George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck... more

George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck Eisner) unleashed a kind of government-caused-outbreak paranoia that was the antecedent of what Stephen King would later exploit in The Stand. Romero and King would collaborate on a celebration of 1950s EC comics horror publications in Creepshow. He totally rewrote the vampire myth as a young man's psychosis in Martin. Outside of horror, Romero made the intensely personal Arthurian parable Knightriders. SG talked to Romero in Boston, while he was promoting his latest zombie movie Survival of the Dead. Survival of the Dead, available now on Video on Demand and opening theatrically on May 28, concerns a rag-tag band of survivors of the zombie holocaust who find themselves on an island off the coast of Delaware, embroiled in an intergenerational feud between two clans of Irish settlers.

Michael Marano: You used zombies as a critique of consumer culture in Dawn of the Dead. In the years since then, zombies have themselves become commercial commodities. There are scores of video games, movies, and Simon and Schuster has a line devoted specifically to apocalyptic zombie novels. Any thoughts on the ways that zombies have become the very kinds of consumerist products that you used zombies that you poked fun at thirty years ago?

George Romero: Well, it's surprising. First of all, I do think it was video games that popularized the creature. I guess they [zombies] are perfect targets for first-person shooters. And I really think it was the video games, and after that the graphic novels, that have made them popular. I don't think it was so much the movies, because if you think about it, Zombieland is the only one that really was a blockbuster, or any kind of huge hit. As far as this question about them becoming a consumer item, I don't know how popular it [the zombie genre] is. I guess they're popular enough! (Laughs.) It's hard for me to even get a sense of that. I'm sort of still doing my own thing. My zombies are still sort of shuffling around slowly and they're almost just a minor annoyance. My stories have always been about people, and how they deal with the problem, how they fail to deal with the problem, and how stupidly they deal with it. To me, it has been a perfect vehicle for socio-political criticism. It's just been fun that way! So, that's the way I think of them (zombies). And people say, 'Jeeze! You created all of this!' And maybe I did, somehow! I didn't even call them 'zombies' in the first film. They were 'flesh eaters' or 'ghouls.' I never thought of them as 'zombies,' because when we made that film (1968's Night of the Living Dead), 'zombies' to me were still the guys in the Caribbean doing wetwork for Lugosi (in White Zombie). I just wanted some sort of strange phenomenon that would be a game changer so that people, my characters, would fail observe that and hoist themselves on their own petard.


MM: I want to talk about "game changers" and sort of "society changers." You started out cutting news footage, back in the Medium Cool days when they still used motorcycle couriers and actual--what that stuff they used to use?

GR: Film?

MM: Yeah! That's the stuff! Film! It was like YouTube with sprockets.

GR: It had little holes in it! They never let me actually cut it. I was a courier. I was Haskell Wexler!

MM: You were?

GR: Yeah, I just ran the stuff around. I learned how to edit at one of those labs. But they never actually let me work on the news footage. It was too precious!

MM: That sort of news-based reality behind how you cut your teeth learning how to cut film, did that news paradigm affect the way that you chose to depict societies falling apart?

GR: I think it more affected stylistically the original film [Night of the Living Dead] than anything else. And even though it's only in the last 20 minutes of the film, people always write about that film and how it's got this 'vérité style' when really it doesn't. I mean we were shooting with a sound blimp. It's just very static. Until I can finally get the camera out of the blimp in the last twenty minutes of the film and the camera, once out of the blimp, was really portable, and I intentionally tried to make that stuff look like news footage and tried to cut it with that same sort of chop that the guys used to use back in the lab. From Dawn of the Dead on, I guess, I've had this conceit that if there's something I wanna talk about, or whatever, I can bring zombies out of the closet and get to make a film, and get it financed.

MM: Now, with using zombies as social commentary and always having them on hand for that, I couldn't help but notice that with Survival of the Dead you seem to be reapplying your satire not just to society, but you seem to be taking on other genres. Like, a little bit of western...

GR: Oh, yeah! [Laughs]

MM: ... and little bit of the "Irish land dramas," like The Field. I kept thinking of Ryan's Daughter.

GR: Really?!

MM: Yeah. I wanted Sarah Miles to be eaten. I wanted that. And I know from Creepshow that you're an old school EC Comics fan. Did old Mad Magazine (originally an EC comic book) approaches to critiquing films and film genres inform how you approached satirizing other movies in Survival of the Dead?

GR: I think it probably does! It's waaaay in the background, somewhere in here (gesturing to his medulla) in the bottom part of my brain. I wanted to do something stylistically different with (Survival of the Dead). I knew I was going to do some Looney Tunes kind of moments with it, and that comes from old comics I guess. I'll go to see horror film with a friend, I'll go to see a horror film with Steve King, and we're sittin' there, the only ones giggling and everyone else is hiding their eyes or running to gag. And we chuckle! And for anybody who grew up on the old EC comics, they were just filled with bad puns and terrible jokes. And it was humor all the way, and it just made you chuckle. So, I just can't resist that! And then I just wanted to completely change (my approach to zombies in Survival). It's a lot more fun to me, for me, to say, 'Hey, man! Let's just do something completely different!' And once I had the idea of the feud, I remembered the old William Wyler film called The Big Country, and I said, 'Let's model it after that! And let's have fun! And let's sort of make a quasi-western out of this.' We went with 2.35 [aspect ratio]. We didn't mute the colors. It was just a choice. All of a sudden, all the department heads got together and said, 'Wow! That would be really fun, to do that!' So that was just, 'Hey! Let's have a picnic, here!'

MM: To me, a lot of the headshots in Survival of the Dead really reminded me of (EC Comics artists known for their ghoulish humor) Jolly Jack Davis and Ghastly Graham Ingles.

GR: Yeah! Those boys!

MM: Now, I don't want to ruin anything for people who haven't seen Survival of the Dead yet, so I'll just speak a

MM: I want to jump back to what you were talking about earlier about using zombies as a template to create character-based drama. You tend to create apocalypses, not just in your zombie movies, that are very small scale. A farmhouse (in Night of the Living Dead). A TV Station where order is breaking down (in the opening of Dawn of the Dead). A bunker (Day of the Dead). In your 1973 movie The Crazies the enemy seemed to be Ma Bell, the phone company. Even Martin, Bruiser and Knightriders, seem to be about intensely personal apocalypses. Do you want to comment on that? Maybe in comparison to large scale apocalypses, like Michael Bay's and Roland Emmerich's?

GR: Well, first of all, I would never tackle one of those! I wouldn't know how! And I don't quite know what's the purpose. Because... it's much more likely that we'll face these little more minor apocalypses, be it family, or school or a job or whatever. And that's always just connected to me, somehow. Just was my characters don't deal with the looming threat of the zombies, they continue to just deal with each other on a superficial and a ridiculous level. And they create their own problems.

MM: In the Cold War days, your zombie apocalypses were total and complete breakdowns of world order. There's no TV, no communication. It's all just done. In your post-9/11 zombie movies, the end of the world seems like a chore. Just another goddam thing to deal with. Was this conscious on your part?

GR: With these last two (Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead) I sort of went back to the beginning of (the zombie plague). I didn't know where to go after Land of the Dead. I didn't want to go Beyond Thunderdome. But that was a pretty apocalyptic world. I didn't want to go further than that. I just didn't know where to go. Do the zombies take over? I'm not interested in that. There was another reason for us starting over [bringing the narrative back to the start of the zombie apocalypse]. I always wanted to sort of do what Steve King does with the town of Castle Rock. You know, create this sort of collage. This is happening here, while this is happening here, and this character recurs. I've never been able to do that, because the copyrights on the first four films are all owned by different people, and I can't get 'em to come together on a deal, here! So, that was another reason why my current partner and I wanted to start over with this, and start fresh. These two (recent zombie movies) actually connect; Survival uses a minor character from Diary. I actually have two more ideas (for further zombie movies). This movie wouldn't exist if Diary hadn't made a lot of dough. I mean, it cost so little that, even with a limited theatrical release it made a lot of money for the producers. If the same thing happens with this film, I'm standing by! I got two more minor characters from Diary, and I would love it to have this little set of movies that go together.

MM: Do you have any non-zombie movies planned?

GR: I'm working on one! I don't know if it will happen. At my age, man, I don't want to go out and do the pitch again. Peter Grunwald (my business partner) and I--we were out there for almost six and a half years almost and never made a movie. We got all these huge development deals. And I made more money than I've ever made in my life, but I never made a movie. For one reason or another, all the deals blew up. And I just don't want to do that anymore. And I found a lovely place to work, in Canada. And I work with now, again, the same family of people. The guy that shot my first movie up there shot this movie. The same wardrobe people and everything. I love the collaborative process of making films. And I hate the deal making. We have an idea that we would love to do. If it gets too nuts, the development aspect of it, then I don't know. I do have another horror movie idea, which is non-zombie. Which I'm sure we can finance. But if this film does well, I think I'll do another one of these (zombie movies). Hey, I'd be happy if did two more of these that that was it. I love doing them!

Christopher Moore is in many ways the definition of a successful writer. Since his first book Practical Demonkeeping was released in 1992, his books have become more ambitious as his writing has gotten sharper and funnier. Oh yes, he’s also a funny writer, which is not to say that he’s an unserious... more

Christopher Moore is in many ways the definition of a successful writer. Since his first book Practical Demonkeeping was released in 1992, his books have become more ambitious as his writing has gotten sharper and funnier. Oh yes, he’s also a funny writer, which is not to say that he’s an unserious writer, but he’s one of only a handful of American novelists who want to make the reader laugh. Whether he’s taking on religion in “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” or writing a funny book about death in “A Dirty Job,” there’s no writer quite like Christopher Moore

Fresh off “Fool,” a book which took him back to Thirteenth century England and told the story of King Lear from the point of view of the court jester, Moore returns to present day San Francisco with a sequel to his earlier books “Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story” and “You Suck: A Love Story” in “Bite Me: A Love Story.” What follows is an edited conversation with Moore, which was just as entertaining as his readers might expect.


ALEX DUEBEN: I really enjoyed Bite Me and I was wondering, the ending of the previous book You Suck deliberately echoed the ending of the first book in the series, Bloodsucking Fiends. Were you planning the sequel when you did that?

CM: Yeah. You Suck was left open to have a sequel and I wanted the three of them to stand as piece of work. I had originally proposed four, but I think this does it for me.

AD: What would fourth have been?

CM: I don’t know. I didn’t have a plot. I just had a title, Foul Dead Things: A Love Story. (laughs) But I didn’t know what it was going to be about. And I’m not completely closed to it, but I’m done writing vampires for a little while.

AD: Each of the three books are very different

CM: I don’t want to write the same book over and over again. And even though there are some similar plot elements, as you might think there would be in the setting with the same characters. I just didn’t want to do structurally the same book over and over again. I’ve always tried to do something at least a little different.

AD: Do you enjoy writing Abby Normal?

CM: She still has the ability crack me up. She’s difficult to write because her stuff has to be very crafted. It’s not natural for me, a middle aged white guy, to write in the voice of a sixteen year old goth girl. It’s as hard as writing Shakespearean dialect in my last book Fool. Abby’s stuff is every bit as difficult to write as that.

AD: Her dialogue definitely has a sense of structure and its own internal narrative logic.

CM: When you do these kind of dialect books you have to invent something that approximates the speech of either a sixteen year old goth girl or a medieval fool. You can’t actually write the way they would speak, or it’s not accessible to the reader. It has to be a little more clear and a little less stylistic, so its really a hybrid of normal diction and this hyper diction that these characters use. That’s what’s going on with Abby. Me trying to make the way a kid like that speaks, which can be wildly irritating, accessible to people who have to spend three hundred pages with her.

AD: When she first appeared in A Dirty Job as a small character, did you know she would become such a big figure in later books?

CM: I didn’t actually. I knew that I was going to bring her back and A Dirty Job foresees that You Suck is going to be written because there’s a scene that is duplicated in both books but from different points of view. I knew that Abby was going to be in the book but I didn’t know until I started writing her voice how big she was going to be. When I went to write Bite Me she had taken over. She had become such a strong part of the second book that Bite Me became her book.

I don’t want to sound mystical and, oh the characters tell you what to do, but it’s very much like method acting. I can talk about how difficult it might be to craft the way she speaks, it’s also self-driven and you get into the character the way a method actor would. She just had so much energy that I kinda just gave the third book to her. At least voice-wise.

AD: I know you live in San Francisco and have written a few books set in the city. For you, what makes it a great setting?

CM: Geographically you can contain it fairly easily in a book. It’s smaller than most big cities. It’s a tenth the size of London or Paris or Los Angeles, so you can write about all the different neighborhoods, or many of the different neighborhoods in the city, and the characters never have to get in a car because everything’s so close. There’s this mystical gothic-y fog thing that goes on in the city. Architecturally it’s very pretty. It’s got a lot of things aesthetically going for it.

Most of the books take place in the North end of the city which is the Financial district, Chinatown, North Beach, which is an Italian neighborhood, and Russian Hill, which is right now young professionals and retired people. You have these clashes of culture. Chinatown is like a foreign country that’s four blocks by four blocks. Watching the interaction of all those different cultures is just interesting. I was a cultural anthro major so I get to do cultural anthro in my backyard more or less.

AD: My major complaint about Bite Me is that there wasn’t enough of the Animals.

CM: The story didn’t want to keep them engaged. I understand what you’re saying. I have the same feeling, but I couldn’t get them more engaged and develop their characters more in the context that I had because of turning so much of the book over to the new members of the cast, which were Abby and Fu Dog and Jared. In a three hundred page book the cast can only get so big and I found myself saying can I go down a road with this subplot or can’t I? I thought, I’ve got to have them show up. The Emperor, too. I would have loved to have had the Emperor more engaged in what was going on, but the book didn’t have enough room for them.

AD: I definitely understand and you didn’t want to just fulfill a checklist of things from the previous books included that people enjoyed.

CM: It was tough for me to write a third book in a series and not make it formulaic. There’s an arc to any book you write that is just the arc of the story. There’s the status quo, something happens, and then you return to status quo and consequently when the characters and the setting were the same, there was going to be a similarity to the books. I was trying to avoid that, but yet satisfy readers who want the same thing over and over again. I mean I get asked ten times a day when are you going to do a sequel to Lamb. My answer is, it’s the life of Jesus, you can’t do a sequel to it. (laughs) Pretty much everyone knows how that story ends.

AD: Is there the possibility of seeing more of Abby and Tommy and the Emperor?

CM: Probably the Emperor. I would at some point like to do a book with the characters and premise from A Dirty Job, the death merchants, that would probably be set in San Francisco. It had the Emperor and it wouldn’t be a difficult stretch to put Abby and Tommy in it. I don’t have a plan for that but I do want to do a book with that premise again and that would almost undoubtedly be set in San Francisco.

Of my San Francisco books, there’s no doubt that A Dirty Job is my best. It was also way more ambitious. It’s a comedy about death. When I did Bloodsucking Fiends I thought, it’s a vampire book it’s not a vehicle for big themes. It needs to be entertaining and funny and that is all I should shoot for. Hopefully it is. A Dirty Job I had big themes to deal with that were pulled from caring for my mother when she was dying and caring for my girlfriend’s mother when she was dying. There was experience to put in that I had to bring through the comedy.

AD: A Dirty Job is one of if not my favorite of your books and I think it’s one of the most successful because that’s where the sensibility and voice and the structure and complexity of the book all came together.

CM; When I teach it’s something that I try to tell students, but it’s a really big thing to hand someone, a project or a book is often defined by its ambition before you start it. That’s what I think for any artist is what makes a difference. Are you stretching to do this? Are you trying to do something that’s actually hard to do and might be beyond your abilities. I could really fuck the dog one of these days doing that. Continually putting those hurdles in front of myself. That’s why it’s kind of fun to do a book like Bite Me. The book I’m working on right now, I’m completely freaked out about being able to ever finish it.

AD: All your books have a comic sensibility in common. Is that you and your perspective on the world?

CM: I think so. That’s kind of my default setting. I really don’t think you can teach anybody to be funny and I know having taught a little bit that when someone comes in and says I want to write like you and you talk to them for ten minutes and go you’re just not funny. It’s just not how you think. It’s not something that I learned. My dad was a funny guy. It’s just how I react to the world. I actually tried to write quote serious stuff unquote and I haven’t been able to pull it off. I get about ten pages into something and I go, something funny has to happen, this is boring.

AD: How much of say, Fluke, is you wanting to write a science fiction story, but it just comes out in this fashion?

CM: Fluke is the perfect example. The reason I wrote Fluke is because I wanted to get in the water with humpback whales. Bottom line. A friend of mine had come back from this island called Rurutu--I call it the Scooby Island cause it’s called Rurutu. He had been in the water with singing humpback whales and he described it. I thought, that’s awesome, I need to do that. In US waters the only way you can do that is if you’re on a whale research permit and you have to get permission. I started writing letters and sending my books to scientists and these guys in Hawaii said sure come on over we’ll put you on the research permit. It started more with wanting to live a life. One of the things you find pretty early on when you write books for a living is you realize I could live my entire life within this room by myself making click-y noises on a keyboard if I don’t make some effort to go do stuff.

That book was completely motivated by wanting to experience what it was like being in the water with whales, and as I started doing the research, it turned out that the scientists were much more interesting than the whales. That’s what the book ended up really being about. The people who study whales much less than the whales themselves. But it all started with just wanting to experience what it was like being in the water with a humpback whale. Which was awesome by the way.

AD: Do you do a lot of research?

CM: I actually do. For Fool I spent a month in England and France. For Lamb I went to Israel for almost a month. I didn’t go to the Himalayas or India and other places that take place in the book. I quite frankly ran out of time and money. I couldn’t go to those places and actually get the book done, so all that’s done from my imagination. I always try to go to the places I’m writing about. It adds dimensions to the book that I would never have been able to anticipate. If I hadn’t gone to Israel and seen how desolate Judea is, where the Dead Sea is and where a lot of the gospels take place and seen how rough the land is from Nazareth to Jerusalem and sort of gotten an idea of what the geography of the place is like, it would have been a completely different book. So yeah I always try to go to where I’m writing about. Even it’s harder with the historical stuff.

I’m writing a book now that takes place in nineteenth century Paris and the city is in many ways the same but the culture’s not. It’s weird because it’s closer to our culture than medieval england or first century Palestine were and that actually makes it more difficult because I can’t just make shit up. (laughs) There was this huge hole in the Jesus story. I could do anything I wanted. With Fool, which was set in the Thirteenth Century, it was kind of the same thing. There’s so much that people don’t know about what went on in those days that I was able to fill it in.

AD: How do you work. Do you outline your books, because in Bite Me, especially, there’s a lot going on.

CM: I do a sort of diagram that’s less a “category one subcategory a” outline and more of a circles and arrows thing. Because it’s a visual representation it’s hard to describe it. The short answer is I do a very rough outline and then I try to plug in scenes that I know are going to be there and stay about five scenes ahead of myself. I mean I obviously write in scenes. That’s how I learned to write, it’s what is effective, and it’s how drama happens. For instance I know that in the next scene we’re going to meet the old vampires and then I’ll get there and decide whose point of view I need to do that from. As far as the outline goes, all the outline will say is, meet old vampires. And then as I approach that I’ll figure out that they had to get somehow and I’ll research the ship.

As the years go by I outline more for a couple reasons. One, I’m on deadline all the time so I can’t afford to be stuck. With Lamb I was stuck for six months. I got up to Antioch and I remember the proposal to the publisher said, and then they’ll have adventures, or something like that. I figured I’ll figure it out when I get to it, and then when I got to it I went, fuck I have no idea what happens now. And I’m stuck in Antioch going I don’t know what’s I didn’t think it through, so I do that now. What I do is outline a little bit more and know where I’m going so that my writing time is more efficient. But then when I write, I write it page one, “once upon a time,” right to the end. I try to write a little bit every day. I have goals which I always fall short of. I try to write a thousand words a day and then I’ll do eight hundred. I try to write for four hours a day and I’ll write three. What happens is the story tightens up as you get to the end, by the time you get to what would be the third act of a book you don’t have a lot of flexibility in what you can do. You sort of set all this stuff in motion and you can’t go very afield to do any exploring. Any goofing around you have to do it in the first half of the book. It becomes necessary to outline as it tightens up. Like braiding a rope or something.

AD: Reading the books, you seem to enjoy the first two acts more than last part, it’s much looser and feels more relaxed in the beginning and the end is very much about wrapping up the plot.

CM: You mean actually doing the process? The first hundred pages are so fucking hard I can’t even tell you. I hate that part. This was the first time I ever said that out loud because it’s not a good thing to say things like that, but the first hundred pages of a book are miserable. You’re establishing the world and you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t have the characters set and every day you’re making just a million decisions and I’m awful at making decisions. It takes me three hours to figure out where I’m going to have dinner if I’m going out to dinner. All those decisions have to be made and they set the path for the rest of the book in those first hundred pages. It typically will take me six months to write the first hundred pages and I may write the next two hundred pages in two months.

As far as what I enjoy writing the most, probably the middle third of a book is the most enjoyable you’ve got things running but you still have some room to move around in and you can make decisions that go a little farther afield a digress a bit. But the first part’s miserable and largely because even if you’ve done it a dozen times like I have you still go shit I have no idea what I’m doing. This is like the first book all over again.

AD: I don’t know if you want to say anything about the next book you’re working on. You mentioned it was set in 19th Century Paris.

CM: I can tell you about all I know about it. It’s about Nineteenth century French painters. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s going to have weird supernatural stuff in it. It’s going to include a cast of characters that’s a laundry list of the most famous painters of their day, the impressionists and the post-impressionists. It turns out, that’s really hard to do, so don’t try that at home. (laughs)

Justin Halpern is an ordinary guy who curates an extraordinary Twitter page. In less than a year it's garnered over 1.3 million fans who follow Justin simply to keep track of the latest and greatest shit his dad says. Justin's talent lies in realizing the aforementioned shit was of a superior... more

Justin Halpern is an ordinary guy who curates an extraordinary Twitter page. In less than a year it's garnered over 1.3 million fans who follow Justin simply to keep track of the latest and greatest shit his dad says. Justin's talent lies in realizing the aforementioned shit was of a superior quality to that emitted from other dad's mouths. He also has a knack for conveying the underlying heart behind his father's seemingly harsh witticisms.

Raised on a farm in Kentucky, Justin's dad, Sam Halpern, is a man of few words - who knows how to make every syllable count. The exact opposite of passive-aggressive, Halpern, Sr. has never been backwards about coming forwards with his often-unsolicited opinions and words of advice. Growing up, this brutal honesty was difficult to deal with, but now Justin is reaping the rewards. His @ShitMyDadSays Twitter page has spawned a hilarious yet surprisingly touching book of longer vignettes -- brilliantly retold by Justin -- and a TV sitcom produced by Warner Brothers for CBS starring William Shatner, which was co-written by Halpern, Jr. in association with the team behind Will & Grace.

The @ShitMyDadSays phenomenon was precipitated by a very humbling experience for Justin. As the founder of the Holy Taco comedy site, a Maxim.com contributor and an aspiring screenwriter who was free to work wherever is laptop rested, he decided to move back from Los Angeles to his hometown of San Diego to share an apartment with his girlfriend who also happened to reside there. Things didn't go to plan however; Justin's love interest broke up with him the day they were supposed to start cohabiting. To add insult to injury, having already given up his LA apartment, at 28 Justin had little option but to move back in with his folks. Fortunately his story, or at least this chapter of it, has a happy ending.

SuicideGirls caught up with Justin, who now splits his time between Los Angeles and San Diego, to find out more about the upside of living in close proximity to your grumpy old dad (and the fun that can be had with irritable bowel syndrome).

Nicole Powers: Do you still live at your parents house when you're in San Diego?

Justin Halpern: Actually I don't. I've moved out since. I live with my girlfriend in San Diego but I'm at my parent's house quite a bit. When I'm in San Diego I work out of there because I have a shitty little apartment and I don't actually have enough room to work.

NP: And do you go home to do your laundry? (Sam Halpern: "I'd say I was gonna miss you, but you're moving ten minutes away, so instead I'll just say don't come over and do your fucking laundry here.")

JH: I do go home still to do my laundry. Even when I'm in LA, I'll save it up until I have to go down to San Diego and then I'll do it at my parent's house.

NP: So on that point you're defying your father? It's complete dissension on the laundry front.

JH: Yeah. I feel like that was one of those things where he said it to get it out into the cosmos knowing that it was never going to happen.

NP: Your dad seems like a wonderful man in doses of 140 characters or less, but I can imagine he might have been a little tough to live with.

JH: Yeah. Growing up it was tense, but I feel that everybody has times when they're growing up with their parents that they wish that their parents didn't live with them. You go through those kinds of things, the only difference I think was that my dad never sugar-coated anything.

NP: What was the most brutal thing he said to you that still stings to this day?

JH: I think it's actually one quote in the book. Most people probably just glance over it, but I remember it being a formative moment in my life. I was really into Lego, but I was terrible at building things. I just was not good at it. He came by one time as I'm building some stuff with Lego. It just looked like a big mess on the ground. He's just come home from work and he goes, "Listen, I don't want to stifle your creativity but that thing you built there, it looks like a pile of shit." I remember when I was thinking of quotes to put in the book, when I saw that one I thought that one still stings a bit.

NP: So a promising career in construction ended before it began.

JH: Yes, but the thing is, I don't think I had a promising career in construction. The reason that stuck with me was because he was never afraid to tell me when I wasn't good at something. He always told me when I was, but he was like, "Hey, maybe this isn't your thing," and I definitely respect that now as an adult.

NP: I think that's what children need more of. I know that parents are often told by so-called experts to encourage their kids whatever. But if you say "good job" to your kids even when what they've done is a steaming pile of shit those words completely lose value. When you did get praise from your dad, it must have meant something.

JH: Totally. I grew up in a middle class community but right next to us was a really wealthy community. Everything they did their parents were, "Oh, it's fantastic. Everything you do is so great." My dad was never like that. Now, going back home, I see those kids a lot and a lot of them, they don't have jobs, they didn't graduate college. Basically, as soon as life gave them a kick in the nuts they just quit. And I never did because I was used to the realities of sucking at something and having to try harder, and try again or try something else.

NP: Your dad might have proverbially kicked you in the nuts but then he would also give you the flip side of that -- the genius of his comments is that they are very double-edged.

JH: Yeah. When I stopped playing baseball, my dad really wanted me to be a pro baseball player but I could kind of tell that that wasn't going to happen. I was good, but I wasn't good enough to be professional. So my junior year of college I quit the college team and focused on writing and filmmaking, and it was hard for him but he was like, "As long as you give one hundred percent at this and you're realistic with whether or not you have talent, then I'll be as supportive as you need me to be." And he was.

NP: You don't talk much in the book about when you actually decided to start writing. Are there any vignettes you can recall when you first showed him some of the early stuff you'd written?

JH: Yeah. In my first screenwriting class...you know, you're taking all these classes in college and every once in a while you'll get behind and you'll have something due the next day and you'll have to rush it. I remember I had to write the first act of the screenplay, and I had left it until the last, last minute. I read it and I'm like, "Oh god, this is not very good." I think I almost wanted to get shit on because I knew I had done such a bad job and I asked my dad if he could read it. He read it and he looks at me and goes, "You're not going to get a dime writing if this is how you're going to write. This is total shit and you should fail yourself. Don't even give it to your teacher, just give yourself an 'F' and take the class again."

I was so upset. I was like, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Can you honestly say that you tried with this piece of shit?" And I was like, "You know what? I didn't." And he's like, "Well I don't know what you're doing, because if you're not going try in the one class that you are supposedly studying then you should just give up and try something else." That was my wake-up call in terms of being a writer. It was like, I've got to take this seriously if I want to do it because I've got to see if I have any talent.

NP: What's the main thing that you know you should have learnt from your dad that you haven't quite got the hang of yet?

JH: I think the biggest thing is growing up with him I encountered a lot of awkward situations, because he says whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to say it. I felt like I was constantly giving a preamble before people would meet him or apologizing for something he said, even though it really didn't necessitate an apology. I'm still a little bit that way. I'm still a little bit too non-confrontational and I tend to err of the side of not hurting someone's feelings even if it's something that they need to hear. I tend to kind of wussy out and I wish I had a little bit more of his chutzpah.

NP: Although warning visiting friends that your dad might be wondering around the house naked is probably a good thing. People need to be prepared to see that.

JH: That's a necessary one.

NP: So where did your dad get his wisdom and humor from? Do you remember your dad's dad?

JH: Yes. My grandfather died when I was fifteen, so I did get to know him a little bit. My dad said he was the toughest human being he's ever met...The best story that sums up my grandfather is, my dad when he was ten, he was on a wagon at the farm and he fell off, and the wagon rolled over his arm. It mangled his arm and they took him to the emergency room in a small town in Kentucky, which was the closest hospital. The doctor said, "We're gong to have to amputate this arm or else your son might die." And my grandfather said, "Then let him die. There's no room in this world for a one-armed farmer." So they didn't amputate the arm, and they waited it out. My dad obviously survived, but that was the kind of guy my grandfather was.

NP: How does your mom cope with your dad's rather strong personality?

JH: Well she's the smartest person in the family by far.

NP: Which is saying something considering your dad a nuclear scientist.

JH: A doctor of nuclear medicine, yeah exactly, but she's smarter than he is. She's also quicker than he is -- and he's quick. If I try to verbally spar with my dad, it's pointless. He'll beat me into submission, but she can hang with him no problem. She runs circles around him. I mean part of the reason why she was attracted to him was because he's so honest and so truthful. She knew she was marrying a really honest and fair guy.

NP: Obviously your mom's good at the instant comeback, but are there lines you wished you'd said that just came to you too late?

JH: I would spend the next ten hours thinking of what I could say. He would saying something when I was growing up and it would just cut right to the bone, and I'd be just so pissed off. I would literally be sitting in my room or playing outside by myself just trying to think of what I could say if he ever said something like that to me again. It was so frustrating because he just does it so effortlessly and I'm sitting there, essentially in my own writer's room, by myself trying to figure out how to one-up a guy who just says stuff off the top of his head.

NP: How old were you when you started to see the wisdom in your dad's words?

JH: I think it wasn't until I had graduated from college. I started to see some kind of wisdom in what he was saying a little earlier than that but it didn't make me feel any better. I wasn't able to really process what he was saying until probably 24 or 25. I moved to LA and got a job as a waiter...That was right around the time I started to kind of enjoy the things he said, and was able to process the information and not have it be clouded by hurt feelings.

NP: At what point did you start writing down the shit that your dad said?

JH: I was probably about eleven or twelve. I mean, I wrote everything down. I was a really angsty kid who wrote a lot in journals. I wrote everything down and some of what was in there was things that my dad had said to me that made me upset. I didn't think they were funny at the time. Looking back, some of them were really funny, but at the time I didn't [see it]. I lost most of [the journals] but some of them I still have and they're just sort of like the kick and scratch and drawings of a kid that was a little awkward and upset quite a bit.

NP: Some of your dad's advice I love best is his dating advice. For a fuddy-duddy, he was really hip when it came to getting the girl.

JH: Yeah, it's weird, even now, he's like 74 and he'll admit it himself, he says he was never really a good-looking guy. He said he always looked a little older than he was, and he was never really that cool looking. But even now when women talk to him that are 30 years younger than him, he's pretty charming. He just has this supreme confidence. My brother says dad always acts like he could give a fuck if you would want to screw him or not. That's one of the reasons why I think women love him. I think when he was younger and he was single, he was never hitting on women, he was just being himself. He never acted like someone was out of his league. He would just ask whomever he wanted out.

I mean there's this story in the book about when he set my brother up with this woman who was a brain surgeon and used to be Miss Oklahoma or something. My brother was terrified and so upset that my dad had set him up with her, because my brother was 29 and living at home and washing dishes at Hooters. My dad was like, "Who gives a shit? You're a man, she's a woman."

NP: Your dad had natural game.

JH: Yeah, which was not passed down to any of his sons.

NP: But you've got a girlfriend now.

JH: I do, I do. It's the same girlfriend that I split up with in the book. Well when I say "I spilt up," I mean "she split up with me." We've been dating four years. We've had a couple of break ups here and there, but, yeah, I've had the same one for a long time.

NP: At what point did she take you back?

JH: Everybody asks that -- is she after your book money? No. We broke up right when I moved down [to San Diego], like the day that I moved down. Then we were probably apart for two months, and we got back together before any of the Shit My Dad Says stuff had hit. But I didn't want to move back in right away, because it's like you're on shaky ground when you get back together -- you want to make sure everything's cool. So I took it really, really slowly and I stayed at my parent's house, and we kind of slowly got back together. So we started before any of this happened.

NP: The whole Twitter to book thing happened so fast, 'cause you only started doing the Twitter page in August 2009.

JH: It's crazy yes. I can't believe [it]. I mean actually a year ago, pretty much, I moved back home with my dad. I had my tail between my legs and things were not going that well for me. I had a good job, but I had pretty much nothing else.

NP: The book came out May 4th. I love your account of how you didn't really know what to do at your first book signing.

JH: [laughs] Oh, you read the blog. I didn't know if anyone actually reads it. Yes, I just did one last night too. I did my second one last night and that was equally as awkward. I got yelled at by the person who was running the bookstore because they were like, "You're writing too much when you're signing for people. Just sign your name." And I was like, "But they're coming out to see me. It's like so nice I want to at least write something personal." And they're like, "You're taking too long, the line's taking too long."

NP: And you've also been doing TV, Carson Daly?

JH: Yeah, that's been really weird, because I'm very comfortable when I'm writing. I'm even somewhat comfortable with small groups -- I like people so I'm pretty comfortable when I'm talking to people at book signings and stuff like that. But I'm not comfortable in front of a camera. I'm very self-conscious. I was very nerdy growing up, and I'm not comfortable being in front of a camera. That's taken me some getting used to and I still haven't gotten it. I watched that Carson Daily interview when I got home and it was like horrible because I was saying the word "like" every four words. I sound like some kind of like 13-year old girl from San Fernando Valley.

NP: I think that's just an affliction that comes with living in California.

JH: I know, it's not one of our finer [qualities].

NP: At least we've stopped saying "rad" -- look on the bright side.

JH: That's true.

NP: So did Carson Daly know that you'd farted in his ex-girlfriend's face? [Justin wrote a blog about his penchant for relieving the boredom of his old job as a waiter by farting on celebrity customers, a questionable skill he can perform more or less at will thanks to his IBS issues.]

JH: [laughs] You know what? I talked to the producer, and I was like, "I really want to tell this story." It's the only story in my whole entire life that I've ever wanted to tell on TV. I told the producer, and the producer was like, "That's hilarious, but I don't know if we can could tell that story on the air." Carson was really nice and I never really talked to him about it. I was just told by the producer beforehand, "We want to stay on track, we don't want to tell that story." I was bummed.

NP: How can anyone object to a decent fart story?

JH: That's what I thought. It had a beginning, middle and end. It had tension and conflict, there were characters involved, it was a very well rounded fart story.

NP: And fart stories are the bread and butter of comedy.

JH: Yeah, and who better to fart on than Jennifer Love Hewitt.

NP: So what had you been eating prior to the incident? Was there some Brussels sprouts or black beans involved?

JH: Yeah, I had had Mexican food. It was a hot one. I gave her everything that I had. I could feel it coming out of my collar because my shirt was tucked in -- that was how hot it was!

NP: Have you been back to the scene of the crime to see your former employers since you let that story out on Holy Taco?

JH: Well the Crocodile Café, the one I worked at, no longer exists. But I went back to [the place where it used to be] yesterday for the first time since I had left there because my book signing was a couple of blocks away. It was a kind of surreal feeling. I actually did sit at the table that I farted on Jennifer Love Hewitt at.

NP: There should be a plaque there really shouldn't there?

JH: [laughs] I like your style. I wish you ran that restaurant.

NP: I'd put a nice brass memorial plaque there. It'd be a premium table.

JH: Exactly, exactly. History happened there.

NP: We'd have a velvet rope in front of it.

JH: [laughs] That'd be awesome.

NP: So do you still take pride in farting on celebrities?

JH: Yes. I do. I've farted on quite a few. That was the best one, but I've farted on quite a few celebrities to the point where there's kind of a small contingent of my friends that if we're out and we see celebrities, that's all that they're focused on.

NP: So what was the last celeb you got?

JH: Well, I don't know if this counts, it's a little gross, but I was in the Warner Brothers' building because that's where I have my offices now, and I went to the bathroom and Scott Bakula, the guy from Quantum Leap, was in the bathroom next to me. We took a shit next to each other and during the shit I farted. I don't know if that counts. I think that counts as half, I'm not sure.

NP: I think that counts. It's like double points if you also got to dump side by side.

JH: Exactly. There's these moments you know when you've made it and that was mine.

NP: Yeah. I was proud of taking a piss next to Diana Ross but you've seriously trumped that one.

JH: That's pretty awesome though.

NP: I thought so too. It was on the Paramount lot, so it was a premium location and she was in full Diana Ross mode with the big hair.

JH: [laughs] I knew a SuicideGirls interview would be interesting.

NP: So if you're working out of the Warner Bros building, is that connected to the TV series?

JH: Yes. We actually shot the pilot already.

NP: Oh my god, with William Shatner?

JH: Yes. It was great. He was fantastic. He reminds me a lot of my dad in the sense that, he's not profane, he's very much a gentleman, but he doesn't want to engage in any unnecessary conversation or anything like that. He comes in, he does his work and he leaves, but -- I'm going to throw this word out there -- he's brilliant. You think he's not in on the joke, but he's in on every joke. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows the best way to deliver everything. He is really something.

NP: I know your dad hasn't wanted to get involved in any interviews or promotion, but presumably William Shatner wanted to meet your dad for research -- did that happen?

JH: They actually did meet, but he didn't ever ask to meet my dad. My dad came to the pilot taping and at the end of the show the executives were like, "Bring your dad down. Have him meet Mr. Shatner." I could tell that neither my dad nor Mr. Shatner were that interested in meeting one another. Everyone wanted them to take a picture together, so my dad walks down and Mr. Shatner says, "Hello sir." And my dad says, "Hello." They take a picture and then they turn in opposite directions and walk away from each other. That was it.

NP: I guess that was all that was required.

JH: Yes. It was the most perfect meeting. I was so happy. I was like, man, they both delivered.

NP: I'm surprised you even got your dad down to the taping.

JH: He wasn't going to go. He's like, "Can I show up late and stand in the back?" And I'm like, "It's not my fucking sixth grade play. You've got to come and sit for the whole thing." My mom talked him into it so that's why he came, but other than that he hasn't done anything.

NP: What was his reaction afterwards?

JH: It was funny, he ruined one of the takes of the show. It's a live audience and we're all sitting there and there's this moment where Shatner says he's going to think about something while he takes a shit, and all of a sudden I hear my dad in the audience go, "I do do that." He ruined the take.

NP: Bless. I think you should have kept that in personally.

JH: I know. If this show ends up getting picked up by CBS and we get on the air I will lobby for that take to go in there just for the ten people that read my blog and know that that happened.

NP: How's the TV show different from the book?

JH: Instead of the main character, who is basically me, coming back because his girlfriend has split up with him, he's coming back for economic reasons. He worked at a magazine and the magazine folded, and he's going under, he needs money, he needs a place to live. That's kind of the impetuous for the show whereas in my situation it was a breakup that instigated it.

NP: Whose choice was that to change it?

JH: That was mine. I co-wrote the show with my writing partner Patrick Schumacker, and then the two gentlemen that created Will & Grace, very talented guys, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. When we were pitching it we really wanted to touch upon [the current economic situation] because so many of my friends are out of work. They have college educations, and some of them have master's degrees, and they just can't find any work. We're having this generation of people who aren't lazy bums who don't want to get a job, these people did everything right and once they get out of school society just gives them the finger right now because of the times were in.

NP: I know, there's a whole generation of thirty and forty-somethings that are having to move back in with their parents so you're definitely capturing a moment.

JH: That's what we were hoping to do.

NP: But not everyone has parents like yours.

JH: That's true. I've been very lucky.

NP: Well I'm very much looking forward to seeing the TV show. I'm such a huge fan of William Shatner and love your Twitter page -- it's two of my favorite things in the universe colliding.

JH: Awesome. That's great to hear. You will love him in this. This is him. He has absolutely nailed it. It's crazy. The audience is going apeshit for him in this role. When we were doing it, I was with all these TV veterans, these guys that have done Will & Grace, and they're like, "You don't see this at a pilot taping very often. Soak it up."

NP: I would ask that your refrain from farting on William Shatner, unless you have a Denny Crane/Alan Shore moment over a cigar and he's OK with it.

JH: I will never, ever fart on Mr. Shatner. You can put that down. I would never do that.

NP: Well, I would say never say never, there may just be the right moment on the right balcony.

JH: [laughs]

NP: I just wouldn't want you to fart bomb him without his permission. I think he deserves a bit more.

JH: He does. He definitely does.

NP: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to chat, and for sharing your fart stories.

JH: No, thank you. This is by far the most fun I've had in an interview.


Shit My Dad Says is available at Amazon.com and all fine bookstores. For further info go to: ShitMyDadSays.com.

At the Richmond Tattoo Show last year, I was told to check out a portfolio from a guy by the name of Timmy B. He wasn't at his booth, but I looked through photos of his work --I was impressed, to say the least. As he approached the booth, I was shocked to see someone under the age of forty standing... more

At the Richmond Tattoo Show last year, I was told to check out a portfolio from a guy by the name of Timmy B. He wasn't at his booth, but I looked through photos of his work --I was impressed, to say the least. As he approached the booth, I was shocked to see someone under the age of forty standing before me. At only twenty-three years old, Timmy has become the talk of the east coast over the past few years. This could be credited to his relentless travel schedule, but I think with work like his it was just a matter of time before his name was on the tip of everyone's tongue.



TattooSnob:Let's run through the basics before we start. Tell us a little bit
about yourself?
Timmy B: My name is Timmy B, although some internet folks may know me better as Timmy Nitemare, long story, but I'm ok with that.  I'm currently working at Cherry Bomb Tattoos in New Port Richey, FL alongside an awesome realism tattooer named Billy Toler.  I've been tattooing about 5 years now and have to say the experiences I've had are unbelievable.  One of the more recent being that I am now sponsored by Eternal Inks and that is a huge accomplishment for me, so I have to say thanks so much again for picking me up.   I am beyond grateful for the people I've met and get to call my friends, I love what I'm doing and wouldn't trade it for the world.



TS:I'm sure people make comments about your age on at least a semi-regular basis--but seriously, how are you such an amazing tattooer at only 23? Any idea where you feel like you'll be at 33?
TB: I do get the age thing a lot, being 23 has its perks but it also can have its downfalls.  Certain people judge a lot on age and assume someone who's as young as I am must know nothing about tattooing.  I usually leave my age out of things and let the work speak for itself but hey, you can't win em all.  All I can say is that I'm just trying to better myself and experiment with style all the time and I hope I can keep doing it until I'm 33.  I'm just grateful I have the opportunity to do what I do and really hope to continue learning for as long as possible.

TS:How would you describe your work? Your portfolio shows you feel comfortable with a number of different styles.
TB: I hate this question, haha,  My style I guess is something along the lines of Illustrative realism with a lot of Traditional or neo traditional feeling and influence.  I've dabbled into a lot of styles and I am comfortable doing a lot, my primary focus is really to just give someone a solid tattoo that won't fall apart in 5 years.  Only time will tell I guess so 5 years from now if you see my style completely change, you'll know why....





TS:I know you've done quite a bit of traveling in the past, do you plan to continue that in 2010?
Timmy: I was going to try and settle down a bit for 2010, but that definitely didn't happen.  I'm doing a lot of shows this year that span all over the country as well as a few guest spots, and there is also a Europe trip along the way which is pretty exciting.  I would list the shows and guest spots but that would pretty much take forever so I'll spare you the reading..haha.

TS:Are there any cities or shops that have become favorites because of your trips?
TB: I Love Chicago, Denver was great, one of my absolute favorites would definitely be Austin Texas, I always have a blast out there and a lot of my good friends work out there.  As far as shops, No Surrender in Texas was amazing, thank you Mr. Zach Ross, and Ink and Dagger in Decatur GA is always interesting, And as we all know that the infamous and famous Russ Abbott is the owner, and he's my favorite teddy bear.  This question is to hard though, I always have a blast on my guest spots and every shop I go to is always filled with great and talented people so I can list them all.  But you know who you are, thanks everyone.



TS:In terms of conventions, do you enjoy working them or do you only
attend a select few?
TB: I love working conventions, Its like seeing your family on a holiday, you get the chance to see a ton of great people and your best friends all put into one place for the 3 or 4 days and just do good tattoos and party.  I always look forward to shows and the whole convention circuit, if you go to a show and don't have fun, something is seriously wrong...



TS:I hear you're on Team Cool Kids, can you explain what that's all
about? Who else is on the team?
TB: We can all thank Mr. Tanane Whitfield for Team Cool Kids as he is the driving force behind it all.  I'll try and give you the short version of what its about.  Tanane called me up and asked me to start a crew with him, keep in mind I had never even met Tanane at this point, so this phone conversation was pretty funny.  But anyway, He said he wanted to start a crew of solid up and coming young tattooers who could pretty much try and defy and recreate the stereotype of tattoo artists.  We want to issue a new generation of tattooers who are willing to help people and not be competitive just to show that this industry does not have to be a cut throat industry,  we want to show future tattooers that we can all be friends and accept each other and every style along the way.  We also plan to start being more active for charities and other groups in society to try and make the world see that tattooing is an art form and we can help and contribute in good ways. As far as who is in it, there is a solid list and I'll give you a few examples, Obviously Tanane Whitfield, Myself, Taylor Cort, Kyle Cotterman,Myke Chambers, Dennis Duarte, Pepper, Drewski, Scott Olive, Nora, Steve Martin, Short, and Brando.





TS:Who was the last artist that tattooed you?
TB: Mr. Bryan Reynolds, I love him, so we got matching tattoos on the side of our fingers....

TS:Do you have a list of artists that you want to be tattooed by?
TB: Oh hell yeah, Just to name a few, Jeff Ensminger, ( My hero ),  Russ Abbott-again...Myke Chambers, Dustin Golden, Nick Baxter, Bryan Reynolds-again, and I dont know there are a shit ton so thats a few for now.



TS:Any last words?

B]TB: Check out

Myspace.com/TimmyNightmare
NightOwl.com
Eternal Tattoo Supply







NightOwl.com
TattooNow

George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck... more

George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck Eisner) unleashed a kind of government-caused-outbreak paranoia that was the antecedent of what Stephen King would later exploit in The Stand. Romero and King would collaborate on a celebration of 1950s EC comics horror publications in Creepshow. He totally rewrote the vampire myth as a young man's psychosis in Martin. Outside of horror, Romero made the intensely personal Arthurian parable Knightriders. SG talked to Romero in Boston, while he was promoting his latest zombie movie Survival of the Dead. Survival of the Dead, available now on Video on Demand and opening theatrically on May 28, concerns a rag-tag band of survivors of the zombie holocaust who find themselves on an island off the coast of Delaware, embroiled in an intergenerational feud between two clans of Irish settlers.

Michael Marano: You used zombies as a critique of consumer culture in Dawn of the Dead. In the years since then, zombies have themselves become commercial commodities. There are scores of video games, movies, and Simon and Schuster has a line devoted specifically to apocalyptic zombie novels. Any thoughts on the ways that zombies have become the very kinds of consumerist products that you used zombies that you poked fun at thirty years ago?

George Romero: Well, it's surprising. First of all, I do think it was video games that popularized the creature. I guess they [zombies] are perfect targets for first-person shooters. And I really think it was the video games, and after that the graphic novels, that have made them popular. I don't think it was so much the movies, because if you think about it, Zombieland is the only one that really was a blockbuster, or any kind of huge hit. As far as this question about them becoming a consumer item, I don't know how popular it [the zombie genre] is. I guess they're popular enough! (Laughs.) It's hard for me to even get a sense of that. I'm sort of still doing my own thing. My zombies are still sort of shuffling around slowly and they're almost just a minor annoyance. My stories have always been about people, and how they deal with the problem, how they fail to deal with the problem, and how stupidly they deal with it. To me, it has been a perfect vehicle for socio-political criticism. It's just been fun that way! So, that's the way I think of them (zombies). And people say, 'Jeeze! You created all of this!' And maybe I did, somehow! I didn't even call them 'zombies' in the first film. They were 'flesh eaters' or 'ghouls.' I never thought of them as 'zombies,' because when we made that film (1968's Night of the Living Dead), 'zombies' to me were still the guys in the Caribbean doing wetwork for Lugosi (in White Zombie). I just wanted some sort of strange phenomenon that would be a game changer so that people, my characters, would fail observe that and hoist themselves on their own petard.


MM: I want to talk about "game changers" and sort of "society changers." You started out cutting news footage, back in the Medium Cool days when they still used motorcycle couriers and actual--what that stuff they used to use?

GR: Film?

MM: Yeah! That's the stuff! Film! It was like YouTube with sprockets.

GR: It had little holes in it! They never let me actually cut it. I was a courier. I was Haskell Wexler!

MM: You were?

GR: Yeah, I just ran the stuff around. I learned how to edit at one of those labs. But they never actually let me work on the news footage. It was too precious!

MM: That sort of news-based reality behind how you cut your teeth learning how to cut film, did that news paradigm affect the way that you chose to depict societies falling apart?

GR: I think it more affected stylistically the original film [Night of the Living Dead] than anything else. And even though it's only in the last 20 minutes of the film, people always write about that film and how it's got this 'vérité style' when really it doesn't. I mean we were shooting with a sound blimp. It's just very static. Until I can finally get the camera out of the blimp in the last twenty minutes of the film and the camera, once out of the blimp, was really portable, and I intentionally tried to make that stuff look like news footage and tried to cut it with that same sort of chop that the guys used to use back in the lab. From Dawn of the Dead on, I guess, I've had this conceit that if there's something I wanna talk about, or whatever, I can bring zombies out of the closet and get to make a film, and get it financed.

MM: Now, with using zombies as social commentary and always having them on hand for that, I couldn't help but notice that with Survival of the Dead you seem to be reapplying your satire not just to society, but you seem to be taking on other genres. Like, a little bit of western...

GR: Oh, yeah! [Laughs]

MM: ... and little bit of the "Irish land dramas," like The Field. I kept thinking of Ryan's Daughter.

GR: Really?!

MM: Yeah. I wanted Sarah Miles to be eaten. I wanted that. And I know from Creepshow that you're an old school EC Comics fan. Did old Mad Magazine (originally an EC comic book) approaches to critiquing films and film genres inform how you approached satirizing other movies in Survival of the Dead?

GR: I think it probably does! It's waaaay in the background, somewhere in here (gesturing to his medulla) in the bottom part of my brain. I wanted to do something stylistically different with (Survival of the Dead). I knew I was going to do some Looney Tunes kind of moments with it, and that comes from old comics I guess. I'll go to see horror film with a friend, I'll go to see a horror film with Steve King, and we're sittin' there, the only ones giggling and everyone else is hiding their eyes or running to gag. And we chuckle! And for anybody who grew up on the old EC comics, they were just filled with bad puns and terrible jokes. And it was humor all the way, and it just made you chuckle. So, I just can't resist that! And then I just wanted to completely change (my approach to zombies in Survival). It's a lot more fun to me, for me, to say, 'Hey, man! Let's just do something completely different!' And once I had the idea of the feud, I remembered the old William Wyler film called The Big Country, and I said, 'Let's model it after that! And let's have fun! And let's sort of make a quasi-western out of this.' We went with 2.35 [aspect ratio]. We didn't mute the colors. It was just a choice. All of a sudden, all the department heads got together and said, 'Wow! That would be really fun, to do that!' So that was just, 'Hey! Let's have a picnic, here!'

MM: To me, a lot of the headshots in Survival of the Dead really reminded me of (EC Comics artists known for their ghoulish humor) Jolly Jack Davis and Ghastly Graham Ingles.

GR: Yeah! Those boys!

MM: Now, I don't want to ruin anything for people who haven't seen Survival of the Dead yet, so I'll just speak a

MM: I want to jump back to what you were talking about earlier about using zombies as a template to create character-based drama. You tend to create apocalypses, not just in your zombie movies, that are very small scale. A farmhouse (in Night of the Living Dead). A TV Station where order is breaking down (in the opening of Dawn of the Dead). A bunker (Day of the Dead). In your 1973 movie The Crazies the enemy seemed to be Ma Bell, the phone company. Even Martin, Bruiser and Knightriders, seem to be about intensely personal apocalypses. Do you want to comment on that? Maybe in comparison to large scale apocalypses, like Michael Bay's and Roland Emmerich's?

GR: Well, first of all, I would never tackle one of those! I wouldn't know how! And I don't quite know what's the purpose. Because... it's much more likely that we'll face these little more minor apocalypses, be it family, or school or a job or whatever. And that's always just connected to me, somehow. Just was my characters don't deal with the looming threat of the zombies, they continue to just deal with each other on a superficial and a ridiculous level. And they create their own problems.

MM: In the Cold War days, your zombie apocalypses were total and complete breakdowns of world order. There's no TV, no communication. It's all just done. In your post-9/11 zombie movies, the end of the world seems like a chore. Just another goddam thing to deal with. Was this conscious on your part?

GR: With these last two (Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead) I sort of went back to the beginning of (the zombie plague). I didn't know where to go after Land of the Dead. I didn't want to go Beyond Thunderdome. But that was a pretty apocalyptic world. I didn't want to go further than that. I just didn't know where to go. Do the zombies take over? I'm not interested in that. There was another reason for us starting over [bringing the narrative back to the start of the zombie apocalypse]. I always wanted to sort of do what Steve King does with the town of Castle Rock. You know, create this sort of collage. This is happening here, while this is happening here, and this character recurs. I've never been able to do that, because the copyrights on the first four films are all owned by different people, and I can't get 'em to come together on a deal, here! So, that was another reason why my current partner and I wanted to start over with this, and start fresh. These two (recent zombie movies) actually connect; Survival uses a minor character from Diary. I actually have two more ideas (for further zombie movies). This movie wouldn't exist if Diary hadn't made a lot of dough. I mean, it cost so little that, even with a limited theatrical release it made a lot of money for the producers. If the same thing happens with this film, I'm standing by! I got two more minor characters from Diary, and I would love it to have this little set of movies that go together.

MM: Do you have any non-zombie movies planned?

GR: I'm working on one! I don't know if it will happen. At my age, man, I don't want to go out and do the pitch again. Peter Grunwald (my business partner) and I--we were out there for almost six and a half years almost and never made a movie. We got all these huge development deals. And I made more money than I've ever made in my life, but I never made a movie. For one reason or another, all the deals blew up. And I just don't want to do that anymore. And I found a lovely place to work, in Canada. And I work with now, again, the same family of people. The guy that shot my first movie up there shot this movie. The same wardrobe people and everything. I love the collaborative process of making films. And I hate the deal making. We have an idea that we would love to do. If it gets too nuts, the development aspect of it, then I don't know. I do have another horror movie idea, which is non-zombie. Which I'm sure we can finance. But if this film does well, I think I'll do another one of these (zombie movies). Hey, I'd be happy if did two more of these that that was it. I love doing them!

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around... more

Robert Williams has had careers that would fulfill many lesser artists. He worked for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and was involved in the hot rod movement. He created psychedelic posters and was part of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix collective. He’s a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited around the world. Guns N Roses took their debut album title from Williams’ painting “Appetite for Destruction” which was also the album cover. He’s one of the founders of Juxtapoz, the biggest art magazine in the world, and it was the title of his first book of paintings that gave the lowbrow art movement its name. He’s written extensively about art including the Rubberneck Manifesto in which he famously argued that “something dead in the street commands more measured units of visual investigation than 100 Mona Lisas.”

Last year Williams had his first solo show in years in New York, “Conceptual Realism: In the Service of the Hypothetical” and this year it opened at Cal State Northridge. Williams was also asked to contribute to this year’s Whitney Biennial. Much of his popular success comes from his skill and precision at depicting the realistic details in his work in a way which make the flights of fancy seem natural. His oil paintings, shows the influence of twentieth century pop culture but his craftsmanship and skill are worthy of the old masters. Imagine if Salvador Dali was raised on EC Comics, pop culture and dropped acid, and you have a hint of what Williams’ work is like.

What was most striking about talking with Williams was that an artist who has had such long and influential career was so clearly touched and appreciative of my own observations towards his work. He believes he’s currently working at the top of his game, which for those who attended his recent show is hard to argue with, but he believes with passion that he has the skill and the talent to create work so powerful and affecting to convert the critics of his approach and subject matter. The following is an edited version of a far-reaching conversation about art, comics, Los Angeles and what Williams likes about watercolors.


ALEX DUEBEN: You’ve mentioned that underground cartoonists were your first peer group. You were part of the Zap Comix collective, which included Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson and Spain Rodriguez and others. What were you trying to do?

ROBERT WILLIAMS: Underground comics is closer to art than it is to comics, because you could do as you please. It started in the early fifties when the Kefauver subcommittee cracked down on comics. There was a book called Seduction of the Innocent by a Dr. Wertham that later created an investigation into comics and how they were causing juvenile delinquency and all the really good comics got run out of business. I’m old enough, and my peer group was old enough, to remember the really great comics. Then all of a sudden the spigot was turned off and from that point on it was Disney comics and happy animal comics and whatnot.

It started with the psychedelic poster movement. The fine arts world never acknowledged the psychedelic poster movement even though the psychedelic poster movement was far far larger than the poster movement in the late 1890s with Toulousse-Letrec and other artists. All of the artists that were involved in poster movement were, much like myself, disenfranchised artists. The thing slowly started creeping towards comics. Some of the psychedelic posters started breaking down into panels. Underground comics, the first one that I can remember is Jack Jackson’s God Nose from ’64, so there’s a heritage in this thing. Crumb came out with Zap in 1967. I was working for Ed “Big Daddy” Roth doing illustration, cartoons. They were very irreverent and I was in trouble for it. The seeds were there. Even if Crumb wasn’t born and I wasn’t born this thing was going to surface.

When we started doing underground comics, they were very subversive, very pornographic, very antisocial. Every social more we could find, we would violate. Our attitude was, you think those comicbooks were bad back in the fifties? You ain’t seen fucking nothing yet.

AD: So all that was very conscious and very intentionally dealing with these subjects and in that manner?

RW: You have to understand, we’re in a period of history now where artists think they have to placate everybody in the world. They have to get the largest audience possible. The underground artists and underground world were very happy just to deal with themselves. None of those underground comics were ever made for a general audience. The attitude was, fuck the general audience. It was just like the psychedelic rock posters that had that lettering that you couldn’t fucking read until you knew how to read it. It wasn’t for every idiot. It was for an intelligent arcane audience that was in the know. Now the attitude is we’ve got to make everybody fucking happy, but that time there was a big cultural separation between the underground and the overground. The Vietnam war was the ignition point. That was when the country split right in half.

AD: I’ve read a decent amount of underground comics from that period and I have to admit I’m sometimes unsure how much I get, not just in terms of the references, but because it was for a different audience at a different time.

RW: It wasn’t something to hunt you down and appease you. It was something if it interested you, you go and investigate. It wasn’t something for everyone to get hip to. It was a very closed world. And there’s another factor, Alex. There were two philosophies. There was the graphic abstract world of the comics which I belonged to, that Rick Griffin belonged to, that S. Clay Wilson belonged to, that Victor Moscosco belonged to. And then there was the literary graphic story side of the underground comics that Crumb belonged to and Gilbert Shelton belonged to. They were interested in telling stories. My side of the thing, the abstract world, was more into the abstract illusionary art world to take you through a mind expanding trip. Now eventually as underground comics got more popular and had a larger audience, the literary side took over because people weren’t interested in the abstract side anymore they were more interested in reading the story and throwing the comic book away.

AD: Which is something that continues to do to this day in comics where abstract work is really a largely obscure and ignored corner of comics.

RW: That’s what happened to the underground comics. They got so popular and so big that they started to have to cater to a much larger audience and they had to start making much more sense. The earlier comics weren’t responsible for making any fucking sense. So after about 1970 or ‘71, the psychedelic nonsense really tapered off.

AD: Which is the point when underground comics became a genre essentially.

RW: Yeah.

AD: You guys were making comics, but were those old comics hugely influential?

RW: Absolutely. You have to remember that the only artists who could draw and paint were comics book artists and artists who did B-movie posters and stuff like that. Illustrators. The art world had turned its back on it. Almost every one of us in the underground comics had a fine arts background and faced the same pressures the same bigotry.

AD: You guys liked EC comics and Wally Wood and--

RW: Wally Wood was my hero. I talked to him a couple of times. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better. Unfortunately every time I talked to him both of us were drunk.

AD: And if we go back to Pop Art and Roy Lichtenstein, who took a comics panel and played with it in a way that was disdainful of the panel.

RW: Not only would he take a comic book panel and would denigrate it so it even looked funkier, he would take a comic book panel verbatim and then find stylizations in there and alter them so it looked as if it was even more retarded. He was showing his indifference, because in pop art you show a cold indifference.

AD: He wrecked what art there was in the panel and I think that indifference and coldness you mention is why pop art leaves many people cold.

RW: The buying public in art are not into it that much. They’re interested in the value and how it looks as decoration in a large modern home.

AD: Do you feel art scene at large remains indifferent to you and your style even now?

RW: The art scene now is more open than I’ve ever seen it in my life. But there’s a problem with the art. I knew this a long long time ago. If you get a lot of people that want to be artists, you have to adjust down the capability requirements so that all these people can be artists. You can’t expect to take young people and force them into a rigorous discipline of learning how to draw and paint. That’s what they did one hundred years ago in the old European art academies and in the United States in the early Twentieth century. They had really tough schools. It was hell to get through an art school a long time ago. Now they’ve eased that so you just have to be sensitive and be able to pay the tuition and attend and flop around some colors. The discipline has gone out of it completely.

The arts have to be open for everybody with every kind of style. I’m for making the thing open and free. I don’t think an artist has to learn to paint and draw. I prefer to do that, but I want the ability to have as much right to be in a museum as someone else. I respect their right to put anything in there. If they want to have a pile of sand in the middle of the museum, that’s okay with me. As long as I have room in there.

AD: Your show in Los Angeles which was in New York last year is the first show you’ve had for a number of years. How prolific are you?

RW: I’m slow. I plod along. I used to be a lot more prolific in my thirties and forties and my twenties, but I’m sixty-seven years old and I just work at it continually. I’m just as happy to do a real big tight oil painting and plot every little detail out and crawl across it like a snail. That’s the way it gets done. I’m not the most prolific artist, never really have been.

In the eighties I was turning out two and a half paintings a month. Now I turn out a painting every two and a half months. But they’re a lot better paintings. More detail.

AD: So you’re in the Whitney Biennial this year.

RW: I am in the Whitney Biennial.

AD: Was this a big deal?

RW: It was a very very big deal. I didn’t realize how big it was at the time. I’ve been showing in New York for about twenty, twenty-five years now and it’s just been a slow process of eroding away these obstacles. Eighteen years ago I got into Tony Shafrazi’s gallery and then I proved myself there having a number of sold out shows. I’m sure Tony got me in the Whitney. Tony’s probably the second or third biggest gallery in the world. He’s quite a character.

AD: You’re showing six watercolors at the Whitney. What do you like about watercolors?

RW: I don’t like anything about watercolors.

AD: Um, let me rephrase then. Why did you feel six watercolors would be appropriate for the show?

RW: That way I could have my name in the show six times. And have six different ideas instead one big painting. They said they would accept six small watercolors. They saw my watercolors at the Shazfrazi show. You saw the four. They said they would accept six of those so I sat down and did six.

AD: So you don’t enjoy watercolors?

RW: I enjoy watercolors immensely, but I love those tight ass oil paintings. That’s the real test and that’s the real form of expression. Those are ass busting to do. They’re difficult and if you spend a lot of time on them and they don’t work out, man, it’s really a gamble. I’m at the top of my form and I’m busting my ass on those big oil paintings. Later, when I get old, I’ll be doing a lot of watercolors. Don’t worry about that.

AD: I know you grew up in California and you’ve lived in Los Angeles for a long time. What keeps you there? The city keeps changing so much.

RW: I love the weather. I’ve got hot rods. I’ve got room -- a house on a big lot with room. I love going to New York, but I can only handle New York for about a week and then it starts closing in on me. New York has an energy that maybe you can see it in Tokyo and Berlin and Rome, but New York is the capital of the world when it comes to cultural energy. But I’ve got to get out of there after awhile.

AD: From your perspective, does Los Angeles have a good art scene?

RW: LA is going to take over New York eventually. New York got all its culture from Europe. The old Victorian principle of sophistication. To be sophisticated you have to be inhibited. That doesn’t exist on the West Coast or the Pacific Rim. LA knows to be sophisticated, copy New York, but they fail at it miserably. I don’t mean to run New York down but you come out here and get involved in the art world out here and there is so much energy going in all directions it can’t be contained. It’s like trying to herd kangaroos or something. They try to be sophisticated, but they fail, and in that failure they come up with their own dynamic.

Not only do you have the motion picture industry out here, you have the hot rod culture, the biker culture, the surfer culture, the tattoo culture. On and on and on all started out here. Psychedelic posters. Underground comics. It all started out here. It happened spontaneously. It can’t stop itself.

See more of Robert Williams work here

Get the book Conceptual Reality here