Behind-The-Scenes At The MTV Movie Awards With ... James Murphy?
This past weekend MTV aired their annual two-hour paid advertisement for upcoming blockbusters awards show. Videogum boiled it down to just the funny parts, although the funniest part actually came via a James Murphy MySpace blog post (H/T P4K) last night, where the LCD man filed his report on what it was like to attend as a "largely anonymous dude in a weird band that most people don't know about" and as the +1 of his TV star friend, Aziz Ansari. The surprise isn't that he and Aziz are bros (they're longtime Buck Hunter buddies), it's that James Murphy should be blogging like all the time. And that Danny McBride is an LCD fan proving further that he too is the best. And that LCD Soundsystem are working on some new tunes. Here's James's unedited take on all that scum on the red carpet, North American and otherwise:
making a record is strange. last time i made a record i had a pretty brutal and miserable experience. then i made something that wasn't the record, went back to said record, and had a great experience. it all worked out. this time i'm having a pretty great experience. i like the record more, but have no idea if that means it's better or anything. it's just more fun. the shitty full-days of lying on the floor stuck in my own head about things has been pushed back into hours, or only one hour, here and there. i also get to swim in the morning, and do things like that. which is good. which makes the record better, i think. because now when i'm not actually working on the record, i'm doing something i like and that occupies my mind, rather than sitting in a room with my head in my hands wondering if i still know how to make music.i was very hungover today, mainly because i drank a lot of drinks with alcohol in them yesterday. i accompanied my tv star friend to the mtv movie awards because it seemed like the most hilariously hollywood thing i could possibly do right then, and wound up at times pretending to be either his publicist or body guard, which was very funny. i also ate a lot of these skewers with a shrimp and a green olive on them. they were good, but not substantial enough really to soak up the shitty free beer that they have at these things.
while at the awards, i learned a few things:
1. will ferrell is very nice in person, and must be exhausted with how much effort he puts in to seeming like a decent, regular guy. i met him very quickly and he was so absurdly nice that i felt like a dick for all the times i was wooden and awkward with strangers at a festival or something.
2. danny mcbride is fucking hilarious. and pretty much like you expect.
3. eminem is a better actor than you think.
4. pr people and "young hollywood" seem like, literally, different species of animal.
5. young, self-satisfied, confident celebrities are weird to be near.
6. the more excited young people are about an actor/actress, the less likely i am to recognize them. there is an inverse relationship formula for volume-of-screaming to person-i-recognize that i'm working on.
7. jason 'mayhem' miller has a very large head. and that's coming from ME.
8. talking for 2 minutes with ben stiller about something totally unrelated to the mtv movie awards while at the mtv movie awards makes people audibly say "who is that talking to stiller??" in total, unselfconscious earshot of the subject (me) while said subject (still me) walks back to the bar area. they'll actually point.
8b. being at an event thrown by a company called "music television" pretty much ensures that you will not be recognized by anyone at all except for the people you show up with, previously know, and danny mcbride.
9. comedians are funny in person, but not the way you think.
10. hollywood likes to stratify, and being the +1 of a tv personality makes you pretty low on the list, but if you've just said hi to will ferrell, and he looked at you in some way that could be interpreted as "familiar"--largely because he's kind, and you blurted something about him using "north american scum" in "stepbrothers"--you can basically walk into any room you want and take beer for the next 5 minutes. it's like getting an invincibility pill in pac-man. you can feel the power start to blink after you cruise out with 4 beers from the 3rd dressing room, so you should probably head back to your friends and share the beers.
11. chris isaacs likes his dog.
12. forest whittaker is disarmingly friendly.
13. i, as a person, am oddly frightened (i'm saying frightened here--not intimidated) by jim carey.i think like being a largely anonymous dude in a weird band that most people don't know about. it's nice. i wouldn't want to be a movie star. i mean, i feel like i knew that, but it's good to have your feelings validated like that once in a while. because it's easy to sit back and say "i wouldn't want to be a movie star" when it's totally not a salient point... but being there, with everything seeming so easy for them, still didn't make me want any of it. except the free stuff.
today i woke up late, sat around in a horrible state, until i went in the pool and played "goodminton" (which is badminton where the object is to keep the birdie in play as long as possible), ate in n' out burger, and watched several episodes of the BBC show "ashes to ashes", which has amazing music.
tomorrow i'll wake up early, do a little jiu jitsu stuff, swim, shower, get into my making-a-record outfit, eat an avocado and a hard boiled egg, make an amazing coffee, and get to work on a new song. gavin russom (gavin and delia, black leotard front, black meteoric star) is here for a few days, so maybe i can get him to wrangle some synths with me. i have a good feeling about tomorrow, frankly. and i'm also terrified that i'll never make anything good again.
that works.
oh: my tv friend is aziz ansari. thanks, aziz.
Awesome. Already giving New York mag more material for their next profile about how James is superman.
Posted at 11:02 AM by amrit
Tags: Aziz Ansari | LCD Soundsystem | MTV Movie Awards
i 2nd your conclusion. would love to stuff like this from him on a daily basis. a whole book, even.
Score = 8
I love this man and the music he makes. The new album can't come soon enough!
Score = 6
It's not a huge revelation or anything, but this just made me like LCD Soundsystem a little more. For some reason I thought dude would be real arrogant, happy he's not. Or,
"anyone who's friends with Aziz Ansari is a friend of mine."
Score = 7
This is both hilarious and very promising. New LCD would be great.
Score = 4
Well that was a perfectly pleasant read. Thanks james!
Score = 7
yea this def made me love James Murphy even more... id like to think anyone would have a great time being a +1 to Aziz, hes a god
Score = 4