Stolen Nova and Charlie Denis on Beauty, BDSM, and “Lauren Bacall”

After heading the LA skate-rock band Easy and performing as a guitarist and vocalist for stoner-punk trio The Shrine, Josh Landau is ready to go solo. In the trippy, transportive music video for his sexy new single “Lauren Bacall,” released under the moniker Stolen Nova, Landau trades Los Angeles for London with the help of his friend Charlie Denis. The UK-based director conceptualized the video as “a trailer to a movie that doesn’t exist,” taking Landau on a richly saturated tour of a debauched fantasy of London, darting through call girl card-plastered phone booths and the London Underground, cheekily renamed “The Underworld.” To celebrate the song’s release, we asked Landau and Denis to answer some rapid-fire questions about their favorite bands, one night stands, and life on the road. 

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INTERVIEW:  Where are you now?

JOSH LANDAU: In my car, about to go surfing at this spot where the rich people have a private gate to the beach so I gotta walk, like, 30 minutes down the sand to get to it.

CHARLIE DENIS: In London, eating McDonald’s.

INTERVIEW: Where do you want to be?

LANDAU: On top of a wave.

DENIS: In New York City, eating McDonald’s.

INTERVIEW: What did you have for breakfast?

LANDAU: Coffee and mushrooms.

DENIS: This is my breakfast.

INTERVIEW: How many hotels have you been kicked out of?

LANDAU: None, because no matter how much trouble I get in I know how to talk my way out of it.

DENIS: More hotel bars than hotel rooms.

INTERVIEW: Who do you have a shrine of?

LANDAU: Edvard Munch, Tony Alva, Phil Lynott. 

DENIS: The only shrine I have is one of toilets. When I left home, I stole this toilet ashtray my parents had since the ’80s, and I’ve since collected them in various forms, including a Hot Wheels car and a tattoo on my arm. The urinal mounted to the wall in my bedroom can get confusing at parties.

INTERVIEW: What’s the last thing you stole?

LANDAU: A phone charger at the airport.

DENIS: Conveniently, a toilet roll from a hotel room.

INTERVIEW: Black Flag or Black Sabbath?

LANDAU: When you’ve had one for breakfast and the other for dinner for so long, you need some Hendrix for lunch.

DENIS: Black Flag.

INTERVIEW: What was your best one night stand?

LANDAU: I woke up in a stranger’s bed with a beautiful girl. She didn’t live there either. We were across the street from Sherlock Holmes.

DENIS: Probably the one that I don’t remember too well.

INTERVIEW: Favorite Monty Python movie?

LANDAU: Flying Circus…that’s what we used the most as inspiration for the “Vortex” animated music video.

DENIS: The Meaning of Life. I’m feeling like Mr. Creosote right now.

INTERVIEW: What inspires you?

LANDAU: Hustlers, renegades…

DENIS: Homoeroticism, machismo, male prostitution, Hollywood, the illusive relationship between images and their contents, angels, cowboys, trash, violence, rats, palm trees and death.

INTERVIEW: What turns you off?

LANDAU: Milk chocolate…I like dark. Being stingy, fake excuses, laziness—also being too fearful or shy without reason. I think everyone is afraid to get up in front of the class and speak, so just forget about it and get on with it. 

DENIS: Over-enthusiasm.

INTERVIEW: What are your beauty secrets?

LANDAU: Black coffee, dark chocolate, red wine.

DENIS: Photograph yourself in a way that makes you look beautiful.

INTERVIEW: What’s the secret to life on the road?

LANDAU: I think Bob Dylan said, “Keep a clean nose and always carry a lightbulb.”

DENIS: The secret to life is being on the road.

INTERVIEW: What do you do when no one is watching?

LANDAU: Sing Frank Ocean songs.

DENIS: Eat.

INTERVIEW: Do you like being watched?

LANDAU: Yeah. I love the rush. I usually perform better.

DENIS: Yeah, unless I’m eating. I think Warhol’s ANDY-MATS (“restaurant for the lonely person”) idea makes a lot of sense. In fact, I think we should switch the privacy aspects of eating and using the bathroom and make restaurants restrooms, and vice-versa.

INTERVIEW: Are you a voyeur?

LANDAU: Sure, but then I usually like to get in on the action too.

DENIS: With neighbors like mine, it’s hard not to be. Nobody on my high street has blinds. There used to be a couple directly opposite us that we nicknamed “Will and Kate” because they seemed to have the perfect prim and proper relationship. Every morning Will would walk around stark naked, and we began to think he was too good for Kate. Above them, there’s an older gay couple that have regular BDSM sex parties.

INTERVIEW: Fuck, marry, kill: Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall?

LANDAU: Yes, absolutely, and definitely. 

DENIS: Fuck Humphrey Bogart, marry Greta Garbo, stream “Lauren Bacall.”

INTERVIEW: Why can’t it just be magic all the time?

LANDAU: I think it is magic all the time. Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna turn a corner and someone is gonna stick a gun at me and be like alright that’s enough the game’s over, get in the van, you’re going to boring land.

DENIS: If it was magic all the time the concept of magic wouldn’t exist and I’d be out of a job.