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Harry Smith (Host): In the year 2033, water is the world's most valuable commodity and it's controlled by a bad guy. That's the premise of a new movie, "Tank Girl," based on a British comic book series. Malcolm McDowell is the bad guy Kesslee, and Lori Petty is Tank Girl, the only one who will take him on.
Host: Malcolm McDowell and Lori Petty join us. Good morning.
Malcolm: Good morning, Harry.
Lori: Good morning, Harry.
Host: Did it ever occur to anybody before to cast you as a bad guy?
Malcolm: Oh, so early and so smart. No. It's just this face. What can I tell you? With a nose like mine, you know...
Host: Oh, my goodness. And you have to explain, if you will, who Tank Girl is to people in America who have never seen this comic book before.
Lori: Tank Girl is this post-Apocolyptic, funky, sexy, silly hero/heroine. She smokes cigarettes and drinks martinis. And I kill Malcolm about five times. He keeps coming back.
Host: And then in the end you end up sort of hanging out with a...
Malcolm: Some kangaroos.
Host: Yes, right.
Lori: Well, they're half-kangaroos...
Malcolm: Ice-T.
Lori: They're half-kangaroos and half-people.
Host: Half--exactly. Right. Kind of mutant sort of things. And you play the bad guy who runs the corporation that controls all of the water
Malcolm: That's right. The water. Which is the gold standard. That's currency at that particular time. It's the kind of movie that, you know, you park your brains at the door, you go in with a thing of popcorn and you just have a good time, hopefully. You know, it's that kind of movie.
Host: There you go. It was very comic-booklike and there's a whole--in terms of its effect and feel and the animation in it and--and all of that other stuff. And I sat there and I thought, 'I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before.'
Lori: Yeah, that's one thing, if you go to the movie, whether you love it to death or hate it, there's nothing like it. You've never seen anything like this movie before. So it's worth just the experience of the mixed medium and the madness and...
Malcolm: It's not a good movie to go and have a snooze in.
Lori: No.
Malcolm: It's so loud. This music is like--isn't it? You love all that.
Lori: I love da-na-na.
Malcolm: It's all this sort of--What do they call it?--grunge from Seattle.
Host: Yeah.
Malcolm: You know, that kind of noise is that...shut up. It's grunge...
Lori: No, go ahead.
Malcolm: Isn't it grunge?
Lori: Yeah.
Host: Is--is he right?
Lori: No. It's a mix of alternative...
Malcolm: Oh, sorry, alternative, grunge.
Lori: Every like three months the word changes.
Malcolm: Oh, right. Excuse me.
Lori: See, now it's alternative.
Malcolm: Oh, OK.
Host: There you go. Well, we can understand how you got cast as this bad guy because you've done it a--a time or two in--in the past.
Malcolm: Yes, I know. I know.
Host: But my question for you is: How did were you cast as Tank Girl?
Lori: Well, just like every other movie, when they send you the script and you look in it, and then there was this picture of her--this drawing of her, I just cracked up laughing. She has a shaved head, and a Band-Aid and a smirk and a black eye, and she's just real sarcastic and silly and mean and at the same time--I just took the picture--I walked in I said, 'Tank Girl, Tank Girl.'
Malcolm: She dressed up in this stuff.
Lori: Yeah.
Malcolm: She went in like another actress did for "Batman." Remember that one?
Host: Oh, right, right, right.
Malcolm: Was it Cat Girl or something?
Host: Right.
Malcolm: So she went in the studio with a sort of safety pin in her...
Host: Flesh hanging off here.
Malcolm: Yeah, really. And a piece...a little--you know, plait hanging off her hair. She went in and said, 'I am Tank Girl.' That's what she did.
Lori: Yeah, I held them hostage.
Host: Thanks very much for coming by to share the story of this movie with us this morning.
Lori: Thank you.
Malcolm: It's a pleasure.
Host: Who should go see it?
Lori: Everybody should go see it.
Malcolm: Well, not my mother, for God's sake.
Host: Mine either.
Lori: My mother. My mother will like this movie.
Malcolm: She'll have to switch her hearing aid off, that's for sure.
Host: Thanks, guys.
Lori: Thank you.
Host: Do appreciate it.
Malcolm: Mm.
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Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net