Heyoka Magazine:
Can you please tell me about your background in
performing arts and film?
Marie Findley:
At around the age of 13, I developed
an unhealthy obsession with the actor Tim Curry, in fact, I
still carry a key ring with a picture of him on it. I had no
idea whether he was gay or straight but I was convinced I was
going to marry him. I knew that actors have always found their
obsessive fans a little creepy and would never consider having a
relationship with them, so I thought I would have a better
chance if I met him in a professional situation, where he felt I
was his equal. So I decided I’d become an actress. I threw
myself into my drama lessons and found I had an
aptitude for performing. However when I came to
audition for Drama School – the training ground for
most British actors – I knew it wasn’t right for me.
I had to do a Shakespearean monologue – I chose one
by Hermione, but, the Harry Potter films weren’t out
at the time, and, having had no classical education,
I didn’t even know how to pronounce her name, which
soon became apparent.
I then found a
University in Leicester that had an experimental theatre course.
The students were not regurgitating lines of Shakespeare and
setting Much Ado About Nothing in Nazi Germany, or some such
nonsense; they were creating their own work and performing it in
challenging environments, like the university duck pond! My
audition piece was from a play by Pinter, I was told to perform
it as though I were a mad woman who’d escaped from a mental
institution. I did a fine job and they accepted me on the
course. At around the same time I started making Super 8 films
with some friends of mine. We were the local oddballs, but that
didn’t bother us, in fact we actively encouraged the image and
adopted more appropriate personas – I was Tulip Junkie and my
two friends were Cherry Muffin and Leggy Manana. Collectively,
we called ourselves Lovely Movies but our movies were far from
lovely. Inspired by John Waters, we made films about
cross-dressing serial killers, socially stigmatised cannibals,
inept psychic superheroes and bored, bitchy housewives.
Gratuitous blood, and vomit seeped out of every frame. We even
developed our own puke recipe that would produce a long, firm,
drawn out vomit, rather like a turd.
Marie Findley
Ken
Russell as Dr Calahari
with Marie Findley (alias:
Tulip Junkie), as Nurse ABC
Once I finished university I joined
a small theatre company called Dogs In Honey with Stephen Jones,
the man behind Baby Bird. Whilst we toured with a show called
Aliens 4, I was also developing an ambitious plan for a movie
called Blade Brothers. It was a to be a musical about Siamese
Twins who were champion ice-skaters. Lovely Movies submitted the
script to Channel 4 and it was short-listed for a late night
show. It was then that I realised I might have a modicum of
talent. After securing work as script writers for Ant and Dec –
two lovable Geordies who have done very well for themselves in
the UK, Cherry Muffin (AKA Emma Williams) and I decided to get
an agent. We were signed to comedy agency Avalon, and wrote for
various British programmes, including Smack the Pony. We also
developed a film and comedy show called Afflicktion, which we
took to the Edinburgh Festival. One of the films we were
showcasing was called Our Honeymoon and contained 2 seconds of
erect penis. Because we’d dared to show the sacred sausage at a
public venue there was national uproar and we ended up on a
radio show with a man who is no stranger to controversy – Mr Ken
Russell. He has always been a massive hero of mine – Blade
Brothers had been a rip off/homage to Tommy – and Ken responded
well to the adoration (not like Tim Curry huh?!) He came to see
our Edinburgh show and realised that he could make little
underground films using a digital camera and his friends as
actors, just like the moviemakers we were showcasing. I think he
found the idea liberating. He wanted to be working but he was
always waiting around for project approval and funding. And so
we embarked on a number of projects together culminating in the
feature length film, shot in Ken’s back garden – The Fall of the
Louse of Usher, in which I played Nurse ABC Smith to Ken’s
Doctor
Calihari.
HM:
Weren't you working as a model at some point, what was that
experience like?
Marie Findley: I have never been a catwalk or
editorial model, but I have been a hair model for most of my
life and spent some time with professional models. It’s not a
world I’d want to get into, ironically, I don’t think it’s very
good for your self-confidence. Audrey Evans, one of the other
Mediaeval
Baebes, was a professional model for a while. Audrey is
devastatingly beautiful – she just rolls out of bed looking
gorgeous, while it takes me a solid hour of preening to get even
close. Yet Audrey gave modelling up because she said she was the
oldest, the fattest and the hairiest model on her agency’s books
and she couldn’t live with that.
I have, however, been a life model.
This I have done for many years, and this is great for your
self-confidence. As a life model you pose naked for artists or
art students. If you have any hang ups about your body, you soon
lose them because, on the whole, artists think the human form,
in every shape and size is beautiful. I am a great life model; I
am very still, I can create imaginative poses and I take my work
very seriously, because I feel I am collaborating with the
artist.
. Audrey
Evans
Katharine Blake
HM: How and when did you get into music?
Marie Findley:
When I first met Katharine Blake – the founding member of the
Mediaeval Baebes, she was seeing a friend of mine. I hadn’t
spoken to her very much until I found myself sitting next to her
in the middle of a field at the Phoenix Music Festival.
Katharine had a bottle of cider, and because we are both partial
to the odd drink, we soon bonded over the booze. Katharine was
singing to herself (something that she still does often), it was
a beautiful song and I asked her what it was. She told me it was
mediaeval. Now, this was very exciting news. Apart from wanting
to be an actress I’d also toyed with the idea of becoming an
archaeologist (must be something about the letter ‘a’). I’d
always had this strong feeling that I’d been a peasant, in a
former life, maybe a mediaeval serf toiling the land and pulling
up turnips, and somehow I felt if I took up archaeology, I’d get
nearer to my past. I also have a great deal of patience for
menial tasks – and I imagined scraping away at the earth for
hours on end to find a piece of broken pottery would satisfy my
diligent disposition. In the end, I decided against it –
probably because glamour is pretty high on my agenda, and I
couldn’t see myself spending my entire working life in
dungarees. I expressed my interest in the Mediaeval period and,
without attempting to discover whether I was tone deaf or not,
Katharine asked if I wanted to join her band. Here was the
chance to get closer to my past but in a glamorous way. I said
yes immediately.
HM
: Can
you tell me why you left the band and
what this transition is like for you?
Marie Findley:
I left the band because my boyfriend, now my husband,
was offered a job in New York that he couldn't turn
down. I could have stayed in the UK, but I
had had a relationship with a guy who lived in the
States - our international courtship lasted 4 years, but
it's certainly not an ideal scenario! The Mediaeval Baebes has been such an enormous part of my life and
defined my youth, so it was not an easy decision to say
goodbye. But many Baebes find that when they reach their
30s, life kind of takes over. In fact there is only one
original member left out of the original 12 and that's
Katharine Blake.
When you
say transition, I'm not sure whether you mean adjusting to life
without the Baebes or life in New York?
The Mediaeval Baebes
Maple Bee
HM: I mean leaving
the Baebes?
Marie Findley: When you leave the Baebes there is
naturally a gaping hole in your life but the band itself
adjusts to losing a member very quickly. You are either
replaced, or the other girls sing your parts. This can
be quite hurtful, like one of the other Baebes, Maple
Bee, said to me, it's like breaking up with a boyfriend
and you're suffering terribly and then you see your old
boyfriend and he's got a new girl and he doesn't seem to
miss you at all. The Mediaeval Baebes has a life of it's
own and it seems to go on, no matter what. The band
would not be efficient and effective if it caved in
every time someone departed. And, I think that fact it
carries on regardless helps individual members to move
on too.
The Mediaeval Baebes have always embraced change
and that's an important thing - as long as the original
essence is not lost in the process - the longevity of
the project relies on the ability to adapt. It's too
soon for me to know how much I will miss the Mediaeval
Baebes but I will certainly miss singing on a regular
basis, so perhaps I'll find an outlet
for this in the future. Adjusting to life in the US has
been simpler. I have lived in London for 15 years and I
see myself as a city girl. I'm living in the lower east
side which is incredibly cool, so it's very easy to be
excited about being here. I was forced to leave behind
my collection of stuffed animals (not fluffy toys, but
taxidermy) which was a real wrench, but I've discovered
a shop called Evolution which caters to all my needs. My
husband just bought me the perfect Easter gift - a
stuffed chick, accompanied by a mother hen in skeletal
form, which I think represents the death of Christ and
his rebirth very succinctly! The only real issue I'm
having is with mobile phones - or as you say - cell
phones. The UK is way ahead of you guys, you need to
catch up!
HM: What about the photographic book. Songs of The Flesh that you modeled in and how this idea came
about?
Marie Findley:
In all honesty, I
can't remember how the idea for the book came about. I know that the
Mediaeval Baebes were very keen to work with Vania (can't remember the actual spelling of his
complicated Russian surname). His illustration work was
particularly interesting to us. He did a mock album cover for
the Baebes, but the record company rejected his initial work
because they wanted something more colourful (eventually he
designed the artwork for The Rose but we didn't know that was
going to happen at the time). Meanwhile, I had commissioned him
to do an illustration of me and we became friends. He was
working for a company called The Erotic Print Society who put
out a monthly magazine which included his illustrations. We
still wanted to do something with him, so I think he asked the
publishing company he was working for whether they would fund a
book that contained tasteful nude and semi-nude pictures of the
Mediaeval Baebes. And, I think it was at that point we discussed
the idea of me writing some text for it. Of course, we knew that
a book that contained nude photos would appeal to some of our
male fans, and might bring us new ones, but that wasn't the main
motivation.
We were desperate to
work with Vania and he knew the Erotic Print Society would
publish a book that contained nude photos. I wanted to give the
book a vaguely serious slant also and, inspired by Vania's hazy
, dreamy photographic style, I researched Mediaeval attitudes to
dreams and attempted to interpret our own in a Mediaeval light.
HM:
Do you find photographic modeling different from life drawing,
painting, modeling for artists?
Marie Findley: Modeling for a photographic artist is not so different. It is
still a collaboration and you have to interpret what the
photographer wants to say, but you can be more expressive
because you don't have to hold that look for an hour. Ultimately
the big difference for me, was knowing that I had a reputation
to uphold, and that made me more self-conscious. As a life
model, nobody is interested in whether I am attractive in a
conventional sense, but the photographic evidence in Songs of
The Flesh had to prove I was a Baebe!
For more info visit about the
Mediaeval Baebes visit
