Jeff Wilser, THE MAXIMS OF MANHOOD Author: Mr. Media Radio Interview

If you’re old enough to remember dumbass books such as Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche—or my own Why Men Watch Football—then you know there have been a lot of cheap attempts to make money off the good nature of good men.

But not by Jeff Wilser. This guy actually knows what he’s talking about.

The author of The Maxims of Manhood: 100 Rules Every Real Man Must Live By gives us life instructions that are more practical than anything handed down since Hef wrote the Playboy Philosophy. (I think it’s just an odd coincidence that Wilser’s book title has he word “maxim” in it, since nothing useful ever came out of the magazine of that name.)

Here's a good example, Maxim #21: Use every four-letter word but one.

Classy, huh?

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Copyright 2009 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Magazine Editor Index to Mr. Media Interviews

Playboy Magazine image via Wikipedia

The
Mr. Media
Interviews
By Bob Andelman


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MAGAZINE EDITOR INTERVIEWS

Gail Simmons
“Top Chef” judge; Food & Wine, magazine editor

Stacy Collins and Breann McGregor
Playboy Special Editions

Jason Snell
Macworld

Chris Napolitano
Playboy

Kim Kleman
Consumer Reports

Seth Bauer
The Green Guide

Mary Kay Culpepper
Cooking Light

Tamara Conniff
Billboard Magazine

Tatiana Siegel
The Hollywood Reporter

Carey Winfrey
Smithsonian Magazine

Lisa Granatstein
Mediaweek

Eric Rhoads
Radio Ink

Dale Hrabi
Blender

Samir Husni
"Mr. Magazine

Jamie Ceasar
Digizine

Bob Guccione Jr.
Spin

Rob Tannenbaum
Details

R. Seth Friedman
Factsheet 5

Heather Findlay
Girlfriends

Chris Gore
Film Threat

George Myers, Jr.
George Jr.

Bruno Maddox
Spy

Randall Lane
P.O.V.

Chip Rowe
Playboy Advisor

Barbara O'Dair
US

Roger Black
Reader's Digest

David Lauren
Swing

Julie Lewit-Nirenberg and Nancy Nadler LeWinter
Mode

Sandra Beckwith
The Do(o)little Report

Copyright 2008 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

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Chip Rowe, "The Playboy Advisor" writer: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published July 14, 1997

Chip Rowe is an expert in two fields. The first is sex. Every month he spends his days researching, studying and writing about the most obscure and most obvious elements of physical intimacy for one, two or more consenting adults.

Now, if you're an expert at sex, most people might wonder when you have time -- or need -- to develop any other interests. But before Rowe became the Playboy Advisor in 1994, one of his other great obsessions in life was zines.

Zines are homemade, not-ready-for-newsstand magazines created for self-expression rather than profit. Rowe himself is the publisher of Chip's Closet Cleaner, a sort of "Your Zine of Zines," periodically collecting the best material in other people's zines. And now he's gone a step further, interviewing zine publishers and compiling their best pop culture and counterculture humor, essays, interviews and cartoons in a new paperback, The Book of Zines: Readings From the Fringe (Owl Books/Henry Holt).



Even better, Rowe can connect the dots between his day job at Playboy and his zine hobby.

"Some of the funniest advice to give is when I can find an answer or insight in a small zine like Black Sheets or Bust, which had one of the best pieces I have ever read sort of about sex called 'Don'ts For Boys.'"

"Don't for Boys" is one of three stories from Bust magazine featured in The Book of Zines. It offers advices such as "Don't lie. I'll catch you." And "Don't call me if you haven't gotten over your last girlfriend or mother."

If you've ever read or published a zine, you're probably wondering who would ever publish a book of articles from them. For one thing, the vast majority of zines are horrible to read and horrible to look at. But the cream of the crop are often better -- and infinitely more compelling -- than many corporate magazines.

"You see certain articles, certain viewpoints that just strike you as brilliant, and you look around for somebody to go, 'Hey, look at this!' " Rowe says. "I had this vague idea there should be an anthology, and in late 1994, I started seeing articles about the zine revolution in Rolling Stone, Details, and notably in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal did a front page article, 'Zines of the Times,' and just to show how unhip they are, they were obviously trying to rhyme 'Zines' with 'Signs.' They got it wrong. But book publishers in New York were educated about zines and recognized their significance. Enough people know what zines are that somebody walking into a bookstore who sees The Book of Zines will be curious enough to pick it up."

Not that Rowe was motivated by visions of big bucks. That would go sagainst the grain for a zine aficionado, after all.

"My feeling was just to do it because it was ready to be done," he says, sounding more like a zine publisher than an editor at one of the world's best-selling magazines.<>The Book of Zines include:

"'Solve it Yourself' JFK Assassination Diorama," from a zine called Verbivore, provided readers with the tools to recreate the scene at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Was Lee Harvey Oswald, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon or space aliens behind the plot to kill the president?

"Rejected Apes Subplots," a feature in Hitch, suggested new ideas for the Planet of the Apes films, including: "Dr. Zaius calls for an end to feces-throwing during council meetings."

"Open Up and Bleed" is a graphic guide to legendary to legendary stuntman Evel Knievel's many broken bones. It first appeared in a zine called Heinous.

Rowe's book is full of stories, lists and graphics such as these that appealed to his sense of humor and the offbeat. It is not, in any way, the last word on zine culture -- that's what Factsheet Five , an occasional catalogue of zines and where to find them (profiled in Mr. Media last fall), is for. The Book of Zines is one of at least three recent books describing the once underground phenomena of zines. Also available in bookstores is The Factsheet Five Zine Reader: Dispatches from the Edge of the Zine Revolution (Crown) by R. Seth Friedman and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution by Tristan Taormino and Karen Green (St. Martin's Press).

Since 1989, Rowe has published 13 issues of his own zine, Chip's Closet Cleaner. The first one was just eight pages long and photocopied in glorious black-and-white at Kinko's. The last one was 68 pages, printed in two colors, published in a quantity of 900 copies and online at Rowe's Web site.

Rowe is also the publisher of a second zine, This Is the Spinal Tap Zine: An A to Zed Guide to One of England's Loudest Bands. He's the kind of guy who collected Reader's Digests as a kid because they made his world "neat and organized." As an adult he indexed several months of the Weekly World News -- for fun.

Zines is Rowe's first mainstream book.


"I did books when I was in fourth grade, circulation of one," he recalls. "My parents still pat me on the head, even after this book came out."

Rowe, 30, took over the coveted Playboy Advisor job in 1994 from James R. Petersen, who dispensed sage and sometimes sardonic advice to men for 22 years. Only four or five men have held the job since the column's first appearance in September 1960.

Each month, Rowe answers up to 18 reader questions (of 500 submitted each month), mostly about sex, but sometimes touching on wine, stereo equipment or how much their old Playboy collection is worth. Almost all queries are answered in print or by mail -- including one Mr. Media himself sent as a college student back in '79.

"We have form letter responses for a lot of them," Rowe admits, "but the ones that really take a lot of time, of course, are the ones you have to research and that you haven't heard before."



That's where Rowe combines his job and his hobby.

"When you are writing about sex every month, you have to read stuff that keeps your interest up," he says. "You can't read sex manuals every month; they are pretty much the same. Sex is not that complicated. So I find some of the freshest writing in zines. I just mentioned Rollerderby in the Advisor. It is a really well-known zine by Lisa Carver, who interviewed a woman who had a hand fetish and was very eloquent. It was in answer to a guy who wrote in saying that his girlfriend had commented on his hands and is this weird? I said, no, not at all and I quoted from Rollerderby and not Time magazine. I feel more comfortable quoting from Rollerderby because I am sure the guy hadn't seen that or wouldn't see it except for me giving him the address."

You're probably wondering the same thing I was: Why him?

"People always ask me, 'How do you qualify for a job like that,' and I get to say, 'Well, I am just good at sex. And I have always been good at sex'," he says, perhaps half kidding.

"It is a cool thing. What qualifies me for this? Well, I am a journalist, and I am curious. I love finding stuff that I can tell people.

The most common question asked of Rowe typically ends, "Am I normal?" One guy recently wrote in that he sneezed five times after every orgasm -- "Is that normal?"

Well, Chip?

"I walked over to the Northwestern University Medical Library and found a reference in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association)," he says. "A physician had prescribed a patient some nasal spray that solved the same problem. I found it just amazing that somebody had addressed this and I was able to give this guy an answer.

"It is kind of a cool feeling to know that in some sense I can help set standards of sex, that great sex involves pleasing your partner, it is unselfish, if you want to have great sex, it doesn't begin with yourself. Great sex is really focusing on the other person."

When people learn what Rowe does for a living, he becomes the life of any party. Well, almost.

"My wife rolls her eyes," he says. In fact, before they were married, journalist Charlotte Snow wrote an article for NewCity in Chicago titled, "I'm Dating the Playboy Advisor!" In it, she revealed how her parents responded to her boyfriend's occupation (well, actually) and how her friends now turn to him for advice.

At his 10th high school reunion, one former classmates got on his hands and knees, worshipping at Rowe's feet.

"Omigod! Omigod!" he kept repeating, awed by Rowe's position.

Curiously, the Playboy Advisor column has always been uncredited. People came to know Petersen over the years because he wrote books and toured college campuses. Rowe figures all that is still ahead of him.

"I am in no hurry," he says. "I still have a lot to learn about sex."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Jim McBride, "Mr. Skin" adult web site pioneer: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1

Guys, Mr. Skin watches movies so you don’t have to.

Forget the days of wading through plot and dialogue just to get to the moment where Phoebe Cates pops open her bikini top in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Or when Sherilyn Fenn gets randy in Two Moon Junction.

Mr. Skin, via his website at www.mrskin.com and his just released second book Mr. Skin’s Skintastic Video Guide, The 501 Greatest Movies for Sex and Nudity on DVD, can tell you alphabetically exactly how far to fast-forward just to get to the good parts. Skin time, what body parts are exposed, size, skin color, hair color, you get the idea. Mr. Skin is nothing if not thorough.

And for those who think there must be a finite supply of these moments, let me just say that today alone Mr. Skin added seventy new pictures and twenty-one video clips to his archive. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.


BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Mr. Skin, also known as Jim McBride, welcome to Mr. Media.

Mr. SKIN: Hi Mr. Media. It’s always a pleasure to meet a famous mister. You’re right up there with a Mister Clean, a Mister Peanut. This is a big thrill for me to rub elbows with another mister.

ANDELMAN: I must say I feel the exact same. Thanks for joining us today.

Mr. SKIN: Thanks for having me.

ANDELMAN: Jim, you were a guest on Howard Stern’s morning show recently on Sirius, and he called you a “grandmaster of porn.” Your parents must’ve been so proud.

Mr. SKIN: Oh yeah. As you can imagine, my parents are very proud of me. I’m very lucky. I have parents that are very cool. They are the kind of parents that, as long as I’m happy, they’re cool with what I do for a living. And it’s neat. I even have my mom works as a “skintern” for mrskin.com. My parents are retired, and she gets paid to help with data entry for the website.

ANDELMAN: Now I understand -- data entry! She’s not watching the movies with you noting the…


Mr. SKIN: No. I have a team of 10 people in our content department that go through screeners of DVDs that movie companies provide us or stuff that we tape off of satellite or things we rent at Netflix. It’s a hard job. They have to go through movies, fast-forward through movies to find the nude scenes and chronicle them, grab the pics and clips, associate the actresses to the movies. It’s tough work, but somebody has to do it.

ANDELMAN: Now, how do you interview someone for a job like that? And are they all men?

Mr. SKIN: We have, I think of our 45 employees, I’d say about 40 are guys and five are female. But I think it’s more because there’s so much tech involved with running a website that you get a lot of males. We have writers; some of our writers are female so we do have females, but it’s definitely a guys club over here at mrskin.com.

ANDELMAN: Tell us a little about how mild-mannered Jim McBride became the internet legend known as Mr. Skin.

Mr. SKIN: Well, as a kid, I had a fascination with celebrity nudity in film. In fact, I remember when I used to look at my dad’s old Playboys in the early seventies. I would immediately go to the “Sex in Cinema” section. That was my favorite part of Playboy. I, of course, loved the Playmates, but the “Sex in Cinema” feature fascinated me, that famous people, people I knew, had been naked in film.

And fast-forward, a habit of mine, to the early ‘80s, and I was a senior in high school and all of a sudden, we got cable television and a Betamax at the same time. And it was a meeting of two great technologies. And you gotta remember, as a kid, growing up, we had ABC, NBC, and CBS, and that was it. All of a sudden, now I had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime, and to fill all that programming, they had to show Italian sex comedies, drive-in movies. So I was a kid in a candy store taping as many films as I could every night with my new Betamax and the next day, editing the nude scenes onto other tapes I was collecting. I had hours and hours and hours of nude scenes on tape, and I’d categorize them as TV stars or categorize them for movies from the ‘70s, however I chose. And I became kind of an expert on it just as a fan, and it was something I collected.

During the ‘80s and ‘90s as I continued to do it on my own, I was a fun guy at parties or wherever. The guys would always come up to me and say, “Has such and such been naked?” and I said, “Oh yeah, 42 minutes into this movie.” And they were blown away that I knew this stuff.

One day in the mid to late ‘90s, I was in a bar in my hometown of Chicago, and I just happened to be standing next to a guy who had a radio show here. The topic of female celebrity nudity came up, and some guys were asking me questions. I was nonchalant, answering the questions, and he thought, “My God, this would make for a great radio guest!” And he invited me onto his show. We agreed not to use my real name. We came up with “Mr. Skin,” and next thing you knew, I was on more shows in Chicago. Finally, it started to spread across the country. I never dreamed it would become a popular radio segment where people would call in, ask me actresses, I would tell them off the top of my head if they had been naked, but it did. And then I was thinking, “Wow.” I had nothing to promote. I didn’t have a website or anything. I just went on radio shows talking about this stuff, and, finally, someone heard me on the air in Chicago and said, “I’ll help you build a website if you want to do it.” And I said to him, “What’s a website?” In 1998, I didn’t know what a website was.


I started with me and one tech guy, and I launched mrskin.com on August 10, 1999. And then it’s grown to today we have over 40-some employees, and we get about 6 million visitors a month to mrskin.com. And it’s really one of those things where it wasn’t like, as a kid I thought, “Boy, I want to grow up and have a website and be an expert on female celebrity nudity in film.” It’s one of those things that just kind of happened, but I couldn’t be luckier. The fact that I get to do this for a living and am obviously well-paid to do it, it’s a dream come true.

ANDELMAN: Now, did you meet your wife before or after all this happened?

Mr. SKIN: Right when it was starting, I was going on a show in Chicago as a regular guest to talk about nudity in films coming up on DVD and whatnot. And he had his one-year anniversary show at a bar, and he had me there as a guest as part of the live broadcast. And I actually met a girl at my health club, and I said, “Why don’t you come to this thing, it’ll be fun.” And she brought a friend who turned out to be my future wife. The night she met me I was Mr. Skin. So she knew what she was getting into, in other words.

ANDELMAN: So you never had to resort to any subterfuge or anything…

Mr. SKIN: No, but I, prior to meeting her, I sure did, because there were times where I would go out with someone, and the topic of, “What do you do?” would come up. And I remember “computer consultant” came up a lot in the early days, until I could feel someone out, no pun intended, I really wasn’t about to just throw the Mr. Skin out there and ruin my chances until I felt a little more comfortable.

ANDELMAN: Well, as part of the challenge for me in getting ready to interview you, I had to force myself to think back to the first time I saw a woman’s breasts in a movie. And I’ve come up with, I think it was Serpico, and the reason I remember it mostly, I don’t remember whose breasts they are, and I’m sorry, sorry for the women listening…

Mr. SKIN: You don’t have to, because I do. Her name’s Cornelia Sharpe.

ANDELMAN: There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. Skin! That was it! I remember it because I had read the book; I loved the book. My dad took me to see the movie. I must’ve been 12, 13, maybe 14. I can’t remember what year that was.

Mr. SKIN: It came out in ’73.

ANDELMAN: There we go. I was 13. Thank you, thank you. Take a bow. So I remembered being in the movie theater, and then suddenly there they are. And just as suddenly, my dad puts his hand over my face, and I’m like, “Knock it off!” Do you remember your first pair, so to speak?

Mr. SKIN: Actually, there’s different moments in my life. I remember the situation you just talked about. In 1977, I was 15 years old, and my parents took me to an R-rated movie called I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. And it was a critically-acclaimed movie, and they took me and, 52 minutes in, Kathleen Quinlan’s top loosened. I remember that awkward moment where you see breasts, and you’re sitting next to your parents and then the next day going and telling all your buddies you saw breasts in a movie. So that was one of my early memories.

Remember on PBS, you used to watch the Public Broadcasting cause they would occasionally flip in some nudity. I remember I watched “I, Claudius” in 1976, all of 13 episodes, just for the nineteen seconds of nudity. I became an expert on the Roman Empire just because I was just riveted waiting for Sheila White’s topless scene in that. Another thing, I remember when “Steambath” with Bill Bixby and Valerie Perrine was aired on public television. She had some nice nude scenes in that, and I remember catching that on public television. So those are my earliest memories of nudity, but I remember looking in Playboys I saw a ton more prior to ever seeing it on a movie screen or TV screen.

ANDELMAN: That’s funny. I’m thinking about PBS, and I think probably around the same year that I saw Serpico, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was being broadcast in the United States for the first time. And I remember all the guys talking about how funny it was, but also oh my God, could you believe that you can see those breasts?

Mr. SKIN: Yes, exactly. And they would have Carol Cleveland would be on.

ANDELMAN: Yeah.

Mr. SKIN: She’d show her breasts. And you’re right. Well, that was the great thing about public television especially. To a kid now, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal when you have the Internet, you have all these different ways to see girls naked. But boy, when we were kids, it was tough. We could only look at National Geographic so much for your nude scenes.

ANDELMAN: Now, from a sociological point of view, and we won’t spend a lot of time on this, but as much time as you’ve spent in pursuit of seeing naked actresses in movies, any idea why we’re so attracted to that? Is it the whole forbidden fruit?

Mr. SKIN: Well, I think the biggest thing is I compare it this way. It’s just for people personally. Who are the people you most want to see naked in your life? It’s always people you know. You work at an office, you see a girl works at your office, you see her all the time. She’s beautiful. Most guys are thinking, “God, I’d love to see her naked.” It’s because she’s familiar to them. They know her, they see her all the time. You see a girl that you get coffee every morning. She works back there, and she has great breasts, let’s say, and you think, “Boy, I’d love to see her nude.” Well, think about celebrities. With the way media is and, Mr. Media, you would know this, the way things are. Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, they almost are a part of people’s lives. They’re on every television show. You see them in the magazines. You hear about them from other people. You feel like you know these celebrities like you know people in your real life. I’m not saying it’s the same, but it’s the same type of feeling -- you feel like you know Jennifer Aniston. You feel like you know Angelina Jolie because you just are inundated with information on them. And I think because of that, it adds another level of excitement to want to see them naked just like you do someone in your personal life. I really believe that. I think that because of the familiarity. I always say that what would you rather see, Angelina Jolie naked or someone as hot as her that you don’t know and never heard of? Everyone would take Angelina Jolie.


ANDELMAN: Yeah, I guess we’ll have to wait for someone to do that off this website, thegirlsinyourofficewhoyoualwayswantedtoseenaked.com.

Mr. SKIN: Well, that would be a pretty expensive database, I can tell ya that.

ANDELMAN: Is there a difference to being, say, addicted to porn and just wanting to see celebrity women without their clothes? I was thinking about this, and I remember years ago, at least from my experience, this would be before mrskin.com started, picking up a magazine called Celebrity Sleuth.

Mr. SKIN: Oh yeah. I’m a big fan of Celebrity Sleuth magazine.

ANDELMAN: Yeah. It collected still photos and images much the way you do. But, in that situation, it was something that even my wife had to admit that she was a little curious to see who they got each month.

Mr. SKIN: Well, yeah. I’ve kind of based mrskin.com on, in a sense, the Celebrity Sleuth and Celebrity Skin magazines, magazines I grew up loving to read in the eighties. And it’s the same thing. Here’s a guy, Celebrity Sleuth, who has an incredible collection of pictures and paraphernalia and trinkets or whatever of celebrities. And he, on almost a monthly basis, would put out a magazine in which he’d talk about different topics and different celebrities, and it gets you interested. If you paint the picture, if you make the people you’re talking about sound interesting and give some background on them and some history, it makes it that much more exciting to see them nude. And Celebrity Sleuth is a master at it. I’ve always been a big fan, always given him a lot of credit as a “skinspiration” for what I do, and I learn lessons from that exact thing. It’s more than just throwing pictures up. It’s about the information that accompanies it, and we’re real big on that at mrskin.com. That’s why we have so many reviews, ratings, articles, interviews, information where you can find what’s coming up, all that kind of stuff. When it’s combined with the pictures, that’s how you have a successful venture, no question about it.

Click Here to Keep Reading!

©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Jim McBride, "Mr. Skin" adult web site pioneer: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2

(Return to Part 1)

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: In talk shows, they talk about a big “get,” like, at one time Donald Trump would’ve been a great get for a certain talk show or something, and there’s people who just won’t do those things. What has been a great get at mrskin.com? Someone that people really wanted to see that you found.

Mr. SKIN: Oh, well, like we’re always looking for rare, out-of-print stuff where we know you can’t just walk into a Netflix or a Blockbuster and find. Like some examples, Stockard Channing. Stockard Channing, not the hottest girl in the world, but she’s pretty famous. People know her from “The West Wing” and a number of other shows. She did a movie in 1977 called Sweet Revenge, and no one every heard of this movie. It’s out-of-print. It only came out for a short time on video. But she has a nude scene 17 minutes in. And I remember when I had the website I was trying to track this down in the early days of the site and, a few years later, tracked it down. And things like that are really fun for me.

Another example would be Melanie Griffith did an Israeli movie called Ha Gan, which translates into The Garden, and she’s pretty much naked throughout the whole movie, full frontal. And that’s another one out-of-print, impossible to find. We tracked that down.

Victoria Principal did a movie called The Naked Ape that was produced by Playboy, one of the few times they went into the movie production business. And the movie was made and never released or released very limited at theaters, and I was able to obtain a copy and have that.

Stuff like that’s really fun, and I could probably name some others. But to give you an idea of one of the fun things for me and for the website is we’re not only chronicling the actresses we all know, the Angelina Jolies and Pam Andersons and Jennifer Anistons, but it’s all the female celebrity nudity in the history of film. And there’s some real obscure stuff out there, and it’s fun to find it. The pursuit of it is almost as fun as actually seeing the pics.


ANDELMAN: There’s a new movie in release called Good Luck Chuck with Jessica Alba, who’s had an interesting career avoiding being caught naked. She got very upset with Playboy when they put her on the cover in a bikini. And, for this movie, the story where I had read, I guess, she was talking to someone from Newsday and said did you think I was naked in that movie? And she insisted that she was always covered up. How big a get would it be to find her?

Mr. SKIN: Let’s put this way: in this day and age, if Jessica Alba did a movie where she was naked, everyone would know about it. There’s no way that this would be an unknown movie cause, in this day and age, it just wouldn’t happen. I think finding out that Jessica Alba is gonna do a nude scene from someone on a set and before it came out, that would be huge. But it would be too difficult for her to do a nude scene. It would be sitting there, and no one noticed it. Nowadays, it’s just impossible. Yeah, that Good Luck Chuck should’ve been renamed “Good Luck Seeing Jessica in the Buff” because it just doesn’t happen, and it’s unfortunate. There’s about, I’d say, six or seven girls naked in Good Luck Chuck. There’s a ton. Nothing from Jessica Alba.

ANDELMAN: Okay. And what about this? You’re a dad. As a matter of fact, just a couple weeks ago, your wife had a baby. My daughter whispered to my wife the other day that someone had told her that there were nude pictures of Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical on the internet.

Mr. SKIN: Yes.

ANDELMAN: How do you feel about the inadvertent release of stuff like that? Those pictures were not from a movie. And then after you think about that for a second, how will you explain to your own kids one day what you do?

Mr. SKIN: Well, first of all, as far as Vanessa Hudgens, I always say. “If you don’t want pictures of yourself naked out on the Internet, don’t take pictures of yourself naked.” That’s number one. My personal business philosophy is we only are chronicling nudity from films or television or video. I don’t sit in a tree and take pictures of actresses and post them at mrskin.com. We really stay true to the movie database aspect of it. So the Vanessa Hudgens stuff is not something you would find at mrskin.com.

To get to the question of how would I explain what I do to my children, to be honest, I’m not ashamed of what I do for a living. It’s not only a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of work. And I treat it very seriously. I have a great team of people working with me. It’s a great place to work. I would have no problem explaining it to my children when the time is right. And if I was doing something that I felt I’m ashamed of or couldn’t tell my children, then I probably shouldn’t be doing it. So that’s really my philosophy. I really wouldn’t have a problem telling my kids.

ANDELMAN: Has any actress ever asked you to remove her image or video?

Mr. SKIN: Yes. We get letters occasionally, not as many as you’d think, but occasionally, we’ll get letters from actresses. I could tell you that 99.9% of the time, they’re from no-name -- I shouldn’t use no-name -- obscure actresses which maybe search Google and find out that mrskin.com has pics and clips and a review of their nude scenes at our website. And we’ll get contacted by them, but we always point out to them that we’re a database and that our attorney gets to them right away to make sure they know what the website’s all about. And we’ve never had any -- in over eight years of running this website -- legal trouble as far as movie studios or actresses are concerned. And I think it goes back to because of how we promote the data. We’re celebrating the nudity. We’re having fun with it, and we’re sticking to stuff that actresses willingly appeared in. It’s not like the Vanessa Hudgens thing or the paparazzi pics that you would see all over the internet.


ANDELMAN: Have you ever had a Traci Lords moment where you found out that someone was underage?

Mr. SKIN: Occasionally, especially these European movies and stuff, you’ll find out that maybe an actress was 15 or 16 when she was in the movie, but it’s hard to tell right away. And we always remove that stuff. So we try to keep it so that, as best we can, that an actress is at least 18 years old when she does stuff. It’s just the smart thing to do in the political and business environment today.

ANDELMAN: You’ve had a relationship with the “Howard Stern Show” for a while, and you do the “Mr. Skin Minute.” But you made a real crossover to the mainstream this past summer with a part, not you personally, but the Mr. Skin site with a part in the movie Knocked Up. How did that come about?

Mr. SKIN: Well, I received a letter from the attorneys at Universal saying that they’re putting a movie out in a year. It was gonna be done by the guy that did 40 Year Old Virgin and would I give permission for my website to be used in the movie. And my answer was, “How quick can I get this back to you, signed?” I didn’t know how they were gonna use it originally, but they said that it was gonna be real positive. “You’ll like it.” And I said, “You know what, I don’t even care if it’s negative, let’s do it.”

Then the movie was made. I heard from people that saw it at a film festival, you’re not gonna believe the promotion for mrskin.com in this movie. And then I was able to see a screening in Chicago. I invited a bunch of friends, and there was a screening in Chicago before it came out. And I was just floored, blown away, by how just to be associated with the movie this successful and more important, the actual product placement of mrskin.com. You couldn’t ask for a better product placement in a movie.

ANDELMAN: Oh, it was amazing. And all the while, I don’t want to give away too much for people who haven’t seen the movie yet, but all the time that they’re building up to where Mr. Skin will be mentioned, anyone who has heard of or seen the site has got to be thinking they’re doing Mr. Skin.

Mr. SKIN: Right. I’ve had that from a lot of people where they didn’t know that the Mr. Skin thing was coming up, and they’re watching it thinking, “My God, they totally ripped you off! I was so angry!” and then they’re like, “Oh, my God, was that great!”

But I was able to talk to Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen. I was lucky enough to go to the L.A. movie premier of Knocked Up and then the after-party to meet those guys. And they both told me that when they based Seth Rogen’s job for the movie on what I do for a living thinking it would be a funny…Number one, it’s a funny job to have to tell people that’s what you do, but number two, they wanted a website that already existed so that the guys could be trying to duplicate it and later find out that it existed. So my site kind of fit. They wanted a funny business and something that already existed, and it kind of hit it well for them.

And I’m so lucky because now on September 25, yesterday, the DVD is in stores and pretty soon, it’s gonna be airing on cable television everyday. And as great as the bump was for us when the movie hit theaters, I truly believe that the DVD and the airings on cable and satellite television are gonna be just even better because you’re already at home watching it, and you just walk over to your computer and check out mrskin.com

ANDELMAN: That’s just an amazing thing. Any movie producers that would like to mention Mr. Media, just give us a call, okay. We’ll talk. How do the movie studios treat you? And tell me if there’s any difference between pre-Knocked Up and post. Do they discourage you, or do they actually send you the videos at this point?

Mr. SKIN: No, actually the movie companies really embrace mrskin.com. And we keep records. I have over 75 different studios send us screeners of movies before they’re out. In fact, I had Knocked Up in here on September 10, I believe it came in. It’s in stores September 25th. Its very common for a great majority of the movie studios to send us stuff. Think about it: I get to go on Howard Stern, Mr. Media, many different radio shows, to talk about their movies. We don’t talk about Disney movies or Gone With the Wind or things that have no skin. But if a movie has female nudity – like Good Luck Chuck - that’s on the front page of our site today. We get 6 million visitors a month to our site! We’re telling you there’s six different girls naked in that movie! Unfortunately, not Jessica Alba, but I’m promoting their movie. And in this day and age, of all the competition, what a great thing to get mentioned by mrskin.com for free on the radio and for free at the website. It’s a great promotion for the studios. We used TLA Video, if you’re at our web site and you want to buy Knocked Up, let’s say. You can follow a link direct from mrskin.com to TLA Video. We’re their biggest seller of movies. We move movies. We get people excited about them. And let’s face it: a lot of the movies are crummy movies. But we point out that “Alyssa Milano is nude in this movie” or “Demi Moore is nude in this movie” and it makes guys want to own the movies to check ‘em out. It’s a great vehicle for the movie studios to be able to promote their product.

ANDELMAN: You’ve said that, in deference to your mother’s preference, you don’t list the nudity in Schindler’s List.

Mr. SKIN: Well, what I meant by that is we don’t have the pics and clips from Schindler’s List. From the database standpoint, we do have Schindler’s List in our database, but we don’t have the pics and clips. I remember a few years back my mom sent me an email. She saw it at the website, and she said, “Please tell me you won’t put up pics and clips from Schindler’s List.” And I said I will not. I promise you it will not happen. And that’s the only example of one where we pulled, but I think that was the right move.

ANDELMAN: Well, I was gonna ask you if there are any other lines that you won’t cross, and I had one in mind. I was thinking of the Jodi Foster, the rape scene in The Accused.

Mr. SKIN: You think of The Accused, but if you think of these B movies and flasher movies, there’s so much more rough stuff in those. And if I have to start screening things based on what I think is wrong or right, that gets into a weird area. So what we do is, if it’s a movie that has nudity, we’ll review it, show the pics and clips, rate it, and that’s the policy. And hey, there’s stuff I have on my website I can’t even watch it because the scenes are so rough. Some of the stuff you saw in Hostel is pretty tough, but I didn’t want to get into censoring other artists’ work. And it just gets too goofy. If you don’t want to watch it, don’t go to that page to check it out is how I feel about it.


ANDELMAN: I asked you the question, but I actually saw that The Accused was on the site. But I thought it was interesting someone had a concern because it does say, “Turn down the sound.”

Mr. SKIN: Oh yeah, well yeah. We definitely have comments about it because it’s a rough scene, but that doesn’t mean that, because it’s a rough scene, I want to leave it out of the website. And, like I said, The Accused is just in the mainstream of people know about it. We have hundreds and hundreds of movies. I Spit On Your Grave, it for one, is a drive-in movie from the seventies that makes The Accused look like a Disney movie. So there’s movies out there that are very rough, but we, if it has nudity in it, that’s what we deal with, and yeah, sometimes it’s rough, but most of the time it’s enjoyable.

ANDELMAN: You’ve indicated in other interviews that you have no interest in doing a male nudity site, but the issue seems to come up more and more often. I’m kind of surprised that you haven’t considered a spin-off.

Mr. SKIN: It sounds stupid, but I don’t really do this for the money. I do it because, when I was a kid, I was so into collecting this stuff. When I was collecting it for 15 or 20 years, I didn’t make any money doing it. But I continued to collect it and chronicle it and learn about it and read about it. I didn’t do it for the money. If I have to wake up at two in the morning to tape and go through a movie because Ernest Borgnine’s gonna be in his underwear, it won’t be fun.

ANDELMAN: But you can hire people to do that.

Mr. SKIN: If anyone wants to do a guy nude site, go ahead. I won’t stop you. I won’t compete with you.



ANDELMAN: So where do you go from here? Hugh Hefner bought Jenna Jameson’s Club Jenna site awhile back. I suspect you’ve had offers. And with the publicity and the attention you’re going to get as Knocked Up goes into DVD, I’m sure that the value of the site only goes up.

Mr. SKIN: I think so. I’ve had some inquiries lately about what I would sell this website for and until someone knocks my socks off, I’m very happy doing this for a living. I don’t really have any plans to sell it.

I can say, as far as the next frontier -- or front and rear, if you will -- for us is the…I feel like, as far as radio goes, I’ve done everything I can to get the Mr. Skin brand and word out on radio. The Internet, obviously, we’ve got that covered. I have books. I have a book out in stores this month called Mr. Skin’s Skintastic Video Guide, The 501 Greatest Movies for Sex and Nudity on DVD. It’s our second book. I think we’re off to a good start in the book world.

I think the next logical step would be the television side of things, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be television in the network or cable sense. It could be television as far as maybe putting content out there that can be downloaded to your phone or downloaded to whatever device you have. I really think that’s going to be the next area that we have to get the Mr. Skin brand into. And I’ve had tons of offers I’m sifting through right now how to make that happen. It’s pretty amazing what’s out there, and it’s a learning process for me. I really think you’ll be able to download content from us, pretty cool stuff, in the coming years, and I think that’ll be a real neat thing for the future. And, hey, it may lead to a TV show, it might not, but I don’t even know if TV’s the way to go anymore. I think if you could do something that millions of people want to download via the Internet or via their phone, who’s to say that’s not better than television in the next couple years, anyway.

ANDELMAN: That’s where it all seems to be going.

Mr. SKIN: It seems, yeah, it seems. So we’ll see.

ANDELMAN: Well, Mr. Skin, Jim McBride, thank you so much for joining us today on Mr. Media.

Mr. SKIN: Well, thank you. I really appreciate you doing this interview and like I said, we’re in the “mister” club. Any time I could meet a mister, it’s a big thrill for me.

ANDELMAN: Appreciate that. And if you’re reading this or listening to this and you’re over 18 -- and if you’re not over 18, just don’t come back to me about it, you can check out Mr. Skin’s website at www.mrskin.com.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Bob Andelman, "Baby Media" father: Mr. Media Essay Classic

Originally published April 28, 1997

Funny how much a baby changes your life.

Forget about changing diapers and crying, spitting up formula on your favorite clothes or demanding your attention when it's least convenient. That's all quite secondary to the joy seven-month-old Baby Media brings to our lives.

No, what surprises me are the many ways little Rachel changes the way I think about the media.

First there were the little things, like no longer leaving the latest Playboy on the coffee table or in the "library." Not that Rachel will see it at her age; we're more concerned about not leaving it around for her 12-year-old baby-sitter to discover.

More important, I've been thinking about the overall images of women my daughter will get from the media. On TV, there's Roseanne, cracking wise at her own family's expense. Fran Drescher -- "The Nanny" -- who puts great import on material possessions and physical appearance. And Ellen DeGeneres makes sophisticated double-entendres about lesbianism and sexuality at 8 o'clock.

Not exactly the "family fare" that Mrs. Media and I think will be appropriate for the newest member of our family.





In the movies, I'm suddenly paying attention to the roles and presentation of women and not being at all impressed. Women are consistently victims or play second-banana to male leads. These things that didn't even cross my mind a year ago make me wonder about an entire generation of Rachels out there. The pay-TV movie channels are the worst offenders, invading our homes with the most gratuitous, exploitative and violent films out there. (We call Cinemax "The Naked Channel" because no matter what time of day, there is almost always somebody running around unclothed.)

No doubt most women wonder what cave I've been living in, but these images really never made an impact -- other than titillation -- until Rachel was born and I began suspecting about the world she will inherit. I even found myself thinking I over-reacted in knocking Tipper Gore's campaign for labeling record albums with lyrics that might be inappropriate for young children.

Although I hope my daughter might one day share my delight in reading comic books, her gender-positive choices are seriously limited: Every major female character, from super-powerful Storm and Jean Grey of the X-Men to mentally tough Lois Lane, is drawn with unbelievable torsos, gravity-defying breasts and waists so tiny they couldn't possibly digest food properly.

I discussed all this with my friend Sean, whose daughter Olivia is two months older than Rachel. He said he was shocked to read children's books from a little girl's perspective. Sean saw an angle on all this that I hadn't even considered.

"The male figures in these books are either buffoons or they don't care about their kids!" he said. "Their message is 'Raising a child is woman's work.' It's really disappointing."

In Bambi, he noted, the little deer's father is rough. And while the father of The Lion King is a strong moral figure, he dies early in the story and is replaced by his treacherous brother.

"Typically, the father-figures in these stories are bad," Sean says. "That's not the message I want to send my daughter."

Looking at Rachel's shelf of Dr. Seuss books, I wondered why the children bedeviled by The Cat in the Hat worried about their mother returning home but not their father. And in P.D. Eastman's equally classic, Are You My Mother, it never even occurs to the little lost bird that it might have a father. Fathers really do get short shrift -- a disservice to both little girls and boys.

On another front, news stories recently described how, in the rush to sell "Star Wars" merchandise, parents of little girls found a dearth of "Princess Leia" dolls and action figures. My own experience at a toy store was similar; the only Princess Leia figures made her look like a teen-age boy.



My sister-in-law, Cathy, raised two boys to manhood and started over again three years ago by adopting two baby girls. She told me that whenever she sees female action figures she scoops them up like rare jewels and stores them away until the girls will be old enough to play with them. I've followed her lead, starting a collection for Rachel with "Deanna Troi" and "Dr. Beverly Crusher" toys from the Star Trek: First Contact movie. (I passed on the pneumatic "Xena" toys, however.)

Another project is looking for positive female articles in newspapers and magazines. While Rachel won't read for some time yet, I've already stashed away in her closet two New York Times Magazines with the cover stories "Heroine Worship" and "Women Muscle In," the latter about the explosive boom in professional sports opportunities for women.

I'm not sure where all this or my old, open-minded, live-and-let-live, childless views are headed. I'm no puritan. I believe in absolute free speech. I think the recent TV ratings are meritless and ineffectual, offering no substance as to program content. Without that, they amount to less than nothing.

But mostly, I believe monitoring what a child sees, hears and reads is a parent's responsibility. That's something I felt before I had a child and something I want to live up to now as a father myself. So as long as my media counterparts will print or broadcast anything to make a buck, I will look both ways before turning on the TV or opening my child's books.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Clare McHugh, "Maxim" editor: Mr. Media Interview Classic

Originally published March 31, 1997

Does America really need another men's magazine?

Do men need another 172 pages every month or so telling us how to behave, how to get lucky more often, how to pick wine, who's hot and what's not?

If subsequent issues of a new magazine called Maxim are as ticklishly unsubtle as the first, the answer is a testosterone-cup-runneth-over yes.

Mr. Media reads piles of magazines each month, but the men's category is his favorite. Not for the pictures, either, although . . . The quality of writing in Playboy, Esquire, and GQ, for example, is generally excellent. But no matter how much older, wiser and wealthier Mr. Media gets, he never quite sees himself as the model reader for those publications. In his 20s, he thought he'd grow into that debonair, literate, sophisticated fella.

But now, in his mid-30s, all those guys seem much younger!

Maxim, on the other hand, is a perfect fit.




What makes it so different? Is it that Maxim is the American edition of a popular European magazine? Or could it be that this is the only major men's magazine in this country edited by a woman? A woman with a tree house sense of humor, that is, who could hang out and be accepted by your average bunch of guys talking sports, knocking back a few, checking out babes and scratching themselves. Okay, maybe not that last thing.

"I spent a lot of time studying men because I always wanted them to be interested in me and think I was good fun," says Maxim editor Clare McHugh.

McHugh, 35, certainly pushed the right buttons in her first issue. On the cover is Christa Miller, Drew Carey's TV gal pal; inside is a photo of Star Trek's Spock and Kirk; a directory of women who guest starred on "Seinfeld" and went on to greater glory -- providing an excuse to run Teri Hatcher's picture; a comparison between Macintosh and Windows users; and useful advice on buying lingerie for the woman in a man's life -- accompanied by 11 photos, natch.

But it's that very lingerie story -- "The Gift That Keeps On Giving" -- that spins the editor's gender. "It's a match made in heaven," reads the subhead. "Women love wearing lingerie; we love seeing it in action."

Not to be too picky, but if the editor is a woman, that sounds a little, um, funny.

"Some guy did write that," McHugh protests. "You have to assume the 'we' is a masculine voice. Besides, I don't think people will realize right off the bat that there is a woman editor."

C'mon! Mr. Media protests. There's a picture of you on page 16 over the headline, "So who's the chick?"

"I hadn't thought of that, really," McHugh says demurely, chuckling.

And it is a small point, but one that's important in a business where men's -- and women's -- magazine are closely identified with their editors -- Hugh Hefner is Playboy; Ed Kosner is Esquire; Art Cooper is GQ, Helen Gurley Brown was Cosmopolitan.

"Helen Gurley Brown is a brilliant editor because she really speaks to the readers where they are," McHugh says. "If I could wish for anything for Maxim it's that I could address men where they are, not in some idealized place or role of what masculinity is or means."





Staking out a piece of the newsstand to call her own, the fast-talking editor litters her magazine with politically incorrect lines her male counterparts couldn't pull off, such as "Hot Babe Management Tips."

"You've uncovered my secret!" she says, laughing. "I think I can get away with things that male editors can't."

Doesn't she care about potentially offending members of her own team?

"I don't care, in fact," she says rather bluntly. "In my mind, I think that if women are not upset by it, I'm doing something wrong. It was very important to strike a very male tone and attitude toward women. Not in an antagonistic way. But for lots of men, women are confusing and mysterious -- and also annoying! So we really had to write about women the way men thought. I'm not trying to explain women to men as much as I'm trying to address men's concerns about women."

McHugh's last job was launching another European import, Marie Claire, in an American edition. And her boss there was Bonnie Fuller, who recently stepped into Brown's fashionable shoes at Cosmo. Before that, McHugh worked her way up the Big Apple media food chain: New York Post, The New York Observer and New York magazine.




Joining a previously all-male fraternity, McHugh doesn't seem the least bit worried about comparisons with her "brother" magazines in the category, based on these blunt assessments:

Details -- "Cool. Maybe too cool."

Playboy -- "Nobody reads it just for the articles."

GQ -- "It's a fashion magazine."

Men's Health -- "A great magazine. Practical. It turns off people who aren't that interested in health. And it does tend to be the same issue over and over again."

Esquire -- "It's a literary magazine. For older gentlemen."

"Women's magazines in this country have done a better job of addressing women than men's magazines have done addressing men," McHugh says. "Men's magazines lag behind the development of men. I don't think men really changed through the ages. Feminism affected them in a way that it's given men more opportunities to do what they want. They don't have to fall into the stereotype of what it means to be masculine. You know, the good provider, the mountain warrior, the Hemingway wannabe. Other men's magazines address this heroic, iconic man, whereas most guys I know are very warm and interested in having a good time. They're in touch with themselves in that they know they like sports, they like women. They drink beer. They like to know stuff. They like to have a little something up their sleeves so they seem like experts. They don't spend a lot of time worrying if they're 'adequate' or not."

McHugh is surrounded by men, both at the office and at home. Beside her husband, renowned freelance writer Mark Lasswell, and their two-year-old son, Charlie, she also has two younger brothers and an "overpowering" father, who is a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.

Still, won't guys doubt you know what's going on?

"I hope to prove worthy of the job," McHugh says. "It is strange to edit a magazine for a group that you are not a member of. On the other hand, it does give me freedom and it's a new slant on doing men's content to have a woman's touch. I hope it works out for readers; I hope it works out for me."

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

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Michelle Borth, "Tell Me You Love Me" actress: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1

The ironic thing about Michelle Borth’s role as Jamie, a woman whose fiancé won’t commit to monogamy in the new HBO series "Tell Me You Love Me," is that she is the kind of sexy, intoxicating woman that could probably drive the best-intentioned married man to cheat on his wife.



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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: I was fascinated watching the show. It was very unlike anything I think I’ve ever seen, even on HBO.

MICHELLE BORTH: Well, that’s a huge compliment. Thank you.

ANDELMAN: How was this show pitched to you, and what was your first reaction to it?

BORTH: It was pitched to me about three years ago, during pilot season, and it was very much what you would think. It was proposed to me as this really graphic show, and that that was something I should know before going into it. And I was like, “Okay, well, let me read it.” And I read the pilot, and I was floored. I was really floored by it because I personally really connected with the character Jamie on a personal level that I was like, “Someone is following me around and writing my life because this is my life.” So I went into the audition for this project with wanting it moreso than I think anything I’ve ever auditioned for in the past before that.

ANDELMAN: It seemed like, looking over your resume, that it was quite different from anything you had done before.

BORTH: It is. It absolutely is. I haven’t actually done much TV work. I’ve worked quite a bit and have been in the low-budget indie/horror/sci-fi genres, which are great. But this is actually more along my speed and what I really would like to do. This kind of show, on this kind of network, specifically, is a dream come true for me and I think for any actor, but for me, specifically, it was a dream come true.

ANDELMAN: Well, you mention right at the top there that it was presented to you as a very graphic, sexual show.

BORTH: Yeah.






ANDELMAN: Did you have any hesitation with that?

BORTH: Of course. Initially, I did when I had the first conversation with my agent. The way that it was presented I was like, “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel about that.” Because, even in the films that I’d done, I’ve done one topless scene prior to any of this, and I was like that’s it, I did my one, I’m not doing anything more. So I was like oh, no, but after reading the pilot, it was just so smart and so beautifully written. Something, like you said, I’d never read anything like that. I haven’t read a movie script or a pilot or anything even close to what I read. It automatically then didn’t become an issue. And that’s the truth. It honestly was not an issue to me from that point on.

ANDELMAN: It’s funny. Ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have even thought to ask you this, but here I am. I’ve got a daughter going on 11. My view of some of these things, I notice, has changed, and I think, my goodness, how would I feel if my daughter was portraying a character like that on screen? You said you did one topless scene. This is, for people who haven’t seen it yet, this is way beyond a topless scene.

BORTH: Absolutely. It’s absolutely difficult. It’s not a show that I am pushing my father or my brothers to watch because I think it might be awkward for them as family members. But, in general, I think that it’s a big deal because there hasn’t been anything that’s been this true to life on TV at all, especially primetime TV, and HBO is known for raising the bar and setting a new precedent. And I think that this goes along the lines of anything else that they’ve done. “The Sopranos” was an extremely violent show and showed things that you wouldn’t be able to show on basic cable and stuff like that. And we’re just doing the same thing with a different context. We’re now dealing with sex which, in America, I’m realizing now that we’re a little sexually repressed. So I think it rubs people the wrong way.

ANDELMAN: How do you think America will be after a season of “Tell Me You Love Me”? Will we be less repressed, or will the people who are repressed want to be more repressed and the people who aren’t want to be more exposed?

BORTH: How do I feel? Well, first off, I think people are gonna be, I hope not, but I think people might be a little disappointed when they initially watch the show and realize that it’s not a big porn fest. That it is actually a really smart, intelligent show, and sex is a part of it because we’re dealing with intimacy of relationships and all of that. So I think that the HBO audience is a smart audience, and the show is slow-paced, and there’re no bells and whistles. There’re no big booms or music or fast cuts that it’s gonna take a certain audience to watch it, but once they do, the storylines will pick up where maybe the sex drew people in. I think the storylines are gonna draw people in, and so the people who watch it just for the sex I think will be disappointed because it’s not just about that. And the people who I think maybe will get offended, just don’t watch it. Don’t watch it.

ANDELMAN: I have to say, in defense of the sex scenes, that, if you like to watch a movie or TV and check out the sex scenes, the ones in the first two episodes are pretty intense.

BORTH: We come in with a bang. We’re coming in with a bang. I would say probably the two most graphic episodes of the entire season are the first two. Absolutely. So, yes, we’re coming in with a big bang.






ANDELMAN: You mentioned other HBO shows. It kind of reminded me of the opposite of an older HBO show, “The Mind of a Married Man.” It’s not a comedy. It’s a drama, and it’s more like, except for your character, “The Mind of a Married Woman,” although when we meet you, you’re on your way to becoming a married woman.

BORTH: Right. I actually just got HBO. I needed to get HBO. So I haven’t seen that show, but viewing the lives is really voyeuristic. You feel like you’re there going through these problems with these couples. And what I think is great about the show is that it’s so universal, and it hits every demographic that pretty much, if you’ve been in a relationship and you’re an adult, you’re gonna be able to relate to one of them. There’s gonna be one of the relationships that’s gonna draw you in and say, “Ah, I know that, I know that and I have said that before.”

ANDELMAN: Are you or have you ever been married?

BORTH: No, I am not married, and I have never been married. I have not been in a relationship in four years.

ANDELMAN: So you’re even a little separated from where Jamie is.

BORTH: I am. The thing about Jamie, though, that was difficult for me and what initially drew me in, what I said earlier about the pilot, was just a lot of the pain and heartache that she has in her relationship with Hugo and the breakup with Hugo and all of that is something that I have experienced. So, for me, as an actress, what was difficult was all that baggage that you dealt with and put away, I had to pull out and open up and live it for six months so that wasn’t fun. That wasn’t great. I’m like I spent a lot of time and hard work getting over all those issues, let’s go on back out and play in it again.

ANDELMAN: Michelle, I have to ask, maybe you’ll tell me, maybe you won’t, how old are you?

BORTH: I just turned 29.

ANDELMAN: Oh, that’s amazing. I would’ve guessed 22, 23.

BORTH: Thank you very much. You know what though, I will say this much. I auditioned for this show on my birthday, on my 26th birthday. So this has been a very long process filming the show. It’s been about a year since I shot it, and it’s been two years since I shot the pilot. So the first episode you actually watch is the pilot. We shot that over two and a half years ago. So I am younger.






ANDELMAN: And do you guys know yet if you’ll be picked up for another season?

BORTH: We don’t know because the show hasn’t aired yet. So we don’t even know what the response or the ratings are gonna be like, and they haven’t told me anything specific. They can’t because there’s no guarantee.

ANDELMAN: Usually, they have a sense of this.

BORTH: Yeah, but HBO’s track record because they can, they have the ability to, they give shows a chance. I can only think of one show in the past that didn’t get past the first season, but they usually give them two or three seasons for people to start to settle into it.

ANDELMAN: Right.

BORTH: I would be really surprised if we didn’t have a second season, honestly.

ANDELMAN: Well, let me come back to the characters for a minute. Most of the married couples in the show seem likely, at this point, to stay true to one another, although perhaps, tempted by other fruit. And that kind of allows the actors in those relationships to build intimacy with one another. But Jamie and Hugo, they seem doomed from the start, leading me to think that you’ll be getting physical with, perhaps, a series of actors or, for all we know, actresses, in search of the right mate. And so I wondered, does that make the role and your job tougher than maybe some of the other actors on the show?

BORTH: Oh my God, absolutely, absolutely! The one thing that was difficult, specifically, is that throughout the entire shooting of the episodes, everyone’s got their partner. As an actor, you’re working with the same person over and over and over again. You build that trust. You build that stability. You build that chemistry with that other actor. And little things like right now, like interviews, when you do interviews, a lot of the couples get interviewed together, and so they bounce off one another. And what’s been difficult for me is that because of my storyline and Jamie going in and out of relationships to try to find what she’s looking for, I’ve had to do this journey on my own, not only as the character but as Michelle Borth. And it’s a little frightening because number one, this is my first big anything, especially my first TV show, so having to go through all of this by myself and figuring it out all myself is ironic to me because it parallels my character on screen. But it is, it’s difficult. I would like to have had Luke, say, go through all of that with me and do it as a team like the other couples and the other actors got to do. But that wasn’t the case. But it’s been a great learning experience. Had to do it trial by fire.






ANDELMAN: I have to ask you so I guess this is a man’s question, I don’t know. There’s a scene with you and the actor who plays Hugo in the car, which is pretty intense and pretty graphic. How do you start and stop where the acting and the human being begins and ends in a scene like that?

BORTH: That’s actually a really good question because I thought about it, and I don’t really know how to answer it. You have to distinguish your work from personal, absolutely, and although Luke and I did develop quite a strong relationship, and it made those scenes a lot easier to do because we had this really great chemistry in real life. So I think that just shows even more on screen. But it’s acting, and I feel like in whatever technique or however people work, I substitute people. So in that scene, I’m thinking of someone else. I’m bringing someone else into that scene in my mind.

ANDELMAN: And thank you for thinking of Mr. Media in that scene. I appreciated that. I could see that.

BORTH: I was! I was thinking about you in that scene, which is why it was so intense. But you have to. You have to distinguish, otherwise you’re gonna find yourself in really awkward, weird situations which happens a lot on sets. I kind of understand now why people who work together tend to date afterwards. Just reading magazines and watching “Extra” and stuff like that, I get it because you spend a significant amount of time with that person and, especially with what we’re dealing with on this show and that close and that intimate, you do develop that relationship off-screen. I think you have to in order to bring it on-screen, but it is all for the sake of the work and for the job, and that’s it. And then you come home and let it go.

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©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.