In a recent interview for movie-buff blog /Film, Pinky discusses the new TV Carnage DVD, Let’s Work It Out, his super-secret production techniques, and the sport of the 80s (cocaine). Read the entire interview below.

-SBTVC
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In college, it was unwritten law that a house party wasn’t worthy of House Party unless you woke up and stumbled past a TV turned upside down in a puddle of fluids as it resiliently played a TV Carnage DVD. Such DVDs were the new late night color test for stupid-smart wasteoids, an aughts cult sensation that arrived in the shape of legit packaging and artwork with names like Casual Fridays and A Sore For Sighted Eyes. All anyone knew, or cared to know, was that the DVDs were the obsessive, homemade works of a guy named Pinky; a person who didn’t seem to grasp “copyright” while composing and editing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of bad TV/VHS into hilarious masterworks of sublimation.

As TV Carnage’s popularity grew, the signature ski mask of Pinky was lifted. An online search today will inform that Pinky is Derrick Beckles, the filmmaker and actor whom /Film readers might recognize from Truth Campaign commercials. One of the founders, alongside Gavin McInnes, of the irreverent Brooklyn site, Street Boners and TV Carnage, Beckles recently directed a music video for the song, “No You Don’t” by the band Islands. It just so happens to star TV Carnage mega-hearter Michael Cera. With his latest DVD, Let’s Work It Out, due mid-January, TV Carnage is going full-cardio. Imagine the neon sweat from ’80s work-out videos by celebs ranging from John Travolta to O.J. Murderer blasted into a hall of mirrors, sucked into a syringe, and then stabbed into your brain’s abdomen. Beckles chatted with /Film and exclusively gave us the first trailer. It’s all splattered below for your weekend enjoyment.

Hunter Stephenson: Hey Pinky. Without revealing the guts of your interior process, can you describe how long it took you to compile the footage for Let’s Work It Out? And how long have you been editing it? I heard you have hackers working for you who sit around a giant clock just like James Cameron…

TV Carnage: I do all the editing myself partially because I am a control freak and partially because I have something in my genetic code that allows me to watch endless hours of horrendous ideas. I have interns that help occasionally but I see them shorting-out after about a month of helping me cull through this brutality. The last one was watching [an exercise VHS] called Week with Raquel and left my house half way through. She texted me saying she was at home barfing and I never saw her again. I know it’s all worth it when I can achieve those sorts of things.

When I started this DVD it was intended as a break from Cop Movie, a cinematic Hot Rod I’m welding together from the scraps of one hundred and twenty cop movies, with the intention of having some sort of arc and storyline. I thought, you know, “What a quaint and quick side project that will introduce my new line of thematic monstrosities.” Well I’m happy to report I was as wrong as the definition of that word could legally allow me to be. I have since watched five lifetimes worth of humans bend, stretch, curl, squat and crunch.

Admirable. In your opinion, what were the ’80s criteria for celebrities to make that precocious leap from Hollywood to work-out videos? Who had the best thighs and the best health-glow skin of the ones in Let’s Work It Out? I’m guessing it’s between Sugar Ray Leonard and Estelle Getty…

Well, I noticed that the videos were mostly motivated by the desire to work out peoples hands by having them rap there thumb and fingers around money and hand it over. I think in most cases the exercise was in the purchasing and returning of these things. There is also the aspect of people on the rise who want to let the world know they exist or plan on sticking around, like Alyssa Milano and Sandy Duncan. Then there are the people who use them as a foray into getting serious roles, like porn stars Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn Allen. And then there are medical professionals like Cher and O.J. Simpson. Oh. And there are a shitload of maniacs and mental deficients. It’s a more than perfect well toned, self-involved universe to explore. And there is the movie Perfect with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. And on annnnnnndddd on.

Fuck! Perfect. Have you ever seen a bootleg of a TV Carnage DVD on the streets of New York or Canada?

I don’t think they would know how to start describing it. Their sales pitch would be half sentences and, “umms.” And that face you make when someone rips the kind of fart you can taste.

Do you agree that “bodybuilding was the sport of the ’80s” and if not, what was?

I think coke was the sport of the ’80s. A lot of very sinewy nostrils thanks to the ’80s. The guy from Let’s Work It Out who claims “everyone calls bodybuilding the sport of the ’80s” is a horny doctor chap and the video he made and stars in comes across as a swingers ad. It’s really weird. You get a little horny and very worried when you watch it. You start looking for the nearest exit in case he jumps out of the TV and starts licking your neck. There are the weirdest crotch shots and women with massive hair shoving their cans into the lens with strained workout faces. It’s like watching someone take a dump in lingerie.

Um, gross. Would you agree that Let’s Work It Out is about sweaty positivity as your previous video, A Sore For Sighted Eyes, was about a paranoid connection between Rosie O’Donnell, John Ritter, and kittens?

Let’s Work It Out is intended to remind people to get out their and be active, eat well and treat their body like a temple. I’m so excited to get this thing out because if they follow my regimen there will be a lot of mutants with bodies that look like Dali was their personal trainer. A Sore for Sighted Eyes was about sensuality and mind control. Cats posing like Marilyn Monroe having their dresses blow up by the air escaping from a saxophone. You can quote me on that. I am also finishing up Cop Movie. And Totally For Teens, which the fake “Best of a Teen Show For a Teen Show” that never existed. I did for it Adult Swim and it’s being discussed with Comedy Central for a series. Tell your readers to give it a watcherooni!

Click Here to watch TOTALLY FOR TEENS!

-HUNTER STEPHENSON

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