Digging through the cooling embers of lost interviews from press circuits of a forgotten purpose, PBS has been doing God’s work by curating the Blank on Blank series, which animates raw audio of interesting interviews with interesting people. The subjects featured within have been as noteworthy as they get, from David Bowie to Meryl Streep to Heath Ledger, with the topics and animation meandering around in any direction that the participants please.
Ledger here is relevant, as he discusses the complicated process of role playing in his Blank on Blank interview, some years prior to his time being consumed by the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight. One of his supposed sources of inspiration for that role was Tom Waits, who takes on a halfway-hilarious, halfway-terrifying persona in interviews, and never more so than in his new Blank on Blank installment, taken from 1988.
At the time, Waits was promoting the Big Time live album and movie, and was in subsequent top form while talking with Chris Roberts, landing on a variety of Waits-ian topics, such as the brilliance and bravery of Stonehenge moles, smoking reefer beside stained glass windows, and capturing your ideas with a safari rifle and telephoto lens.
Listen to our Tom Waits Booze Menu Playlist.
(via Rolling Stone)
