The

Pilo t

Issue

ALL HOLLOW
www.allhollow.com

All Hollow is published by

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ALL HOLLOW
www.allhollow.com

Editor in Chief
Barna Nemethi / barna@griffon.ro

Editors
Maria Desmirean / maria@griffon.ro Vlad Fenesan / vlad@griffon.ro Andreea Ionita / andreea@griffon.ro

Photography
Barna Nemethi Vlad Fenesan

Contributing fashion editors

Oana Vasilache Bianca Naumovici Printed at Everest For advertising or sales inquires, please send us an email at office@griffon.ro. To subscribe to the magazine, please visit allhollow.com

Contact
35B Aurel Vlaicu St. 2nd floor +40744353646 / +40756091260 www.allhollow.com office@griffon.ro facebook.com/allhollow @allhollowmag vimeo.com/griffon

All Hollow is published by

Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

WE COME IN PEACE
BARNA NEMETHI

We come in peace. Which is surprising, given the fact that we come into a strange strange world. As a whole and as an industry; creatives and consumers; publishers and buyers. Somehow, the stranger and odder the ground shifted under our feet, the faster we adapted and regained balance. We quickly came to terms with the weird and we got used to it. So, in time, we left ourselves at the mercy of the cynical. Today , everywhere we look we see the cuts beneath the cover. Its all become a big flying rug Aladdin would be jealous with issues cramped and hoarded under it. Miraculously , it still flies.All of us crowded on that small rug we call creative industries, we move forward barely touching the ground. But at what cost? Is it worth it? To be consumed by perversion for fake rewards and strained relationships? For some time now, our wits and minds have sharpened our tongue to call out through the smallest of cracks and the biggest of gaps. We criticize first, ask questions later. A nation of critics that somehow passively accept the very precise things they dread and continue to live with them side by side. Lets face it: we are all corrupted that way. Im the first to admit that. But above all, we are bored. So very bored. It almost makes no sense to lift up our heads, raise our arms and actually do something that matters, to make a contribution. Not something exceptional, life-changing-never-done-before fictionalised nostalgia, but something merely interesting. Just wake up and create something interesting, something

that puts you out there, puts your heart on the table, for the vultures and wolves to feed on. Bother us with something that will tickle our minds again.

the veil lifted a lot of amazing things happened. We met people, we learned things, we sweated, we hurt and we started to see that all was not lost. We met with Cristi Lupsa and the wonderful team at DoR, who deliver, against all odds, impeccable journalism in a country where media and news are either ridiculous or malevolent. They write their hearts out, issue after issue.This is also why they were the best host for our pilot number and have our full support for anything

We are the hollow men. The straw men. The empty men.

they ever want to try to achieve.We met stylists and designer willing to go out on a limb with us and try something new, experiment.We met musicians willing to risk not playing the same chords and we met people with the joy to dance on more than just one bitrate. We met writers and photographers that are ready to use their tools honestly and fluently who are eager to create. Because in the end, thats what its all about: local content. Our content. We want to build a playgound for all talented designers and stylists out there, publish their work and ideas that are too experimental or unfitting for todays print. We want to work with the other magazines, trying to push the industry forward together. We want to talk to the doers and makers of our creative industries and make this a place where they can say what they truly believe, without just answering the same rotation of boring questions. We want this magazine to be the aggregator of beauty , fun, knowledge, experimentation, entertainment, and above all, everything

But theres always the satus quo. Why should anyone think otherwise? Why try? Its hard. Its a waste of time. Wheres the return? Wheres the money? Why bother when no one will appreciate or even acknowledge? But after all the whining unleashes, while browsing through all the excuses that ring in our minds, over all this bickering, the impulse of intrigue emerges.The need for fascination.The desire of a slip. Revealed in new beautiful meanings of the same old stories they will want it once its out there. We are the hollow men. The straw men. The empty men. We want you to fill us, make us whole again. And we wont stop until we are overflowed. There have been enough excuses, enough shout outs, enough demands for better.This magazine is our leap of faith from the anguished neurotic bystanders hoping for a quick fix of creative work to the trust that you will fill us with meaning. As one little hobbit said to Mr. Gandalf:I wish the ring never came to me, I wish I had money and I worked for Interview and Dazed, I wish I were surrounded by rich and talented people, I wish it were easy. So do all who live to see such times, but its not meant for us to decide.All we can decide is what to do with the time that is given to us said the wizard.And we have decided. Weve gone to print. And most importantly , weve made a promise never to go back, back to the comfy shelter of good enough and that-works-why-try-harder. So things got well underway and we started to work. Once

that is interesting and relevant. Once our eyes opened we also saw a city with so much to offer. This city I live in, this country I live in, this region I live in, and this time I live in have plenty to give if you are not so angry and bitter. We believe that Bucharest can be the new hotspot for whats interesting, creative, cool, and innovative for the entire region.Thats why we write in English, because very soon we will bring you whats relevant from our neighbor creative communities and also we proudly want to share the local content generated here. In Bucharest. Romania. So where is the rider? Because what we have here is his horse, with the stamina and the nerve for the long run.We are blowing the horn here. Come and ride. Lets join the best hearts and minds of our creative industries and emerge together with curated local content. Put Bucharest on the map. An elusive man once said you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose. All Hollow contains a lot of promises, a lot of poetry.And it is required that we prove ourselves through content and not through empty words. All that is hollow is meant to be filled, and things must fall into place. With no pressure and no fear. Ignorance is not bliss. Innocence is bliss. Its the prose that has to follow and we are well aware of that. Every time weve done something that didnt feel right, it ended up not being right. And this feels so right. We are the hollow men.The straw men.The empty men.And this is how we unfold, not with a bang but with a whimper.

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LUST IN BLACK
The success of Veronica Pascu, one of the most in-demand models in Romania right now, is not at all surprising. If youve seen any of her work, were sure you were sold and mesmerized by her beauty. If youve ever seen her in real life,you can double the pain. Like many models, Veronica started her career as a teen and now,at 30, she continues to commission advertising campaigns and be featured on covers and in editorials for fashion magazines, both Romanian and international. She has been involved in creating spectacular volumes of imagery; shes a risk taker, a thrill seeker, and an haute vivante. The first time we worked with Veronica was on set for a music video we did; obviously, she played the love interest. No need to say that the whole crew and cast couldnt stop looking at her; every little move she made was gazed at by more than 200 people. It was jaw dropping to see her on camera so we wanted the same rapture for the retinas in print. Needles to say, she was game.

photography / BARNA NEMETHI VLAD FENESAN

make-up artist / Mirela Ecobici

mirelaecobici.ro

hair / Adi HArlea

MANIFEST

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i pledge allegiance to the

Monica Birladeanu left Romania back when tabloids featured people whom youd actually heard of . She moved to LA, took up acting classes,and has since starred in both big production movies and festival-worthy indie films. This June, at TIFF , she attended the premiere for Tudor Giurgius Of snails and Men, where she plays Manuela, a single and confused 30 year old secretary living in Romania in 1992.We met Monica ona photoshoot for the poster of that very same movie. She came in with a fresh American vibe skinny jeans, denim shirt, biker boots, messy hair. Hot as hell. Got us hooked right off the bat. We started talking about photography (she has the most amazing Leica camera), Hipstamatic, her love for books and Leonard Cohen, her fascination for Sundance and her take on the emerging Chinese film market. Monica DAZED us with her charmh and we instantly knew we wanted to shoot her and show her the way we saw her laid back, fresh and ridiculously beautiful. A week later, she was pledging allegience to the flag,we were pledging allegience to her.

photography / BARNA NEMETHI styling / OANA VASILACHE BIANCA NAUMOVICI

ou live everywhere - LA, Bucharest, NY, Iasi; , you are a citizen of the world. How do you cope with that? How do you sleep? How do you eat? It is true that I get to live everywhere; to such an extent that I tend to call home any hotel room where I spend more than 3 days, and that worries me a bit. I also tend to have my own time zone that is never the same with the one of the country Im currently in. And I eat room service food. Too much of it... So it shouldnt surprise you if I tell you that when I'm in Bucharest I often wake up at 4 AM and want to reach for the phone to order a chicken avocado sandwich on wheat bread, no fries and no onions (I have my own perfected recipe). When I'm on set I crave junk food a lot, especially chocolate, of any kind, if theres no red velvet cupcake around (I have a serious addiction to it).When Im about to go on long travels I think I got to the point where I'm able to pack my life in two pieces of luggage. However, this made me seriously ask myself lately what home truly is: a locked apartment under your name somewhere in the world? nameless hotel rooms? or actually something I have work on, in order to have it? Are you friends with actors? Or do you avoid the breed altogether? How is it in classes, when you have to put your heart on the table and willingly or not, you become friends? Yes, of course Im friends with actors. I guess once youve worked with them, somehow you cant avoid it. I personally believe that actors make a special breed of people who walk around with a FireWire to their souls, and when they work they just plug into each other's hearts for a deep, direct connection.And they had to develop it only because sometimes you might get on set and be introduced to a gentleman whos going to play your husband starting the next day (and youll have to do a super emotional scene too, by the way). So what tends to take months, maybe years, for other human beings to work on (and Im talking about friendship or intimacy with another person), sometimes actors have to compensate and find solutions to create it in 24 hours. And when the connection is created, it feels really good, mostly because its safe - you put your heart on the table in front of some-

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one who does the same, and you know hes not going to take advantage of that, because its all done within the frame of a professional environment. It feels so good when you want to hang on to it even after the shooting is finished. The common ground of pain or problems is the most known way of bonding between people. I still go to classes every time Im in Los Angeles and find new generations of actors every time I go back, only because everybody is pretty much like me: working all over the world, traveling... After a few days of watching scenes I feel I might not know the names of all my classmates, but I certainly know something thats essential about them after seeing them perform. And thats because it feels as if Ive seen into their souls when on stage. Ivana Chubbuck, the coach, never lets you get away with superficial work on anything.You either give all you've got and tear your chest open, or shell send you back and make you do it again in a couple of weeks. At the same time, there are many methods of acting. Some of them require an individual process, creating an imaginary world similar to the characters, in which you live for a while. Thats why some actors avoid any connection before shooting. Im cool with whatever method my partners work with. I have backup tricks to use in emergency cases anyway. Tell us an actor you adored when you started acting. Feelings still there, or is he like a high school crush? I think I missed quite a few classes in high school to go and see the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair over and over again because I truly thought Pierce Brosnan was pretty much the most seductive thing Ive seen on screen up until that time. I loved his character too - the sleek bored businessman who offers himself the experience of stealing a piece of art from the Met for his amusement and then falls in love with an exquisite woman who happens to be the detective assigned to his case. I dreamt for years of being the Catherine Banning to his Thomas Crown. Then, about 5 years later, TV Mania magazine featured me on a calendar attached to their Christmas issue. I bought it, looked at my picture (my face slashed by the words May-August, by the way), and when I looked on the other side, there he was: Mr. Brosnan himself sharing the poster with me. I laughed until it hurt 'cause I guess my dream had just come true: I was on top of Mr. Brosnan or he was on top of me, depending on which side you d hang the calendar. Regardless, I liked this very much and felt this was the climax to my personal affair with Mr. Crown. Since then my cinematic education has improved and my taste in men evolved in a different direction, far away from the sleek-suit wearing,perfectly shaven Mr.Thomas Crown,so hes now a long forgotten crush.And I know that because I bumped into Mr. Brosnan while he was waiting for his luggage (like all mortals do, shocker! [big laugh]) in LAX and watched him for about 5 seconds before looking away and getting on with my life.

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I won't be a hypocrite and say I only enjoy the process of filmmaking without the praise that comes with being part of a good movie.

Quick. Last 3 movies youve seen. Sell us on one of them. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Take Shelter, Looper. All three of them are excellent films. Neither Beasts of the Southern Wild (the 2012 Sundance winner and Camera dOr/ Un certain regard prize in Cannes), nor Looper are out yet. Theyll get released in September, if Im not mistaken. But you can definitely look for Take Shelter to see it, an amazing film about mental deterioration thats borderline prophetic. An excellent performance by Michael Shannon that gives you real shivers of fear in a very Hitchcockian way. It plays off the fear of losing your mind one day, or just being taken over by some mental disease. I wont go any further so I wont spoil the film for you, but I highly recommend it. We know you read your reviews because you posted a few. Hows that going for you, being exposed like that? How do you take the hits? How do you take the 6 seconds of glory? Honestly, I have yet to read a review where Im personally slashed by a film critic. They mightve slashed some of the movies I was in, but somehow, I got away untouched. The movies where I was under expectations (do you like my euphemism for bad acting?), or just new to this world and very inexperienced, were insignificant enough to not be reviewed. So thats how I got away. But I dont fear a film critics sharp tongue as much as I fear myself when watching a film I was in. If there were a chance that they would let me get away with doing half-ass things on screen, I wouldnt allow it myself. Im the most fierce critic Ill ever have. And when they shred to pieces a movie or just criticize a few things, I think I have the necessary discernment to understand if theres anything to learn from that. It could also be that the author of the article was really not in the mood to see this type of movie and therefore it didnt land well with him; or that he makes a good point and I agree with him, because often I know pretty much most of the movies weaknesses. But if I learned anything from past experiences is that a

movie will get very different reviews in different countries. And the very thing youll be criticized for in a Sundays review in an Italian newspaper, might get you awarded in another country. In the case of Francesca where, after the Venice Festival premiere, we were reading quite frequently that people wanted to see close-ups of my character, see closely how she registers all the things that happen to her.... and there I was, months later, getting an award for best actress at Bursa Film Festival in Turkey for transmitting emotions even when my character had her back to the camera. At least thats what the jury said their motivation was. Truth is, you cant make movies for reviewers, bloggers or compulsive Facebook followers. And trying in your movies to please the crowd who had negative things to say about your last movie would be a big mistake. I wont be a hypocrite and say I only enjoy the process of filmmaking without the praise that comes with being part of a good movie. But I have to say theres a certain type of praise that makes me purr like a cat: when people come up to you to share something personal about the film, whether theyve been touched by it, or made them think or feel anything in particular. I enjoyed it so much when a woman approached me at Transylvania Film Festival after the premiere Of Snails and Men and told me that she felt that in the movie I was somehow her sister, because she had a similar job as my characters and saw in me some of the insecurities she had at the time. She said if she hadnt seen this film, she wouldve never had the courage to come talk to me. Because no matter how much you aspire to get the approval of your peers, its the people that pay for the ticket and let you tell them your story that matter. Therefore, dear moviegoers out there, were no different than you are: we have bad hair days and tons of insecurities too. We just put them to work instead of letting them work against us! So please come talk to us after seeing a film. We love to hear your thoughts.

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them who they are in the script. Would you ever do a remake of a film? Tell us about it. I wont jump at the classics if thats whats expected, but I would say that Id love to be in a remake of Murmur of the Heart by Louis Malle (Im a good, solid Malle fan) or Investigation of a Citizen Above All Suspicion by Elio Petri. I would be hugely tempted by Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate or Fear Eats the Soul (the Fassbinder one), but some of them would lose their juice if transported to present, or would simply not work at all, or Im simply not old enough for them (like Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate or Emmi Kurowski in Fear Eats the Soul). I think one of the reasons why there aren't too many remakes of the classics is the technologically advanced world we live in.A cellphone in the pocket of the main character can absolutely ruin the plot of the original film. Ive never been a fan of re-heated meals, so for the moment Ill stick to contemporary material. Quick. Last 3 bands you listened to. Band of Horses, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Jack White They say acting makes you know yourself better. How deep does that go? Pretty deep Id say. In acting school, before teaching any technique, they start training you to be honest about yourself and admit your own flaws.Thats where it all starts: understanding and accepting that we are imperfect human beings and loving ourselves for it. Characters are most likely broken, chipped human beings like ourselves, but in different ways (cause thats what creates drama, right?). Only by acknowledging that you can approach a character without judging it. The moment you judge your character for being a prostitute, a killer, an impostor, you create a rift between you and the character and great performance can never be achieved; you have to look at their pains and the damage that made I think there is an osmosis between my work and my personal little discoveries about myself. Thats because now I cant say if Ive understood some things about who I am as a person through some of my characters; or if I understood some of those characters exactly because I found out some answers about myself. And this kind of work changes you in silent ways because you wake up one day having much more understanding for peoples fears, aggressiveness, insecurities or simply loving humanity a lot more. I know for a fact that my transformation is quite palpable: from being attracted to sleek-perfectly dressed-swiftly movinginscrutable-Thomas Crowns to rather introspective damaged-self aware-still looking-for-answers-kind of people. Im the biggest fan of people: I love watching them think, laugh or react to things; I love watching discrepancies between body language and discourse; I love to speculate a great deal about them and re-construct their biography by their choice of words, clothes or the way they eat...and I steal shamelessly from them. I even turn paparazzi on people in airports or supermarkets if they happen to wear or do something that I could use as inspiration for a character Im currently working on. Im a big time thief and when working on something, I have a blast stealing peoples Facebook pictures. I download them, file them and use them as reference when I talk to the director or costume designer for a specific project. Facebook is an absolutely endless resource for documentation. Oh and since were on the actor/thief topic, maybe its time to blow up a major clich that I hear actors and interviewers use so often (I myself did it in the past as well). I dont believe an actor ever enters the skin of a character and this phrasing is starting to scratch my ears whenever I hear it. Because yes, he may train himself to walk differently for a character, twitch his face in a way he never did before or practice gestures he stole from an acquaintance, but the emotions, the drive to act as his character does, are abso-

Im the greatest fan of people: I love watching them think, laugh or react to things; I love watching discrepancies between body language and discourse.

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I like my directors to be great manipulators. a director must watch his actors closely and never lose sight of what he needs them to do in order to tell his story

lutely personal to the actor.Theft can only go so far. He has to pull all those emotions from inside his own soul: anger, hate, impulse to kill or lie. How could he borrow those from anybody? Therefore I think its more appropriate to say that an actor rather exhibits different parts of himself when playing characters and in no way believes hes somebody else (cause that would be borderline schizophrenia, right?). But of course, this way of presenting things is more comfortable; its less exposing to the actor who fears he would be associated with his characters behavior. Are you method? What makes you tick? Im not method, no. Swimming for months on and off screen in a fictional reality is absolutely draining to me. I tried it in the beginning and I ended up exhausted and with my gun unloaded in front of the camera. Its certainly a great way of achieving compelling and authentic human behavior for some actors; its just not the thing that works for me. I know what makes me tick, what makes me scream or cry, because Ive watched myself closely over the past years. Its enough to think of specific situations that make me feel one way or another and I can generate perfectly valid visceral reactions for the scene Im shooting. What does a director have to do to make you deliver the best possible outcome you projected? Well, first of all hed have to have immense passion for his own project. Hed have to love it immensely because that kind of love is contagious and it spreads beautifully around the people he works with. And only constant obsession about a story makes one come up with the best solutions when necessary. I entrust myself to people like that. And trusting my director is an absolute must for me in order to be able to unveil myself and be the best I can be.And I like my directors to be great manipulators: to understand what buttons they can push to get a reaction out of you; to understand how you think and what your own mechanism of

creating the character is, so theyll know how to guide you before shooting a scene; or to know where to punch you in between takes so that you wake up in case you dropped. But most importantly, a director must watch his actors closely and never lose sight of what he needs them to do in order to tell his story. I worked with directors who tend to be very delicate and subtle, or very caterpillar-like, smashing you completely so theyll break your defense mechanisms and make you become so raw they can shape you in whatever form they need to. Im game for whatever their method is as long as its efficient and its directed towards the same goal: telling that story in the most compelling way. We cant help but notice that you are a big indie movie addict. You watch them, act in them, read them, and promote them. What is it that you like so much about them and hate about big studio movies? Ah, my love for indie movies was initially a form of snobbery I suffered from: I was looking for meanings in my life and thought that I could find them only in niche form of art, like auteur cinema or folk/indie/rock music, or photography and visual arts. In the beginning, it was just a phase. But then I found myself there out of pure love. I started to act in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and that kind of movie shaped the opportunities I had for future gigs. You do one auteur movie after another and you tend to stay in the festival movie area per forza. I like tremendously a movie that's stimulating or one that requires a lot of patience, imagination and involvement, however, I also value greatly the entertainment provided by mainstream cinema and studio movies. Its hard to generalize and it would be plain stupid to do so, but lets say that I love challenging projects. Ironically, budgets matter for me: the smaller the budget, the more comfortable I am. Thats when people dont have trailers larger than an apartment in Bucharest and personal assistants to communicate through and drivers that

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everybody is concealing too much these days, and their secrets feed my insatiable need for truth. Theres a need for truth in all of us, we are just scared to face it because that means wed have to do something about it

wont pick up anybody else except for the king-actor hes assigned to.Theres distance between people on projects of this size and I hate that kind of distance when I work. I also hate too much comfort and feel much more creative when I'm in a restrictive environment.And this has nothing to do with snobbery, but rather with a need of humbleness and a need to connect with the others. And how can a connection happen when we have limousines between us? [smiles] That being said, I have to state that outside my job I like a comfortable life more than anything else. You seem quite confident and driven, but you must have some weak spots. What frightens the shit out of you today? Oh, I think I stated quite a few in the previous answers. But mostly facing great opportunities and not being ready to seize them. Fear of disappointing myself. Fear of mediocrity. Im sure youre bored of yourself answering over and over again the same questions, tell us something you would want someone close to ask you? What makes me shut up? [laughs] Whats your biggest drive? The need to become a person my children would be inspired by... If Im lucky. Do you like secrets? To hold, to find out about? How does that affect your research? I looove secrets, mostly other peoples. I tend to believe everybody is concealing too much these days, about who they really are, and their secrets feed my insatiable need for truth. Theres a need for truth in all of us, we are just scared to face it because that means wed have to do something

about it (especially the inconvenient truths). Somehow I feel that when a friend or a stranger entrusts me with a secret that paints them in unflattering colors,it strangely makes me more comfortable around that person and ignites in me a huge stream of love and admiration for such courage. What are you working on right now? Anything juicy? Yup. Something dry and something juicy, actually. Im getting ready to shoot a feature film with Ioana Uricaru called After the Wedding in September and then in November a film called Panarea by Adam Lough. I just went through the Directors lab at Sundance Film Institute in Utah with Ioana where we had the chance to be supported by them financially and logistically to shoot five of the most challenging scenes for her (and implicitly me), and then got advised on how to solve various dilemmas we had about the scenes. Its a true blessing to have a chance to experiment on a film a priori to the actual shooting without having a producer throwing a tantrum about how you should stick to conventional filmmaking so he can make money off the film, or the film crew of 50 people checking their watches once youve gone 5 minutes into overtime. We had a really supportive Sundance crew made out of people who were there out of passion alone and thats the essential premise to making great films. Quick. Something to live for. Art. Love. Children. Quick. Something to die for. Children. Love.Art.

make-up artist / Doinel Ungureanu

Beauty-Make up academy

hair / Adi HArlea

MANIFEST

assistent photographer / IOANA ENESCU

GRIFFON CREW

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RADIO LIVE TRANSMISSION

Behind a deep , warm and very serious sounding voice stands a tall, slender man, with sharp features and quick eyes. He says 'Hello', but you quickly realize that he's already scanning, analyzing and crafting his next move. So before you even think of what to say, Bogdan serban takes lead with , his first question. Usually, being around him, you become a subject of interest, you will be questioned,you will be cornered,you will laugh and you will never walk away without paying his tribute: information. Because Bogdan serban is a curious man; he was just , born that way as he puts it. He will ask you anything any time; he will dig deeper and deeper in every direction trying to find something to hang on to, something worth sharing later. Seventeen years into radio broadcasting, hes one of the top voices of the industry, a fierce endorser and promoter of local culture and a very important figure in the uprising of the Romanian indie music scene. A strong believer in the power and persistence of HIS MEDIUM, we found him on the front lines, fighting the system, proving that quality radio can still sell.

ogdan serban is a true radioman; he has flow. We , just had to unleash him in a discussion about music and step aside. We talked with him in two very nice and special venues to us Energia & Papiota over a couple of beers. First round was on us, he took the second one.The text below is a rendering without cuts of all the topics we went through.We had a fun time living in the night. [Talking about getting people interviewed and such] For example last year, when Ian Brown was here I asked the organizers to do an interview. Since we were partners at the event, I told him: 'hey , come on, lets take him to the studio', and you know what he said? He said 'dude, I'm an old dog, it's been done man, you know'. 'Come to the radio, give us an interview!' 'Let's just drop it... I'd rather get drunk with you'.And I got that.This year, hes coming back and Im kinda curious if he'll give any interviews, since he's coming with The Stone Roses. Well, probably the rest of the band's gonna give them, not him. Compared to him, those guys haven't been interviewed as much. //// [Moving on, talking trivia about the local bands] When they [The MOOoD] came to GuerriLive, I asked [the lead singer] to sing normally. Hes got such a head voice, and I was on to him. He just cant do it. He played along, he wanted to and I told him 'listen, its OK, just choose any track you want, and then sing it in a normal voice'.And he kept trying I was playing him song after song, but he kept going for the pitch. He cant, he just cant do it any other way now. I was like: Look, dont go up theeeeerreee [imitates the pitch, everyone laughs] Never the less, the pitch part, he fucking masters it. He masters the technique very well. [we all agreed] Romanian bands? Theyre all in one big pile. Couldn't tell you a favorite. I have periods, I have phases. I cant allow myself to stay with one single band. I cannot afford to be a one band fan. [The music zone he's in right now] Theres a very good vibe now, the electro zone moves incredibly well. The guys from Yoon. Last week we had Yellow, and now we have Yoon

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coming.This is an electronic duo with seven people in the live version. I really wanted to show them to my musical director, but there's a tension now, because we support a lot of Romanian music and people have started whining: 'Whoa! Come on, too much Romanian music'. So what I did was stop telling people where the bands are from and just play the tracks, and of course everybody liked it, yeah! [laughs] Everybody went 'wow! yeah, it really sounds good'. Not many bands can pull that off, but mostly in the electro area, a lot of them sound like any other foreign band. You cant tell a difference, they have very good production value. But I found out one of their secrets: they are mostly family bands, so they stay together; theyve got time. Theres no pressure between them like 'dude, cant rehearse now, Ive got another gig'.They dont drag mercenaries, I mean players, after them. No, they take their time.They afford to take as many weeks, even years as they feel they need to come up with something. See, that was obvious with Robin and the Backstabbers. The drummer Robin's brother the hardest to replace in their case. [Tell us how you started working for the radio] Wow! [You're still doing it after so many years] Its been seventeen years. [How come you didn't get tired, bored, fed up?] Hold on, hold on, therere too many questions now. [Theyre supposed to be, haha] So, Ive been doing this for seventeen years. I was at the age when everyone tries everything; basically everyone was trying, period. I knew what I wanted, I had a plan, like any other teenager, and it was acting, I wanted to do theatre. But, you see, at the same time, the rumour spread around in my native town, Targoviste, , that the first private-owned radio station was going to pop up after the Revolution. It was 1995 and I gave an audition and that was it.Although I didnt get a chance to talk to my old mates, I think that everyone in my generation did the same thing. We all auditioned, we were all trying to mimic the way they speak on the radio, we were all doing it at home and then we realized we would actually like to do this. I really started to want to do radio.The great advantage was that the guy who founded the radio station was a true visionary , and also very well advised, so he took people from Radio Romania Actualitati, , which was the best state radio station before 1989.These guys were the only pros, you know, even if they were old school, they were the only real radio pros.They knew what they were doing. So we set up, we went to Bucharest to see a couple of shows, to see how they did Romania Actualitati, , the shows with Megan, Ghitulescu and Paul Grigoriu. Those were the guys that did the morning show, and we saw what it meant to get a show ready all night long. They came in at ten in the evening, thats when the job started, had their own offices, bed included, and on top of that, the most notable detail, [leans right into the recorder and whispers] a case of vodka. They started working and spent two or three hours doing it.A huge team worked for

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that morning show. It was extremly elaborate, or so it seemed to all of us then, but the truth is, it seems even more so today. It somehow resembled a bureaucratic entanglement, the way they did things, because the editing was done on an assembly line.There were people who worked in shifts all night long. In different offices, on desks, material was collected from all over the country , from correspondents everywhere, and they were editing piece by piece, even word for word, from magnetic tapes. Then they called the guy who was running the show in that particular morning, who could have been any of the three, and they told him 'This is it', while other editors prepared the headlines and made up the text that either Grigo, riu, or Megan, or Ghitulescu would read in that morning. Finally , they got some sleep and woke up at four in the morning, so they could start the morning show at five. They had this cool thing too, I dont know whether they still have it at Romania Actualitati , now, but the studios were equipped with pipes and tubes to ventilate the air within, because studios usually have no windows. So they had these venting pipes installed, and they could smoke inside the studios. People smoked inside a radio station, and that was truly something.When they did the first private radios, in my time, smoking was not allowed, we didnt have the venting installation. But those guys smoked. [About not leaving radio, and radio today] Well, not yet. I still see it as the only area left, I mean the only one that offers me real freedom, not just a feeling of it. Its the only medium, except maybe writing online that gives you this kind of freedom. But the thing is that everyone else working in radio here has unfortunately ruined it.They no longer know how to value that freedom. [Radios in general or do you have certain stations in mind?] Both.You asked me why Im still doing radio today.This is why , because theres still a place for Guerrilla on the market. Worldwide too. Look at the States, where you have satellite radios in your car, already a standard feature in the American car-building industry. Cars come out of the assembly line with satellite radio; you have 5,000 radio stations already set up.You couldnt listen to all of them until youre done with the car, [laughs] you couldn't listen to all of them until you died.And the way I see it, even though people have been sobbing for the inevitable demise of radio for years now, it will outlive television. It is an evolution no one anticipated, but it turns out replacing that voice in your car has proven to be a quite a challenging task. Also, its extremely hard to replace its ability to surprise you.This is what radio does best. No matter how many CDs you have, how many megabytes in MP3 is, theres no way it can still surprise you, because in the end, you already know whats in there and radio will always find a way to surprise you. [We argue that it also brings an opinion to the table. Most of the times, the voice gets to share opinions, thoughts, feelings, and people listen to it because they want to relate] Im sure youre only referring to us [Radio Guerrilla], because otherwise, it's not the case. In these times, you are what you speak. If we would follow this line of thought, all radio stations in Romania have come to provide something that has helped in alienating this whole nation. They feed their audience through a funnel, underestimating them, ignoring them. And they do this every day over and over again. [So you manage to listen to other radios as well] Well, yes, Im also being exposed to them in taxis, in shops, and I realize nothing has changed. Everything is frozen. Not only that, I mean not only the language they use, but the music as well. Discourse and music are one and the same. Its the same bitrate with the same scarce words. A fast bitrate with few words, thats the way it is.Thats the recipe. [About whether he agrees with us that Bucharest could eventually become the cultural and artistic hotspot of Eastern Europe] That's a high goal, you're brave. Yes, why not? Bucharest seems to be culturally active, but I can't possible follow in this idea empty handed. I will have to wait. Its obvious that things start happening. I got an email these days from Andrei Jecza, the one who has the Jecza Gallery in Timisoara. His father was an outstanding sculptor, and he keeps suggesting to me, for quite some time now, that we do a mix between Romanian music and contemporary art. He has managed to put his thoughts on paper and he found some mone. Hes going to do something like Affordable Art.

in Romania, in these times, you are what you speak.And if we would follow in this line of thought,all radio stations in Romania have come to provide something that has alienated this whole nation.

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Limited, numbered series of contemporary art, joined with music from bands, sold at affordable prices and expected to increase their value in time.The idea is to attract the music consumer and encourage him to look at art, as well. //// [About the new producer of the show] Let me tell you another story. Listen to this, our current producer Irina Petrovici was a huge fan of the show. She's the one that created and managed the Facebook page 'Imi place sa logout' ('I like to logout'), which soon became the shows official fan page. We had a producer at the show for five years and when he left, I really didnt know who to turn to, and Guerrilla Logout is a show that really needs a producer. Delia, my girlfriend, recommended her, she said 'take Irina!', and all I had to do was call her up.Think about it, she didn't do any radio before, no radio production, but she came in, learned everything really fast and was right on track in no time. She came up with a bunch of stuff, things that the show needed and were pretty obvious to an outsider, who had nothing to do with the industry. [What did Irina do before?] She worked in an advertising agency, in more than one, actually. She managed several bands, including the The Mono Jacks, I think one of her last jobs was with the The Romanian Cultural Institute. She came in with a great deal of ideas I would have never thought of.This also boosted the online version of the show. Theres no way this kind of radio show can work out with only one brain, there are a few brains working with all thats going on there: the producer; the lead-editor, who comes up with the special segment called 'The Daily Synthesis' on politics and stuff like that; now, this last half-year, weve also had a project manager, whos very much connected to music, and has his own band.Actually he rolls with something like four different bands. I hadnt thought about that either- to have someone from the other side [a musician] working for the show. Each one of us radio people look at [bands] like they were some kind of product, and when you bring them in, look, heres the product himself telling us where things stand. [Speaking of bands and GuerriLive, how did the whole GuerriLive business start] There was this Mono Jacks concert in Underworld, in September, almost two years ago. I went there with one of my colleagues from the news, George Mihalcea. Our current producer, Irina Petrovici was managing the band and she called me up: 'Come see them live!'. So I went. When I realized we were fifteen, maybe sixteen people in that small club room, I told her 'hey, wait a minute, we can do this in our studio. Same thing. Why shouldnt this band play in our studio?!' The following day I came up with the concept and wrote it down. Mihai Dinu, the musical director of Radio Guerrilla got hooked right away. He had done it before at RFI. So he backed up the idea. Everything moved very fast. We did a demo with Les Elephants Bizzares. People immediately went 'wow!'. But now, after two years, if you make me listen to the demo, well, we might as well just shoot ourselves, the quality was [We gave Radio Guerrilla credit; we said people do go out more now, people want to hear the live bands promoted by Guerrilla] We have indeed become a benchmark now. If anyone is looking for new bands they come to us. Well, this is what I tried to do from the very beginning, but I didnt wrap it like that. I said 'lets experiment, let's ask every band to play something else other than their own stuff'. They all do covers anyway. But theres so much pride in this area and no one does covers of another Romanian bands. Lucia came up with a cover on The MOOoD. An incredible one, better than the original. Shell be big, but maybe for the outside market, not here, in Romania. Here she will be assimilated with the author of the song. Let the God of Good Music help her not stray towards Inna and such, musically speaking; otherwise I wish her all the notoriety in the world. [Speaking of Inna and her notoriety, tell us about this importexport music] There was a reporter who asked my opinion on this for a UK magazine. She was doing an article on our musical exports and after she interviewed a lot of people from the industry, people from well-known music labels who were interested in selling this kind of euro-trash, euro-dance, she came to me for a different opinion. I told her the same thing Im telling you. My opinion hasnt changed, even though this was about a year ago.As long as you meet your audience with the same kind of music, filtered through the funnel I was talking about earlier, this is the kind of music you get. If youd use a sieve, youd have several genres pass through it; but with a funnel, only one genre will be allowed to pass - it quickly becomes the only available genre and everyone thinks its the standard and the only one that is of value.This

theres so much pride in this area that no one does covers of another Romanian band

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is what weve exported until now.That's why this country became a landmark on the musical map as the best producer of this kind of music: euro-dance, euro-beats, euro-trash. [Luckily, other genres have started to scratch the surface, like electro] Yes, electro.[pauses] I think there are several levels to this discussion. Inna is one level. Other Romanian artists that proved successful on the underground European alternative scene like The Amsterdams are at a very different level.They had several European tours and that, in my book, is also a success. Unfortunately in the underground, we cant talk about sales. Alternative bands will never keep up with Inna when it comes to international sales, but they are slowly trying to catch up. For example, Emagic has created two event companies with a well defined intention in this sense: they realized that most festivals impose their lineups. That's why we go to Bestfest and listen to some Yugoslavian bands, or Bulgarians that not a living soul has ever heard of. They came with the idea of making exchanges between festival lineups.They want to sell bands like Robin and the Backstabbers, like Grimus to other major festivals, to help increase their notoriety. [Maybe the public will force the industry to change] I met this kid and she showed me the music on her phone. She had Florence and the Machine and Foster the People in there and I asked her where she got her music from. Instead of answering me straight away, she paused for a second, because she didnt remember. She wasnt listening to radio, she wasnt watching TV , she was a very atypic teenager.Then she remembered that her friends gave her the music.Their parents heard it on the radio, looked it up and shared it with their children and their children share it among themselves.These kids parents listen to Guerrilla and they are directly exposed to other kinds of music. This may very well mean that our salvation might come from their kids. Its the generation that will put pressure and will eventually change the standards of what something becomes mainstream. [we all agree, but believe its a matter of time] It will also be a matter of money. I think that with all the piracy thats going on now, it will eventually bring some change in how the money is made.When it comes down to buying a ticket for a concert you wont pay for any kind of show any more. They will have to deliver more then just show up and sing. //// [We have plenty of concerts, but not enough shows] You should make the necessary distinctions between them. When you say concert, you mean club concerts, you cannot deliver anything else there, theres no way, no room, you just cant. All you can do there is play your music. This is the way things happen abroad, too. Bands are being chosen from the clubs, and then the production companies come in and make them

big. Wether you have a show or a concert, I guess its about the number of people who can attend, about the clubs capacity, I think thats the way things go. I know that on Broadway, where theaters are concerned, its about the number of seats. Budgets depend on the number of people that attend. Clubs, I'm sure, are also divided according to their capacity. And before you flood the market with a lot of small concerts, full of visuals and stuff, before you saturate, before you invade all these small places, you cannot go to the next level, to ask for a bigger space, to ask for a show. Clubs will automatically have to make sure they fulfill this demand; they will supply screens, lights, the whole setup.They will have to meet the demand. Don't forget that in this trophic chain the only thing that matters is the guy paying for the ticket.And he measures his 'ticket' in the number of beers they cost Ive seen this. In Romania, concerts are being measured by the number of beers. We should establish a top of how many hectoliters of beer are being sold at concerts. [About film scores and end credits soundtracks] The film industry in this country, for instance, although its very hot, it fails to come meet and collaborate with the music industry. I havent heard about any filmmaker approaching a band to ask for the rights for using their music on a film soundtrack. And I dont think the bands are the problem here. I think that directors dont even consider the possibility. It may seem funny to you, but in Mungius latest one he could have easily done it... Let me think, it should be something dissonant, there are absolutely bucolic images in the film. Maybe Niste , E.M.I.L.? No, no Luna , baieti, Amara, there you go. Thats it. That's right. Ill ask him at the premiere, Ill call Mungiu and ask him: What do you think of Luna Amara? Could you have used them in the film? For the end credits at least. [About being a good listener] Im not just listening to music, I listen to everything thats going on around me. There are some rules I instinctively follow. They taught me in college that to be a good actor you have to be a constant consumer of theatre, to go to as many performances as you can. To be a good radio person, you have to be a very good listener. So I listen to radios abroad, as many as I can, and I listen to what's going on around me. Maybe you havent noticed but I have been asking you a lot of questions too.There were a lot of times when you were answering to me. [Yes, weve noticed] [About piracy] As far as music is concerned, I think this is the only possibility for Romanian music to become attractive: to be bought. Because at this time, we are swimming in fake top charts. Even our top, the one we [Radio Guerrilla] do, is a top of preferences. The best top, the relevant one for any future industry, the one we dont have now, is the sales top. If someone doesnt come up with a psychological price for the Romanian track, downloaded from the internet, for instance 1 RON per track, we wont have anything close to this. The

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way iTunes met the industry, when Steve Jobs came and said 99 cents is what you should pay for a track. It all turned into a phenomenon. Romania has the premise for something like that and it can be the next major thing in music. But, again, there should be a psychological price. Bands should be the first to say 'yes, we agree', then the other companies that collectively manage the copyrights, and so on. Everybody under the same law. That's for music. When it comes to film, I'm all for going to the cinema, its another thing altogether. Its a shame to pirate it, you're missing out actually. We even have niche cinemas, like Europa on Calea Mosilor, where all you get is , European cinema. Its a shame, really, not to pay that shitty price for a ticket. [And finally about the young generation and his childhood] I think its a generation that has grown old prematurely.They live in a made up reality. They no longer enjoy the pleasure of touching something, of feeling with their own hands, 'here, touch it, thats how it feels'. I think thats harmful. I was looking at young kids, Ive got a lot of friends, of colleagues, who have kids, even grown-up kids, and I was looking at them: the pleasure of playing or messing around in the streets is gone. Those kids dont even have a clue what it means. Its a little bit sad. I know the mobile phone was a great achievement after all, a great technological discovery, and a very useful one, but on the other hand, it has shaven quite a few years off the kids lives. When I was a kid, during the summer breaks, I was leaving the house at 10 oclock, and coming back late in the evening. Nobody knew where I was, they could only guess where to find me and if anyone needed me, they went and searched in the neighborhood, near the lake, in the park. My acting up reached its highest quota when I was a teenager.That was immediately after the Revolution, we were the generation that had its first two years of high school before the fall of the regime and the last two years after it. One thing I remember about the early 90s is something that I'm sure had never occurred anywhere else, and that we were the only ones who experienced it: we smoked right in front of the classroom. When we saw the teacher come along the corridor, we put out our cigarettes right in front of him, while looking him in the eye.That was during the first term, in the first days after the Revolution. If we didnt like a teacher, we went out into the schoolyard, put up a strike and had him changed.We were in the tenth grade and we knew that in the twelfth grade the main way of rebelling and of marking ones passage from school to adulthood was to tear ones uniform. We realized we wouldnt have any uniforms to tear by the end of high school, they weren't mandatory anymore, so in the eleventh grade I suggested we pick up a day in which we would all come wearing the uniforms we still had from the previous years, even if they were a little small and all. It was February and we covered the trees in those torn uniforms. It was my period of discoveries, and a lethal combination of rock music and a lot of philosophy I obviously didnt understand. I started with Cioran and, yes, with vodka, a lot of vodka. I was getting home in the mornings and my parents kept trying to understand: 'We are not giving you any money, how can you come home every morning shit drunk?!'. It was fine, because I didnt ask them for anything, and that in itself was quite something: I returned home every morning absolutely sizzled. I had no dime in my pocket and still came back drunk. My mom took my key away, so she could at least know when and in what state I was arriving home.Then we would spend another hour or two talking in the kitchen. Thats roughly said, because in fact I was the only one talking. And my mother kept telling me: 'You know, if I'd write down everything you say, I might just get it published and it would be spectacular'. I cant remember what I told her, it was probably delirious stuff about what I had been reading during the day, before drinking, and from the conversations I was having at night, while drinking. What I mean to say is that my parents always let me do things my way. My folks would call the police only if I didnt come home for three whole days.That was our agreement: three days. After that they could call the police and, implicitly, the morgue. I knew this and always called them, no matter what, after three days, from wherever I might have been. [like from the morgue] Mom, Im in the morgue, dont worry, it's all good. [Laughs.]

my parents always let me do things my way. they'd call the police only If I didnt come home for three whole days

The clothes were provided by Victoria Men (83-85 Calea Victoriei). For more informations, you can also visit: victoriaonline.ro

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