The New Yorker Radio Hour - Barry Blitt’s Rogues’ Gallery of Presidents

Episode Date: December 5, 2017

Barry Blitt wasn’t into politics—music and hockey were more his things—but as an artist he’s become one of the keenest observers of American politicians. Blitt has contributed more than eighty covers to The New Yorker, many of which are collected in his new book, “Blitt.” His style features watercolors and soft edges, but the satire is sharp. “It’s nice to have an image that is sort of quiet in itself, but is jabbing someone,” Blitt tells David Remnick. They talk about Blitt’s most controversial cover, from July, 2008, which reimagines the infamous fist-bump between Barack and Michelle Obama, and which provoked a backlash from liberal readers who worried that the satire would be lost on some. But nothing, Blitt says, beats drawing Donald Trump. Plus, Hilton Als talks with the indie film producer Christine Vachon about women in Hollywood and how to deal with the suits; and we have some helpful tips about your new avocado.     New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is Broad Trade to the Barbar. Observatory is straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right. I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy. And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles that are out there. This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially, and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios,

and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I don't think there's a keener observer of American politics and life than Barry Blit. Now, forgive me for bragging a little bit when I say this, because Barry's been one of the great cover artists for the New Yorker for a very long time. By way of introduction, I'm going to read you the blurb for his new book, which is called, pretty logically, Blit.

Here's how it goes. Quote, a gorgeous, hilarious, and provocative compendium of the award-winning artist's illustrations for the New York. Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. Now, I'm quoting, this is directly from his website. It continues, quote, Barry Blitz cartoons have been lampooning American politics and culture, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. This lavish full-color collection showcases more than a quarter century of et cetera. And so on, and so forth.

You get the idea. The less said about it, the better. End quote. Barry, tell me about this book, the decision to do a book now. Now, what is it, you know, you've done other books before, obviously. What's this book about in a sense? Blit by Barry Blit. Good title, by the way.

Do you think so? I think it's excellent. I was going to call it in one eye and out the other. And then it seemed pretentious, and I just, at the last minute, I just thought I'll use my own name. And this book happened now because an editor called me and said, why don't we do a collection of your stuff? And, you know, I would never suggest to do something like this myself.

You never refuse an editor. I refuse an editor. This book is dominated by your work for the New Yorker and New Yorker covers, New Yorker illustrations, or there's other material, too. Tell me about your first cover for the New Yorker. I think it was in 1993. Yeah, it was. And, you know, I mean, obviously, your first one you remember. I remember Francoise had been encouraging me to, I had been doing interior drawings for her.

for first for Chris Curry and then for Francois as well. That's Francoz Mouli, who's the New Yorker's cover editor. Right. And she encouraged me to send sketches for cover ideas, which I didn't think was my thing. I was doing mostly small drawings. And so what I would do then, this was before I was getting asked to do topical, political stuff.

I would walk around New York City, which I was new to, and I would scryl. You know, I'd see a hot dog vendor. Oh, that's a great idea. That's so New York or a cab driver. and I remember seeing business people standing outside offices smoking cigarettes because all of a sudden you couldn't smoke in offices anymore. And so that seemed like a good idea, and I put them on window ledges.

So it's a cityscape of people standing on window ledges, and that was your first cover. But now you've become known as really a great political artist, you know, like Thomas Nast or Herblock or, but yourself. Did you think of yourself as a political person growing up? Absolutely not. No, that wasn't my thing at all. I mean, I liked hockey and some baseball and then pop music as I got a little older. I had a Dorothy Hamel period where I was drawing her a lot. That ended.

But I think, I mean, as I wrote in the book, it seemed like when Monica Lewinsky Gate happened, when that stuff started, when political news became pop culture. culture news and I was doing regular stuff for entertainment weekly and they started asking me to draw Bill Clinton and I was drawing Bill Clinton for the New Yorker as well. It's sort of happened from there. What do you want your political art to do? You've done dozens of covers about George W. Bush. That was a favorite subject for certain. And dozens of covers about Obama and we'll go into some of the specifics in a second. And now Trump at an even greater rate. Is anybody of all your subjects, of all your political subjects, a favorite, somebody you don't get sick of.

You mean, people I draw a subject? I mean, I don't get sick of the act of drawing Trump because, I mean, he's an amazing specimen to draw. I think a lot of presidents are, you know, crazily enough, although he's on another level. Well, describe that for me artistically. Why is he an amazing specimen to draw? I mean, just, I mean, when I'm collecting photo reference, I use photo reference for everything. Some cartoonists don't have to. So whenever I see a photo of someone, I want to draw, drag it onto my desktop from wherever it is. And I've just got an enormous file of Trump pictures because it seems like every angle you look at him.

There's a new revelation, you see, a chin you hadn't noticed before. There's something about the overbite or the sweep of the hair, you know, it just seems like he's made out of plastic or something. He's just very interesting to draw. And you wonder if, I mean, if, you know, his face is his destiny or, you know, if there could be like a decent person inside of that head, you know. What do you see in his face? I mean, I look at a lot of pictures of him.

And Trump, some of him I try and, like, play a game with myself and suppose that this is a great man here. This is a kind, you know, moral, you know, intelligent man. And as sometimes I can almost do it, you know, I can see humanity in his face sometimes. But, you know, it keeps proving me wrong. Barry, my recollection is that during the Bush administration, you did many, many covers about Bush. I don't remember us ever getting any, you know, people would moan or send a note and think we'd gone too far or whatever. But nothing terrible and certainly nothing from the Bush administration. along comes Barack Obama, and he's running for president,

and it is in the interim between, as I recall, it was the summer. So it was clear that he was the nominee, a Democratic nominee, and he was being called a not a patriot, that his wife was somehow a kind of terrorist, that he was born in a foreign land, that he was a Muslim, as if there was something wrong with that, and you decide to do what? I remember sketching in my sketchbook and thinking, I think it was after Fox called it, when him and Obama and Michelle...

They've done a fist bump. They've done a fist bump, and they called it a terrorist fist bump on Fox, and I just thought, wouldn't it be funny to draw everything that they're saying and put it in one picture? And so that's what I did. They were saying that there was a video of Michelle saying Kill Whitey that, of course, never materialized. And so I drew her as sort of an Angela Davis-style militant black panther, and I drew Barack as what they were whispering about him. And I stuck a burning American flag in the fireplace just to... And a portrait of Osama bin Laden above the fireplace. Right. Just to telegraph that this is, you know, this is satire, this is not real.

And how did you experience the reaction sitting in Connecticut? The reaction was harsh, and it was immediate. it. I mean, it was Sunday night before the magazine came out, but I guess it's leaked to the press on Sunday. And so I think the Huffington Post called me in a Sunday evening and asked if I regretted it. And I didn't even know it was out yet. And I think I answered glibly. But, you know, by the next day, I learned how many emails it takes to fill up an AOL inbox. It's a thousand because it went to a thousand immediately. Yeah, my email kept, it looked like a cash register that had broken in a Charlie Chaplin movie or something like that. It kept coming and coming and coming. And the biggest sentiment, it was people on the Democratic side saying, of course I understand it, this was the main line of logic. Of course I get it.

But those people out there, meaning in the big square states, big red states and so on, they're going to take it as confirmation of everything that Fox is telling them. When you look back on it now, do you think of it as a triumph or a mistake or something in between? As far as the cartoon itself, I think of as an experience. I tried something. I'm not sure it worked. I mean, if it has to be explained to people, I'm not sure it's a, you know, it's a resounding success. I'm fond of the cartoon now. I know that I lost a bar mitzvah gig because of it. I was, I have a little band of illustrators, and that was one of the first reactions to it was I got a call from a lady in Catona who had hired me to play music at her. She dumped the band? She dumped the band. Yeah. What's the band?

I didn't know this. It's better you don't know. I shouldn't have brought it out. I want to know. What do you play? I play a little piano. You play a little piano? What kind of songs does the band play?

We play some jazz and some blues and some rock and stuff. But did it change your, your, did it make you any more nervous? Did you lose your nerve for a bit after that experience? Not work-wise, really. I mean, I was nervous at home. In a physical way? Sure, yeah. Like someone would burst through and hurt you?

No, I just meant nervous as in, you know, walking around with a stomach ache. Not nervous. For how long? How long? A couple of days, a few days. I think until John Stewart came on and, you know, he said, you know, come on, everyone, this is a cartoon, you know. And it's, it's, the reaction out there seemed to change after that, too. I gotta say I'm forever grateful to know.

Yeah. Now, you know, New Yorker covers have had different phases. In the early jazz age era, there were these kind of, jazzy, highly colorful, vivid colors. By the 50s, 60s, and certainly into the 70s, William Sean, who was editor for a long, long time, quieted them down. There would often be covers of the New Yorker

that were bowls of fruit or abandoned summerhouses or just a line of laundry, just one single sheet hanging out in a kind of Cape Cod September. It was a calming strategy almost. and then other things happened. Do you look back on those eras and see anything that you miss? We got criticized recently in Slate that our covers are too, quote-unquote, thirsty. I'm a little thirsty right now.

That they're kind of grasping for attention rather than having this old notion of beauty. Yeah, I can't really relate to that personally. I mean, I like a little punch. I mean, it's nice to have a punch and have it in sort of a velvet glove. Is that an actual metaphor? It could be. That's something Trump would say he invented. But, I mean, it's nice to have an image that is sort of quiet in itself, but is jabbing someone.

Philip Roth once said that reality, America. American reality has a way of just outrunning art and any attempt to create purely from the imagination. Just too, American life is too bizarre. When do you finally say, you know what, this might make a funny drawing, but it's just, I can't. I just can't do it. It's happening now.

I mean, as much as I mentioned that I enjoyed drawing Trump's head and his face and the back of his head, et cetera, it's hard to, I mean, often what you're doing, doing when you're creating a cartoon of someone like that is saying, imagine if he did this. But often he'll go farther than that in reality, and it's hard to, it's not funny anymore. But it seems to be harder and harder to dream up ridiculous scenarios because they're not so ridiculous, you know, they can happen. So happen every day?

They happen every day. And, I mean, the Harvey Weinstein thing seemed like it was something to make fun of. But since then, I mean, there's been a lot, a lot of names added to that, you know, that particular docket. And that's hard to make fun of, too. So it feels like the walls are closing in on us. Sounds like we could both use a week off. Yeah. Barry Blit, thanks so much.

Thank you, dear. Barry Blit's new book is called Blit. The book. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. Congratulations on your. avocado. Getting a new avocado can be a thrilling and exciting moment in a person's life.

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and performed for the radio hour by comedian John Early. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm here with my friend Hilton Alls, who's the magazine's theater critic, but he writes about cultural. in all its variations. And he recently talked with an influential filmmaker named Christine Vachon. Now, Hilton, Christine Vashon

is not exactly a household name for everybody, but within the film industry, she's a very significant presence. So what's she done? Christine Vashon is the founder of killer films, which has gone on to produce incredible works such as Poison, Todd Haynes, and Boys Don't Cry,

which got Hillary Swank the first of her 12 Oscars. And she's done Wonderstruck, which is Todd Haynes' new, big, wonderful feature. I have to tell you, I saw Boys Don't Cry years and years ago, but I still remember that story and the surprises involved.

Oh, yes, she was the producer, and Kimberly Pierce came to her, and she was covering the trial of Brandon Tina, who was a trans person who falls in love with Chloe 7. And unfortunately, is brutally murdered by people who can't really accept who he is.

It's a heartbreaking true story, and I think every kid, high school kid, should really be required to watch it. It's an extraordinary piece of work. Hilton, you used to go, like I did, to revival houses all the time in the city. Is that where you saw, got your film education? Completely. And one of the things that we started talking about right away is what it was like to go. to the movies back in the day before videos and DVDs and links and whatnot.

I grew up in New York City, and I grew up at a time where there were, you know, there were a lot of movie theaters. For us, really, the Olympia. Yes. Which was, you know, on 106th Street. And it was one of those theaters that had been a big, beautiful theater that they broke into like six little, six little. You know, cinerooms. Yeah. Sinar rooms.

That's great. You know, your feet stuck to the floor. Yes. You could hear the other movie, you know, so you'd be watching like a quiet romantic comedy or something and you hear the guns from the war. Guns of Navarone. Exactly. And we just went there every single week and watched whatever they were showing. It was a dollar.

It was a family event. But you remember the days? No, we went by ourselves because this was the days where 10-year-olds roamed the streets. That's right. So that's, we would go see whatever was there. And I remember if we liked something, we'd just keep going back until it was gone. Wow. You know, since we couldn't put the DVD back in the player, we would just go see the movie again.

But it was just like the kids in the neighborhood. It was what we did. What, in terms of growing up and thinking, I want to do X thing one day, were you always intent on being a filmmaker? No, but I mean, I sort of, I throw this back at you a little. little bit. I mean, we're about the same age. Yes. And you also grew up in New York. Yes. So when I came back to New York after college in the early mid-80s, we weren't, I kind of feel like everybody was just sort of like, I want to be an artist.

Yes. And it was very fluid. Like, you kind of just wanted to be in the world. Yes. And people were doing film and art and music and fashion. Food wasn't such a big thing yet. Like if it was now, they'd be like, and food. But then it was just like, food is what you ate.

Exactly. You go to Dojo's. Exactly. Oh, God, yes. Tofu burger at Dojos. Right. But so it kind of took a while to figure out that film was kind of the most interesting thing to me. Were you always intent on producing for others?

You know, I had fun making my own films, but ultimately, I felt like it just wasn't, I don't know, I didn't feel, I guess at a certain point, I just, I didn't feel that same sense of urgency about directing that I did about producing. And it's a hard thing to explain to people because everyone thinks that you're a producer because you couldn't direct, you know, or you weren't good enough to direct or, you know, it's hard to explain it as a choice. Yes. And I really did decide, like, producing is so much more about, I don't know, about having the whole picture in mind, about not that a director has to have that laser focus on the frame. And I just didn't think I was well suited for that. That's interesting. And I'm wondering about your directives in terms of moving into underground, let's say underground features.

What was a director for you in terms of working with someone? Was it that you would really suss out their personality? What was the thing that compelled you to keep going? You know, in those years it was really the scripts the projects themselves, like kids, for example. Yes, yeah. I remember seeing kids and being blown away by it. It was the photographer Larry Clark's first film, I believe.

That's right. And it was really about kids. in Manhattan. Yo, Telly. Jenny says, what's up? Was Jenny home? You know, Jenny, man. A pretty girl you bought last summer.

Oh, man. I didn't see her in forever. What's she up to? You know, walking that balance of having, like, you know, it was a professional team. And there was a portion of the kids, not all of them,

but a portion of them, who really did live on the streets. And then a whole bunch of other kids who, you know, whose parents took them to the set every day or, you know, called if they weren't home on time. You know what I mean? So that was balancing that, making sure that, you know, the chaos that Larry sometimes wanted to film

was not the chaos that we actually had on set. Right. One of the hardest things about kids in some ways was when we stopped, when we finished shooting, was those kids, they just were like, you know, they were so desperate. They had that structure of coming to the set every day. And connecting. And that was, I mean, some of them came to the production office for weeks afterwards. Well.

Just to have someplace to hang out. Well, you tested negative for all sexually transmitted diseases and infections? Yes. You're clean. Oh, God, I can't tell you how nervous I was. I didn't even sleep last night. Well, now you have to be careful, Ruby, okay? I want you to take these papers home,

and I want you to read them. And Ruby, read them. Jenny, you've tested positive for the HIV virus. What? The test isn't 100% accurate. You should... I tested positive? I'm sorry.

We only had sex with Teli. One of the things that I love about your work so much is that the film always bleeds into life with your projects and life bleeds into the film. I mean, you're one of the first producers to ever deal with the devastation of AIDS in a real and constructive way. Were filmmakers then understanding after you had done these projects that you were someone that could really hear the politics and the script? I think so. I mean, I guess, you know, when I think about what did we do right after that, we did, I shot Andy Warhol, still one of my favorites. Yes. And then, of course, Boys Don't Cry, which we didn't do for years afterwards.

Yes. But Kim walked that script into our office while we were making I shot Andy Warhol. And then it took, I think, another seven years to actually get it made. I remember you telling me that it was about a six to seven year project. Again, this idea of you, I don't want to be. want to make you sort of uncomfortable with this. You saw it before other people saw it stuff, but the transgender issue, clearly at the harder boys don't cry, is so profound. Brandon, what's going on?

Y'all have the truth, don't you? It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Do you have any water? Because my mom, I'm really, my voice is dry. Um, a person who has both. Well, see, Brian is not quite a heat. Brain is more likely to shut up. What's your business? I don't care if you're half monkey or half ape.

I'm getting you out of here. What was it that was styming you? I've read from Larry McMurtry, you know, the gay cowboy movie took forever. Right. Was it a similar thing of difference in this context of narrative film that still wasn't being? accepted? I mean, I think part of it was it did take that long, well, first of all, when Kim first came to us with it, the killers hadn't even gone on trial yet. Oh, wow.

And so it was kind of early days in the whole, she was fascinated by the story. And I think, I think she'd been to Nebraska, but maybe only once. In the course, and she'd written a fictionalized version. Nobody was named Brandon or Lana, etc. In the course of the next few years, she went to Nebraska and actually sat in on the trials, so got so much more texture and understanding of who these guys were. Because I think her portrayal of them in the film is so nuanced. And obviously what they did was horrific, but they're not, they don't come across just as ordinary villains. That's right.

And then she got the sort of, I don't know, I want to say courage, but that sounds a little trite. She got like the confidence, that's really what I mean, the confidence to say, you know what, this is the Brandon Tina story. Like I don't have to name him something else. This is about him. So then it became much more like this is a story based on these true events. What is this idea I remember reading?

about queer cinema, and it's something that has always kind of amused me because I was like, well, we're all queer because the movies that Christine was making was about the world. But what was the ghettoization verbally of what you were doing? What was that about? Well, I think, so, you know, I guess in 1991 or 1992, Ruby Rich did a panel at Sundance called The New Queer Cinema. And I wasn't on the panel. In fact, I was a little irritated that I wasn't on the panel. But, and that sort of coined the term, which immediately the minute that term was coined, everybody was like, but, you know, I don't want to call myself that.

But I think now when we look back on it and I feel like there's a kind of a new nostalgia for those days, especially amongst young queers who bring it up to me whenever I go and speak at colleges. And I, but what I feel is always missing is that sense of urgency that the AIDS crisis brought. Yes. And that people need to get that, you know, it wasn't this sudden like, oh, we're here, we're queer, we're going to make movies. It was like, if we don't tell our stories, we're going to die. That's right. And nobody's going to hear them. That's right.

And that was a very different kind of, that was, that in a way I feel like, like the, term new queer cinema has been stripped of that barb, which I think is kind of the most critical part of it. I agree with you that the energy, I think that that energy is now, or not, wasn't replaced, but became wider because of your work. So then there was Rose Trochet and a number of other women filmmakers, Mary Harron, who felt that because there was a queer cinema, there could be a womaness. That's right. That's right.

And so let's talk about those ladies for a minute. And how, what were the other set of difficulties or problems in terms of selling a woman, director, and story? Well, you know, it's funny. I considered myself an old hand at Sundance by the time I brought, you know, go fish there, which I think means I'd been there like three times. But, you know, I was like, I know how this works. I get this. So one of the things that really surprised me when we took GoFish, it did remarkably well. It was bought by the Samuel Goldwyn Company.

The audiences loved it. And it was there the same year as Clerks. Okay. The Kevin Smith film. And which was also received well, was also sold to a company. It was sold to Miramax. And then, of course, you know, Kevin was sort of immediately taken up into bigger budget filmmaking. And Rose really had to struggle.

Like her, the sort of like the heroic young filmmaker coming out of Sundance worked if they were men. Yes. But if they were women, people didn't really know what to do with them. You know, Sundance itself, you know, scratches its head and says, why do these guys, the guy and the girl come at the same time, both have extraordinary movies that the critics love, that get, you know, get great deals, and then the guys are shooting stars, and the girls are like crickets. Right. Your story is so extraordinary in a number of levels, one being, of course, that you kept getting the movies made. And tell how was it with the suits with you?

when you would walk into that room. And we have to, I think we'll probably get to some version of one scene later. Because I remember watching you with him and you would just, you were so calm and you were so focused on getting your project made that no matter how insane he was behaving. Right. You were just like looking him in the eye the way one must with a crazy person. Right, right. And you just, I watched you for years just with these guys. And we don't even have to have a name for them.

they had to listen to you because you would just stand your ground. You know, it was tough, and it still is tough. I feel like I get, I still get mansplained constantly. So you just have to, like, take a deep breath and means to an end. You know, I say that all the time, you know, he's just a means to an end. Like, we're going to get this done. We're going to find our point of connection. and we will figure it out.

Christine Vachon, the head of killer films talking with the New Yorkers, Hilton Alls. Vashon is the producer of around 100 movies, including Wonderstruck, directed by Todd Haynes, which is out right now. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour today. I hope you'll join us next week

for the writer Susan Orlean. She'll talk about her time following the trail of the skater, Tanya Harding. You remember her. Her story is the same. subject of a new movie coming out this month. Till then, look for us on Twitter at New Yorker Radio. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

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