Adult Swim : I Should Watch That - Interview with Girl Talk

Girl Talk, a.k.a. Pittsburgh's DJ Gregg Gillis, has perhaps singlehandedly popularized the art of the mash-up for the mainstream in the last decade. His albums, from 2002's Secret Diary on through last year's sublime All Day, pull wildly through music's back catalog at large, and effortlessly introduce the likes of Nirvana and Hall & Oates to TLC and Busta Rhymes. Strangest of all, it works. If you're skeptical, All Day is currently available as a free download, and Girl Talk's on tour behind the album through March. Before heading out on the road, in this I Should Watch That, Gregg Gillis talked to us about his undying passion for seeing new releases, his dad's surprising gangster obsession, and why worshipping Satan, in theory, appeals to him.

No 1: 127 Hours

It's based on a true story about a rock climber who gets stuck between rocks for, like, 127 hours. [Laughs.] I don't know where it's based, I think somewhere in the United States. He was stuck in a particular location and ended up having to saw his arm off. [Laughs.] I was curious to see how that would work, because I've read that this is James Franco's breakout performance and this was the role he was made for. I was like, "What? How can this even be a movie?" I watched the preview a second ago and it's him having flashbacks and kinda having life revelations in the rock. And it did look good, but I have to say when I saw him get stuck in the rock and realizing what happened, I got really anxious. I'm not claustrophobic or anything, but I could imagine naturally freaking out in that situation. I also am not necessarily a fan of watching people cut their arms off, so I am excited for the movie but simultaneously feel like it could be an intense bummer.

“I'm not claustrophobic or anything, but I could imagine naturally freaking out in that situation. ”

Sometimes you have to make the decision at the theater of what to go see. Usually when I'm making that call, I don't want anything necessarily lighthearted, but I want something that's going to be fun. I save the rentals for the more intense stuff. I don't know if that's going to be a theater one for me, even though it looks great. I might wait.

I try to not necessarily pay attention to reviews so much to influence what I'm going to see, but I do like to read them regardless. I like to go to Rotten Tomatoes and see what people are thinking. Oftentimes it's not naturally going to link up with what I'm thinking. But when those movies come along and they're the ones that overwhelm critical response, I have to see them for the sake of seeing them. But then I feel like I'm sitting there the entire time trying to think of ways that this isn't as good as everyone has been saying. [Laughs.] So sometimes that kinda ruins the experience for me.

It's funny because the opposite happens a lot, too, where critics and fans prematurely rally around something before it's even out and seem to want it to fail, like with the Spider-Man musical.

In that case, I haven't really seen too much Broadway work but that seems so extreme on every level with the budget, with U2, and it being Spider-Man. It seems so gnarly in so many different directions that--it sounds awesome to me, how crazy it is. But yeah, that's just how it is sometimes. I guess it depends how overwhelming the response is. When movies come out like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, I feel like no one's eager to hate those movies even though the critics love them. People are waiting to get into them, which is a little bit different from music maybe. I think sometimes it's easier in music to maybe hate on something and it doesn't mean that you're wrong or stupid. It's more or less your opinion. But with movies there's more of an objective analysis that can be obtained. So even if you didn't like it, you can say, "Well, it was a good movie, though."

“I think sometimes it's easier in music to maybe hate on something and it doesn't mean that you're wrong or stupid.”

Also, it's easier to just flip through a CD and dismiss it roundly, whereas with a movie you've got to put in a greater amount of time.

Yeah, and there's just a different connection with fans and the music and fans and movies. Maybe like Avatar was built up so much that people were eager to dislike that movie, but with music it seems like every album that comes out, no matter what it is, if it gets any buzz there's going to be a certain demographic that's really eager to hate on that product. Like these new movies, like Unstoppable? You don't run into anyone who's dying to hate that movie, but you're going to run into someone who's dying to hate the new Sleigh Bells record. It's ridiculous.

No. 2 Due Date

That one kinda had mediocre reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, but in such a way that it got me excited. A lot of the negative responses were things that sounded cool to me. I think it might be a little bit dark, and I think the main characters might just be people that are hard to enjoy liking. Sometimes those are the movies that I can really love, where it's a bit too much or a bit too dark for some people. I like movies that go extreme with it. It's hard to take in critics' reviews of comedies. A lot of the great comedies are ones that get panned and kinda go on to be cult classics.

“A lot of the great comedies are ones that get panned and kinda go on to be cult classics. ”

But with Due Date, I think the cast is sick. I've heard the name Zach Galifianakis for years but I've never kept up with his stuff to honest until The Hangover. And then recently I've been watching his series Between Two Ferns on YouTube, and I thought those were pretty incredible. And Robert Downey Jr. rules, I just saw Iron Man 2 a few nights ago. I think that cast is cool. The fact that some people on Rotten Tomatoes were saying it was too dark for them was a definite checkpoint for me.

Yeah, there seems to be a real rise in darker comedies lately.

Yeah, and it might just be the general humor style that's popular. Some of them go really far. When I was thinking of movies that maybe went too far and weren't so well-received, one that popped in my head from a couple years ago was Observe And Report. I don't know if you saw that.

I haven't, but isn't there, like, a rape scene in there that's played for laughs?

[Laughs.] That movie is dark, and it's pretty amazing. It goes places you don't expect it to go. There's also a heroin scene played for laughs. It's raw. It's the opposite of Talladega Nights or something. A lot of those [Adam McKay] movies, like, come on TBS and you can watch at any time of day. I feel like Observe And Report is more like Requiem For A Dream where you have to be mentally prepped to dive into this film. But I like all manners of comedy. I love Dumb & Dumber, but at the same time I think people really recently have been fine-tuning that art of dark comedy and taking it somewhere I don't think we've seen it go before.

No. 4: For Colored Girls

It's Tyler Perry film with Janet Jackson, and it looks really intense. It has an all-star African-American cast, and I haven't seen so many Tyler Perry films but I feel like he has such a specific style and such a specific following. He's just blown up so much that I definitely respect what he's doing. I'll dive into a movie like that. And that's a movie that, to me, that'd be a cool one just to check out in theaters because it's an unexpected theater pick. It looked pretty serious, and I don't know the plot of it, but I remember seeing the preview in theaters and being interested in it.

This one, he's just producing. I don't think he's actually in this film. His films kinda have this specific voice to them. I haven't seen that many but there's a style to them, and it's very dramatic. I think it comes from his work on the stage. He comes from a background doing plays, and he was initially successful doing a series of plays based on characters that went on to be in the movies, like Madea and the Diary Of A Mad Black Woman. His TV show, too, is really mind-blowing sometimes because it is a comedy but it takes some really serious tones.

No. 5: The Tourist

There's a certain breed of movie where I see the preview, and it's not really engaging at all. It feels like a chore to have to see, but just by the nature of being a fan of new releases I will go check it out. The Tourist looks boring maybe, but ultimately I will go see it and I'll probably enjoy it. A lot of these movies that don't seem that great to me end up being awesome. Like that movie has Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Those are two classic actors right now. I'll see anything with them in it, but nothing really caught me about that movie. I'll see it in the theater if I show up and they got my order mixed up, but that could be one I save for rentals as well.

“A lot of these movies that don't seem that great to me end up being awesome.”

It sounds like your life is an extended version of that Seinfeld episode about The English Patient. You constantly have all this pressure on yourself to see whatever's in theaters.

[Laughs.] Right, right. That's just how it is with a lot of the big blockbuster movies. A lot of them I hold off. If it reaches a certain point where I haven't seen it, I'll be dedicated to not seeing it. Like at this point I have not seen Avatar. [Laughs.] I was ready to go on opening day. I was ready for it, then I missed the whole thing. Now that it's past the whole excitement, I may actively try to never see it just for conversational purposes. "What? You never saw Avatar?"

There are a lot of classics I haven't seen, like The Godfather. I've seen parts of all of them, and on Thanksgiving they ran all of them on AMC. I was at my parents' house at my parents are into movies, too, a lot, but I didn't think they'd be into the Godfather series. It doesn't seem like their style necessarily, and they were really into it. My dad was breaking down every aspect of it. [Laughs.] It was this gangster interest I never knew he had.

Do you have any types of movies you're into that people might not really suspect?

I love a lot of horror movies relating to the devil and worshipping Satan, because it's pretty realistic to me. It happens. Some people do worship the devil, versus maybe ghosts existing or something. I'm interested in movies that look into the culture of people wanting to actually worship the devil or be possessed by the devil. Things like that. So Rosemary's Baby is surprisingly realistic throughout the whole thing, and of course then it gets a little bit extreme. But as far as the plot goes it's believable, and when it does reach that point where it gets a bit more science-fictional, it's still pretty creepy and really cool.

No. 6: Love And Other Drugs

I don't know much about this one. [Laughs.] This guy I know from Pittsburgh hit me up on Facebook today and was asking if I saw it. I don't know why. [Laughs.] I think it may have been filmed in Pittsburgh actually. Is it like a romantic comedy or something?

Yeah, but all I know about it is Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, naked, and their nude bodies are obscuring all the "adult" parts of each other.

I wish they would do a cover that was the opposite of that, where all their nipples and adult features were obscuring their facial features. So, like, nipples for eyes and things like that. But I just got that message on Facebook today, someone I randomly know asking me about it. A guy asked me. I'll jam all the romantic comedies, I have no wall up about what I'm going to see. I'll watch the Disney movies. I'll watch romantic comedies. I'll watch horror. I'll watch whatever. I just thought it was funny because I haven't heard anyone talk about this movie, and there was no follow-up with that dude. It was just, "Yo, have you seen Love And Other Drugs? Enter. Send." That kinda piqued my interest in itself.

“I'll jam all the romantic comedies, I have no wall up about what I'm going to see. I'll watch the Disney movies. I'll watch romantic comedies. I'll watch horror. I'll watch whatever. ”

I think being open to seeing all those movies works well with having a girlfriend. Sometimes she may want to see the more traditional romantic comedies, but sometimes those movies slay. They're naturally s***-talked by a lot of guys but sometimes those movies are over the top. I guess this is more of a comedy, but it was kinda a movie like, on paper I wasn't juiced, but that movie with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin and Meryl Streep [It's Complicated]? It was awesome. It was straight-up awesome. I saw that in the theaters and I was kinda like, "Eh, we'll go." I was with friends in Australia, actually, and we walked past the theater and it was my friend's birthday. And that was another one, I can't compare it to Love And Other Drugs because I have no idea what it's about, but it's more of a romantic comedy with an older cast geared to an older fan base, and it slayed. It was funny and awesome and I enjoyed it on every level. Sometimes, you know, these movies are built up like you have to go but you don't want to, but it can be rewarding. More often than not, I gauge incorrectly what I'm going to like.