Interview: Get Mortified's Scott Lifton
Hey, it’s not shameful if your Valentine’s Day didn’t turn out exactly as planned. Craigslist doesn’t always deliver
What's the most mortifying thing you've encountered in this project?
My mother reading my diary entry about me almost stalking a girl in high school
How many years must pass before people can actually laugh at themselves?
About 7
Do you keep a journal now?
No
Has the Mortified project changed the way you look at teens today?
Yeah...I realize how we are universally fucked up, confused, and lonely..How our sphere of influence is so small when we are younger and everything seems larger than life...I also realize that although most
of us look back at our teen years as the best time in our lives, most of us were really depressed then, yet even in that depression we felt a more intense kind of life both in the ups and downs..In some ways I kind of miss it, In most ways, I don't
If you could go back and redo your teenage years, what would you do differently?
I wouldn't have been so damn shy, and I would have learned an instrument and other language
Who is on the line up for the 16th/17th
It’s a mostly doomed valentines show, so expect hopeless crushes, embarrassment, and awkwardness... This show features:
Sacha Rothschild: A nice Jewish girl leaves her private school for the public junior high schools of Miami only to enter a world of drugs, sex, and crime.
Nic Arzen: A coming out journal of a man who can’t even tell his diary that he's gay
Ian Fratar: A real hootenanny of back woodsy love poetry
Cindy Picara: A horny 17 year old's search for love or at least a kiss in trashy novels
Ahli Lewis: Inside the love/hate mind of a beauty pageant queen
Amber Milner: True story of a 6 foot 2 awkward 15 year old girl who cant fit in and her spiral descent into depression and horribly bad poetry
Myself: A male point of view on falling in and out of love in a week\
If you can't make the live show, you can always buy SFist's new favorite Coffee Table read: Mortified
Name
Scott Lifton
Introduce yourself in one sentence:
I'm Scott, I'm one of the producers for the SF Mortified... do you
have any diaries?
Age and Occupation
31 Producer
Home Town
Nanuet, New York
How long have you lived in the Bay Area and Where
8 Years (with 2 short stints in NY and LA). I've lived in Nob hill-2 weeks with my ex's sister, Lower Haight- a one month sublet at oak and Steiner, and a 2nd time around at Hayes and Fillmore , Upper Haight, sharing with a place with a girlfriend and some craigslisters at Hayes and Ashbury, The
Mission- 16th and Guerrero so much damn noise with the buses,drunk bar smokers, and drunk homeless, Sunset- 14th and Noriega-PARKING!, Alamo Square- top of a mansion, Nopa- this is the hottest spot in the city right now. Why? I moved out with an ex after college for no reason except "why not", and despite many attempts, I've been unable to leave
Favorite place to spend time online
www.getmortified.com(Is that a shameless
plug?) and www.liveevilrocks.com ..It's a website that I'm helping to set up for Live Evil, the world’s worst badass metal band. The man behind the band, Laurent Martini performed in mortifed, singing his horrible 12 year old metal songs, and now we are trying to share live evil with the world....Also I'm on http://www.prettycraftything.typepad.com/, my friend Shelly’s blog and craigslist a lot
Favorite local business
826 Valencia for pirate supplies and literary needs,
Say Cheese, the amazing cheese store in Cole Valley
What I'm currently Reading
You shall know our velocity by Dave Eggers
Best Deal in San Francisco
Free sunset parties
Free cheese at the lions pub at Divisadero and Sacramento every night
Favorite mode of transportation
Teleportation
Best Band or Musician to come out of the Bay Area
Michael Franti and Spearhead and Live Evil
Favorite Bay Area Stereotype, and whether or not you buy into it
People are flakey out here, but I love them
Favorite local hangout
Madrone for drinks and dancing, Fritz for fries and dipping
SF has the BEST
People, food, and sex
You've never lived in SF until
Had your car towed because of 1,000 dollars worth of parking tickets
Favorite Bay area politician of past or present
Big Gav
Now that Mayor Gavin is single, who are you going to
set him up with?
My mother
You can tell someone is a local here IF
They know where Bolinas is
SF would be soooo much better if only
Bars, clubs, and solid public transport were open 24 hours
Best Burrito
Mariachi's (Valencia @ 16th)
Best Restaurant
Bix
Best movie scene filmed in or about SF
the scene in Groove that I was cut out of as an extra
Favorite artist to come out of the bay area
Doze
Favorite author to come out of the bay area
Dave Eggers
Place you always tell visitors to check out
Drum circles on Sundays in GG Park, the vowel movement
Favorite Bridge in the area
Golden Gate Bridge
You have two hours and $15 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?
Bottle of 7 dollar wine, maybe bonny doon's big house red, along with some drunken goat cheese, a baguette, and GG park in the summer...otherwise I could spend 2 hours and 15 dollars at Amoeba
I have found/sold/bought the following on craigslist
Beds, apartments, shoji screens, mortified performers
I want all the SFists out there to know
Mortified needs performers like you! Diaries, journals, poems, letters, songs, raps..It’s cathartic and fun..I promise!
Tell us a San Francisco Story
Once upon a time a nice little Jewish NY boy moved across the country to San Francisco. He didn't like his girlfriend but he loved the city. It really took him in and opened his eyes. There was more to the world than bagels and movies. There were other dimensions and past lives, and "energy". He partied very hard and swore he would start a commune with his friends in Costa Rica. He had a breakdown and moved back to his old buddy NY, but he could never get San Francisco out of his mind. He would hear people saying its name as they walked by on the street or at dinner. He moved back a year later, worked on a local comedy show, SUTN, and met an amazing girl. They were friends. He left for L.A with dreams of film producing and editing grandeur, learned about a show called Mortified...Learned he hated L.A in 5 months. He realized that career is not everything, and the places and people and food that he loved the most were here in SF. He came back for what he swore would be the last time, started producing a local show here. Fell in love for perhaps the first time and moved in with the aforementioned girl and drank wine and ate lots of cheese.
Question you'd ask if you were doing this interview
What’s in your fridge right now?