The Fog Of Love

Sean Ono Lennon learned at an early age that peace, love, rebellion and art come at a price. On his debut solo album, 1998's Into the Sun, the son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon sang about love, jealousy and his insecurities in a voice that sounded naive and demanding. Since then he's kept a relatively low professional profile and has been pretty successful in dodging the paparazzi -- except when dating famous daughters Bijou Phillips or Elizabeth Jagger. Now 30 years old and a bit wiser, Lennon has distilled the anguish of an aging boy into a new album and produced his first film, both titled Friendly Fire. If Into the Sun was his letting-the-world-in album, Friendly Fire is about Lennon closing the door a little -- to lick wounds that are still fresh.

With songs like "On Again, Off Again" and "Falling Out of Love," Friendly Fire has many signs of a post-breakup record. "Yeah, it definitely is," says Lennon. "I feel like in order to express beauty, you have to have weariness in it. I think beauty without suffering is kind of saccharine, like a Hallmark card. You know what I mean?" The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Lennon, the by-product of two groundbreaking artists, would eventually want to do something other than just making music. "My mom thinks about all art as being one medium. That's what makes her a conceptual artist, because she believes as long as you have the concept, it doesn't matter what medium you express yourself in. It's the concept that creates the meaning, and therefore, it can manifest as music or film or painting. It takes place in your mind. And I kind of feel that way, too."

The idea to make a film to accompany his music came about naturally while Lennon was simultaneously developing a movie called Coin Locker Babies. "I would say my whole life has been leading towards making [Friendly Fire], whether I knew it or not," says Lennon. "I wanted to present that music in a sort of a formal language as well -- not necessarily a feature film, not a bunch of music videos, either, but something in between like a dream language of images that somehow express things about the music that are not maybe completely contained in just listening to it." Michele Civetta, the director for the film version of Friendly Fire, was an easy pick. He and Lennon have been best friends since their Dalton days (Civetta will also direct Coin Locker Babies next fall).

In Friendly Fire, Lennon and Civetta pay homage to many of their heroes. "I mean, this is silly, but I wanted it to have a look of Barry Lyndon or some sort of high-class film," Lennon says. "I wanted it to have this kind of over-the-top elegance, a real cinematic feel." Aside from the fairly obvious Stanley Kubrick touches, you can also detect glimpses of Luis Buñuel's surrealism and Woody Allen's self-effacing humor. Lennon's friends Lindsay Lohan, Bijou Phillips, Jordana Brewster, Devon Aoki and Asia Argento all appear in the film. Quite understandably, he is a fan of working with his eclectic and glamorous circle of friends and doesn't skimp on compliments for his actresses. "I wanted to use Lindsay, because I think she is incredibly brilliant and kind of like a legend. And, honestly, I had an opportunity to present her in a way I don't think she was presented before. I think she's amazing, and she was nice enough to do it. She didn't have to do it. She's a very big movie star." As for Bijou, he says, "It just seemed really interesting to cast Bijou as herself since the whole thing was about her anyway. Bijou also is very underrated. So again, I thought it was a way to showcase how talented she is."

Lennon and Phillips dated for several years, but broke up after he found out that his childhood best friend Max LeRoy "had been sleeping with [his] girlfriend." To compound matters, LeRoy died in a motorcycle accident last November. The experience of making Friendly Fire wasn't easy for Lennon, but it was a necessary trip that helped him sort out his emotions, one that kept him from "going a little crazy." "Sean's been able to synthesize something inherently tragic and personal, and like his mother, in that respect, he was able to turn it into art," says Civetta.

The expectations for anything Sean Lennon decides to do are greater than any one person can bear. In so many people's imaginations, he is the symbol of ideals -- like a wishing tree that people hang their dreams on. But despite it all, he is just another artist in search of self-realization and self-satisfaction, another guy mending his broken heart. "I tried to write an album that addressed what it was like to fail in a relationship and have it fall apart," Lennon says candidly. "I know it's not the first time it's been written about, but that just seemed like something worth writing about anyway."

Styling by Kristina Dechter * Grooming by Zak Coldicutt * Sean wears a suit by Lanvin.