We’ve had his lady, Ms. Neile Adams, featured on our site as an outstandingly stylish individual of our recent past, and have more and more inspired by her other half – the eternally suave and sophisticated, Mr. Steve McQueen.
Riot boy, rider boy, and adventure man to the core – Steve McQueen is the epitome of style for all you brothers who love classic menswear styles, but with a cool twist.
Check out some of the images we pulled to muse over and inspire!
“I remember seeing him across the swimming pool and my knees were knocking. He radiated such macho energy. Men wanted to be like him. Uptight society ladies and biker molls wanted to be with him.”
-Ali McGraw
“He was a fascinating, crazy, irascible, roguish, likable, dislikable guy. Yes, he was all those things.”
-David Foster
“I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen, who was a very famous movie star at the time, but as a kid it didn’t impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles, riding around in the desert; he was like a second father.”
-Herb Ritts
For more info on Steve McQueen, the man, the myth, the legend –
{French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ miˈʃɛl baskija]; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988}
1. artist. style icon.
2. academic; a little underground; a little street; archaic African; American hip-hop; Classic; Refined; Cultured; Gritty; Nitty; Bad Ass; Post-Punk; Anti-Conservative; Painted. Layered; Tough; Rugged; Tribal; NYC.
3. timeless.
4. cool.
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I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.
-Jean Michel Basquiat
I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.
“I came from a very hardened punk background in the late 80’s and early 90’s and my early films really projected that. Of course there have been aspects of the more mainstream-type stuff I’m currently doing that, at first, have been difficult to navigate due to my past. But I’m learning. It’s a very rewarding process and I’m loving it.”
-Johnny Terris
Johnny Terris is one bad ass dude.
A true Renaissance man, Johnny has engaged in roles as actor, film maker, author, model, photographer and painter. Best known for his transgressive, violent punk-influenced films that were far from mainstream, even in the indie sense; Johnny would distribute his earliest on VHS in the streets of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to strangers. He even went as far to use his own blood in scenes!
Legendary for being asked to be Johnny Depp’s double in the early 90s – Johnny, in true rebel fashion, turned it down. Now he continues his work as an actor (AKA Edward Terris) in the TV miniseries “Sex & Violence”, which co-stars Academy Award winning actress, Olympia Dukakis.
The Eye of Faith is honoured to post this interview with a true pioneer of the subversively cool right here in the True North Strong and Free!
Special thanks to our correspondent John Wisniewski for the interview.
JW: When did you begin making films and and acting, Johnny?
JT: I started doing movies around 1987 when I was 14 years old. Basically out of boredom living in a small town. My cousin, who was also my best friend, would film various things typical boys would do and then just decided to make a movie one day. We were heavily influenced by retro horror and grind house style film and my work of course reflected that. I never fit in with anyone in the small town where I lived and neither did he, so doing films were an outlet for us, an expression. When I left home at 16, I became angrier and had an axe to grind with the world, so they eventually became more graphic and explicit and transgressive.
JW: Why did you decide to write an autobiographical novel?
JT: I started writing Sinister Splendor & Broken Glass back around 2002 but shelved it for many years. I originally started to write it for myself only, basically for therapeutic purposes because in 2001, the love of my life became a missing person and was never found so I thought writing about it would help with dealing with it. From there it just kind of spiraled into writing about my life from childhood, my early years on the street doing underground films and present stuff. The next thing I knew I pretty much had a book.
I compiled it together and released the first draft in 2011. It has since changed direction. Instead of an autobiography, it’s now more of a fictional character story that is set in the 1970’s and 1980’s, about a guy named Aaron, that is heavily based on my life instead of being about my life. That’s the third and final draft and the most recent one.
Nobody really knows who I am, and I’m sure most of the world wouldn’t care anyway so I decided to make it fiction that is based on me with characters based on my friends an family instead of the standard autobiography. It made it more interesting to me that way. And I think to others reading it too. The book is still my life, but the characters are different.
JW: Any artists that have influenced your work?
JT: A few artists have influenced me in big way, Richard Kern and The Cinema Of Transgression were probably the biggest influence on me in terms of my own films. Retro 70’s and 80’s horror played a huge part as well. Early Dario Argento played a huge part. Grindhouse flicks, drive-in movies form that period.
From a very young age I was really influenced by a lot of vintage heterosexual porn too like Devil In Miss Jones, Devil Inside Her, Behind The Green Door etc. All the really strange and surreal X-rated films of that period. Early John Waters of course played an influence, especially in my early work.
Musically I was, and still am, obsessed with the NWOBHM/New Wave Of British Heavy Metal from the late 70’s and early 80’s. Bands like Girlschool, Motorhead, Plasmatics/Wendy O Williams, Saxon, Turbonegro, Judas Priest, bands like that. Tight jeans, white t-shirt, spiked wristband, leather jacket wearing, sneering bands. A lot of punk-tinged heavy metal from that period. Listening to that stuff gets me in writing mode immediately.
JW: Do you enjoy acting?
JT: Yeah of course, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. I’m actually more comfortable in front of the camera being someone else than I am in my personal life. It’s always been that way. When I was a little kid I used to memorize scripts at the age of 9 or 10 years old and perform every character in my bedroom by myself for hours on end. Acting has always triggered something in me, as far back as I can remember.
JW: You once doubled for Johnny Depp. What was that like?
JT: I never doubled for Johnny Depp. I was asked to when I was younger and living in Los Angeles but I was moving back to Canada at the time. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. I have no desire to be another actor, or anyone other than myself.
JW: What is your opinion of Hollywood and Hollywood movies?
JT: When I first went to Hollywood it was nothing like I expected it to be. It was actually pretty grimy and trashy. The Rainbow Bar & Grill was always fun. The Whiskey was fun. I don’t have a problem with mainstream cinema or the Hollywood stuff; it’s not exactly my thing, but being older now I’m not as ferocious against it like I used to be.
I used to revolt against it in a really hardcore way. But I’m currently one of the leads in a television series with Olympia Dukakis (who is an Oscar winner) so I’ve obviously tamed a bit in the old age and don’t care about that as much haha.
Most Hollywood films are formula and neatly packed for selling purposes and because of that it’s the same stuff just rehashed over and over again with a different title, and I personally find that very boring. Hollywood is very loud and explosive and action packed. They make and market their films that way. I prefer psychological films that are slower in tone and make you think.
JW: Are you a horror film fan? Any favorite horror films, Johnny?
JT: Yeah I am a huge horror fan, I grew up on them and they are a huge influence. My mother was a huge lover of horror movies and nothing was really ever censored from me so I was watching stuff like ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ when I was just a little kid. I usually prefer the physiological ones over the gore. I have lots of favorite horror films, though my favorite one would have to be the original ‘Carrie’.
JW: Are you working on any screenplays, Johnny?
JT: Nothing really big right now, no. I’m very slowly writing a screenplay/script which is a greaser-style drama film about two brothers and their alcoholic father. But that’s a work in progress and who knows how that will evolve; too early to tell right now. I am though, currently helping a friend of mine shoot his apocalyptic style film.
Many props go to our many friends, fans, and followers who have helped get us this far – and many more to those who we have yet to meet who will take us even farther along the path our destiny has chosen for us.
Life is nothing but a series of moments that pass before us. In a blink, they are gone. A whisper in the wind. A forgotten melody that drums in our memory.
Take these moments and package them tight, for you never know when you might need them.
This very wise {Style-Wise} is dedicated to that. After all, style is not as cut and dry as people like to make it out to be. It goes far beyond the clothes we wear, and trickles deep down into our centre where the components of who we truly are stay in constant motion.
Here’s a little inspiration mixed with some simple philosophical points courtesy of the brilliant words of one, Mr. Terrence Malick, who seems to have some magical grasp on words, sound, and image, in a method that transcends the idea of style to whole other level that never ceases to enchant the mind and soul.
Check out this scene from his first feature ‘Badlands’ (1974) starring Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen as star-cross’d lovers on a crime spree across America in the 1950s.
The film was based loosely on the real life crimes of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate who attempted to live a life outside the mundaneness of their strained small town lives. . .
Starkweather was promptly sentenced to death by electric chair and died June 25, 1959 after a mass crime spree across the plains. Caril Ann Fugate maintained her innocence, and was sentenced to life in prison for a charge of first degree murder. However, after 17 years as a model inmate she was released on parole in June 1976.
“Since this has happened, there’s not a day in my life that has gone by that I haven’t thought about it,” she said of the killings. “There’s times when I think about my family and when I think about them, it’s always what happened. It’s always how they died.”
The latest music video from music legend David Bowie stars Gary Oldman and Academy Award Winning Actress, Marion Cotillard, who take the film to the next level in a menagerie of religious imagery and graphic violence. It came as no surprise then that upon its upload onto Youtube today the video was promptly banned.
Well, you were psyched if you thought that, because a Youtube spokesperson revealed that the ban was, in fact, a mistake. “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it,” the rep said, making the ordeal just an ode to human error. [source]
I came across the article completely at random.
With the New Year just in our midst, it has had me reflecting much on life, the passing of time, and the revolution we have been living in and witnessing around us.
The world has changed profoundly. So profoundly so, that many people are still being left in the dust of our sound barrier breaking world!
This photo story from cabel.me really illustrates that paper thin barrier between the {past}, {present}, and {future}. I was really impressed with the photographs, and fell in love with the story.
A story of “An incredible basement, a video-game-level basement, a set-decorator’s dream basement” in Portland, with a beautiful past hidden, yet so completely on the surface of today’s quickly evolving future.
So please CHECK IT OUT! Enjoy !!
Somewhere in Portland, there’s a very old building, and that very old building has a very, very old basement. An incredible basement, a video-game-level basement, a set-decorator’s dream basement.
And when you walk past the janitors office, with the wonderfully decked halls…
And tromp down a sunken hallway…
You find a old room. Mostly empty, dusty, and dead quiet.
And then you start to look closer at the walls.
And you start to see things.
(You see that Brown didn’t often pay his dime for coffee.)
(You see that a lot of calculation was done right on the wall.)
(You see that World War I was front and center on everyone’s mind.)
(You wonder what was being tallied, and if it was better to win or lose.)
(And you learn the tongue-in-check “rules” of the room.)
And eventually, you crawl behind a corner, and discover a bundle of conduit.
So what if they’re a little mean? Doesn’t mean they don’t know how to have fun, or better yet know how to throw a “kick-ass” dance party. “Teenage Gang Debs” definitely do!
Sort of a new obsession as of late. This exploitation classic takes the archetypal “mean girl” to a whole new level. Shot in gritty black and white on a very low budget, the film is everything we could ever hope for with a soundtrack that will keep you bobbing your head straight to the gates of hell.
The trailer describes these bad girls as “The Go-Go Girls who go too far; from backroom binges to back alley rumbles anything goes as long as it’s violent!”
You get a great hit of vintage bad-ass styling here, too! REBELS FOREVER!!!
We can’t wait to screen this at our studio with the company of our own group of Teenage Gang Debs!
This little dance sequence is one of the highlights of the film, so please check it out!
Start with the front punch
then do another front punch
then you do a knee kick
then you do another knee kick
And baby, that’s all you do
And then you’re a black belt too!
– “Black Belt” by Steve Karmen; Sung by Lee Dowell.
