AL4 nationalpost.
com
American Psycho musical takes one step closer to the Broadway stage
Tony Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik, pictured,
who provided the music for the hit Broadway musical
Spring Awakening, has signed on to compose music
and lyrics for a stage adaptation of American Pyscho,
it was announced on Tuesday. While news of American
Psycho’s transition from book to musical has been
known for some time, Tuesday’s announcement is proof
‘I’m really interested in
the stories and the art’
TAXIDERMY
Continued from Page AL1
“I didn’t want to be a practising
artist in the sense that I would have
shows or make work for galleries,” she
says. She graduated in 2004 from The
Ontario College of Art & Design and
teaches fine arts and cooking to chil-
dren. “I wanted to make my life my
art, and so I started curating every-
thing that I owned and curating the
space that I lived in.”
Mavis invites you into her sunlit
living room where plants rise to the
ceiling and in every space, there are
scaly, furry and feathered creatures
frozen in various poses. A Canadian
goose hovers above, while a baby al-
ligator lounges on her coffee table. In
one corner, three snarling raccoons
have run up a tree branch to escape
a coyote. The head of a prong-horned
antelope protrudes from the white
wall, his face wise, perhaps wistful.
She has 64 pieces.
“Taxidermy became en vogue in
Victorian times. Churches had al-
ligators hanging from the ceiling,
and it was to inspire the wonder of
God. They were mainly privileged
wealthy men who were able to go
out and acquire, so now I’m this
pink-haired lady who is living the
life of a Victorian aristocrat in my
rented city flat.”
She doesn’t give many tours now;
she mostly rents the parlour out
for photo shoots. The musical duo
Morgan Mavis shares her home with an earless raccoon and a
found bear — among a host of other creatures great and small.
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
TUESDAY, MARCH 9
MASSEY HALL
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE ROY THOMSON HALL
BOX OFFICE, ALL TICKETMASTER OUTLETS,
CALL 416.872.4255 OR 416.870.8000
OR ORDER ONLINE AT ROYTHOMSON.COM,
MASSEYHALL.COM OR TICKETMASTER.CA
All dates, acts and ticket prices subject to change
without notice. Ticket prices subject to applicable fees.
ARTS & LIFE
that the production is one step closer to the stage. It
was also announced that playwright Roberto Aguirre-
Sacasa, who writes for HBO’s hit series Big Love, will
write the book. Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial 1991
novel American Pyscho is about a young investment
Thunderheist shot the art for their
album there.
Mavis stands next to her favour-
ite piece, a bear — they’re both 5-
foot-4 — which used to be the mas-
cot of a fur shop in Peterborough,
Ont. “It is part of our past and it has
a Canadian context. We’re a nation
that started on fur trading. I’m just
really interested in the stories and
the art.”
She points to a raccoon who is
grinning despite the fact that he is
missing his ears and his fur has been
bleached by the sun. “I was walking
near Spadina Circle near [the Uni-
versity of Toronto] and he was just
sitting in the bushes.”
He was already stuffed, she
clarifies.
Next to him, a stern-looking bald
eagle is perched on a branch above her
Queen Anne couch. Her father was
driving a North Island Gazette news-
paper truck in Port Hardy, B.C., when
the bird struck his windshield; he kept
it in his freezer until he received a legal
permit for it to be stuffed.
An Albino caribou head with black
eyes is the last face you see before
leaving the conservatory.
“My friend drove him from Mont-
real to Toronto in the front seat of a
Honda Civic. ... I’m sure it was quite
the scene on the 401.”
In here, it is quite the scene.
❚ For more information, visit
thetaxidermyconservatory.com
National Post
mleong@nationalpost.com
BRETT GUNDLOCK / NATIONAL POST
IMELDA MAY
P L AY T H I N G S
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE COUNTDOWN
Why are those women fully clothed? Wait, is there even any water in that “hot tub”?
Flub-a-dub-dub
PROMOTIONAL
EVENT REVIEW
Hot Tub Time Machine
at the Air Canada Centre
BY MARK MEDLEY
Clark Duke took part in a strange
scene on Tuesday night: The star of
the cult Internet show Clark and
Michael appeared at the Air Canada
Centre during a Leafs game, along
with his co-star Collette Wolfe, to pro-
mote his latest project, the upcoming
comedy Hot Tub Time Machine.
However, what was billed by or-
ganizers as “A Hot Tub Theme Night”
was not so hot.
A press release promised that
Duke and Wolfe would “show the
fans how to get ‘tubbed,’ ” which
most of the media in attendance
understood to mean that the actors
would actually, you know, get in a
hot tub.
It turns out they meant that Duke
and Wolfe would stand around an in-
flatable pool while some Leafs girls
romped around in the bubbles. To be
fair, the press release didn’t explicitly
state the actors would get in the hot
tub, but come on! If you’re promoting
a film called Hot Tub Time Machine
on “Hot Tub Theme Night,” it stands
to reason there will be some hot tub-
Things are about to get weird
MARTHA
Continued from Page AL1
It was the Internet, in fact, that
brought them back to recording
music. They found that an eager new
generation of listeners was digitally
mining the back catalogues of early-
’80s post-punk and new wave artists;
some fans started emailing them
about unauthorized sampling of
their music in different parts of the
world. One German hip-hop act, Die
Fantastische Vier, lifted the main riff
for its radio hit, Troy, directly from
the song Indecision from the Muf-
fins’ debut, Metro Music. The couple
won a substantial settlement and put
some of it into recording Delicate.
The new album incorporates ma-
terial they’d been working on quietly
for many years. “We have drawers of
every format of the time,” Gane says.
“Cassettes, DAT tapes, CDs and now
SD cards with MP3 files.” Delicate
looks back — the song Blue Bed, for
instance, takes its title from a lyric
from their 1983 album Danseparc
— and also forward. The single Mess
builds on a fresh, roiling loop-based
groove and features vocals from the
couple’s daughter, Eve, a budding
photographer whose self-portrait is
Delicate’s cover.
The album’s title is in part an
NATIONAL POST, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2010
banker, Patrick Bateman, living
in 1980s New York. The book has
sold 1.6 million copies and was
adapted into an acclaimed film
2000, directed by Mary Harron
and starring Christian Bale.
Mark Medley, National Post
bin’ action.
The stars were asked which was
stranger: learning the premise of the
film or attending this event.
“Probably this,” Duke said.
Even though the event was a dud
— getting the actors to stand near the
pathetic excuse for a hot tub was like
getting Indiana Jones to stand next
to a box of snakes — Hot Tub Time
Machine remains one of the most an-
ticipated films of 2010.
The film is about a group of
middle-aged friends who — with the
aid of a magical hot tub — travel back
in time after a night of heavy drinking.
“I thought it sounded awesome,”
Duke said. “I didn’t take a whole lot
of convincing on my part.”
Duke said he wasn’t surprised
by the level of anticipation the film
is generating online, where it’s un-
leashed the same kind of tongue-in-
cheek fervour that greeted the 2006
turkey Snakes on a Plane.
“I try not to read too much into
anything like that,” Duke said. “Hope-
fully they’ll go watch it now.”
Besides John Cusack, Craig Rob-
inson and Rob Corddry, the cast fea-
tures the always-eccentric Crispin
Glover and ’80s comedy staple Chevy
Chase.
“Crispin Glover? Amazing to work
with,” gushed Wolfe, who added the
actor even helped her with another
audition while they were filming.
acknowledgement of life’s fragil-
ity, something they had to confront
while recording it: Gane was diag-
nosed with prostate cancer a year
ago (he’s since had surgery, and the
prognosis is apparently good), and
Johnson has been battling Parkin-
son’s disease for 10 years. That said,
her singing has generally been un-
hindered, and in person, she seems
more than fighting fit; indeed, both
she and Gane, while in their late fif-
ties, look younger than their years.
Recently, musicians from new
dance-influenced bands such as
Spiral Beach and You Say Party! We
Husband and wife duo Martha Johnson and Mark Gane (a.k.a. “Muffin”).
PETER J. THOMPSON / NATIONAL POST
“Such a nice guy. I actually didn’t
have any of my scenes with him, but
he was incredible.”
“He’s a hell of a karaoke singer,”
Duke added.
“Yeah, he’s amazing. Actually, he
sang — what did he sing?”
“Ben,” said Duke.
“Ben, Michael Jackson’s song.
Yeah, it was really amazing. Chevy
Chase, though ...”
“Chevy was awesome,” Duke said.
“He’s my lifelong hero, and I told him
that on the first day, ’cause otherwise
I was gonna throw up around him or
something. But it was great. We end-
ed up having dinner every night for
like a week, and all our scenes were
together for the most part. It was
really awesome.”
And their favourite part of ’80s
culture?
“The music,” Duke said.
“The hair, for me. I love the hair. I
thought it was amazing. It really does
wonders for framing your face. A lot
of teasing. It was really big. Big hair
is great for a woman’s face,” Wolfe
said. “It took about two hours to put
it up.”
“Two hours?” asked an incredu-
lous Duke.
“My hair is a work of art in this
movie,” Wolfe said. “I literally look
like I’m wearing a helmet.”
As the event wrapped up, I eyed
the hot tub, wondering: If I jumped
in would it take me an hour back
in time, before this event ever hap-
pened?
❚ Hot Tub Time Machine is slated for
release on March 19.
National Post
mmedley@nationalpost.com
Say Die! have acknowledged the debt
they owe the godparents of Toronto’s
indie scene. Their live lineup reflects
this intergenerational connection:
the youngest Muffin, multi-instru-
mentalist Hill Korkoutis, is a mere 22.
Best of all, Martha & the Muffins are
in the pleasantly unexpected position
of looking forward to recording their
next album. “We’ve got a lot of songs
written already,” Johnson says, her eyes
gleaming. “We have to make some-
thing weirder than we’ve ever made.”
And left to their own devices at
last, they may just make their best
music yet.
❚ Martha & the Muffins play Toronto’s
Music Gallery on Feb. 5 and 6. Call
416-204-1080 for ticket information.
National Post
AARON LYNETT / NATIONAL POST