WORDS AND PHOTOS BY PEGAH FARAHMAND

Left: Richard shows off his mounds. Top: Sydney gets ready for her toothbrushing scene in Milan. Bottom: Richard and the Great Glass Elevator.

Last summer, Richard Kern came to Europe and did a tour of sorts for his popular VBS show,

Shot by Kern

. Along with director Jim Demuth and myself, Kern visited London, Barcelona, Milan, Berlin, Antwerp and Paris, and took photos and video of lots of semi-nude girls mucking around in bathrooms, bedrooms and in the great outdoors.

The highlights of the tour have now been made into a series that you can watch on VBS to your heart’s content whenever you’re ready. To draw attention to the fact that this series is now ready to watch, Richard talked to Jim and me about the trip and we made it into a magazine article with some photos. This is what you are looking at now.

Jim Demuth:

OK, I have a question. Richard, I heard that you have a bizarre morning routine that goes something like this: “You wake up, grab a beer, grab a rear, shave your beard, and put on some scene gear. Then you try to get drunk before your mum wakes up. Then you break up with your girlfriend so you can bang sluts.” Is that true?

Richard Kern:

Very funny. I haven’t listened to that since last summer. Hollywood Undead rules.

Pegah Farahmand:

Yeah, why did you only play really bad nu-metal when we had lunch? What are you listening to now while you eat?

Richard:

Howard Stern when I’m eating. Whenever I don’t have to think I listen to talk radio. I hate thinking.

Jim:

Yeah, thinking sucks.

Richard:

This is some interview.

Pegah:

How’s your raw food diet going?

Richard:

I just came back from the mountains between the Ukraine and Poland and I ate some form of ham or pork with every meal including breakfast. Now that I’m back in NYC, it’s raw food two or three meals a day. When my kid is here, we eat meat. I tried to get burgers for lunch today but my kid wanted “sushi”. What’s the world coming to?

Jim:

Food was a big theme of the trip. What was your favourite meal?

Richard:

My favourite meal for lunch was in Milan, although I think I got the squirts from some of the weird fish I ate there.

Pegah:

What about when we ate the sour balls in Antwerp? I got a good photo of you munching on one.

Richard:

I love balls.

Pegah:

What were your highlights of the trip?

Richard:

Well, I liked shooting Sydney in Milan, Cecile in Paris and Mary and Julie in Paris. The shot of Cecile smoking pot in that park in Paris sold all but one print so far at the exhibitions. That was probably the most popular.

Pegah:

Jim had a soft spot for her.

Richard:

I wouldn’t call it soft.

Clockwise from top left: Richard asked the girls to get involved in some house gymnastics; Richard “loves balls” too, apparently; a wall of macabre artefacts in Lydia Lunch’s house; Laura in Barcelona just before she pulled a whitey.

Jim:

What about the Sicilian girl in Milan? That felt pretty uncomfortable for me.

Richard:

The girl who wouldn’t wash her boobs in the sink? That girl was crazy. I threw a fit like I haven’t thrown in years. I think it was her dad calling while we were shooting that did it.

Pegah:

You hate it when the guys in their life start getting involved, right? Although with Lucy from London, her boyfriend came along and seemed pretty nonplussed by the whole thing.

Jim:

Her boyfriend signed her up for it!

Richard:

Sometimes the boyfriends are good, sometimes bad. One girl came here from Russia with her boyfriend and was all into it, then he ditched her here in New York the next morning and took her passport and money. She didn’t speak English. I told her to go to the Russian embassy and, in true Russian fashion, she found some guy to help her within two hours.

By the way, in the British episodes of the show, I was so jet-lagged and out of it, I didn’t really know what was happening. It’s pretty noticeable in that episode I think, although Keex and Lucy were great to shoot.

I wish I could have shot Laura in Barcelona when she threw up after smoking pot. These days when I shoot a girl smoking, I shoot video after they are really high. I should have done that on the trip, the smoking pot thing. That’s another thing that’s sort of weird. I’m getting these teen girls over to smoke pot. I’m like the creepy old guy in the neighbourhood that all the kids go over to his house to do drugs ’cause he doesn’t care. I think everyone knew someone like that when they were growing up.

Jim:

What’s the all-time most insane girl you’ve ever shot?

Richard:

A girl wrote to me from Japan. I said, “If you’re ever in NYC, let me know. I’ll shoot you.” Two days later she called: “I’m here.” She came over. I noticed lots of scars on her arms. She said that she cuts herself a lot. I said, “I’d like to shoot that.” She took a shitload of drugs like roofies and other psycho drugs and sliced herself to shreds here in my house. I videotaped it and photographed it. The whole time I was thinking, “This is sick.” There was blood everywhere. Then we’re done and she didn’t want to leave. I think she thought we had a deep connection but I was thinking, “Get me out of here.”

Pegah:

I think my favourite memory was when we had lunch with Lydia Lunch.

Richard:

Oh yeah, it was great seeing Lydia. What was weird was I’ve seen her in several apartments over the years and they all look exactly alike inside. Like a place a serial killer might live.

Pegah:

Richard, you know you’ve taught Jim a rare talent?

Richard:

What is that? Rapping?

Pegah:

He can smell when girls are on their period now.

Richard:

That’s an unfortunate talent. It will plague you everywhere. On the street, in the subway…

Pegah:

Remember when we played that game on the Eurostar where you had to name as many words for boobs as possible. You said you could go through the whole alphabet and have a word beginning with each letter. What are your three favourite words for boobs?

Richard:

My top three: boobs, mounds, tits. Oh wait! I also like fun-bags.