erin_broadley

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

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

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


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

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

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

GF: How do you feel about the upcoming election?

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

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

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

GF: Would you be a good president?

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

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

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

GF: How did you feel about Andy Warhol?

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

GF: What about Basquiat?

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

GF: What about David Bowie?

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

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

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

GF: What books?

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

GF: Like what?

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

GF: What periods fascinate you the most?

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

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

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

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

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

GF: What did you think of the McFarlane toys?

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

GF: What do you collect now?

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

GF: Would you ever make a line of furniture?

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

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

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

GF: Have you ever crashed your bike?

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

GF: What were your injuries?

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

GF: Do you believe in ghosts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GF: Whats it about?

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

GF: Whats your presence on the show going to be like? Voice? Designing characters?

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

For more on Frank Kozik go to his official site here