TP: Yeah, but that’s something we have in common, I feel that your home to you is like this shell and I feel this way too. Here’s a secret, [whispers] I don’t really like people [laughs]. I don’t particularly like sharing things with people or having social moments. I feel like you’re the same.
JD: Yeah, it’s because people take advantage, they’ll just keep taking. The more you want to be a nice guy, the more people take, take, take. So rather than be abused, just back up and say, “I don’t need all that.” In fact, all you really need in life is just one friend, you can be nice and polite with everyone, but you can’t be friends with everybody. I love when people from Facebook walk up to me in the street and tell me they’re my friend, I don’t know you!

TP: [laughs]
JD: They all want to tell me they’re my friend.

TP: I also have this feeling that you seem tough, and then sweet, but everything about you, and Kim also, everything seems to be unpredictable. Every time I come to LA, unpredictable things happen, maybe it’s just because Kim is…
JD: Explosive [laughs].

TP: Explosive. We go down Hollywood Boulevard chasing for a pizza and she starts talking to anyone and everyone, she makes friends so easily. Then all of a sudden we have random people round here, like Gus [Van Sant] or the guys from The Dandy Warhols, so I always get the feeling that something unpredictable might happen and that’s something that has a lot to do with you, I think. In your career, you’ve been in so many historic things, you’ve worked with people like Bob Mizer, Andy Warhol, Louis Malle, Serge Gainsbourg, and I have the feeling that it was all unpredicted.
JD: Yeah, people would come up to me and know about me through something else. So I showed up at his place and they kept telling me he was an artist but I didn’t know how art had anything to do with soup. I was a young kid and over time Paul Morrissey became my mentor. To me, these movies they were making were just silliness, they weren’t really movies, but yet they had a big following and people wanted to see me, they wanted to see how I reacted to certain situations. Paul taught me the importance of the films. So yeah, the Andy Warhol thing was an accident, but Paul groomed me and made sure I would be able to react the right way and I allowed that to happen by realising that I needed to get some good information and interact with the world. He also got me ready to go to work in Europe, he didn’t think I’d have any success here. I don’t know why, I think it was mainly because he didn’t want to see me working here in America but not working with him.

TP: Yeah, he was much more your mentor than Andy was, right?
JD: Yeah. Then I went to Europe and got to work with a lot of great directors and film people, really important people. It wasn’t anything I did, I didn’t search them out, they searched for me. So that was pretty fucking cool, you know? [laughs]

TP: Even for me nowadays, I get the feeling that the European artistic scene is much more into something I can give to them rather than the American culture, which is sort of the other way around.
JD: Back then they found me more interesting than in America.

TP: Even now, when you received the medal of honour in Paris [Joe received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012], that’s really cool, that’s hot important.
JD: I don’t know how important it was to me. I didn’t really get it, you know? Nobody gave me a sword [laughs], nobody went like this [pretends to knight Thiago] and knighted me, there was no big ceremony. It was a pin. I think it’s more important to the people who know me.

TP: That’s exactly how you felt working with Warhol, right? Like it wasn’t particularly important to you but it was to them.
JD: Yeah, but it was more important to me when I found out that Europeans love my work, it was a lot more interesting to them than it was to Americans. Americans weren’t into the underground scene, well not at first, it did become successful later on.

TP: Your generation, I feel you guys were doing things that you couldn’t even realise how important they would become… like, maybe doing wrong things at the time was pushing the boundaries of the future. So many times you got naked on screen, the taboos about sexuality and masculinity, all those things, you were pushing the boundaries, but did you realise?
JD: No, you don’t realise it when you’re doing it. Paul knew though and he tried to make me aware of the significance of what I was doing. It was all new to me, I came from a real rigid and strict Christian upbringing, but I was a bad boy and got myself in trouble and things like that.

TP: Is it true that you stole a car and got shot in the leg by police?
JD: Yeah, they’re all true stories. But yeah, Paul always reminded me that these movies – even though I complained because I didn’t feel comfortable with being naked sometimes because I didn’t see the reason for it – would someday show in museums throughout the world and they weren’t some porno movie, they were important. He’d emphasise this to me and tell me not to look at it as something that will be bad for my career, because I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be in movies, I liked doing it when I did it but I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to do. I felt more comfortable just looking after the Factory and taking care of the films, sending them off to be shown, I felt more comfortable doing that rather than being in front of the camera. But Paul kept working with me and kept pushing me, he’d educate me by showing me movies so that I would be ready for Europe and ready to work with those art film directors. I didn’t want to do that, I just wanted to make shoot em’ ups [laughs].

House of Hackney Oriel Mey Meh Lampshade £385

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