Gregory Jacobsen: The Mr. Skin Interview

Tell us about your background. Where did you grow up? What was that like?

Born and raised in the beautiful shithole of New Jersey. Paint factories blowing up down the street, sludge dumping into the river, playing in fenced-off radioactive woods where they manufactured A-bomb parts, lighting fires!

What appeals to you about Chicago?

I came here for school. It's cheap here in Chicago and it's a somewhat (relatively) big culture hub, although I rarely leave the apartment these days. I wouldn't mind leaving Chicago. Sometimes I hate the fucking people here.

Tell us about your artwork. How would you describe it?

People wallowing in their own filth, grotesque sexual rituals, pathetic attempts at salvation painted in many, many layers and detail with acrylics. Dirty little girls, lots of ramshackle piles and viscous ooze. I do it because I am compulsive and find that I have to pile these paintings to the ceiling before I die instead of going out and having a good time.

How about your music?

Unfortunately not too many people give a shit about the music end of what I do. The band Lovely Little Girls is an extension of my paintings, where we are trying to create a grotesque and queasy emotional impact but still have it be very accessible . . . fun, but extremely foreboding. I do it because I fancy myself a performer and this is the type of music I like. Also, the music and painting ultimately play off and influence each other.

Tell us about your blog and radio show.

A few years ago I started an MP3 blog called Cake & Polka Parade. This was at the time of the big blog explosion, and I felt there really weren't any MP3 blogs that I cared about . . . they were all geared towards god-awful bland indie rock.

Who gives a shit about that stuff and doesn't it already have enough outlets for exposure?

And who cares about some verbose, shaggy-haired turd pontificating on some Arcade Fire CD?

I wanted to share some of the weird and strange treasures I had been collecting on vinyl and cassette over the years.

There were a few amazing blogs at the time like Otis Fodder's 365 Days Project that I aspired to . . . although I also wanted to highlight some of the more avant-garde and noisy stuff I am into.

WFMU[http://www.wfmu.org], the great freeform station from New Jersey, had also started up their blog around this time, and the station manager eventually contacted me, liking what I was doing, and invited me onto the roster of writers for their blog.

That was an honor, as I grew up listening to the station, pining for it when I moved out here, and was now obsessively listening to it once I got a high-speed connection. The station started up web-only slots and I was asked to fill some time.

The show is a version of Cake & Polka Parade. It's everything I like, from metal, children's music, found recordings, free jazz, crazy 20th-century classical.

I try to make connections in the music that aren't so apparent . . . see if I can segue Herb Alpert into Celtic Frost into a field recording of barking seals and have it make sense. I try to do the show on a monthly basis, but I edit the hell out of it and it's time consuming.

Who are some of your creative influences/heroes that might surprise your fans?

Howard Stern. I grew up listening to him every day and it gave me my love of talk radio and radio in general. A lot of artsy people write him off, but there's an organic flow to the show that other mainstream talk radio lacks.

Most other "shock jocks" also don't have the self-deprecating but self-aggrandizing, I guess you can say Jewish humor, that Stern has. Also, the show, and especially the old Channel 9 show, has a ridiculous ramshackle quality about it that I love. I think he's getting better as he gets older—he's less bitter and pissy and he lets his odd take on the world show through in his conversations.

What is the origin of the name Fatty Jubbo?

I was living in an apartment and an ornery fat woman and her ham-hock husband moved in upstairs. She was always bitching and compulsively cleaning the stairwell. She would then spray a shitload of cheap, sickly sweet air freshener into the hallway that would leak through our door.

My roommate dubbed her Fatty Jubbo and I stole the name. Fatty Jubbo factors into a lot of my work—ridiculous and petty people. Fatty Jubbo is also me—I was a fatty when I was young.

What was the first movie nude scene you ever saw? Is there a funny story attached to that?

I can't really remember. It's not a nude example, but the first movie woman I was really taken with was Sarah Douglas, the evil villain lady in Superman II. She was really ballsy, and that outfit was really sexy. They must have modeled her after Cosy from Throbbing Gristle or something.

The other non-nude (but close) must have been Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi (Picture: 1), especially when she chokes Jabba with the chain. And that outfit!

But for nude or sex scene, the earliest one that had the biggest impact was The Accused, where Jodie Foster gets raped on the pinball machine.

What is your favorite movie nude scene?

Well I just saw a decent Cuban film, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. There's a great scene where a carnival comes to town and all the townspeople are in a tent to see the "Spider Woman" . . . which is basically some woman with her head in a board painted with spider legs. They roll a TV in front of her and show some really lame music video with interpretive dancing and a song that just repeats "Spider Woman!" Meanwhile, the main guy of the carnival comes in from the back and fucks the woman from behind. Everyone is oblivious as they watch the goofy video.

What are your three favorite sexy movies of all time?

The Piano Teacher, A Real Young Girl (Picture: 1), and Andy Warhol's BAD.

Who do you think are the three sexiest movie actresses/celebrities not of this era?

Susan Tyrrell as Queen Doris in Forbidden Zone (Picture: 1), Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame, Shelley Duvall (Picture: 1) in all the Altman films. Oh . . . and Lalla Ward as Romana II in Doctor Who . . . and some unknown silent film star named Alice White. Too many to mention, really.

Who are the sexiest movie actresses/celebrities today?

Annabella Sciorra (Picture: 1), Kate Winslet (Picture: 1), Gina Bellman (Picture: 1), and Mila Kunis.

What was the sexiest time period in film? In art? In music? Why?

Oh, the 1970s, definitely . . . for movies and music at least.

In the case of film, movies were sexy throughout . . . there was always a tension . . . rather than getting into the mid-late '80s and beyond where you had this obligatory sex scene midway through.

I can't really say though—I'm not a hardcore film buff who can map out these trends and changes, but generally I would say films from the '70s were much more sensual . . . right down to the stock of the film. Aside from that, I really like the fashions from the '20s to the '50s.

As for music, punk is a given . . . especially, at least for me, art-punk and no-wave of the late '70s/early '80s. It's the rhythm of dirty fucking.

What directors do you think have made particularly erotic films?

Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman.

What actress/celebrity/famous singer would you like to collaborate with creatively?

Singers? Definitely Diamanda Galas, Catherine Ringer, and Dagmar Krause, although I am just a measly little shit among them. All are amazingly beautiful, strong, creative women with stunning vocal abilities.

Actress? Susan Tyrrell! She is hilarious!

What actress would you most like to paint a portrait of? What do you think the final product would look like?

Bette Davis from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Most of my paintings look like that anyway.

What kind of movies are no longer being made that you'd like to see revived? (And don't cheat and say "good ones"!)

All the gems from the '70s where the studios threw money at talented filmmakers. More open-ended sci-fi like 2001 and Solaris (not the George Clooney butchering).

More indie films that defy genres like Café Flesh (Picture: 1). Seeing amazing things like this always reminds me of what a banal age we live in.

Given an unlimited budget and a guarantee of success, what would the ultimate Gregory Jacobsen film be like?

It would end up being some opulent Busby Berkeley sort of musical colliding with Vienna Aktionism.