Jules Feiffer
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

There are renaissance men then there is Jules Feiffer. Feiffer has become the cream of the crop in every field he has entered. He first gained fame for his comic book strips in The Village Voice and won a Pulitzer Prize for said strips. He has written the screenplays for Carnal Knowledge and Popeye. But his latest project is The Long Chalkboard which is his first collaboration with his wife Jennifer Allen. It is three very moving and poignant tales for adults. Also Fantagraphics has just released the fourth volume collecting Feiffer’s early works called Passionella and Other Stories.

Buy Passionella and Other Stories

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?

Jules Feiffer: I’m working on several deadlines, none of which I’m doing.

DRE: How much do you help put together Passionella?

JF: I didn’t do a thing other than giving them the material, which was out there. [co-founder of Fantagraphics] Gary [Groth] decided what the selection would be so I had nothing to do with that. Then when they had the layout and a cover design ready, they showed it to me and all I did was change the background color design on the cover to another color.

DRE: Did you change any of the artwork?

JF: No. I don’t think that’s what they were interested in. This is a record of the work that’s already done. You don’t try to fix it. This is stuff I haven’t looked at in maybe 30 years and it’s interesting. It turned out to be a growing pleasure reading it over again and seeing how well it holds up because you never know. I had some minor changes to make in the layout of the book and the way they ordered the strips. I suggested that Passionella be the final story and that’s what they did. Just minor stuff.

DRE: You could have never expected it to be looked at again 50 years later.

JF: Oh yes I did. You always hope that the work you do will last. Though it is a surprise when it does. But outside writing specific political cartoons, like about the current president, you hope it has some resonance later on somewhere down the line.

DRE: How do you like working with Fantagraphics?

JF: It’s just a terrific outfit and they work very hard to give you want you want. They have done an increasingly beautiful production job over the years.

DRE: This is the fourth volume of collections of your work, how many volumes could there be?

JF: They can go on longer than I’m going on. At the pace they are putting these things out they no doubt will.

DRE: Your art style has really changed over the years.

JF: Yes, my style has radically altered. I have a new book out with artwork from stories my wife wrote, called The Long Chalkboard. If you look at the artwork in that, you’ll see it’s quite different from anything you’ll see in Passionella. It’s not anything deliberate. I think you work 40 or 50 years and you eventually learn how to do it.

DRE: Did you feel that by the time you did Passionella you had really gripped how comics work?

JF: Passionella had two existences. It was originally commissioned by Pageant magazine which was a little magazine being published in the 40’s and 50’s. They turned over 28 pages for me to do the story. The story turned out to be a hit and circulation went up but I hated the artwork that I did. I thought it just looked awful and I decided that when it was going into book form, which it did a couple years later, I would completely redraw it. By that time, I had somehow evolved into a style that I liked. So in that intervening year and a half, I learned how to do what I’ve been trying to do for some time. It takes a while.

DRE: How did you first start developing that style?

JF: Most people develop a style unless you’re lucky and born with it. You just steal and borrow from the people you admire and throw in something of your own. There are all sorts of artists who I was eager to look like and I was a composite of all of them. It’s not unlike your writing style. Occasionally you can’t stand yourself because you’re just imitating somebody and you know you are. Then it just seems to evolve you into who you are. You don’t know how that happens but it does happen, the same thing as drawing.

DRE: Did you ever do any straight up comic book work?

JF: The only comic book work I ever did was Will Eisner’s Spirit supplement. Eisner, who is now considered the most innovative presence in comic book history, was doing The Spirit and I joined the staff and after a year or so he let me start writing the Spirit stories.

DRE: What did your contemporaries, at the time, think of comics?

JF: Comic books, unlike today, were treated with disregard and considered the low rent part of the business. If you were an aspiring cartoonist and wanted to make it big, your eye was on newspaper strips which were much more interesting then and ran bigger which was a nice thing. Today they reduce them so much it’s amazing anyone is attracted to them, but in those days there were five columns or more and many of them were lovely. Cartoonists were either hoping to graduate into their own strip or to move on into magazine illustration.

DRE: What made you different?

JF: What made me different were the negatives. I loved the realistic illustrator style and if I could have drawn that way, I would have done that. But I didn’t have the drawing ability to draw that realistic artwork nor did I have the brush line that was required to do those slick black and white very crisp drawings. My stuff looked much cruder, messier and chaotic. In other words, it stank. Clearly I was not qualified to do the work that I had originally enslaved myself to do. So since I was determined to be a successful cartoonist, I had to invent another form. So I did.

DRE: Had you and Jennifer [Allen] collaborated before The Long Chalkboard?

JF: This is the first time. She has done columns in the New York Times and New York Magazine. She worked at Life as a reporter which is how we met and for the last eight years she’s been doing stand up comedy which she writes and produces.

DRE: Why was it time for you guys to work together?

JF: I’ve been after her for years to write her own book and for one reason or another she never got around to it and finally she did. When she showed me these stories, they were clearly so right for illustration and it was hard to imagine how they would get published without it because they were short. They were also so concentrated and thoughtful that you needed a drawing to move you more slowly from one line to the next line and to draw attention to the writing, which is just brilliant.

DRE: Were the stories in autobiographical for either one of you?

JF: I don’t think she was aware when she wrote any of them what the autobiographical content was, which is just as well. I think that most of us do our best work when we are unaware of what we’re putting into it or what we’re taking from our lives. You’re just making up a story. I’ve been surprised over the years looking back on work that I didn’t think was autobiographical at all, how much of my life I had put into it. I think to go out deliberately and think that the only story that’s interesting is the one that happened to you is baloney. It’s nice to fictionalize things out of your life and turn them into stories or turn them into fables and that’s what she did in this case. She wrote these three lovely adult fables for grownups and I was privileged to draw them. It was one of the best times I’ve had doing anything.

DRE: I interviewed the great comic book writer Alan Moore and his fiancée Melinda [Gebbie] recently for their book Lost Girls. They got together in the process of creating the book over 16 years. I asked them what they argue about and she said that since the two of them are very sensitive they don’t argue in the same sense that other couples argue. When you and Jennifer had disagreements over The Long Chalkboard, what would they be about?

JF: First of all, she would show me the writing which went smoothly for the first two stories. For the last one, Judy’s Wonder Chili, I thought that she changed tones in the middle of the story. The last third of the story took on a different tone so I suggested a different approach. Then while we were driving back to the city from upstate New York, she threw out different ideas and I told her which ideas I thought worked and finally she came up with something entirely different from what we had discussed. She showed me and it was wonderful. That was basically the only serious discussion that we had where I was able to affect some change in the story. Not from the creative end but just from the critical end. It’s just helping her edit it. As far as the artwork went, I would show her my design of a character and she would approve it. If she didn’t like it I’d do something else.

DRE: Have you ever revisited characters that you created in the past for another story?

JF: No, not really. Since I’m the guy doing the drawing, there may be reference points from characters I’ve done in the past but they’re almost never deliberate. But there’s got to be a certain amount of duplication when you do the stuff for 50 years.

DRE: Have you thought of doing an updated Monroe story?

JF: No, I never thought of doing any updated anything. Although sequels are supposed to be very commercial, when I’m finished with a character or I’m finished with an idea, it’s done and there’s no part two to it. I have nothing more to say about it. Years ago, Mike Nichols tried to talk me into writing Carnal Knowledge 2 and I said I didn’t have a clue what I’d write.

DRE: Do you still read comic strips?

JF: I’m in New York and the papers here do not have a great selection of comic strips. The only newspaper I read that carries comics is The Daily News. They have Doonesbury which is still wonderful. It’s interesting how [Garry] Trudeau has really changed himself, his work and his approach. It’s a different strip and far more personal and interesting and than it was 25 or 30 years ago but it is still very political. I also read Mutts which is a gorgeously designed throwback to comic strips of the golden age. Those are the two I follow the most.

DRE: I read that your story I Lost My Bear was just made into a cartoon short.

JF: I Lost My Bear was the first picture book I did. I’d done two novels for children and then I Lost My Bear was my first picture book. The cartoon is about eight minutes long and they did a great job on it. What’s of most interest to me is that the voice of the narrator in the cartoon is my daughter Halley, who was the subject of the book ten years earlier. Halley has turned out to be an actor. She’s in a play on Broadway now and she was in a movie called The Squid and the Whale about a year or so ago. She’s done two more movies that haven’t come out yet.

DRE: What are you working on now?

JF: Mainly I’m working on two things, a memoir which I am about two years behind on and a musical comedy book for The Man on the Ceiling which is about a boy cartoonist. It has been bought by Walt Disney theatrical productions to make a Broadway show out of it. I’m writing the book and this composer/lyricist, Andrew Lippa, who did The Wild Party a few years back is doing the music and lyrics.

DRE: Are you doing drawings that they will turn into scenery and costumes?

JF: I won’t have anything to do with that but I’ll surely have something to do with the cartoons that the little boy draws. Those will be projected and animated and do all sorts of things. There’s nothing you can’t do today digitally. They’re going to be up on a huge stage. It’s very exciting.

DRE: When I called you last week to set this up you told me that you don’t do email.

JF: No, I don’t but I take faxes. I resist email because I just don’t know how to use a mouse or even turn on a computer. There’s nothing about a computer I know how to do. I’ve been through a computer class but didn’t pick up how to use one. I’m mechanically deficient. I was past 40 when I learned how to drive. I just don’t do machinery well.

DRE: Well thank goodness you know how to use a pencil and a typewriter.

JF: I never learned how to type. It’s all longhand.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Jules+Feiffer/