INK UP THOSE HEINEYS, ZENTROPA INTERNS

I occasionally flip through books on corporate branding but I don't really read them because A: they're mostly boring and B: also pretty much obsolete by the time they're out. But I do welcome new thoughts on the subject, like last week when Peter Ålbæk, co-owner of Danish film company

Zentropa

, encouraged all his interns to tattoo the company logo on their asses. He publicly announced that those who complied would have "better looking" paychecks and be first in line for promotions. The Zentropa logo is a snide graphic rendition of a capital "Z," meaning tattooing it on your butt pretty much implies that you've been sodomized by a 2.0 Zorro. When I went to visit, a few Zentropa interns already had it done. Kudos, kids.

It's pretty safe to say that while Zentropa's other co-owner, Lars von Trier, is more of an involuntary lunatic, Peter Ålbæk opts for the obnoxious, deliberate loudmouthed lunacy. When I went to Zentropa to interview

Lars von Trier

for our

Film Issue

, I found that the road directions on the Zentropa site were only 70% accurate--the other 30% was complete nonsense. When Peter Ålbæk walked in on our interview midway through, I asked him about it and he said something like, "Well, we like to screw around with the press." Then he left, only to re-appear minutes later outside our window, to urinate on the garden gnomes on Zentropa's front lawn.

Lars remarked—with a sigh of resignation—that they still have to establish Peter's role in the company, which brings us back to the butt-tattoo issue. If you haven't guessed it already, those are the kind of things Peter Ålbæk does. He's the guy who leads the skinny-dipping at the Cannes festival and the guy who "accidentally" reveals the plot of Lars' new film at press conferences (it happened with Antichrist): a professional ass.

All photos except for the last by Camilla Stephan