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For my cinematography class last week I had to pick a shot to recreate and direct—and it's the first thing I've directed in a while! I chose a shot from Poltergeist and here's how it came out.
Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout, which follows an unnamed teenage girl and her younger brother as they become stranded in the Australian outback, reflects upon a multitude of social issues. In turn, the work is fecund with a wide spectrum of possible interpretations on the part of the viewer. My reading of the film is that Roeg is commenting on the sociohistorical moment during which Walkabout was produced in terms of family structures. It was in this transitional period that Western cultures saw a rise in the divorce rate and in single parent households, as well as in interracial marriage. Roeg uses Walkabout to challenge the traditional family structure, while temperately embracing the “new family.” Interestingly enough, the film presents these various structures discretely and in a linear fashion (although the film has a sizable amount of nonlinear editing). Thus, my argument will trace the sequential order in which these permutations appear.
Walkabout leads off by showing the dissolution of the traditional family, namely due to mental illness engendered by the stresses of conforming to contemporary principles. A montage sequence backed by cacophonous didgeridoo music introduces the boy, the girl, and their father via frenetic cutting, which, as film critic Stephen Farber acknowledges, is a “method of implying the tensions and anxieties that have finally unbalanced the father.”1 Notable shots in the sequence include the father lasciviously gazing at his daughter while she plays in the pool with her brother, as well as a repeated shot of a brick wall. The first time we see the brick wall, the camera dollies horizontally to reveal downtown Sydney, but the second time, the dolly reveals the desolate outback. The sounds of the city are played over the brick wall the second time to disorient the viewer before the wilderness is revealed. A related shot shows lush vegetation that looks like a jungle, but as the camera pans up, this “jungle” ends up being a well-maintained park in the city. The cumulative effect of these shots is as follows: Roeg suggests that the “concrete jungle” of modern civilization has become a more dangerous place than the so-called “wild;” the brick wall in the desert and the jungle in the city imply a role-reversal of the two settings. The institutionalization of the traditional monogamous nuclear family has forced the father to repress his lust for women besides his wife, but his incestuous and pedophilic feelings for his daughter have surfaced nonetheless. In this way, the technologically-advanced city has become a psychological danger for the father and a potential physical danger for the children. Their only escape is to nature: to the outback.
To the outback they go and, as the gas runs out in their VW Bug, the father suggests they set up a picnic in the middle of the wilderness. The daughter unloads the picnic basket from the trunk while the father ogles her buttocks. As the son plays with action figures and the daughter sets up the picnic, the father’s mental illness comes to a head and he pulls out a gun and starts firing at his children. They hide behind a rock as their father grabs the second canister of gasoline from the Bug’s trunk and lights the vehicle on fire before shooting himself in the head, clearly ashamed of his insane actions.
The dissolution of the traditional family is complete at this point, but at the very same moment, a new family form has displaced it. European social policy professor Linda Hantrais explains that “[t]he breakdown of marriage is likely to be directly associated with the development of reconstituted families, defined as an adult couple, married or single, and at least one child from a previous union of one member of the couple,” which is indeed what happens here.2 3 As the father fires away, the girl assumes the role of a single mother and herds her little brother deeper into the backcountry. The single parent family became very common in the 1970s. Professor of demography Anton Kuijsten notes that “the traditional family household [has] lost ground [and] has also grown smaller and has fewer children in fewer cases,” and sociology professor Jeffrey M. Jacques adds that “the growing diversity of family/household structures” in this period included “a greater willingness to bear children in single parent families.”4 Roeg embraces this novel family structure, but realistically depicts the difficulties of making it work: the girl struggles to find water for herself and her brother, which embodies the challenge for single, working parents to provide for their children. However, she is successful and locates an oasis.
When the pair awakens the following morning, they find the watering hole all dried up, to their horror. After a moment of panic, a figure appears on the horizon: a teenage aboriginal boy, who befriends the little boy and the girl and not only shows them how to find more water, but also leads them toward civilization. In one shot, the three characters walk across a sand dune holding hands. Literary and film critic Mark Anderson asserts the importance of hand-holding in another Roeg work, Don’t Look Now (1973), but his argument can be extended to Walkabout: “Holding hands with someone is both a physical and figurative act. Parents hold their children’s hands to guide them and give them security.”5 In turn, the hand-holding of the aborigine, the girl, and the boy can be interpreted as a visual cue for yet another shift in this family’s structure--this time into a multiracial nuclear family, with the aboriginal boy as the father figure. Data from Jacques’ essay indicates that the rate of interracial marriage in the U.S. alone more than tripled between 1960 and 1970 (from 0.4% to 1.5%).6 Once again, Roeg embraces this increasingly-prevalent incarnation of the family, this time by showing how similar interracial marriage is to the traditional monoracial family form. The little boy in the film takes a liking to the aborigine boy and establishes a makeshift language with him so that they can transcend the language (and racial) barrier. Cinema and literary scholar Anthony Boyle concurs that, through the relationship of the two boys, Walkabout “dissents from the notion that there is any fundamental failure of communication between those raised in a modern society and those raised outside of civilization.”7 Instead, Roeg depicts intra-family diversity cooly and casually, as if it were no different from any other family form. And as with many other families, the family in Walkabout begins to face complications when they stop trekking and start to assimilate into traditional family roles, as they settle into “normal” home life.
The aboriginal boy falls in love with the girl on the makeshift family’s journey and, upon settling in an abandoned homestead somewhere partway between wilderness and civilization, he performs a sacred mating dance for the girl. When she sees him dancing and following her around their house, the girl grows terrified: she does not love him back. The miscommunication in this couple’s “relationship” surely reflects the misguided marriages of several people in the world beyond the screen, as well as the ensuing divorces these people seek. As the aboriginal boy dances outside ceaselessly for over a day, the girl hides inside the house with her brother. Eventually, the aboriginal boy collapses from exhaustion. When he reawakens, the boy hangs himself from a tree. As the girl only needed the boy to show her the way home, he was useless once they arrived at the homestead--dead to her, both literally and figuratively. The aboriginal boy’s suicide essentially demarcates the termination of their relationship and, in turn, a shift back to the (now-divorced) single mother family structure. In Linda Hantrais’ work, she illustrates that there were “fluctuations in divorce rates over the 1960-1995 period,” but that “the overall result is an increase in the proportion of marriages terminating in divorce.8 Hantrais goes on to say that, notably, “[t]he United Kingdom has recorded a consistently high figure [of divorce] over a longer period [than countries such as] Italy and Spain...”9 Roeg presents this third family structure, which is ever-so prevalent in his home country, just as matter-of-factly as interracial marriage. As Boyle so eloquently phrases it, “[Walkabout's] concern is with the danger that the erotic poses for all people. Its premise is that man, regardless of the degree of his civilization and the complexity of his culture, is ruled by the same destructive forces.”10 In other words, Roeg essentially implies that traumas such as divorce happen to a large number of families, and that the dissolution of an interracial family can be just as tragic as the dissolution of a monoracial one.
One possible cause of divorce that Roeg examines in the movie, aside from a unidirectional expression of love, is the objectification of women. At about the middle point in the movie, the two boys and the girl play in a tree. As the girl climbs ahead of the aboriginal boy, her clothed buttocks juts out before his eyes. Intercut with the boy’s POV is footage of his thoughts: closeups of naked female aboriginal buttocks (intercut with footage of an aboriginal tribe discovering the destroyed VW bug). As Farber explains, “the aborigine boy becomes conscious of the girl's body, and her gestures remind him of the naked native women he has known all his life; for the first time, he sees her as a woman.”11 Roeg chooses to show the aboriginal boy’s “falling in love” with the girl via superficial and lustful imagery as opposed to through subtle character growth, and in turn leaves a set of questions open ended: If the aboriginal boy and the girl just met and can barely communicate with one another, can he really be in love with her as a person? Or does he just love her for having a female body? Was the boy’s ultimate downfall as the girl’s potential mate his rush into the mating dance ritual before getting to know her on a heart-to-heart level? I would argue that the boy’s blind assumption that the girl would accept his mating proposal reflects his chauvinism against the female sex and that this is the central cause of the breakdown of their family.
Additionally, the issue of the male gaze and the objectification of women can be extended to the form of the film itself. As art house film professor Thomas Kemper noted in one of his lectures, a major component of art cinema that drew audiences in was the sexual content that could not be found in mainstream fare.12Walkabout is no exception, as there is an extensive scene of the teenage girl swimming naked in a deep natural pool, simply enjoying herself. While this scene may be emblematic of her embracing of the “wild” life of the outback, it continues for a long enough time that the meaning of the scene is beyond understood and it is clear that Roeg intends to arouse his audience. Roeg gets away with such a long scene by intercutting shots of the aboriginal boy hunting wildlife. The effect is that the male gaze that Roeg entices the viewer with is tempered by the brutality of the boy’s killing of animals. Still, film professor Corinn Columpar, who specializes in on-screen feminist and Aboriginal issues, agrees that “the white girl's difference is sexual in nature and consequently sexualized throughout the film so as to incite desire on the part of both her traveling companion [the aboriginal boy] and the film viewer.”13Walkabout itself objectifies women in the same way the aboriginal boy (and arguably the insane father) does in order to attract audiences. This is problematic because Roeg challenges or at least questions the objectification of women, but then utilizes this technique itself to increase his film’s success.
Ultimately Walkabout embraces the new family structures of the 1970s, but acknowledges that these configurations have as much potential to fall apart as traditional families, because people have the same issues regardless of skin color or marital status. Roeg ends the film with one final challenge to the traditional family: years later, the girl is all grown up and her husband arrives home from work. The man goes on and on about how he got a promotion, but the woman zones out to fantasize about returning to the outback and swimming in the deep pool with her brother and the aboriginal boy. In retrospect, she wishes she could have a nontraditional family and a less mundane life, as her “walkabout” was the most exciting point of her existence. The woman’s dissatisfaction exemplifies Roeg’s challenge to the traditional family. With the increasing acceptability of a variety of family structures in Western cultures in the early 1970s, the woman had more choices than she was willing to see, and sadly made the safe choice. Although every family form is a risky undertaking, the fundamental message in Walkabout is that the nontraditional family is more interesting, more-forward thinking, and less bound to contemporary societal mores; the “new family” is a family worth the risk involved.
2 Hantrais, Linda. “Relationships Between Social Policy and Changing Family Forms Within the European Union.” European Journal of Population 13.4 (1997): 339-379. Web.
3 Sociology professor Jeffrey M. Jacques notes that Roeg’s homeland, the United Kingdom, has “displayed more advanced signs of family breakdown in terms of divorce and lone parenthood” than nearby countries such as France and nations in Scandinavia. Roeg has either consciously or subconsciously accounted for this common British event in Walkabout.
4 Kuijsten, Anton. “Changing Family Patterns in Europe: A Case of Divergence?” European Journal of Population 12.2 (1996): 115-143. Web; Jacques, Jeffrey M. “Changing Marital and Family Patterns: A Test of the Post-Modern Perspective.” Sociological Perspectives 41.2 (1998): 381-413. Web.
5 Sanderson, Mark. Don't Look Now. London: British Film Institute, 2012. Print.
6 Jeffrey M. “Changing Marital and Family Patterns: A Test of the Post-Modern Perspective.” Sociological Perspectives 41.2 (1998): 381-413. Web.
7 Boyle, Anthony. “Two Images of the Aboriginal: Walkabout, the Novel and Film.” Literature/Film Quarterly 7.1 (1979): 67-76. Web.
8 Hantrais, Linda. “Relationships Between Social Policy and Changing Family Forms Within the European Union.” European Journal of Population 13.4 (1997): 339-379. Web.
9 Hantrais, Linda. “Relationships Between Social Policy and Changing Family Forms Within the European Union.” European Journal of Population 13.4 (1997): 339-379. Web.
10 Boyle, Anthony. “Two Images of the Aboriginal: Walkabout, the Novel and Film.” Literature/Film Quarterly 7.1 (1979): 67-76. Web.
12 Kemper, Thomas. "Last Wave: ‘60s Politicized Cinema." University of Southern California. Norris Cinema Theatre, Los Angeles, CA. March 10, 2014. Lecture.
13 "Corinn Columpar." Cinema Studies Faculty. University of Toronto, 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. http://www.utoronto.ca/cinema/faculty-columpar.html; Columpar, Corinn. “The Gaze as Theoretical Touchstone: The Intersection of Film Studies, Feminist Theory, and Postcolonial Theory.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 30.1/2 (2002): 25-44. Web.
The Radioactive Chicken Heads: An ExCLUCKsive Interview
For one of my classes this semester I was tasked with finding a subculture (loosely defined) in the Greater Los Angeles Area and entering into and returning from that community with some sort of interview-based presentation. I picked an eclectically-themed, cross-genre band with a quirky fanbase that has been around for 20+ years, but who largely remains an underground treasure: The Radioactive Chicken Heads. Every band member wears a paper mâché variation of a chicken or carrot head and has his or her own backstory. And their live shows are energetic and feature not only music, but staged fights with their foes. Highly recommended.
To make a long story short, a friend who I know through my long-standing Aquabats fandom has been involved with the Chicken Heads for a year or two, helping them with a TV pilot and with playing on stage. He connected me with their frontman, pseudonym Carrot Topp, who was kind enough to grant me an interview with a large chunk of the band (whose personnel fluctuates in number from show-to-show), both in character and as themselves.
I met them last month before they played a show at Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific during the triannual Night Dive art exhibit and concert that the aquarium sets up inside after hours. The band members are really kind, funny people and they were so chatty that evening that I rarely needed to intervene in the conversation. We talked about both their extraterrestrial and Peruvian fanbases, an awkward experience with a man who had a thing for carrots, catching on fire at a skatepark, and much more! The following is a transcript of the interview, along with some photos I took of the concert.
Carrot Topp: Want me to do the interview in character or out of character?
Frankenchicken: Wha-what do you mean? There is no “not character.”
Carrot: Well he said he wanted to do an interview not in character. I said I would do it but not [on] video.
[“Done Dirt Cheap” starts playing in background]
El Pollo Diablo: AC/DC? Why? They’re not very good.
Franken: Okay, well ask the questions over here, c’mon!
Cody: Alright! Describe the Radioactive Chicken Heads to someone who’s a total newbie.
Franken: Basically it’s like Chuck E. Cheese on crack.
Cody: Chuck E. Cheese on crack?
Carrot: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Diablo: Vegetarian GWAR?
Franken: You know what, I could tell you my first experience. Before I was in the band. [To Carrot Topp] I mean that’s a good one right?
Carrot: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us that.
Franken: Alright, so, at the time Green Jellÿ was cool, but uh. I went to see Green Jellÿ. And 45 Grave, a band called Frankenstein, uh, who else was there?
Carrot: Ummm, Rosemary’s Billygoat.
Franken: Rosemary’s Billygoat and Chicken Heads. It was amazing. The first band was the Radioactive Chicken Heads. I didn’t know what to expect; I thought it was a cruddy college band because the name sounded ironic and too long. But when they came out, a freaking carrot came out of nowhere. And then like all these chickens came out of nowhere. And then they started to play music. And there was a blacklight; they were glowing. It was freakin’ amazing. I had a smile from ear to ear their whole set. They blew my mind. And they weren’t just visually good, the music was good too. They had a variety of music. It was, you know, punk rock, there was ska, there was metal, there was like everything. It was amazing. Then after that there was a band called Frankenstein. This guy came out with a like--
Carrot: This is about the Radioactive Chicken Heads though! You wanna talk about--are you doing an entire concert review? [laughs]
Franken: They [Frankenstein] were amazing. 45 Grave. They were amazing. This and that.
[laughter]
Diablo: Everything that night was pretty amazing.
Franken: Literally I felt like I took acid without taking acid. And it all started off with the coolest band there, The Radioactive Chicken Heads.
Carrot: That’s why we keep him around.
Franken: They started the trip.
Carrot: Okay, so yeah, I would say it’s--it is like if Chuck E. Cheese, you know, came to life. I always had nightmares of Chuck E. Cheese when I was a kid and I tried to just, make those nightmares for the kids of today, because if you go to Chuck E. Cheese now, it’s not very scary. It’s all, you know, brightly lit...
Diablo: “You say happy, we say birthday...”
Franken: [To Carrot Topp] What are you talkin’ about? You just--
Carrot: Well it’s still terrifying to me, but yeah, it’s not the nightmarish place it was when I was a kid and I wanna keep that alive because--
Franken: What about those pictures you posted just recently? That was a pretty creepy one [Chuck E. Cheese].
Carrot: That was scary, but that was...
Franken: Was that retro?
Carrot: ...[continued] the old Chuck E. Cheese, like the Rock-afire Explosion Chuck E. Cheese. Now I’m getting off-subject though. But basically that’s our inspiration. We’re here to, uh, give children nightmares. Just like the animatronic creatures of yesterday gave us nightmares.
Franken: And adults.
Carrot: Yes.
Diablo: So if you could dwindle it down to one word, it would just be nightmarefuel.
Cody: Nightmarefuel.
Franken: That’s two words!
Cody: Compound word, compound word.
Diablo: Oh yeah.
Carrot: But officially we call ourselves “genetically modified rock and roll.”
Cody: Nice.
Franken: Tell him about our island.
Carrot: I can’t tell him. That’s off the record.
[laughter]
Cody: Secret record.
Franken: Delete that from the record.
Cody: I will. I’ll delete it.
Carrot: Nobody’s supposed to know where to find us on our island--oh wait--you don’t even know about that.
Cody: This message will self destruct...
El Pollo Diablo summoning poultry demons.
Cody: Have you heard of “Five Nights at Freddy’s?”
Carrot: I have heard about it. A lot.
Franken: We’re like that but--
Diablo: Who?
Carrot: It’s a video game. People post that on comments on our music videos a lot.
Cody: Based on Chuck E. Cheese.
Diablo: Ri-ri-right.
Franken: Yeah, we’re like that but instead of it being on a screen, we just run out into the crowd and do it for real.
Cody: Yeah. Kill people?
Franken: Yeah, yeah, yeah! ‘Member that kid that you ate?
Rockin’ Robin: Is he gonna see the show?
Carrot: Yeah, you’re gonna see the show?
Cody. Yeah.
Robin: My character doesn’t bring nightmares. Put that on there... I don’t bring nightmares.
Cody: Okay. [laughter]
Bird Brain
Cody: So what kind of “zany antics” can we expect to see on the stage?
Franken: Fist fights!
Cody: Yeah?
Carrot: No, you can’t expect anything. You have to expect... the only thing you can really expect is that me, Carrot Topp, I’m probably gonna get attacked by a bunch of ridiculous monsters. And I’ll survive... at least to this day I’ve survived, but I’m always being attacked. There’s all these--I’m always having a lot of difficulties, a lot of obstacles getting through a show.
Franken: There’s a lot of conflict in the set.
Carrot: Yeah.
Franken: I don’t know why. It’s really interesting.
Carrot: You might see a giant glob of fat.
Robin: ...I think we’re like superheroes.
Carrot: We are pretty super.
Robin: We’re like superheroes!
Carrot: Yeah, we have some mutant powers. That’s for sure.
Robin: Right?! And those are villains [referring to the fat glob and Badd Bunny]!
Diablo: We’re pretty much indestructible.
Carrot: I fight liquid fat, a giant glob of fat [and] my arch-nemesis, Badd Bunny, who’s a giant, robotic rabbit, who’s um... he’s got a taste for carrots. It’s in our contract for every show we do that we do not allow any giant, robotic bunnies into the show. But the security guards--
Diablo: They [the bunnies] always make it in.
Carrot: Yeah, you can’t find good help these days because the security guards seem to always--
Diablo: They let one in.
Franken: They don’t work.
Carrot: Yeah.
Franken: They don’t carry guns at these shows.
Diablo: Robot bunnies just bribe really well.
Carrot: They somehow--yeah. He [Badd Bunny] always seems to make his way into the show.
Franken: You know I assume he’s gonna pretend he’s a fish and swim into this show.
Diablo: He could do that.
Cody: Could be a mutant fish bunny today.
Franken: Yeah, you know, you never know.
Diablo: The short and short of it... there’s lots of “symbolism.”
Cody: [laughing] Yes.
Carrot: That answer your question?
Cody: Yeah, no, absolutely!
Carrot: Okay. Probably answers three questions.
Cody: No, it’s fine! I love it. What kind of people are drawn to your guys’ shows?
Franken: Nobody.
[laughter]
Robin: Mutants!
Franken: Yeah, not people, mutants.
Carrot: Yeah.
Franken: The people that see us are, uh, they think we’re amazing, but then when they go home then they just die off because we’re too amazing.
Cody: They die from awesomeness?
Franken: Yeah, they never come back.
Carrot: Yeah, it makes it difficult to have a good following.
Diablo: And if you don’t die, you’re in the band.
Robin: They don’t die from the radiation?
Franken: That might be it too!
Diablo: We are radioactive.
Robin: That’s what I thought.
Cody: A survivor’s cult...
Frankenchicken
Cody: Craziest stories from your guys’ time?
Carrot: Oh, I’ll tell you my craziest story--at least this is... well... two crazy stories. One crazy story: there was a... um... this one’s hard to explain, but there was a drunk guy that basically... he went on stage, he grabbed our microphones and... basically he grabbed a microphone that wasn’t even plugged in. We had other microphones. I started talking for him, saying [falsetto, like Elmo] “Look at me! Look at me mommy! Look, I’m finally here on Sesame Street.”
Franken: [sarcastically] Such a good story.
Carrot: And he got so mad he took a swing at me and the security guard had to jump on stage and pull him down.
Franken: Luckily that was one of the shows that they actually had security.
Carrot: Another good story: I was playing a place--a skatepark in Ohio called Skatopia--[excited] this is probably the best story.
Franken: That story goes “We played Skatopia.” [laughs]
Carrot: No, there’s more. It’s like an 88-acre anarchist’s playground and while we were playing, I noticed that my shirt was really hot. I was like “It’s getting really, really hot” and then I noticed somebody was hitting me really hard and I was like “Why is this guy hitting me?”
Cody: Oh no...
Carrot: Well what happened is I was on fire.
[laughter]
Carrot: I was on fire. Somebody threw a firecracker at me and it just landed in my pocket. It landed in my pocket, I didn’t even notice it. That was one of the craziest things, was being on fire. Eventually the whole stage caught on fire. That was the end of the show.
Diablo: That was the end of Skatopia.
Carrot: No, it’s still there!
Diablo: It’s still rising?
Carrot: I think they rebuilt it.
Cody: The grand finale [the stage fire].
Carrot: Yeah. I wish that part was on video, but you can see videos of that place.
Cody: Cool.
Dueling shredders: El Pollo Diablo vs. Bird Brain
Cody: So, aside from crazy stories, do you have any [other] “favorite” stories?
[laughter]
Diablo: [creepily, to Carrot Topp] Are you the carrot? Are you the carrot Aaron?
Carrot: Okay that’s a good story. Okay so we played--that was at the Brewing Company, right?
Diablo: Yeah.
Franken: Okay so there was this place. They made beer. There was a green--it was like a clean room that we played in. It was not tall enough for anybody. ‘Cause the Chicken Heads are, you know, abnormally sized. So everybody had to play crouched over. And so anyway we played in there and it was a sweatbox. And then afterwards, you know, we sell our merch and people come up and try to talk to us and this and that and say like “Oh” you know, like “you guys are crazy, like all mutated and weird-lookin’.” But somebody like--we had the Evil Carrot at merch.
Diablo: No, I was working the merch.
Franken: Were you working the merch? [jokingly gestures at El Pollo Diablo] Oh, we had the roadie working the merch.
Diablo: [rolls his eyes] Whatever...
Franken: And uh, this guy that had a sexual fantasy of the carrot came up and said--this is the first thing he said was [stereotypical flamer voice, sounds kind of like Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time] “Are you the carrot? ‘Cause I think the carrot’s really sexy.” And he [Diablo] was just like “Oh, no, I’m not the carrot, like I’m the roadie.”
Diablo: To set the scene, he was in, like a pompadour hat, like a regular T-shirt, cutoff jean shorts like way--
Franken: You mean a fedora?
Diablo: Yeah, whatever.
Franken: A pompadour is a hairstyle.
Diablo: You’re a pompadour. Anyway, [he had] cutoff jeans like way above the knees and like rainbow suspenders and he comes up and he’s all like [another flamer voice] “Let me get the carrot pin because I think the carrot is so hot.” And he’s like feelin’ up on us. And then like I’m like “No, I’m not the carrot, he’s the tall guy walkin’ around and then he comes up to him [Frankenchicken] and he asks him if he’s the carrot and--
Franken: I told him the truth: he went back to the farm to replant himself so he could get ready for the next show. And he didn’t believe us. He thought we were the carrot and he wanted to... you know... and uh, we had to let him down easy and say “You know what? He’s gone. I don’t know what we can do for ya.”
Diablo: And that is the favorite story.
Franken: But he bought a shirt, so everything was good.
Carrot: So now they [the band members] say that all the time: “Are you the carrot?” Yeah, that’s like--he [the carrot fetish man] kept saying “You would tell me if you were the carrot, wouldn’t you? You would tell me?”
Franken: Like he was trying to catch us in a lie, like “You’re a cop. You have to tell me you’re a cop, right? You’re a carrot, right?”
[laughter]
Franken: ...So we’re really big in the gay community.
Carrot: That’s true.
Franken: And every other community.
Carrot: Actually everybody--
Franken: But the gays, they really like us.
Carrot: That’s true.
Franken: They don’t like the female characters though, but luckily tonight I don’t think we have too many of them.
Carrot: We do, we have a couple.
Franken: Do we? Rockin’ Robin!
Carrot: Children love us. Old people love us. We have fans, big fans, you know, in their 80s and 90s. So I think we do really well.
Franken: Aren’t we really big in Japan?
Diablo: We’re big in Peru.
Carrot: We’re big in Peru. That’s where we’re the most popular.
Cody: Big in Peru?
Carrot: Yeah. And we’re actually going to Peru in the summer. It took off on YouTube there. ‘Cause our videos went, you know, viral in Peru... compared to here.
Cody: Oh yeah? That’s cool.
Carrot: So we’re goin’ there for the second time this summer.
Cody: That’s exciting.
Carrot: Yes. But we tend to bring out a bunch of freaks and weirdos. They seem to be attracted to us for some reason.
Franken: Like Techno Destructo [from GWAR]. For some reason he hangs around the Chicken Heads. He likes to wrestle too.
Diablo: [nasally voice] He likes to wrestle.
Carrot: Yeah. A lot of pro wrestlers come to our shows. That’s our main demographic, I think. Is pro wrestlers.
Diablo: There’s lots of fightin’ goin’ on so. Pro wrestlers and ex-GWAR people.
Franken: I think they’re all “ex-GWAR people” now.
Diablo: [sad trumpet sound] Womp womp womp.
Carrot Topp
Carrot: Alright we’re ready for the next question.
Cody: Okay, yeah. So you guys have been around since the 90s, right?
Carrot: I have.
Cody: You’ve [Carrot Topp] been around since the 90s.
Franken: You’ve been around since the 70s.
Carrot: That’s when I was born. The end of the 70s.
Franken: Well you’ve “been around.”
Cody: You have technically “been around.”
Franken: I’ve “been around” since ’86.
Carrot: Well the Radioactive Chicken Heads have been around since the 90s and that’s what counts. That’s when I was reborn in vegetable form.
Cody Right, right... So how did you guys, fit into the O.C.--I guess it was like a ska/punk scene sort of at the time and how do you fit into the scene today in comparison?
Franken: We’re universal. It’s not just O.C. or L.A. It’s everywhere.
Carrot: We don’t really fit into any local scene. We don’t even think of ourselves as like an O.C. band. We just try to be--we don’t even think about ourselves as like an “Earth band.” We try to be, you know, intergalactic...
Carrot: [Frankenchicken and Carrot Topp together] ...planetary
Franken: You know, we’re mutants, so we don’t really fit into any category. So like, we’ve shot beams into space and we’ve actually gotten a response but they told us not to tell the general population about it.
Robin: What are you talking about?
Cody: ‘Cause they were trying to tell Jodie Foster in Contact.
Carrot: [To Frankenchicken] Then why are you telling him?! He’s part of the general population!
Franken: What? I didn’t say which ones [alien races].
Diablo: He’s not a general, he’s at least a major.
Carrot: I don’t think you’re gonna wake up tomorrow. [laughs]
Franken: There’s lots of aliens out there. Lots of different races.
Diablo: Like he said, we don’t really fit in. We’re mutants but we played Professor X’s School for the Gifted Youngsters. They didn’t like us.
Franken: We got expelled.
Cody: You got expelled?
Diablo: Kicked right out.
Cody: You’re the ex-X-Men.
Diablo: Yup!
Franken: Expelled X-Men.
Cody: Yeah, there you go. [laughs]
Diablo: Just call me Professor X. Or Triple X.
Carrot: But we’ve never really been in uh...
Cody: ...like any specific scene.
Carrot: We can play any kinda scenes. We play with any kinda bands. We’ve played with ska bands, metal bands, drag queens, anything.
Diablo: Fish [in reference to the venue].
Carrot: Exactly.
Franken: We can play anywhere. West Hollywood even.
Cody: Is this your first Phish concert?
Carrot: This is my first Phish concert.
Franken: [Frankenchicken laughs] Hah! I got that.
Carrot: I’ve been following Phish all around here.
[laughter]
Robin: I don’t get it.
Carrot: Oh, it’s a band. Called Phish.
[laughter]
Diablo: She didn’t know. It’s just a crappy hippie band.
Franken: And like I said, if people don’t like us we just eat ‘em. Especially if they’re children.
Diablo: Yeah.
Franken: We just give ‘em uh, you know, radioactivism.
Robin: You just touch ‘em, that’s it, they’re infected!
Diablo: Yeah!
Franken: They get cancer, they die, whatever.
Robin: They poop, they sneeze, and they cough...
Carrot: We have to issue a warning before all our shows that people may be contaminated by radioactivity, so we try to, you know...
Robin: The fish are all gonna end up glowing.
Carrot: We don’t want people to stand too close to us. We don’t even really want people to come to the concerts because--
Franken: I mean we just don’t care. We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do no matter what.
Carrot: Yeah, people keep inviting us places for some reason.
Franken: People like it or they don’t. Most of the time they like it.
El Pollo Diablo is stabbing you with his pitchfork!
Wikkan Chicken: [Wikkan Chicken arrives in the background] Thanks for abandoning me guys!
Carrot: Sorry! We’re doing an interview with Rolling Stone. We’re doing a cover story.
Wikkan: Why am I not in this interview?
Franken: We’re doing an interview with the Rolling Stoners.
Carrot: Sorry!
Wikkan: Why am I not in this interview?
Carrot: [to Wikkan Chicken] I don’t know. Is that band still playing right now?
Wikkan; No, they’re out.
Carrot: Are we supposed to be setting up now?
Wikkan: N-n-no, the guys--
Cody: They’re having like a drag show.
Carrot: Okay. If we don’t finish this before we gotta go, we can finish it after the set.
Cody: Oh okay, thank you, yeah!
Franken: How many questions do you have more [left]?
Carrot: A lot, a lot. Stop giving such long answers.
[laughter]
Franken: C’mon, let’s fire through these!
Cody: We’ll fire through these. So you mentioned GWAR. Are you guys friends with a lot of those eclectic, costumed bands?
Carrot: Yeah we are.
Franken: The answer is “yes.” Next question. [laughs]
Cody: And would you consider there to be a sort of shared community/sub-culture between you guys and the fans as well--like shared fans?
Carrot: Yeah. There’s sympathy between all the bands that have to wear all that heavy gear.
Franken: Rosemary’s Billygoat, GWAR, we both have--
Carrot: And there’s a lot more than being in a regular band. You have to take about four times as much stuff as a regular band.
Diablo: We see each other naked a whole lot, so it forms a bond.
Carrot: It’s true.
Franken: I’ve seen Techno Destructo’s butt like way too many times. I mean, you know, Rosemary’s Billygoat, the singer from that band, you know, Mike Odd, he’s been in our videos, we’ve been in his videos, uh, Techno Destructo from GWAR--original GWAR, he’s been in our videos. We’ve wrestled with him. We’ve done all kinds of stuff.
Carrot: There’s not many bands like that, so we tend to--we all know each other, you know?
Cody: Yeah. Cool. You guys have had a lot of your exposure to, uh, the public from outlets of campiness like Dr. Demento, Gong Show, Troma.
Carrot: Yes.
Cody: What’s the value of camp in the world?
Diablo: Like summer camp or winter camp?
Franken: Well, ya know, it relaxes ya. You go out, you look at the stars, you sit by the fire, you roast marshmallows. It’s good!
Doable: They’re called s’mores I hear.
Cody: That’s what I hear too! Anything else?
Franken: No, next question!
Carrot: No, I don’t know. I ran away from camp.
Carrot Topp and Bird Brain jam.
Cody: Why do you guys love performing and specifically performing in character and in costume?
Franken: Wh-what costumes? There’s no costumes!
Carrot: Why do we love that? We don’t really love it. We just don’t have a choice. If I had a choice we wouldn’t do this.
Franken: You think you could get a decent job lookin’ like a Frankenstein chicken?
Carrot: Exactly.
Franken: Or a giant carrot?
Carrot: We tried, trust me.
Franken: I mean look at me, c’mon! I got bolts stickin’ out of my neck and scars and--
Carrot: It’s really the only the way we can eat. Sometimes they’ll throw us some chicken feed.
Franken: You think I could work retail? I hate people.
Carrot: But no, we don’t enjoy it one bit.
Wikkan: That’s not true, a little bit.
Carrot: It’s just um, you know, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. That’s us!
Greasy Chicken and Carrot Topp stare into your soul.
Cody: Any last thoughts from your characters?
Franken: There’s only “in character,” this is all of our thoughts, what do you mean?
Diablo: From El Pollo Diablo-- sometimes it’s hot as hell.
Carrot: From Frankenchicken? I’m still thinkin’ of mine.
Franken: Frankenchicken--URRRRRR! FIRE BAD! FRYER BAD! NO FRYERS.
Diablo: I’ve heard that before.
Carrot: Rockin’ Robin? [silence] No? You’ve got nothin’ to say? Rockin’ Robin has nothin’ to say.
Franken: C’mon Rockin’ Robin.
Carrot: Wikkan Chicken? Any words of wisdom?
Franken: Wait a second. Frankenchicken wants to say one thing right now, I wanna clarify somethin’: My van runs.
[laughter]
Franken: That’s all I wanted to say. My van is--
Carrot: It wasn’t running when we recorded the song.
Franken: My van is--it’s both boss and it runs and it peels out.
Carrot: There’s a song called “The Curse of Frankenchicken.” It’s about Frankenchicken. And he gets upset about--
Franken: That’s how I got here [to the aquarium]. I drove here in my van. It’s also my belt buckle.
Carrot: [someone whispers in Carrot Topp’s ear] Alright, we gotta finish this interview, but... Frankenchicken didn’t make it to the recording session, so I put in a line about how he’s got a “real boss van but it doesn’t run,” ‘cause his van wouldn’t run that day. Yeah. He’s not too happy about that.
Franken: I was getting the tires changed. It can’t run on rims!
Carrot: It’s on the recording, you should hear it. You can hear the car--we put in a sound effect of his van trying to start.
Franken: And now here’s Slayer. [turns up the music]
[laughter]
Carrot: [to the whole band] I just wanna--any closing thoughts?
Wikkan: Don’t listen to the carrot!
Robin: He lies!
Wikkan: He lies!
[more laughter]
Carrot: I mean we’re really here for all the mutant vegetables and chickens. They don’t really have any role models these days, so we have to, you know--
Robin: Teenage mutants.
Carrot: We’re doing what we can so they can grow up and be, you know--do something with themselves instead of just, growing up in, you know, a fast food restaurant and dying. We feel that there’s something better they can do, like be in an aquarium.
Franken: With a bunch of fish.
Diablo: Playing music for fish--not with a “ph-.” Only with an “f-.”
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