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‘It’s all I think about,’ the singer tells MTV News of hitting the road after opening on Rihanna’s Last Girl on Earth Tour.By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Christina Garibaldi

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Ke$ha is currently on the road with Rihanna, but the “Tik Tok” singer says once the Last Girl on Earth Tour wraps up, she’d like to plot a trek of her own. And she’s hoping that the lessons she’s learned opening up for the pop star will be useful on any tour she might embark on in the future.
“I’m finishing up this tour and going in to start writing again — some more music for you guys — and will continue touring throughout the rest of the year,” she told MTV News. “I don’t know who’s going to go on tour with me yet, but I think I’ll be going on my tour later this year perhaps.”

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Check here for news on performers, presenters, nominees and more leading up to this year’s big show!

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‘If time allows, there will definitely be new music,’ Robert DeLeo adds of STP’s future.By Chris Harris

Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert DeLeo and Scott Weiland

Photo: Charley Gallay/ Getty Images

There are a number of reasons why Stone Temple Pilots decided to reunite after nearly five years apart — some are obvious, and others, not so much.
Of course, the financial windfall of reviving the grunge stalwarts for an extensive U.S. tour was too good to pass up, and bassist Robert DeLeo readily admits as much. And then there are the fans, the ones who had been with STP since the very beginning as well as those who discovered the band only after it first split back in 2003 and who, woefully, have yet to catch the Pilots live.
On a more personal level, though, Stone Temple Pilots’ resurrection was purely selfish, and very much an anticipatory (not to mention optimistic) move on the band’s part: If, after the months and months of rumors and denials, there ever is a full-on Led Zeppelin reunion tour, STP wanted to be ready to offer their services as an opening act.
“Believe me, that was one of the reasons,” laughed DeLeo. “We thought, ‘We should get together now, in case Zeppelin does tour.’ I’m serious, man. That would be one hell of a bill: STP and Led Zeppelin. I mean, we could play a doghouse, out in the middle of the ocean, and if I got to play with Zeppelin, that would be a highlight of my life.”
Yes, DeLeo — and the rest of the band — had several reservations about raising STP from the dead — a feat DeLeo jokingly referred to as “Mission Impossible.” For the band’s members, the idea of regrouping was terrifying at first, but with time, the boys settled their differences and tried to think positive.
“For me, it was about putting down some of the things that I was used to getting bitten by,” explained the bassist — who, with guitar-playing brother Dean DeLeo, has been collaborating with Peter Frampton on material for his next LP. “After you get bitten, it’s hard to go back. I wanted to go into this with an open frame of mind and a positive attitude and just have fun with it. We should have fun with it, which God knows we didn’t always have with our career when we were younger. If that’s all I can say, and that’s what I can get out of this reunion, great.
“I think I speak for all of us when I say there’s a lot of unfinished business that we didn’t get around to the first go,” he continued. “Enough time has gone by, and it feels really good to be back. I don’t really want to put too much thought into how it feels — I’m just kind of going with it and keeping a good positive attitude about it. I just needed to get over the things that we all needed to get over, and that’s been working so far. If everyone shows up and does this thing, I think it’s going to be really amazing.”
DeLeo claims that during recent rehearsals, STP were “sounding as good as ever,” and he credits sobriety as part of the reason the band’s in tip-top shape.
“My brother’s going on four years of sobriety,” he said. “We have a lot more clarity in the band now, and I think with clarity comes appreciation. I saw that the other night, when we played [a secret gig in Los Angeles]. I saw it in my eyes, and in the eyes of the rest of the band. There’s a lot more rock in this band now.”
As for an STP record, DeLeo is not 100 percent sure that’s going to happen. The goal for STP over the next few weeks, he said, is to reacquaint themselves with their songbook and prepare for their return to the road. Once the band is back in that mindset, the bassist said new STP material is very possible.
“I’ve always got stuff written, and there’s always a long list of songs that are always there — it’s a matter of timing,” DeLeo said. “If time allows, there will definitely be new music. I think it would be silly not to release new music. I’d like to believe we still have a writing relationship, but the first step is getting reacquainted with what we know.”
While STP were on hiatus, frontman Scott Weiland teamed up with Velvet Revolver, and the DeLeo brothers joined forces with Filter’s Richard Patrick for Army of Anyone — who are now on hiatus after releasing a poorly received self-titled LP. Does DeLeo foresee an AOA reunion somewhere down the line?
“You never know,” he said. “It’s just like STP — I didn’t know if I was going to return. Whether we get back together and do anything, I think we made a great record, bottom line. That’s all that matters to me. If we make another one, I want to make sure it’s great, and that applies to STP and anything I do. But I was pretty heartbroken over [the feeble response to AOA's album].”

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‘I think pressure is always a good thing,’ Phillips says about expectations for Robert Downey Jr. flick.By Eric Ditzian

Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis in “Due Date”

Photo: Warner Bros.

Robert Downey Jr. is convinced that “Due Date” is a better movie than “The Hangover,” for the simple reason that, as director Todd Phillips explained to MTV News, “Due Date” is about something, whereas “Hangover” just follows a bunch of groggy dudes around Las Vegas.
Phillips doesn’t necessarily agree with Downey, but he’ll take the compliment, just as he accepts the pressure of following up the $467 million worldwide success of “Hangover.” His mission after that flick broke big last year was to get right back to work. For that task, he hauled Zach Galifianakis back into the mix and recruited Downey. “Due Date” follows Downey’s character, Peter Highman, whose wife is about to go into labor, forcing him to hitch a ride with Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) in an attempt to get to the hospital before his child is born. Their road trip does not, to say the least, go smoothly.
As part of MTV News’ ongoing Fall Movie Preview series, Phillips called us up to chat about working with Downey on a straight comedy, the “anti-chemistry” of his two stars and the difficulty of pulling off a cinematic stunt as surprising as the naked Asian who jumped out of a trunk in “The Hangover.”
MTV: I take it you’ve locked picture a while ago, right?
Todd Phillips: Yeah, we have. This movie could have come out in the summer, but because of “Iron Man 2″ and Robert’s press requirements for a movie that size, we had to space them out.
MTV: If it’s been done for a while, do you ever wake up and say, “Crap, I need to use a different take! I should have done this differently!”
Phillips: It’s funny you say that, because just yesterday we watched one of the release prints at the Arclight [theater in Los Angeles]. You want to see how the prints look, so you go to a regular theater. There was actually a little sound issue. So we went back in and fixed something with the sound. But that was more of a technical thing than a creative choice. When you look back at movies, you always go, “God, I would have done that differently, or I wished we had tried this,” but this one is still too close for me to do that.
MTV: Right, it’s when “Road Trip” comes on TBS that you go, “Damn!”
Phillips: Right. I’ll see “Old School” sometimes on TV and I’m like, “Oh, if only we’d had more time that day we could have done that better.”
MTV: You do have this great history with Warner Bros. and you’re coming off the huge success of “The Hangover.” When you said you wanted to do “Due Date,” were they ever like, “Todd, man, maybe hit ‘Hangover 2′ first?”
Phillips: You know, being at Warner, not to sound like a corporate kissass, but Warner Bros. is like being on the Yankees.
MTV: I’m a Mets fan, my friend.
Phillips: It’s still like being on the Yankees! They just have it so wired. The filmmakers that they choose to work with they support wholeheartedly, as evidenced by gambling on a movie like “Inception,” which was so brilliant but so big a gamble in studio terms. But they trust Chris Nolan because he’s f—ing amazing and they just let him do it. It’s pretty much the most supportive studio I’ve ever been involved with. They were excited to do “Hangover 2,” but once I had spoken to Robert Downey about “Due Date,” they totally got it.
MTV: Getting someone like Downey, does that alleviate some pressure — if there is any — about following up such a massive hit?
Phillips: I think pressure is always a good thing. A lot of guys make a big hit movie on the size of “The Hangover” and they get gun-shy. They wait a few years in a weird way, and I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to do something again and not worry if it was going to be as big as “The Hangover” because “The Hangover” was lightning in a bottle. You can’t judge other successes or other movies based on it. I just didn’t want to get into that headspace. That was part of the reason for striking out and doing something real quick like “Due Date.” It’s something I had been developing — it’s not like it’s rushed — but it went quicker because I was like, “Let’s just go do it.” For me, I choose movies based on who I can get in it. Comedies are so about casting. Obviously I wanted to work with Zach again after “The Hangover” and Downey is pretty much the best there is out there. Once he said yes, we were like, “Let’s just go.”
MTV: We haven’t seen Downey do much straight comedy in a long time. I guess you could say “Tropic Thunder,” but that’s hardly something typical and straightforward.
Phillips: Yeah, you haven’t seen Robert Downey be Robert Downey. A lot of great actors — you see this with someone like Johnny Depp, who’s a huge f—ing talent, and Robert Downey — where they play parts where they’re putting on masks or accents or hats and wigs. They kind of like to lose themselves in a role. In “Tropic Thunder,” which I think is great, he’s in blackface and you’re not really seeing Robert. What was fun for Robert about this, and what was fun for me to make it, is Robert Downey just being Robert Downey. There’s no makeup, wigs. It’s just Robert playing such a real character.
MTV: Was that one of the reasons he signed on, to get back to something with less artifice?
Phillips: I’m not sure why he makes his choices. I know he loved “The Hangover.” I know he loves Zach and was a fan of my films. Actors like to play. For a guy like Downey, he loved the idea of not being on a green screen for 60 days and just coming in and f—ing around with a guy like Zach and a guy like me. It’s a real loose environment, as opposed to something like “Iron Man 2,” just by nature of the effects.
MTV: A movie like this lives and dies on the chemistry of those two dudes.
Phillips: Or the anti-chemistry, in this case. It’s interesting, because before “The Hangover” came out, people could dismiss it or say, “Oh, it’s a movie about bachelor parties and Vegas. I’ve seen that before.” And a movie like this, you go, “Oh, it’s two guys on the road. It’s ‘Tommy Boy’ or it’s ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles.’ ” And it’s really not. It works on this whole other level that I think people are going to be surprised by. It connects on a different level.
MTV: It’s probably hard to put into words what that level is, but what were you aiming for?
Phillips: This is how Robert explains it, which is sort of a backhanded compliment. He goes, ” ‘Due Date’ is a better movie than ‘The Hangover’ because ‘Due Date’ is about something.” I know what he means. There’s another dimension. As proud as I am of “The Hangover,” it’s a two-dimensional film. It’s a comedy that works as good as any comedy could work. But there are some character moves in “Due Date” that Robert and Zach go through that I think will be surprising on a film that you think you have figured out by the trailer or the poster.
MTV: You mentioned that people look at it and think “Planes, Trains” or “Tommy Boy.” Did you go back and look at any of those road trip movies for inspiration or in terms of what to avoid?
Phillips: I love “Planes, Trains,” and I seriously love “Tommy Boy,” which is one of my favorites. But one movie all three of us looked at is “Midnight Run.” That might be the best of the bunch. It’s not so much to emulate or avoid, it’s just to be inspired in some way. “Midnight Run” was a big one for me.
MTV: The Dan Band has popped up in a bunch of your movies. Any chance we’re going to see them in “Due Date”?
Phillips: The Dan Band is not in “Due Date,” and it’s just by the nature of what the movie is about and where it winds up. There was no way without it feeling incredibly forced. But you could argue it’s a little forced in “The Hangover.” But I love them so much. They’re the best.
MTV: I don’t know if this is one of those questions you get a lot, but where do you go from a naked Asian man jumping out of a trunk in “The Hangover”? How do you top that?
Phillips: That is a tough one to top. The key with comedies in general is they work when there are surprises. So a naked Asian man jumping out of a trunk is a perfect example of a surprise. It goes back to what I was talking about before with even just the nature of “Due Date.” There are a lot of surprises in the film that I think take the movie to another level. The surprises won’t be a naked Asian man or the Dan Band, but I think there are enough surprises that it will connect with people. But that is the challenge, because comedies work so well when they are surprises.
From the saucy Jessica Alba in “Little Fockers” to James Franco’s grueling journey in “127 Hours,” the MTV Movies team is delving into the hottest flicks of fall 2010. Check back daily for exclusive clips, photos and interviews with the films’ biggest stars.
Check out everything we’ve got on “Due Date.”
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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