INTERVIEW | The Lab Magazine

They Can Turn Left: The Lab Magazine

Two guys just having a good time, having a good time. Guy #1 Tyler Close Justin. Guy #2 Power Mcdade Regimbal Jeremy. Stemmed out of their successful collaboration as The Studio Movement, the newest love child of this epic bromance, The Lab Magazine, has been going strong for a few months now, with another issue on the verge of being released. An Andy Warhol vibe fuels the fire, and diverse interview subjects, such as Chin Injeti and Frank W.Ockenfels, have already brought it to the attention of some legendary figures such as Christopher Plummer. They inspire us, they inspire the art scene and they might do it for you too, esp if you drink ‘the wine’. But first…

THE MEAT

JR: Did you really bring these slippers for us?
Yeah.
JC: That’s amazing.
JR: Did you make them?
No. I did not.
JR: Are you gonna go see The Nutcracker?
No.
JR: I heard it’s really good.
JC: I heard it was.
JR: It’s fantabulous.
Isn’t it always though?
JC: Yeah.
It’s one of my favourite books.
JC: Books? Never read it.
Yeah. It’s pretty good. But I have some trouble watching ballet with really serious people.
JC: Really? Do you get really into it?
Yeah, but the tights.
BOTH: The bulge?
Yeah.

THE POTATOES

JR: Why is Santa’s sack so big?
Why?
JR: Cause he only comes once a year.

Can I put that as a quote?
JR: Mike is gonna say I stole his joke.
We can give credit…
JR: No. We’ll take the credit. Thanks Mike.
Don’t take people’s joke credit.
JR: Haha. We won’t.

Maybe we should talk about how you feel about dance.
JC: Ha ha ha.
JR: How we feel about dance?

Yeah, in general. It’s not a dance magazine, but you should touch on it.
JR: Dance is amazing.
JC: It’s contagious.
JR: It’s very contagious. It’s a beautiful art form. Have you ever met Hoist? He’s a professional dance assistant.

How long have you assisted for?
JC: For a day.
For a day?
JC: For a day.

Do you feel like you know it, inside and out?
JC: I’ve known it since I’ve been three. I’ve been dancing my whole life.

Do you stuff when you dance, or is that just for ballet?
JC: Ballet.

THE REST

What is the difference between The Lab and The Studio Movement?
JR: The Studio Movement is a production company. The Lab Magazine is an art, film and music magazine.
JC: We also do TV, web design, commercials, anything…
JR: Also, all sorts of marketing ‘schemes’ and work as an add agency.

And did you start it so you could get into filmmaking, or did you start it to survive?
JR: We both worked on lots of different stuff before. I did film, and Justin was into photography. We had a good collaboration of people and just kept rolling with it. Commercials and music videos are a way for us to keep alive.
JC: We have three feature films in development right now. A horror film, a drama and a children’s story. And we’re semi developing a script about a hobo clown and Jeremy is developing a world thriller.
JR: That’s our ultimate goal. To make films. Commercials and web design are a great way to keep involved with our community, but we ultimately want to make films.

So what did your film background include in particular?
JR: I’ve edited for quite a while, I shot sports videos way back in the day. Pretty exciting…

Like the 90s?
JR: No, no. I’m not that old.
Sorry.
JR: No, I used to shoot sports videos in the 60s. It was pretty epic. When skateboarding was first starting, I was all over it.

The original Anchorman.
JC: Yeah, yeah.
JR: I was part of the Dogtown Boys. No big deal.
JC: You’re like a highlander.

Was your background always photography?
JC: Well, my brother is an actor. And has been an actor since I was like 10 years old, so I was always on film sets, and always knew I wanted to be in film. I eventually started hanging out with lots of good-looking people. Women. Sleeping with them.
(Jeremy cracks up throughout).
JC: I was planning on how far I was gonna take it. Haha.

At least you’re being honest.
JC: Actually, it all started with a photo shoot. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, this photographer shot my brother. He had all these beautiful women around him, and lived in this amazing loft. And I was just like: “I wanna be like this guy. This is my life. This is what I wanna do”. So I pretty much wanted to start taking photos right then.
But we always made movies. I used to follow around my grandma and my grandpa and make little documentaries about them, around the house. My brother and I would narrate and do voice-overs for them. We’d get in huge trouble with our parents, cause we would say stupid stuff and yeah…

What’s your brother’s name?
JC: Josh Close.
JR: Amazing actor.
JC: He is a really great actor. He’s actually the writer of two of the films we are developing right now.

So you’re all co-writing?
JC: We all came up with one of the stories, the horror film, called The Replicas, but he writes the scripts. He’s a screenplay writer. He’s also part of the Studio Movement. We had our first film screen at the last Vancouver International Film Festival. Well, not our first film, but our first short film with Josh. We have tons of shorts. But we have two circulating the festivals right now, Short on Love and Frog.

Would you like to talk about them?
JC: Sure. Tell her. Tell her about Frog.
JR: Frog is fifteen minutes long, all shot in one long take. It starts on a bus, and follows a couple talking. It’s an awkward… if I can recap it here, without Justin making fun of me… It’s the last encounter between a couple that broke up quite a while back, and he’s come to get his stuff. It’s an awkward conversation, but it’s really well written. Amazing actors.
JC: There’s Allison Mack from Smallville.
She is awesome.

So you directed a dance movie as well. That’s exciting.
JR: Yeah, you should watch it.
I did. Twice. For Hoist.

Tell me about The Lab…
JC: We first put out our pilot issue, which is the 48 page, Issue 00. And it’s pretty much issue 00, because Issue 01 is 100 pages, and it’s a “real” issue, distributed around the world. Zero was kind of our ‘feeler’ issue. We knew what we wanted for the design and concept, but we wanted to see how people reacted to it, and fortunately enough they loved it, so we’re gonna keep going strong. Issue 01 came out in February. 100 pages of greatness, on shelves all over the world. I want it to be in Australia, and Japan, and Russia.

Why are you excited to have a magazine?
JC: The major thing is that we’re building a community of people. We’re in a hard economical time for being an artist, and I think doing a magazine gives hope. It lets people know that others care about art, enough to pick up a magazine and read it, and understand it. I think the most important thing about our magazine is not that we interview the artists, but that we have artists interviewing artists. We just think there’s no other way than doing that.
JR: And it’s so much more than a magazine for us. We also do the parties, and we’re trying to revamp, or uplift Vancouver’s creative community.
JC: We throw parties every month that we invite musicians to showcase their work at, so people can come out and watch them. We use our network that way. Just kind of more of a community, than a publication I guess.

Do you feel it’s working? Or starting to?
JC: Totally. We’ve been doing cool shit for years, not to toot our own horn, but we’ve made some great videos and photos and stuff, yet I think this is the first time we’re being recognized for our work. To do The Lab, it’s like a mass market. You can put it anywhere. In coffee shops. I love walking by coffee shops and seeing people reading it. There’s no greater joy than that I don’t think.

And do you feel like this is going to put Vancouver on the map too? As far as interesting work going on?
JR: Definitely. We’re always gonna have a section with up and comers, locals that we believe in, and send it out to the world. We’re hoping people are gonna be like: “Wow. Where the hell is Vancouver?”
JC: And not all our content is from Vancouver. Some of it is from the States and around the world. But I think when people are gonna find out it’s actually made here, designed and created by us, that is gonna help Vancouver more, rather than only supporting the Vancouver artists. There is an incredible pool of untapped talent here, and people don’t quite understand. But I think that it, being from here, is gonna be a really good thing.

Do you think it’s going to spark other movements?
JC: Definitely. There were 4 or 5 other magazines that came out around the same time, but what sets us apart… I want us to be the Interview Magazine of Canada. I don’t think there’s anything like Interview here, and it’s tied to that whole Warhol movement, and he started that…

I owe them (Interview) money.
JR: Why, did you subscribe?
I forgot to pay for it, and they sent it to a collection agency, but I do love it.
JC: Yeah, it’s great. And it was really based on what Warhol was doing. Having these parties, making weird videos that would cause controversy in the media. And now that the Internet is so accessible, we can do pretty much everything we want and have it out there in the world in the same day. That’s that.

What is some stuff that you look at that inspires you? In town, or the world? Other than Interview Magazine?
JC: I’m inspired a lot by films and stories. I get inspired by photography, but not really. I get inspired by paintings and films. I don’t really look at it that much, maybe because I am a photographer. I had this conversation with (photo legend) Frank Ockenfels, and he was talking about how he never really buys photography. And I would buy some photos, cause there are some amazing ones, but I’d much rather buy a painting. Or a movie. What about you?
JR: What inspires me? Aloe Vera drink.
JC: We got wasted last night. That’s why we need the Aloe Vera.
JR: I just get so inspired by the community out here. I feel amazing, even though we got wasted. Just going out, seeing bands, seeing what goes on here makes my brain go.
JC: We went and saw Topless Gaylove Tekno Party, and there were probably 250 people there, and the venue was max. 150 capacity and it was so crammed, but still going crazy.

Awesome. Now, do you wanna talk a bit about the process of putting the magazine together?
JR: The process…
JC: How long is this interview?
JR: The process?!

Anything that excites you at first, gets you started?
JC: I think it’s exciting that we actually get to contact musicians, and artists, and photographers that we love. You know, every time we’ve contacted a musician that we love, it has been along the lines of “Hey, we can make a music video for you” just so you know “wink, wink”. But this is not asking them for anything…
JR: It’s more like paying tribute to someone that you like. That’s really gratifying. It’s like going: “I love your shit, I wanna show it to other people”.
JC: Yup.

That’ll be the main quote.
JC: Haha. “I love your shit”.

JR: That is one of the most exciting parts. As stuff starts rolling in, for example with this issue, there were photographers shooting all over North America so there was stuff coming in from all over the place.
JC: Yeah, at one time we had two spreads shooting in the same day, one in LA, one in New York, and we were corresponding through phones. There was nothing better than that. We’re supporting people that we believe in. We do so many other things in the media world, such as film, and not to sound selfish or anything, but it helps everything that we do, because we’re building a gigantic network of everyone.
JR: And it’s not like everyone here needs to start doing that. Chin said something along the lines of: by uplifting everyone around you, uplifting your community, it uplifts you back. Basically the better we all make Vancouver, the better it’s going to be.
JC: I find a lot of artists don’t like to talk to other people. They have the attitude: “I’m an artist. I’ll let my art speak for itself”. And it’s just so not like that anymore. Maybe back in the day it was like that, because they maybe didn’t have telephones, or the Internet, but I think everybody just needs to celebrate art more, rather than keeping it for themselves. I hate seeing 50 year olds, shredding at the guitar so well, but just didn’t know how to promote themselves as artists. Or just really talented people that you can just tell are gonna be doing their side job, and just be this brilliant artist in hiding for the rest of their life.

That hurts. It almost just as bad as giving up your soul to booze or a cult.
JC: Yeah. Well, everyone has that perception, that you’re drunk and high all the time.
JR: Yes. People just don’t understand. Haha. You don’t need to drink to…
JC: Actually that inspires a lot of my photo projects.

Drinking?
JC: Marijuana.

Do you wanna talk about it?
JC: Sure. Yeah. Like one of my famous photos, that people are familiar with, is one with the big yellow house.
JR: I remember that day. (giggles)
JC: It was just a complete stoner idea, and I can’t wait for the summer because I wanna do a full house series of people like that. I think a lot of ideas come from being stoned with your friends, and saying stupid shit, and it actually works.
JR: I remember laughing, and saying something like “Imagine if there was a milkman in front of the house”.
JC: Yeah… And if Jon is naked in the window…  (Reminiscing and giggling)
JR: So ridiculous.

Maybe you should do one per drug.
JC: Giggles. I don’t do drugs. I only smoke pot sometimes.

But you can talk to “others” that may or may not have.
JR: I don’t do drugs.
JC: I don’t do drugs.
JR: We’re both like… hmmm.
JC: I don’t though. I drink a lot of wine. Wine is my drug of choice.

Does wine make fancier photographs?
JC: When I’m on a shoot and I have a bottle of wine, and a Bob Dylan or Sam Cooke record, I know it’s gonna be awesome.
JR: And it’s gets sexier.
JC: Yeah, it gets sexy.

Do you usually put music on?
JC: Yeah, always. I hate hearing myself breathe when I’m shooting. It’s the worst. It makes everything so awkward. And for the model too, if they’re gonna move and be organic they can’t be hearing their heartbeat.

What’s your secret?
JR: What’s my secret? To life?
JC: Old spice.

If Justin’s is pot and wine…
JR: What’s my secret. Hmm. Oil of Olay, twice a day. What can I say?

You could also try L’Oreal because you’re worth it too. What do you do to get them in the mood?
JR: Like candles and wine, is that the mood we’re talking about?
JC: Yeah, what do you do to get actors in the mood?

Do you dance?
JR: I usually, dance, yeah.

Well, you know everybody has rituals.
JR: I guess there is no secret. With the last film we did, we just improvised and tried keeping a happy vibe. It was all improv. It was ridiculous. We just shot everything four times, and took the best stuff out. There are no secrets behind Dance is Contagious. Just having fun.

Do you usually have a more extensive rehearsal process?
JR: I’ve mostly done music videos and commercials, but I’ve produced a lot of projects and it’s definitely important.

What do you see in the future?
JR: Our three film projects, and continuing to do the magazine. Just killing it.

Any last words, for the kids.
JR: Content is king.
JC: Stay off the drugs.

About The Lab

The Lab Magazine – released 3 times a year – is dedicated to art, music, photography and film. It is designed to bring the world together through conversations with artist, musicians, filmmakers, actors, photographers and entrepreneurs.

Available Online at
www.thelabmagazineonline.com
Available in Print At
Sophia Books

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