GWAR & Mark from Empire Records meet again in very funny Riot Fest interview

After GWAR were announced on the 2019 Riot Fest lineup, one of their old victims — Mark from 1995’s Empire Records, aka actor Ethan Embry — tweeted, “I see GWAR is added to the hellscape of Riot Fest. I have a 25 year score to settle with a gluttonous virgin eating worm.
See you in Mud City GWAR!”

Now, Riot Fest has published an interview between Mark and GWAR’s Balsac the Jaws of Death — moderated by comedian Anya Volz — where they try to settle the score, but things quickly go off the rails, and multiple hints are dropped that Mark will just have to come to Riot Fest to settle it once and for all. Here’s an excerpt:

EE: This is off the fly. I guess I didn’t know the shit I was stepping into. I, Ethan, was just excited to see—I guess I’m a little late, because they’ve been playing there every year for the past decade—that GWAR was going to be at Riot Fest. And I thought “How fun would that be, to go up and watch GWAR and get covered in blood and shit again?” And, uh, I guess I didn’t understand the power of Twitter beef. I had never been involved in a Twitter beef—and I think you also combine the power of an intergalactic entity such as GWAR with Twitter beefs, and you end up where we are now.

JDG: This is a very typical let’s-blame-it-on-the-media-type stance that you Hollywood people always take. And you’re just afraid to admit it, you know? You were trying to start something with GWAR, and you didn’t think that we’d come all the way from Antarctica to Chicago to stand in front of you and slaughter you in front of the whole crowd. And that’s what we’re gonna do.

EE: What’s the name of your worm again?

BJD: The World Maggot. How did you survive the World Maggot? Because many people saw you die in Empire Records. You were devoured by it.

JDG: Ooo, ooo! Balsac! I know the answer. Cinemax did a little side-moonlighting a while back, and we did a little thing with Ethan Embry and the cast of Empire Records up in New York. And at that event, put on by BBQ Films, the World Maggot actually spit him back out. It was just an awful taste.

And here’s another gem:

[Anya Volz:] Your issue seems to be that you think this “Hollywood-type” can’t put his money where his mouth is, and you want to eat the vessel himself this time—or let the Maggot eat it.

BJD: I just want to devour Mark’s head, because I think there’s enough residual THC from those hash brownies he was eating in the 80s to get me high.

[Anya:] So it really sounds like you just wanna get high.

BJD: That’s pretty much the whole reason any musician starts playing music.

And one more, where Balsac suggests killing Liv Tyler:

BJD: I think we’ve got a similar beef with the editors of Empire Records. They both made us look a little foolish, you know? They made Oderus sound like some kinda clown, they made Mark look like he couldn’t play guitar, it was just—

[Anya:] A common enemy. This is wonderful!

BJD: Yeah. We can team up—

JDG: There we go! Balsac with the ideas!

BJD:—And kill Liv Tyler! Wait.

EE: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

JDG: What about the store owner? That guy was a douche. Let’s kill him.

You can read the rest of the very interview here. And get tickets for Riot Fest, in case a GWAR/Empire Records reunion really does happen. Full lineup here.

And revisit the classic Empire Records/GWAR scene below…