You know how you hear about how all Canadians are really nice? Gavin McInnes is an exception. Gavin first got notority in the States in the 90's when he co-founded Vice Magazine (ask him about it, he loves talking about it.) Since selling his shares and moving on he has got his fingers in everything. From still making music with his band to his website Street Carnage to even doing a little stand-up here and there, he's taken things to another level. I am still confused as to whether he is the ultimate hipster or he is what hipsters imitate but he is surely one of the funniest guys in America right now. I had a minute to talk with the guy and here's what transpired.
Gavin and his wife, a squaw who was once referred to acrimoniously as Pocahipster
Philthy Rich- You seem to have a ton of fans everywhere from NYC to the other side of the world for everything from your Street Carnage stuff to Vice Magazine to even your thousands of followers on Youtube. What makes you so special?
Gavin McInnes- Probably that I'm invincible.
PR- You have quit a different humor than most of the people involved in comedy one way or another. How do you set yourself apart from other commedians?
GM- "Quit a different humor"? What's a "commedian"? Did you go to a public school in a bad neighborhood or are you just stupid?
I guess what sets me apart from other "commedians" is that I'm not one. I've done stand up maybe half a dozen times on a lark. I find it pretty easy but it's not something I give a shit about or would want to really pursue.
If you mean "person in the humor industry," maybe it's that I've always said I just want to make funny shit - not necessarily make people laugh - just make funny shit. I don't care if they laugh or not. I want to make something I can look back on and say, "That was funny." The Nigel Norris video was a complete flop and the Sophie Can Walk video was a huge hit but I view them both as equally successful.
PR- Haha, ok so I can't spell. That's what spell check is for.
I feel like there isn't many COMEDIANS out there with the same type of humor. You've got guys like David Cross, who's a buddy of yours, and a few others but what would you call your type of humor?
GM- Um, schadenfreude? I like things that are terrible and get as much enjoyment from seeing a couple have a fight in public as watching them fuck. Actually, I'd way rather watch a couple argue on the street than fuck. Have you ever enjoyed one of those? You see them during Mardi Gras a lot when normies get wasted. It's like seeing a shooting star or a black unicorn.
PR- Speaking of David Cross, how did you get to know him?
GM- At Max Fish in 2002 or so. We were both eavesdropping on these two guys who were having a real heavy talk about selling out. It was an Asian guy who just got a job offer at NASA in DC or something and a white dude who obviously had nothing going on. The white guy was giving him grief and saying shit like, "Come on man. Right when the band's really starting to take off, you're going to throw it away for some bullshit 9 to 5?" We were both snickering because we KNEW the white guy would jump on the next bus if had a TENTH of the opportunities his buddy had. It was such an obvious lie, we both thoroughly enjoyed it.
PR- Do you think that was the moment David decided to do Alvin and the Chipmunks?
GM- Is that supposed to be some kind of stab at him where he should be embarrassed? I don't get it. Would you refuse enough money to buy a house if the cartoon that paid you wasn't cool enough? It's not a cigarette company or some corrupt corporation. It's a fucking cartoon. This is just like the white guy at Max Fish. There isn't one person who scoffs at David for doing that movie who wouldn't jump at the chance for a fraction of the fee.
PR- You seem to know everyone actually. I recently saw the video of you with Mike Muir from the Suicidal Tendencies. Who DON'T you know? And who would you like to know?
GM- I've been to the Yankees Game with Will Ferrel, had drinks with Tommy Lee, I've been to SNL with Johnny Knoxville but I've never been to me.
PR- You co-founded Vice Magazine back in the 90's in Canada but recently sold your shares. What made you want to get out of the magazine business?
GM- Creative differences.
PR- What else do you have on your plate?
GM- Writing TV pilots, writing screenplays, doing voiceover work, doing dumb cameos, a cartoon of Pip & Norton, t-shirts with aNYthing, a new magazine called Street Carnage, doing more stupid videos, freelance writing, doing Street Carnage presentations live with Derrick, doing my comic book Celebrity Encounters, publishing other coffee table books with various photographers, doing documentaries with Decon Media, doing short films with Last Pictures, doing other movie projects with Street Carnage Films, there's Street Carnage Radio, working on my daddy blog, I sometimes officiate weddings, practicing with my 80s Hardcore cover band 80s HC...
March 2009. 80s HC live.
PR- I saw the Teva commercial, how did that come about? Do you have any more commercials in the works?
GM- Making these stupid videos is fun on the cheap but a lot of the funnest ideas are cost-prohibitive. I wanted to do a parody of nature shows and had been working on this documentary with Decon about the Movie Watching World Championships. One of the guys (now my manager) said he could get a client that would be cool to work with and have the money to make the videos really over-the-top. It was Teva. We had a meeting and they loved our idea and that was that. This led to a viral video marketing company I'm doing with Kenny Hotz, the guy who started Tom Green, and some marketing mogul named Jordan Mendell. It's called Epidemic Syndication.
PR- Actually, from where I am sitting, it looks like you've done everything. You started Vice, you do the Street Carnage thing, you made comics, you've been in bands. What else is left?
GM- Before I die I want to: Fuck a retard, kill a man, throw a wiener down a hallway, skydive, become a Knight of Columbus, punch a nude boner, fart on a fireman, Jimi a Hendrix, learn the acoustic guitar, grow tits, scare the living shit out of a spider, unlearn 3 card tricks, and do an interview with some wigger magazine nobody's ever heard of.
PR- I live in NYC but I'm from the other side of the country. You live here as well and are coming from elsewhere. What's your take on NYC? Do you love it? Hate it?
GM- The thing about living in New York City is, you have to see it as one gigantic Jacob Javitz center. The insane rent we pay is like the lanyard that enables you to go to the different booths at the trade show. People from all over the world who want to do shit have all agreed to meet here and hustle so, if you're plate isn't full, it's a waste of a lanyard. If I didn't enjoy having dozens of spinning plates, I'd move to LA and tell people I was still working on my screenplay every couple of years. It's for young people, rich people, and hustlers. If you're not in one of those categories, you need to leave. It's also a pretty rough city if you're a woman looking for a mate. I've seen a lot of ovaries dry up and fall off in this town.
Oh yeah, I also like how every 10 years a new New York crops up. in the 40s you had the bohemians say fuck you to Greenwich village and set up shop up in Yorkville, then the beatniks brought it back to Greenwich in the 50s, then in the 60s you had Philip Glass and Chuck Close take over Soho, in the 70s it was all about CBGBs and punk rock, then you had the Limelight in the 80s and 90s. My New York was 2000-2010 and was personified by Dash Snow but that's just my blip in an ever-evolving city. The next kids, the Newmore Switchblades or whoever it will be, they'll have their New York and their icons who shaped it. To say "I miss old New York" is actually the opposite of what the whole city's about. New York is all about new New York and that is always changing.
Living in Montreal with other punk kids in the 80s. Holy shit is this guy old.
PR- Being as Clout is a graffiti magazine, can you give me your take on graffiti?
GM- Graffiti is a wigger vandalizing some poor bastard's property by writing a nickname (a fucking nickname) all over it. It breaks my heart to see a new business open up that some hard-working entrepreneur has poured all his money in and then have some asshole hit him with a $1,500 glass replacement bill by writing a shitty tag in etching cream on the glass. What a spoiled brat thing to do.
The origins of graffiti aren't much better. It started out as Puerto Rican kids in the Bronx growing up without a dad in a house full of women. They saw their sisters fawn over John Travolta and their mother reading celebrity magazines all day so they decided "Fame" was where it's at. There was no father to slap them upside the head and say, "Go clean the front stairs." So they start writing their stupid fucking name everywhere and on trains and shit as a way of saying, "Look at me. I'm famous."
Rich suburban kids are always desperate for some kind of urban culture so they started aping this retarded trend in a sad attempt to feel "down." How lame. You are aping a fatherless child with distorted values. The fact that you now have Germans and Scottish kids and all of Europe trying to be some weird perversion of a someone like Lee Quinones is so pathetic, it makes my head spin. How did we get here? Nickname Mania!
It's even worse than corporate advertising everywhere. At least they're advertising something that exists. Graffiti is ubiquitous advertising with no other purpose than making one shithead feel like he is successfully aping one Puerto Rican teenager who was aping the values of his stupid adolescent sisters. Fuck off.
A photo from Gavin's neighborhood. This may have shaped his opinion on the art.
PR- Is there or has there ever been any graffiti here or in Canada or anywhere that's stood out to you at all?
GM-I mean, the guys that actually improve the look of something don't really do it anymore do they? I've always loved Espo, and Kaws' ad vandalism is great but those guys are in galleries now. I guess Banksy improves his surroundings. That's about it. Here in Brooklyn it's just stupid fucking tag after stupid fucking tag.
PR- Have you ever wrote your name on anything?
GM- For a while we would go out and write our own names because we thought graffiti was so gay. Gavin Miles McInnes was my tag for a minute. Then I heard Mark Ryan did that joke years before me. Why would I want to mimic latinos getting sucked into female culture? When you see them getting manicures and corn rows it's the exact same shit. I wonder when the German kids jump on that bandwagon.
PR- Going back to Vice, you guys really pushed the limits back in the late 90's and early 2000's, what was it like in the beginning?
GM- That was in the 90s so it was a lot of GBH and E and stuff. It was always pretty much the same though. Lots of getting wasted and being an ass.
PR- You did the Do's and Don'ts for years. Are you going to continue to do them?
GM- Here's a tip: Before you interview someone, why not spend 4 minutes googling them? I still do street fashion critiques only now I call them Street Boners and give a rating in kitten heads. The DOs & DON'Ts was either loving it or hating it but the Street Boners system is more precise. I no longer have anything to do with Vice's DOs & DON'Ts or anything Vice. That's part of the deal when you sell your shares. This information is not hard to find.
PR- Next time I'll be sure to read everything about you written all over the internet.
So Street Carnage is your new venture. What are your plans as far SC goes?
GM- Derrick and I are putting out a magazine of the site's best parts. I just finished a book of Street Boners that Harper Collins is putting out in the spring and Derrick has two new TV Carnages in the works: A compilation of exercise tapes and a compilation of bad cop movies called Cop Movie. Now that we can finally charge something for ads, the site is finally getting out of our start up debt so I'm looking forward to actually paying contributors and being a real company.
Signing the deal that finalized his buyout. Looks eerily like a pic of the Sex Pistols leaving EMI for A&M.
PR- You took Street Carnage down to South By SouthWest. I had a few friends perform down there also. What was that like? Are you gonna go next year?
GM- Derrick and I had been going there for over a decade and it gets to the point where you're just sick of hearing bands. We wanted to do a party with not a lot of music so we only booked Ninjasonik, Cerebral Ballzy, Izza Kizza, and Vivian Girls. Turns out, not everyone who goes to a music festival is as sick of music as we were so barely anybody came. We had room for about 500 people and only 150 showed up. It was infuriating and we lost our shirts. I can't speak for Derrick but I never want to do a party there ever again. I don't even want to go to Texas ever again. Fuck that place and fuck SXSW.
I should mention however that all the bands killed it especially Ninjasonik. They took the 100 or so people that were there and made it into a huge sprawling party. I love those guys.
PR- Do your parents follow your career at all? Are they proud when they see things like the Sophie Can Walk video or read some of the Do's And Don'ts?
GM- Nigga, I'm 39-years-old with 2 kids and a house. You think I give a shit what my parents think? And will you please stop talking about the DOs & DON'Ts? I haven't done those since 2007. You're asking Mike Judge to do his best Butt-Head laugh and it's starting to get on my nerves
PR- Has there been anything they've disapproved of?
GM- Yeah I was recently grounded for two weeks because I came in after curfew. This was very hard on my wife as she had to deal with the kids all by herself. My manager was also furious because I missed all kinds of meetings. My parents are THE WORST!
PR- If you could go back in time is there anything you'd do differently?
GM- I really regret not buying a New York's Mega Millions ticket on September 7th and choosing 4,10,18,28, 50 with a megaball # of 35. FUCK!
Back in 1988. Obsessed with magazines from a very young age.
PR- Is there anything else you'd like to add?
GM- I'd like to add two spoonfuls of baking soda to about an ounce of vinegar.
To stalk Gavin outside of his post office check out:
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