You are working together with Gottfried Helnwein now, one of the more influential visual artists of our time. How did that come about? MANSON : I met Cyril Helnwein (Gottfried Helnwein's son) at the opening for the movie Resident Evil . Tim Skold and I were invited. As a tribute to the Vienna actionist art movement – in which people like Gottfried Helnwein and Günther Brus were involved – I painted myself completely black and I painted Tim white and put him into an outfit Brus once wore and got arrested for wearing. A young guy came up to me and handed me a book. On the first page of the book was a picture of Brus who looked just like Tim in that outfit! That's when I knew I had to call Helnwein immediately and we clicked and started to work together right away. NY ROCK : What were the reactions to the work you created together? Some of the photos are a bit unsettling.... MANSON : It was funny; we released some of the photos without commenting what they were or what we intended to do with them – if they were the cover for The Golden Age of Grotesque or not. Not even our record company knew what they were for. They assumed they were for the cover artwork and got quite angry, "What the fuck should we do with this cover?!?" So I told them not to worry about it; it's not the cover and showed them the one with the Mickey Mouse ears. It freaked them out even more. But that's how I deal with people who think they're the portraits of authority. NY ROCK : You don't seem to be the type who lets himself be bullied by authority or record-company execs.... MANSON : When they were bugging me about the new material, I recorded myself when I was talking to my cat for half an hour and told them it's the new single. They really freaked out and wanted to get me institutionalized. I bet they were checking out ways to get out of the contract because of a mental-illness clause.