Talking with Tim

Last week I lamented the passing of Studs Terkel. I had no idea that I’d be paying tribute to critic John Leonard upon his passing this past Wednesday.

I lost track of Leonard in recent years, around the time of my divorce and returning to the Catholic Church. I was first introduced to Leonard in the 1990s, when I stopped attending church and started watching CBS’ Sunday Morning. His TV criticism and passion was like no one else I had ever seen. His scant moments on the show were sheer enlightenment. In the late 1990s, I read his book, Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures.

I did not read the New York Times Book Review when it was edited by Leonard in the 1970s (well I was in grade school). I would periodically read his book reviews in Harper’s, but I did not realize he continued to do TV reviews for New York magazine up almost to the point of his death. I regret not appreciating Leonard more in general–at the point I found out he had written for the Nation in recent years, the degree of how much great analysis I denied myself became apparent.

Leonard was a liberal who got his start at the National Review (another reason to respect the William F. Buckley era of that magazine) . He was able to vote for Obama–despite being gravely ill and literally a day away from death–on Tuesday.

Writers are lining up to sing his praise, but I leave you with A.O. Scott’s thoughts on Leonard:
“He demonstrated in every sentence what a critic could be — what a critic must be. Not a cop, a saint, a celebrity, a judge, a bureaucrat or a priest. A citizen. A teacher. A friend.”

Jeff Parker is a damn fine storyteller in my book. Well not my book, because I don’t have a book. But with Halloween fast approaching, Parker and company have put together Giant-Size X-Men: First Class #1 (set to hit your store this Wednesday) with a Halloween theme. As detailed by Marvel: ” Just in time for Halloween, The Beast starts conducting investigations into his own “X” files around the world! Are there aliens among us- or things even weirder? Featuring special guest-star artists and classic material too! And emboldened by the safety net of Nowlan inks, Parker even drew the cover!” As noted by Parker at his fun-lovin’ site, Parkerspace, Comic Book Resources has a preview of the book here. I was able to snag Jeff for a brief email interview recently, which is always fun for me. This blog would not exist were it not for Jeff’s encouragement and support, so I’m always happy to throw back some support his way.

Tim O’Shea: How did the Giant-Size X-Men: First Class with Halloween theme first get developed?

Jeff Parker: Me. I love Halloween specials, as might be obvious from the Monster-Size Hulk with the Frankenstein monster that came out this month. And my cool editors were fine with doing another special.

(more…)

This Wednesday will see the release of Dynamite’s Army of Darkness #14. To find out what’s going with the series, I caught up with series writer Mike Raicht and artist Scott Cohn. I had the pleasure of meeting the creators at the recent Baltimore Comic-Con and from that meeting we were able to conduct this email interview.

Tim O’Shea: Am I correct in thinking that starting with issue 14, the focus will be a little less humor and little more horror? Or is humor too crucial an ingredient in any AoD story?

Mike Raicht: Starting with issue #14 we will be going a bit “darker”. However, Ash will still be Ash. His humor and outlook on being a Chosen One is crucial to the book and that will always remain. At least I hope. But the situations the book unleashes on Ash will be more horror oriented. The Book of the Dead has basically ruled Ash’s life for a long time now. So much so that Ash has kind of accepted his fate. He is the Chosen One and his job is to protect humanity from the horrors unleashed by the Necronomicon.

(more…)

To be able to score another interview with one of the Cinematic Titanic crew after having the good fortune to interview Mary Jo Pehl was not something I had expected. But right after Pehl expressed interest, so did Frank Conniff. Conniff, another original MST3K cast member and writer, was best known as TV’s Frank on the show. After MST3K ended, Conniff diversified into various TV projects, including work on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and Invader Zim. In addition to his current involvement with Cinematic Titanic, he serves as host and performer for Cartoon Dump, a monthly show at Hollywood’s Steve Allen Theatre that aims to feature “live comedy, great music and hilariously bad animation“. We got to talk about both new projects briefly this week. My thanks to Conniff for his time, and to Josh Opitz for arranging both Cinematic Titanic interviews.

Tim O’Shea: You recently wrote about Skidoo (the Otto Preminger film with Groucho Marx as a gangster named “God”). I have seen the film as well and I wonder would that be a film that the Cinematic Titanic gang might like to tackle? Or is it just so weird on its own merits that to mock it would dilute the potency of its sheer badness?

Frank Conniff: I don’t think we could ever get the rights to “Skidoo.”

On the one hand, it would be a fun film to riff on, but on the other hand, it is, as you say, bad on its own merits and maybe it doesn’t need the Cinematic Titanic treatment to be enjoyed.

(more…)

As a person who could be sent into near convulsions from laughing at the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 shows, a few months ago when I heard about Cinematic Titanic (which features the creator and original MST3K cast executing what they characterize as “Movie Riffing 2.0″) I looked into it with some skepticism. But almost immediately after playing a Cinematic Titanic teaser at YouTube I was laughing uncontrollably just like old times. I was recently fortunate enough to interview one of the crew, Mary Jo Pehl. This interview was conducted prior to the August 7 release of Cinematic Titanic’s riffing of The Wasp Woman.

Before diving into the interview, here’s the official take on Cinematic Titanic: “Cinematic Titanic is a feature length movie riffing show and is an artist owned and operated venture created by Joel Hodgson, the creator of the Peabody award-winning Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Cinematic Titanic features the original cast and writers of MST3K, which is Hodgson (Joel Robinson), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), and J. Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo). Filling out the ensemble is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank). Cinematic Titanic’s focus is to riff on the movies we love, which are ‘the unfathomable’, ‘the horribly great’, and the just plain ‘cheesy’ movies from the past.”

And now for the official word on Pehl: “Writer, actor, raconteur, bon vivant and former Mystery Science Theater 3000 writer, Mary Jo Pehl’s work ranges from television to theater, national radio to regional magazines. Her hilarious and thoughtful takes on life have delighted audiences in print and stage.” My thanks to Pehl for her time.

Tim O’Shea: For a collaborative comedic effort like Cinematic Titanic how hard was it for you to get back into the rhythm and dynamics that had been polished during MST3K? Or is it like riding a bike, and everything just fell back into place?

Mary Jo Pehl: It was kind of surprising how easily we fell back into it. I hadn’t realized that it was in my blood! Not only that, I had recently worked with a couple of guys here in Austin who do an homage to MST3K called Master Pancake Theater. They invited me to riff live with them, so I got a little experience actually riffing live on the films and not just writing the jokes. It was good training to actually being in front of the movie.

(more…)

Recently BOOM! Studios released Shmobots, a graphic novel by writer Adam Rifkin and artist Les Toil. I recently was able to conduct an email interview with Rifkin. Before getting to the questions, here’s BOOM!’s official breakdown of the creators and the project: “SMALL SOLDIERS and MOUSEHUNT screenwriter and DETROIT ROCK CITY director, Adam Rifkin, pairs with pin-up artist supreme Les Toil to create Shmobots! In an world where man needs robots to do menial labor, a city decides to contract with the lowest bidder in order to create its army workforce. But the whole thing backfires and the robots end up being lazy and stupid — with attitude. So what do you call these slacker robots? They’re a bunch of Shmobots! A darkly funny tale of passion, romance, and sexy-time! Once you go chrome, you never go home!” Honestly I had to interview the writer after I read the 128-page trade paperback and it had such absurd scenes like “The Diary of Anne Frankenstein”. It appealed to my odd sense of humor. BOOM! is uploading pages from the book for free, on a daily basis, here. My thanks to Rifkin for his time and for BOOM!’s Chip Mosher for his assistance.

Tim O’Shea: The Diary of Anne Frankenstein AND a Stan Lee endorsement? Rarely can a book pull off both–how did you score the Lee endorsement?

Adam Rifkin: Getting a thumbs up from Stan Lee was a real dream come true. The man has been such a hero of mine for so many years that I really can’t put into words how much that endorsement means to me. I actually had met Stan a number of years ago when I was shooting episodes of a television series that ultimately never aired called WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD. It was a show based on a movie I had made of the same name. Stan played himself in one of the episodes and as a result he and I had become friendly. He truly is one of the nicest guys I’ve come across in this business. Anyway, after SHMOBOTS was complete I sent Stan a copy just to get his feedback. Not only did he dig it, but he gave us that fantastic quote to use with his blessings. WOW!

(more…)

Two interviews in one week? Is it still summer schedule for this blog? Yes it is, but here’s what I was thinking: Some of us might be interested in reading a comics industry-related piece in the latter part of this week that does not involve San Diego. Plus I’m really worried about industry pulse taker, Dirk Deppey, falling asleep from counting “tumbleweeds in the street“. Fortunately, writer Todd Dezago was recently available to do an email interview about his and artist Craig Rousseau’s The Perhapanauts. Issue 3 of the series, which moved to Image earlier this year, came out last week. Dezago is always an opportunity for fun–well fun for me, because I can always do a joke or two in the questions. Hopefully he had fun as well.

Before the interview, though, a smidge of background:

“There are places in this world where the fabric of reality has worn thin, where strange and terrible creatures have crossed over to lurk in the shadows and the night.

There is an organization dedicated to finding these creatures and sending them back whence they came, sealing the rift behind them, and maintaining the integrity of those borders.

The organization is called BEDLAM. Its agents are…The PERHAPANAUTS!”

Tim O’Shea: How soon after seeing you and Craig in these matching shirts did Larsen step down as publisher?

(more…)

I’m fairly certain the first time I ran across Gerard Jones was when I picked up an issue of his and Will Jacobs-written comic book, The Trouble with Girls, back in the late 1980s. I also was aware of his work for Marvel and DC in the early 1990s. But Jones’ writing really came to my attention in 2002, when he wrote the nonfiction book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence. It was then that I interviewed him (for a long defunct website) about the book. His popularity substantially increased with the 2004 release of the Eisner Award-winning nonfiction work, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. Jacobs and Jones, after a 15-year hiatus, recently started collaborating on comedy writing again–and posting their efforts online. Upon reading about one (of three) of their projects “Million Dollar Ideas, our new humor novel set in ’40s Hollywood (sort of)” [as described by Jones], I took the opportunity to email interview him about his return to fiction and humor.

Tim O’Shea: What prompted you to pursue a return to humor writing and collaborating again with Will Jacobs after a 15-year hiatus?

Gerard Jones: Writing humor with Will is the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. We both got a little burnt out on the financial and market stresses of it after our struggles to keep The Trouble with Girls alive didn’t work out, but we both always figured we’d come back to it when the time is right. But then we both had kids, mortgages, a need to be a little more practical with our career decisions. I think we finally got to the point that we felt secure enough with our other endeavors to consider writing something fun by high-risk again, and all we needed was the trigger. That trigger turned out to be Checker Books asking to reprint the first 14 issues of Girls a couple of years ago. The rest of that story is told in an entry on http://undressingamerica.blogspot.com (and my Red Room page).

(more…)

So a week or so ago, one of my sisters emailed me to ask–even as she conceded I was clearly on a summer “man that wedding date is coming up fast (August 9)” schedule–if I was going to comment on the passing of George Carlin. And I agreed that I should.

As a kid, I listed to Carlin’s comedy albums. He helped shape my sense of humor, no doubt. But there’s not much I can say that has not been said about the man.

Two things. Visit his website, as he gets the last word, in a sense, there–including the following great words:

“Upon my death, I wish to be cremated. The disposition of my ashes (dispersal at sea, on land, or in the air) shall be determined by my surviving family (wife and daughter) in accordance with their knowledge of my prejudices and philosophies regarding geography and spirituality. Under no circumstances are my ashes to be retained by anyone or buried in a particular location. The eventual dispersal can be delayed for any reasonable length of time required to reach a decision, but not to exceed one month following my death.”

(more…)