http://bikinibandits.com/ en-us © Bikini Bandits bikinibandits.com Hype RSS Feed On my movie blog, Heather from Bikini Bandits left me a comment to look at her site with videos, pictures ?. Normally, I will go check links quickly to see if the link is okay for the blog. Hey! it?s a family friendly movie blog. Plus, I needed to take a break.



I was willing to make a short post on the other blog but taught the content there was too mature. So, I decided to make a post here and I deleted to original comment. I only wrote about them because it fitted better with the funny and more adult side of this blog. :D



The site is about 4 ladies in bikini with guns. I watched the Bikini Bandits Go to Hell: Part 1 and Part 2 so far. The Go To Hell series has 5 parts ranging from 1m51s to 3m27s. Other series are available for streaming but your need Quicktime.



Unfortunately, I did not find an About page. I wanted to read some history behind it but they do have a MySpace page for each one of the 4 ladies and 1 for the Bandits. The Hype page(press) started in January 17, 2000 but a quick whois revealed it was registered on November 9, 1999 until 2010.



I also read Streaming-media technology is given birth to a new universe of visual entertainment. It is a true after watching the first 2 video that I could see some Russ Meyers meets Quentin Tarantino.



When I have more time, I will go see the rest of it but check it out!]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=60 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:17:05 EST Maynard recognizes the Bikini Bandits on his album, V is for Vagina...





-----



Lyrically, I?ve been an admirer of Maynard James Keenan since the early ?90s. His words resonate as deeply ? either spiritually, emotionally, or bitterly ? as his wide-ranging vocal intonations.



However, with Puscifer, yet another manifestation of Maynard?s multi-faceted psyche, the topical aspect of the songs is far more simplistic and straightforward. The title of the album, V Is For Vagina, pretty much spells this out even before the CD packaging is opened.



Keenan opens the album by expressing his superficial side via voluptuous women in ?Queen B.? ?This lady got the thickness/can I get a witness?/this lovely lady got the thickness/can I get a hell yeah?? Yeah, I know. Let?s blame it on the Bikini Bandits . Absurd lyrics aside, the song does boast funky drum beats mixed with experimental sounds that make you want to shake your posterior, regardless of its size.



?DoZo? contains menacing keyboards and guitar, with subtle, disturbing samples of random voices and chanting. Maynard?s voice has the throaty drone similar to Anthony Kiedis? vocal style in the title track of RHCP?s Blood Sugar Sex Magik. A ?Dozo? is a term for a certain hunter native to the Ivory Coast and also means ?please? in Japanese, but neither seems readily relevant to the song.



Keenan pulls no punches in ?Momma Sed? in which he overtly lectures about the pains of life. ?Changes come/keep your dignity/take the high road/take it like a man.? An accordion, dog barks, and a slow, woeful guitar exemplify pity in the drum-driven ?Drunk with Power,? in which Maynard raps (literally) about a white pimp trying to keep his world intact. The overall tone of the song echoes the absurdity of ?Queen B,? making it impossible to take seriously.



The rumors surrounding Keenan?s conversion to Christianity sparked much discussion and disbelief amongst fans. He provides cryptic confirmation or, possibly, is laughing at the manner in which the public reacts to the smaller rumor in ?Sour Grapes? and ?Rev. 22 20? (Dry Martini Mix). The aforementioned song comes across as a serious plea to accept Christ, whereas the latter revolves around a seductive woman even Christ couldn?t resist. ?Christ is coming/and so am I/you would be too if this sexy devil caught your eye.?



The two songs seem to contradict each other with ?Rev. 22 20? justifying sin, and the first obviously expressing one?s need for Christ. ?It?s always gonna be sour grapes with you, boy, until you get right with Jesus.?



The lyrics in Puscifer are primarily Keenan, but, musically, the project is an amalgam of numerous artists. Some of the more noteworthy names consist of Danny Lohner (NIN), Lustmord, Tim ?Herb? Alexander (Primus), Lisa Germano, Tim Commerford (known as ?Timmy C? of RATM and Audioslave), and even the actress/musician Milla Jovovich. On MySpace, Keenan sums Puscifer up as, simply, a space with no hard edges, nor any clear or discernible goals. Additionally, he instructs us to check our over-inflated expectations at the door.



These are wise words from the man who previously has been responsible for complex art, because V Is For Vagina is precisely the opposite, and should be listened to with a grain of salt. I will check my over-inflated expectations at the door as I repeatedly listen to this album, but on my own time. Check out the album for its unique, experimental sounds from a vast array of musicians and artists.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=59 Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:45:58 EST Thanks to the type of publicity that more than 3 million hits on YouTube can generate, Amber Lee Ettinger remains Barack Obama's most-famous fan not named Oprah. Well, the man of this Hazelton native's dreams will take the stage at Drexel University on Tuesday night to debate his presidential-wannabe foes.



This week, I caught up with Playboy's resigning "Babe os the Month" to talk about the fame her sexy "I Have a Crush on Obama" video hath wrought and whether it's true that the love has faded. Even if she's been interviews everywhere from ABC News to Maxim, she was so charming that we ripped up the planned Two-Minutes-With-feature format because neither a head shot, not limiting her to three questions, seemed very fair, y'know?



Consider it CP's gift to the democratic process.



City Paper: How surprised were you by the reaction to the "Obama Girl" video?



Amber Lee Ettinger: To this day, it amazes me how big it became. Had I known it was going to end up like this, I probably would've been brushing my hair throughout the shoot. But it was a great time. Leah [Kauffman, the Temple student of "Box in a Box" fame who sang the Obama song that Amber lip synched] and Ben [Relles, who came up with the idea and recruited Amber, who he'd seen as Miss Howard Stern TV] really did Philly proud. When Ben played me the song, I thought it was great and funny; a chance to act silly.



CP: So it was more of an acting job than a chance to get involved in politics?



ALE: Exactly, but because of it, I've been thrust into the political scene, and it's been awesome. I went to South Carolina for the YouTube debates, and was at Washington Square Park for a recent Obama rally. At YouTube, I sat and watched but afterwards, I got to go to the press room to interview a couple of candidates, Joe Biden and Dennis Kuchinich. But Obama didn't come in. Such a shame!



CP: Do you care about politics?



ALE: Well, I always cared, but I was never that involved or that into it. But doing the video, and being on the news, has gotten me more involved, which is great. I like it. I mean, it's not like I really have to talk about the issues, I'm just paying a lot more attention to what's going on than I did before.



CP: I got a press release this week from your Bikini Bandits friends who were dismayed that somebody had forces YouTube to take down the ["Obama Girl Was a Bikini Bandit"] video in which they congratulated you for your successes. {They intimated that the video, featuring a bevy of scantily clad gals, wa taken down by "Obama's henchmen" and urged the candidate to not "alienate the Bikini Bandit vote!") What do you think about all that?



ALE: I just found out yesterday and yeah, I'm a little upset. I don't know why somebody would do that. They must be scared of us!



CP: They asked whether your man Obama is the "voice of liberalism or a draconian hardliner." Which do you think he is?



ALE: Hmmm, I'm not sure.



CP: I saw the Steppin' Out interview you did in August that had everybody thinking you've ditched the Obama crush and were actually going to get on the Hillary bandwagon. I'm not going to ask you who you're voting for, of course, since it's your right to keep it secret, but say it ain't so!



ALE: (Laughing) He asked me how I thought she did at the YouTube debate and I said, "Great!" Somehow, everybody else turned that into me voting for Hillary!



CP: Obama's coming to Philly next week. If you had a chance to get up and ask some questions at the debate, what would they be?



ALE: Now that's a good question. I'm not sure. I'd need to think about that one for a while because if I only get one chance to ask him something, I have to make sure it's perfect.



hickey@citypaper.net]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=58 Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:17:28 EDT


The "Bikini Bandits" series, which is being produced by advertising agency Gyro Worldwide, isn't likely to win any awards from the National Organization for Women. But Steven Grasse, 35 year-old director and co-owner of Gyro Worldwide, doesn't seem to care.



"This is all about four girls in bikinis who kill people. It's basically got hot chicks with guns and lots of meat snacks," says Grasse. "It's Russ Meyers meets Quentin Tarantino." Grasse and his crew of 60 men and women are filing four four-minute short films for AtomFilms. Each of the shorts focus on the same gang bikini-wearing females. "Bikini Bandits," the first in the series, introduces the gang as they assault a G.Mart. "Bikini Bandits," is short on dialogue but long on laughs, according to Grasse, reporting that the cast consists of strippers and nude models discovered during casting call at a local Philadelphia strip club. The rest of the episodes have the girls continuing their crime spree. All of the films being shot on location, and Grasse says Gyro Worldwide is paying great attention to eye-catching detail including a decidedly phallic time machine.



Despite its Internet roots, the "Bikini Bandits" sequels are being shot somewhat un-Internet fashion, in this case on 35mm film rather than more typical digital video. Hosting site Atomfilms will take care of the encoding once the projects are completed, employing Enron Communications to convert them to Real Networks' Real G2, QuickTime and windows Media Player formats.



"It's sort of like (the way) they shot the Back to the Future,' episodes two and three," says Grasse. "We map it all out ahead of time and shoot out of sequence, but it really doesn't have an impact on the actors or us." In addition, there are plenty of product placements and cross-promotion deals, most notably Gyro Worlwide's own clothing line, Sailor Jerry and retail store, G.Mart. "Because we come from advertising background, we immediately built in all the cross-promotion that will carry forward.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=32 Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:21:23 EDT Before she was the world famous OBAMA GIRL, Amber Ettinger worked for Gyro as a world famous BIKINI BANDIT. That's right, she's starred in countless episodes of our world famous BIKINI BANDIT web series which to date has clocked in over 20 million views!!!!!!!



Here are some of Amber's greatest BIKINI BANDIT COMENTS....including a clip we did honoring her role as OBAMA GIRL.....which has gotten nearly 250,000 views on YOUTUBE already.





Check out the Adweek article...



'Obama Girl' politics on the Web have a way to go



For political elections, we know that the Internet is the way of the future. If we could just figure out how. Right now, we're in our "sweaty lip" period. Just as Richard Nixon's unseemly perspiration came to characterize an otherwise revolutionary media movement in 1960?the first televised presidential debate?we're still sweating out the role of the Web in the coming 2008 election. What we've got now is the kind of raw and ugly; the metaphorical pancake makeup is yet to be applied.



For example, if the Internet is supposed to be democratizing knowledge, isn't YouTube supposed to be doing the same for video sharing? You know, breaking down barriers, throwing open doors to any informed netizen with a camera?



Right. I guess we have a way to go, because the biggest political phenomenon to come out of YouTube this summer was the Obama girl. All that freedom and new technology, and the best we end up with is the GoDaddying of political advertising?



Well, "Obama Girl"?as well as the two followups, "Obama Girl vs. Giuliana Girls" and "Mitt Romney Girls"?is not quite as dumb or cheesy as they look. Just as most of the user-generated spots that won brand-sponsored contests last year came from industry people (as did the much-seen anti-Hillary "1984" video), so, too, does the "Obama Girl" work come from some serious marketing minds. Ben Relles, for instance, the mastermind of the team, has an MBA from Wharton and has worked at major agencies.



This group is less interested in electing any one candidate than it is in mixing politics, sex and clever lyrics to build its own Web brand, barelypolitical.com. "The revolution will not be televised" was a famous phrase from years ago. Nowadays, the message is more that the Internet is hard to monetize. Here's what barelypolitical.com has taught us:



1. Use a swimsuit model. More than the catchy tune (and "I've got a crush on Obama" tends to stay in your head), Amber Lee Ettinger, the actress/dancer/lip-syncing model and star of the series, gets a ton of attention. (By the way, the creators found the directors for the low-budget, weekend shoot on Craigslist.) Fox News has devoted lavish time to the videos and certain male news anchors have made fools of themselves while conducting interviews. Here's a nugget from MSNBC's Hardball:



Chris Matthews: Amber, you're walking down the street. You're beautiful. But do people come up to you and say, "I've seen you in the video"?



Ettinger: Yes, they do.



Matthews: How many hits do these guys have? Like 20 hits to memorize your face?



Ettinger: I don't know. (Turns out, she has so far gotten 3 million hits on YouTube.)



2. When the slobbering starts to slow down, up the ante with a second video. In this case, with a diverse cast of tough, urban "Giuliani Girls" to fight with Ettinger's Obama crew. (The Obama women sing a line that Giuliani "married his cousin.") The smackdown got 1.2 million hits on YouTube.



3. When that dies down, make a third video. Barelypolitical went with a Mitt Romney joke. Really just clips of the media success of "Obama Girl," it ends with blonde triplets embracing a life-size cutout of Romney?a subtle religious dig on his Mormonism. (Plus, polygamy is hot what with the success of Big Love and Girls Next Door, the reality show about Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and his three live-in blondes). In its first week, it got 300,000 hits.



The truly strange and sort of sad thing is the videos have also been featured on Russian and Japanese TV news, and Al Jazeera. (Perhaps even Osama has watched "Obama Girl"! Maybe he even bought the T-shirt!)



But for American voters actually interested in politics, the reality is that the videos are not necessarily pro-Obama. "Obama Girl" makes fun of his bare-chested romps on the beach and the way he disingenously uses his charisma and sex appeal while trying to appear sober and aboveboard.



So far, the camps have officially distanced themselves from the work. Obama claims he's seen "the first half" of the video, which is like smoking but not inhaling, which he made fun of Clinton for doing. Romney claims he hasn't seen his version either, though he also said that "Ann [his wife] has to stop wearing those hot pants." Ba-bum. Later, Ann weighed in and said that the videos are "a lot of fun."



That's what the creators intended. Relles, who is 32, says that the videos were meant to be "entertainment rather than serious political message." He said that as a little boy, he learned about politics from the parodies done on Saturday Night Live by Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey.



No doubt, people will continue to watch the videos, although the jury is still out on whether a series like this would motivate fans to learn more about the candidates themselves, or have any effect on the election.



Certainly, Ettinger's career has benefitted. And the site is selling those "Obama Girl" T's and hats. But the videos, much like "Lonelygirl15," will eventually jump the shark. And like sharks, or politicians on the Internet, the next set of messages has to keep moving ahead or die. Figuring out how to get serious hits from serious content is the next step. Meanwhile, who could have predicted that summer's first political media phenom on YouTube would combine porn and perspiration?]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=20 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:13:25 EDT Bikini Bandit Amber is so much more than just a pretty face. Now that she's concquered The Howard Stern Show as a recent "Miss Howard TV" (Artie fell in love with her), she's released the feel-good song of the summer.



"I Got A Crush On Obama" by Obama Girl (Amber) is heating up YouTube and gathering national press. Testify, Amber! Testify!



"I've Got A Crush On Obama"]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=21 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:49:55 EDT Taken from Blender's "33 Things You Should Know About Tool":



15. KEENAN CAN ACT



Keenan isn't tight with Ohio homie Marilyn Manson, but he has played murderous cult leader Charles Manson on The Ben Stiller Show. He also appeared on the mid-'90s HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show, and as Satan in the 2002 film Bikini Bandits. So what's harder, playing the prince of darkness or a hippie serial killer? "Oh, Manson. He's a real person. People know what he looks like, how he talked. With Satan there's so much gray area."]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=43 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:04:23 EDT


Check out the fan-made boobie-tastic video for this bluesy boogie on YouTube.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=44 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:07:27 EDT The Inquirer asked three Philadelphia ad agencies to show how they would bring Ben Franklin into the 21st century.



Even in his own time, Ben Franklin was a master of spin. Biographer Walter Isaacson called him America's "first great publicist."



How would he fare in today's ultra-image-conscious world? We asked three Philadelphia advertising teams to give Ben's outsize personality a modern makeover and bring him into the 21st century.



Gyro Worldwide Advertising, which prides itself on attracting young customers, focused on Franklin's bad-boy side. "I really think he would have been having more fun than people are saying," Gyro chief executive officer Steven Grasses said of Franklin. "He was a rock star."



Ladies' Man



Yes, Franklin invented a lot of stuff and played a big part in the founding of our country...but he was also the original Maxim man.



So, if he were around today, he'd plow all that cash he made from inventing stuff into the pursuit of his true passion - the ladies!



We think he'd have his own bawdy men's magazine called "Franklin," complete with curvy photo spreads such as "Hotties of the Revolution" and articles on "How to be a Playa at the French Court." He'd also use it as a forum to jab at his enemies, such as John Adams (just as he did with his actual newspaper, The Aurora).



Based at Third and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia, Gyro Worldwide Advertising, Inc. uses "nontraditional" marketing to appeal to "people that define what's cool," says Chief Executive Officer Steven Grasse. The 18-year-old agency has 65 employees. Clients include R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Puma and Pepsi Co.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=45 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:18:07 EDT


The first full-length feature--well, it's a little more than an hour long, so we'll be generous--rendered entirely in Flash animation is a lowbrow, vaguely obscene parody of action movies that proudly boasts a humor level that never ventures beyond a high school freshman level of sophistication. It should do quite well with its target audience, particularly if they're partial to images that feature cartoon nudity, gunplay, sexy jokes, voodoo and feces. The story revolves around the titular quartet of bikini-clad babes attempting to get a lap-dance-loving, boozing Santa Claus back on the job as Christmas approaches. Creator Steve Grasse moves the story along at a frenetic, anime-like pace, unbound by logic, taste or any other traditional confines. Among the supplemental features is a 27-minute live-action Christmas special, which is a series of comedy skits hosted by the real, non-animated bandits, who have developed a cult following from their appearances in Web-isodes on the Internet. Two other features illuminate the level of humor anyone renting or buying this are in for: "Yule Log Part 1" is a 5-minute shot of an unflushed toilet--pun intended; "Yule Log Part 2" is five more minutes of a burning automobile tire, accompanied by jaunty holiday music. Also included is an animated music video of the closing theme of the feature film, "F*ck Christmas," which has some very funny but totally blasphemous lyrics. The opening theme song of the feature is more interesting. It's a punk song by Jerry Only's seminal New Jersey band The Misfits, featuring the surviving member of the Ramones, Marky, on drums. If you like Bikini Bandits Save Christmas, you'll want to complete your set with Bikini Bandits: Briefs, Shorts and Panties, which collects 71 minutes of low-budget, sporadically witty Internet juvenilia.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=48 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:36:22 EDT Steven Grasse, creator of the Bikini Bandits and special guest at this year's Raindance, shares some dark secrets with writer in residence Ronni Raygun Thomas.



Got in the car. Loaded up on Dunkin Donuts. Kept my eyes on the road driving faster. South. Past Jersey and into Philadelphia. Tolls are costing me a fortune. Raindance will pick up the bill. Park at a meter. Walk a few blocks. A flat-chested girl opens the door to Steve Grasse's office. Not quite what I expected from Bikini Bandits HQ. Turns out the flat-chested girl is actually Steven Grasse.



Walk into the office:

'Hey, are you Steve? Nice to meet you in person finally. Wow, Philadelphia sure is nice this time of year.' Mr. Grasse curtly replies 'Fuck you, Philly is a rat hole and you know it.' Small talk nice guy. Things going well, batteries run low on my recorder. Head to a lunch spot, pretend I'm buying cigarettes. Pick up batteries. Am I in Philly or am I still in Brooklyn?



'That's a nice shirt you have on, where is it from?'

'Uranus.'

'Fascinating. What time do you have?'

'Half past a cow's ass, quarter to his balls.'

'Shit' I better go put some quarters in the meter so I don't get a ticket on the car I used to get here. Order me a sandwich, get yourself whatever you want. Raindance is picking up the bill.'

'Oh well, in that case I'll have a shit sandwich.'



Embarrassed and on edge. Run to the car. Feed the meter a handful of quarters. Run back, out of breath. Get myself together.



'So. Steve Grasse, I've been warned by Raindance that I have to talk at least a bit about your film. So to avoid pissing them off, what is your film called?'

'Bikini Bandits Save Christmas.'

'Christmas, huh? What was a typical Grasse Christmas like? Did you sing carols and all that?'

'Very nice actually, I had a very nice traditional Pennsylvania Dutch childhood cows, barn raising, apple dumplings, It was all very picture book. My poor dear mother still can't figure out what happened to me, and why I turned out so "damaged".'



Dry sweat pouring down my back.



'When did you realize Santa was dead?'

'Santa's not dead you asshole, watch my film.'



Thoughts turn to the Raygun family Christmas. 'I'm half Syrian and half-Italian and my mother use to make traditional Arabic Christmas dinner. Have you ever had homemade kibbe? Do you want the recipe?'

'Sounds un-American. Watch it, or I'll get Tom Ridge and Homeland Security on your ass.'

'What's your favorite food?'

'A good "tossed salad" is always enjoyable.'

'How's that made? Can you show me?'

'Sorry, can't show you, I don't swing that way if you know what I mean.'

'Do you remember that show Go-Bots? Cause I actually liked them more than Transformers.'

'As I mentioned, I grew up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. We weren't allowed to watch TV.'



It's happening again ' I'm not listening. And I think Grasse is catching on. I keep zoning out, trying to keep myself from the irrefutable anxiety of the interview process. Try desperately to keep your mind on the subject like they would have told you if you went to high school.



'How about Voltron?'

'Sounds like vulva.'

'When I was a kid, I wanted Voltron, and of course the one with the lions was the right one. So my parents got me not that one, not even the car/plane/boat one, but the robot one. What's the worst present anyone ever gave you?' You're a big boy now keep it together.

'One year, my parents gave me a little piglet. I named him Willy the Piglet. We became best friends. He even slept in the bed with me. However, the next year, my father slaughtered poor Willy and then made me eat him from Christmas dinner. I am still traumatized to this day. When the movie Free Willy came out, I nearly lost my shit. I still haven't seen Babe. I'm afraid what it would do to me.'

'Geez, that must have hurt.'

'Of course it did. I still can't be in a stable relationship. I am afraid they'll get fed to me for Christmas dinner. The horror of my life is unbelievable.'



I need to get out of this restaurant. Pay the bill and move things along. Don't make eye contact. Not with anyone in this town. Be invisible.



'Would you mind showing me around Philadelphia?' (Keep moving).

'You know what would be fun, I'll take you up to North Philly and drop you off, see if you can find your way back, alive. Ha ha ha. Just kidding, I'll show you a few sights. If you look up there at the statue of William Penn, you'll notice it looks like he has a big boner, a big ass stiffy. This was pointed out in that movie Birdy that was directed by Alan Parker, Matthew Modine starred in it. And over here, on South Street is where Larry from the Three Stooges was born. Isn't that awesome? And if we have time, I'll take you to Kelly Drive. It's a winding road named after Grace Kelly, who died in a car accident on winding road, the irony. Philly's actually a really nice place to live if you are a rich white guy, like myself. But, if you're not rich and white, I guess it kind of sucks cowballs.'



Grasse, a centurion smiling over the city he calls home. A statue of depravity. Catch the gleam from his eye. Tells a lie.



'That was a great tour, you must really like this city. Buy yourself a cheese steak, Raindance will pick up the bill.'



My thoughts turn to booze. Need to take off the edge, keep moving, don't stop, don't make eye contact. Not with anyone.



'Have you ever had a drink called a Dr. Pepper? It's a shot of I think Chambord and vodka set on fire then dumped into a beer.'

'Well, no, I've never had a Dr. Pepper, it sounds delicious.'



Turn him on to booze. Secure a drink in one's future. Live. Eat. Drink.



'What's a good drink you've had?'

"Since, we're talking about Christmas, I'll use this as an opportunity to plug Sailor Jerry Rum. I own the company, among many other things; remember I'm a rich white guy. Anyway, our rum is available in the UK, and here's an excellent egg nog recipe"



Sailor Jerry Egg Nog

Hardy splash of SJ Rum

4 egg yolks

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

1 tbsp of sugar

1 tsp of vanilla extract

4 cups of milk

1 tsp of nutmeg



'You need to beat the egg yolks first and then just add everything else.'



Now's my chance. Don't fuck it up. 'We should go to a bar. Together. And get that, it sounds good.'





'I don't think they'll serve egg nog at a bar in August. However, we can have a Suffering Bastard. That's Sailor Jerry and a bunch of shit:



Sailor Jerry Suffering Bastard

2 oz SJ Rum

2 oz gin

2 oz vodka

2 oz tequila

2 blue curacao

1 dash cherry brandy

3 oz sour mix

3 oz orange juice



Pour over ice into a hurricane glass, stir, garnish with an orange wheel. Let's go. I'll take you to Rotten Ralph's, it's a complete shithole I know.'



Rotten Ralph is not only the name of the place. Rotten Ralph is Rotten to the pit. Five girls in the back. Pleasure for the disabled. A mental discotheque. Feast your eyes on the back of society. And dig in. 'Wow this place is nice. So do you drink a lot?'

'Not as much as you might think. Everyone says my movies look as if I directed them drunk. But, I'm not a drunk, just slightly retarded. Special.'

'Have you ever been caught by your mother drinking her stash and then she has an intervention with you? And then she claims that you have a problem? And then you say, "No. You have the problem!"?'

'No, but my mom caught me jerking off once. I think that what upset her was there was a nature documentary playing on the TV.'



Suck down, rest the ice on your tongue, relax. You're doing fine.



'What's your favorite Oscar Wilde quote?'

'Eat, shit, and die.'

'Have another drink. Raindance will pick up the tab.'



Lies. Big shot. Glass on the ledge of the bar.



'Thanks, and why don't you have another lapdance, I'll pick up the tab. Tawanda, get over here and make Mr. Raygun happy.'



Her teeth remind me of a forest. A forest reminds me of rotting teeth. Brushing up against a flaccid paper bill in my front pocket. Don't make eye contact. Concentrate on your notes. Wrap it up.



'Anything you would like to say? I feel as though I've been pretty thorough with my question. Raindance will be pleased.'

'Try saying "one smart man felt smart" ten times as fast as you can. It pretty much sums up my view of my life, my career and my filmmaking.'



Get lost, stumble out. Misguided by my guide. Lean. Slope. Pass the shining lights of the pharmacy. The fanfare of a local cinema. Looking up at the marquee, I feel like I've forgotten something, oh yeah popcorn.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=27 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:35:40 EDT


Hot blooded males everywhere now have something socially acceptable to do with their right hands as they watch the infamous Bikini Bandits: The scantily-clad sirens are back on the small screen, this time as the stars of an interactive flash animation game 'The Getaway' that debuts this week on their website www.BikiniBandits.com, and is controlled by simple keyboard commands.



The ultra-violent game is everything you'd expect from the Bikini Bandits: Guns, flesh and a hefty dose of unruly behavior. The objective of the game is to speed the Bikini Bandits' 1969 Camaro away from the scene of their latest scam, through the ghetto streets of North Philly. Points are scored for every passing car that is smashed, with bonus points awarded for hitting a scooter and spilling the drivers' guts on the street.



Big-ass boobies tell the players how many lives they have left. All pretty juvenile, but what would you expect from the team that brought you Bikini Bandits; Fuck Hollywood Productions.

The game should appease the rabid appetite of fans who are impatient for the launch of the first ever full-length flash animated feature film in the history of the world, "The Bikini Bandits Save Christmas,"which launches in November.



About F-Hollywood Productions



F-Hollywood productions has set out to bring creative freedom-combined with an edgy blending of sex, violence, and campy unconventional elements to the big screen by working outside of the Hollywood system through way of independent and alternate sources of funding and distribution. To find out more, go to www.gyromart.com/fhollywood_productions.php]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=51 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:40:08 EDT


Marketing is the message. So says Steven Grasse, director of the direct-to-video Bikini Bandits series. In the opinion of Grasse, "As filmmakers, we suck; but as promoters, we"re great."



You may snicker and pat yourself on the back for being one of the torchbearers for cinematic art, but guess what? Steve's got a career. You don't. Need proof? Steve is headed to London for the October 7th premiere of the animated Bikini Bandits Save Xmas at the Raindance Film Festival. Once there, he will share the American Director in Residence chair with Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. And if that's not enough, he threw a big party at Cannes with French Playboy-bunnies and all-while the tab was picked up by the estimable production company, Canal+. Then he's headed to some exotic island off the coast of Madagascar to film his next feature.



Why Steve Grasse from Philadelphia, PA, with "a flawless concept done horribly," and not you? Maybe it's because you spend too much time quoting The Knights of Nigh from The Holy Grail and not enough time marketing. "It's really what this whole business is about," reports Grasse.



This film marketing mantra is the gospel from Grasse's ad agency days. And this ain't marketing for the faint of heart we"re talking about. Grasse and producer Michael Alan truly have quite a perfect set of grandiose balls between them. Before Bikini Bandits was even accepted to premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival, Grasse and Alan took out full-page ads in The City Paper, the local alternative weekly, promoting their participation in the festival. This naturally pissed off festival brass, creating more press in the ensuing uproar. When the film officially became part of the festival, the Bikini Bandits team purchased every available seat at the premiere, creating a sold-out screening and generating more frenzied buzz. They then threw a big ol" party, let 3,000 in to celebrate and left 2,000 cooling their heels on the sidewalk. Buzz, buzz, buzz.



What began as a performance art project has morphed into a true brand-name phenomenon. Grasse stresses that "People worry about getting it right the first time rather than building access to what you want or where you want to be. Each film is a baby step to that end." Their next film is about Muslim terrorists confronting their anger issues through having regular sex. Sundance turned down Bikini Bandits. "Fuck "em," says Grasse.



Tim Breitbach, co-producer and co-writer of Dopamine, had a different but no less successful approach to marketing his film at Sundance. It involved friendship bracelets. Yes, he's referring to those woven string bracelets that seventh grade girls give to one another with squeals of platonic delight. Yet in the skilled promotional hands of Breitbach, these innocuous trinkets become a not-so-subtle metaphor for everyone's favorite obsession. According to Breitbach, "In 2003, we had Dopamine in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance. We wanted to work the festival in a coy, playful way that represented the content of the movie and built the little buzz machine. We gave out these friendship bracelets that said 'dopamine" in block letters. The physical act of handing out the bracelets was an intimate, one-on-one gesture that connected us with a lot of people, chatting with them while we slipped it onto their svelte, delicate wrists. And yes, we focused on women."



Women no doubt made up the core audience for this thinking person's romantic-comedy. Potential friendship braceleteers beware, warns Breitbach. "After about three days, the group of us that were spreading the 'dopamine" love started to play games to save ourselves from boredom on Park City's frozen January streets. We started doing stuff like, "Only give the bracelet to someone you would like to have a threesome with, while naming the starlet who would be included," etc. Needless to say, the giving was more selective, but the results were more encouraging. I mean, hey, we got distribution right?" Indeed they did. Dopamine got a 10-city theatrical release as part of the Sundance Film Series and was just released on DVD. If there's one thing to take away from this article, it's continuing proof of marketing's oldest commandment: Sex sells. Geek show. That's how Dallas-based director Shane Carruth described the party scene at Sundance. You might think a hot young director scoring domestic distribution with a film in competition would have the doors flying off the hinges at the blanket of supposedly swanky parties that smothers the town during festival time. Not true. Carruth, whose film Primer was picked up by THINKFilm for North American release, had trouble getting into the "right" parties. Even though his name graced the pages of the magic "lists" around town, Carruth was still forced to endure grillings worthy of the Abu Ghraib welcoming committee. "If you"re not a celebrity or don't have a celebrity's face, you spend a ridiculous amount of time defending yourself to the doormen at these parties." It was trial by fire. Carruth basically had to pitch these doormen to be allowed in.



The silver lining to this sooty cloud is that anything else you did would be easier than standing on a snowy Utah doorstep, reciting your resume while your nose hairs freeze. Fortunately, independent moviemakers are a notoriously resourceful lot. Carruth's solution? "Be sure to tell the doorman you"re an actor in the film. That works."



In truth, it's when the enchanted doors swing open that your problem really begins. How to mine the career gold that surely lies in them there hills is yet another concrete block landing in your path. Like most of us, Carruth would rather be at home in his underwear watching TV than watching A-List actors and agents wrestling over cans of Old Milwaukee beer and broken potato chips.



Once the festival party frontier had been reached, Carruth was concerned with sharing a two-story tall version of his vision with a theater full of strangers after three years alone with a four-inch computer image. In preparation for the inevitable post-screening interrogation, he resorted to the popular "Oscar acceptance" speech method, rehearsing in front of a mirror, imagining the worst possible questions that could be asked. It seems to have worked; Carruth survived his first Sundance like a true disciple of Nietschze, ready to bear the arrows from a 20-city, October 8th release.



Director Ryan Fleck and his partner, Anna Boden, gave up on parties. They wanted to go. They'd heard all the legendary tales about moviemakers being "made" in condo back rooms at parties sponsored by William Morris. But for whatever reason, they never made it up into the hills surrounding Park City. Instead they made a great short film, Gowanus, Brooklyn, and made the pimps come to them. Smart. "You can't get too caught up in the schmooze if you don't have anything backing it up," remarks Fleck.



Easy for him to say, since Fleck and Boden's Gowanus, Brooklyn won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the festival. "If you have a good film, the always uncomfortable schmooze factor can be minimized." They got tired of standing around parties nudging each other while shot-gunning drinks to get up the gumption to make The Move and go and talk to some important person in the crowd. Fleck has devised something of a Zen koan to deal with the nerve-straining process.



"When you approach somebody, you"ve got to pretend to have confidence. I keep telling myself that everybody's used to it; that they expect filmmakers to buttonhole them. I try to take comfort in that, but it really doesn't make it much easier."



Fleck and Boden also advise to sit in the front row at screenings where you may want to talk with a particular actor or producer after the Q&A. What began as a film geek reflex has oddly become a very practical way to network. By being one of the front row rangers, you lead the pack of shuffling knuckleheads lurching toward the stage and it puts you closer to your quarry. You get in and get out.



Fleck also advises not to "overlook the smaller festivals as a venue to really meet people. Sundance is the best, but you always get the feeling everybody's looking over their shoulder for their next contact to be made. Smaller festivals like the Independent Film Festival of Boston, at the beginning of May, are amazing. The fest is so friendly. It's really intimate, so it makes it easier to schmooze and make a lasting connection. The Full Frame Doc Fest in Durham, North Carolina is great as well." Armed with a new agent, lawyer and executive producer as a result of their fest success, Fleck and Boden can sit back and let the sharks hunt for meat while they concentrate on making moving pictures.



Why is it that the best guys in the world have the worst time with women? I"m sorry folks, but it's true. Nice guys finish last. Treat a film festival like a pimp smacking a ho and you"re virtually guaranteed festival gold. For instance, a longtime Los Angeles moviemaker who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons recently entered his romantic-comedy into a well-respected festival. He then proceeded to sabotage his chances for success in said festival. Phone calls went unreturned, e-mails went unanswered, requests for materials were ignored and finally he curtly informed the festival that he was taking off to a much-needed vacation in the South of France and couldn't be bothered to attend. He won the Best Director Award. "Just blow them off and they give you an award. Most directors are asses, so hopefully by not attending the festival, they'll like the film better than they'll like you."



In reality, this director's not really much of an asshole. Sure, he's a little loud, a little obnoxious and a little opinionated, but he's not truly a full-blown asshole. He does theorize that it's hard to maintain the fiction of a director if he shows up in person and you get to know him. It's bound to be a disappointing experience to finally meet someone who's done a careful job maintaining a persona of cinematic brilliance and mystery, just to realize he's as shy, insecure and awkward as you are.



The lesson from all this is, if you"re not at your best, it pays to stay away or shut up. There's an old law in acting that if you don't know what to do, don't do anything. This sounds simple, but when you"re stuck at a festival feeling like a pariah, it's almost impossible to resist the temptation to open your mouth and let something stupid come out.



Andrea Sperling, producer of D.E.B.S., a lesbian Charlie's Angels action movie satire, recalls a dust-up that happened at a long-ago festival. It seems there was an argument between the moviemaker and the distributor about re-cutting a film; the moviemaker prevailed and the film remained intact. In a public restroom at Sundance, the moviemaker's agent was overheard siding with the distributor over the cut of the film. Word got back to the moviemaker, through Sperling, about her powder room betrayal. This ignited threats of bodily harm from the agent to all involved, forcing Sperling to spend the rest of the festival watching over her shoulder for the enraged agent in hopes of averting a bloody Main Street showdown. So watch your mouth-and your back.



Sperling's most recent Sundance experience has been kinder and gentler. She and director Angela Robinson used the short version of D.E.B.S that was initially screened at Sundance as the carrot to drive the donkey that drove the cart. Prior to the film's premiere at the festival, Sperling sent the feature script and short to potential financiers with the hopes of announcing a deal at Sundance. In the interim, Screen Gems bit on the script and short, and combined with a poster and trading cards created by Sperling and Robinson for the main characters, gave the production company an idea of what the marketing could look like.



There's that word again: marketing. "Everything looked so good; we really hit a home run with them with the marketing ideas. Even before our film was accepted at Sundance, we came up with a 'total concept" strategy to drive our goals." While at the festival, the D.E.B.S. people passed out the trading cards on the streets of Sundance, adding to the film's "buzz." The gamble paid off. The story of four female spies out to thwart evildoers will be released in March by Screen Gems. The director, Robinson, has become something of a poster child for parlaying homework and talent into a huge career. She's set to direct the $60 million Herbie the Love Bug for Disney, starring Lindsay Lohan. While that may make most of us want to chase a bottle of pills with a fifth of Southern Comfort, the message is: Talent plus marketing plus guts equals success. It's that simple. It's either that or it's back to the church basement with the Christmas pageant... dreaming of a career.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=47 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:34:07 EDT


Unless the Lil'Pimp movie beats us to market (which I don't think it will, its been sitting here like a turd on a shelf for the past 24 months), Bikini Bandits Save Christmas will be the first feature-length flash animated movie ever released. It will also be the first movie released from our newly formed production company Fuck Hollywood Productions.



So What's It All About?



It's a heart warming, family holiday adventure, where the spirit of Christmas triumphs over evil, of course. Santa Claus gets kidnapped by the evil Mr. G (owner of the uber-evil g*mart corporation), and the bandits set off to the rescue of the bearded fat one.



Just why do the Bandits give a rat's ass about Santa Claus? Because it turns out that Mr. and Mrs. Claus are Bikini Bandit Heather's mother and father 'no shit' Heather was reared in the North Pole!



Santa's helpers are, of course super sexy hottie Elf Vixens who wield heavy artillery to avenge Santa. Oh, and there's a whole subplot involving gangsta rapper Schoolly D and voodoo zombie stripper hoes. Maynard James Keenan of Tool makes an apperance as the Rambo-like Spirit of Christmas and the Misfits provide the opening credits theme song.



So yeah, its just another Christmas movie, so put it under your tree bitch.



Why Animation?



Because this script would cost $30 million to shoot, and our budget was slightly less than that.



Dude, we're making this whole movie for $10,000 no shit. We got a couple cases of beer and sat in a recording studio over a weekend and recorded all the voices. We then sent an email to all our fan club members to ask for music tracks to be donated to the project. The animation was done in-house in our spare time.



So it's probably the cheapest feature-length animated film ever made.



Why Christmas?



It's a script we wrote a few years ago. It was sitting in a drawer lost and forgotten. Actually, it's the script we wrote when all those Hollywood fuckers first started calling.



This is the script that was seriously read by everyone in Hollywood from Ozzy's production company to Marilyn Manson's people to Mel Gibson's Icon Productions. It was read by the biggest and best, and rejected by all.



So yeah, fuck Hollywood! We'll make our movie anyway. Eat shit and die you plastic surgery disasters. [Note: I wrote this while listening to the Dead Kennedy's Plastic Surgery Disasters.]



Merry Christmas!]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=30 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:03:23 EDT Bikini Bandits was tipped by the Times as the hottest ticket of last year's Raindance and picked up by MTV for an Xmas day screening. Director Steven Grasse on bullets and tits and selling out.



The really unusual (some would say disgusting) thing about the Bikini Bandits was that it was conceived not as art, but as a marketing concept. I knew that if we created this 'thing' we could create a whole brand around it. Which explains why there is no plot whatsoever. The plot was irrelevant. It just needed to be an open-ended vibe, a feeling, a thing people wanted to take part of. Of course, this is what I say now. The truth was closer to the fact that we didn't have the talent to come up with a coherent screenplay. We also didn't have the time or money to make a more traditional movie.



Seriously. Though, I own a surprisingly successful advertising agency here in Philadelphia called Gyro. So I know more than most about these things. I read an article once about the birth of Def Leppard. Before there was even a band, the dude had posters, t-shirts, everything. He even printed up fake ticket stubs for shows that never happened. But before long, people started believing Def Leppard was real talk about putting the cart before the horse. Def Leppard is precisely what the inspiration was with the Bikini Bandits 'If you build it, they will come.'



We launched the g-mart store and the g-mart line of clothing at the same time as the first Bikini Bandits short film. So right away fans had a whole world they could step into.



We also threw fantastic Bikini Bandits parties all over the world. This was done primarily so fans could come inside and experience the world of Bikini Bandits and g-mart for themselves.



What we're doing here is creating a loyal market for out line of products.



And, as independent filmmakers, we're protecting ourselves from the normal bullshit that befalls us. For instance, when The Bikini Bandits Experience DVD comes out in the states this summer, we don't really expect to make much money on it. Why? Because it won't sell well? No, we expect it to sell buttloads. We expect to be screwed by Hollywood accounting but that's okay. Each DVD sold will help sell g-mart clothing and merchandise, and the clothing line is something we entirely control the distribution and profit of.



Think about it, the Bikini Bandits films are nothing more than extended infomercials for g-mart. The performance art aspect of the whole thing is that it's an ad you pay to watch. So some pimply-faced fourteen-year-old buys the DVD and watches it with his pimply-faced friends, then they immediately go online and load up with g-mart merchandise.



So, should you all feel duped by our crass commercialism? No. not at all. Our brand of blatant commercialism is, in its own way, a sort of postmodern Warholian performance art piece. What really cracks me up is that we've managed to convince Atom Films to pay for all seven of the Bikini Bandits films (g-mart commercials). We've managed to secure a big time Hollywood agent (United Talent Agent). And, we have two big ass Hollywood production companies fighting it out to make a big ass big budget Hollywood Bikini Bandits Movie.



That, my friends, is art.



And then there's MTV airing the 'movie' and running endless promos, which, once again, inadvertently promote g-mart. Of course, if some big assed corporation were doing all this, it would really piss me off, but it's not. Gyro is pretty successful, but it is small and independent. We're not owned by some large mega-conglomerate that cheats its shareholders. I built Gyro with my own blood, sweat, and tears from the ground up.



It's this do-it-yourself mentality that's at work here with the Bikini Bandits. We like to think of it as a Fugazi with boobs. Meaning, we make our own way in the world and control every aspect of our destiny, like the band Fugazi. Instead of waiting for Hollywood to come calling, we went out and made something they are now fighting to get a piece of. Suckers.



So how come Bikini Bandits managed to get so much attention and press when so many independent filmmakers make films that never get seen?



Relentless self-promotion. We've probably sent out over a thousand press releases since we started this whole Bikini Bandits business. We have a list of magazines from around the world that we send things to. We're also stages a variety of events designed to get the media interested in covering the Bandits for instance, the big ass party we threw at the Cafe de Paris in London after the Raindance screening.



Of couse, there have been some key events that really helped get the ball rolling. When Atom Films first went public they had $10 million to spend on advertising. They chose our film, the first Bikini Bandits episode, to be the keystone of their marketing campaign. They spent more than $1 million alone on MTV airing a 30 second spot for people to go to their website to see our film (of course, Atom is all but bankrupt now, as most dotcoms are these days).



Somehow we got Maynard from Tool, Jello Biafra and Dee Dee Ramone to be in our film, which almost guaranteed media interest. Here's a hint: put bikini girls in your movie. It will make almost anyone else want to be in it.



We got MTV UK interest in airing the movie. This was huge for us. And, it happened by accident. We sent them the music video for the Dee Dee Ramone song "In a Movie" (the Bikini Bandits theme). They told us that instead of airing the video, they'd rather show the movie. We were floored.



We are also really careful about getting email addresses on our website. And then we talk to our fans at least twice a month. We also say yes to all sorts of promotional opportunities that come along the way. Here are a few examples. We did the Gumball Rally last year. We figured the enormous amount of publicity this event generates more than justified the cost of sending four hot chicks coast to coast in a 69 GTO. We also put the film on tour alongside a movie by the Suicide Girls called Four Days in Panties and three hardcore bands. It's called the Backseat Film Festival. And last year we went to the Vans Warped Tour with Troma. It's endless and relentless.



So, my parting words to you independent filmmakers are fuck art. Make something that people want to see, something with boobies. And, most importantly, realize the movie is not as important as the marketing. Lack of self-promotion is where 99% of you royally fuck up. Get out there and sell yourself. This is America, damn it. Or it is from where I'm standing.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=38 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:47:30 EDT Hallelujah! The backlash has finally begun. I don't know about how things are in the UK, but we here in America have started a full-scale backlash against all those fucking Hollywood left wing do-gooders and their liberal-ass preaching about everything, especially the war.



If I was George Bush, the next place I'd bomb (after France) would be Hollywood. And I would start with Micheal Moore's house. I tell you, it I was at the Oscars, I would have gotten up on stage and kicked his fat ass. Listen, lard ass, if you hate America so much, then get the fuck out. Your movie sucked anyway, you fat piece of shit.



After I smart bomb that obese twinky eater, I'd round up Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins and unleash Ted Nugent and Charlton Heston on those peace loonies.



Oh, and while I'm at it, would some please tell George Clooney to shut the fuck up. He was quoted as saying that the Bush administration is run just like the Sopranos. Sounds like someone needs a holiday in Cambodia, don't you think?



You know, these over-privileged Hollywood fuckers ain't too smart either. You gotta laugh when the Dixie Chicks tell a crown of country music fans they're ashamed Bush is from Texas. That's like me, the director of Bikini Bandits, saying I don't like tits. Know what I'm saying?



But at the end of the day, karma usually wins out and these dumbasses get what they deserve. For instance, have you heard Madonna's latest album? It sucks big hairy moose cock. You know why? Karma.



Shit, did I just piss off a lot of you English dudes? Probably, you're all a little light in the loafers, aren't you?



You didn't used to be, you know. You guys use to rule the planet. ?Thy will be done'. Why, almost every global conflict today can be tied to your empire's handiwork a century ago. You better support us over Iraq. You're the dudes who caused all this shit in the first place. We're just the muppets who have to clean the whole thing up.



And, while we're at it, can we talk about fox hunting? I mean, what the fuck? Don't you realize the rarely ever catch the frigging fox? Fox hunting plays a vital role in deterring development. It's good for the environment and it helps keep the land open. Without it, you'll get mini-malls everywhere like we have here.



Political correctness will be the death of us all, I swear.



Anyway, back to the Oscars (which I think was what this article was supposed to be about). I wish Lord of the Rings won more shit. It's the only movie nominated that I really got a chubb over. Oh, and Gangs of New York wasn't bad either. I really identified with Daniel Day Lewis' character ?The Butcher', as you can imagine.



And, as much as I'm a fan of Spike Jonze, I just wasn't into Adaptation. I don't know, I haven't really been into any of the Charlie Kaufman films ? too wacky for me, a little too clever. I wish 8 Mile had been up for more. Being white trash myself, I really felt that movie.



You know, this rant gives me an idea for a new Bikini Bandits movie ? The Bikini Bandits Destroy Hollywood. The ghost of Richard Nixon speaks to the Bandits and convinces them that they must exorcise the liberals from Hollywood and make Tinseltown safe for democracy.



Of course, I don't really feel this strongly about the war, or anything else for that matter. I just enjoy pissing everybody off. So, you know, fuck you if you can't take a joke.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=29 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:49:32 EDT There's "freedom" fries, "freedom" toast and Inspector Gadget starring "Freedom" Stewart. One more and we"ll stick our "freedom" manicured nail down our throat and hurl, or "freedom" kiss a wall outlet and electrocute ourselves. But we have compatriots in our disdain. We have Beret!, the hardcore band so angry the members turned French with their overwhelming rage.



Meet the new faces of faux antipatriotism: young, cute and with painted-on outrageous moustaches and goatees. They wear black and white striped shirts and berets: they carry baguettes and drink wine. They smoke, hate hyped political correctness and sing (in French, of course) about all of the above onstage in their songs. They also like to punch, eat cheese, hate Morrissey and will be hawking their new album Fromage de la Rue. Beret! Is just one aspect of the new touring festival music, film and performance art known as The Backseat Media Festival. Sponsored by Backseat Conceptions, the production cozies up in Deep Ellum for two days. On Friday at Spiderbabies, Beret! Will perform along with James Brown and his one-man show called Glory Hole and the bands Urine Trouble and The Invincible Czars. Doors open at 10pm.



Saturday's programming is all film with a section of shorts (including Bill Plymphton's Hair High, The Creepies vs. Robot Monster and Barak Epstein's Prison A Go Go) beginning at 4p.m. The festival also includes the Dallas premiere of 4 Days in Panties starring James Brown of Glory Hole as a guy so obsessed with Chloe, one of the tattooed, pierced, dyed-haired girls from the Suicide Girls Web site, that the dude dresses like a lady to infiltrate the girls-only scene. Brining the Backseat incest full circle, Beret! stars as the girls' angry French boyfriends who fiercely protect their fidelity. The Suicide Girls, several of whom co-star, and Troma Entertainment, producers of Tromeo and Julliet, present 4 Days in Panties at 6:45 p.m.



Continuing the bizarre co-starring theme is the Dallas premiere of Bikini Bandits, which is described as Russ Meyer meets Pulp Fiction with a band of buxom bikini-ed babes running amok, driving classic cars and toting large guns. Maynard James Keenan from the band TOOL plays Satan, while the pope is played by the late Dee Dee Ramone (who surprisingly passed away before John Paul). Corey Feldman and Jello Biafra also make appearances. Bikini Bandits starts at 5:30 p.m. Admission for the evening of films is $5.

What one will find in the Backseat is bizarre, surprising and definitely nothing like what was just in town for the Dallas Video Festival. It's also all just as ridiculous as "freedom" fries.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=26 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:50:35 EDT http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=31 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:04:52 EDT Cleavages large enough to lose a grenade in, and enough guns to blow your head clean off about in Steven Grasse's exploitation satire. Imagine Buffy meeting Russ Meyer in a caf? in the Midwest and you have the ambience of Bikini Bandits, a series of bite-sized chunks that the production team deliberately makes a flimsy effort of weaving into a narrative after they broke ratings records on the broadband film channel Atom Films.



Thus the Bandits rescue a retarded Amish boy from an unwitting career as a porn star; they go to hell to do battle with Satan, sporting an enormous strap-on that fires laser bolts; they go back in time to party with a couple drunken Founding Fathers. Does any of this matter? More important are the cameos from Corey Feldman, who plays along like a trouper, and the late Dee Dee Ramone as the Pope, revealing himself to be the grand character actor we always suspected.



The film's awareness of its piecemeal make-up is evinced by the cartoon sequences of an increasingly uneasy director talking to editor Gabe Imlay about the film's (lack of) narrative structure. Things are further fragmented by the interludes for the shopping channel G-Mart, a kind of one-stop shop for the criminally insane, betraying Grasse's guerilla-advertising background. Busty host Mercedes and her buzz-cut companion Sam showcase items such as a crystal meth lab for kids ('your child will learn about chemistry and economics with this kit'), devices to aid drunk-driving, and, of course, more guns. You can even check out the online outlet at www.gyromart.com



To say that all this reeks of bad taste is to impute Catholicism to the Pope. The amount of flesh on show invites ogling, but perhaps there is the hint of a critique in the way it never quite delivers on all of the male wish-fulfillment it so playfully and continually promises. However, it's probably a good bet to stay away from the cerebral, and just enjoy the ride. JK



Steven Grasse and Shyamala Joshi began their filmmaking career together with intent to create educational children's programming that was entertaining and engaging for the child as well as the parent. Finding this hard, they redirected their efforts to a series of T&A flicks full of guns, and hot rods, and shit. Contrary to rumors, Steven Grasse is not a 752-pound albino with alopecia. They appear in this production still with Pope Ramone. God bless you, Dee Dee. RIP.



Country: USA, Running Time: 60 mins, Format: Beta, Directors/Producers/Screenplay Steven Grasse, Shyamala Joshi DoP: Rhet Bear Editor: Gabe Imlay Cast: Dee Dee Ramone, Jello Biafra, Corey Feldman, Maynard James Keenan, Heather Victoria-Ray, Heather McDonnell, Betty San Luis, Cynthia Diaz, Robyn Bird Print Source Aliza Segal-Byrne Address: 38 N. 3rd, Philadelphia, PA 19106 USA T 215 923 6980 F 215 923 6981 Email: JenniferR@gyroworldwide.comWebsite: www.bikinibandits.com]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=35 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:23:34 EDT Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan has made his big screen acting debut in ?Bikini Bandits' a cult, low-budget action movie set to hit UK cinemas next month. Keenan appears as the Devil.



"He got naked, shaved his ass, and covered himself with red paint for his first starring role," says director Steve Grasse proudly. "You'd think that someone who can sell a million records could have gotten himself into a real movie what's he doing in this piece of shit?



"We were worried about how we were going to get the world's coolest rock star from the world's greatest band to be in our shitty little movie. But it turns out Maynard has a chocolate fetish, so we sent him tons of Milky Ways, Baby Ruths, Snickers, etc? and eventually he caved in. We got out man!"



'Bikini Bandits', which also features starring roles for Corey 'Stand By Me' Feldman, punk legend Jello Biafra, the late Dee Dee Ramone and an impressive number of under-dressed female hell-raisers, has been described as'Natural Born Killers' in a thong' by one impressed critic. What plot there is revolves around four bikini-clad babes finding endlessly inventive ways to torment men, while undertaking a huge crime spree. Exactly how Keenan's diabolical character fits into all this is unclear. We would have asked the man himself to answer this question, but he was busy toasting tortured souls in the fire of Hades.



'Bikini Bandits' will receive its UK premiere at an exclusive screening in London on October 25, as part of the Raindance Film Festival. The screening is to be followed by a swish launch party at Soho's Cafe de Paris, at which Brighton hairies The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Diaster will play alongside a host of unseasonably-clad lovelies.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=25 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:10:43 EDT So you're driving through the desert, and there's only a bikini and a 1978 Thunderbird between you and the wilderness. What do you slam on the stereo? Why, Nylon's Top Road-Trip Mix Tape, of course. Crank it up.



"You're So Vain" Carly Simon (No Secrets)

"Hyperactive" The Donnas (Get Skintight)

"Megan is my Friend to the Max" Reggie and The Full Effect (Greatest Hits '84-'87)

"Tiny dancer" Elton John (Madman Across the water)

"Spinning Around" Kylie Minogue (Light Years)

"Gigantic" The Pixies (Surfer Rosa)

"Son of a Preacher Man" Dusty Springfield (Dusty in Memphia)

"Temptation" New Order (Substance: The Singles 1980-1987)

"When Doves Cry" Prince and The Revolution (Purple Rain)

"Whole Lotta Love" Led Zepplin (Led Zepplin II)

"Sweet Emotion" Aerosmith (Toys in the Attic)

"Music" Madonna (Music)]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=36 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:25:41 EDT If you travel around Britain in a bikini, shooting people, you would do time. In America, they make film about it.



Those of you who are dedicated and staunch will remember that back in Sept. 2000, FRONT took you over to America for mayhem and madness with the scantily clad Bikini Bandits. Well as you can imagine, they loved the fact that we were the first to introduce the gun-slinging hotties over here. So Pete Grasse, one of the actors and brother to advertising magnate and owner of GYRO worldwide, made the call that demanded we fly back over and be on set for the new Bandits short film.



It only seemed like a few days before James, the snapper from the previous Bandits noncing trip, and myself were toasting Buds at 30,000 foot, nervous at what was my first trip to America, let alone Philadelphia. Dinks flowed as I convinced myself that I was onto a winner. Rocky II was the best film ever made, Mr. T is my hero, and I can bust a few moves like Will Smith.



When we arrived we were greeted by a big, model-type by the name of Will, holding a FRONT magazine sign. He was to be our chaperon and guide for the next few days and was a true diamond. We loaded up into a van that the A-Team would have been proud of, and Will must have thought Col Decker was on our case, because his driving resembled Michael Schumacher with his missus about to drop a sprog in the back ? an utter lunatic. Needless to say we arrived at the film studio shaken, but not stirred. On entering we were met with lots of sssssshhhhhh and ?Action!'. A man was belting out some lines and we didn't have a clue who this character was, but the film crew were treating him like he'd invented a cure for cancer. Being a curious Brit and super-professional journalist, I asked who he was. Of course, Corey Feldman, ex teen star of The Goonies and The Lost Boys. It was his height that was deceptive. He now towered at a mighty 5ft 2in. This was the final shoot of the day and the Bandits had already left. We nipped off to the hotel to give ourselves a cat's lick, as we were off out for food, Philly style.



We found this place a real eye-opener, as hip-hop heads, hard bastards and gorgeous women mixed, drinking cocktails while wolfing down Chinese food. We met rock stars, DJs, producers, and even what appeared to be the Lord himself, because I was sitting next to Dee Dee Ramone from the Ramones a proper legend, who had been in the film the previous day. Looking like a cross between Alex Higgins and a tones Gareth from The Office, people loved him, and so did the Persian rugs, judging by his eyes. He told us tales from his days of the road and how he used to score in London. They certainly don't make them like the used to.



We were up early the next morning to catch the Bandits at work. They were filming in Larry's Porn shop, where else? Now this pissed all over Soho, like a Blockbuster for pervs. From the balcony we had a view to a kill. The bandits pulled out some lethal weaponry and acted hard, but looked amazingly sexy in next-to-nothing. I was in love and not with the ?one up the bum no harm done' video collection next to me. Time wasn't on the film-crew's side and Steven, the director, owner and gaffer, was dishing out some verbal whoopass to get everyone moving to the next scene. What happened next, James and myself were not prepared for, and that's saying something when you can shock a photographer who has been to nearly every war-torn country. Stopping off at the hotel on the way to the next scene we picked up the rest of the stars, who were busy signing autographs. When they arrived it was like Swansea City's away support. First we were introduced to Gary the Retard (that was his name), and his agent, then Hank the angry dwarf who yes, was a dwarf, a bit of a loose cannon, and with a mullet to wrestle for, both of whom are on the Howard Stern show. The circus wasn't only in town, it was on my lap. For 30 minutes Gary explained, seven times, that after the Bandits film he was gonna star in a porno with two blondes [have to get the mail-order number for the Ed].



Now the afternoon's filming was in action. In a massive nightclub, skimply dressed Bandits stormed the building to snatch a kidnap victim, which resulted in British tongues hitting the floor. Period drama it ain't. I seemed to be losing the plot: a combination of jet lag, Hank the angry dwarf, and imagining Gary the Retard in his next acting role. It was bedtime before I got nicked. But James was in his element. Bowling around with his camera got him access to places that would even shock channel 5. So he stayed, the sly dog.



Cool as ice, Will picked us up early the next day. Today, the sights of this wonderful city were on offer. The shorts and Scottish-blue legs were unleashed on the puzzled people of Philadelphia. Now Will must have seen I had the ?eye of the tiger' that morning, because after a short drive, my dream was in front of me ? the rocky steps. Steaming up them didn't have the same effect, due to a flying loafer. I looked down at my achievement; all right, it might have been a little different. I didn't have the Portsmouth touch, so kids weren't all around me, but a lifetime goal was achieved. Now bring me Clubber, Creed and Drago, I was hungry, I shouted to James and my Philly comrade.



'We pulled up outside Geno's cheese steak house in south Philly. Balboa was now gone from inside me and we ate like kings in front of hundreds of big, tattooed Mafia types going about their business. The call came through that the afternoon's filming was about to start. This was the Hold Land scene not one to be missed. There were donkeys, chickens, cheeky ladies and even drunks on the Bethlehem set. You could say it was a tad different to the bible Mary kicked Joseph out cos he was angry she wasn't giving him any sweet piece of ass.'



The Bandits turned up in the name of girl power, telling Joseph they'd drop him like a bad habit', shot a load of guards, and recruited Mary who was, without a doubt, the pick of the bunch. Still puzzled, but very happy with the action and crumpet on offer, we made out way over to the ladies. After convincing them we don't ?put another shrimp on the barbie' where we come from, we chatted about the film. The Bandits were highly recognizable from films and modeling. The extras, equally as tasty, were a mixture of actresses, students and strippers. Numbers were exchanged, but not a sausage, so, like the littlest hobos, we thought maybe tomorrow, because it was the last day. For such a short film, such a lot of hard work and effort had gone into the Bikini Bandits. They were known for their merchandise and other films, but this is the one.



The next day's filming ran like clockwork: it was the death scene with the Bandits meeting the Grim Reaper. All very spooky and when things came to an end, tears rolled quicker than the audience's at a Bright Eyes screening. Now the cast and crew could get their groove on at an uptown party. Rap and funky beats belted out and the free bar got a caning. While James exposed his flash to the ladies, I threw some shapes on the dance floor, impressing the darlings I'd followed all week. Well, I thought so, until up popped Will, my trusty tour guide and loyal chaperon, throwing himself about and pulling off some top Jacko moves. My come-dancing taps were severely blanked.



It was over, and time to return to the less glamorous, but slightly saner, London. From what I could gather, the film theme was on a superhero tip: the Bikini Bandits were looking for a missing Amish girl and her brother, who had a bit of a fuse on him. This led to some mad situation, but they would stop at nothing, slaughtering anything that got in their way, to the cries of ?Freeze, Muthafuckers!'. The film was cut into many parts, but was really about good v evil, with the Bandits being the good, of course. In film terms they had created a tongue-in-cheek Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction flick with a bit of Russ Meyer and Russ Abbot thrown in for good measure.



Goodbyes and high-fives were exchanged. The love affair with Philly, and its fine fillies, was over. The experience was one I'll never forget. Philadelphia is the placed to be and I need a way to get back there, I wonder if they need any extras for Gary the Retard's film?]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=37 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:37:38 EDT Maynard James Keenan took on the role of Satan for B-movie epic, Bikini Bandits Go to Hell.



Did the devil make him do it, or was it the half naked babes? Ordinarily camera-shy Tool singer Maynard James Keenan took on the role of Satan for director Steven Grasse's forthcoming B-movie epic, Bikini Bandits Go to Hell, where a gang of heavily armed (and heavily stacked) ladies kill and plunder. "Maynard?s a natural," says Grasse, whose Bandits series has until now been an Internet-only phenomenon. "If he wants to be an actor, he could be huge." And, get this, if you thought Sinead O?Conner's papal-shredding stunt pissed off the Vatican, wait until they see Dee Dee Ramone as the pope. "I wonder if he?s gonna get aggravated," says Ramone of John Paul II. "But I don?t think he will, he likes me." To round out the cast, Grasse corralled ex- Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra, 1984 icon Corey Feldman and Howard Stern regulars Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf and Gary the Retard. Anybody else smell Oscar?]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=49 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:38:42 EDT


Last week some hot women joined Corey Feldman, Dee Dee Ramone and others to film Bikini Bandits Go to Hell, a full-length version of Gyro Worldwide ad honcho Steven Grasse's short web films, due for release in November. Bikini Bandit/Satan Girl/Ninja Bitch Geeta Dalal offers CP readers an inside look at the filming.



Monday

When I show up for call time at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m., I'm pretty sure that I'm still drunk from the night before. No one seems to notice, and I'm soon herded into a van with about 12 hot girls on my way to stardom. First stop: Camden County airport in Berlin, NJ. We're not being shuttled off in private jets to the next location. This is the location. I run around in a bikini all day, feeling a bit moronic. We're filming a couple outdoor scenes and posing next to hot rods. I score the black '64 Pontiac GTO. Armed with a fake 40, a fake machine gun and a real cigarette, I look like Joan Jett crossed with a Charlie's Angel. The other girls don't have to rely on badass. They have nice ass. They look gorgeous and young, most of them exotic dancers. It's hard not to stare (as evidenced by every male in the vicinity), and that admiration begins my pathetic decline into insecurity, which I quickly abandon. This is not a soul-searching foray, and this is not a quest for true beauty. This is Bikini Bandits: a racially diverse Russ Myers-meets-Pulp Fiction/Saturday Night Live skit, and I'm glad to be in on the joke.



The first star to show up is Corey Feldman. We eagerly watch a limo pull up - and then Feldman step out of the van beside it with his personal assistant, Majestic Magnificent. Though far from the days of Teen Beat, Goonies and Michael Jackson, Feldman looks much the same. A Poison Ivy-like dominatrix, Joey, immediately goes up and starts picking on him. After shooting a picnic scene, a drag racing scene and various gratuitous Corey scenes, we're done. Corey needs "some girls" to go to Delilah's with him and I find out that I've been volunteered. I make Joey come with me. I sit there eating fried cheese watching half-naked chicks with Corey, Joey and Majestic Magnificent, who keeps asking me if I'm an exotic dancer and won't accept "no" as an answer. Joey and I are bored and go to tip one of the girls from the movie. Majestic follows along and looms over my shoulder. When I ask him what he wants, he whips out a picture of a naked man with a huge erection. "See? That's me! You can tell by the birthmark on my arm!" I didn't stick around for the debate.



Tuesday

Call time's at a much more reasonable 7:30 a.m. The shoot's at Telenium sound stage in Primos, PA. Today the Bikini Bandits are in hell, and I'm a Satan Girl. Satan is Maynard from Tool, painted red from head to toe and wearing only devil horns and a codpiece the size of a premature baby. Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf from Howard Stern plays his satanic mini-me. The best part is that Satan's nemesis, the Pope, is played by Dee Dee Ramone, and I have to admit I'm starstruck. The cast is divided - half of us know we're in the presence of a legend, and the other half have no idea who "that old guy" is. I feel my age, but I wear it proudly. Every time I get my makeup, I listen to Dee Dee tell punk-rock war stories. I definitely feel a little glammy at this point.



Wednesday

Today rocked. We shot a Ninja scene at the Trocadero, and the stars of the day were Jello Biafra and Gary the Retard from Howard Stern. We're filming a scene where Jello plays a corrupt porn director who has kidnapped a bunch of girls and one of the main characters, Massively Retarded Amish Boy, and is about to force them into porn. There's no use in questioning ethics at this point, but I will give props to director and head of Gyro Worldwide, Steven Grasse: When he means to be campily offensive, he does not mess around. And I suppose that Gary's presence reminded us that everyone, from half-naked girls to rock stars to the mentally impaired, has the right to self-exploitation. (For the record, Gary was treated very well and had a lot of fun.) Corey Feldman and the Ninja Bitches (I'm the one with the cat-o'-nine-tails) come in and kick everyone's ass. The scene ends with a shot of Jello, looking like he stepped out of the "Sabotage" video, with a tube of K-Y sticking out of his butt. Mind you, this was his own idea. No one wanted to help him prepare for the scene.



Thursday

Today is the last day of stardom for me. Corey ended the shoot with a performance of his Michael Jackson dance, which he prefaced by stating, "This is one of life's most humiliating moments" and then proceeded to rock every move but the Moonwalk. I saw him on my way to the van that would take me back to day-job land. He looked vulnerable. Then I saw Majestic Magnificent. He just looked like an ass. At this point I'm gonna miss moviedom, especially after getting paid to beat the shit out of a car with a sledgehammer. I saw many an ex-boyfriend in the fender of that Corolla, let me tell you. I'm glad to have been an extra in Bikini Bandits Go to Hell. It made me reconcile my "don't fuck with me" attitude with a very "fuck-me" image. And now that's just another weapon in my arsenal. I used to be the kind of person who would be offended by all of this until I realized that we live in a world where gender differences and sexism exist. If you refuse to use your natural weapons, you're like a hockey player in the middle of the game without a stick. Or in my case, a bikini, an AK-47 and a pen.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=52 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:42:46 EDT


Mildly Retarded Amish Boy is stage left, in a cage. Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf sports an AK-47 assault rifle. And five leggy ladies in lingerie, platform boots and spike heels are huddled on a big red bed.



"All right, girls!" yells Evil Porn Director, in a blond wig, tinted shades, tan poly suit and orange shirt. "Now we're going to get hot and nasty!"



At which point the cage is opened and Amish Boy and two gentlemen, who in less-enlightened time might be referred to as village idiots, head for the curvy thespians, while the dwarf and some big dudes with automatic weapons chase them. Everybody whoops and screams.



Finally, well after the smoke machines stop and someone shouts, "Cut!," the Trocadero the on-time burlesque hall and present-day rock venue now serving as a set for Bikini Bandits: The Movie returns to a state of between-take calm.



"Hey, Jello, that was great!" says Steven Grasse, Bikini's real-life director, approaching Jello Biafra, the former San Francisco mayoral candidate and leader of the proto-punk band Dead Kennedys now playing the porn auteur. "Just do more. Go over the top!"



Then Grasse turns his attention to the supinated fivesome: "Girls," he says gently, scanning the mattress-scape of cleavage and calves. "You've got to look more scared."



So it goes on the set of the first feature-length Bikini Bandits, a (probably) straight-to-video affair characterized by an egregious absence of political, or any other, sensitivity that could become either (1) a phenom that will put Philadelphia on the movie map in ways M. Night Shyamalan never dreamed of, or (2) proof position that we're all going to hell in a handbasket.



The film, which concluded its 10-day Philadelphia-area shoot on Friday, features an ensemble cast that also includes Maynard James Keenan of the alt-metal band Tool (as the Pope), wackball L.A. comedian Bret Reilly (in dual roles), the Howard Stern Show's Gary the Retard (as himself), and Goonies-star-turned-tattooed-rocker Corey Feldman. Feldman, holed up in a dank backstage dressing room, isn't sure yet exactly what he's doing.



Bikini Bandits began last year as a wildly popular series of Internet shorts spawned from the fevered imagination of Grasse, co-owner of Philadelphia's renegade advertising agency Gyro Worldwide. (Accounts: Puma athletic footwear, kamels cigarettes, Glenfiddich whiskey and Delilah's Den, the Philadelphia strip club from whence most of the Bikini Bandits have come.)



"We've had close to five million people download all the films so far," Grasse reports ? using a figure of hyperbolic inexactitude but on that nonetheless reflects the uge success of the series, available at www.AtomFilms.com and now packaged in the DVD Bikini Bandits: Freeze Mother @#%?!, which Grasse says is "selling like hotcakes."



The four- to five-minute works the inaugural "Bikini Bandits Episode 7," "Bikini Bandits and the Magic Lamp" (shot in Morocco), "Bikini Bandits and the Time Machine" (shot in colonial Philadelphia), "Bikini Bandits Go Dutch" (barn-raising in Amish country), and "Bikini Bandits Under the Big Top" (the circus) all revolve around a foursome of two-piece-wearin', firearm-bearin', hot-rod-driven' vixens who rob mini-arts, torment drooling men, and occasionally kill one by stuffing with processed food products.



"It's John waters-meets-Russ Meyer," says Grasse, who hastens to add that his works are shot better than the Baltimore schlockmeister's and his girls are prettier than the softcore artist's.



"It's all done in such a tongue-in-cheek way that we're actually making fun of people that are chauvinistic," he adds, attempting to deflect the obvious isn't-this-exploitation Question.



"At the same time, we're making fun of people that are so politically correct that you can't do anything fun anymore without getting in trouble. We make fun of every race, creed and color in the tradition of Howard Stern. So, no oneescapes, and by offending everyone, you offend no one, hopefully although the thing we did yesterday might have gone to far. It involved Satan and the Pope."



Making the move from the Web to the widescreens from featurettes to full-length motion picture seemed like a natural progression for Grasse and his Gyro partner Shamala Joshi, a thin intense woman who has been directing movie's second unit and who shows up at the Arch Street set breathless and weary after a long day with ad clients in New York. Financing for the low-budget (Grasse won't say how low) feature, which is expected to reach video outlets in six months, came from AtomFilms and a Nuremberg production company, ("For some reason, bikini Bandits are big in germany," Grasse says.)



As cowritten by Grasse, 35, there is no cohesive storyline to Bikini Bandits: The Movie. Instead, "it's structured a lot like Kentucky Fried Movie or Monty Python's Meaning of Life," explains the director, wearing a red Budweiser cap, a gray Daytona Beach Bike Week T-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, and a look of suprising tranquility. He also cites MTV's Jackass, that high-brow affair in which projectiles are fired at guy's private parts, as a source of inspiration



"It's [got] a very adolescent viewpoint on the world," acknowledges Grasse, whose younger brother, Peter, assays the role of Amish Boy. "It's like, what if the whole world was a Van Halen video?'



In the role of lead Bandit is Heather-Victoria Ray, a veteran of USA Tropical Tease and Hulk Hogan's Thunder in Paradise. Wearing a leopard-print two-piece, the actress reclines on a lounge chair behind the mixing board waiting for the scene in which she and her cohorts: Cynthia Diaz, Heather McDonnell and Betty Tru, rescue Amish Boy and five females from the clutches of Evil Porn Land. A bartender at Life in Old City and a makeup artist for a number of area bands, Ray has beautiful eyes.



"A lot of people take it the wrong way, or get offended by the Bikini Bandits," she says. "But, I mean, I get offended by the government. There are so many things that everyone wants to get offended about. Well, then don't watch it it's simple. But for those who can take it with an open mind and a light heart because that's all it is, it's just purely lighthearted humor then they're going to see a lot of creative ideas."



Feldmen, who just turned 30, surveys the scene the 300-pound biker dudes, the dwarf, the babes with the seasoned eye of someone who recently starred as a deranged gynecologist in Troma Films' Citizen Toxic: The Toxic Avenger part 4.



"I'm basically playing myself," he reports, adding, with deadpan amusement, "it was obviously a great mistake to be involved in this great project. There's going to be a lawsuit pending. I've been greatly insulted since I've been here: I've been treated awfully. They put me in a dark, smelly room. I've been treat like some kind of abandoned stepchild, and obviously it's just the most tasteless project.



"I did it for art, truthfully. 'Steven Grasse contacted me and said he wanted me to do this art piece called Bikini Bandits' and I thought, well, you know, in my career there's been Stand by Me, there's been Dream a Little Dream, and then the pinnacle, really could become Bikini Bandits. That really could be the crux, if you will, of my being."



For Joshi, who came to advertising from New York's fashion industry, her sitting here surrounded by dozens of heavily tattooed camera operators and assistant directors, sound technicians and customers, is the realization of a long-held ambition.



"It was always our dreams that, when we were successful enough, we would go and have a clothing line or publish a book and ultimately make movies," she says. "Steven wanted to direct, and I wanted to direct, and we're just really into film. It's a love of both of ours. It's amazing that this thing that began as a lark has turned into, well, something."



Turned into, well, something indeed.



Up in the balcony, Ray and her bandits are hiking up their bikini bottoms, slinging their prop weaponry, and waiting for the cue to descend upon the nefarious Jello Biafra. Their first line of dialogue 'shouted in unson as they point their artillery at Biafra and his goons' is the Bandits series signature phrase, the exclamation that inspired the DVD's title. Suffice to say, it starts with "Freeze."



They run through the scene a couple of times, and then Grasse calls a wrap.



"Why does everything have to be so deep and meaningful and have a message?," he wonders. "To me, a movie should be entertaining and fun."



"One day, maybe, we'll so something more serious," Grasse adds, then pauses to contemplate that possibility.



"But, nah, probably not."]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=33 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:20:06 EDT


If you had to look back on the last six months of film -The Next Best Thing, Mission to Mars, Whatever it Takes, The Ninth Gate, Battlefield Earth, I Dreamed of Africa, Center Stage, 28 Days, U-571, Up at the Villa-you'd have to say "yuck." A lot. Out loud. Few tremendous films slipped through-the darkly comic American Psycho, music culture entities that gave head and heart like Human Traffic and High Fidelity, the funky romantic and fiercely competitive Love and Basketball, throwbacks to another era like Joe Gould's Secret. Even with "action adventure" as our guide, Mission Impossible 2 and Gladiator were effective. But where is the filmic excitement, the experimental zeal of last year's Being John Malkovich or Run Lola Run 'The lust for layered text and multiple moods encouraged by Magnolia'.



One film that seems to have that at present is Time Code, Mike Figgis' (Leaving Las Vegas) multi-paneled bleak comic tale - shot with long continuous takes with no edits - that effectively looks at lost love, mistrust and the Hollywood way in real time. A fascinating exercise for sure-what with its overlapping realities and contextual reshuffling-but it seems more a test pattern than a movie. Where the real new action seems to be, the true alternative to seeing flicks play out in traditional fashion, is the Internet. Sites like Sightsound.com, i.films.com, mediatrip.com, leofest.com and atomfilms.com are slowly turning the heads of film freaks with entertainments short and long-films, animations, digital content-spread out onto the Internet, broadband services, home entertainment, and airlines. These sites create a dial-upable catalog from Academy Award and Sundance winning shorts to ad agency bi-product to streaming up-to-the minute animations works. This gives everything you see and feel on these sites an absolute rush. Though lengthier Hollywood fare is available-like the just downloaded sci-fi flick Quantum Project. Starring Monty Python's John Cleese and Stephen Dorff, the action drama bursts onto your too small screen with the apostolic force of any run-of-the-mill sci-chase flick. At 40 minutes in length, the Project is tiny and explosive, but a bit long for computer sitting. "Short entertainment is perfectly suited to fast-paced lifestyles, Internet highband width constraints, and audiences seeking innovative alternatives to traditional forms of entertainment" is Atom's creed, one that seems echoed across all I-providers.



The recent Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema echoed that sentiment with a segment Steaming Cinema produced/simulcasted in cooperation with The Bit Screen website; exhibiting film, animation and multimedia works created specifically for the Internet. The films ranged from the episodic (Scrums from Italy) to the intimate (Teetering from Australia), from the animated and compu-generated (Robot Love, Sumi Dance) to the abstract (Agitated Beauty). The Philadelphians joined in on the I-film reindeer games - Michael O'Reilly's City Halls, John Serpentelli's Positively Negative, the etchy sketchy Scratches&Scribbles from the Big Picture Alliance-is encouraging. But the most promising of all Philly I-shorts had nothing to do with the Festival. Little to do with local film in fact. It is the Gyro Worldwide shortie Bikini Bandits Episode #7- shown on atomfilms.com - that seems to be taking the web by storm.



Directed by Gyro CEO Steve "BadAss" Grasse and starring brother Peter Grasse and the girls from Delilah's, bursts like an old Russ Meyer flick, fast and furious, but with the benefit of hyperlink video/edit technology, an exquisite sense of MTV murkiness and a playful light and darkness that surrounds all corners of the screen. Its story is blunt-busty girls rob convenience store, take goofball cashier with them into a fateful debauch-but fanciful fun. Like the robbery BB portrays, everyone's in, out in under ten minutes, and no one gets hurt. Maybe. Grasse wrote and directed this-and the entire BE franchise- because he wanted to move Gyro, one of the East Coast's largest ad agencies, into doing more original content for a while. "That's why we've been doing things like G-mart (Old City gallery/shop) Sailor Jerry (T-s and tattoo ephemera) and Billy the Dead Boy (books)" says Grasse. "We want intellectual property that we can own. In the long term, Gyro wants to be a company that does advertising for clients but also produces original films, books, and more. "Grasse shot BB as an experiment-using in-house talent like photographer Rhett Bear, editor Gabe Inlay, wardrobist Tracy Lutz and art director Mark Brodzick, whose kitsch Golden Fluffy meat, booze and cleaning products litter BB. When the locally shot product was completed, Grasse sent it out to different web sites that show short films. Steve was shocked by the response. "Not only did they all want the film, they fought over it."



Atom gave Gyro the best distribution deal, paying Gyro to do five new episodes, the first of which is being shot in Morocco in May: BB Rock The Casbah, BB and the Time Machine (parts I & II), BB under The Big Top, BB Go Dutch, starring Larry McGearty, Sailor Jerry himself. Grasse is beside himself for the future, not only of the franchise (he's already received feature film offers) but of the possibility of I-films in general and the sites that distribute original content. "Atom Films has spent big bucks promoting the film on national TV, MTV, VH-1 and Comedy Central," says Grasse. "They felt this had what it takes to be a 'hit' on the web, so they're promoting the hell out of it. In one day, more than 15,000 people downloaded it. Over 700 people took the time out to 'review it' on line. Funny-people either gave it 5 stars or no scars. Which is good. You either love it or hate it."



Not all local filmmakers have gone Internet mad. Take writer/director Gage Johnston. The founding co-artistic director of The Red Heel Theater, and the Founding Artistic Director of Simply Classic Theater Company has made her first full length feature-Something's Happening to Robin Stark-a lovingly long meditative rumination on death and duplicity that languishes on lengthy takes rather than flash-fast edit points. "One of my favorite shots in the film is a slow motion shot of Jen-Jennifer Childs, Barrymore Award winning co-star of Stark along with 1812 Theatre Company partner Peter Pryor (who plays Childs' husband) and Pearce Bunting (who plays a death-like entity)-running cowards the camera while the camera is moving backward," says Gage, whose Stark floats between strong color-saturated Hockney-esque pastels and' cool video symmetry. "I was trying to elicit a kind of vibrancy in the decay of the city," says Johnson about the texture of the film before returning to her story. "Dave Deneen, the I-can-solve-that-problem Cinematographer, bolted the camera to a long board, then he -and another guy ran holding the board. The effect is that the camera is floating and soft while Robin runs directly toward the audience." You won't find the laboriousness in I-film. Robin has a powerfully oozing feel to it chat matches Johnson's slow-brewed filmic thought. Johnson enthuses about the stages aspect of film, finding the devil in the details, the puzzle that is editing, the writing process. "Maybe I was just in a morbidly comic mood, I started thinking about what is funny about death, what would someone do to avoid death, what is dying 'well' and since you're dying why should you care about impressing other people by doing it 'well,'" says Gage about coming up with Robin specifically for Childs. "Since Robin is dying and, let's face it, kind of ornery, I needed someone sympathetic, charming and with a sense of humor. I wrote the entire part imagining Jen in it."



Johnson's comic mystery about death was shot in and around Philly utilizing our town's crumbling, hanging-on-for-life look. "Philadelphia feels like Europe and sometimes like a hellhole. I find that mysterious and charming. It's a great city for ghost stories," says Johnson. Ultimately, Robin Stark conveys powerful emotions about a couple's acceptance (or betrayal) of death, a story not so much about goodness and badness, but of laughter and forgetting. "I think most of the time when you- take a good look at things, there are things you'd want to avert your eyes from, but Robin and Jay (Childs and Pryor) can't avert their eyes. They have to take a good hard look and laugh or...not laugh."]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=46 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:20:54 EDT


"The idea came to me and my brother when we were bored out of our minds on a family vacation and we thought about making a film that has all the things we love: girls, guns, hot rods and meat sticks," says Steve Grasse, the 36-year-old enfant terrible behind Gyro.



Given the popularity of these films, plans are in place to turn them into a major motion picture with the working title of The Bikini Bandits Save Christmas...The first audition/party was held recently at Shampoo, and it was like all things Gyro, a collision of high-and low-brow, the reactionary and the radical. Hopefuls shook their aspirations on a makeshift cat-walk to the funk-soul-brother sounds of DJ Gregg Foreman. Revelers drank 40s of Colt 45 out of brown paper bags bearing the Bikini Bandit logo.



"We're going to do this all over the country; we literally need hundreds of girls," says Grasse. "It's going to be the film with the most girls ever."]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=24 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:47:45 EDT


Gyro made it's Atom debut in May with "Bikini Bandits, Episode Seven," a five-minute tale of "girls, guns, and carnage," in the words of Gyro CEO Steve Grasse, in which four buxom women rob a convenience store called G-Mart. It was one of the most popular live-action short films on the web, receiving more than 460, 000 views within the first six weeks.



Five more installments of "Bikini Bandits," all written and directed by Grasse, and starring his brother Peter, have been produced. Gyro has plans for five more, and is developing a theatrical feature based on the series.



Gyro's ad clients include R.J. Reynolds, Puma, and M&M/Mars. It runs a clothing and housewares company, Sailor Jerry, featuring the artwork of a WWII-era tattoo artist, with its own line of 99-proof rum. The company, which also runs a Philadelphia retail outlet, plans to spin other short films into feature projects.



"What Gyro is good at is hyping things and promoting consumer goods," Grasse said. "We have a clear advantage over other filmmakers because we're good marketers."



"We think we can extend their brand into the motion picture and TV business," said UTA TV department manager Peter Benedict, who's also one of the heads of the tenpercentery's new-ventures department. "My hope is that we can turn ?Bikini Bandits' into a franchise along the lines of ?Wayne's World' or ?South Park.'"



As part of its deal with Gyro, Atom will take all rights, except for merchandising, to "Bikini Bandits," and own a stake in the feature, acquisitions VP Jannat Gargi said.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=23 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:44:05 EDT You almost got blown away then.' My saviour is advertising mogul Steve Grasse, a man who enjoyed such phenomenal success with Gyro, his advertising company - clients include Coca-Cola and MTV. He spent a small portion of his considerable fortune filming his personal pussy posse, the Bikini Bandits, and broadcasting them on the Net. Almost overnight, the Worldwide Web community lapped the Bikini Bandits, their spoof mini-movies reaching cult-like proportions, and the reason why I am up to my eyes in girls and guns on the set of the latest Bikini Bandits mini-movie in Philadelphia. As Heather removed her weapon from knackers, and wiggled off to join the rest of the tooled-up totty, Steve showed me around the set and filled me in on the Bikini Bandits' brief history. After Gyro grossed $70m last year, Steve decided he could afford to have some fun: his unconventional creative genius came with the Bikini Bandits.



The premise is a simple one. A band of sexy women squeeze into the smallest bikinis ever made, and then rob G-Mart stores equipped with a dazzling array of firepower and pneumatic cleavage. G-Mart is a spoof convenience store, owned by Steve Grasse, selling spoof products as diverse as Golden Fluffy Spray Cheese, Pimp Daddy beer, Gags cigarettes, Beef Flaps and Meat Packer's condoms. So far the Bandit ad/films have been released on the Atomfilms website - www.atomfilms.com - yet they've become one of the most downloaded video clips on the Net ever, with over two-million hits to date. Steve is clearly ecstatic. 'Welcome to our own sick little world,' he croons.' This is the third of the Bikini Bandits ads. We got back from Morocco last week. Man, that was HOT! Today we are shooting Time Bandits, the girls are going back in time and I hope FRONT feels at home!' I don't know about him, but my home doesn't look much like this... The Bikini babes: Heather-Victoria Ray, Barbara DiMatteo, Corrine Thompson, Nayla Hodge, Heather McDonnell and Betty San Luis, with more flesh on show than my local butcher, are locking and loading assault rifles and automatic pistols. If this wasn;t bizarre enough, characters are wandering around the set in 18th-century costume because the Bikini Bandits are going back in time to revolutionary America to rob'Ye Olde G-Mart'.



I am greeted by a costumed character with huge buck teeth and a 40oz bottle of malt beer in a brown paper bag. 'Take a hit, man. I'm Washington by the way.' Actually this is Pete Grasse, Steve's younger brother. Pete first appeared in the first Bandits installment as a goofy counter clerk captured by the girls and driven away to a fate of epic proportions. 'It was truly incredible. They filmed me in the back of a car as the girls covered me in ketchup and mustard, rubbing my balls, and suffocating me with their tits. In the end they choked me to death on a weiner sausage.'



Later that day, Pete and Larry McGearty, who was playing Ben Franklin, were captured by the girls after the store had been robbed and smothered to death after a good bout of breast-bouncing fun. What we are shooting is "limp core" confides Steve. ' You never quite get it up, but it's close.' After watching Heather and Helga in a tongue-flailing girl-on-girl lesbo smooch, I felt I had to disagree. In the truest sense of the word, this was in fact, hardcore.



After a long day of filming in the historic downtown Philadelphia, the crew wrapped Time Bandits and went for some much needed r&r. Pete Grasse promised to show us some real American fun. That's how FRONT ended up at Delihla's Den, the largest strip joint in Philly. As over 250 girls bumped and ground their way around a club the size of an aircraft hanger, I began to marvel at the remarkable ethos behind Gyroworld. At every opportunity, the boundaries are pushed as far to the limit as possible. Gyro wasn't just a job, or even a pastime. As Pete put it, Gyro is a way of life and life has a massive pair of tits.



The second day of filming progressed from the sublime to the ridiculous. Good old-fashioned banditry done and dusted, we moved on to a huge ranch to film The Bikini Bandits Go Dutch. Remember Harrison Ford in that film Witness with all the strange Amish religious people? Okay. Replace Mr. Ford with five pistol-packing babes who pitch up and prevent the evil businessmen from the big city who want to buy up all the residents' land.



The object, clearly, is to shock. But in the crazy world of Gyroworld you are never quite clear where the boundaries lie. Steve Grasse also funds a pro-Republican political movement called Shift. Whatever his real agenda, Steve appears to have a real desire to challenge authority and push freedom of expression to the limit.



This seems to be a philosophy that the Bandits enjoy wholeheartedly. Surrounded by the girls at a lunch-time shooting break, I am pleased to discover that not only do they, 'Just love the way I talk', but that they have enormous fun themselves shooting the ads. Heather, now disarmed, explains that she left a career in TV to work on the Bandits.



As looking her in the eye becomes increasingly difficult, she beings to giggle, 'Do you like them?' I had to admit, that yes, actually, I do. 'Thank God for that. I've had them done five times. Id hat to disappoint you.' Breasts are obviously big business for the Bikini babes. The girls hope that a full-length feature Bikini Bandits film will follow hot on the heels of the commercials. Privately, I hoped that there would be a Banditis In Britain episode. Back on the farm, the day climaxes in reconstruction of the Waco siege, where the bad guys from the ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco, And Firearms] who have come to massacre the Amish are butchered in a blaze of bare-breasted bravado by the big and bouncy Bikini Bandits. And try saying that with your mouth full.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=40 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:56:09 EDT http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=39 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:48:36 EDT What are some of our "favorite places" this summer? Try Mutantwatch.com and, like millions of other good citizens, cast a vote for senator kelly's campaign for genetically cleaner America free of mutants. Too tame? Atomfilms.com features Bikini Bandits, hip film shorts directed by Steven Grasse that star four badass, pistol-packin' hotties who rob, steal, and terrorize. The site is such a hit that atom ran its first ad on bawdy mtv, which rather remarkably deemed it too edgy for prime time and only showed it after 11 pm.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=22 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:40:56 EDT Pointlessly depraved?



Like watching a Russ Meyer flick while thumbing through Maxim and spraying Cheez Whiz down your throat. Profanity? Lots of it, and the soundtrack will have you one-clicking a copy of Enon's only album just to hear the song "Rubber Car" again. Bikini Bandits, a monthly series about a gang of babelicious, two-piece-wearing killers who lure drooling men only to blow them away with the heavy armor tucked inside their Lycra, is as tawdry as a late-night Cinemax guilty pleasure ? but with less nudity, fancier editing, and one set of rotten teeth. The plots are, intellectually, pure marshmallow fluff 'MTV videos have more substance' but guerilla advertiser-turned-director Steven Grasse wants it that way. He's even opened a real G-Mart in Philadelphia and online just like the convenience store the Bikini Bandits keep holding up so you'll never be without Golden Fluffy Brawny Oak Flakes again.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=41 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:00:16 EDT


More movies that will play on Post-It-sized screens. The feature when we looked was Bikini Bandits and The Magic Lamp. For some reason, this was the site's most-viewed flick.]]> http://bikinibandits.com/hype.php?id=34 Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:21:32 EDT Steven Grasse of Philadelphia's Gyro Advertising is back in the news again, this time with his directorial debut. It's last month's first installment of Bikini Bandits (marked episode 7, but that's just to confuse people he says), a series