m a good, solid malle fan) or investi-
gation of a Citizen Above All suspicion by elio petri. i would
be hugely tempted by Bonnie & Clyde, The graduate or fear
eats the soul (the Fassbinder one), but some of them would
lose their juice if transported to present, or would simply
not work at all, or i’m simply not old enough for them (like
mrs. Robinson in The graduate or emmi Kurowski in fear
eats the soul). i think one of the reasons why there aren't
too many remakes of the classics is the technologically ad-
vanced world we live in. a cellphone in the pocket of the main
character can absolutely ruin the plot of the original film.
i’ve never been a fan of re-heated meals, so for the moment
i’ll stick to contemporary material.
Quick. last 3 bands you listened to.
Band of Horses, edward Sharpe and the magnetic Zeroes,
Jack White
They say acting makes you know yourself better. how deep
does that go?
pretty deep i’d say. in acting school, before teaching any
technique, they start training you to be honest about your-
self and admit your own flaws. That’s where it all starts: un-
derstanding and accepting that we are imperfect human
beings and loving ourselves for it. characters are most
likely broken, chipped human beings like ourselves, but in
different ways (‘cause that’s what creates drama, right?).
only by acknowledging that you can approach a character
without judging it.
The moment you judge your character for being a prosti-
tute, a killer, an impostor, you create a rift between you and
the character and great performance can never be achieved;
you have to look at their pains and the damage that made
5 4 /
lutely personal to the actor. Theft can only go so far. He has
to pull all those emotions from inside his own soul: anger,
hate, impulse to kill or lie. How could he borrow those from
anybody?
Therefore i think it’s more appropriate to say that an ac-
tor rather exhibits different parts of himself when play-
ing characters and in no way believes he’s somebody else
(cause that would be borderline schizophrenia, right?). But
of course, this way of presenting things is more comfort-
able; it’s less exposing to the actor who fears he would be
associated with his character’s behavior.
Are you method? what makes you tick?
i’m not method, no. Swimming for months on and off screen
in a fictional reality is absolutely draining to me. i tried it
in the beginning and i ended up exhausted and with my
gun unloaded in front of the camera. it’s certainly a great
way of achieving compelling and authentic human behav-
ior for some actors; it’s just not the thing that works for me.
i know what makes me tick, what makes me scream or cry,
because i’ve watched myself closely over the past years. it’s
enough to think of specific situations that make me feel one
way or another and i can generate perfectly valid visceral
reactions for the scene i’m shooting.
what does a director have to do to make you deliver the best
possible outcome you projected?
Well, first of all he’d have to have immense passion for his
own project. He’d have to love it immensely because that
kind of love is contagious and it spreads beautifully around
the people he works with. and only constant obsession
about a story makes one come up with the best solutions
when necessary. i entrust myself to people like that. and
trusting my director is an absolute must for me in order to
be able to unveil myself and be the best i can be. and i like
my directors to be great manipulators: to understand what
buttons they can push to get a reaction out of you; to un-
derstand how you think and what your own mechanism of
creating the character is, so they’ll know how to guide you
before shooting a scene; or to know where to punch you in
between takes so that you wake up in case you dropped. But
most importantly, a director must watch his actors closely
and never lose sight of what he needs them to do in order to
tell his story. i worked with directors who tend to be very
delicate and subtle, or very caterpillar-like, smashing you
completely so they’ll break your defense mechanisms and
make you become so raw they can shape you in whatever
form they need to. i’m game for whatever their method is
as long as it’s efficient and it’s directed towards the same
goal: telling that story in the most compelling way.
we can’t help but notice that you are a big indie movie ad-
dict. you watch them, act in them, read them, and promote
them. what is it that you like so much about them and hate
about big studio movies?
ah, my love for indie movies was initially a form of snob-
bery i suffered from: i was looking for meanings in my life
and thought that i could find them only in niche form of
art, like auteur cinema or folk/indie/rock music, or photog-
raphy and visual arts. in the beginning, it was just a phase.
But then i found myself there out of pure love. i started to
act in The death of mr. lazarescu and that kind of movie
shaped the opportunities i had for future gigs.
You do one auteur movie after another and you tend to
stay in the festival movie area per forza. i like tremen-
dously a movie that's stimulating or one that requires a lot
of patience, imagination and involvement, however, i also
value greatly the entertainment provided by mainstream
cinema and studio movies. it’s hard to generalize and it
would be plain stupid to do so, but let’s say that i love chal-
lenging projects.
ironically, budgets matter for me: the smaller the budget,
the more comfortable i am. That’s when people don’t have
trailers larger than an apartment in Bucharest and per-
sonal assistants to communicate through and drivers that
5 5 /
i like my direCTors To Be greATmAniPulATors. A direCTor musT wATCh his ACTors Closely And neVer lose sighT of whAT he needs ThemTo do in order To Tell his sTory
about it (especially the inconvenient truths).
Somehow i feel that when a friend or a stranger entrusts me
with a secret that paints them in unflattering colors, it strangely
makes me more comfortable around that person and ignites
in me a huge stream of love and admiration for such courage.
what are you working on right now? Anything juicy?
Yup. Something dry and something juicy, actually. i’m get-
ting ready to shoot a feature film with ioana Uricaru called
After the wedding in September and then in november a film
called Panarea by adam Lough.
i just went through the Director’s lab at Sundance Film in-
stitute in Utah with ioana where we had the chance to be
supported by them financially and logistically to shoot five
of the most challenging scenes for her (and implicitly me),
and then got advised on how to solve various dilemmas we
had about the scenes.
it’s a true blessing to have a chance to experiment on a film
a priori to the actual shooting without having a producer
throwing a tantrum about how you should stick to conven-
tional filmmaking so he can make money off the film, or the
film crew of 50 people checking their watches once you’ve
gone 5 minutes into overtime. We had a really supportive
Sundance crew made out of people who were there out of
passion alone and that’s the essential premise to making
great films.
Quick. something to live for.
art. Love. children.
Quick. something to die for.
children. Love. art.
won’t pick up anybody else except for the king-actor he’s
assigned to. There’s distance between people on projects of
this size and i hate that kind of distance when i work. i also
hate too much comfort and feel much more creative when
i'm in a restrictive environment. and this has nothing to do
with snobbery, but rather with a need of humbleness and a
need to connect with the others. and how can a connec-
tion happen when we have limousines between us? [smiles]
That being said, i have to state that outside my job i like a
comfortable life more than anything else.
you seem quite confident and driven, but you must have
some weak spots. what frightens the shit out of you today?
oh, i think i stated quite a few in the previous answers. But
mostly facing great opportunities and not being ready to
seize them. Fear of disappointing myself. Fear of mediocrity.
i’m sure you’re bored of yourself answering over and over
again the same questions, tell us something you would want
someone close to ask you?
What makes me shut up? [laughs]
what’s your biggest drive?
The need to become a person my children would be in-
spired by... if i’m lucky.
do you like secrets? To hold, to find out about? how does that
affect your research?
i looove secrets, mostly other people’s. i tend to believe
everybody is concealing too much these days, about who
they really are, and their secrets feed my insatiable need for
truth. There’s a need for truth in all of us, we are just scared
to face it because that means we’d have to do something
6 1 /
eVeryBody is ConCeAling Too muCh These dAys, And Their seCreTsfeed my insATiABle need for TruTh. There’s A need for TruTh in All of us, we Are jusT sCAred To fACe iTBeCAuse ThAT meAns we’d hAVeTo do someThing ABouT iT
make-up artist / hair / assistent photographer /doinel ungureAnu Adi hArleA ioAnA enesCuBeAuTy-mAke uP ACAdemy mAnifesT griffon Crew
ˆ
Behind A deeP, wArm And Very serious sound-
ing VoiCe sTAnds A TAll, slender mAn, wiTh
shArP feATures And QuiCk eyes. he sAys
'hello', BuT you QuiCkly reAlize ThAT he's
AlreAdy sCAnning, AnAlyzing And CrAfTing
his nexT moVe. so Before you eVen Think of
whAT To sAy, BogdAn serBAn TAkes leAd wiTh
his firsT QuesTion. usuAlly, Being Around him,
you BeCome A suBjeCT of inTeresT, you will
Be QuesTioned, you will Be Cornered, you will
lAugh And you will neVer wAlk AwAy wiTh-
ouT PAying his TriBuTe: informATion. BeCAuse
BogdAn serBAn is A Curious mAn; he wAs jusT
Born ThAT wAy As he PuTs iT. he will Ask you
AnyThing Any Time; he will dig deePer And
deePer in eVery direCTion Trying To find
someThing To hAng on To, someThing worTh
shAring lATer. seVenTeen yeArs inTo rAdio
BroAdCAsTing, he’s one of The ToP VoiCes of
The indusTry, A fierCe endorser And PromoT-
er of loCAl CulTure And A Very imPorTAnT
figure in The uPrising of The romAniAn indie
musiC sCene. A sTrong BelieVer in The Power
And PersisTenCe of his medium, we found
him on The fronT lines, fighTing The sysTem,
ProVing ThAT QuAliTy rAdio CAn sTill sell.
6 8 /
rAdioliVe
TrAnsmission
,
,
ogdAn serBAn is A True rAdiomAn; he has flow. We
just had to unleash him in a discussion about music and step
aside. We talked with him in two very nice and special ven-
ues to us —energia & papiota— over a couple of beers. First
round was on us, he took the second one. The text below is a
rendering without cuts of all the topics we went through. We
had a fun time living in the night.
[Talking about getting people interviewed and such] For ex-
ample last year, when ian Brown was here i asked the organ-
izers to do an interview. Since we were partners at the event,
i told him: 'hey, come on, let’s take him to the studio', and you
know what he said? He said 'dude, i'm an old dog, it's been
done man, you know'. 'come to the radio, give us an interview!'
'Let's just drop it... i'd rather get drunk with you'. and i got
that. This year, he’s coming back and i’m kinda curious if he'll
give any interviews, since he's coming with The Stone Roses.
Well, probably the rest of the band's gonna give them, not
him. compared to him, those guys haven't been interviewed
as much.
////
[moving on, talking trivia about the local bands] When they
[The moooD] came to GuerriLive, i asked [the lead singer] to
sing normally. He’s got such a head voice, and i was on to him.
He just can’t do it. He played along, he wanted to and i told
him 'listen, it’s oK, just choose any track you want, and then
sing it in a normal voice'. and he kept trying… i was playing
him song after song, but he kept going for the pitch. He can’t,
he just can’t do it any other way now. i was like: Look, don’t
go up theeeeerreee [imitates the pitch, everyone laughs] never
the less, the pitch part, he fucking masters it. He masters the
technique very well. [we all agreed]
Romanian bands? They’re all in one big pile. couldn't tell you
a favorite. i have periods, i have phases. i can’t allow myself
to stay with one single band. i cannot afford to be a one band
fan. [The music zone he's in right now] There’s a very good
vibe now, the electro zone moves incredibly well. The guys
from Yoon. Last week we had Yellow, and now we have Yoon
coming. This is an electronic duo with seven people in the live
version. i really wanted to show them to my musical director,
but there's a tension now, because we support a lot of Roma-
nian music and people have started whining: 'Whoa! come on,
too much Romanian music'. So what i did was stop telling
people where the bands are from and just play the tracks, and
of course everybody liked it, yeah! [laughs]
everybody went 'wow! yeah, it really sounds good'. not
many bands can pull that off, but mostly in the electro area,
a lot of them sound like any other foreign band. You can’t
tell a difference, they have very good production value. But i
found out one of their secrets: they are mostly family bands,
so they stay together; they’ve got time. There’s no pressure
between them like 'dude, can’t rehearse now, i’ve got another
gig'. They don’t drag mercenaries, i mean players, after them.
no, they take their time. They afford to take as many weeks,
even years as they feel they need to come up with something.
See, that was obvious with Robin and the Backstabbers.
The drummer… Robin's brother… the hardest to replace in
their case.
[Tell us how you started working for the radio] Wow! [you're
still doing it after so many years] it’s been seventeen years.
[how come you didn't get tired, bored, fed up?] Hold on, hold
on, there’re too many questions now. [They’re supposed to be,
haha] So, i’ve been doing this for seventeen years. i was at the
age when everyone tries everything; basically everyone was
trying, period. i knew what i wanted, i had a plan, like any
other teenager, and it was acting, i wanted to do theatre. But,
you see, at the same time, the rumour spread around in my
native town, Targoviste, that the first private-owned radio
station was going to pop up after the Revolution. it was 1995
and i gave an audition and that was it. although i didn’t get
a chance to talk to my old mates, i think that everyone in
my generation did the same thing. We all auditioned, we were
all trying to mimic the way they speak on the radio, we were
all doing it at home and then we realized we would actually
like to do this. i really started to want to do radio. The great
advantage was that the guy who founded the radio station
was a true visionary, and also very well advised, so he took
people from Radio Romania actualitati, which was the best
state radio station before 1989. These guys were the only pros,
you know, even if they were old school, they were the only real
radio pros. They knew what they were doing. So we set up, we
went to Bucharest to see a couple of shows, to see how they
did Romania actualitati, the shows with megan, Ghitulescu
and paul Grigoriu. Those were the guys that did the morn-
ing show, and we saw what it meant to get a show ready all
night long. They came in at ten in the evening, that’s when
the job started, had their own offices, bed included, and on
top of that, the most notable detail, [leans right into the re-
corder and whispers] a case of vodka. They started working
and spent two or three hours doing it. a huge team worked for
B7 0 /
ˆ
˘
,
,
,
˘ ,
that morning show. it was extremly elaborate, or so it seemed
to all of us then, but the truth is, it seems even more so today.
it somehow resembled a bureaucratic entanglement, the way
they did things, because the editing was done on an assembly
line. There were people who worked in shifts all night long. in
different offices, on desks, material was collected from all over
the country, from correspondents everywhere, and they were
editing piece by piece, even word for word, from magnetic
tapes. Then they called the guy who was running the show
in that particular morning, who could have been any of the
three, and they told him 'This is it', while other editors pre-
pared the headlines and made up the text that either Grigo-
riu, or megan, or Ghitulescu would read in that morning. Fi-
nally, they got some sleep and woke up at four in the morning,
so they could start the morning show at five.
They had this cool thing too, i don’t know whether they still
have it at Romania actualitati now, but the studios were
equipped with pipes and tubes to ventilate the air within,
because studios usually have no windows. So they had these
venting pipes installed, and they could smoke inside the stu-
dios. people smoked inside a radio station, and that was truly
something. When they did the first private radios, in my time,
smoking was not allowed, we didn’t have the venting installa-
tion. But those guys smoked.
[About not leaving radio, and radio today] Well, not yet. i still
see it as the only area left, i mean the only one that offers
me real freedom, not just a feeling of it. it’s the only medium,
except maybe writing online that gives you this kind of free-
dom. But the thing is that everyone else working in radio
here has unfortunately ruined it. They no longer know how to
value that freedom. [radios in general or do you have certain
stations in mind?] Both. You asked me why i’m still doing ra-
dio today. This is why, because there’s still a place for guerrilla
on the market. Worldwide too. Look at the States, where you
have satellite radios in your car, already a standard feature in
the american car-building industry. cars come out of the as-
sembly line with satellite radio; you have 5,000 radio stations
already set up. You couldn’t listen to all of them until you’re
done with the car, [laughs] you couldn't listen to all of them
until you died. and the way i see it, even though people have
been sobbing for the inevitable demise of radio for years now,
it will outlive television.
it is an evolution no one anticipated, but it turns out replac-
ing that voice in your car has proven to be a quite a chal-
lenging task. also, it’s extremely hard to replace its ability
to surprise you. This is what radio does best. no matter how
many cDs you have, how many megabytes in mp3 is, there’s
no way it can still surprise you, because in the end, you al-
ready know what’s in there and radio will always find a way
to surprise you.
[we argue that it also brings an opinion to the table. most of
the times, the voice gets to share opinions, thoughts, feelings,
and people listen to it because they want to relate] i’m sure
you’re only referring to us [Radio Guerrilla], because other-
wise, it's not the case. in these times, you are what you speak.
if we would follow this line of thought, all radio stations in
Romania have come to provide something that has helped
in alienating this whole nation. They feed their audience
through a funnel, underestimating them, ignoring them.
and they do this every day over and over again.
[so you manage to listen to other radios as well] Well, yes, i’m
also being exposed to them in taxis, in shops, and i realize
nothing has changed. everything is frozen. not only that, i
mean not only the language they use, but the music as well.
Discourse and music are one and the same. it’s the same
bitrate with the same scarce words. a fast bitrate with few
words, that’s the way it is. That’s the recipe.
[About whether he agrees with us that Bucharest could even-
tually become the cultural and artistic hotspot of eastern
europe] That's a high goal, you're brave. Yes, why not? Bu-
charest seems to be culturally active, but i can't possible
follow in this idea empty handed. i will have to wait. it’s
obvious that things start happening. i got an email these
days from andrei Jecza, the one who has the Jecza Gallery
in Timisoara. His father was an outstanding sculptor, and
he keeps suggesting to me, for quite some time now, that we
do a mix between Romanian music and contemporary art.
He has managed to put his thoughts on paper and he found
some mone. He’s going to do something like affordable art.
in romAniA, in These Times, you Are whAT you sPeAk. And if we would follow in This line of ThoughT, All rAdio sTATions in romAniA hAVe Come To ProVide some-Thing ThAT hAs AlienATed This whole nATion.
7 4 /
,
˘ ,
Limited, numbered series of contemporary art, joined with
music from bands, sold at affordable prices and expected to
increase their value in time. The idea is to attract the music
consumer and encourage him to look at art, as well.
////
[About the new producer of the show] Let me tell you another
story. Listen to this, our current producer irina petrovici
was a huge fan of the show. She's the one that created and
managed the Facebook page 'imi place sa logout' ('i like to
logout'), which soon became the show’s official fan page. We
had a producer at the show for five years and when he left, i
really didn’t know who to turn to, and Guerrilla Logout is a
show that really needs a producer. Delia, my girlfriend, rec-
ommended her, she said 'take irina!', and all i had to do was
call her up. Think about it, she didn't do any radio before, no
radio production, but she came in, learned everything really
fast and was right on track in no time. She came up with a
bunch of stuff, things that the show needed and were pretty
obvious to an outsider, who had nothing to do with the in-
dustry.
[what did irina do before?] She worked in an advertising
agency, in more than one, actually. She managed several
bands, including the The mono Jacks, i think one of her
last jobs was with the The Romanian cultural institute.
She came in with a great deal of ideas i would have never
thought of. This also boosted the online version of the show.
There’s no way this kind of radio show can work out with
only one brain, there are a few brains working with all that’s
going on there: the producer; the lead-editor, who comes up
with the special segment called 'The Daily Synthesis' on pol-
itics and stuff like that; now, this last half-year, we’ve also had
a project manager, who’s very much connected to music, and
has his own band. actually he rolls with something like four
different bands. i hadn’t thought about that either- to have
someone from the other side [a musician] working for the
show. each one of us radio people look at [bands] like they
were some kind of product, and when you bring them in,
look, here’s the product himself telling us where things stand.
[speaking of bands and guerrilive, how did the whole guer-
rilive business start] There was this mono Jacks concert
in Underworld, in September, almost two years ago. i went
there with one of my colleagues from the news, George mi-
halcea. our current producer, irina petrovici was managing
the band and she called me up: 'come see them live!'. So i
went. When i realized we were fifteen, maybe sixteen people
in that small club room, i told her 'hey, wait a minute, we can
do this in our studio. Same thing. Why shouldn’t this band
play in our studio?!' The following day i came up with the
concept and wrote it down. mihai Dinu, the musical direc-
tor of Radio Guerrilla got hooked right away. He had done it
before at RFi. So he backed up the idea. everything moved
very fast. We did a demo with Les elephants Bizzares. peo-
ple immediately went 'wow!'. But now, after two years, if you
make me listen to the demo, well, we might as well just shoot
ourselves, the quality was…
[we gave radio guerrilla credit; we said people do go out
more now, people want to hear the live bands promoted by
guerrilla] We have indeed become a benchmark now. if any-
one is looking for new bands they come to us. Well, this is
what i tried to do from the very beginning, but i didn’t wrap
it like that. i said 'let’s experiment, let's ask every band to
play something else other than their own stuff'. They all do
covers anyway. But there’s so much pride in this area and no
one does covers of another Romanian bands. Lucia came up
with a cover on The moooD. an incredible one, better than
the original. She’ll be big, but maybe for the outside market,
not here, in Romania. Here she will be assimilated with the
author of the song. Let the God of Good music help her not
stray towards inna and such, musically speaking; otherwise
i wish her all the notoriety in the world.
[speaking of inna and her notoriety, tell us about this import-
export music] There was a reporter who asked my opinion on
this for a UK magazine. She was doing an article on our mu-
sical exports and after she interviewed a lot of people from
the industry, people from well-known music labels who were
interested in selling this kind of euro-trash, euro-dance, she
came to me for a different opinion. i told her the same thing
i’m telling you. my opinion hasn’t changed, even though
this was about a year ago. as long as you meet your audience
with the same kind of music, filtered through the funnel i
was talking about earlier, this is the kind of music you get.
if you’d use a sieve, you’d have several genres pass through
it; but with a funnel, only one genre will be allowed to pass
- it quickly becomes the only available genre and everyone
thinks it’s the standard and the only one that is of value. This
7 6 /
There’sso muCh Pride in This AreA ThAT no one does CoVersof AnoTherromAniAn BAnd˘ˆ
is what we’ve exported until now. That's why this country be-
came a landmark on the musical map as the best producer of
this kind of music: euro-dance, euro-beats, euro-trash.
[luckily, other genres have started to scratch the surface, like
electro] Yes, electro.[pauses] i think there are several levels
to this discussion. inna is one level. other Romanian artists
that proved successful on the underground european al-
ternative scene like The amsterdams are at a very different
level. They had several european tours and that, in my book,
is also a success. Unfortunately in the underground, we
can’t talk about sales. alternative bands will never keep up
with inna when it comes to international sales, but they are
slowly trying to catch up. For example, emagic has created
two event companies with a well defined intention in this
sense: they realized that most festivals impose their lineups.
That's why we go to B’estfest and listen to some Yugoslavian
bands, or Bulgarians that not a living soul has ever heard
of. They came with the idea of making exchanges between
festival lineups. They want to sell bands like Robin and the
Backstabbers, like Grimus to other major festivals, to help
increase their notoriety.
[maybe the public will force the industry to change] i met this
kid and she showed me the music on her phone. She had Flor-
ence and the machine and Foster the people in there and i
asked her where she got her music from. instead of answering
me straight away, she paused for a second, because she didn’t
remember. She wasn’t listening to radio, she wasn’t watch-
ing TV, she was a very atypic teenager. Then she remembered
that her friends gave her the music. Their parents heard it on
the radio, looked it up and shared it with their children and
their children share it among themselves. These kids’ parents
listen to Guerrilla and they are directly exposed to other
kinds of music. This may very well mean that our salvation
might come from their kids. it’s the generation that will put
pressure and will eventually change the standards of what
something becomes mainstream. [we all agree, but believe it’s
a matter of time] it will also be a matter of money. i think
that with all the piracy that’s going on now, it will eventually
bring some change in how the money is made. When it comes
down to buying a ticket for a concert you won’t pay for any
kind of show any more. They will have to deliver more then
just show up and sing.
////
[we have plenty of concerts, but not enough shows] You should
make the necessary distinctions between them. When you
say concert, you mean club concerts, you cannot deliver any-
thing else there, there’s no way, no room, you just can’t. all
you can do there is play your music. This is the way things
happen abroad, too. Bands are being chosen from the clubs,
and then the production companies come in and make them
big. Wether you have a show or a concert, i guess it’s about
the number of people who can attend, about the club’s capac-
ity, i think that’s the way things go. i know that on Broad-
way, where theaters are concerned, it’s about the number of
seats. Budgets depend on the number of people that attend.
clubs, i'm sure, are also divided according to their capacity.
and before you flood the market with a lot of small concerts,
full of visuals and stuff, before you saturate, before you in-
vade all these small places, you cannot go to the next level,
to ask for a bigger space, to ask for a show. clubs will auto-
matically have to make sure they fulfill this demand; they
will supply screens, lights, the whole setup. They will have to
meet the demand. Don't forget that in this trophic chain the
only thing that matters is the guy paying for the ticket. and
he measures his 'ticket' in the number of beers they cost —
i’ve seen this. in Romania, concerts are being measured by
the number of beers. We should establish a top of how many
hectoliters of beer are being sold at concerts.
[About film scores and end credits soundtracks] The film in-
dustry in this country, for instance, although it’s very hot, it
fails to come meet and collaborate with the music industry.
i haven’t heard about any filmmaker approaching a band to
ask for the rights for using their music on a film soundtrack.
and i don’t think the bands are the problem here. i think
that directors don’t even consider the possibility. it may
seem funny to you, but in mungiu’s latest one he could have
easily done it... Let me think, it should be something disso-
nant, there are absolutely bucolic images in the film. maybe
niste baieti, e.m.i.L.? no, no… Luna amara, there you go.
That’s it. That's right. i’ll ask him at the premiere, i’ll call
mungiu and ask him: What do you think of Luna amara?
could you have used them in the film? For the end credits
at least.
[About being a good listener] i’m not just listening to music,
i listen to everything that’s going on around me. There are
some rules i instinctively follow. They taught me in college
that to be a good actor you have to be a constant consumer
of theatre, to go to as many performances as you can. To be
a good radio person, you have to be a very good listener. So
i listen to radios abroad, as many as i can, and i listen to
what's going on around me. maybe you haven’t noticed but i
have been asking you a lot of questions too. There were a lot
of times when you were answering to me. [yes, we’ve noticed]
[About piracy] as far as music is concerned, i think this is the
only possibility for Romanian music to become attractive:
to be bought. Because at this time, we are swimming in fake
top charts. even our top, the one we [Radio Guerrilla] do, is
a top of preferences. The best top, the relevant one for any
future industry, the one we don’t have now, is the sales top. if
someone doesn’t come up with a psychological price for the
Romanian track, downloaded from the internet, for instance
1 Ron per track, we won’t have anything close to this. The
7 7 /
˘ ˘
˘ ˘
,,
way iTunes met the industry, when Steve Jobs came and said
99 cents is what you should pay for a track. it all turned into
a phenomenon. Romania has the premise for something like
that and it can be the next major thing in music. But, again,
there should be a psychological price. Bands should be the
first to say 'yes, we agree', then the other companies that col-
lectively manage the copyrights, and so on. everybody un-
der the same law.
That's for music. When it comes to film, i'm all for going
to the cinema, it’s another thing altogether. it’s a shame to
pirate it, you're missing out actually. We even have niche
cinemas, like europa on calea mosilor, where all you get is
european cinema. it’s a shame, really, not to pay that shitty
price for a ticket.
[And finally about the young generation and his childhood] i
think it’s a generation that has grown old prematurely. They
live in a made up reality. They no longer enjoy the pleasure
of touching something, of feeling with their own hands, 'here,
touch it, that’s how it feels'. i think that’s harmful. i was look-
ing at young kids, i’ve got a lot of friends, of colleagues, who
have kids, even grown-up kids, and i was looking at them: the
pleasure of playing or messing around in the streets is gone.
Those kids don’t even have a clue what it means. it’s a little
bit sad. i know the mobile phone was a great achievement
after all, a great technological discovery, and a very useful
one, but on the other hand, it has shaven quite a few years off
the kids’ lives. When i was a kid, during the summer breaks,
i was leaving the house at 10 o’clock, and coming back late
in the evening. nobody knew where i was, they could only
guess where to find me and if anyone needed me, they went
and searched in the neighborhood, near the lake, in the park.
my acting up reached its highest quota when i was a teen-
ager. That was immediately after the Revolution, we were the
generation that had its first two years of high school before
the fall of the regime and the last two years after it. one
thing i remember about the early 90’s is something that i'm
sure had never occurred anywhere else, and that we were the
only ones who experienced it: we smoked right in front of
the classroom. When we saw the teacher come along the cor-
ridor, we put out our cigarettes right in front of him, while
looking him in the eye. That was during the first term, in the
first days after the Revolution. if we didn’t like a teacher, we
went out into the schoolyard, put up a strike and had him
changed. We were in the tenth grade and we knew that in the
twelfth grade the main way of rebelling and of marking one’s
passage from school to adulthood was to tear one’s uniform.
We realized we wouldn’t have any uniforms to tear by the
end of high school, they weren't mandatory anymore, so in
the eleventh grade i suggested we pick up a day in which we
would all come wearing the uniforms we still had from the
previous years, even if they were a little small and all. it was
February and we covered the trees in those torn uniforms.
it was my period of discoveries, and a lethal combination
of rock music and a lot of philosophy i obviously didn’t un-
derstand. i started with cioran and, yes, with vodka, a lot
of vodka. i was getting home in the mornings and my par-
ents kept trying to understand: 'We are not giving you any
money, how can you come home every morning shit drunk?!'.
it was fine, because i didn’t ask them for anything, and that
in itself was quite something: i returned home every morn-
ing absolutely sizzled. i had no dime in my pocket and still
came back drunk. my mom took my key away, so she could at
least know when and in what state i was arriving home. Then
we would spend another hour or two talking in the kitchen.
That’s roughly said, because in fact i was the only one talk-
ing. and my mother kept telling me: 'You know, if i'd write
down everything you say, i might just get it published and
it would be spectacular'. i can’t remember what i told her,
it was probably delirious stuff about what i had been read-
ing during the day, before drinking, and from the conversa-
tions i was having at night, while drinking. What i mean to
say is that my parents always let me do things my way. my
folks would call the police only if i didn’t come home for
three whole days. That was our agreement: three days. after
that they could call the police and, implicitly, the morgue.
i knew this and always called them, no matter what, after
three days, from wherever i might have been. [like from the
morgue] mom, i’m in the morgue, don’t worry, it's all good.
[laughs.]
my PArenTsAlwAys leT me do Things my wAy. They'd CAll The PoliCe only if i didn’T Come home for Three whole dAys
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