Interview with NME.com, February 2001
MAZ'S ARRESTING COMMENTS

MARILYN MANSON has compared his recent arrest for public indecency in ITALY to the media criticism of his lyrics following the 1999 COLUMBINE shootings.

Speaking exclusively to NME.COM last week, Manson blamed his arrest after a gig at the Rome Palaghiaccio (February 5) on the controversy surrounding the Milan trial of two girls accused of stabbing a nun to death. A police raid on the girls' homes uncovered images of crucifixes, pentagrams and, crucially, Marilyn Manson lyrics.

As previously reported on NME.COM, Manson was arrested again the following day in Bologna for public indecency, this time relating to a charge from a show on June 20, 1999 at Imola Heineken Jammin' Festival. No dates on Manson's ;'Guns Gods And Government' tour were cancelled as a result of the arrests.

Manson told NME.COM: "Right now there is a court case in Milan of two girls that stabbed to death a nun, allegedly, and the media has said that they are Marylin Manson fans and they are blaming music, much like in America, and the Columbine shootings. So there was a big controversy about me coming to Italy and to Rome which is a very, obviously, a very religious place.

"I think that they wanted to make a statement by kind of picking on me in some way. I think anywhere else in the world it wouldn't have happened and then the following day in Bologna they came and arrested me with another citation of public indecency from a concert I did two years ago. So they are just trying to pull anything out to use against me."

Asked about his arrest, Manson added: "It looked like 100 police officers. I am not sure how many, but there was a lot." Controversy also followed Marilyn Manson to Poland last week, when the Mayor of Warsaw urged parents to stop their children going to see him in concert.

"I know that in Poland there was a lot of controversy about me coming there because the church was trying to ban the concert," Manson told NME.COM.
"Maybe because the Pope is Polish and there is certain elements of my show which I have been warned I will be arrested for in Poland. Just the religious elements of it, which obviously comprise a big part of what I do. But in Poland the newspapers said I sodomized a doll of the Pope onstage or some sort of nonsense they made up but there was no such thing."

Manson also commented on reports that he was to star in a remake of 'Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory', and said he is still keen to do it.

"I don't know how the rumours started in the first place but a lot of people seemed interested," he told NME.COM. "I finally contacted the people and the script itself is a year away from being finished, but it is a possibility I could do it anyway. It was just a false rumour that I was officially doing it, and I don't think Tim Burton has anything to do with it either, but I still love to have that opportunity to do something like that. Obviously that's a role that I think I could make very interesting. There is another film that I have been asked to do that I might been working with a director from Madrid. He is making a remake of 'Fu Manchu' where he wants me to play the sidekick of 'Fu Manchu', which I would really like to do."