Gene Simmons of KISS tells depressed people to ‘kill themselves’

SOURCE

KISS rocker Gene Simmons has built a career on controversial antics, but has he gone too far this time?

In a recent interview with journalist Roger Catlin on Songfacts.com, Simmons made some extreme comments regarding suicide and depression that now threaten to have long-term effects on his band’s career.

Asked whether he still keeps in touch with original KISS members who left the band over the years, Simmons launched into a shocking tirade:

“No, I don’t get along with anybody who’s a drug addict and has a dark cloud over their head and sees themselves as a victim. Drug addicts and alcoholics are always: ‘The world is a harsh place.’ My mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. I don’t want to hear f**k all about ‘the world as a harsh place.’ She gets up every day, smells the roses and loves life. And for a putz, 20-year-old kid to say, ‘I’m depressed, I live in Seattle.” F**k you, then kill yourself,” Simmons said.

It didn’t end there.

“I always call them on their bluff. I’m the guy who says ‘Jump!’ when there’s a guy on top of a building who says, ‘That’s it, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to jump.’ Are you kidding? Why are you announcing it? Shut the f**k up, have some dignity and jump! You’ve got the crowd,” he said.

Simmons’ comments have drawn condemnation from other legendary rockers. Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx yesterday denounced Simmons on his radio show, Sixx Sense.

“It’s pretty moronic because [Simmons] thinks everybody listens to him, that he is the God of Thunder. He will tell you he is the greatest man on earth, and to be honest with you, I like Gene. But in this situation, I don’t like Gene. I don’t like Gene’s words,” Sixx said. “There is a 20-year-old kid out there who is a Kiss fan and reads this and goes, ‘You know what? He’s right. I should just kill myself.’”

Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx (at left) has publicly denounced Simmons’ comments.

Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx (at left) has publicly denounced Simmons’ comments. Source: Supplied

The backlash has reached all the way to Australia, with Triple M today announcing they would remove all KISS songs from their playlists nationwide.

In a statement published on the Triple M website, network head Mike Fitzpatrick labelled Simmons’ comments “misguided and insensitive.”

“Depression and suicide are not topics he should be using to further his notoriety or sell records. His desperation to use mental health issues to find relevancy in a modern age is sickening. I can only put it down to a brain fade on his part. The Triple M Network can’t and won’t be playing or supporting this d***head’s music. I put the challenge out to other stations across Australia and North America to also drop any of this nudnik’s songs until such time as he reconsiders his thoughtless and insensitive position.”

Simmons comments were published on the Songfacts website on July 31, and it appears that, in the wake of actor Robin Williams’ tragic suicide this week, the KISS bassist may already have softened his views on those dealing with depression:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 8.48.22 AM

Simmons also retweeted the following (US based) information for those struggling with depression following Williams’ death:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 8.48.34 AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: News.com.au

 

Webtastic Wednesday: The Gunfighter

The Gunfighter

Directed by Eric Kissack (erickissack.com)
Written by Kevin Tenglin (kevintenglin.com/)
Produced by Sarah Platt
Shot by Jon Aguirresarobe (jonaguirresarobe.com/)
Costumes by Kate Mallor
Art Direction by Paul McConnell

Starring
Nick Offerman
Shawn Parsons
Scott Beehner
Eileen O’Connell
Timothy Brennen
Jordan Black
Brace Harris
Circus Szalewski
Travis Lincoln Cox
Schoen Hodges
Chet Nelson
Keith Biondi
Read Mor

Lauren Bacall, Dead at 89

SOURCE: Variety

Lauren Bacall, the sultry blonde siren who became an overnight star via a memorable film debut at age 19 opposite Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks’ “To Have and Have Not,” died Tuesday at her home of a suspected stroke. She was 89.

The Bogart estate tweeted the news.

Much later in life, she was Oscar-nommed for supporting actress for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in 1997’s “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

Born Betty Joan Perske, “a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx,” she stunned audiences in the forever-after-famous “you know how to whistle” scene in the 1944 romance “To Have and Have Not,” in which she was as flirtatious as possible within the parameters of the Hays Code.

Audiences were impressed; her co-star, the 44-year-old Bogart, even more so. They were soon married and remained devoted to one another for the next 12 years, until Bogart’s death in 1956.

It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that Bacall would emerge from the shadow of being Bogart’s wife/widow and hit her stride, this time onstage, where she scored successes in the comedy “Cactus Flower” and then won two Tonys in musicals “Applause” and, later, “Woman of the Year.”

Her gravel-voiced, sultry persona, however, immediately transformed her into a celebrity. The voice was said to have come from a year shouting into a canyon. Regardless, “the Look,” her slinky, pouty-lipped head-lowered stare, influenced a generation of actresses.

That had less to do with her acting assignments than with her social and political reputation — lying long-legged on President Truman’s piano, bravely protesting with her husband against the House Un-American Activities hearings as early as 1947, campaigning for Adlai Stevenson (twice), or hosting the Rat Pack in Holmby Hills with Bogie and later, in New York, with another famous husband, actor Jason Robards Jr. It has been suggested that her career — she was under contract at Warners for several years — was harmed by her political outspokenness. Bogart did some of his best work in those years, but then, he was Bogart.

Her fierce independence caused her to be suspended from Warners no fewer than seven times. Backed by Bogart, she justifiably complained about the poor material she was handed. That independence sometimes crossed over into diva territory and became more pronounced as time passed.

At AMPAS’ first Governors Awards ceremony in November 2009, Bacall was one of four honorees. Anjelica Huston saluted her by quoting Bacall as saying, “Stardom isn’t a career, it’s an accident,” though Huston said Bacall’s ascendance was not accidental.

Bacall expressed surprise at her own career, saying, “It’s quite amazing the people I worked with — some of the all-time all-time greats.” And she admitted that when Hawks told her he wanted to pair her with either Bogart or Cary Grant, she said she wasn’t impressed with the dese-dem-dose quality of Bogart and said of Grant, “Now you’re talking!”

Bacall’s fierce ambition to achieve stardom began at Julia Richman High School in Manhattan, from which she graduated at 15. By that time she was already doing department store modeling. She studied acting and dancing and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she remained only one term. She quit modeling on Seventh Avenue to become a theater usher and got herself a walk-on in “Johnny 2 x 4” in 1942 and an ingenue role in George S. Kaufman’s out-of-town failure “Franklin Street.”

Harper’s Bazaar editor Niki de Gunzberg hired her to model for the magazine, and a 1943 cover photo came to the notice of Hawks, who screen-tested Bacall and put her under contract (which he later sold to Warners). The studio coached her for a year, and then she was slipped into “To Have and Have Not,” where Hawks found that “when she became insolent, she became rather attractive.”

Bogart’s marriage to Mayo Methot was on the skids, and Bacall soon became his fourth wife, bearing him two children over the next dozen years. They appeared together in movies three more times, most memorably in “The Big Sleep” and then in “Dark Passage” and “Key Largo.”

Otherwise, when she wasn’t turning down assignments, she was agreeing to appear in mediocre ones such as “Young Man With a Horn” and “Bright Leaf.” At Bogart’s urging, she bought herself out of her contract shortly before Warners shaved its roster in the wake of the TV boom of the early ’50s.

One of her better assignments, “How to Marry a Millionaire,” teamed her with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, and “Woman’s World” again utilized her glamorous, stylish persona to dress up the proceedings.

On television she co-starred with Bogart and Henry Fonda in a live production of “The Petrified Forest,” which Bogie had done on film in 1935 with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. She also starred with Noel Coward and Claudette Colbert in the TV production of Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

When Bogart succumbed to throat cancer, Bacall threw herself into her work, again in A pictures, but with mixed results. There were impressive efforts like “Written on the Wind” and “Designing Women” and considerably less impressive ones like “Blood Alley” and “Flame Over India.”

After a serious affair with Frank Sinatra, she moved east and appeared onstage in the comedy “Goodbye, Charlie.” She met and married Robards, whose star was on the rise, and they had a son. His drinking problems contributed to their breakup and divorce in 1969.

In 1967, she was the toast of Broadway in Abe Burrows’ comedy “Cactus Flower” (a role she lost to Ingrid Bergman onscreen). She appeared in the comedy for two years, and then starred in a musical stage version of “All About Eve,” called “Applause,” in the Margo Channing role originated by Davis. For it she won a Tony Award, and she played the role in the London version too.

Later screen roles consisted of cameos and character parts in films including “Harper,” “Health” and “Murder on the Orient Express.” She appeared in John Wayne’s last film, 1976’s “The Shootist.” A rare starring opportunity, “The Fan,” was a dismal failure, and Bacall returned to Broadway in another musicalization of a classic Hollywood film, “Woman of the Year,” which had starred Katharine Hepburn.

Bacall’s 1978 autobiography “By Myself,” written without the aid of the usual ghostwriter, translated that gravel voice onto the written page and became a bestseller. She also penned “Now,” in which she wrote about her career, family and friends since ’78 but which she declined to call an autobiography. In the book, she wrote, “I’m called a legend by some, a title and category I am less than fond of.”

She continued to work on stage and screen and television, doing a TV remake of “Dinner at Eight” and taking a small role in “Misery.”

In 1997, she received the Kennedy Center Honors; in 1999, the American Film Institute voted her one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in history.

Bacall was among the stars of Lars Von Trier’s “Dogville” and “Manderlay,” made a cameo on “The Sopranos” as herself in April 2006 and appeared in the 2012 film “The Forger” with Josh Hutcherson and Hayden Panettiere.

But mostly she continued to be Lauren Bacall.

She is survived by her two children by Bogart, Stephen and Leslie and her son by Robards, actor Sam Robards.

Actor/Comedian Robin Williams Found Dead

Source: Variety

Veteran film and television comedic actor Robin Williams was found dead on Monday. He was 63.

The cause of death is believed to be suicide via asphyxiation, according to the coroner’s office in Tiburon, Calif. He was found in his home.

His publicist said the actor had been battling depression of late.

“This is a tragic and sudden loss,” his publicist Mara Buxbaum said in a statement. “The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”

Williams is best known for both comedic and dramatic roles in movies including “Good Will Hunting,” for which he won a Best Supporting Actor in 1997. In addition, he won several Emmys, Golden Globes.

Williams’ film career was bookended by TV roles including his breakout role on the ABC sitcom “Mork & Mindy” in 1978. He returned to TV on CBS last season, “The Crazy Ones.”