Claude : I've seen this movie, "Elephant". An American movie. You've seen it? In this movie, i've seen it maybe 2 week ago in France, it's a movie from Gus Van Sant, about a drama in a school in which a kid came with a gun and shot other kids there. So this movie is very interesting, because there is no real critics about people who shot. It's more like, the director is trying to follow each kids and just to show us how they live the moment individually. And at the same time, it's a very very slow movie, there are a lot of micro happenings, micro events.

Gaeten : I thought that this movie is too sweet...

Vincent : I've seen a Larry Clark one's.

Claude : "Kids", a famous movie, it's a movie about kids doing skate boarding, and how they live, the relationship between all these kids. Recently Larry Clark made another movie called "Ken Park", it's also a movie about skate boarding. But it's more different kids, it's more about parents and family of these kids. All these kids have in common some very strange families, like middle class family but violent...

Gaeten : It's funny to see the connection between all these new movies from American people, show all these youth in the USA, young people are very desperate. We can feel it a little in this kind of movie. When we were on tour in USA, we fellt this, you know. All these kids live there and after have to find jobs, but it's hard to live there. Now, even if it's the richest and the strongest country in the world.


Claude : It's not really easy life, teenage life, as it is, in France, for example, very different.

Gaeten : On our tour, one month tour in USA, we drove during one month accross USA. When we stopped in a city, we saw a lot of poor people just in the center of a city. You can see that America is not so rich, American life is a dream... I mean it's freedom life but not for poor people...

Claude : There is a big difference between poor people and rich people... I've seen a documentary recently, about black people in USA. It was very sad, because you could only see people who were trying to get jobs. They wanted to work. They were doing the worst job. What they had was few money. They didn't have enough money to pay for the rent, to live, no money. It's like very depressing... America is spending a lot of money for stupid things, you know. It's like, there are some people who need money, but the goverment don't give money. Just cut them. Social helps could be cut really fast... People are getting more and more poor and there are no solutions for them at all.

Gaeten : That's why, when you go there, you have to come back to Europe, especially when you are a musician or an artist, I mean, in France, and also in Germany, you can live as an artist more easily. I think it's good.

Vincent :It's not a big change for now. But in France, the government is on the right wing now. They tried to change a lot of stuffs, and maybe it's going to be America, you know, we will lose a lot of helps.


Gaeten : Maybe not at this point, it's more and more right government in Europe. In France it's right, in Italy it's right... More and more are on the right wing... you can feel that in other countries. This thing changes, because we try to follow USA, try to follow the economic pression... But at the Iraq war, France has the opposite opinion against the war, it's was a good point... But recently they tried to change artists statut in France.

Claude : Because in France, at the moment, there is a special statut for artists. If you can prove that you are making a lot of concerts in a year, then you can have some money back from the government. You give them a little money what you won (as taxes). After a year, you can have some money back. So you can have time to record your album without doing gigs and half money anyway .So that you have time and money, too, to do your art. But at the moment, they want to reduce the money, to give less money...
Gaeten : They give more money to police, because it's right, security. But it's better than USA.

Claude : YES! I think that France is the best country for artists. Now Europe is growing, a lot of small countries are entering in Europe. They want to change the statut cause it was unique in Europe. So France had to be the same level as the others. That's a bad point... But in a way, it's still the best place I think. Now in France, there are people who are fighting against the government and just strike in the street. It means that a lot of people don't want to change everything. Maybe hopefully people will be more into left side for the next election. If the left side is coming back at the government, I'm sure that a lot of things will come back, hopefully. I hope so.


Vincent : Especially good jobs...

Gaeten : All the artists in France are trying to change the things. Yesterday I saw in a newspaper, the 4th of December, everybody who was living in France was supposed not to watch TV, and just go out, in clubs, in theaters.

Claude : To show how it's important to be artists, and how country needs artists. Because even for TV, people who are working for TV, for example. cameraman.. they have the same statut as artists. We need everyone to be all together.

Gaeten : In Europe, and everywhere, there are all those programs like "Pop Star",in which people spend maybe 3 months in a house to become a new star, in this kind of programs, it's strange, because, young people believe that's easy to be a star, and that they can be one in few month but they missed the most important point the artistic one. They just think about fame and money.

Claude : People think TV is a great thing.

Gaeten : In a way, they try to cut art, people who making some music or small movie... One evening, some artists made some actions against this kind of TV shows. Just some kind of demonstration.

Claude : Yes they came on a set with a big banner on which it was written : "Turn your TV off". It was a live prime time show, a very popular program...



Links to the artists:
DAT Politics:
http://www.ski-pp.com