23 Questions with Orji Walflauer
Orji Walflauer plays A/V in In the Land of Merry Misfits -- the brilliant, mad genius slumming in the world of Bethany Local Access TV.
Walflauer attacks the role with an intensity that imbues this ridiculous character with a surreal gravity matched only by the Technicolor costumes and psychedelic design of the film. Like his fictional counterpart, Mr. Walflauer is brilliant and mad. Unlike A/V, Walflauer is not satisfied with being a big fish in a tiny meme pool, and has set his sights on nothing less than world domination.
We recently corresponded with Orji over a numerologically significant list of questions, just after his return from the Misfits premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's the transcript.
1 You've been involved in the quest to complete this film for over 10 years -- how does it feel to have it finally completed?
i feel a deep satisfaction, a sense of triumph and closure mingled with the excitement of new beginnings and the opening of wormholes into triumphs yet undreamt of.
2 In addition to your film work, you're also acting on the stage. What's your take on the differences between stage and screen acting?
i enjoy the challenge and the direct energetic exchange/vampirism of stage acting, but, ultimately, i find the experience a little vulgar. perhaps it comes from that childhood feeling that my actual experience was a pale shadow of the experiences suggested by imaginal constructs like books and songs and films and comics, but a screen performance, after the role has been invoked and improvised and played out for the camera, can be manipulated into perfection and nourished by its place in a more complex, multidimensional whole. seeing myself on that big screen...i've never felt more "real".
3 Why do you act?
to give free rein and riot to the multitude of selves within me who cannot be contained, explained, or effectively expressed in the domain of ordinary social intercourse.
4 You were recently in NYC, at the Tribeca Film Festival. What's it like?
like coming home. keven and maria and joe and randall and rich and the sundry other beauties whose presences and futures have mingled and fused in this production are my closest friends, my true family, and no earthly experience can beat the fever of shining brightly with the people you love, the people with and through whom you are your best self. on a more specific frequency, it thrills me to see keven (whose passion and talents have wrought secret miracles behind the scenes of our lives for so long) finally receiving recognition for the role he was born to play above all others: the writer/director/actor. the auteur. the creator. my big brother Underman is possessed by genius, and it's about time the whole world knew about it.
5 You write songs, some of which can be found on your MySpace, songs featuring a wide variety of complex characters . Can you tell us about this work, and describe how your acting experience informs your songwriting process (and vice versa)?
songwriting is a reflex that i was compelled to hone into a skill through my involvement with "Omega Girl Incorporated", Maria's forthcoming diva debut. i'd written the odd song here and there over the years, with sir richard wentworth and mike "professor statik" mcquilkin and other hypnosonic luminaries, but the OGI project really opened a door in my brain and now the soft enigmas (my pet name for sentient popsongs) come swarming fast and thick whenever summoned. once i've identified the flavor of a particular musical project, i usually sit and freestyle a list of possible titles, every one of which is pregnant with a song that lurks (fully formed and hungry) in imaginal space. then i spit a few couplets and it comes of its own volition, as a set of lyrics and a melody. then my ingenious cohorts coax the latent soundscapes from what i've crooned into a tape recorder or a computer. each song is a little film unto itself, with its own roles and angles and ambience. you can always almost see the video. my acting process is similar in that once i've cast a collage of little details, the character comes forth with a will of its own and just does its thing in my body within certain ritual parameters like the dialogue at hand and the dynamics of the scene. the set becomes an altar. the lines are incantations. when the scene is in the can, if i'm lucky, the invading loa will return to its place in the the wardrobe within. the characters i've played can be extreme and unpleasant. despite my banishings, it takes very little for any of them to bubble up and turn any given social situation into bad news (but great theatre).
6 Who are your favorite actors and why?
John Malkovich. Klaus Kinski. Crispin Glover. Nicole Kidman. Dirk Bogarde. Gary Oldman. Sam Rockwell. Christian Bale. Christopher Walken. Willem Dafoe. because you can't take your eyes off them, and they go all the way.
7 Is there a character, fictional or real, that you would kill to play?
the joker from "batman". the painted doll from "promethea". clare quilty from "lolita". kim carsons from "the place of dead roads". dr. who. kakihara in a western re-make of "ichi the killer". a young aleister crowley, perhaps. the list goes on. i guess it wouldn't take much to start me killing again. just don't tell my parole officer until i can afford to flee the country.
8 What makes you laugh uncontrollably?
everything.
9 What makes you cry?
HER.
10 A/V -- the character you play in ITLOMM -- is both brilliantly bizarre, and somewhat of a fascist. What's your attitude towards discipline and creativity?
my preferred method of creating things: first be the loving mother, listening to the gestating children, feeding them what they need, coaxing them gingerly into manifestation, letting them be whatever they want to be. then i'm the stern daddy who teaches the child how to present itself and make things happen in the world outside its womb. there's a time for inhale and a time for exhale. a time for delirium and a time for architecture. i time for passive submission to the oneiric fury of the unconscious and a time for strategically unleashing the dream-babies in a form the waking world will understand and embrace. turn turn turn.
11 What would the ITLOMM Tarot deck look like?
fool: will
magus: money
high priestess: monchichi
empress: heather
emperor: lord
hierophant: friar chuck
lovers: mitch and josie
the chariot: the jaguar
justice: big time
the hermit: george
wheel of fortune: pigboy
strength/lust: a.v.
the hanged man: junkie
death: J.C.
temperance: esteban
the devil: brendan mcdeeval
the tower: the team tree
the star: gunner
the moon: castro
the sun: esteban
judgement/the aeon: the fight scene/castro
the world: george's auto
that's the major arcana. the suits, i suppose would be beers for cups, hubcaps for discs, celphones for wands, and paintball guns for swords. or maybe swords for swords. or grails for cups. something like that.
12 Would you like to revisit the character of A/V, say, in a sequel or spinoff?
anytime, anywhere. one of keven's special gifts is to create characters who function simultaneously as parodies and enriching mythologizations of the actors who play them. at times, i am all too "A.V.", i must admit. but the character is a whole comic universe unto himself. i would happily put him up again in the haunted penthouse of the old hotel i call my soul. for keven, i'd play third extra from the left with the fanaticism some actors would save up for their hamlet.
13 If you could live one day in another timespace, where and when would it be, and why?
the paris of the surrealists. or weimar berlin. maybe kakodelphia during the birth of hypno.
just because.
14 What do you think is the role of art in human experience, and has it changed at all from the origins of human expression?
i think human experience is a side effect of art. the history of human expression is the process of art remembering that it made all this. for its own sake.
15 You currently live in San Francisco, and have previously lived in Los Angeles, Boston and New York. What , if anything, have these cities given you?
Boston gave me a down-to-earth facet that has anchored and tempered my more spaced-out/artscum qualities. and it gave me a family. my peeps. my colleagues.
New York gave me a glimpse of a flawed, high-voltage utopia made of living stories. its shadow has haunted my dreamspace ever since. it's a city to have mythic adventures in. i wasn't ready back then. after two years i ran screaming. now, i'm ready. after "Misfits", i'm ready for anything.
Los Angeles gave me heatstroke and deep depression. i actually like the place when i'm working there or visiting my intimates, but, in general, it doesn't suit my temperament. and the weather is my idea of hell.
San Francisco gave me a new home, another family, another sister, a laboratory teeming with strains of ceaseless, infectious creativity. a panoptikon within which to craft fresh strategies and let my strangest ideas bloom into works the whole species can enjoy.
16 What question would you most like to ask yourself in 50 years?
"what were you thinking?"
17 Top or Bottom?
depends on the context.
i'm a reverent sadist with the ladies, but imaginal lifeforms and sentient stories get me pregnant on a regular basis.
as far as the psychosexual dynamics of power go, i guesss you'd call me a switch-hitter.
ac/dc. grim and greasy. amen.
18 Luke Haines or Jarvis Cocker?
luke haines when i'm working, jarvis when i'm living. which is to say, i like to be a diabolical worldshredding surgical supervillain in the laboratory and an eloquent, sexualized working class crooner on the streets.
19 Grant Morrison or Genesis P. Orridge?
they're both great gurus for any artist trying to employ and manifest magickal intent in a popular idiom, but i think morrison goes the extra mile in weaving irresistible hyperpop protein coatings for his dangerous ideas, whereas genesis is perfectly content in preaching to those already on his wavelength. there's room for both strains of enchantment, but my own aesthetic tends to side with those shameless populists who trick out their mindbombs in armani. on a superficial level, morrison is an old-school sexy motherfucker, and genesis, these days, in his genderblending reconciliation of every opposite, looks a bit like a wax mannequin of pamela anderson that's been left too long in the sun. no offense, gen.
20 What makes great fiction?
a narrative with the density and complexity and immersive, seductive nature of "reality". it needn't be "realistic". its logic and intensity and beauty should compete with reality, and potentially supplant it.
21 What is your definition of magic?
a way of seeing that can incorporate, explain, and render sacred every other way of seeing.
22 What of the elf question, Herr Direktor?
the only good elf is an elf in chains. the gnomes of zurich have spoken.
23 What will you do next?
i'm starting a radio show (called "The Orji Walflauer Experience") on "pirate cat radio", here in sf. wednesdays, 2-4pm on 87.9fm in SF and LA and www.piratecatradio.com. i wrote a novel called "ectosexual" that needs some editing/reconfiguring, but i hope to be shopping it around by autumn. another novel, called "hot pink holocaust", is already suggesting itself. in june, i'll be co-starring in a play called "Ten Lane Pizza Bowl", here in SF. i'm writing songs with fellow mercury man Sir Richard Wentworth, under the working title: "pornocracy", with more music brewing via Mike McQuilkin, Eric Sluga, and Joe Labelle, all of whom worked on the ingenious "Misfits" soundtrack. i'm also recording songs as "Julius Desmond" with Ophelia Desmond and the whole haunted half-real Desmond family. an oral biography of the Desmonds and a biopic script are also in the works. i'll be moving to NYC in 2008, so i intend to spend the next year in a state of blissful alchemical monasticism. like Uncle Andy, i want to be an art machine in the city of mercury. also expect more Underman/Omega Girl projects on the horizon. the world doesn't know what it's in for. Look at me. plug plug plug. already, i'm a whore.