epic:

smeg

black-good is the new white-good. SMEG dishwasher and fridges.

mayer talks twitter:

Photos: John Mayer (twitPic)

"We were finding other peoples TwitPics. Look at TwitPic.com with a savvy eye, and you’ll see American life at its most amazing. You’ll see through a lens of people you’d never meet. This is my brother Doug. This is. . . I’m taking a bike ride with Eric Childs. It’s ridiculous. I’m trying to find a new frontier for Twitter. There’s an art form somewhere there, I don’t know what it is yet."

John Mayer

yes we cannes

A scant 16 films playing in official competition at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival — far fewer than usual — were revealed at a Thursday morning news conference held at the Grand Hotel. In announcing the lineup, festival director Thierry Fremaux reiterated comments that he's recently made to the media, saying that it has been a difficult year to put together the list of films but that he does intend to add to it in the coming days.

Among the most high-profile films to make the grade are Doug Liman's political thriller "Fair Game" — about the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame incident — starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, and the only U.S. film in the main competition. Ridley Scott's " Robin Hood," starring Russell Crowe, will open the festival out of competition, while Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" was, as expected, given an out-of-competition screening slot.

Other out-of-competition screenings are Stephen Frears' "Tamara Drewe" and Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," which also stars Watts and "Wall Street's" Josh Brolin. Fremaux noted that he had asked Allen whether the film could screen in the main selection but that the competition-shy director refused yet again.

Back in the competition this year is Alejandro González Iñárritu, who last appeared in 2006 with "Babel," for which he won the directing prize. This year's film is the drama "Biutiful," starring Javier Bardem. Iran's Abbas Kiarostami will walk the red carpet with his "Certified Copy," marking the fourth time he appears in competition.

Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano appears in his "Outrage," which marks his return to competition for the first time since 1999. In total, there are four films hailing from Asia in competition, including Im Sang-soo's "Housemaid," Lee Chang-Dong's "Poetry" and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "A Letter to Uncle Boonmee."

Also making a return appearance is Mike Leigh with "Another Year," starring Jim Broadbent. This is Leigh's fourth time in the main competition. Nikita Mikhalkov is also back for the first time since winning the Grand Jury Prize with "Burnt by the Sun" in 1994. The Russian maestro's latest film is a sequel of sorts to that epic, "Burnt by the Sun 2."

By Nancy Tartaglione, Special to the Los Angeles Times

gaga is on the roids

LAS VEGAS - 2010 International CES - January 5, 2010 - PLR IP Holdings, LLC, owners of the Polaroid™ brand, today announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Lady Gaga, who will serve as creative director for a specialty line of Polaroid Imaging products. The partnership brings together one of the world’s most iconic brands with today’s fastest rising musical artist and cultural trend setter, known for her string of smash global hits including Paparazzi, Bad Romance and Poker Face, her fashion forward design aesthetic and her exceptionally close connection with her fans.

Lady Gaga will make a special appearance at the Polaroid booth at the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Thursday, January 7 at 10:45am to talk about her new creative and business relationship with the Polaroid brand.

"I am so proud to announce my new partnership with Polaroid as the creative director and inventor of specialty projects", said Lady Gaga. "The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation--blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era--and we are excited to collaborate on these ventures with the Polaroid brand. Lifestyle, music, art, fashion: I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer, and to as my father puts it--finally, have a real job."

The partnership with Lady Gaga is the most recent in a string of partner announcements by PLR IP Holdings, LLC (PLR), the new owner of the Polaroid brand. In the past six months, PLR has assembled a family of Polaroid partners for product development, marketing distribution and licensing. Building upon Polaroid's rich history, the Polaroid partner network will support fans and users of classic Polaroid products and deliver new Polaroid products to a new generation of Polaroid customers while staying true to Polaroid's long-standing values of fun and simplicity.

New products by Polaroid and Lady Gaga are to hit retail shelves starting in late 2010.

polaroid.com

the re-make

What does Hollywood consider sacred?

With Hollywood hot on the trail of remakes, is there any film that's untouchable?

Producers have yet to move forward with updates of "Casablanca" or "The Maltese Falcon" at Warner Bros. And if Ridley Scott truly likes epics, why not have him try his hand at "Gone With the Wind?"

For now, studios are steering clear of the classics, for a myriad of reasons, and instead finding new potential in overlooked or failed concepts of the past.

The politics surrounding a project can play a significant part in remake decisions. For example, it wouldn't make sense for Fox to attempt a remake of "Titanic" anytime soon, says one insider, because the studio is still in business with James Cameron, and most of the original execs are still on the lot.

By contrast, something like the Coen brothers' upcoming remake of "True Grit" is far more palatable. With 40 years having elapsed since the original, Paramount didn't have to worry about politics with past execs or its original helmer coming into play.

Then there are the broader expectations that films are expected to deliver on these days. Classic titles aren't necessarily classic brands, which can sell on multiple platforms.

"You look at a lot of the titles being made today, many of them are moving toward youth like "Conan" or "(He-Man and the) Masters of the Universe" where there is a lot of revenue, says one producer. "Classics like a "Casablanca" don't carry that type of brand."

Money issues and the right creative team also can make or break a remake deal."Studios are never afraid of offending anybody, but they are afraid of losing money," says an agent. "If the right actors and directors aren't banging down a studio's door to get something made, then no studio is just going to give such a project to a fresh-faced USC grad."

Still, some classic projects have surmounted the hurdles to get a modern makeover, but wound up helping to make the case that such concepts need to be carefully considered in the first place.

Fresh off the heels of his "Good Will Hunting" Oscar nomination, Gus Van Sant and Universal decided to take on the Hitchcock classic "Psycho" -- in a shot-by-shot remake, no less. Crix were not moved and auds hardly showed up at the box office.

Sony saw potential in remaking the 1949 best picture winner "All the King's Men" with Oscar darlings Sean Penn and Kate Winslet in the leads and "Schindler's List" scribe Steve Zaillian helming. But the pic was rescheduled from a December 2005 bow to a September 2006 slot, and after receiving lukewarm responses from critics, auds passed.

So, unless the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet start banging on Warner Bros.' door to do a remake of "Casablanca," auds will have to make do with the Bogie and Bergman original.

By Justin Kroll

Coachella 2010

The three-day Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival came to a close just before midnight Sunday, bringing to an end a weekend that placed rock, dance, hip-hop and electronics on equal footing. It only took closing act the Gorillaz about 10 minutes to tap into each of those genres.

The evolving band-art project -- what originally began as a partnership between Blur's Damon Albarn and comics artist Jamie Hewlett -- was at its most expansive at Coachella. Albarn acted as a composer and a conjurer, directing a mini symphony and waving his arms to inspire flashes of synthesized and electronic sounds. The Gorillaz -- aided by Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, anchors of what was once one of England's most ambitious bands, the Clash -- were, in many ways, the most perfect of Coachella bands.

The weekend played host to superstars such as Jay-Z; pop weirdos including MGMT; and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, a legend in the making taking bold experimental leaps as a solo artist. Beyond the headliners, however, were a range of offerings, electronic paranoia (Fever Ray) as well as sweet vintage pop (She & Him) and blues revivalists (the Dead Weather), and that's just scratching the surface.

The Gorillaz view all such styles as ripe for picking, and one would have been hard pressed to find another band on the Coachella bill so eager -- and apt -- at diversifying its sound. "White Flag," off the recently released "Plastic Beach," is an elegant mix of ethnic sounds, hip-hop, modern electronic effects and an occasional symphonic flourish.

Watching it stitched together on the Coachella stage was fascinating. A mini-band using old-world and Middle Eastern instruments was wheeled to the front of the stage, Simonon, with his bass below his waist, stalked out a dub-inspired groove in the corner, and Albarn directed violinists to strike while waving the pennant referenced in the song's title.

LA Times

Avalon Coastal Retreat Tasmania

Avalon places its guests within a living work of art, a Tasmanian crystal palace, one of elegance and light.

Award winning architect Craig Rosevear says that his steel girder and glass design is a resolution between the practical requirements, comforts of a home and the natural beauty of the location.

Avalon is built to surround you in the natural beauty of this place in luxurious comfort.

"The dramatic site on the ocean side of the Tasman Highway ensures this will remain one of the state’s most recognisable dwellings. Thankfully it is a project handled with care and commitment by the owner, and uncompromising skill by the architect"...Extract from the citation by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects(RAIA) given upon receiving a 2005 Residential Award in Tasmania.

Black Edition

We’re all familiar with the fashion crowd’s fixation with black, but if you’re also obsessed with watches, check out Black Limited Edition, a series of vintage stainless steel Rolexes turned into “Tron”-like collector’s items. Alejandro Alcocer, a watch fanatic and design entrepreneur who has previously delved into skateboarding, catering and handbag design, followed the legend of a black watch supposedly released by Rolex in the late 1960s for the Royal British Army soldiers stationed in South Africa. It was thought that only 500 were made, but Rolex never confirmed their distribution and they became the holy grail of watch collecting. So Alcocer decided to make his own, with the help of a Pennsylvania-based company that had previously done contract work for the U.S. Army but had fallen on tough times. Aside from the dial and crystal, which remain in vintage original condition, the watches were transformed into matte black beauties using highly specialized chemical applications. Black is the new black, and I’m feeling for the Rolex redux.

NY Times

BOCA CHICA

Old Acapulco is finding inspiration these days in its glittery past. The latest retro revival is the Hotel Boca Chica, a ’50s era hideaway that gave birth to the margarita and sheltered John Wayne and his Hollywood cronies. Reopened a few weeks ago by Grupo Habita — the ultrahip owners of the Condesa DF in Mexico City, among other culty hotels — the Antonio Peláez-designed property has 36 minimalist rooms tucked away in a quiet cove beneath pink and white modernist bungalows that spill down the seaside cliffs where Rita Hayworth shot scenes for “The Lady From Shanghai” (1947) and Elvis filmed “Fun in Acapulco” (1963).

Every room has a private terrace with a hammock, and in the Sunset suites ($275), folding louvered doors open up the entire room to the gardens and the warm sea breezes of Acapulco Bay. It’s like living in a treehouse. From here you can spy on all the comings and goings of guests sunbathing by the pool or having cervezas under the giant thatched roof of the restaurant. Speedboats and yachts moor in front of the hotel to order sushi rolls and sashimi-to-go from its Japanese restaurant, a reinstated feature from the ’50s.

For the tri-level spa, Tanya Hughes and Jason Harler, the consultants behind the wellness center at the Standard in Miami Beach, looked to traditional folk medicine and treatments for inspiration. They installed chilled and wood-fired Japanese Furo tubs, where aroma-infused ice blocks are periodically melted; an aroma steam room with a giant fishbowl window that faces the sea; and a heated Turkish hamam slab where therapists administer scrubs and massages. Candlelight fills the cavelike rooms, which are open to the elements and create the atmosphere of a mellow bathhouse hangout rather than a posh by-appointment facility.

In the immediate neighborhood are street markets selling straw hats and T-shirts as well as family-style restaurants like La Cabaña on Caleta Beach. Up the hill from Boca Chica are crumbling midcentury houses, and it’s pleasant and poignant to stroll past and observe their romantically melancholic state, consumed as they are by unkempt palms and unruly flowering vines. This side of Acapulco belongs to Mexicans, a satisfying fact if, like me, you’re traveling here during spring break. I feared I might be surrounded by drunk college kids with vomit in their blond highlights. But that group vacations farther up the bay in new Acapulco. This place is has always been — and hopefully will always be — about seclusion.

NY Times T Magazine

Pizza Goes Global in LA

It may boast an Italian heritage, but pizza is now claimed by South Americans and South Asians alike, not to mention Croats, Israelis and Armenians.

Brami's Kosher Pizza in Reseda bakes the impossible. Somehow stuffed inside a thin disc ofmalawach — a Yemeni flatbread as dense and flaky as a hundred layers of phyllo — is a pizza. Mozzarella oozes with each bite from between the crisp sheets of dough, bringing with it tangy crumbles of feta, diced tomatoes and briny green olives. At its edge, the crust is pinched into an almost pastry-like braid, sealed just well enough to contain that cheesy filling.

There are traditional kosher pizzas on the menu — rabbinically approved reproductions of the classics — but at Eli and Shelly Brami's restaurant, themalawach pizza is a creation apart. It's as Israeli as it is American, a unique melding of culinary concepts that reflects the cross-cultural pizza boom spreading across Southern California.

Just as certain city blocks contain the cuisines of a half-dozen different countries, pizza in Los Angeles doesn't conform to one nationality — it practically circumnavigates the globe.

There are South American pizzas shaped by decades of Italian immigration and Croatian pizzas forged along the shores of the Mediterranean. Korean and Japanese corporations have taken to testing their unique interpretations of pizza on L.A.'s international appetite. And some foreign pies defy classification altogether, labeled as pizzas by restaurants and diners searching for a simple descriptor. It's all part of the naturalization process.

A purist's definition of pizza might not apply among such diversity. Take for instance Guelaguetza's clayuda, which some refer to as Oaxacan pizza: a parchment-thin tortilla smeared with asiento (rendered pork fat) and black beans and topped with cheese, lettuce and slabs of meat spread across the tortilla like continents cast off into separate hemispheres.

Others consider the lahmajune from 60-plus-year-old A. Partamian Bakery to be Armenian pizza. The flatbread is completely covered with a ruddy, gamey mix of ground lamb, tomatoes, bell pepper and spices and baked until it borders on blackened. Unlike some more brittle versions made elsewhere, lahmajune from the West Adams shop is as pliant as a New York slice.

These are inexact incarnations — pizzas not by birth but by adoption. Still, there's credence in such classifications. At Pasadena's Old Sasoon Bakery, the Georgian breakfast flatbread khachapuri can't help but recall an oblong, egg-topped pizza. The Geragosian family's Armenian-by-way-of-Syria bakery produces a superior version of the canoe-shaped staple, capped with a blend of Middle Eastern cheeses and a cracked egg. Drag a piece of the khachapuri's billowy, bready crust through the egg to release a tidal flow of yolk that flavors every inch of this morning meal.

Pizza-like mankousheh at Forn Al Hara in Anaheim also blurs boundaries. Fresh out of the oven, its crust is charred and blistered with pockets of air as taut as overinflated balloons. When it's cooked with cheese and sujuk, a peppery, cumin-shocked beef sausage freed here from its casing and transformed into a meaty spread, the Levantine flatbread shares more than a passing resemblance to pizza.

Maybe it's just another unpredictable result of globalization, but previously pizza-less countries have developed their own distinct creations. Waves of Italian immigration brought pizza to Argentina, and Mercado Buenos Aires imports that South American style to Van Nuys. Each slice of its Buenos Aires pizza is crowned with a piece of cured ham, a sliver of roasted bell pepper and a single green olive.

Costa Mesa's months-old Il Dolce Pizzeria highlights another pizza of Argentine invention, the fugazzeta. From owner Roberto Bignes' wood-fired oven comes not the typical focaccia-like fugazzeta, but one with a chewy Neapolitan crust, airy at its edges and thin as a pane of glass at its center. The powerfully simple fugazzetais sauce-free, spotted with milky patches of house-made fior di latte cheese and blanketed with julienned sweet onions and a dusting of oregano.

Sometimes it's all about the sauce. So it is at Dean's Pizza in Long Beach, a true fusion that's part Thai restaurant, part pizzeria. Its parallel menus are mostly kept separate, but there is one notable intersection: the Thai curry pizza.

Dean's uses a red curry sauce redolent of kaffir lime and lemongrass that burns with a subtle, creeping heat. Curry pizza here can be constructed virtually to anyone's liking, with a choice of toppings (think pepperoni and pineapple) or without them altogether (the lactose-averse can order the pizza without cheese). Try reconstructing something close to a traditional red curry with a pizza of chicken or tofu and bell peppers.

L.A. has also become a testing ground for foreign pizza chains informed by the strip-mall standard American franchises that have set up shop abroad. But don't expect pedestrian localizations of Pizza Hut. Instead, inspired overseas entrepreneurs have been taking the basics and building them into peculiar pizzas that go beyond the boundaries of convention.

Seoul-born Mr. Pizza Factory's Koreatown branch is the only one of its kind in the U.S. Consider the bulgogi and seafood pizzas first, but ultimately opt for the Potato Gold: potato wedges, bacon, corn, crushed tortilla chips, cheese and a drizzle of sour cream. It recalls a plate of potato skins you might find at a sports-bar happy hour until you reach the layer of sugary sweet potato paste buried deep within the doughy crust. It's a bracing surprise.

Similarly startling is Strawberry Cones, a Japanese chain that recently opened its first U.S. restaurant in San Gabriel. Its early signature might be the teriyaki mochi chicken pizza: a rice-flour crust covered with cubed chicken, red onions, mozzarella and Romano, teriyaki sauce, a squirt of mayonnaise, shards of dried seaweed and mochi, squares of glutinous rice superheated until they can be stretched like cheese.

There's also a line of "ninja pizzas" whose crusts are colored a pronounced gray by powdered chikutan, Japanese bamboo charcoal regarded for its mineral richness. On the salmon and avocado pizza, the chikutan crust tastes a bit like the sea air that swirls above a beach bonfire.

Until recently, you could even find Filipino pizza, multicultural pies topped with fatty pork sisig, Spanish sardines or chicken adobo. But don't take its disappearance as a sign of waning pizza popularity — there are more global offerings on the horizon.

San Pedro's Pavich's Brick Oven Pizzeria is about to open a second location that owner Zdenko Pavic hopes will start cooking by May. It will have not only dedicated seating but also an expanded menu to complement its mammoth Croatian pizza laced with purplish ribbons of Balkan smoked beef.

Also coming soon is Bella Vista, a Brazilian pizza buffet on track to open this month in Culver City's Brazilian Mall. As owner Marcelo Gomez describes it, the restaurant will operate like an all-you-can-eat churrascaria, with waiters bringing dozens of different pizzas straight to the table until you can take no more. Among the Portuguese-style pies and seafood-intensive slices, it might be the dessert pizzas that prove most distinct, concentrating on fruit-focused pairings like banana and cinnamon and guava paste and cheese.

However you slice them, these international interpretations of pizza, each more unexpected than the last, prove that in Los Angeles, the world truly is flat.

By Miles Clements, Special to the Los Angeles Times

April 15, 2010

TODS SPRING SUMMER 2010

you can't escape the tween

A mass of hyper tweens swarms a small auditorium in London’s Science Museum. They have been waiting outside on a cold January night for an hour and are extremely eager for things to start. In miniskirts, lace tights, and sparkly headbands, with bracelets piled high and cell-phone cameras at the ready, close to 200 girls shuffle in, giddy with anticipation and oblivious to the occasional boy in the crowd. The fans of Justin Bieber have only one boy on their minds: JUSTIN is boldly written on one girl’s forehead; another has J.B. scrawled on her left cheek. Some hold up handmade signs with devotional love letters. Many are furiously text-messaging, no doubt flaunting their imminent dream come true to less fortunate friends doing Sunday-night homework. When will he be here? “Justin! Justin! Justin!” they are chanting. And it is deafening.

A fresh-faced former hockey player from Stratford, Ontario, Canada, Justin Bieber, 16, has emerged as the pop prince of the Twitter generation, able to fill Madison Square Garden with squealing pubescents, as he did for a show this past December. Unlike Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers, Bieber is not a Disney creation but a self-styled Internet sensation, a YouTube meteor who was discovered in 2007 after he posted dulcet covers of songs by Stevie Wonder, Ne-Yo, and Usher. That tender moxie caught the eye of his current manager, hip-hop executive Scooter Braun, who signed Bieber at age 13—and then attracted the attention of Usher and Justin Timberlake, who engaged in a bidding war for the budding superstar. Usher won, and Bieber’s debut EP, My World (RBMG/Island Def Jam), released in November 2009, broke Billboardrecords and went platinum within two months. Even the president wants a piece of him. “It’s the only time I’ve ever been nervous to perform,” Bieber says of playing for the Obamas during the holidays in Washington, D.C.

This London show is an intimate one for Bieber, marking the U.K. release of My World.Wearing a black leather jacket and skinny gray jeans, Bieber slinks onstage, conscious of but not overly cocky about his Tiger Beat prettiness and ultrasmooth moves (he actually has a “swagger coach”). Girls go wild, hugging one another with an excitement verging on evangelical fervor. A bodyguard steps in to keep the hormonal advances at bay, but Bieber flirts with the worship, stepping out into the audience and causing one fan to weep merely by touching her hand. Bieber seems unfazed, poised, proud.

Backstage, sitting around a table with various handlers, who take turns keeping him entertained, Bieber says he likes closely interacting with his fans but admits that the hysteria can at times be over the top. For example, last November he was forced to cancel an appearance at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field mall because the throngs got out of control. Teenage girls are obviously . . . “Crazy!” Bieber pipes in. His hit songs like “One Less Lonely Girl” and “Love Me” fuel obsessively tweeted adolescent fantasies, and his looks don’t help ease the madness—those big brown eyes, that mop of perfectly swept hair! “I don’t style it. I just blow-dry it and”—he pauses and tousles his hair—“kind of shake it,” he says with a charming Southern twang, acquired since moving to Atlanta to propel his career as a recording artist. He has a house there, a step up from his childhood bedroom, where the walls were plastered with posters of Beyoncé. “I’ve been totally in love with her since I was seven. She kinda broke my heart when she married Jay-Z,” he says with an adorably wry smile.

Bieber is prone to self-reflective pronouncements that toy with maturity: “I haven’t been in love yet. I’ve definitely loved girls. But it’s kinda like puppy love. It’s not the real thing, but that’s what you think at the time.” He is still very much a kid, however, restlessly shredding a napkin and throwing the scraps at his manager, excitedly cracking jokes about Chuck -Norris, and breaking into spontaneous dances. “I leave the hip thrusts to Michael Jackson,” he teases. He picks up his Gibson guitar and starts playing to his entourage, including his stylist, his musical director, and his father, Jeremy Bieber.

(Justin normally travels with his mother, but this week he’s sent her to a spa and his dad is -stepping in.) “Down, down—let me teach you something,” he instructs his father, who is -accompanying him on another guitar. They rehearse a song from Bieber’s new album, My World 2.0, which is out this month and features contributions by Ludacris, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, and The Dream. The songs will be—shock!—“mostly about girls, again,” the boy wonder says. “I want them to hear my music and wanna play it again because it made their hearts feel good.”

So what exactly is Bieber’s ideal world? “I want my world to be fun. No parents, no rules, no nothing. Like, no one can stop me,” he says, and then repeats it. “No one can stop me.”

Interview Magazine 2010

Ashton Kutcher

How Ashton Kutcher is pioneering a new kind of media business, bridging Hollywood, technology, and Madison Avenue. Really.

I've walked into the middle of a swine flu outbreak.

"Here, put this on!" Ashton Kutcher bounds from around the corner in his loft-style Hollywood office, wearing a paper face mask and holding another one. "You can choose whether to wear it or not, but we all are. We can't afford to get sick!" Within seconds, I am surrounded by a fast-moving herd of masked Flip-cam marauders, filming my every move. Perched on the stairs. Popping out from the office kitchen. Uh-oh. "Seriously!" says Kutcher, with a goofy grin around his mask. "Swine flu!" He points to the mask in my hand. Punked and defeated, I put it on. "Awesome," he laughs.

I've walked right into an episode of Katalyst HQ, a Web-based video serial that puts the staff of Kutcher's production company, Katalyst, through a loosely scripted, hopefully funny parody of its workday. The current 16-week "season" is sponsored by Hot Pockets, the savory pastry item whose creators want us to "eat freely," unencumbered by a knife and fork. (Truly. The brand manager told me that.) The program is a collaboration between Katalyst; Slide, a Web company founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame; advertising titan Publicis Groupe; and Nestlé, which owns Hot Pockets. It has been a huge hit, with millions of reposts of the videos on Facebook, each one reaching an average of 65 friends.

"There is nothing really like this out there," says an obviously thrilled Mike Niethammer, Nestlé's group marketing manager. Niethammer, who reviews the script concepts, chuckles at the report of my punking. "I did throw out a Hot Pockets mention," I say. "Nice," he laughs.

The Katalyst HQ series illuminates what Kutcher's production company wants to become: not just a home for his television and movie projects but also a go-to source for brands looking to deploy what's called "influencer marketing," a squishy hybrid of entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation that finds its audience via video, animation, Twitter, blogs, texts, and mobile. "Entertainment, really, is a dying industry," says Kutcher. "We're a balanced social-media studio, with revenue streams from multiple sources" -- film, TV, and now digital. "For the brand stuff, we're not replacing ad agencies but working with everyone to provide content and the monetization strategies to succeed on the Web."

Kutcher, 31, is not exactly the image of a business visionary. He's still best known for his eight seasons as Michael Kelso, the pretty-boy lunkhead from That '70s Show, and as the executor of cringe-worthy celebrity pranks on the hit MTV show Punk'd. (Not to mention his marriage to Demi Moore.) But his future, Kutcher insists, will be all about business. He intends to become the first next-generation media mogul, using his own brand as a springboard. "Punk'd is part of who he is," says Sarah Ross, Katalyst's director of new media. "We're using his brand as a syndication system."

If this all seems far-fetched, hang in there. Mask off, Kutcher holds forth nonstop on his multiplatform plans. He talks of Web trending, content pirating, and the fact that Twitter has yet to make any money. "If we in this industry don't figure something out, we're going to go the way of the music industry and be cannibalized by the Web," says Kutcher. "It's really a war to make money."

It's not just talk. Some 3.9 million people follow Kutcher on Twitter (@aplusk), and he has nearly 3.3 million Facebook fans. Those numbers have helped attract corporate clients beyond Nestlé -- including Pepsi and Kellogg -- and supporters such as Oprah, Larry King, and former News Corp. No. 2 Peter Chernin.

Kutcher and his partner, Jason Goldberg, spent the better part of two years courting the wizards of Silicon Valley, converting them from teachers and skeptics to friends and allies. For all their pranks, Katalyst's digital division can claim one thing most other social-media businesses can't: profitability.

The episode I walked into has a Thanksgiving theme, and Kutcher tells me he plans to let loose a live turkey in the office. "Then everyone will be worried about bird flu!" he says. This from a future media titan? Still, even if Kutcher turns out to be more style than substance and Katalyst doesn't become the Next Big Thing, Kutcher's experiment points toward a new model for the evolving media business that connects Hollywood, tech, and Madison Avenue. No kidding.

The Flip cams have left the room. Kutcher is making the case for his business. And he can barely keep still. He begins by taking jabs at the companies that have fueled him in the social space, specifically Twitter and Facebook. And he's pretty funny about it, even if he's also sorta serious. "When I have a conversation with someone and they say, 'I'm not worried about monetization yet,' that scares the shit out of me," he says. He's poking fun at social Web companies that run up their user base without regard for how they're going to make money. "I'm part of an industry that is struggling daily. Daily. And I'm always worried about the numbers." He jumps up, turns his Cubs cap around, and tucks his legs underneath him before plopping back down. "You cannibalize this business" -- he waves at Hollywood -- "a profit-positive business that trades at a decent multiple, and you're just going to put people out of work. And these folks are counting on just figuring it out. And if they don't, we're fucked! That's not okay."

Then Kutcher does a spot-on impression of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: "I can sell a more-targeted individual based on the content that you want -- blah blah." He laughs at my reaction. "Fucking awesome, dude. Go do it. And make a ton of money off of that, and I'll make programming for that all day. But nobody is actually doing that."

Next rant: ad agencies. "For years, the ad business has been happy to have a completely ambiguous accounting system that they've been monetizing off," he says, referring to Nielsen ratings. "Now that the Web offers a slightly more granular dollars-and-cents audience-acquisition metric -- now they're going to get completely granular about how they're getting money?"

What the Katalyst team is planning, he says, is simple: Make entertaining stuff, give it to people where they already are, let them have some fun with it, and mix in brand messaging. And because of the viral nature of the Web, each new consumer is cheaper to win than the last one. "The algorithm is awesome," Kutcher says, sounding simultaneously sophisticated and adolescent. "Katalyst is a merger of three industries," he goes on, settling into an unexpectedly credible argument. "A piece of us is connected to ad agencies. Because we get the complex overlay of the social Web, we know how to engage an audience and how to make entertainment for the social Web. And we know how to gain and activate and retain an audience. So we create social networks for brands."

This is the way things are going, says Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. "Katalyst is way out on the leading edge in terms of thinking this stuff through," he says. Katalyst steps into the gap left by ad agencies that gave up on the Web after the dotcom bust. "Banner ads aren't going to cut it," he says. "And media companies have not been creative or aggressive about making products designed for engagement marketing. Now that's changing, giving brand advertisers a new way and reason to buy."

Garrit Schmidt, who leads the experience design and client-strategy practice for digital marketing firm Razorfish, agrees. "People are discovering that experience matters more than traditional advertising now," he notes. "Using celebrity as a personal sphere of influence is an interesting [distribution] model." Of course it's risky, Schmidt adds, because the more commercialized personalities become, the less influence they have. Kutcher acknowledges this: "I am consciously risking my career on the edge of what's too much information. Eventually, we'll open up this platform to others, just like Facebook and developers. For this to work, it has to be open."

Jason Goldberg's office is rapidly filling with toxic fumes. "Either this is a staff revolt or part of an episode of Katalyst HQ," he says, blinking and talking fast. His office floor has been covered with hundreds of Styrofoam cups, filled alternately with motor oil, red wine, vinegar, and what is rumored to be Kutcher's pee. Door closed, the stench is impressive. The evil twist: The cups are paper-clipped together, making them nearly impossible to remove efficiently and cleanly. Goldberg gingerly steps around them to take a call from his 1-year-old daughter and actress wife, Soleil Moon Frye. (I can follow her at @moonfrye, he tells me cheerfully.) "You should see what they've done to my office," he says to his wife. To me, he remarks, "You don't want to prank the prankster. I have their Social Security numbers." I smile conspiratorially, wishing I'd held on to my mask.

Goldberg comes by his pranking credentials honestly. When he and Kutcher founded Katalyst in 2000 to capitalize on Kutcher's growing '70s Show appeal, their first project was Punk'd, which lasted seven fun-filled seasons. Their pitch -- a bunch of short-form, quasi-reality-based videos -- had been kicked to the curb everywhere before MTV gave them a shot. "If I had to do itall over again, I'd take that show straight to the Web," says Goldberg. "Short form is perfect for the Web, for people who want to consume and share, but also create content."

The partners decided two years ago to get serious about understanding the Web. They took on their first investor, a New York outfit called Prime Capital, and became semi-regular Southwest Airlines commuters to the Bay Area, attending tech conferences, taking meetings, and earning the techie rite of passage: getting called out on Valleywag ("incomprehensible videos"). They debuted their first Web-only property, the gossipy animated series Blah Girls, at the annual TechCrunch 50 confab in 2008. The characters poked insidery fun at Web stalwarts like Jason Calacanis and Mark Cuban -- "the industry pit bulls," jokes Goldberg.

About a year ago, Kutcher and Goldberg persuaded Sarah Ross to join as head of digital. Ross, a Web 1.0 veteran, spent 10 years in marketing at Yahoo and has five startups under her belt. When it comes to tech, "Hollywood always misses," she says, perhaps recalling her days at Yahoo under Terry Semel. "You've got to invest the time to become part of the community, and you have to earn Web cred." While Kutcher did his best -- "Ashton would hang out and talk to engineers and bloggers who reach, like, six people," Ross notes -- she brought formidable Valley contacts: Andreessen, for one, and PayPal cofounder Levchin. "I had Max Levchin come down and speak to the group," she laughs. "The boys had no idea what he was saying, but they were riveted." Goldberg calls the event "an out-of-body experience for our crew."

The digital team's most visible success on the social Web to date is its complete and utter domination of Twitter. (Kutcher says @aplusk "is Ashton plus Katalyst. It's both." Very savvy.) Ross explains, "We decided that when we hit a certain reach and traction on Twitter with Ashton, we would test the notion of creating a social movement there." Ross consulted with Ray Chambers, a longtime friend from her Yahoo days who is also special envoy to the UN for malaria. Was there a way to use Kutcher's Twitter profile to raise awareness for the upcoming World Malaria Day? Could the effort connect people to something tangible, like a bed net to save a child?

Chambers pointed Ross to a small organization called Malaria No More, which he'd cofounded with Chernin. "When Sarah came to us, we knew it sounded cool," says Malaria No More's CEO Scott Case, a founder of Priceline.com, "but we weren't sure where it would go. We worked together to build out a framework, which we started testing in March with Ashton." It turned out to be ideal: First, it had a simple, twitterable message -- "Every 30 seconds, a kid dies of malaria. Nets save lives" -- and an affordable call to action: $10 buys a net. The goal was to drive people to Malaria No More's Web site to donate.

But the Katalyst team decided to up the ante. At that point, @aplusk had 750,000 followers on Twitter. Using Kutcher's celebrity as a lever, they unilaterally launched a race against CNN -- the next-most-popular Twitterer -- to be the first to have 1 mil-lion followers. The deadline: April 25. If Kutcher won, he promised to donate 10,000 nets and encouraged other celebrities to give too. "It would either work or I'd be out of a job," says Ross, laughing. CNN, suddenly part of the story, agreed to match Kutcher's contribution, and Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, and Larry King all gave the race airtime. Katalyst and the Malaria No More team hit the Web with videos, tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts. "Our servers melted. We had more traffic in April than the prior 12 months combined," says Case, who consulted routinely with Chernin on strategy. "Everyone who said they'd donate did," he says, sounding very Hollywood. "Diddy, Seacrest, and Oprah -- they all were intrigued by the echo Ashton created." Final tally: nearly 90,000 nets. (Ever the closer, Case says donations can still be made at malarianomore.com.) Meanwhile, Kutcher's own strength in the social-media marketplace was assured; he has the largest Twitter following on the planet.

Malaria wasn't Katalyst's only cause. Around the same time, Ross started working with Kellogg, which was looking for a way to call attention to hunger in America and to what the company was doing to help. For Ross, it was a way to bridge the gap between civic action and big brands -- to show marketers what Katalyst could do. "We provide a content solution for them," she explains. "We can then take that content and syndicate it through social environments in ways that they couldn't buy in those social environments on their own." Like those Facebook ads that no one clicks? "Exactly," she says.

Katalyst brought in Kutcher's wife, Demi Moore (whom he dubbed "Wifey McWiferson" in a recent video), to help tilt the demographics toward women, Kellogg's target. In response to the couple's tweet streams (Moore's Twitter name is @mrskutcher), users submitted short video segments on hunger, which Moore edited into a single video. She also added a bit of news from Kellogg: "We decided to donate one day's worth of production to food banks," says Kellogg VP Kris Charles, roughly $10 million worth, some 55 million servings. The video appeared on Facebook on the Kellogg Cares fan page. "We had 200,000 fans in less than a month, and the vast majority were women over 25," says Charles. "That's the audience we want to reach. And Demi was a great fit for that."

It is Katalyst's work with Pepsi on something called DEWmocracy that may best illustrate the model Kutcher & Co. is after. The first iteration of DEWmocracy was a reasonably successful promotion: a destination site with an animated film made by actor Forest Whitaker, where fans could pick the next Mountain Dew flavor. For the second iteration, Frank Cooper, chief marketing officer for beverages for Pepsi North America, says, "We talked to lots of companies with impressive track records in the digital space." But, he says, "Katalyst had new ideas about where we could find value in the social-media space and how to mobilize large groups of people." The campaign, which runs through early 2010, lets people pick not only the flavor, name, color, and label of new sodas but eventually the in-store merchandising and the ad agency, in an online bake-off. Fans can also submit their own ads. "My theory is, you have to engage the constituency and let them be the voice of the brand," says Kutcher. "I help connect people to the Mountain Dew brand so they can be creative with it."

Cooper reports that Mountain Dew's Facebook fan page grew fivefold at the launch, but says the big win is inside Pepsi. "A lot of senior managers at consumer brands feel like their role is to control the communications around a brand," he explains. They are uncomfortable with the transparency of social media because "people will say negative things about you." What makes him happiest about DEWmocracy, he says, is "the competency we're building throughout the organization in using these new tools. It's a symbol of what's possible within brand marketing at Pepsi."

Kutcher and Goldberg acknowledge that Katalyst today is still primarily a film-production studio. And not all on that end is going swimmingly. Its most recent Kutcher vehicle,Spread, earned a pathetic $250,000 in the United States, although Kutcher says, "We made $10 million overseas, so we recouped." The Beautiful Life TV series was canceled after just two episodes, and Personal Effects, a teary drama starring Kutcher and Michelle Pfeiffer, got little U.S. distribution. For 2010, Kutcher has two major features coming out, and Katalyst is producing what the partners call an "experimental film" that could easily flop. "We're taking a big risk, but we're all about learning," says Goldberg.

Learning continues with their digital business as well. Nate Zegura, a kid out of Cleveland, was recently tapped to do a regular live fantasy-football show on the Katalyst Web channel. "Sometimes I'm on the show, sometimes I'm not," says Kutcher. "We're going to open it up -- but it's still our channel, our audience."

Kutcher bursts back into Goldberg's office, bringing in a literal breath of fresh air and a squad of Flip-cam commandos. "Dude, we've got two names for you: American D-Bag or Stuntholes." He smiles and waits. We all weigh in on the merits of the two names, without being told what they'd be used for. We're evenly split, but Kutcher is leaning toward Stuntholes. "Basically, anything with an S sound before 'holes' is going to be funny," he declares, pleased with the focus group. Kutcher looks at me over the sea of Styrofoam cups: "This is going to be really, really fun. All of it."

Fast Company.com