Though Kinky Friedman was born in Chicago everyone knows he has the heart of a Texan. Friedman first came to notice as a musician with the Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys which created satirical country music. Soon Friedman brought his satire up to a new level with his novels using a fictionalized... more

Though Kinky Friedman was born in Chicago everyone knows he has the heart of a Texan. Friedman first came to notice as a musician with the Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys which created satirical country music. Soon Friedman brought his satire up to a new level with his novels using a fictionalized version of himself as a private detective solving crimes in New York City. Friedman’s most recent bid came as he ran for governor of Texas this past midterm election which he lost to Rick Perry.

Right on the tail end of the campaign Friedman released the book, The Christmas Pig, which is about a fictionalized land where the king needs an artist to create a nativity scene. The king decides to hire an artistic but mute child prodigy. While the child is creating the scene, he becomes friends with a talking pig who helps him along the way.

Buy The Christmas Pig

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?

Kinky Friedman: Well, I’m on a book signing tour for The Christmas Pig.

DRE: I loved the book, by the way.

KF: You’ve read it already, wow. You don’t waste much time Daniel. It’s a lovely little Christmas book that has turned out to be one of my best efforts.

DRE: [laughs] We Jews are always inundated with Christmas and Christmas stories and a lot of them are done by Jews. What made you decide to write Christmas Pig?

KF: Kind of like Dostoyevsky I took an assignment to write a celebrity Christmas book to earn gambling money for Vegas. It turned out to be a better book than I anticipated because sometimes when you set out to write the great American novel or paint your masterpiece, you never do. It’s always done accidentally. The great work is done obliquely by people who are trying to pay the rent or gambling debts, either one will work. Once you can get that mindset going you have a chance. But Christmas Pig goes beyond Christianity and Judaism. As Thomas Payne said on his deathbed, “The world is my country; to do good is my religion.”

DRE: Have you ever known a kid like Benjamin?

KF: Yeah, I have. In fact I know several but I know one very much like that and I suspect there are lots more. His autism is academic and a lot of autistic kids are brilliant artists. I also knew a pig once.

DRE: It wasn’t a talking pig I assume.

KF: No but close though. I’ve never really known a king though. Mark Twain only met one king. It was the king of Hawaii.

DRE: Why did they offer you a Christmas book?

KF: I don’t know. That was David Rosenthal’s idea at Simon & Schuster. It’s worked out well because the wonderful Germans have already translated it with illustrations for next Christmas. If the Germans like it, the rest of the world can’t be far behind.

DRE: Was part of the fun you being a Jewish guy writing a Christmas story?

KF: Well, I kind of am a Judeo-Christian. I contend that I have Jesus and Moses in my heart and they were both good Jewish boys that got in a little trouble with the government. I don’t think of myself as a Jewish guy. I’m pretty damn open about being Jewish, but none of it makes a lick of sense. Heroes of mine are Father Damien, a Catholic priest who died of leprosy over 100 years ago. Martin Luther King was one. Gandhi, Breaker Morant. A lot of people who weren’t Jewish are my heroes. Jesus was just one of a great line of misunderstood people that I admire.

DRE: Do you celebrate Christmas?

KF: I don’t celebrate anything but hunting accidents. I don’t celebrate holidays. I don’t like them.

DRE: Why is that?

KF: Because they’re stultifying dull. I think life is moments, that’s all. I don’t think you can contrive having a Jewish singles of Dallas Purim party and make it soulful.

DRE: [laughs] Was that your pig on the cover of The Christmas Pig?

KF: Might as well have been. No, my pig has already gone to Jesus.

DRE: I read that you save many animals. Do you eat meat though?

KF: Yes. I have been a vegetarian in the past although I still love a big, hairy steak. Do I eat pork? No. I don’t eat pork for spiritual reasons not for any narrow, stupid religious reasons. I like pigs, I think they’re really smart, good and I think we’re very deceitful toward them. Pigs are getting them a very bad deal. It’s like the horse sslaughter plants in Texas that I’m trying to close. They’re shipping meat to France for people to eat. After you get past closing the horse slaughter plants then you should close the cattle slaughter plants too.

DRE: Are you still involved with the Max Soffar case?

KF: Yeah, I don’t know where it’s going to go except that I’m now closer friends with the governor than I’ve ever been. That’s one that’s really an injustice in a lot of respects. I don’t think Max did this crime and I don’t think that there’s much evidence that he did either. Yet two juries have convicted him. Why did that happen? When was the last time we executed a rich man in Texas? The answer is never.

DRE: That’s crazy.

KF: Yeah so it’s probably true in New York. You wonderful, progressive motherfuckers. You are probably the most parochial, provincial group of people on the whole planet, people around New York. Particularly Manhattan because they look down on you as well, they don’t think Queens exists.

DRE: Well, I just moved to Queens.

KF: Then you just step up. It’s a real place in the world. The Christmas Pig was written for people. It wasn’t written for Jewish intellectuals. This is a book for people who can read between the lines. Really being Jewish or being Christian is pretty damn similar.

DRE: If they follow the basic rules.

KF: Yeah, which they never do. Those are the ones they totally ignore. That’s why Israel’s main support comes from the Christian right, not the Democratic left who ought to support Israel if they look at the Lord.

DRE: Do you still create music?

KF: As little as possible.

DRE: Why is that?

KF: Because I never have time. I hang around musicians a lot. A lot of them are good friends of mine. I like music but mostly I’m writing and campaigning even though that’s over with. But I may get back to music though I doubt it. I say musicians can run this country better than politicians although we won’t get a lot done in the mornings. We’ll work late and we’ll be honest.

DRE: Obviously you didn’t win the bid for governor in Texas.

KF: Well, the people have spoken the bastards, as Hunter Thompson said. The people have mumbled actually. There was a pretty apathetic turn out. I gave Texas my phone number and she never got back to me. But the whole point of the Alamo was not that they won or lost but the fact that they stood up against insurmountable odds and it led right to the battle of San Jacinto and the formation of Texas. The Alamo, while not being a technical victory, was what sparked and continues to spark the imagination of millions of people. It was like when Kissinger asked Chairman Mao if he thought the French Revolution made a difference or not and Chairman Mao said it was too soon to tell. That’s where we are at this point.

DRE: What were your expectations?

KF: I thought the people would turn out. Had they voted in big numbers, we would have won. They did not. As long as the turnout is low, the Crips and the Bloods are always going to control.

DRE: I know they attacked you for a few things you said. Do you feel like you should have said those things?

KF: No, not at all. Particularly the Democrats proved themselves to be vicious and the main victim was the truth. That was the casualty. I would have looked to the Democrats to stand up to the truth but they didn’t. They pretended that they didn’t understand what satire was. In other words, they pretended that they didn’t understand Mark Twain or Voltaire or Borat or Blazing Saddles. They pretended that I was a raging racist like the guy in To Kill a Mockingbird. To paraphrase Mark Twain, he said that the three most precious things in America are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Conscience and the prudence never to use either one of them.

DRE: What do you think of Governor Rick Perry?

KF: Well, he called me yesterday. He’s been very gracious. He said that he could use a guy like me to reach the people he can’t reach, which are a lot of Texans. The vast majority of them are black. So who knows, there may be some bridge building here. We might both end up working for the people of Texas. I like him personally. I don’t think he’s been really been an activist type of governor in the past six years. There are a lot of areas that I don’t think are doing well such as education, immigration and environment. Those are big ones.

DRE: How do you feel about the Democrats getting control of Congress?

KF: Totally irrelevant. Just a different set of lobbyists moving to Washington.

DRE: You don’t think there’ll be any change for the good?

KF: Very unlikely. I think I’ve really had enough of the Republicans and the Democrats. The two party system is offering us some of the worst candidates that you’ve ever seen. If the best we can do is George Bush and John Kerry we’ve got a serious problem. We can’t even nominate guys like McCain and Rudy [Giuliani] for starters because of the system. George Washington was right, we don’t need two political parties. All government needs is common sense and common honesty.

DRE: When will that happen? Never?

KF: Never. Well, Texas had an opportunity.

DRE: You think you’ll run again?

KF: Pretty doubtful, I’m getting pretty old. I’m 62 years old which is too young for Medicare and too old for women to care.

DRE: When did you start doing the animal rescue?

KF: We opened Utopia Rescue Ranch eight years ago and it’s a real eye opener to deal with abused and stray animals and to see what people have done. We’ve adopted over 1500 animals in the past eight years; it’s a really great thing.

DRE: Was there something specific that led you to doing that or was it a decision?

KF: It was a dream. Cousin Nancy runs the ranch. She wrote a book called The Road to Utopia: How Kinky, Tony, and I Saved More Animals than Noah. That’s the whole story of the rescue ranch.

DRE: What’s the next project you’re working on?

KF: Maybe I’ll do a book on the campaign. We’ll see. I don’t think I’ll do another mystery book until I hear the literary world clamoring for it’s return.

DRE: We’d love to get you a membership to SuicideGirls.

KF: Well the problem I have is that I don’t use the internet at all. I think it’s the work of Satan. I don’t have email or any of that shit. Even Willie Nelson doesn’t approve of that. Willie was a little bit irritated when I told him I don’t use email.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Like them or not, you can't deny that Editors have achieved a rare combination of critical and commercial success. Their debut album, The Back Room, went platinum and earned the band a 2006 Mercury Prize nomination. They followed that with 2007's An End Has a Start, which hit #1 in the UK and... more

Like them or not, you can't deny that Editors have achieved a rare combination of critical and commercial success. Their debut album, The Back Room, went platinum and earned the band a 2006 Mercury Prize nomination. They followed that with 2007's An End Has a Start, which hit #1 in the UK and landed Editors on the US charts for the first time.

Now Editors are back with In This Light and On This Evening, a strong third record that might just help them conquer America. They've changed things up quite a bit, dropping their trademark guitar sound and putting synths front and center. Editors also brought on legendary producer Mark "Flood" Ellis‚ (known for his work with Depeche Mode, U2 and many other huge acts) and the result is something very different, yet still immediately recognizable as an Editors album.

Bassist Russell Leetch talked to SuicideGirls about the new record.

Russell Leetch: Hello, Jay, how are you?

Jay Hathaway: I'm good. I wish they'd put your album on the hold music, instead of whatever I was just listening to.

RL: Was it shit? There's a lot of shit at Sony, they've got some terrible acts.

JH: [laughs]

RL: I can't vouch for all acts on the label. [laughs]

JH: Before I ask you any serious questions ... I was just reading your Wikipedia page. Are you still growing a beard? What's the deal with that?

RL: [laughs] You know, the problem with Wikipedia is that your friends can edit it, and they can put stupid shit in place of what's supposed to be there. It becomes very miscellaneous. I can't actually grow a beard. Maybe on my 30th birthday I'll have a beard. I don't know.

JH: Cool, cool. So, you're living in New York now, right?

RL: Yeah.

JH: I've heard a lot about how the new album was influenced by London. Did New York have an influence on it as well?

RL: I went out to more smaller shows, and got back into watching bands and being excited about music again. For a while, because we've been a band for quite some time, and we've played so much, I just got a little bit tired of certain things. Being there, I felt quite refreshed. I guess it did rub off on us in some ways.

JH: Is your outlook on the future as dark as this album might suggest?

RL: I don't know what it suggests, really. All kinds of things come through. At the end of Bricks and Mortar, there's a nice sentiment of "I hope life's good with you." I think if you go into a city at nighttime, any city, you're bound to see a lot of the things that are touched upon. It can be such a hedonistic, good experience, but then you can come out of a bar and witness some really horrible violence. It kind of feels threatening, but also good at the same time. It's the same everywhere.

JH: There are a lot of references in your lyrics to guns and God. What's the story behind that?

RL: All of us are atheists, we just don't think there's anything really there ... how could there be so many problems? The modern world relies a lot on people going on about religions to justify wars. How does that work? I think that's troubling to a lot of people in our generation.

JH: So, you all had to sing on this album ...

RL: Yeah, on the backing vocals. Flood [Producer Mark "Flood" Ellis] made us! He was like, "So, Tom does all the backing vocals?" and we were like, "Well, yeah, 'cause he can sing the best." He said, "Well, you all sing in tune, and it'll sound like someone else's voice. That's what you want for the backing vocals." When we started singing, we'd be laughing and going "We are really bad at this!" But the Boxer vocals are from all four of us, and they sound quite nice and eerie. It was opening us up to the fact that being a bit shit can be to your advantage.

JH: It's not going to sound like everything else, at least.

RL: There was a lot of freedom with that kind of thing on the record. It's quite a different Editors record from the first two. I really like the sonics of it. I think it's got a really nice, warm tone. It's quite an inviting record, I think.

JH: And then the really big change was that you used so many more synths. It seems like the dance music side of Editors came out a lot more obviously on this record ...

RL: I think that's exactly right. Everyone's going "Oh my God, you just suddenly got synthesizers." Well, no. They're on both of the previous records, but they're as backgrounds, rather than at the forefront. Having a riff on a keyboard is quite different from having it on a guitar, but it was just more fun writing on the synthesizers. We've always loved 808s and 909s and drum machines generally. We're much bigger fans of New Order than of Joy Division, by a long way.

JH: That says a lot right there. So, you end up getting remixed a lot more, too, since you're going in that direction ...

RL: Yeah, remixes can be really good. The Tiesto one for us has been pretty big across Europe. It's been a big dance hit. It's kind of cool that your band can get integrated into the dance world and people might discover you that way. I quite like that.

JH: Have you heard your songs in a club yet?

RL: Yeah! We were in club in Paris (this was a couple of years ago) the Sebastian remix that happened for us got played. I just thought that the production on it was absolutely immense. He did a really good job.

JH: Do you miss playing bass, though?

RL: Not at all. It's nice to roam about and play different instruments and stuff. I grew up playing the piano, so that's my main instrument. I just play bass in the band, really. That's kind of fun, just being more varied.

JH: So you guys already had the musical expertise to play all the synth parts for the album?

RL: We knew what oscillators and waveforms were, so we kind of understand what synthesis is. And we like a certain type of synth. We like something with a bit of grit. Something with a bit of power. There's a lot of modern synth music which can be a little bit wet. We wanted it all to be kind of played on, like analog synths. Still to be a band. Kind of how people saw it in the '70s, when these things were invented and people started making bands out of them, especially the Krautrock influence. Something like Neu! That's a big part of this record for us.

JH: Are you planning on directing any more videos?

RL: Oh! I didn't direct that Bones video. I compiled a load of footage that was off a video camera, that's the best explanation for it. I wouldn't class that as directing, it wasn't good enough.

JH: Well, are you going to have another go at doing some video stuff? Did you enjoy doing that?

RL: I didn't really enjoy it, no. We just got asked to make a video diary of what we were seeing each day. Sometimes it's a little bit tiresome. Like, today, all we're doing is playing cards. It's like, "That could be a music video for 4 minutes, but it'd be a bit rubbish. Find something a little bit more inventive." We've got Arni & Kinski, who did the video for Smokers, doing our new video for You Don't Know Love, which I'm really excited about seeing. Some videos, I really love, and others I really don't like. For example, the Papillon video, I'm not a fan of it. Some of our fans are, some aren't. But when someone does a video, we pass it over to the director and they can have their artistic license.

JH: Did the other guys in the band like it?

RL: [laughs] Uh, the majority didn't, actually, for that one.

JH: Interesting ...

RL: Well, it became too late in the day for us to get a video that we would all like. It got to the release date without a video, so some favors had to be pulled in. Things like that happen. People liked it. That's cool. It's just funny how sometimes people take it that it's us, that we've decided the video. We try to have as much control over it, but sometimes it's just not our idea.

JH: What was it like working with Flood?

RL: It was fun. It was really good. I think everyone would have an idea or a preconception of what he's going to be like. He's a very ordinary, nice guy, who speaks a very straight-talking, non-highbrow kind of talk. He's made some amazing records, from Nick Cave to Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, U2. You'd imagine that someone that's got a big repertoire to be a bit of an arsehole, but he just wasn't. He joined Editors very well, and we're looking forward to working with him again pretty soon.

JH: Since a lot of people know Flood for his work with U2 ... how do you guys feel about U2?

RL: I guess some of us like them and others don't. They've never been one of my favorite bands. I'd leave that to R.E.M. or Radiohead or Spiritualized. I've never been into getting all of their albums and listening through. I'd go and watch the 360 Tour, it'd be a fun night out. As a band, I don't know ... they're just there, aren't they? They've been around a long time.

JH: Do you guys ever want to be the biggest band in the world? Like U2, but cooler, or something?

RL: I think if you want to be absolutely massive, you definitely lose cool. I don't think you can be like ... I don't know who's done that well. Maybe R.E.M. a few years ago? They were still pretty cool when they were huge. It's hard to do. We're not cool enough in some people's books anyway.

JH: What's the biggest rock star moment you guys have had? Ever smashed any hotel rooms?

RL: No, I think it's stupid when people trash hotel rooms. There's cleaners who have to clean, and yeah, you can pay some money, but that's pretty scummy, I think. If you're going to be extravagant, I think it's best to go to really nice restaurants and blow some money on some really nice wine and food. Do it that way, rather than being a dickhead. If anything, we'll go and spend a large amount of money on some fine dining.

JH: What was living in Birmingham like?

RL: I think the equivalent in the US is Pittsburgh. There's not that much there. It's a post-industrial city. It's a bit a grey. There's not a lot going on. It doesn't invite people to go and visit it, that's for sure.

JH: That's fair. It's sort of a post-industrial album, in a way ...

RL: I think we've definitely always had that vibe, and I guess that stems from where we're from. The big grey canvas of concrete definitely rings true. We definitely weren't brought up in the country, that's for sure.

JH: What were you guys like in school?

RL: We were all good, I think. We were just regular kind of guys. Not too mischievous, but not like the brightest bunch. [laughs] Got on with people. Grade C students. Maybe Bs, actually. Good Bs.

JH: Since this is for SuicideGirls, I feel like I should ask: does anyone in Editors have tattoos?

RL: Yeah, Chris does. Chris has got three roses on his arm.

In This Light and On This Evening is out on iTunes now, and in stores January 2010.

Back in 1984 Slayer and other metal mainstays Venom and Exodus hit the road on what was dubbed the Combat Tour. According to band legend, one drunken night on the tour bus, Slayer frontman Tom Araya -- just a tempestuous twentysomething -- stumbled down the hallway looking for a place to take a leak. more

Back in 1984 Slayer and other metal mainstays Venom and Exodus hit the road on what was dubbed the Combat Tour. According to band legend, one drunken night on the tour bus, Slayer frontman Tom Araya -- just a tempestuous twentysomething -- stumbled down the hallway looking for a place to take a leak. Venom vocalist Cronos joked that the bathroom was right there, in his mouth. Araya proceeded to whip it out and piss all over Cronos' hair. Sure, Cronos left Araya with a shiner but it's all part of what makes Slayer, well, fucking Slayer.

After more than 20 years and 13 albums, the thrash-metal titans are still going strong and with the release of "Christ Illusion" in 2006, some say Slayer is better than ever. Not only is "Christ Illusion" the first album in 15 years with the original lineup -- Araya (vocals/bass), Kerry King (guitar), Jeff Hanneman (guitar) and Dave Lombardo (drums) -- but it also managed to earn the band a Grammy, proving you never know what to expect from these California natives.

SuicideGirls caught up with metal legend Kerry King to chat about the "Christ Illusion Special Limited Edition" (out now), the band's summer tour with Marilyn Manson, and the joys of breeding snakes...

Erin Broadley: So Slayer just released a special edition of Christ Illusion, which is the first album you guys have put out with Dave Lombardo on drums in over a decade. How is it to have the original lineup back together again?

Kerry King: Well, we’ve been touring with Dave since ’02 so to us it’s old news, but for fans it’s cool because it’s the first thing he’s gotten to stay on since the ’90s. I think for the kids still, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. Slayer putting out a new album with Lombardo for the first time since 1990, you know, it’s like Christmas every day.

EB: Right. How did the shows go in Europe?

KK: Cool.

EB: Those were not with Manson, correct?

KK: Just a couple. We played together in Switzerland and I actually held up bus call so I could go check out his show because I hadn’t seen Manson play in years. So I went on stage. Actually one of our old guitar techs is working for Manson, so I went up for the first five songs and hung out in guitar world and got to see what it was about. So looking forward to it, looking forward to having my first drink of Absinthe in a month next week [laughs].

EB: Yeah. One of our writers interviewed Manson a few weeks back and he said that he has to drink Absinthe every day because if he doesn’t, he’ll melt.

KK: I know, it’s the strangest thing, man! I remember when we met he did a photo session for Revolver. He brings out these three cups of Absinthe.

EB: Oh man.

KK: He’s like, “I’m drinking, who’s in?” I was like, “Oh, we’re going to get along fine.”

EB: I thought when you drink Absinthe, that’s when you’re supposed to feel like you’re going to melt -- not the other way around.

KK: It doesn’t do anything to me. Either that or I’m not drinking enough of it. Manson mixes it with water. I’m like, “Why are you mixing it with water man? Drink that shit straight.” I guess if he’d been doing it all day maybe he needed to put water into it [laughs].

EB: Do you have a favorite bottle you carry around with you like that?

KK: Well, I generally don’t drink before we play. I think of the fans first.

EB: For sure.

KK: I’m sure there’ll be a moment or two where me and Manson will light it up before we both play. When we did that show in Switzerland it was like that. I know a lot of people on his crew so it was like, “Come do a fucking shot before we go on stage.” So we did. For me, I usually drink whatever vodka flavor of the month I’m on. You know, we’ve always got Jägermeister backstage.

EB: When you and I first met at an Ozzfest press conference a couple years back, you made me do shots of Jäger with you.

KK: [Laughs] Imagine that…

EB: Wasn’t it only noon? You were like, “Dude, come on” and I said, “No I hate black licorice.” But you insisted so I thought, “Well fuck, who’s going to turn down shots of Jäger with Kerry King?”

KK: Yeah, it’s good [laughs].

EB: Well, getting back to the tour you guys are doing with Manson, during Manson said that with this tour you guys are “bringing Satan back.” I’d have to argue that when it comes to representing the evil in rock and roll, I don’t think it ever really went away. What do you think?

KK: No, I don’t think it went away. Something he probably didn’t bring up, which rings a bell with me, is that it seems like more and more people are coming around to our way of thinking. I’m not saying everybody’s going to be Satanists, but for me it’s like questioning what you’re told. I think a lot of people don’t just sit and think, “Oh yeah, go to church on Sunday…Jesus is good. Jesus is great.” I think people say, “Well, why is Jesus good? Why is Jesus great? I’ve never seen the guy. How do I know this is real?” I think people are questioning the norm more than they did 15 years ago.

EB: Well, I always say that if there is a God, the only reason he rested on the seventh day was because he was fuckin' hung over.

KK: [Laughs] Yeah.

EB: Do you see Slayer’s music providing any answers for those people who are “questioning the norm”?

KK: Well, the way I write 90 percent of the time is to throw up issues but not give a definitive opinion. I mean, to me the opposite would be Rage Against the Machine. Zack has an agenda. He makes sure everybody knows it and he wants you all on board. I don’t like to do that because I think some of our fans are still too impressionable and they’ll just believe it because you tell them to.

EB: Right, and then you’re kind of being the same thing you’re preaching against.

KK: Yeah. Like, when I say, “Religion is hate” -- I mean that’s a definitive statement, that’s what it is to me.

EB: When it comes to your fan base, do you find that there are a lot of new recruits still coming on board?

KK: Oh, absolutely. In the last five years I’ve seen more kids than I did when we were coming up. [Slayer] has definitely jumped generations and it’s really cool to be able to do that. There’s no formula, there’s no recipe. I guess you just stay relative long enough to where older brothers or parents hand it down and say, “I’m so into this, I want you to dig it.”

EB: Slayer, entertainment for the whole family.

KK: Hopefully the kids aren’t going to rebel and say, “Well I hate it because you like it.”

EB: You’ve mentioned before the importance of integrity to the band. Do you find that a lot of other metal bands out there are lacking integrity?

KK: Well there’s a revolving door as to who’s playing in a lot of bands. So there’s no question mark there. We never made questionable records where you thought, “Well, I wonder what Slayer is going to be playing when they come to town this time.” You know, it’s just like you know what’s coming to town. You know what’s going to be happening. You know you’re going to have a good time. You know people are going to be talking about it for the next few weeks. It’s as close to a guarantee, I think, as anything out there.

EB: You guy’s won a Grammy this year for the song off Christ Illusion called “Eyes of the Insane.” That must have been a pretty surreal experience.

KK: Actually I was on tour and I had a day off that day and I was at the gym when that went down. I came back from the gym and I had all these texts on my phone. I’m like, “Well, either something really good or something really bad happened” [laughs].

EB: Yeah, either someone died or I won a Grammy.

KK: All the congrats and when I came back to earth and went to the bar later and people could get a hold of me, they were like “Oh, congrats.” Whatever, you know, I don’t really care. The same day I won “Man of the Year” through Metal Hammer’s reader’s poll. That means more to me because the fans voted for it.

EB: Right, right.

KK: I think people in the Academy you know, I think as far as metal goes, they have no idea. That just told me we’re a household name. I think they probably picked it because it was [also a] video. I think if you were to ask them, “What’s the other nine songs on the record?” they would have no idea.

EB: Where’s your Grammy? Is it in the house?

KK: Yeah, we’re moving right now so I left it in the box. I’ll definitely display it. I’ve got two Metal Hammer Golden God awards. I’ve got two Kerrang! awards. I’ll have a little award shelf and they’ll be more prominent. I’ll probably have that one in back and the Golden God ones in the front.

EB: How is the snake breeding going?

KK: I only had one batch this year because I was touring and didn’t pay enough attention. But next year I stand to have 23 clutches of eggs, which could be upwards of 400 animals, you know. That’s going to be huge.

EB: It’s fascinating.

KK: I know people have had them, like Alice Cooper has had them and Slash had them, but it’s technically a secondary business for me.

EB: You know as much about snakes as you do about playing guitar.

KK: Oh yeah, there are people in the snake world that know me for my line of reptiles have no idea that I even touch a guitar.

EB: How long have you been doing it?

KK: I got my first [snake] in ’84. Right after our first big tour and I peaked in the late ’90s. I probably had just under 400 animals of my own. Then I realized it was taking too much time away from Slayer and I sold everything. I got back into it about four years ago on a much smaller scale. I still realize that Slayer pays the bills and I need to pay most time to that because I can breed snakes forever and I can’t play in Slayer forever.

EB: Well hey, you’re a smart man, you’ve got a back up.

KK: Yeah, I mean it took me a while to prioritize but now I’ve got it all right.

EB: And you know, it’s convenient that the two go hand in hand -- being a snake breeder and being in a band. They’re both pretty badass professions.

KK: Yeah, totally, once I actually get my website up next year. If there’s a Slayer fan that’s going to buy a snake he’s going to come to my site because he’s going to want a Kerry King snake. Even if 5,000 other people have the same reptile he’s going to buy it from me.

EB: [Laughs] Hey, well don’t tell Gene Simmons or else he’ll start a snake business. He’ll be like, “That is a great idea. I am a businessman. I’m going to start a KISS snake farm.”

KK: Yeah, he’ll buy me out [laughs].

EB: Right. With Christ Illusion, there was a bit of a debacle last year where you guys felt a little bit dissed when Rick Rubin chose to produce Metallica’s record instead of yours. What was the story behind that whole thing?

KK: That’s probably as much of it as I know. I didn’t delve into it at all. You know, once it was done it was done. I didn’t really care. All I’ve got to say is you know, I want Metallica to succeed as much as anybody because I would love to be a fan again. But now that I’ve got Christ Illusion out, they’ve got something to step over.

EB: Will you guys still work with Rick in the future?

KK: He had his hand on this record. He didn’t do full production but he had his hand in it mixing and stuff like that. If he wanted to do the next record, yeah he’d have a shot at it. I don’t dislike the guy for it or anything. But I think Josh Abraham did a good job on this record so I’d be more than happy to work with him again too.

EB: Right. What’s the difference between Christ Illusion and the special edition?

KK: We’re on Sony now. Sony wanted to re-release the record and have, you know, their own stamp on it so it’s got the song we didn’t finish – it’s got “Final Six” on it. It’s got the video for “Eyes of the Insane.” It’s got some behind the scenes video from Australia and Florida, I believe, just some fan stuff. Everything on there is pretty fun. I’ll watch it. If I was a fan I’d dig this.

EB: I have a quote here from Tom where he talks about the references to death in Slayer’s music. He says, “I think it’s just a common thread in general: we all share death, and we all share it at different times in different ways, but it’s the one thing that we all have in common. We all die. It’s how we live that makes us different.” I thought that was a pretty good way to sum it up. What would you say? What about the life you and the band have lived has made you different, especially amongst your metal peers?

KK: Well, we make up a mean riff [laughs]. It could be something that simple and easy. If I don’t come up with anything better, use that [laughs]! Yeah, you know, I think from the beginning we were lucky enough not to have to not be ourselves to be popular. Before we got our first record deal, we went out and played. We didn’t care if anybody liked us. We liked it. It was awesome and people came around to us. I think that also speaks for longevity. We never had to make believe we were somebody we weren’t. So, we made stuff up we loved. We made up stuff we believed in. We made stuff up we were fans of. I’m still a fan of the genre. I’m still a metal kid. You’ll always find me at Anaheim House of Blues if there’s a metal show in town. I think it all just revolves around itself.

EB: That brings up another question: Playing in this band for 26 years and being a fan of metal obviously longer than that, have you ever come to a point where you’ve felt disenchanted? Have you ever felt like you started to lose touch with being a fan first and foremost?

KK: The funny thing is, we were just in Europe. We played somewhere in Holland at a festival and Heaven and Hell opened for Slayer. That was weird for me.

EB: Wow.

KK: Yeah, that was weird to me. After the show Tony Iommi was knocking on the door and I’m like [laughs], “Stop knocking on my fucking door and get your ass in here! Don’t ever do that again!”

EB: Like, “Mr. King can I come in?”

KK: Yeah [laughs].

EB: What are Slayer’s plans for the rest of the year?

KK: The Manson tour is it. Then I’m off for football season. So don’t call me on Sunday.

EB: Is being home for football a requirement?

KK: No, this is the first football season I’ve been off for years. Usually I’m in Europe and can’t see shit! The last two years I was in European tours and I missed most of the season.

EB: Who’s your team?

KK: Raiders.

EB: Nice.

KK: Gotta be the bad guys.

EB: That, and they have a pretty badass color scheme going on.

KK: You know what, if Al Davis ever kicks the bucket the coolest thing the Raiders could do would be the monochromatic uniforms like all the other teams are doing. They could be all black. Or they could be all silver like little trophies [laughs].

EB: [Laughs] Anybody else in the band a football fan?

KK: Yeah, Jeff’s into it -- he’s a Raiders fan too. He used to wear Wheatly’s jersey offstage. He’s copying my ass because in ’94 I wore Biletnikoff for two years [laughs].

EB: How dare he.

KK: Yeah. It’s my idea.

EB: It’s funny; during the Manson interview he said that he hates watching sports, he reuses to watch them and he doesn’t want to be around anyone who does.

KK: [Laughs] Hey Manson, get in here, you’re watching this.

EB: I know, right? You just thought it was a coincidence that you got to go home for football season but maybe in reality he scheduled it to pull the plug before the jerseys come out.

KK: [Laughs] Yup.

EB: You guys are taking the stage before Manson but you’re excited because now you get to relax and hang out after your set, right?

KK: I know. We never ever get to play except last. So people say “Isn’t that weird?” And we’re like, “No, that’s really cool.” Yeah, Manson will be onstage and I’ll be drunk already.

EB: To wrap things up, I know that you’re a big lover of horror movies. What was the last good one you saw?

KK: 1408. I saw that when I got back from Europe. It’s pretty cool, man. You’re watching this movie and you’re like, “This is fucking wrong.” Just mentally, “What the fuck is going on with this thing?” It was cool. It was mental.

EB: Alright, well thanks for your time.

KK: Hopefully we’ll see you in Irvine.

EB: Hopefully.

Brian Posehn has deep comedy roots. He first gained famed as a performer/writer on the seminal sketch comedy show Mr. Show with Bob and David. Since then he’s become an in demand supporting in numerous sitcoms like Just Shoot Me and movies such as The Devil’s Rejects and Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. more

Brian Posehn has deep comedy roots. He first gained famed as a performer/writer on the seminal sketch comedy show Mr. Show with Bob and David. Since then he’s become an in demand supporting in numerous sitcoms like Just Shoot Me and movies such as The Devil’s Rejects and Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. This past year has been the biggest for Posehn. The Comedians of Comedy was a hit for Comedy Central, his first comedy album Live in: Nerd Rage was just released and his first comic book miniseries The Last Christmas just began at Image Comics.

Buy Brian Posehn Live in: Nerd Rage

Daniel Robert Epstein: Are you just doing interviews today?

Brian Posehn: Yeah.

DRE: Anyone good?

BP: You.

Actually it’s been a lot of fun but after a while you start to forget what you just said and you start to feel like an idiot.

DRE: That’s ok; at least you’re not like Patton [Oswalt].

BP: How’s that?

DRE: If Patton doesn’t like the questions he’s being asked, he’ll pretty much just stop talking [laughs].

BP: [laughs] Lovely.

DRE: You’re friends with Joe Lynch, right?

BP: Yeah, real good friends.

DRE: I just visited the set of his movie [Wrong Turn 2]. It was awesome.

BP: I’ve been too busy to get up there. I really wanted to, but he should have just written a part for me and then I would have had to go up there. If he was a true friend he should have had a nerd get shot or stabbed or whatever. But we’ll see maybe I’ll be in the third one.

DRE: All the actors in the movie are very pretty.

BP: What are you saying? I’m pretty.

DRE: You’re not as pretty as the redhead from Blair Witch 2.

BP: You’re right.

DRE: [laughs] I was actually just talking to Missy about you.

BP: Cool, I just had a couple of SuicideGirls in my video for my song Metal by Numbers and my good buddy, Gerry Duggan, called and got some SuicideGirls to come to set.

DRE: Which ones?

BP: I don’t even remember. Siren or Staple?

DRE: Staple [laughs].

So is your angry voice real?

BP: No [laughs]. I used to do it around friends and then those friends started to get in positions where they can hire me. The first time I did Just Shoot Me I didn’t audition for it. The part was written for me by a buddy, Rob Cohen. He just said, “Come on and do that dorky thing you do. Then scream in somebody’s face.” So I did.

DRE: How did the title Live in: Nerd Rage come about?

BP: I was trying to think of what to call the album and what to use for cover art. Powers is one of my favorite comic books. One of the issues last year had a telephone pole in the background of a big battle with a flyer on it that says Brian Posehn Live in: Nerd Rage. I figured I should use that as the title. Then I got the artist, Michael Avon Oeming, to do a more detailed version of the poster. I emailed [the writer of Powers, Brian Michael] Bendis because even though he is a fan and a friend Michael put the flyer in on his own.

DRE: Mike is a spectacular artist.

BP: No other artists’ work looks like that right now.

DRE: And some of the stuff looks so different from Powers.

You used to sell this album just through your website.

BP: Yeah because I didn’t know how big of an audience there was and I didn’t know where to go as far as labels. I wanted to get it out so I could work on a whole new act. So I did that and then I was thinking that going with a metal label made sense because I talk about metal so much that I’ve cultivated a metal audience. Also David Cross went to Sub Pop and Patton likes whatever he likes so he went to Aimee Mann’s label. So it just made sense. Down the road I was thinking I was going to start recording with Scott Ian and doing funny metal. Then Relapse, who was on my short list, approached me before I could approach anybody else. It was an organic fit and I immediately called Scott Ian in and said, “Look pal, we got to do this. We got to finally buckle down and write these songs we’ve been talking about.” So that’s how it all happened.

DRE: Could you possibly do a funnier metal group than Super Group?

BP: Yeah, it’s hard to be funnier than Sebastian [Bach] and [Ted] Nugent but I’m going to try.

DRE: You have to roll around the floor with them. Every time I flip past that show they seem to be wrestling.

BP: Yeah. We talked about calling my band Savage Animal too.

DRE: I know Patton waited so long to put out his album because he wanted to own it. Is it the same with you?

BP: I got a pretty good deal.

DRE: Was that very important to you?

BP: No, what was most important was distribution and just getting it in the right places.

DRE: How did you like the process of putting the album out yourself at first?

BP: I would make more money if I was just doing it on my own but at a certain point you need real distribution. I made a lot more off each record selling it out of my office, but I don’t have a lot of room in my office. I had to take it to the next level with signing to a label.

DRE: One thing I thought that was cool about the Comedians of Comedy was how you guys would do stuff during the day and then go talk about it onstage that night. Is that the way that you’ve always done your act?

BP: No, I’m more of a writer. Throughout the show you didn’t see me doing a lot of that stuff. That’s mostly Patton. He is way more prolific than I am and I think he knew that that was something he was going to do. There’s a little bit where I’m writing a bit in the morning and then trying it at night and it doesn’t go as well as I hoped. I don’t have a total method to my writing, it just happens when it happens.

DRE: Is it a much different thing than working on a screenplay or working on a sketch show?

BP: For sure, because with writing sketches and screenplays I can force myself to just sit down and write. With standup I’ve never done that. Though when I first started, I would. There would be days where I’d meet other comics at a coffee shop and we’d sit around and work on bits. But it wasn’t like I would sit down and go “Ok, today I’m going to think of a bit on dating” or whatever. I never was that kind of comic. If it pops into my mind and it’s funny I’ll write it down and then maybe work on it later.

DRE: Where was the CD recorded?

BP: It was recorded on the Comedians of Comedy tour at a bunch of different places. The first part of the set is actually from Atlanta, one of my favorite cities.

DRE: How did you like having to hear your act over and over again?

BP: It’s a lot of work because I took ten different full sets and then put them together to make the 45 minute disc. The challenge was getting what I thought were the best takes and the best versions of each joke. But the first 20 minutes is all from one show in Atlanta. Then the rest of the record is bits that I don’t do too much anymore that I wanted to get on the record and then never do them again. Also I wanted to have uncensored versions of my material from the Comedy Central special.

DRE: Do you have a special coming up?

BP: Not yet. We’re talking about a DVD so I have a lot of writing to do. Maybe I should start to do what Patton does and write about everything that happens to me and try it on stage at night. I’ve got to start generating material somehow.

DRE: Were you surprised about how popular the Titannica sketch from Mr. Show got?

BP: That was around the time when I first started to get noticed in public so that was one of the first things that everybody connected with. When we did that scene live and David was revealed with the puppet body we got our biggest reaction we ever got. The crowd just went insane those first two shows. When we used to do Mr. Show we’d do two shows in a row and then we’d edit them together to make the best show.

DRE: That sketch really is classic.

BP: I’m pretty proud of it. I have the puppet body hanging in my garage.

DRE: I asked David Cross but he couldn’t remember exactly who wrote the Pharmacist Who Sells Weed sketch. Was that you?

BP: Yeah, that was me.

DRE: That’s a great sketch too.

BP: That idea came from me and Scott Aukerman. I smoke pot occasionally and it came from me joking about how I should get a prescription for dealing with Bob [Odenkirk]. I wrote the line for David to make it less about me because I couldn’t write a sketch where I was the main character. The show was called Bob and David.

DRE: I read you just had a big 40th birthday party.

BP: Yes I did. There’s a clip of it on Youtube of all things.

DRE: I read about it on Blabbermouth.

BP: I can’t believe that [laughs]. It’s really funny that people are talking about my silly birthday. We had this band Metal School which is a cover band that plays at the Keyclub every week. They’re hilarious but they’re actually really tight. They used to be at The Viper Room where I would go see them all the time. My wife knows that I’m a huge fan so she surprised me. She booked The Improv and told me we were going to a cancer benefit where one of my friends was performing.

DRE: Oh, it was a surprise party.

BP: Yeah, it was a total surprise. You can’t really back out of a cancer benefit. She guilted me with the C word so I showed up and all my friends were yelling. Then I got up and sang You Got Another Thing Coming jokingly with the band and then Scott Ian came up to sing.

DRE: I read the first issue of The Last Christmas. I was looking at the cover and I thought “Boy, whoever did this cover does a great rip-off of Geof Darrow.” Then I saw it was actually Geof that did it. How did you make that happen?

BP: I know Geof only from being a fan. I go to [the San Diego] Comicon every year and he’s one of my favorite artists alive. I bought a page from Hardboiled off him years ago and I go to his booth every year. [The Last Christmas co-writer] Gerry Duggan and I had been talking about doing the comic for quite a while. We brought it up to Geof. We were like, “Hey man, if we ever get this thing going will you do a cover?” He was like, “Well, if it actually ever happens, let me know I’ll consider it then.” We were set up at IDW Comics last year but they made us a horrible offer and my lawyer was like “No way.” We walked away from that and then we were looking for another place and just decided to do it with Image. As soon as we asked Geof we both thought that it would never happen. But he came through.

DRE: How did you pick Rick Remender as your penciler?

BP: Rick’s a good friend and I had talked to him about this project for a long time. I said, “Do you want to do this by yourself? Do you want to do it with Kieron Dwyer?” Who is a good friend of ours also and Rick used to ink Kieron’s work. I knew Rick could do it on his own so I gave him the option. We’ve known him more as a writer but I think he wanted to establish himself more as a penciler. We’re happy with it. He captured this great EC Comics look.

DRE: It reminded me of the Lobo Christmas Special a little bit. Was that in your guys’ mind at all?

BP: Well a lot of people read that book but try reading that book now. It is just mayhem for mayhem’s sake and there’s no story to it.

DRE: That’s true.

BP: A lot of people have brought up that comparison but not in a bad way. But I’m sure there’s going to be some fat man at Comicon that’s yells at me. It was an inspiration but in that Santa’s the bad guy and in our book Santa is the hero. There’s a reason for the mayhem in our book. But I’m not going to slam that book anymore.

DRE: [laughs] Hey Simon Bisley did draw it which makes it automatically awesome.

BP: Yeah, he’s amazing. At one point Gerry and I were talking about getting Bisley to do a cover but I was like, “No, then we’ll really draw comparisons.”

DRE: I read that you’re writing a Goon short story.

BP: Yeah, that’s coming up. I’m doing that with Tony Moore.

DRE: Wow. That’s great. Tony Moore’s fantastic.

BP: He’s amazing. He’s one of the best newer guys out there.

DRE: What’s your Goon story about?

BP: It’s not written yet. But I have some crazy ideas keeping him in the Goon world.

DRE: Are comics something you want to keep doing?

BP: I’m doing what I want to keep doing. I’d love to be able to juggle all of this for the rest of my life. Like push a comic book one month and then have a new standup CD out and then keep doing movies and TV. I hope I can keep doing everything I’m doing because I love all of it.

DRE: Has anything you’ve written gotten on TV or movies yet besides Mr. Show and The Comedians of Comedy?

BP: I’ve had lines in movies. Honestly, it’s a tough business to crack. Run Ronnie Run had my name on it but I can’t wait to get something out there that just has my name and is the way I envision it. Screenwriting is the most frustrating thing I do. The other parts of my life aren’t nearly as frustrating but I think once I get that, I’m going to be more satisfied than I ever have just because it’s so hard.

DRE: Do you go to lots of meetings?

BP: Yeah and I do rewrites and punch ups on things you’ll never see. I’ve also done punch ups on movies that have come out and I’ve had original scripts that have gone along and gotten bought but ultimately won’t get made. I’m sure if you talk to Patton about it, his experiences are almost exactly the same.

DRE: Ben Garant told me that Patton is like the leader of a few people that rewrites a lot of the comedy scripts.

BP: Yeah, he does those a lot.

DRE: Are you one of those guys?

BP: My name’s in the same hat.

DRE: You have a role in Bobcat Goldthwait’s movie Stay, have you seen it yet?

BP: No I haven’t. I hear good things. Have you seen it?

DRE: I haven’t seen it. It just sounds so good.

BP: Yeah, I’m hearing really good things and Bob’s an old friend. I’ve known him for years. He said “Hey I wrote a movie about a girl that blows a dog.” I’m like, “Alright. Do I got to be there?”

DRE: [laughs] On the day the dog’s on set.

It was very low budget, wasn’t it?

BP: Yeah, we shot it at his producer’s house.

DRE: Oh really? [laughs]

BP: It was the most low budget thing I’ve been involved with and Mr. Show was real low budget. But when we did Mr. Show we would sometimes steal locations. We would jump out of a van with a camera crew and everybody would throw makeup on, yell our lines then jump back in the van and drive off. But Stay was even lower budget than that.

DRE: You read a lot of mainstream comics. Are you interested in writing them as well?

BP: I want to write comics but I’m never going to be one of those guys that screws with the history. I just don’t care and I don’t have the brain to do all the research. I can’t imagine doing a reboot like some of these guys are doing now.. It’s a lot of work as a reader; I couldn’t imagine doing as much work as those guys do with writing it. Spider-Man and Batman are my two favorites but I don’t know what I would do with them. I’m more apt to come up with a Deadpool story.

DRE: I would imagine that it is really hard to think of something new to do with Spider-Man or Batman.

BP: Right. Everything’s been done and also if I’m doing it, there’s got to be something funny about it because otherwise people will go, “why did he do this super straight boring Spidey story?” So I’d have to think of a comedic take and a lot of the mainstream comics so far haven’t been open to some of the ideas I’ve pitched. Gerry and I came up with The Adventures of Drunk Iron Man. I wanted to show all these other stories you didn’t see of him fucking things up while he’s freaking wasted. Like flying around with his helmet on backwards and a bottle of whiskey by his side.

DRE: [laughs] Is there going to be a second season of Comedians of Comedy?

BP: Hopefully. You’d have to ask the little fellow. We still tour together. So whether or not they send a camera crew out with us is in their court, but there’s nothing on the books but there’s been talk of us going to Europe and doing something for the BBC. That would be insane and I would love to do it. I love touring with Patton and Zach [Galifianakis] because they’re two of my favorite people in the world and they make me laugh every time I see them.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

I was at San Diego Comicon for the first time this past summer. When I read that Robert Smigel was going to be there presenting material from the Best of TV Funhouse DVD, I wanted to meet up with him and say hi. I have met Smigel a couple of times in person before but not since our epic interview back... more

I was at San Diego Comicon for the first time this past summer. When I read that Robert Smigel was going to be there presenting material from the Best of TV Funhouse DVD, I wanted to meet up with him and say hi. I have met Smigel a couple of times in person before but not since our epic interview back in 2004. When I asked Smigel if he wanted to do another interview to promote this next DVD, he said “What else is there to talk about?” Well it turns out, a lot. We ended up speaking for over an hour. Besides dissecting some of my favorite cartoons we even got into some deep stuff about Smigel’s religious tendencies and his upcoming new sitcom on FOX.

Buy the DVD of the Best of TV Funhouse

Daniel Robert Epstein: Whose idea was it to have a special Saturday Night Live Best of TV Funhouse episode?

Robert Smigel: I don’t really know who comes up with these wild ideas. It could be [Saturday Night Live creator] Lorne [Michaels] or the people at NBC. I just heard that they wanted to do one. They offered to do one back in 1999 for some reason. By then I’d only had like three seasons worth of material and I think they were short of ideas. They didn’t know what to air on Saturdays in primetime. So they aired the best of Jon Lovitz’s characters and the best commercial parodies involving sports. They wanted me to do an hour and I declined at that time because I thought it would get boring. I thought I had blown it because they never offered it again but I guess they just ran out of people.

DRE: What about having Ace and Gary as the hosts?

RS: That was my idea. Once I get the opportunity I immediately think of ways to compensate for how boring it would be just to have it be whatever they intended. For example, they asked me to do commentary for the DVD and I just found it to be a horror show with just me talking about the stuff for 90 minutes, much like this interview will be. So it’s the most heavily produced, overly booked commentary track.

DRE: [laughs] What did the audience see when Ace and Gary were hosting?

RS: Obviously we couldn’t have Ace and Gary really come out and perform a monologue for the audience. So first we animated everything and then we just played it in front of the audience. But for the monologue we did it live in front of the audience because we wanted their reaction shots. The audience looked at a blank stage but saw Ace and Gary on the monitor. I’m just grateful that they laughed at all during that time because it was a very strange thing to watch. It was like the way those award shows are when they make Henry Winkler talk to Beavis and Butthead. It is always very painful because the cartoons come in like half a second late with dialogue. You know that the audience is watching Henry Winkler talk to nothing.

DRE: [laughs] Poor Henry Winkler.

RS: Well he’s in high demand.

That was the worst joke I could have made. Henry Winkler hasn’t been at an award show since 1983.

DRE: Is Jimmy Fallon ok with being lusted after by Ace and Gary?

RS: He’s fine with it. He has a good sense of humor about…

DRE: About how handsome he is?

RS: [laughs] I think he’s secure enough in his ability as a performer to be able to laugh at that side of it.

DRE: What’s interesting about the Mr. T parody is that most of the parodies you do are of shitty Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the 70’s. But Mr. T was an 80’s era cartoon.

RS: There are a few 80’s cartoons that I took a perverse interest in and the Mr. T cartoon was one of them. I remember that I actively sought it out for typical comedy writer purposes, to laugh at it not with it. Generally I’m not one of those comedy writers who invest lots of his time in that. I know a lot of writers who like to spend more time watching crappy things than good things because they just can’t resist like the temptation to laugh and make jokes about it. A lot of sketch writers are addicted to Studio 60 right now. I saw an episode of Studio 60 and I got the idea. But there are other ones who just can’t get enough of laughing about how little it has to do with working on an actual sketch comedy show.

DRE: Do you remember the episode of Studio 60 you saw?

RS: I saw the second one where they introduce the backwards clock, which I found funny. They were trying to have their cake and eat it too. They introduced the backwards clock as evidence that the previous producer had lost his mind but then I was told that in future episodes they continue using the backwards clock. Is that true?

DRE: Yeah it is true.

RS: So on the one hand it’s introduced as this ridiculous reflection of how seriously the guy took the show and then it ends up remaining in the show. As everyone has pointed out, how are you going to get people to care about a sketch comedy show the way they cared about the people in The West Wing cared about running the country. It cracks me up that he really felt the need to add a countdown clock to heighten the drama.

DRE: The clock seems to imply that the show within the show produces 52 episodes a year.

RS: Is that true?

DRE: Well they seem to stress over the show by looking at the clock but what happens when they are off the air for a few weeks?

RS: Well he’s not there to watch the countdown clock. That would be like Lorne Michaels turning off all clocks on off weeks.

We were talking about watching something crappy. What was it?

DRE: Mr. T.

RS: Oh yeah, so I sought out the Mr. T one and I got the idea of doing this “I need work” premise.

DRE: I love that one so much.

RS: Oh that’s my favorite cartoon. I told Mr. T that in the commentary track but he didn’t believe me.

DRE: Everything is perfect about it.

RS: Yeah, I just love the idea that it sets you up to root for this guy that is doing something completely inappropriate. His motivations are so confusing and by the end of it he’s trying to beat the crap out of the director. Then the kids yell that the director is still trying to get away and avoid having Mr. T beat him up even more.

DRE: [laughs] I love the line, “Henrik Ibsen is a righteous dude.” How was it having Mr. T in the booth for the audio commentary?

RS: He was great. Once you got him going he wouldn’t stop. We watched the second Mr. T cartoon and the Christmas cartoon and we’re just talking and watching these cartoons and Mr. T just went off on unstoppable tangents. He could just speak nonstop at a rapid fire pace for literally 20 minutes in a row while I didn’t say anything. So I just took a random chunk of it and made up a commentary track for the second Mr. T cartoon, so it has nothing to do with the cartoon itself, it’s just Mr. T going off.

DRE: Did he ask you to call him Mr. T or T?

RS: He didn’t have any requirements. He has a lot to say about the legend around his name and how it’s very important that there’s a dot after the Mr. and that there’s no dot after the T because the phenomenon of the legend goes on ad infinitum. He was very complimentary about how I took the time to not put a period after the T. But I had only done it because that’s the way I’ve always seen it.

DRE: I’m not going to go through every cartoon on the DVD but I am going to go through my favorites. My favorite cartoon you’ve ever done is probably Saddam and Osama.

RS: That’s certainly one of the best ones. One of the most popular and probably the funniest single scene on the DVD is the kids throwing rocks for the commercial. The live action was directed by Jim Signorelli and he perfectly captured a crappy kid’s commercial. Steven Gold sang the song but it was just a scratch track and he was going to make it more sophisticated. But I left it alone. That cartoon was done at the beginning of the Iraq War. I had done one that I had pulled a few weeks earlier, that’s also on the DVD, that was mocking the whole shock and awe type thing, blowing up the whole country in order to liberate its people. I pulled that because once the war got started and Saddam’s statue fell, it was real, “Rah, rah, rah” over here. You want to do satire that reflects what some people are thinking, at least you do on a show like Saturday Night Live.

DRE: What’s amazing about Saddam and Osama is that you do it as if Hanna-Barbera actually teamed up with the Middle East because it seems very real.

RS: They’re the heroes of our cartoon. What I love about the cartoon is that most of the time I can’t really make a stand and I choose not to because I’m not really smart. I can reflect what the overall public opinion is. I can comment if I think things are obviously strange like whether it’s the administration knowing about it or whether there is propaganda on both sides being spun about it. That’s where that cartoon worked because it was a parody about propaganda. I went out of my way to not to make it Al Jazeera because it is exaggerated how bad Al Jazeera is. They’re not quite as bad as people make them out to be. I made it the state run Abu Dhabi. What’s enjoyable is that you can laugh at it from that perspective that people’s minds are being poisoned by bullshit on that side of the equation but if you’re against the war and you hate the President you get to see him portrayed as a monkey who eats his own crap.

DRE: Well I call all my Jewish friends Yahoodi now.

RS: [laughs] We went through a lot of trouble making sure the Arabic was accurate too. Yes the sketch was mocking Arab propaganda but I didn’t want it to mock anything else that had to do with the culture. So it would have been inappropriate for the Arabic to have been treated like it was gibberish or something. We had it translated very carefully and we got Arabic actors.

DRE: For another look at the Middle East there’s another one of my favorite cartoons Shazzang. That one makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

RS: [laughs] That was my favorite in that season for sure. I defiantly put that into the DVD even though lots of people hated Shazzang.

DRE: Really, why did they hate it?

RS: You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t it’s just like, “Oh gross! He’s cutting up a guy.” It was the most graphic and disgusting cartoon I’d ever done. But it was just all about somebody who was well-meaning going too far. I had that idea when I was doing the Comedy Central TV Funhouse show. On SNL I didn’t really to parody cartoons so much. What was fresh about the whole gig to me was that I was making new characters or topical cartoons, which hadn’t really been done. Then when I did TV Funhouse the series on Comedy Central suddenly we had to produce 80 eighty cartoons in ten shows and I had to widen the net a little bit. So I started looking at some cartoons with the idea of a parody now and then. So the Shazzan cartoon is very close to Shazzang. He really does toy with the bad guys a little bit but it’s just a couple of steps behind making him sadistic. Once I had that idea it just became a very fun game that Louis CK and Dino [Stamatopoulos] and I played just trying to think of the most awful and contrived means by which this genie could humiliate the bad guy always with a big smile on his face.

DRE: Dino and Louis are two of the sickest guys on earth too.

RS: Oh yeah. I couldn’t have hired two better guys than those two. It wouldn’t have been like that if I hadn’t had the other guys in the room. But they took to the idea like flies to shit. People who like that cartoon, like you and I, know that it’s one of the best cartoons.

DRE: I played the Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Outer Space so much my wife told me “I don’t ever want to see this again.”

RS: [laughs] Yeah, that was another idea I had back at the Comedy Central TV Funhouse gig. I was thinking about we should do parodies of these band shows and that was my favorite of those ideas. We did the Black Sabbath one. So we were going to do some Ladysmith in the second season. Then I dropped the idea after the show got canceled and sat on it until I had so few ideas for new ideas I went to my old list. On separate occasions I came up with the Ladysmith thing and the Token Black cartoon which was just ok. Token Black had been a full cartoon script that I wrote in 1997 but I just never gotten around to making it. Fortunately it was Black History month but by the time that I realized I could combine the ideas and use them as a setup for Ladysmith it was too late to produce the cartoon for Black History Month so we just made it a Belated Black History Moment.

DRE: The best things about those were the snickering cat in the Driving Miss Daisy one and in Ladysmith you had the little poppy alien thing.

RS: [laughs] Yeah. Well in Driving Miss Daisy she really did have a cat. So if they made a cartoon the cat would definitely have the famous Hanna-Barbera Mutley snicker.

DRE: Then you went back to making fun of Ladysmith by having Triumph singing with a fake version of them for the Night of Too Many Stars.

RS: Yeah, that was my own corporate synergy at work. Then I got to meet Ladysmith because I invited them to do commentary for my DVD.

DRE: So that was really them?

RS: Yeah, I just got into a sweet, simple conversation with them during their cartoon. Then I had them just watch some other cartoons and talk in Zulu. I also had them in the background when I was talking to Mr. T.

DRE: What did they think was going on?

RS: They’re not clueless at all. They speak English. But do they have the same frame of reference as far as the proliferation of cartoons that took place in outer space in the 70’s? No they don’t. They probably didn’t appreciate it on that level but they understood that it was a silly cartoon parody. They had their own objections that were tongue-in-cheek like “We never run away from the aliens. We are Zulu. Zulu do not run away.” But I had to have them behave exactly the way Josie and the Pussycats would have.

DRE: [laughs] You appeared on Conan O’Brien as yourself to promote the special before it aired. Had you ever done that before?

RS: When the Comedy Central TV Funhouse show was on, I did Conan but that was more planned. This last time was a last minute thing. Conan made it very easy and I just tried to think of something funny to talk about. I had noticed in the process of screening all these cartoons and putting them together was how many cartoons had men in their underwear. In the first version of the running order that I had put together, in the first 12 cartoons, six of them had a man in their underwear. There was Barney Rubble and then Tom Brady, John McCain and then Tom Snyder who I ended up taking out of the show but he’s in the DVD. Then Ariel Sharon was in the original Saddam and Osama script giving a blowjob to Dick Cheney.

DRE: Also Boo-Boo and Yogi Bear

RS: Yeah, that’s right. They count as men to me. So all these characters in their underwear on top of Ace and Gary in their skin tight suits.

DRE: What else did you notice putting all the cartoons together?

RS: [laughs] That was the most singularly embarrassing redundancy. The obsession with male genitals or at least the way I leaned on them. I’ve found it reminded me that there were, especially in the early years, times where I would throw in something crude just to make sure I would get a laugh in the cartoon. Like some of the X-Presidents were so dry on some level and I was competing with Chris Parnell who would be humping whoever the host was, it didn’t matter if they were male or female. Somebody would be humped and it was an era where there was a lot of visual shock humor at SNL. They went to two guys kissing almost every week for a while there. It was really funny when Phil Hartman kissed Alec Baldwin in 1991 in a sketch. Now when you see two guys kissing on SNL it’s like “Is this a rerun?”

DRE: I think Fred Armisen kisses the most guys.

RS: I know, they’re still making Fred Armisen kiss people. But in fairness I made him kiss Will Forte on my charity show. But I figured, come on, it’s for charity. [laughs] I liked the setup for the joke; it was Mike Myers as the eccentric millionaire requesting that two men kiss. I had a motivation, not that I’m seriously defending it [laughs].

DRE: In the commentary, you mention that one of the animators, David Wachtenheim is an Orthodox Jew. You also said that you are religious.

RS: I’m not saying I’m Orthodox. I’m observant in that I keep a kosher home. I do go to synagogue sometimes especially on the high holidays though I used to go a lot more. It’s too hard with the family nowadays for me to maintain that. But I was brought up with a fair amount of religion as a kid and there’s a lot I like about religion. It’s easy for religion to get perverted by opportunistic people and it’s easy for religion to be misdirected and used as a simplistic solution to people’s problems but there’s also a lot of wisdom and logic in the Bible. Until I was ten I went to a school that taught Hebrew every day in the afternoon, not just on Sundays, so it didn't feel like it was extra work. I went to a synagogue where the rabbi would really explain the Torah portions in a way that sometimes I didn’t necessarily agree with but I thought there was a lot of logic there. There’s a lot I don’t know about other religions. I know there’s a lot I like about Judaism, it feels like it’s rooted in humility in a lot of ways, at least the way I interpret it. It’s easy to laugh at the logic like, do you seriously not eat pork because it caused trichinosis thousands of years ago? People don’t eat pork because they worry about something that was a problem thousands of years ago. It’s just something that you do as ritual.

DRE: It’s just interesting because I know Stephen Colbert is a practicing Roman Catholic.

RS: Yeah, we’ve talked about religion in the past and he’s definitely not Jewish.

DRE: [laughs] Well it’s just interesting to see people who satirize stuff as harshly as you guys do also be religious.

RS: Yeah, Steve satirizes religious propaganda all the time. But the bad and ironic thing about it is that those people who purport to be the standard bearers for religion divert people’s attention from what’s actually good and useful about religion. People are shocked a lot of times when they hear that I actually have respect for a lot of the precepts of religion and particularly Judaism. I was lucky enough to have been brought up with it in a way where I really got to understand it from the inside out as opposed to the way many people are exposed to it today.

DRE: Yeah, I grew up kosher in my house. That’s why I’m not kosher now.

RS: Why? Tell me about that.

DRE: It sounds like the education that you got was much better than mine. I had no Jewish education at home growing up. I went to Hebrew school and I went to conservative Jewish school but nothing was taught to me at home except for the fact that “You can’t bring that into the house.” That was about it.

RS: With no explanation or anything.

DRE: Yeah, which made me go out and find out the explanations on my own. Which made me think, “Well I don’t know if I like that explanation that much.”

RS: It has to be taught with affection and not fear motivated.

DRE: Yeah it can’t be equated with a rule like a curfew. It can’t be “You have to come home at this time because I want you to.” “You can’t bring that bacon in the house because I don’t want you to.” It has to be backed up with the idea of tradition more than, this is what I want. Tradition was never taught, we just followed the traditions.

RS: That’s important but it also helps if you understand the whole means of why certain meats are kosher and why certain meat isn’t kosher. There are all the humane procedures that have been used for thousands of years to ensure that an animal is killed in the kindest way possible. You at least get to consider that there is a logic and a humility to it.

DRE: Just to get less serious here. When I saw the video for Eminem’s Ass Like That I didn’t realize that was actually you doing Triumph in the video until Triumph fell down and I saw the back of your head.

RS: Oh yeah, just barely. I was very specific about that. There was a long series of negotiations about that whole video. I really like Eminem and I felt bad about what had happened. Then when he came out with that album I was shocked that he would name check Triumph, let alone do a whole song about him. But I guess he felt that even though it was two years later and everyone else in the world had moved on he felt the need to artistically address it. He did get a lot of bad press from what happened with Triumph. I actually thought the song was pretty good. I was grateful that he talked about Triumph and not Robert Smigel calling me a dick or a fag on a record. It’s probably better not to be called fag on the most popular rapper’s CD. They called me up and said, “We’re doing a video and we want you in it.” I was like, “How am I going to say no to this guy?” because I like him and also religion has taught me to feel guilt and take on responsibility for everyone’s pain. I also felt if I didn’t do it they would create some awful looking puppet and do something very negative and derogatory so I felt like I better participate. There were negotiations. Originally he wanted me to be in the video. He wanted to see me very clearly holding Triumph and have Eminem beat the shit out of me. I insisted that it had to be a pile up and I didn’t really want to be seen. Most people don’t even know what the back of my head looks like.

DRE: Only people like me.

RS: I actually puppeteered Triumph because once I was there I figured I better take care of the quality control side of it because I didn’t know how much exposure it was going to get. Little did I know that it would be a video that no one would like and it would disappear very quickly. I think that song just didn’t connect with people. I thought it was a funny song and a good song but it didn’t really connect to people. It certainly didn’t top the one where he was in the Robin costume. One goofy video too many.

DRE: When did the Night of Too Many Stars become such a big deal?

RS: Well it was a different network doing it. When I was doing it with NBC, they were nice enough to do it. I think they committed to it and then they might have gotten a bit of cold feet with the concept once because I think if they felt that if they made a huge deal of it then every charity is going to be on their ass. Comedy Central just didn’t have those concerns. Maybe they were just happy to have a show with Jon Stewart and the funniest people in the world. The lineup I ended up getting was beyond what I had expected. There were the people I contacted and then Jon was able to get people like Jerry Seinfeld to come in.

DRE: Brian Williams too.

RS: I don’t know who got Brian Williams. I don’t know who made that call.

DRE: That was a funny bit he did.

RS: That was a very funny bit. T. Sean Shannon came up with that idea and Brian Williams is always funny. Although the special didn’t really get the promotion outside of the network that it probably should have had. I think the next time you’ll see something much bigger. I don’t think people who didn’t watch Comedy Central knew about it. It didn’t get huge ratings though it made a lot of money. Comedy Central was very generous with letting me set up a celebrity phone bank. The phone bank alone made something in the area of $250,000 which was about five times what anyone had projected. Then Jon himself came up with this thing and appealed to people to stand up in the audience and support a public school program that was desperately needed. Some people stood up with $50,000 donations and then there were different levels. By the time they got to $1000 there were dozens of people standing up and it made something close to $300,000 for our charities within three minutes. So my wife and I were pretty overwhelmed. It made much more money than we had ever anticipated it would make. It made twice as much money as the first event.

DRE: That’s great.

RS: It’s still making money because they will be rerunning it during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Also right now you can download it on iTunes and they give 100 percent of the $1.99 to the charity.

DRE: So tell me about your show Animals that you’re working on.

RS: It’s called The Animals and Greg Cohen and I are developing it. It is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Pretty much since TV Funhouse fell apart. What was great about TV Funhouse is also what was unproduceable about it, the animals and puppets interacting. That’s one of those things that God doesn’t want happening so he makes it very expensive to produce. Now I really do sound like a zealot. I made a huge effort to keep TV Funhouse on the air. It was going to be produced out of Canada. But it became impossible and at a certain point I started to think, “You know, for all this work I just have to find another way to do animal humor that’s easier and maybe try and make some more money doing it.” It occurred to me that if I did a show about animals in animated form then it could also be interesting and racy the way Friends is. You don’t necessarily have to see the animals having sex with each other, in a way I took so much delight with the Comedy Central show. Part of the appeal of what I do with Triumph and the reason I can’t be completely dirty is because I’m doing it on NBC. A lot of people like the stuff where it doesn’t get super dirty more than the Triumph comedy album where I’m uncensored and I can say anything I want. It is funny in that context but some people are just as satisfied or more satisfied with seeing me just go up to the line and not cross it on network television. I think that you can do spots that feel fairly outrageous and interesting with animals on a primetime sitcom.

DRE: So it is going to be like a sitcom, but will it have the short films?

RS: As of now that’s not the plan. I can’t perpetuate that. I would love to. That’s what was great about the Comedy Central show because I just wanted a home for everybody to write short form cartoons. This is taking what I was doing with the Anipals and converting it into something that I think could be interesting and appealing. It might not seem as random and motivated purely by shock value. In fairness we did write a second season of shows that I think were going to be a lot better, where the characters were going to be more developed and their motivations would be more apparent but we never got to do it. What I’m looking to do here is, I’m not going to say it’s like Desperate Housewives or something but it will be like a neighborhood of animals. There’ll be extreme things that happen and it will parody human interaction.

DRE: Any talk about the Comedy Central TV Funhouse show coming to DVD?

RS: Yeah, that DVD is coming out, hopefully within a year. It’s been held up for a lot of strange reasons. One of which was like they weren’t sure they could call it TV Funhouse. They didn’t know what the rights were anymore because there was a big to do when I took that name. At the time I was able to do it because I was still on Saturday Night Live doing the cartoons and it was a way to keep me doing both. I got away with it so I guess it’s alright.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

You've seen Frank Kozik's work before, even if you don’t realize it. His work is so iconic and voluminous that it's probably already somewhere in the recesses of your mind. He's done album covers and images for bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Neil Young, Sonic... more

You've seen Frank Kozik's work before, even if you don’t realize it. His work is so iconic and voluminous that it's probably already somewhere in the recesses of your mind. He's done album covers and images for bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Ice T, George Clinton, Green Day, Beck, The Offspring, The Melvins and lord knows how many other awesome bands.

From 1994 to 2003, Kozik ran his own independent record label, Man's Ruin Records. On that label, Kozik not only released albums, but also he designed the covers for them, working with bands like Turbonegro, Queens of The Stone Age and Sex Pistols. After leaving the music industry, Kozik could have easily retired and settled into one particular niche… he could have, but he didn't.

Instead, he utilized his love of bizarre and weird shit and started making vinyl toys. He completely took over the toy scene and, to this day, people eat his shit up like candy. He's created such awesomely absurd images as a delightfully sinister smoking bunny, Mao Zedong wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and countless others for the demented child in all of us. Sitting down with Frank Kozik, I was pleasantly surprised by how insightful he was. In this interview we spoke about Europe, politics, Andy Warhol, his horrible motorcycle accident, and sex toys. We went there.


Garrett Faber: When you were 14, you came to live in America. What was that like for you?

Frank Kozik: It was completely amazing. You could understand; I lived in a kind of archaic place. I lived in Spain under Franco, and it was a place that was sort of suspended in time, outside of tourist towns. My Mom married into some high level fascist family, it was very uptight, almost like a Victorian setting, we had to dress for dinner, there were many rules. I was destined to marry some other dudes daughter and I was going to work for my step-dad's factory, or my uncle's print shop. It was a system where your destined was predetermined by your social status and family connections. I didn't like it at all.

I had been out quite a few times, spending time with my dad, here in the States or other places in the world. I turned 14, 15 and started to become a person, and as a 15-year-old person, it's not too enticing to have your future laid out for you. At one point my dad was like, "Why don't you just come over here and you can do whatever the fuck you want?" That sounded pretty good. I came to America in '76 living in Sacramento. I fuckin' loved it, I was smokin' pot, I dropped out of school, I worked at the burger place, I bought a shitty car, I became a total scumbag. I loved every second of it because it was different than that super controlled system I had grown up in, I love America, I love it here. You can do what you want to here. Everyone gets a big hard-on for Europe, like, "Oh, I wanna live in Europe! It's so cool!" Europe is cool if you come from the right family and you get to go to a university and be a professor or whatever the fuck, and have status. If you're just a regular person, it sucks. I lived there. I love America.

GF: How do you feel about the upcoming election?

FK: It all depends, I actually switched party affiliations, I cannot vote for McCain. I've been a republican for 25 years, mostly do to my stance on business. I don't really give a fuck, ideology. McCain is so out of the loop, we don't need another fuckin' Reagan fossil idiot running the show. I cannot vote for Hilary because she's evil and fucked, I don't want that bitch telling me what to do. I hated the Clintons ever since they appeared on the horizon, so hopefully Barack will get it, and I'll vote for Barack. If he doesn't then I'll just write myself in.

GF: I'll write you in too, if he doesn't win.

FK: Barack would be useful for foreign policy; he's non-white, young, virile male, non-western name. He might be taken more seriously by patriarchal freaks in other countries instead of some fat, shrill white woman that professes to be a Christian. If anything he'll no pull in Washington, maybe a little bit, I think he might be pretty good for symbolic reasons in the third world.

GF: Would you be a good president?

FK: No one would want me to be the president because I would actually hold people responsible to society. It would pretty brutal, it wouldn't be a lot of fun for a lot of people. Kids would have to wear school uniforms and learn to read. If people didn't want to work, they would be forced to work. I would disembowel graffiti artists, it would be bad.

GF: [Laughs] Well... that's... pretty cool man. How do you feel about Shepard Fairey?

FK: I like Shepard; I've known him since he was in school. I haven't talked to him a lot lately because he lives in Los Angeles. I run into him once in a while. I've known Shepard for probably over 20 years. I think that it's interesting that there's a backlash now, it's been pretty obvious since day one what the guy does. He's really good at what he does. He's a really active individual, I know what Shepard has done, and how he's gone about doing it. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a proactive motherfucker. Content-wise, it is what it is. I disagree with him politically, but seeing what he does with his work I don't think he's taking the revolutionary side of things that seriously anyways, if so, he'd be the first one they would shoot. I think it's silly to make anybody a hero, but I think it's even sillier to go freak out and say "Oh my hero sucks, now I'm gonna destroy him!" I know Shepard, and there is a mechanism around Shepard now, okay? Shepard still believes in his trip so he'll still go out every night and wheatpaste and run around and act a fool and skate and does all this bullshit, like he's always done. That's cool with me.

GF: How did you feel about Andy Warhol?

FK: He's probably my role model. That guy is the greatest genius of the 21st century as far as art and design goes. He was a wizard. All current design steals from him; everybody.

GF: What about Basquiat?

FK: Basquiat, whatever man, he was in the right place at the right time. His artwork doesn't appeal to me. Plus he was apparently a grotesque junkie, which I don't like either. It would of been cool if he'd of been a successful human being and took advantage, he was in the right place at the right time, he made the right connections, he had a good thing going and he fucked it up. That's stupid, I don't think his art's important. A lot of people have done, and do, that kind of shit. I think that if he had been a white guy, nobody would care. I think the ethnicity factor made him cool.

GF: What about David Bowie?

FK: Bowie's a genius. He's made some amazing recordings and always had really exquisite fashion sense. Never got fat. Still pleasing to look at and he's like what, 65 or something? Awesome, I didn't really like his weird late '80s MTV phase; that was a little goofy. But I've enjoyed many a Bowie scene.

GF: Would you ever make a feature length film? What would that be like?

FK: I've made some videos like a million years ago. Within the weird little industry they were really well received. Afterwards I got a lot of offers and I was talking to some famous dude who produces movies, I can't remember his name. He was like, "Let's do a production deal, what movies do you want to do?" I was like, "Do you want me to write something, or adapt something?" So it was going to be an adaptation of a book. I gave him a list of books that I could make awesome movies out of, but unfortunately, they had all already been optioned, so it went nowhere.

GF: What books?

FK: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and Moby Dick -- those were the three books. Apparently no one wants to make Moby Dick, and the other two had been optioned forever. That was a long time ago though, if I got the offer again now there’s some new writers with books I'd like to adapt.

GF: Like what?

FK: I really like this guy Iain M Banks, he's a science fiction writer, some of his stuff would make pretty cool action flicks. I definitely wouldn't want to make a movie about people sitting around talking about their baby and stuff, I'd definitely want to make a really crazy period piece or a science fiction movie.

GF: What periods fascinate you the most?

FK: Pretty much any period because it gives you the ability to nerd out and get historically accurate, have fun building stuff and getting costume designs, ya know, shit like that.

GF: Did you ever think about making a line of crazy sex toys?

FK: I did a lot of sexual art in the mid-80s, I was really into bondage chicks and Bettie Page, right before it got real popular. There was a period when there was a big sexual element in what I did. It started with some really dirty, grungy black and white old bondage porn lookin’ stuff. Then I kind of got into the pin-up girls a little bit. Then what happened was a bunch of dudes came along and they were way better at it than me, so why even try to compete? Right? Then everybody was doing it and it got boring and not really interesting anymore. So then I went the other way and started to do stuff that had nothing to do with sex, which continues to this day actually.

GF: Cool, cool. What are some of your favorite horror films?

FK: I'm not a super big horror film fan, I like the old Hammer flicks from England, because I was into them as a kid and they were lush and crazy and weird. They always had cool posters and credits, especially when the Hammer films did weird Poe adaptations. I don't like modern horror where it's like slasher or CGI'd evil things in a psychiatric institute, I like those old Italian and English horror films from the '60s. I can actually still sit around and watch those now, I'm not gonna go watch Friday The 13th or anything like that, not into that at all.

GF: What did you think of the McFarlane toys?

FK: Not really into ‘em man, the thing is, I collect all kinds of stuff. The problem with the McFarlane stuff is that if you get one, it looks cool right? Then if you get another one, you've got to display the things, and they're so intricate and they're such dust-catchers that the minute you get a few they become invisible. They turn into a big blur, so I never got into collecting them. Also, the automatically became things that normal people collected, then I lost all interest. Then he started making sports guys and weird stuff. I'm not a nerd, I don't read Marvel comics, McFarlane makes great toys, he really upped the quality for things like that, but they're too busy and too normal. They sell ‘em at Toys 'R' Us, and fat kids drinkin’ big gulps go and buy ‘em.

GF: What do you collect now?

FK: Lately, motor vehicles. I just collect motorcycles and cars now that I've got the money. I've always had bikes though, motorcycles. I used to collect old paper goods, I don't do that anymore; I got rid of most of it. I used to be obsessed with old paper goods that had a visual impact, it could have been anything, a shoe ad, weird pulp novels or calendars, old porn, propaganda posters, old comic books. That got stale because after a while it just piles up, flat files, you can't go look at it, or afford to frame it or even have a place to hang it. Then I got into this really intense period where I was into Hello Kitty stuff, this was in the '90s. I got into collecting really cute Japanese shit. That turned into collecting the new really weird toys, which I now make for a living. But now since I make 'em, I don't collect 'em anymore. Lately I've been obsessively collecting snap on tools and car parts and stuff, I've got a couple of car projects going. Also, really nice furniture for the house.

GF: Would you ever make a line of furniture?

FK: I'm kind of vaguely poking around with that, I did some rabbit stools. They weren't really furniture though, I going to make these giant grenade end tables really soon. I've got a gig right now, I'm designing a nightclub's interior, that involves designing all the furniture but it's not really furniture either, it's like bizarre plastic and fiberglass stuff, pop art kind of stuff. I personally collect arts and crafts stuff, stuff that doesn't have much to do with what I do for a living. I'm designing furniture but it's more like weird pop art crap that's supposed to be furniture, rather than actually being furniture.

GF: Awesome! Tell me about the cars and the bikes.

FK: I've always had motorcycles since I was a little kid. I went through phases: back in the '80s I was into the first generation of Japanese race bikes, I had lots of big Yamahas, cafe bikes and stuff. Then I got obsessed with antique motorcycles so I had all these old BMWs from like the '30s and '60s and I spent all this money fixing them up and they all sucked. Then I got into building custom Harley's, I built a couple nice ones but then I got sick of that and I sold them. Then it was sort of like, "I want to be young again," so I got back into the cafe bikes, except this time it was Ducati. So currently I have a 996 and a tracked out 749 Ducati, I actually bought back one of my old Harley's so I actually have a chopper again… A good way to waste time when I should be working.

GF: Have you ever crashed your bike?

FK: Not for a long time, knock on wood. My last big wreck was about 24 years ago. It was a doozy, I was in the hospital for a long time, since then I'm either a better rider than I think I am, or I've been super lucky. No big wrecks since the mid-80s and I ride almost everyday.

GF: What were your injuries?

FK: I'd pretty much fucked up my whole right side, I didn't break my back or anything I had a big concussion, dislocated my jaw, dislocated my shoulder, broke my arm in a bunch of places, broke my clavicle, broke all my ribs, broke my thighbone, crushed the two lower leg bones in my ankle. I had a limp for years. I was lucky though, I didn't get a brain shear or damage my spine or break my hip, I just broke everything else. [Laughs] I was wearing full leathers and a full-face helmet and everything if I hadn't have been wearing that shit, I'd probably be dead. That stuff apparently soaked up some of the impact. All I remember thinking was, "Oh, I'm gonna lose it." Then a blur, then I was in the hospital. Fuckin' sucked.

GF: Do you believe in ghosts?

FK: No, if all that EVP shit was real, here's an easy way to prove it; go to some place like Auschwitz and set up a bunch of a recorders. If there is any sort of sound, it'll be 500,000 ghosts screaming in Polish and Yiddish, if you want to get EVPs and prove ghosts are real, go to the killing places instead of dicking around some dudes house in Illinois.

GF: You once said art is your interesting hobby, what other interesting hobbies do you have?

FK: I have hobbies, I don't know if they're interesting or not. I like to make stuff. I've always been into gardening, fixing up houses, working on vehicles. I like to read a lot of semiotics and systems, theory stuff, socio-economic stuff. I read obsessively and consistently on certain subjects. It does me no good at all, but it's interesting.

GF: What tattoos do you have? Do they all have stories or do they just look cool?

FK: Some of them have a dumb reasoning. The tattoos aren't about having a story but more like an accessibility to a tattoo person who was cool and not a dick. All my tattoos have been done by three people and I have about 40 tattoos. I'm interested in them for personal reasons, I like looking at them and I don't really display my tattoos to other people, they're kind of just for me. I've never gotten loaded and gotten a tattoo, every one of them has a really long thought process, which is probably too complicated to explain in this format. All the tattoos are for really personal reasons that don't have too much to do with display.

GF: Have you ever been offered your own TV show?

FK: I'm actually developing one right now, an animated TV show.

GF: What’s it about?

FK: I can't tell you, I have a non-disclosure agreement.

GF: What’s your presence on the show going to be like? Voice? Designing characters?

FK: I'm executive producer, it's all my characters with the basic premise being a wacky animated sitcom. Maybe for Cartoon Network, I don't know yet. All the stuff starts in a couple of months. It won't be anything that cool, which is fine, I just want to do it to make some money.

For more on Frank Kozik go to his official site here

Harvey Pekar got pretty damn famous when the film adaptation of his autobiographical comic, American Splendor, was released to great acclaim in 2003. Since then he’s had great success with the books, Our Movie Year and a new Best of American Splendor collection but you’d never know it when you talk... more

Harvey Pekar got pretty damn famous when the film adaptation of his autobiographical comic, American Splendor, was released to great acclaim in 2003. Since then he’s had great success with the books, Our Movie Year and a new Best of American Splendor collection but you’d never know it when you talk to Harvey. He’s one of the most worried and nervous but very funny people you will ever meet. Now you can discover his origins in the new book, The Quitter. Drawn by indie comic book creator Dean Haspiel, it tells the story of his troubled teen years for the first time. He failed to impress all either in sports, school and even his family. Harvey finally found his niche but those fears he developed live with him even now.

Buy The Quitter

Daniel Robert Epstein: Why did you want to write The Quitter?

Harvey Pekar: Dean Haspiel was the one who hooked me up with the guy who produced the American Splendor movie. That has been very beneficial to me. I asked Dean if there was anything I could do to pay him back. He said he wanted to illustrate a long work of mine. I tried to come up with something for him and The Quitter was it. It was a period of my life that I hadn’t written about much and I figured I could write a long narrative and he could illustrate it. I’m not saying I would never have written about this had I lived to be 500 years old, but that’s what started me in that direction.

DRE: Was this the longest comic story you’d ever done?

HP: Yeah, except my wife and I collaborated on Our Cancer Year which was twice as long.

DRE: I’ve read most of your work and The Quitter was the first time you really tried to use a normal structure. It wasn’t just the small moments. These were a lot of big and important moments in your life you were hitting.

HP: These were a lot of what most people would call big moments. But this was the structure I chose to accommodate these moments.

DRE: Did you think of this structure beforehand or did you just write the story?

HP: I just sat down and wrote it. It didn’t take me very long to write at all. In fact, I had finished it before I’d even gotten a contract from DC/Vertigo. We talked about it and they’d agreed to accept it. Then they said they’d send me a contract and it took a relatively long time for them to get it. By that time I’d finished the story.

DRE: [laughs] So as soon as the contract showed up, you signed it and sent it back with the story.

HP: Yeah, sort of.

DRE: Has Joyce [Brabner] heard all these stories before?

HP: I think most of them, yeah. I never sat down one day and said “listen I want to tell you about my biography from the time I was born until I was like 25 or something like that.” But I don’t think she was real surprised by anything.

DRE: I was very surprised to find out that you considered yourself a quitter. You can’t be a quitter if you self publish a comic for as long as you did.

HP: It’s mostly about the first part of my life where I couldn’t get anything together. After I got a steady job that made everything possible. I didn’t hate the job, the pay was enough for me to start writing. I got married and it didn’t last forever but it lasted about 12 years. So for a while there my life was pretty stable. I hung on for dear life. There were very few jobs that would have met my requirements. The job was simple enough for me to hold onto without driving myself nuts about it. Another reason I called it The Quitter was because I wanted people to realize that I was pointing out faults that I had. Sometimes people don’t realize you’re doing it deliberately. I’m not perfect and I want people to identify with me. If you’re portraying yourself as someone without fault it’s pretty hard for people to identify with that.

DRE: I’m Jewish and of course there is the stereotype that Jews are plagued with self doubt. Was that part of it?

HP: It may be. I don’t think it’s genetic. It’s probably because Jews have had a history that made them feel insecure. My parents came from Poland and they weren’t exactly treated like royalty around there. In a lot of places all over the world at various times Jews have been treated very badly and it hasn’t exactly made them feel more secure .

DRE: How do you think Dean did with the book?

HP: I thought he did a very fine job. Everybody thinks that Dean did a really good job.

DRE: How much of Dean’s work had you read before you worked together?

HP: I met Dean through a guy named Josh Neufeld who had done some artwork for me. When Dean found that Josh was illustrating stuff for me, he wanted to do something too. So he sent me some of the samples of his work and we got to corresponding and then we did a story.

DRE: Did you play to Dean’s strength’s or just do what you normally do?

HP: His style is noticeably different between this book and the earlier stuff he did with me. I asked him “This thing is way grimmer than anything we’ve done before. Do you think you can come up with an appropriate style that’ll highlight that grimness?” He said he’d been thinking about that too so I don’t know if I would have had to ask him to do this, but I did anyway. So it came about and it worked out real well. I knew that the guy had a variety of styles that he could use. I had seen some of his other drawings and stuff, although he didn’t draw that way very frequently in his comic book stories.

DRE: The Quitter doesn’t have as much of your trademark humor in it. Like you said it’s a grimmer story.

HP: I’ve written stories that have been pretty serious before. It didn’t feel any different. I want to write a good story, but it doesn’t have to be a funny story.

DRE: How’s The Quitter selling?

HP: They tell me that by their standards it’s selling pretty well at DC. They’re satisfied with it. I’m not sure that they expected it to sell as well as it has.

DRE: I think one of my favorite artists that’s drawn your stuff is Ed Piskor. I believe you guys are doing another book?.

HP: Yeah, I’m working on a book with Ed called Macedonia.

DRE: What’s that about?

HP: A few years ago I met a woman just before she left for Macedonia. At that time she was going to college and she wanted to write a thesis about how they avoided war in Macedonia when the rest of the former Yugoslavia had wars all over the place. She said she was going to try and interview people and put together a paper on it. I am interested in politics and I asked her if she would mind taking notes so I could ask her about it when she gets back. I’ve been thinking about doing something political. Then when she came back, she sent me a 140 pages worth of notes. We’re doing a whole graphic novel based on that.

DRE: Is it going to still be through your point of view though, even though it’s her notes?

HP: I’m just going to present her adventures . It is going to be like Unsung Heroes, the Vietnam war book I did. It will be entirely from the point of view of the person I’m writing about.

DRE: How do you like the process of doing it from someone else’s point of view?

HP: It’s fine as long as what they say is interesting. I like to hear things from other people’s point of view. I’m working on a book now. It’s a biography in that it’s about this person telling to me about their life.

DRE: You’ve retold the story about how you first decided to do comics many times. When you first started American Splendor you wrote that you felt there was still so much to do in comics. Do you still feel that way today?

HP: Of course. But I don’t think comics are in much better shape than they were years ago. I think we’re on the threshold of something, but I’m very disappointed. I thought that the underground comic book movement would really be a lot more momentous than it has been so far. I thought it would bring about all sorts of change and that comics would be used in all these different ways. But here we are in the 21st century and superheroes are still the best selling comics.

DRE: Yeah, I don’t get it either really.

HP: People didn’t see the potential that comics have and they still don’t.

DRE: Are you still going to write the actual American Splendor comic?

HP: I’m going to, yeah. I haven’t been doing it for a couple of years because I’ve been working on these graphic novels and I’ve been involved with the movie. But now I’m starting it again with DC. I’ve already written enough stories for two issues. It’s shorter stories and a fair amount of them are humorous.

DRE: One thing you always touch on in your work is how much money you make and need. Is DC treating you ok?

HP: DC treats me really well actually. They treat me better than any other publisher has. But it’s a book to book thing. I don’t feel I really have a real solid base of support among readers. That’s because although they’re comic books in form, they’re not typical comic books in content. Regular comic book content would be superheroes. Consequently I think that the people who would be most interested in my work are those who read novels and short stories. But a lot of them don’t know anything about me because my work comes out in comics. On the other hand comic book readers like superheroes. I’m trying and right now things look ok but I feel like every book I do has got to sell pretty good. That’s scary because before the movie my books didn’t sell well at all. When I was on the David Letterman show I thought it would increase my sales some, but it didn’t. So I thought that the movie wouldn’t help my sales at all. But it turned out that the movie got people to buy it. Now I’ve got a pension, I’ve got social security, so far I’ve been able to make it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Stan Lee was recently named the 26th most influential American by Atlantic Monthly, but if it was up to me I would have put him quite a bit higher. Lee is, of course, best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and dozens more, though controversy has always swirled around how big... more

Stan Lee was recently named the 26th most influential American by Atlantic Monthly, but if it was up to me I would have put him quite a bit higher. Lee is, of course, best known as the co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and dozens more, though controversy has always swirled around how big his real contributions might have been. But first and foremost Lee has always been the consummate salesman, whether it was selling the latest weird Spider-Man villain to the readers or hosting the television show Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Lee’s latest projects are totally without connection to Marvel Comics. His company, Purveyors of Wonders, has been producing original characters for straight to DVD movies. One of the best is Mosaic, an animated film starring the voice of Anna Paquin as Maggie Nelson a high school student whose father is an Interpol agent investigating a mysterious race that can change appearance at will. After Maggie is bathed in the power of one of her father’s discoveries, an ancient runestone, she gets all the powers of a chameleon. Maggie teams up with a member of that ancient race, codenamed Mosaic, to defeat the evil Mannequin who wants to take over the world.

Check out the official site for Stan Lee Presents: Mosaic

Daniel Robert Epstein: So Stan, these are the Purveyors of Wonders projects you’ve been talking about for years.

Stan Lee: Yeah Purveyors of Wonder or POW! is our company. Obviously we wouldn’t purvey anything that wasn’t at least wonderful.

DRE: How involved are you with this?

Lee: I come up with the basic concept for what we do. I’ll write an outline or a treatment or something of that sort. Then we find the best script writer to put it into script form and I stay on top of the whole operation.

DRE: Do you find it difficult to keep relevant?

Lee: I have this one problem. I’m a little too hip. I have to cut back as much as I can because I don’t want to lose too many readers or too many viewers because I am too advanced. When I walk past a bunch of kids playing ball in the street I am always surprised when they don’t yell at me, “Hey fella we’re one man short. You want to join us?” I still feel like I’m one of them.

DRE: I interviewed Roger Corman not too long ago who I believe you’re friends with.

Lee: He’s a great guy.

DRE: His company is now doing stuff straight to DVD. I think some of the best stuff I’m seeing now is straight to DVD. Do you feel this is a really untapped market?

Lee: I don’t know how untapped it is because we’re starting to tap the hell out of it. It’s a great market absolutely.

DRE: Did you find more freedom in straight to DVD movies than theatrical films or even comic books?

Lee: We can do whatever we want but I still love movies and television. But the beautiful thing about POW is that we’re involved in all of them. We’re working on movies, TV series, videogames and we’re doing things for cell phones. DVDs are fun because we just decide to do one and we damn well do it.

DRE: People have trouble creating new franchise characters, what’s the key to writing compelling characters?

Lee: Sure I’m going to tell you so that all our competitors can make note and put us out of business [laughs]. The key is to create characters that people will care about and will want see more of. Now how you do that, I am not going to tell you.

DRE: [laughs] We spoke of a few years ago and you said that you weren’t a fan of pure fantasy, did you relax that a bit for Mosaic?

Lee: It depends on what you’re talking about pure fantasy. If your story has nothing but fairytale qualities then I’m not interested in it. Fantasy has to be tempered with reality. For example, one of the famous fairytales is Jack and the Beanstalk. The fantasy element is that he had magic beans and they grew a giant beanstalk that went up to the sky where a giant lived. That’s fantasy, but it was coupled with reality. Jack was a poor kid who lived with his mother. They didn’t have enough money and finally she told him to sell their cow. By making the character’s realistic and empathetic, you can go into fantasy but if everything is fantastic then it gets boring.

DRE: I know that you said many times that the executive producer credit you get on the Marvel movies are honorary.

Lee: I really don’t have that much to do with producing the movies. Though many of them are based on the things that I have written years ago. As far as the production of the movies, there are so many talented people that they don’t need any help from me.

DRE: Would you be interested in being more involved with the Marvel movies in the way you are involved with the Purveyors of Wonder projects?

Lee: Any creative juices that I have, I can expend on POW so I don’t have to butt into other projects. At POW we are doing so many things that I’m totally involved in so I do manage to keep busy and stuff.

DRE: I read that you will be making a cameo in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Lee: Yes and it’s a great appearance too. I have a couple lines to say and I think the viewers who are old Marvel fans will get a kick out of it because my appearance is based on something that happened in a Fantastic Four story years ago.

DRE: I assume that means Willie Lumpkin will be using his ear wiggling superpower.

Lee: I’m not going to be Willie Lumpkin in this one. I’ll be an even more recognizable figure and I can’t tell you anymore.

DRE: Obviously I write for the internet and so much of the comic book community can be traced back to the fanzines that came about after you started printing people’s addresses on the Marvel Comics letters pages. What made you start doing that?

Lee: I just wanted to make everything personal and friendly and make it seem as if we’re all part of a little club. I wanted to have a warm friendly feeling for everything we did and I thought that helped.

DRE: Did you have any inkling that people would start corresponding with one another?

Lee: I hoped that would happen like that and it did and it was very satisfying. It was very gratifying.

DRE: I read that Atlantic Monthly voted you the 26th most influential American.

Lee: I don’t know how I missed being in the first 25 but you can’t win them all.

DRE: What does being a living legend mean to you?

Lee: Between you and me I don’t give it much thought. I just keep busy doing what I am doing and having fun working with people that I like. That’s the most important thing. I’ve always worked with people that are very talented and whom I like personally so it doesn’t feel like work. You are joining your friends and you get to have a good time.

DRE: I always wondered why it seems that Marvel and whoever their parent company is never gives creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko their due. What are they afraid of?

Lee: I don’t know what you mean but if what is it you would want them to do?

DRE: It always seemed that they never seem to get as much credit as they deserved.

Lee: Everything that they’ve done, their name has been on. I make sure of that. How much more credit could they get? Anytime I do an interview and we are talking about Spider-Man or Dr. Strange, I always mention Steve Ditko. When we talk about some of the other things I always mention Jack. Nobody has been hiding them. Marvel publishes a series called Marvel Visionaries and one whole book was devoted to Jack. I think they’ve done one devoted to Steve Ditko. I’m happy to say they did one devoted to me. I don’t really know what more you would want. I’m not a spokesman for Marvel so I’m not speaking as a Marvel representative but just as a guy outside looking in.

DRE: Years ago Daniel Clowes wrote a book called Dan Pussey and it had a Stan Lee-like character and Kirby had a character based on you in New Gods called Funky Flashman. How did you feel about those?

Lee: At that time Jack was mad at me and he had some fun doing it. I thought it was funny.

DRE: You thought it was funny even though he was mad at you?

Lee: Well, he didn’t stay mad very long. If you’ve worked with an artist for years. it’s almost like a married couple. Every so often you have a quarrel then you get over it.

DRE: Are you working on any new comics?

Lee: Not really. I did some comics for Marvel called Stan Lee Meets. I am in the story and I meet Spider-Man and then I meet Dr. Doom. In another one I meet The Thing and Dr. Strange. John Romita Jr. has done the art. We planned to do that five years ago and I forgot all about it and John was busy. But he got the artwork done a couple months ago. I’ll do a story if something comes up and if they ask me but basically I am pretty much out of comics now.

DRE: Howard Chaykin told me that he doesn’t think comic books are going to last through his life time, which is another 30 years or so, because of computers and the internet. Do you think comic books have a lot of time left?

Lee: I think that comics will be around for a hell of a long time. My gosh, comics are fun to read. Now there is more competition then there has ever been. When I was writing comics they didn’t have television, they didn’t have videogames, they didn’t have iPods and they didn’t have computers. The only competition was movies. But comic books take their place with all the other forms of entertainment and I think that they’ll always be here.

DRE: It’s interesting that you say that while you’re not working on comics anymore.

Lee: Believe it or not I don’t think that I am so important that if I am not working on comics, the companies would fall. People would think that I am stupid or the most conceited guy in the world. Comic books are a great way to read a story. Movie producers are getting more and more interested in comics because they realize that they are great sources of material for TV shows and movies.

DRE: Marvel has many amazing properties but most of them are not nearly as popular as the X-Men and Spider-Man, do you think Marvel has properties that could be as popular in movies as those characters?

Lee: I don’t know if they could be as big as Spider-Man but there is always a chance. I don’t think that anyone will agree with me but I feel almost every character can be successful depending on how you write and produce the character and who plays the role and who directs it.

DRE: A lot more women are interested in superhero comics than ever before. Was that an audience that you found difficult to crack in the 60’s and 70’s?

Lee: Back then there weren’t many female readers but the movies have helped a great deal. Women who have seen X-Men and Spider-Man realize that there is romance, human interest and quite a bit of realism in them besides the fantasy. That’s what women like so more and more women are getting into comics and comic movies.

DRE: You’ve said publicly that you and Steve Ditko were never friends, right?

Lee: Well, we didn’t socialize. But I always thought of him as a friend when we worked together. I had great respect for his brilliant talent. He was so important in creating and making Spider-Man important.

DRE: Do you ever think he’ll show himself publicly again?

Lee: If I had to guess, I would say no. If he hasn’t done it in all these years I don’t know why he would do it now. For some reason the guy just doesn’t want publicity or he just doesn’t want to speak to the press. It’s certainly his prerogative.

DRE: How many Stan Lee related tattoos have you seen on people over the years?

Lee: Quite a few. When I would go to comic book conventions for autographing, very often somebody would roll up their sleeve and say, “Would you sign under the Spider-Man tattoo?” Or under the Dr. Strange tattoo. One of them actually had a tattoo which was a caricature of me [laughs]. I don’t think it did me justice, but hey, what are you going to do?

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

Chip Kidd is one of those brilliant guys that not too many people know about. To learn his name you have to open up one of the books he's designed and look on the credits page. But he also gets a lot of press because he's created some of the most eye catching and dynamic images to ever grace the cover of a book. Some of his most famous works are books by Michael Crichton, Dry by Augusten Burroughs, Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross, Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, numerous comic related books and much more. He has also authored a novel, The Cheese Monkeys. His latest work is a retrospective on him and his work called Chip Kidd: Book One: 1986-2006.

Buy Chip Kidd: Book One: 1986-2006

Daniel Robert Epstein: Does becoming a Jeopardy question really mean that you�ve made it?

Chip Kidd: No, not if I�m any indication. What it really means is that there�s a writer on Jeopardy who�s a fan of my stuff.

DRE: Were you watching or did you get 100 phone calls?

CK: I got a hundred phone calls. I actually love Jeopardy but I don�t watch a lot of TV, because I usually don�t have time. I got asked to do an Op-Ed illustration for the New York Times Op-Ed page and the first couple times that happened, I thought, Wow, this is the crucible of human thought, everybody will see this and the phone will ring off the hook. Hardly ever happened. 15 seconds on Jeopardy and you hear from everybody you ever went to elementary school with.

DRE: What parts of Chip CK: Book One did you design?

CK: I designed the beginning and the end. The beginning gets you into the book and the end is all the comics stuff. That I did, personally. But the rest of it was done by this guy named Mark Melnick, who is a freelance designer who I hired for Random House eight or nine years ago.

DRE: Was that because you didn�t want to design a book about you?

CK: There were several reasons. First of all, it�s a logistical task. It was huge. I save everything. So it�s either in my office or in my apartment or in storage. What we did was go up to the storage place, which is in New Haven, Connecticut and just go through everything. The other thing was that it needed a fresh eye to it. I�ve lived with this stuff for 20 years now. Mark really did bring a lot to it. I really owe him in terms of what the book is.

DRE: I see a lot of books here in your office that aren�t published by Random House, do you freelance a lot?

CK: Oh yeah but ironically, between the time that Rizzoli approached me to do this book and the time the book actually came out, which is about a space of two and a half years, Random House picked up Rizzoli for distribution. That was great, because I had a sales force that was pretty dedicated.

It�s pretty much industry standard that book cover designers are all freelance. We all sleep around because we�re not paid that much. As long as I�m responsible about it, they�re cool with it.

DRE: Whose idea was Book One?

CK: I was approached by an editor at Rizzoli named Ian Luna. But his timing was uncanny because another book was being put together by Veronique Vienne. That book was published by the Yale University Press and was a mixed experience. In other words, I cooperated with it, but I didn�t have any say in what was in it and I signed on for it with that understanding. I couldn�t design it, there were things in that I didn�t think were all that interesting and there were things left out of it that I thought were very important. So that book was in the final stages of being put together when this guy from Rizzoli called me. I was excited because I got to do this my way.

DRE: How soon when reading a book do you come up with the idea for the cover?

CK: Sometimes I�ll be sitting in what we call our launch meeting, in which the editors come in one by one and they tell us what they�re editing for the new list and I�ll get the idea right there.

DRE: Do you ever get stumped?

CK: Right now people at Harper Collins are tapping their fingers on the table, because I have to do the new Michael Chabon book, which is very good. But I�m not quite done reading it and I don�t have a freaking clue.

DRE: In Book One there is a picture of your collection and I noticed a lot of Captain Marvel in it. What do you like about that character?

CK: Actually that�s extremely misleading, because that�s a shot of my entire Captain Marvel collection and that�s all on one shelf. As opposed to the Batman stuff which takes over the rest of the apartment. The thing about collecting Batman stuff is that even though Batman came out in 1939, they practically made nothing until 1966, outside of the comics. For Captain Marvel they made a ton of stuff in the 40�s and it�s still relatively affordable, as opposed to Superman, which they made a ton of stuff in the 40's, but it�s all really expensive. So having semi-saturated myself with Batman stuff, I started collecting Captain Marvel stuff.

DRE: I spoke to Alex Ross recently and he sang your praises for your work on Mythology, when did you first see his work?

CK: It was with Marvels. I was very taken with it and then I was very excited when I heard that Kingdom Come was going to be happening. He used to be represented by a gallery here in New York. When the first issue of Kingdom Come came out he had a show of his stuff, I went to see it and that�s how we met. I introduced myself at the show and he actually had long hair back then. We kept in touch and then I had just finished the Peanuts book and this editor at DC, Charlie Kochman, approached me about doing a book on Alex. At that point I was so strung out and exhausted from doing Peanuts I told him I couldn�t even think about doing something like that right now. So I think we waited a year or something like that and then we just plunged in. Alex and I are friends and the one peril with doing books with your friends, regardless of whether they�re Alex Ross or Chris Ware, it�s like going into business with your friend. You have to be very careful. You want to preserve the friendship first.

DRE: Those two people in particular have very strong personalities.

CK: Yes and both are geniuses and worth pursuing in terms of making a creative project. But you�ve got to make sure it gets printed right so you�ve got all these quality control things that can really shake things up. Though in both cases I�ve been really lucky, because what we�ve done together is great and we�re all still friends. I just feel incredibly lucky to be friends with them.

DRE: Alex�s work is so dynamic, was his book as much work as something like Peanuts, which of course has a great history, but isn�t exactly dynamic?

CK: The main difference in putting the Peanuts book together and putting Alex�s book together is that Alex is alive and Charles Schulz isn�t. Otherwise it�s very similar. The other difference is that obviously Schulz�s career was finite, so you had 50 years worth of stuff and Alex is still very much in the prime of his life and his career. But it�s all about organization and you really make it up as you go along. Schulz�s and Alex�s lives parallel in that they were both kids who turned to comics basically for friendship and to help drag them out of their not so great lives. They both decided that this is what they were going to do and they both changed the world.

DRE: I read that you use something called �the magpie method� to create the book covers.

CK: Yes that�s something I�m a serious believer in. That�s the difference between what a graphic designer does and an actual serious artist. You�ve got certain graphic designers who generate their own imagery, but for the most part you�re working with somebody else�s. That�s all about picking and choosing, it�s magpie. It�s matching things.

DRE: I know that some of the book covers you�ve done have become somewhat of the base for the poster of the eventual movie, such as Jurassic Park. Have you ever designed movie posters?

CK: In the interest of full disclosure, at 3:30 today, someone from Sony is coming in and we�re going to talk about several movies that they want me to work on. I�m always open to it, yet to this date it has never ever worked out. That�s partly why I�m still in books because I�ve had a measure of success in getting my ideas produced. In the movie business, all the clich�s are true. You do a ton of work for a ton of money and nothing ever sees the light of day. For books, you do one thing, it�s the thing you love, it gets approved and it goes out there. But I get paid a relative pittance. I really can�t complain. I�ve done okay. With the movie thing, it�s things like Scarlett Johansson�s agent says her head has to be 80% the size of Jude Law, and et cetera, et cetera. That�s why most movie posters look like shit.

DRE: Like the Shopgirl poster. It�s so blah. I think it is lazy to just throw the stars up on the poster standing there.

CK: Yeah, the one notable exception this year was Thumbsucker and that�s because [writer/director] Mike Mills is a graphic designer.

DRE: Do you turn down a ton of stuff?

CK: It works out pretty even. Every now and then I�ll turn down something, but it�s usually because of scheduling. But I would turn down something if it�s not a project that doesn�t interest me.

DRE: Would that happen after reading the book?

CK: Usually I don�t have to read it. It�s like, this is my book on financial taxation or whatever. Or somebody will say, I�ve got a manuscript, it�s about blah, and I would love for you to do the cover. Then I say, well who�s publishing it? and they say, well I don�t really have a publisher yet and then you politely get them off the phone. But yeah, I was asked to do something about financial consultation or something, and I was just not interested.

DRE: Are you the one that got all the Fantagraphics creators over to Pantheon?

CK: Partially. We started with The Jew of New York by Ben Katchor. But again, it�s timing. Jimmy Corrigan was coming to an end so we did that book with Chris Ware. David Boring was coming to an end. Let�s do the book. There�s been some carping on the fact that we raided the coffers of Fantagraphics.

DRE: Please, keep doing it.

CK: Yeah, we have a very copacetic relationship with them. They were the first to admit that they could not have published Jimmy Corrigan the way we did it. They would�ve had to charge 50 bucks a copy.

DRE: I see you have some of Ivan Brunetti�s stuff here.

CK: I would kill to publish him.

DRE: I love his work, what would you do with him?

CK: The question is, what would he do? I love Ivan; I just went to his wedding last month. I�d like to lock him in a room, chain him to a drawing table and just shove food through a slot under the door until he produces. He�s not terribly prolific for various reasons, but he�s getting his act together more. He�s been talking about doing something called Concrete Playground for years. It�s his life story as a child. But I want to do whatever he wants to do. I would have gone in front of an entire conference room of Random House salespeople and convinced them of why we should publish Haw.

DRE: What would they have said?

CK: Usually by the time a situation comes to that, we are publishing it so then they have to get excited to sell it. The convincing to buy the book, that goes on between me and [editorial director] Dan Frank. He�s the one who could say, we�re not publishing something with an AIDS blood joke in it. But my god, we used to publish Salman Rushdie. We�re grownups. I think Ivan does really great cartoons.

DRE: Do you like Johnny Ryan?

CK: Yeah but my vocabulary for him is very limited. He did Blecky Yuckerella. I think that�s fun. It�s not transcendent, but it�s fun

DRE: Are you writing another novel?

CK: If I could write it as well as I can talk about it, it would be done by now. It�s called The Learners, I�m about 120 pages into it.

DRE: How long do you think it will be?

CK: Probably as long as The Cheese Monkeys which was like 250 pages. In the summer of 2004, I excerpted a small part of it on USA Today�s website.

DRE: What�s it about?

CK: It�s basically the unsequel to The Cheese Monkeys. It�s the same narrator, totally different world. He�s graduated from school and he takes his first job.

DRE: I read something about a movie of Cheese Monkeys.

CK: Yeah I�m working on the screenplay.

DRE: By yourself?

CK: No with the guy who wants to direct it, Chris Grismer. It�d be his first feature. He�s Canadian. He�s done a lot of TV like Queer As Folk. Now he�s working on a new series on Fox by the creators of 24. He�s this smart great guy who gets it and wants to do it right.

DRE: Did your agents put you together?

CK: He approached me and then the agents worked out the money, which was negligible. I didn�t care. I just wanted somebody who wanted to do it right. They�ll do it as a small independent film.

DRE: How much do you know about SuicideGirls?

CK: Almost nothing.

DRE: Do you want a membership?

CK: Is it something that one becomes a member of?

DRE: Yes, it�s like nude punk girls. I don�t know how much you�re interested in that.

CK: I have to say that�s about on the opposite end of the scale of anything that I would be interested in erotically.

DRE: They have SuicideBoys on there.

CK: How old?

DRE: Young guys.

CK: No, this will tell you the tale. My boyfriend is 60 years old and I totally dig that.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

(image) (image) (image) The official SuicideGirls Flip Strip iPhone app is now available to download from the Apple iTunes store. Designed by Stuart J. Moore, Flip Strip is based on the classic nudie pen concept -- with a high tech twist. Flick left and right to choose from 10 super sexy Suicide Girls,... more

The official SuicideGirls Flip Strip iPhone app is now available to download from the Apple iTunes store.

Designed by Stuart J. Moore, Flip Strip is based on the classic nudie pen concept -- with a high tech twist. Flick left and right to choose from 10 super sexy Suicide Girls, then flip your iPhone or iTouch upside down to watch her clothes disappear.

The SuicideGirls featured are Lumi, Sash, Zoli, Rigel, Coley, Radeo, Inga, Dot, Antigone and Moxi.

Click HERE to download.

Did we mention it's FREE?!!!

Have you ever played a dating sim where your character wanders around aimlessly among a sea of impossibly-large breasted anime figures? If your answer to this question was no, it's okay, there is still hope for your digital manhood! In a typical Japanese dating game, you try to charm the women through... more

Have you ever played a dating sim where your character wanders around aimlessly among a sea of impossibly-large breasted anime figures? If your answer to this question was no, it's okay, there is still hope for your digital manhood! In a typical Japanese dating game, you try to charm the women through various dialog choices hoping that she'll be into you, and you into her (pun intended). With the SG's new iPhone app "Seduce a Suicide Girl," you have more realistic and sexy options, complete with come-ons and put-downs!



This application can't really be called a "game," as it is more like the adventure books of old, but it is (PG-13) sexy fun regardless. The app plays out as a series of video clips, with decision points in between. Make a good decision and you can continue pursuing Zoli, but make a bad decision and she'll shoot you down.

The story is first-person, told from the point of view of a young man. There is no female character choice here, which is too bad for ladies who, like the Suicide Girls, don't fit in traditional gender roles, and have a hard time imagining hairy man-hands as their own.

Zoli plays very well the role of the attractive, flirtatious girl you run into at the comic book store; she definitely holds your attention. She is the star of this show as the actual choices you can make are limited, and once you have "won" the game you don't have much replay value. (I guess you masochists out there could have fun being shot down time and time again in different ways ) If you answer to Zoli's liking you will see quite a lot of her, and trust me, that's a good thing!

Overall the app is good, (semi-)clean fun, and I definitely don't regret shelling out the paltry $0.99 for it.

Where would be your ideal location for some SG seduction?