MXMO: Will Sheff [of Okkervil River] on Food and Film
MXMO: Dinner and a Movie with Will Sheff of Okkervil River
Interview by Emily Strong
MXMO (Musicians By Modus Operandi) is a new column that focuses on the hobbies, habits, side-projects and signature idiosyncrasies of the artists we love and respect. This time around, we're talking to Will Sheff about some of his favorite hobbies outside of music: food and film.
Soundcheck Magazine: A lot of times, musicians get asked the same boring questions over and over again in interviews. But is there something that you want to talk about but never get asked?
Will Sheff: Well, I like to talk about cooking. I like talking about food.
SM: (laughs) Yeah?
WS: I love talking about movies.
SM: So what good recipes have you found lately?
WS: Last night I made— Well, Travis [Nelsen], our drummer, made a salmon. We had some friends over – I'm staying at his house while we're rehearsing – and he made this salmon with cucumber wrapped around it and basil on the inside, and that was really good. He had cous cous with it. I believe that's a recipe his brother taught him. And I made a Greek salad. It was feta cheese, cucumbers, tomato, olive oil, olives. Then I made a chocolate caramel tart with sea salt on top and a chocolate cookie crust. It was kind of ok. It wasn't quite— It was reverse engineered. I was trying to figure out a recipe I stole from someone else. I kind of got it right, but it wasn't quite what I wanted.
SM: And yet still probably better than what I could've done! So do you cook a lot?
WS: Yeah, I do. It's fun. I'm also really a movie geek. I like to talk about that.
SM: What have you seen recently that's good?
WS: I really liked Ciao Manhattan, the old Edie Sedgwick movie. Basically what happened when that Factory Girl movie came out is that I got so angry because I'm very interested in the [Andy] Warhol crowd and The Factory in the '60s. It's just a really fascinating and interesting time, you know, with Velvet Underground and all that stuff. I was so mad that it was getting Hollywoodized. But then, of course, it made me kind of counter-program myself, so I read that Edie Sedgwick/Warhol biography, because I really like oral histories and stuff like that. Then I watched Ciao Manhattan, and what's cool about it and what's also distressing about it, is that in some ways it's like a kind of forerunner to people like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.
SM: You're right! That's so true.
WS: Maybe a bit classier in a way. But basically, here's a woman who's falling apart, who is perhaps even brain damaged from the amount of drugs she's been taking, is fucked up on camera, is naked on camera for most of the movie, and is playing a fucked up, naked heiress who is suicidally inclined, who actually ends up overdosing and actually ended up dying. So she's playing herself, but she's playing herself in an exploitation film. And she was fully participatory in it, but she was also on drugs the whole time. So the question is, can it be fully participatory when you're on drugs? Can an exploitation movie have a heart? Can you exploit someone and glorify them at the same time? It's beautiful filmed and beautifully done, but it's also terrible. It has a lot of really bad B-Movie qualities, and yet a lot of really transcendent, artistic qualities. So it's this really completely unsteady blend of high art and utter shit.
(At this point, Dan Bejar walks in and strikes up a conversation with Will Sheff.)
WS: Do you mind if we nix this? Is that cool? I haven't seen this guy in a while...
