There is no one like Allee Willis. She is supremely one-of-a-kind! A total and complete creative force giving life to any misguided stagnant energy, she shows Eric Venturo and me through her home, which according to Allee, was built in 1937 as the party house for MGM. "What is now the backyard, used to be the front yard with a circular drive, when the area was nothing but Walnut tree orchards and Amelia Earhart living down the street. That was it!" The architecturally historic L.A. home, a William Kesling-designed Streamline 'Moderne' gem often called “the house of atomic kitsch” and known as “Willis Wonderland.”
It's a magnificent 'party house' and Allee Willis does her best to keep up her reputation as a Class A Party Thrower, which out of all her talents, she thinks is her best! I'm certain she is a supreme party hostess, but she also happens to be an Emmy- and Tony-nominated, and Grammy-winning composer who has helped sell over 50 million records. Her catalog includes songs most of us know including 'Boogie Wonderland' and 'September' by Earth, Wind & Fire, 'Neutron Dance' by the Pointer Sisters, and the Theme song from the TV show 'Friends', you know, "I'll be there for you."
She released her own album titled 'Child Star' in the mid-seventies. To this day she meets fans who know the album from opening to closing note.
Add to this she also worked with a team of three other writers to open her first Broadway show 'The Color Purple,' produced by Oprah Winfrey.
We are not finished yet people. She is also a very successful artist who under the name of Bubbles, has sold over 1500 works, including paintings, sculptures, motorized work and furniture.
Willis has long braved new worlds of creative endeavor integrating music, art, video, multi-media technology and lifestyle, most recently via the phenomenon known as “Allee Willis Presents Bubbles &…”, a series of collaborations which Willis co-composes, sings, plays, produces, draws, animates, directs and stars in. The first release, "It’s A Woman Thang", exploded on You Tube with close to 1,000,000 views, was selected as Official Honoree in the 2008 Webby Awards and won three 2008 W3 Awards.
Willis is also a cyber-pioneer who conceptualized Internet realms and was an outspoken advocate for them back when “new” media was an unknown to most. From 1990 until 1997, she and partner Prudence Fenton dove headlong into developing willisville.com, the first social networking portal and radically new approach to interactive content. In 1994, willisville’s CEO was digital realm entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Fortune Magazine cited it as one of the emerging Internet’s most exciting companies, and its progress was also tracked by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
AM: Hello Allee, what makes you qualified to curate the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch?
AW: I have the largest documented collection of kitsch in the world. It's mostly from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. I've always lived in it. It's been in a lot of my visual work.
AM: Does it influence your song writing?
AW: It certainly has psychologically affected my song writing. I started doing a 'kitsch of the day' blog. Mainly because I hated blogging everyday. I am a writer by profession and that's all I needed to do was throw one more thing in there for free. I needed to find something that I would LOVE writing about and I could do it in short little blips. It started taking off. I started posting it on Facebook and there started being a lot of conversations about it.
AM: That is how things happen now, but you were seeing this a long time ago weren't you?
AW: In 1992 I tried to start a social network. This is before anyone had ever heard of the internet. It was called 'Willisville.' I started before there were graphics on-line.
AM: What did you do?
AW: I started looking at message boards that were on-line and I thought you could bring some kind of entertainment value to this. I came up with a concept that there would be a social space where people could come and input how this new thing called the internet would grow. Cyberspace was and still is designed by how engineers think it should be designed. It is geared for business people and I thought, what if artists led the way in designing for cyberspace? What if it was purposely kitschy? I worked on it everyday for seven years. I was funded by Intel at one time, but they had me working on projects I didn't care about.
AM: Who did you work with on this project?
AW: One of my partners at that time was Prudence Fenton who was the animation special affects director for 'Pee Wee's Playhouse.' My other partner was Mark Cuban, one of the richest men in the world. Between the three of us in those early years we couldn't get arrested. We kept saying there should be garage sales and people should be able to put their home movies up. People will not need record stores anymore. There will be no need for record companies.
AM: You knew all of this in the early nineties!?!
AW: Not only did I know it, you can go to the technology section on my site and see all the press and prototypes. One of the first bits of press I ever got was in the Hollywood Reporter in 1992. They featured the six people in Hollywood who were paying attention tot he internet. It was me, George Lucas, Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby, and a couple more I can't remember. We were all talking on how great the internet was because you could get background information on things. My thing was, we are not going to be the artist, everyone is going to be the artist. This medium will empower the common man. Every film and record company was appalled by us saying things like this, but they thought it was a hundred years in the future. It was such science fiction.
AM: Do you think this is what you do best?
AW: I think party throwing is my number one skill, but along with writing and collecting, I always wanted to do all of these things together. In 1997 I started doing things on-line for people. I started designing web sites. Then 'The Color Purple' came up and that took five years. When that as done I thought if I'm ever going to try and do what I said I wanted to do in the nineties, now that everyone understands what the internet is, I won't have any arguments about home movies, now is the time.
AM: You had quite a vision back then.
AW: If you took You Tube, Amazon, EBay, and Facebook and put it all together, that's what we were talking about back then. I thought I have to come up with a way to at least put the music and the art together and get known as the person in front instead of the person behind. Do you know about my alter ego Bubbles?
AM: Yes I do.
AW: She is the painter and saved my ass during 'The Color Purple.' She was earning the money, not Allee. You don't earn any money while you are writing for theater.
AM: How did Bubbles get started?
AW: I started working on music with Holly Palmer, who's nick name was Cheesecake, so she suggested we form a group called 'Bubbles & Cheesecake' and I thought that would be a way to at least take the music and the art, and get to be the person out front. I knew how to promote it on the web. That became the first step and our first video exploded with close to a million views. We put out two more videos. The group broke up right away, but that was fine because I had a more global point of view.
AM: Did you have other things you wanted to do more?
AW: I needed to stay in the front and combine my kitsch thing that I could write about everyday. I will never run out of things to write about. If I write about one thing in my house everyday it will take me through until I die.
AM: What made you think people would be interested in Kitsch?
AW: I always threw concept parties and I noticed they always worked best in my house and it was mainly because of the environment. People can walk around and see something that they remember from when they were four and a conversation will start. I thought if I make the kitsch the centerpiece and go back to all the ideas I had twenty years ago and build a social network around that it will bring in people's brains who, at least I like. If you are hip enough to recognize it as kitsch you have something going on. We came up with the idea of the 'Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch' which will launch on September 14, 2009.
AM: What are you doing for the launch?
AW: It will be marked by a week long You Tube festival of eight little short films on 'What is kitsch?' We are having one party the first night and one party the last night at a gallery on Melrose called 'Ghetto Gloss.' There will be a live exhibition of the things that have been in 'Kitsch of the Day' so far. We are going to auction off some of the kitsch. The second party is on the twenty first of September which is the opening line of my song for Earth, Wind, & Fire. On that night there will be Karaoke only of that song. That is the physical end of it and it will be web cast. The real heart of it will be at AWMOK.com where there will be an actual museum divided into categories like automotive kitsch, soul kitsch, whatever it is, featuring my stuff but also submissions from anyone who wants to submit.
AM: So this is where the social networking will come into it.
AW: This will be our social network where conversations are started by commenting on these objects. If I think those pieces are worthy and I select your submission you will get into the museum. This will happen in the 'Kitschenette' section and you will get a 'Certificate of Authenkitschidy' and it will be displayed permanently in the museum. I want to do a lot of live web casts, whatever I can do to build up this community of like-minded people so that I can actually start making money doing this.
AM: What did you study in school?
AW: I come from an advertising background. That's what I studied in collage. I love creating an advertising campaign for this. I love pop culture. I hope this turns into a fully thriving community that sustains itself economically. A portion of the money I make is going toward adopting Detroit, where I am from. I hate what's going on there. We have to get Detroit back.
AM: A lot of people talk about the problems in Detroit but you are the first person I have met who actually wants to help.
AW: I want to help.
AM: So this has taken up all of your time.
AW: All my time and it's all money going out and nothing coming in. I'm used to that. People think song-writers make all this money, and maybe some of them do, but not the ones who are in it for the passion.
AM: I know that whatever it used to pay it doesn't pay the same now.
AW: Absolutely not. You would be an absolute lunatic if you said you wanted to get into song-writing for the money. You have to do it all now. You can't just sit at home and write songs thinking they will be cut.
AM: Have you been writing music since you can remember?
AW: I still do not know how to read, write or play music. I don't know how to do anything that I do.
AM: You must be channeling.
AW: I completely believe that is true. If you can somehow get it down electronically you can just go bar by bar. It's literally poke, poke, poke, write three bars and play it again.
AM: Do your songs come from real life inspiration?
AW: Half and half. A lot of times if you are writing for a particular artist you need to write what they want to sing about.
AM: Did you know the 'Theme from Friends' was for a TV show?
AW: Yes I did know. Three weeks before that show was going on the air they decided they wanted music. I was signed to Warner Chapel publishing at the time. I had no interest in linear anything. That was the first time I worked with a quota. I had to have a certain number of songs written per year.
AM: That sounds tough. How do you do that?
AW: That is horrible for people who do only this for a living. In my case I collaborated a lot. It's not like you write the song and it counts as a song. It will count for whatever percentage of people that are involved. Every time I thought I had fulfilled my quota and I was done they said, 'Oh no no.' So I owed a seventh of a song and they said if I write this, that will take care of my responsibility and I will be out.
AM: Did they tell you what they were looking for?
AW: They wanted something quirky, but commercial. Anytime the word quirky was used in the eighties or nineties, it meant me. I wrote the gig and I thought the song was horrendous. I was in agony the whole time writing it. The music had been written so I was coming in for the lyric. It was a lot of work to get where we needed to be, but we got there. Well the song just exploded. No one thought the series would be a hit. The DJ's in the south made a tape from the opening credits and put it on the air. The Rembrandts got the gig because they were the only Warner group available at the time, but they refused to release it as a single because they did not write it. They did not want to be remembered for it, so despite the fact that it was the number one airplay song of the year, it never earned any money from sales.
AM: I bet you are still happy to be a part of it.
AW: I am incredibly grateful to have written it. I can't stand to listen to it, especially with the good reviews from 'The Color Purple' and with every thing else I have written, guess what credit they list for me the most! I have a love-hate relationship with that song, but way more love.
AM: Ultimately it was good for you.
AW: Here's what's good about it. How does the person who wrote "The Color Purple' also open the museum of kitsch? How does the person who wrote 'September' also write the theme from Friends? How does the person who had sold over 50 million records work with the Del Rubio Triplets? If you ask me who my favorite group of all time is it's the Del Rubio Triplets.
AM: You are the person who brought them back out in the front.
AW: They had been doing gigs but I am the one who got them to record pop songs. I threw all the parties that got them noticed again. If you ask me what is my formula, I will say taking very high elements of art and combining them with the very bottom, low level of art where the likes of the Del Rubios are, who can't play in tune or sing in tune but have the greatest time performing, better than people I know who are at the top. You take the passion from the bottom and combine with the technology from the top and smash them together, with no regard for the middle, that's what I do.
AM: What do you do with the middle?
AW: I have no interest in the middle. It makes me want to kill myself.
AM: I always thought of the Del Rubio Triplets as living kitsch.
AW: Absolutely.
AM: Is there anyone around today who qualifies as this?
AW: I'm sure there are but I don't know about them. I'm sure they are there and truthfully I am hoping that something like this will attract them to me.
AM: Can you comment on 'Child Star?'
AW: It was the first ten songs I ever wrote. I was terrified at the time because I didn't know what I was doing. I'd never been in a studio before. It was a fantastic experience. I loved the album. I didn't hear it for twenty years. When I wrote "The Color Purple' I was reminded of my early writing and I thought I'm going to listen to 'Child Star' again. I was terrified to listen because I thought I would revisit it and it would be pathetic. I was blown away! I think a couple of the songs on there are among the best things I ever wrote. The background vocals and band kill me. I would love to be able to buy the masters back and put it out. As soon as they even smell that you want to do that, it goes from who cares about this to give me your house.
EV: You are so smart Allee. You don't get that from a lot of people.
AW: Well from artists especially. My whole thing is integration. For me something happening in 1979 is as relevant today as something happening in 2009. I'm an archivist so I'm way more interested in what it took to get there than the actual product.
EV: It's amazing to me how you had the foresight to see all of this future.
AW: It just seemed to me that people from all over the place could be plugged into one place. I just seemed like the perfect person to be doing this. Anything you build has to have an idea first. Why can't an artist lead the way. It will certainly be friendlier that way, rather than technology or business meeting their needs.
AM: Do you see a future that we don't see?
AW: I think enough people understand the promise of the internet now, especially with Facebook and such. Before you would need a publicist, a manager, and more. Now you don't need any of that. I don't think I see it as radically different than a lot of people see it today. What I really see, if you want to know, is that we as humans as we are now, will not rule the earth forever. The mutation process has already begun. Right now we are using computers and actually mating with them. There is going to be some kind of mutant human computer-oid. It is an actual mating process. We are at the beginning of a new type of being that will be able to handle the environment we have created. That's the big, big future picture I see. Right now I just want to be the social captain of a social network.
photos: Alan Mercer Lighting: Eric Venturo
To learn much more about Allee Willis
visit her web site
No comments:
Post a Comment