The Reptiles View of a Utopian Society

Have you ever-noticed how bad interviews with models are? Seriously, there is a reason why they’re on the cover not in print. Although to be fair, it’s hardly the model's fault: it’s the questions people ask them. We’re not sure when they became spiritual guides but that’s the way people speak to them. We’re not here to talk to models though, so we thought we’d test some of the most bizarre questions asked to model to Joel from Reptiles. He’s good on guitar, but how is he on the nature of beauty itself?

Noisey: Would you rather be extremely successful professionally and have a tolerable yet unexciting private life, or have an extremely happy private life and only a tolerable and uninspiring professional life?
Joel Cornell:**** I work at my family business and I was having a chat to a chick that works with me about the measures of success in western society and how we are too success driven. I think I’d rather have an extremely happy private life and be unsuccessful. I’d rather be happy.

Describe beauty.
Beauty to me, I know it sounds fucking cliché as shit, but beauty can be seen in literally fucking anything. Even something really sad. Beauty has to involve purity for me, something that isn’t manufactured and isn’t, ah fuck beauty.

What's your vision of a perfect society?
Jesus. I don’t know, I don’t know a perfect society. Western society is so fucked up. I haven’t seen much else so I don’t really know what it could be like. Utopian societies are always bad on sci-fi films. It can’t be something really, really, really, really perfect there has to be something fucked up. But we’re really fucked up now, and I used to care but now I don’t care. Put that in your book.

What were your dreams as a child?
I used to have this book, I thought about this recently, I used to have this book that I would get my mum to read to me called I Want To Be Famous. It was this kid and he’d be an astronaut or like a rock star and I’d drawn all over it. I think maybe I wanted to be famous, not that I want that now. When you’re a kid you want to do what people you respect do and the reason is, not that I thought about this as a kid but now I see it, the reason is that those people followed their dreams. That’s why I liked musicians and rock stars, it’s because they wanted to do that and they did it.

What would be the first thing you would do if today was your last day?
Heroin.

Really? Have you ever done it before?
Never.

Did you enjoy school?
I miss being at school. When I was in high school I went to a private, well-to-do school in the bush in Warrandyte, it was part of a Carmelite Order. I was pretty disillusioned at high school and I didn’t understand why we were there and why we had to do shit. So I fucking hated school, but I miss being at school.

If you could have two celebrity parents, who would they be and why?
Gary Busey and Nick Nolte. I’ve always wanted to get those two in a room together, because they look similar. I’ve actually always wanted to do a film where they play twins and Gary Busey is really sane and professional and straight, and Nick Nolte’s fucking crazy.

So you guys have recently been away?
We were in America for a few weeks, which was pretty intense. When we went to Mexico, they wouldn’t let our car cross the border because we didn’t have the right type of number plates. We had to leave our car in Texas and walk across the border with all our stuff. So there are like, thousands and thousands of people trying to cross the border, and we were at a particularity non-touristy border, there were no western people around, nobody spoke English. At this time apparently the wait to get into America at the border was 48 hours, so there are families there that have been waiting for two days in their cars with their whole lives packed up and we’re there with our guitars and our bag looking pretty good by comparison. Anyway, we get there and we get on this little shitty bus that went through the mountains. It would’ve taken us an hour to get there by car but was going to take us on the bus. Then these dudes got on the bus with like machine guns and shit, and asked for our passports. Most of them were in civilian clothing so we didn’t realise they were check-point military. Luca was asleep and they woke him up and he just shat himself. Anyway we made the festival and that was really good.

And then Texas after that? You guys played SXSW?
I didn’t really rate SXSW, you can have no one at your show and then you can have like 100 people, it’s horrible, it’s just too full on. But we’re tying to get a bit more of a presence in America. We’re going to do another album and maybe go to Nashville to record it this year.

If you have any life questions for the Reptiles check them out at our Noisey shows this month.

14 May at Goodgod in Sydney with Oily Boys and The Friendsters

15 May at Lounge in Melbourne with Constant Mongrel and Repairs