URLYBIRD
TIMES: Tell us about
yourself, Marta.
MARTA:
I'm a native
Pittsburgher living, (no, better make that 'trapped') in West Virginia.
An American born of Serbian parentage but in no way responsible for the
crisis in the Balkans and never have I taken part in any sort of 'ethnic
cleansing'. Mother of three children. College grad with degrees in
communications and philosophy and religion. Work experience includes 17
years in broadcasting, medical claims adjustment, the food and beverage
industry, licensed manicurist (can you dig that?), former new age shop
owner and sometimes psychic consultant, PR rep for The Salvation Army (I
mean can you dig THAT!) and current administrator for a local
organization. I collect gargoyles, stray animals and an amusing array of
books...and of course, there's all this stuff left over from my shop
laying around here! I'm very much into computers, software and all that
other geeky stuff....I love to cook, read and I've really been getting
into gardening these past few years. Dream interp is a passion. And as a
carryover from my days as a radio rocker, I do love music and have a
weird collection of that as well. I think that's about it, Urlybird.
URLYBIRD TIMES:
Hardly!!! |
HARDLY,
INDEED!!!
MARTA
IS A LIVING LEGEND!
| "Yes,"
humble Marta reluctantly admits. "It's likely you've seen my
face on the big screen. My first film was THE TROUBLE WITH
GARGOYLES. I played like this head nun at a nunnery and I think
all the student nuns, or whatever you call them, are bad girls
always making trouble behind my back, getting into all kinds of
mischief like raiding the refrigerator at night when we have a hard
and fast policy of no snacking after meals. If all the nuns snacked
when they wanted to there'd be no food left! Anyway, it turns out
it's the gargoyles! Yes, the nunnery is this really old building
that has these gargoyles on it and it turns out they're alive! They
teach me the meaning of fun and games and pass on to me the red
slippers that belonged to the former head nun who knew all about the
gargoyles too but no one else had a clue! When the tornado comes at
the end of the film everybody thinks it picked up the nunnery and
plopped it right down on me, but as it turns out I'm just pulling
their legs cause those aren't my legs sticking out from under the
nunnery at all. They're prop legs and when the student nuns try to
take off my red shoes me and my gargoyles leap out and surprise
them. And that way we prove that the student nuns are really
heartless if they were going to take my shoes just because they
thought I was dead, and we kick them out and have the nunnery all to
ourselves. That's about it." |
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Marta's
role as a nun was so successful, especially as a nun on a bike, that
in her next film she was featured as a progressive motorcycle-riding
nun, this time in white.
"I
didn't like this ad when it first came out," Marta says. "It
looked an awful lot like the ad from my other movie. But then they
pointed out to me that the motorcycle was pointed left, and I could
see what they meant, that the two posters had nothing in common
whatsoever." |
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WHERE
HAS OUR FAVORITE NUN BEEN THESE PAST SEVERAL YEARS
AND WHAT IS SHE UP TO
NOW?
"It
was rough on me at the time, but THE SINGING SULLIVAN SISTER
SHOW wasn't the success that THE TROUBLE WITH GARGOYLES
was. It had nothing to do with me, but after that I couldn't find a
role. No one had anything for me. Then one day, out of the sky blue,
I got this call from Quint Tarentino. Did I know who he was? Of
course I knew who he was! Needless to say, after what his cousin,
Quentin Tarentinto, had done for that Fonzie guy, and Samuel
Jackson, I knew the stars were shining down on me again. He said he
had just the vehicle for me. A role that would really give me an
opportunity to stretch my acting muscles. I accepted without even
looking at the script. Then when I saw the script, I was a little
upset I was a nun again, and that I didn't even have a nice convent
with gargoyles but instead I rode around in a small Ice Cream Truck.
I didn't see the point. What did it mean? Turns out Quint has a beef
about city sound ordinances, and he just wanted to piss some people
off. He says, 'Who has the right to tell me what I can and can't
listen to, and when I can listen to it!' I wanted to sue and back
out of the role but my attorney advised me that I'd never be able to
win. Now, I see how fortunate I was that I didnt sue. Because I
wasn't happy with the script I was given, Quint rewrote it in less
than a day into something truly phenomenal. The story is about a nun
who had taken this vow of silence, then had this child and so the
child never heard anyone speak, and she grew up and made her living
selling ice cream and wasn't really a nun but was dressed like a nun
because she just had her mother's hand-me-down habit to wear, and
she couldn't talk but she could sing all these songs from musical
comedy because those were the only records her mother listened to,
and the girl found when she was out selling ice cream that she
needed to be able to communicate because even if she was telepathic
and could know what flavor ice cream people wanted, there were a lot
of kids who couldn't read the signs to know what varieties of
flavors she offered, so she made her own language out of the songs,
kind of chopping up lyrics and melodies to form sentences. Then she
meets a widower who has all these children who have been following
her all around the neighborhood like she's the pied piper or
something, and the next thing you know there are all these sound
ordinances and they're fleeing over the Alps from some futuristic
fascist society in the ice cream truck. The film is an underground
critical success. It's too bad Quint hasn't been able to get it
released in the theaters, but it's doing quite well on video. Have
you seen it?"
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AVAILABLE
NOW, ONLY THROUGH BIGSOFA PRODUCTIONS,
IN COOPERATION WITH THE URLYBIRD
TIMES,
MARTA'S NEW, CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MUSICAL COMEDY ROMP
"THE
FAMA SISTERNIS!"
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