I placed ads, answered ads, swapped dirty pics and dirtier emails, all while exploring every idea and fetish possible before exciting myself to the point of having to do laundry. Upon completion, I’d stare at my computer screen, spent and completely depressed and disgusted by the images that had turned me on just a few seconds earlier. — from the story “Gay Keith” by Scott Edgecombe

It was in answering the ad of Gay Keith that Edgecombe learned he was not Gay Scott.

Edgecombe, whose autobiographical tale of being gay for 40 minutes is bittersweet in more ways than one, is the star of the festival circuit short “GayKeith,” directed by Leslie Hope.

The story of how “Gay Keith” the story became “GayKeith” the movie is uncharacteristically kind, filled with Thank You notes, looking out for friends’ well-being, and liberal self-deprecation; all privileges guaranteed by Canada’s Constitution.

“It’s not something I laughed about years later,” Edgecombe says. “I laughed about it in the car on the ride home.”

If his performance is fearless, it might be because Edgecombe says he does not have an internal censor and that he is rarely, if ever, mortified.

“Sometimes I’ll finish telling a story about myself and it’s only about a minute after I’ve stopped talking that I realize I must have really shocked someone,” he says.

Edgecombe spent 15 years in Los Angeles trying to get acting jobs before he returned to his native Toronto. While he never became famous in Hollywood (“Why is Seth Rogen getting all my parts?”), he seemed to weather the downside of the quest for stardom in the amicable way Canadians have while building up the type of short-on-salary, big on one-time-only skills resume common to the out of work actor.

“Among other things,” Edgecombe says, “I was a manny. I took care of my friend Leslie’s son.”

Leslie is Leslie Hope, a fellow Canadian, documentary filmmaker, and actress in series ranging from “Knots Landing” to “24″ (she played Jack Bauer’s doomed first wife, Teri) to “The Mentalist.” She also adapted “Gay Keith” for the screen.

“Scott always told stories,” Hope says, “and he was encouraged to write some of them down. He gave me ['Gay Keith'] and I just bought it.”

“You mean you believed it?” I ask.

“No, I paid for it,” she says. “I wanted to make it, and I wanted him to star in it.”

“So my first real acting job in 15 years — ” says Edgecombe.

” — was after he went back to Toronto — ” says Hope.

” — and I was essentially living right around the corner for all that time — ” says Edgecombe.

” — and I had to fly him back to Los Angeles.”

Hope began acting in her British Columbia boarding school. She is modest about her credits.

“I was not a genius actor,” she says, “but I definitely did not want to be a lawyer, which is what I was being groomed for. I had a certain look that was popular for teens in the 1980s and I was very fortunate to work with some great people early on.”

One of those people was the director/actor John Cassavetes, who worked with the then-19-year-old Hope in “Love Steams,” one of his final films.

“While there was no questions that [Cassavetes] was the boss,” Hope says, “what was very attractive about what he did was that he was allowed and able to work collaboratively. I never wanted to just be an actor—I mostly felt like a fraud doing it—but working with him made me creatively aware of the fulfillment he might have been feeling. I wanted to work with people.”

Hope moved to Los Angeles while still a teenager and says the experience was heady and disconcerting.

“The excess that is available to you for so little made me uncomfortable,” she says. “The grips worked much harder, and at that time for me, jobs came relatively easy. It was easy to become un-grounded, if that’s a word.”

So Hope got back in touch with her humility by co-founding a small Los Angeles theatre company, The Wilton Project.

“99-seat theatre in Los Angeles is tough,” she says. “Theatre is not given its due in Los Angeles like it is just about everywhere else. If we were a smash hit, we’d just break even, but many nights there would be more people in the cast than there were in the audience.”

But theatre was a way of staying versatile, Hope says. “I acted there, directed here, wrote this or that, and in the process met a lot of people, and learned how to ask nicely” for favors that could be put to use in plays or other labors of love, like “GayKeith.”

Edgecombe’s time in Los Angeles was not as financially or creatively rewarding.

“I wasn’t represented by an agent and I was both overweight and a starving artist,” he says. “And don’t get me wrong, I was very often at a loss to explain what I was doing in Los Angeles, but it always seemed more of a great story than a crushing disappointment.”

Indeed, it is Gay Keith himself (poignantly played by Ho-Kwan Tse in the movie) who is most disappointed, and Edgecombe apologizes profusely and gives him a hug.

“I got to leave with the assurance I wasn’t gay,” Edgecombe says. “But I don’t think he got anything out of the experience.”

Hope called in a lot of production favors and paid people “a lot less than their talent would suggest” to make this film, which debuted in Los Angeles at the Downtown Film Festival and will continue to festivals in Palm Springs, Albuquerque, and Miami, with aspirations for Park City’s SlamDance.

“Collaborating is about asking well,” Hope says. “You ask in the first place, you believe in your project, you feed people well, and you run the show professionally even if—and especially if—people are doing it for free. And afterward you make sure to write Thank You notes.”

Contributing the carnival-like soundtrack was yet another Canadian, Jeff Danna, whose scoring work includes the great soundtracks to “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.”

“["GayKeith"] was a really cool movie to work on,” Danna says. “Maybe because it was such a small project, there weren’t so many cooks in the kitchen that the fun was dissipated.”

“Getting Jeff was a coup,” Hope says. “He put us over the top in terms of legitimacy.”

Edgecombe and Hope aren’t sure where “GayKeith” will go; whether it will be developed into a feature detailing Edgecombe’s other L.A. adventures or expanded to a series.

“There’s so much behind the scenes in this little story that I think it wouldn’t hurt to explore it at length,” Hope says.

It’s true. And what someone else might relate through the lens of despair, or at least as a cautionary tale, in “GayKeith” comes off as another intriguing party performance that is as sweet as it is uncomfortable.

After his failed tryst with Gay Keith, Edgecombe gets in his car and goes for the tin of Altoids.

It was 12:40am Christmas Eve.

I started to laugh uncontrollably. “I’m not gay,” I said aloud. Sure, I still had a bad taste in my mouth, literally, but at least I was now absolutely certain about one more “what if” in my life. Some of my gay friends think it just may not have been the right guy, but you don’t hear me telling vegetarians they haven’t found the right meat.

Edgecombe, who has since become engaged and booked TV series cameos and a national commercial in Canada, isn’t worried that airing a potentially embarrassing real-life incident will hurt his acting career.

“The story seemed to make a lot of people happy,” he says, “and it doesn’t embarrass me. I’m sure even Keith got over it.”

See also: “GayKeith” official site, Scott Edgecombe, Jeff Danna, Downtown Film Festival, L.A.

Panelists included our host, Marty Barrett, Stephen Johnson of G4TV’s The Feed, Jeremy Rosenberg of ThinkTank LA, Filthy Book Reader Simone Williams, writer Steve Javors, and Wayne Akiyama of Plan 9 Media.

The setting was postmodern: Mavervorl Media’s soon-to-be-vacated office in downtown Los Angeles. Might this have signified the scrapping of something perfectly suitable in favor of something new and flashy? And the proceedings were filmed with a handheld camera, something that the iPad does not have. Speaking of that, the video is in Flash…

Join the inaugural meeting of the near-Futurists below; an entertaining 45 minutes of educated guesses and speculation.

Mission statements of government agencies rarely have such recognizable taglines as does the U.S,. Department of Education’s “No Child Left Behind.” But at what cost?

As an act and as a motto, the 2001 NCLB (or Nicklebee, inviting comparison to both the overearnest but flawed Dickens character Nicholas Nickleby and also to the Canadian VH-1 staple Nickelback) is widely viewed as a failure, underfunded and unsupported by its Bush Administration sponsors, and onerous to teachers, who feel the program teaches to a test and sets unfair expectations.

The Obama Administration seeks to revamp NCLB, even changing its name to reflect the Department of Education’s new “race to the top” strategy.

And what better way to slap the Nikelbackwash from our mouths than with an unlikely combination of The Five Stairsteps, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Deep Purple?

What better way???

“Ooh Sweet Child o’ Mine Left Behind in Time” will still, Obama said on Saturday, “set a high bar — but we also provide educators the flexibility to reach it.”

The overhaul will shift focus from punishing poor schools to rewarding good ones.

“Under these guidelines, schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded, and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down,” Obama said, adding that the only child left behind in the new plan will be “that horrible Bush baby.”

People of a certain age remember their mothers telling them to finish what was on their plates in deference to “the China babies.”

The understanding being that China babies were starving and that my eating my creamed tuna on toast would mean that my mother would not be forced to add insult to their injury by sending them the uneaten, vomitous sludge.

“Seriously,” the China Babies’ Collective would say, “eating this will make us starve more.”

Anyway, search engine giant ^TM and King of Pop^TM Google appears to be more and more ready to leave China behind, due to its failure to convince that country not to censor Internet searches.

“We’re pulling out of China,” Google said, “and, just in case you were wondering, that does not mean we’re going to push back into it an hour later. We don’t even get that joke, to be honest.”

Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officer Li Yizhong warned the Mountain View company that it will face consequences if it fails to obey Chinese laws.

Rather than play by China’s rules, Google will likely shutter Google.cn within the next few weeks.

A spokesman for Chinese search engine Baidu, whose stock has risen sharply due to expectations of Google’s imminent departure, said “things are gonna get easier.”

See also: Nickelback, Guns ‘n’ Roses, The Five Stairsteps, Deep Purple, Google, U.S. Department of Education

“Now you can have the versatility and blazing speed of the iPad in a model that fits in your pocket,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at today’s unveiling. “The iPadito will revolutionize mobile computing by filling the gap between iPod Shuffle, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Mac Pro in a home or business that already includes AppleTV and an Airport Extreme base station with Time Capsule, preferably the 2-Terabyte version.”

Jobs said that, between the comparative bulk of the iPhone and iPad and the slightness of the the iPods Shuffle and Nano, the new iPadito, which comes in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB models, would “have the pleasant solidity of a bunch of credit cards tightly wound with rubber bands.”

Added Jobs, “… except you could play your Dokken in crystal-clear AAC format.”

With prices beginning at $799 for the 8GB version the iPadito, Jobs said, “ushers in a new era of connected pocket computing, especially when your iPad is way over in the other room.”

Watch the progression:

It looks cool! I want the best one!

But how would you describe it?

It’s like a larger iPod Touch plus the data plan of an iPhone minus the camera capabilities. It’s also like a smaller laptop with up to 64 GB of Flash memory for entertainment and office applications.

So you’d still need a phone?

To be reasonable, Yes. Though it will support Voice over Internet (VoIP) programs like Skype, the iPad as a phone will look like the i-quivalent of the bricklike portable phones of “A Night at the Roxbury.”

Wait – I don’t want a phone with a $40 data plan plus an iPad with a $40 data plan in addition to the Internet I’m paying for at my home and office…

But the iPad looks cool.

But you’d still need a computer?

Well, yes. But it’s like a portable computer.

That’s what my laptop already is. Why do you want something that does all the things your laptop does already?

Because you can fling the iPad like a frisbee!

No you can’t.

Such is the iPad’s cool factor that it is causing people to search for ways to shoehorn it in to an existing personal technology profile. The iPad feels like the superfluous union dockworker the local mob boss makes you hire.

And, like the mob, Apple makes you pay for the dubious benefits it offers.

“Check it out! I can search the Internet on a larger portable screen without the hassle of unfolding it first!”

Now how much would you pay? Upwards of $800, depending.

According to our research, the only real advancement the iPad offers is in the arena of technological douchebaggery.

Now that garish, flashing bluetooth headsets are universally recognized as tools of tools and thus have lost that thin sheen of deniability that allows a douchebag to operate, the iPad may step in as a kind of douchePad Flava Flav.

Wearing an iPad like a necklace, douchebags can display the message of the day (“Hey Good Lookin’: Be back to pick you up later!”), a slideshow, or the weather in one’s pants (“Mudslides likely”).

We really want the iPad to fill an actual need, but it won’t.

That is why we will only buy two.

Previously: The iPhone alternative: a non-hysterical view; Suppressed hatred for original iPhone emerges as iPhone 3G debuts

See also: iPad

“The Vagina Monologues” has been performed thousands of times in dozens of countries (including Pakistan, Egypt, and Indonesia), won an Obie Award, and has been produced on HBO.

A new staging at the Los Angeles campus of Antioch University benefits Ensler’s V-Day, an awareness and fundraising campaign to end violence against women and girls.

Sex educator and porn star Nina Hartley performs the monologue “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” in the Antioch production. Aside from her roles in more than 1500 softcore and adult movies and hundreds of seminars (“as ‘Nina’ is both a character as well as an actual part of me” Hartley says), she’d only had one line on stage in a theatre production before. In high school.

“It’s great being part of a collaborative process,” Hartley said. “It’s nice to be able to rehearse instead of it always being essentially a live sporting event.”

Director Lesley Alexander met Hartley when the latter gave a seminar in Los Angeles.

“I knew [Hartley would] be good, I just did not know how good,” Alexander said, “and how versatile and deeply sensitive to every nuance of character.”

Hartley brings an element of stunt casting to a theatre event that has seen its share of celebrity performers. Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, and Melissa Etheridge, to name a few, have been guest monologuists.

In addition to having fresh voices read existing pieces, Ensler each year pens new monologues. In this way “The Vagina Monologues,” the use of which is tightly controlled by Ensler’s V-Day foundation, remains inextricably Ensler’s vision. Recent new monologues have focused on violence against women in the Republic of Congo.

While the “Monologues” are undoubtedly theatrical, they never stray from Ensler’s activist base. So college and community performances of Ensler’s work often feature non-actors on stage.

“I hope we switch on a few light bulbs in our audience,” says monologuist Sandra Daugherty.

Daugherty performs the monologue “Reclaiming Cunt” in the Antioch production (“It is the rallying cry,” says Alexander). By day Daugherty supervises the Lube, Condom, and Book department at West Hollywood’s Pleasure Chest, where she also teaches classes on “on some of the most sought-after skills in lovemaking.”

“I do like to act on occasion,” Daugherty says, “[but] I am not an actress. If I call myself an actress, I could also call myself a chef, a stylist, and a sexaholic. That is to say, I cook sometimes, dress myself, and I like sex.”

While performances of the play and other works have helped V-Day raise a reported $60 million for its causes around the world, “The Vagina Monologues” is sometimes criticized for being misandrist, heterosexist, and hypocritical. Writing in 2001, Camille Paglia stated that Ensler “encourages the delusion that [women] are in full control of their reproductive system and that everything negative or ambivalent about it has been imposed by the prejudice of misogynous males.”

Further, early performances of the monologue “The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could,” in which the narrator recounts with pleasure her seduction, at 13, at the hands of an older woman who plied her with alcohol, were revised to add three years to the narrator’s age during the incident and removed the line “it was good rape.”

But Alexander wants the “Monologues” to inspire dialogue.

“I want to hear that people are moved so much they cannot wait to do something about it,” she says. “That’s what happened to me. I am forever changed  by my involvement with V-Day and that’s what I want for every single audience member. ”

“‘The Vagina Monologues’ sends a sex-positive message,” said Daugherty. “It says to men, ‘Look at me! My girl parts as just as alive and aware as your boy parts! Help stop our punishment for being just as you are!’

“To women, it says, ‘Embrace yourself! Be proud! It’s okay! Your experience is your own! You don’t have to be like everyone else!’ So much pain, misinformation and shame keep women from exploring those hidden gems between their legs and between their ears.”

• Antioch’s production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues”
• starring Amy Gottlieb,Carol Gustafson, Charlisse M. Bennett, Claudia Shields, Connie De Paepe Layton, Dianne Pennie-Jacobs, Flint, Helena Segal, Julie Rodriguez, Laura Shnitzer, Lesley B. Alexander, Milli Marie, Mindy Meyer, Nina Hartley, Pat Parker, Sandra Daugherty, Shanadi Liyanage, Shishonia
• March 4, 5, and 6 at 7 p.m.
• Antioch University Los Angeles Room A1000
• 400 Corporate Pointe, Los Angeles, CA
• Tickets are $20 in advance and may be reserved here, $25 at the door

See also: V-Day

President Barack Obama is walking a tightrope in his choice to meet with exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama without offending China, those exiling superstars. No matter what the president decides, however, this week’s scheduled meeting or non-meeting is sure to infuriate someone.

“If Obama meets the Lama, we will be infuriated,” said all of China.

“I will be infuriated if Obama does not meet the Dalai Lama,” said Richard Gere.

The solution? Obama and the Lama will meet in private. That way no one will know.

All this anger about such a tranquil, mountain-dwelling man.

I asked the Dalai Lama if he, too, was seething with rage.

“It is for the cosmos to decide if I meet the President or not,” the serene 14th manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion said. “But if I don’t get these sandals off I’m'a stab a bitch.”

The white-hot fury surrounding the Dalai Lama has traveled via underground rivers of electricity and plate tectonics to Vancouver, where warm intermittent rains have postponed several scheduled events of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

“Were Obama to but share a beer in the Rose Garden with His Holiness and (Chinese President) Hu Jintao, the Glorious Snows would again come, and the Celestial Ice Weasel would drag my sleigh in its Cavernous Mouth,” said Tibetan bobsled captain Proprang Bligginterpin.

Over in Greece, the country’s staggering deficit – 12.7 percent of its economy – reminds us that those unwilling to remember history are doomed to repeat it. In this case, the history is that of sacrificed ram-god Poseidon’s tot, the one bearig the Golden Fleece.

Athens is fleecing Greece of its future, in much the same way that Jason fleeced curly Phrixus of the fleece back in, like, 1972. Phrixus, son of Athamas, stepson of the jealous Ino, and brother of the doomed, drowned Helle, for some reason thought that sacrificing the golden ram to Poseidon was a great idea.

Don’t get me wrong: popular lord Jehovah once told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to prove his loyalty to the deity, but that was G-d doing the asking. Why Phrixus thought that stabbing the ram and then bringing the limp body to its own dad, Poseidon, as a gift, well, just makes me not understand Greek even more.

That said, it is clear that modern Greece’s financial problems are directly related to its ancient inability to choose the right gift for a god, thus Obama must behave prudently in his treatment of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, or Athamas’s ousted wife, Nephele, will bring drought to Vancouver.

See also: Vancouver 2010, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Barack Obama to meet Dalai Lama at White House in private , Eurozone tells Greece to ready new cuts, taxes

In school we were told to not be Indian givers. This term is now offensive, in the same way that “cotton-picking,” “Druid-baiting,” and “Krautsploding” are now offensive. But back then, on the rez, we all laughed.

Toyota has recalled more than Ronald Reagan could, and soon will have taken back so many cars that it will demand the 1998-2001 series of Ford Explorers to feed the monkey.

“You get a taste for it,” one Toyota exec didn’t tell me.

At issue is the unintended acceleration or overintended but ultimately fruitless deceleration of Toyota products, including the Prius. Many stateside Toyota dealers are staying open 24 hours to deal with the recalls, which have provided an unintentional acceleration to the sales pitches of Toyota’s competitors.

My favorite: This Dodge Charger crashes when you want it to.

But, unlike that embankment, the moon is not a place Americans will be visiting anytime soon. At least with federal funding.

President Obama’s 2010 budget cuts the cash for NASA’s Ares I booster and its Orion capsule, and scuttles the Constellation program, already $9 billion into its mission to replace the Space Shuttle.

The plan does call for a commercial taxi service to the moon, the International Space Station (ISS), and points beyond, but Boy are people scratching their heads about what happened to the audacity of hope. Who knew that moon was a four-letter word? It’s even a four-letter word in Spanish, but that’s understandable.

Antonio Banderas has never been to the moon.

“We believe that NASA can inspire Americans and lead to scientific advances,” said Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, pointing out NASA’s new Try Reaching Laterally for Now program with troubled teens in the Kissimmee/St. Cloud area.

In Washington, we sit in the snowbank, front wheels spinning lazily, and stare at the moon. The tow truck will not be here for a while. Our 2005-2010 Avalon slides in and out of view of three lanes of oncoming traffic here on the inner loop, and we recall the final resting place of King Arthur, that other presence-challenged Avalon. So that’s what happened to the Hyundai Brigadoon.

See also: Toyota Recall info; White House briefing on Constellation program; DC Snowmageddon; Avalon in HTML history

Used to be that there was enough room, enough lunch, and enough bandwidth for all of us, but the comparatively cozy press luncheon at the Venetian has been removed, leaving only the free-for-all at the Las Vegas Convention Center, something humane slaughterhouse advocate Temple Grandin might recognize from the barbaric pre-squeezie chute days.

People continue to look at their screens when the Internet is down.

A clear tarp has been put down on the carpeting as bloggers, editors, reporters, and photographers sprawl to a vanishing point down the long hallways leading to the Sands Exposition Center. They loll like sea lions, hoping for the Wi-Fi to work again.

Only those with personal access points and a bag lunch from Subway are thriving.

It reminds us that systems break down and, even as millions gather, superficially, on social networks, consume identical Blackberrys and iPhones, and leave cyan vapor trails while sporting Bluetooth headsets, our technology tends to isolate us.

See also: 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show

Re-animated in puppet form the moment of his state-sponsored electrocution, unstable lover/fighter Mubia Abul-Jama (yes, I know) falls in love with sassy Heather Honeydew Boone.

But their post-mortem honeymoon can’t last.

“I’m a man, bitch,” says Black Devil Doll. “I need to get into some Strange.” – from the review by Gram Ponante

We talked with “Black Devil Doll” writer/producer Shawn Lewis about the financial and spiritual costs of the millenium’s best puppetsploitation film.

Mavervorl Media: The same names keep appearing in the credits. Obviously this small, special film is a labor of love, but describe how you know the rest of the production team.

Shawn Lewis: We’re all old friends and have known each other for years. For obvious reasons, (Director) Jonathan Lewis is my youngest brother. (Director of Photography John) Osteen, (Puppetmaster Mitch) Mayes and myself became friends years ago, brought together by our shared love of fucked up movies. And simply due to the fact that we made “Black Devil Doll” on such a small budget, we each had to take on several roles in the production. Everyone was wearing many, many hats.

Mavervorl Media: “Black Devil Doll” (from Hell)  was already a blaxploitation movie in the 80′s. How did it happen that you were allowed to remake it?

Shawn Lewis: It’s not a remake of “Black Devil Doll from Hell”. Sure it shares a similar title and the puppet is black, but that’s pretty much where it ends. I was a fan of “BDDFH” and you could easily call it an homage, but that’s about it. It’s no more a remake of “BDDFH” than “Return of the Living Dead” is a remake of “Night of the Living Dead.”

Mavervorl Media: What was your budget in dollars? What was your budget in time?

Shawn Lewis: I guess around 10 grand in cash. Most of which was to compensate the talent for their time, none of the crew was getting paid. Time-wise is a little more tricky. The movie itself was shot over 33 days, but it was spread out over about 8 months. Lot’s of half days. We all have regular jobs, so there were hardly more than a few stretches where anyone could work full-time, a few days in a row. From day one to the premier at the New Beverly in Hollywood, it was almost 2 years to the day. The editing process took a very long time.

Mavervorl Media: Who has day jobs and what do you guys do?

Shawn Lewis: I own and operate Rotten Cotton, Jonathan is a full-time film student in Los Angeles, Osteen is a freelance editor and motion graphics artist, and Mayes runs production for me at Rotten Cotton. He and Osteen are also two of the creeps behind the “Brawlin’ Broads!” DVD series.

Mavervorl Media: Speak for the group and describe your influences. For example, when the group of you got together to start work, which of your idols did you want to please with it?

Shawn Lewis: John Waters and Rev. Al Sharpton. And through the grapevine we’ve heard that at least one of them is pretty pleased about the movie.

Mavervorl Media: Describe Antioch, CA and why “Black Devil Doll” could only come from there.

Shawn Lewis: Antioch is a soulless town where dreams come to die. You really can’t imagine a more bland, lower middle class suburban wasteland, chock full of dullards. And for that reason alone, it was the only place “Black Devil Doll” could have been shot.

Mavervorl Media: How did a girl like that get a name like Heather Murphy?

Shawn Lewis: From what I understand, a Mexican girl and an Irish guy had sex.

Mavervorl Media: Obviously the girls were all game and they were great fun. But how do you prepare someone who may never have seen a 70′s-style exploitation flick for the attitude required?

Shawn Lewis: I think most of them had. Or at least Heather and Natasha were pretty schooled in old exploitation flicks. They’re both big genre film fans. The rest of the girls just had great, positive attitudes about being in the movie in general. We worked our fuckin’ asses off on set, but we still managed to maintain a fun vibe. Everyone had a pretty great working chemistry together. Osteen and my brother bickered constantly, but that was just pure entertainment for the rest of us.

Mavervorl Media: What did you use for Mubia’s semen?

Shawn Lewis: We all just did a circle jerk the night before, into a bowl.

Mavervorl Media: See? This is why my people don’t trust you. Meanwhile, what kind of reaction did you get from the wigger community?

Shawn Lewis: We’ve yet to hear any official statement. But you know what’s great about really stupid people? They never really seem to understand when they’re the butt of a joke.

Mavervorl Media: Any reaction from actual black people?

Shawn Lewis: Our director is pretty offended by the whole thing. Just kidding, of course. No, not at all. Unless you count Rev. Al as being black, we don’t. He’s not about color, he’s about getting attention. The only people so far to voice any bullshit about being offended is uptight “liberal” white guys. They are the self-appointed protector of the fragile black man.

Mavervorl Media: Where does the movie go from here and how are you planning to make your money back?

Shawn Lewis: Is this a trick question? Through sales! We have a great distribution deal through Grindhouse/Ryko in North America and another overseas deal that puts us into several European and Asian markets. And we hope that people continue to buy all the cool merch that we have to offer at www.blackdevildoll.com. Help support our drug habits, buy our shit!

Mavervorl Media: What’s next for this team?

Shawn Lewis: The sequel seems the obvious next move, I guess. People sure seem to want it. That’s probably what’s going to happen next, we have some great ideas for it. Right now we just want the dust to settle from this release, then regroup and figure out the next move. No lack of fucked-up ideas on our team, it’s just more a matter of coordinating everyones time.

Mavervorl Media: I felt that the movie was most effective when everything was inside the house. That said, your casting was great, and the women were skanked up in a way that really made me think of grindhouse movies. Can you tell me a little about your casting? Were there people who showed up that were too skanky or too glamorous to fit the requirements?

Shawn Lewis: The casting actually went pretty smooth. Heather’s part was basically written with her already in mind, same with Natasha and Martin. They were already friends of ours, so that part was easy. Precious, Christine and Erika were friends of Natasha’s, so that was pretty simple as well. We had one girl show up to read that we thought was going to commit, but she politely excused herself from the project after getting about five pages into the script. And we were totally cool with that. It takes a certain personality and attitude to get killed and raped by a puppet on camera. Better to change your mind before we push “PLAY” on the camera, than to have her bail in the middle of production. Our main requirements for the talent was for them to be reliable, have a good attitude, and look good while washing a car and playing Twister. It didn’t really call for acting chops, but they all still came in and kicked serious ass.

Mavervorl Media: How did you channel Mubia?

Shawn Lewis: Malt Liquor, Hennessy and lots of weed. Lots of weed.

• Buy “Black Devil Doll” here

See also: Black Devil Doll.com