ASIA ARGENTO
by maxluvero 

If your father is a very rich man who owns big huge hotels all over the world and you grew up listening to Britney then you have Paris Hilton but if your father is one of the most famous horror film-makers and has killed you many times on the set since you were a child then you can only have Asia Argento.

I'm in this club in Milan where a 30yrs old woman is playing a dj set mixing Sonic Youth, Nirvana, NIN, the latest techno, Los Angeles' local punk bands while her ex-husband is preparing a live gig for presenting his latest album whose lyrics are translations of poets of the Beat Generation made by the legendary Fernanda Pivano. I never trusted famous people sons and daughters taking advantage of their family name but this woman has a sincerity that I can't avoid admiring. She lives between Los Angeles, Italy and now Paris. She's been an actress since a child, she directed two controversial films, she's going to be a model for Mondino, she's a dj and she has posed naked for Bruce La Bruce while pregnant. I go straight to the dj boot more interested in her then on the event of the night and asked her a few question while she looked at me surprised whether she wasn't such an international star and icon for the alternative crowd.

She keeps playing and dancing and says ...tonight I'm only the dj, answers are in the music I play..., so i decide to write a piece for Punk Globe because she s in the spirit for it and handed her my homemade Punk Globe card.

For those who don't know her, who's she? She was born in Italy in 1975 from director Dario Argento and actress Daria Nicolodi, at the age of 12 she acts in

Lamberto Bava's DEMONS 2 and THE CHURCH and she starts to be a rebellious teenager and actress for macabre roles, her favourite movie is THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, she begins leaving interviews in a pure Courtney Love style affirming to hate her family while keep acting also for her father in TRAUMA and THE STENDHAL SYNDROME. She tattoos her own image drawn like an angel on her navel and becomes a trademark. But as she was not interested in the local film market, she looks for the international audience and begins working with Abel Ferrara in NEW ROSE HOTEL and plays with R. Everett in Michael Radford-s B.MONKEY. She-s a trouble girl, she-s the worst bad italian girl, she listens to Sonic Youth and plays with her image for becoming the dark lady that started to attract outrageous filmmaker like Bruce La Bruce that was one of the first to see in her an international star and interviewed her after her first feature as a director, SCARLET DIVA, the experimental story of a young actress directing her first film. The mainstream audience don t like it, neither the critics so she decides to direct only videoclips and concentrate on her role as an actress working with Gerard Depardieu in France and in 2002 in blockbuster-s Vin Diesel and Samuel L. Jackson XXX. She gives birth to Mary Lou and even if married to italian popstar Morgan she leaves for Los Angeles with the baby and falls in love with J.T Leroy. The general opinion is shocked when she declares to have asked for artificial insemination in order to have a child from the transvestite writer, but it-s only a provocation to declare her love for him and the beginning of a two years cooperation that ended in 2004 with her second directed movie based on J.T. ... THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS. The movie sees involved actors like Peter Fonda, Michael Pitt, Ben Foster, Ornella Muti and see lots of famous stars in cameo roles, Winona Ryder, Marilyn Manson. It-s the real story of a mother prostitute that loves to dress her son with feminine clothes and as she-s a junkie she introduces him to the world of prostitution. It-s a low budget film acclaimed by the critics as a small masterpiece and it-s one of the first times that a young woman co-writes, produces, directs and plays, all together. She's now in the cast of Gus Van Sant LAST DAYS a movie about Kurt Cobain's suicide where she co-stars with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and will be in the cast of Maria Antonietta by Sofia Coppola. Although she s an international icon nowadays she still likes to play her music. Before she finishes her dj set I ask her what next and she says>next is tomorrow, I have to dj in Berlin> and I imagine a very exclusive party but instead she will play in a social center where no stars will be spotted and will throw music with anger and a real punk spirit from Black Flag to hardcore german electronica. At home I think, well, she had all these chances because of her name but no!, I-m not convinced, as she-s also very good looking she could be another Paris but she chose to put on images and art, the spirit that many Punk Globe readers share, the spirit of counterculture. There must be something special and not only in her name.