WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 714 - Daniel Clowes / Ezra Edelman

Episode Date: June 9, 2016

Cartoonist and writer Daniel Clowes brings the world of underground comics into Marc's garage. They talk about the great comic artists who paved the way, the difficulty in translating some graphic novels to film, and the similarities between creating comics and performing standup. Plus, filmmaker Ezra Edelman stops by to talk with Marc about his documentary OJ: Made in America. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that.

Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Lock the gate! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? I'm Mark Maron. This is my show, WTF. Thank you for joining me. I don't know when I've gotten so professional about that, the sort of intro.

Nice to have you. Welcome. Welcome aboard the vessel. Just got back from Conan and went well. It was nice to see everybody. I like hanging out. I took my niece, Matana, over there. She's in town. Showed her the studio. Uncle Mark showing around show business out there on the Warner lot. Telling her about the old days when they shot everything, all the movies there. They still shoot everything there. I love going on a studio lot.

It's sort of interesting to acknowledge and realize that you're in fucking show business when you're in show business, and nothing really hammers at home like driving onto a studio lot. And there's only a few but warner brothers is like one of the big ones just sound stages upon sound stages as far as the eye can see well that's an exaggeration there's a lot of sound stages but there's something about realizing like this is a business this is where they make the product in these places and conan's got a pretty permanent situation over there on one of the big sound stages on the Warner lot. And it's always exciting to go over there. And I'm glad I was funny.

So my little niece didn't have to go like, yeah, that's my uncle. You don't have to watch it though. That was fun. So you can go watch that at teamcoco.com or whatever the hell it is. Find it. Hope you're watching my TV show. That was on last night a funny episode with joey diaz next week is great too it only gets wow i'm really uh i guess i'm really into my own tv show it only gets more fun today on the show what do we got daniel clowes the amazing daniel clowes is here graphic novel, comic artist, creator of many powerful, impactful things in my life. The eight ball comics, Lloyd Llewellyn, like a velvet glove, cast an iron. There's so many ghost world.

His new book is pretty fucking amazing. Patience. I just I love talking to these guys. I've talked to a few of the graphic novelists, the comic artist guys, and it's always interesting to me. Because I was never a Marvel Universe person or a real sort of hardcore comic person, but I guess what they would call underground comics were always very important to me. And he's one of the big dudes.

I was thrilled to talk to him. Also, I'm going to be talking to Ezra Edelman, to talk to him. Also, I'm going to be talking to Ezra Edelman, whose amazing OJ documentary, OJ Made in America, premieres this Saturday, June 11th on ABC. And that's just part one. Then parts two through five will air the following Tuesday,

Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday on ESPN. I watched all this stuff, like binged it completely when I got the screeners. It's one of the most profound and beautifully layered documentaries I've ever seen in my life. And you cannot stop watching it. And it's about so much more than you could even anticipate. So Klaus and Edelman today, and we'll get to that in a second. On the AT&T front, they've sent some people. Some technicians came over.

They did the readings. They brought the meter. There's not a lot of dangerous rays coming into the office, apparently. I'll trust these guys. They're subcontractors. They have nothing invested in lying to me. But they did offer me some hope on the mundane and ridiculous luxury problem of my stereo issue. They're going, apparently it's the Heritage Box.

That means anything to you? You know a lot more about cell towers than I do. The Heritage Box is what the stereo is picking up. And that's the oldest box up there to, I guess, service some flip phones and some other things. And there's a frequency that emits that my old stereo, which is a heritage stereo, just by coincidence, is picking it up. So they had some big ideas about a blanket or some shield. They were talking shields.

They were talking RF shield blankets. It all sounded good. They were decent guys dealing with a neurotically obsessed idiot, myself who uh just wants to be comfortable and listen to records in his office when he wants to and also doesn't want to uh be irradiated to the point of insanity so that's what's going on on that front they're on it we'll see if they let these subcontractors do it all right right. All right. We got a full show here. So let's get to it. As I said before, Ezra Edelman is the director of OJ Made in America, which premieres this Saturday, June 11th on ABC. That's just part one. Then parts two through five will air the following Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday on ESPN. Oh, and speaking of docs,

how many of you guys saw that doc well I guess it's on the festival circuit I don't know if you the one I narrated called Sidemen Long Road to Glory it's screening this Saturday at Bonnaroo and then in the UK on June 22nd go to sidemenfilm.com for screening information docs everywhere I just watched a screener the JT Leroy doc. That was something. Yeah, plenty of docs. No shortage of docs in the world. But this OJ doc is insane. It's genius. I'm going to talk to the man that was at the helm of it. Mr. Ezra Edelman, right? Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole

family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5pm start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th

at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Now. now all right so here's my experience with the documentary oj made in america so i get this wink and as we were talking about before neil brennan who we both know came up to me at the comedy store like you know starry-eyed like like, dude, dude, you gotta watch this. You gotta watch this O.J. Made in America. I'm like, is it on? He's like, no, it's not on. I think you've watched it maybe twice. He's like, I watched it twice. I'm like, alright, dude. He's like, seriously.

And I'm like, I get it. I get it. I'm gonna watch it. Because I knew I was gonna talk to you. So, I get the thing, and sure enough, you know, you enter this world with this movie that's on, or the miniseries or whatever the fuck it is. Docu-series. Yeah.

I have no interest in it. I don't care. And then I get the links to your thing. And I'm like, all right. Well, I said to my producer, I'm like, wait, is there a question about whether he did it or not? And Brendan's like, no, it's not about that. And I'm like, well, okay. I didn't know what it was gonna be about and then you know you watch it and you know where you start

you know at you know in petrero hill san francisco the neighborhood oj came from and then you're sort of like when i when i tell people about it you're really tracking it's a documentary about about race about the relationship with the of the black community with the lapd uh about um civil rights to a degree like you know for the first three hours you're like where's the murder right well kind of but i mean i was i i wasn't really like i didn't know i didn't think it would necessarily be about that. But what does it take when you, what was, because it really is about, it's about celebrity culture. It's about race. It's about Los Angeles.

It's about OJ. But OJ really becomes almost this cipher that you use as a portal, you know, into investigating money, power, celebrity, race, you know, the legal system. So how did this project come to be? ESPN approached me. A guy named Connor Schell who runs ESPN Films and started. I know I don't mean to speak to you as if i've done a lot of research right i was told by a friend of mine that another mutual friend wyatt senac that yeah um you're not a huge sports guy right so my guess is you haven't watched a lot of sports documentaries that no spn would have done so they've done he started this 30 for 30 series they'd probably done 90 docs oh really of like six or seven years as

ambitious as yours no, not at all. And actually the conversation was we want to start doing more ambitious things. So Connor came to me and he said, so we're interested in doing it. We're thinking about doing a five hour thing, five hour project. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I want to do a five hour film. That's what I want to do. And then it was, oh, but what is it about? Right. And he said and he said oh it's about oj that's what we're thinking and i was like

really well why why uh what was the first what it what hit you immediately i was like oh what you want is the trial and going to the murder like yeah it's like which we all live through and has been talked about ad nauseum right and what more what more can I say? Right. What can I add to that conversation? And I happen to be coming out here the next day. Right. And I have a lot of friends out here, all of whom, you know, they're my friends. They know me pretty well.

And I said, you know, ESPN asked me if I wanted to do this five-hour thing about OJ. And they kind of were like, are you crazy? I think you need to do this. Because. Just because of the opportunity? Thematically, it's about a lot of the things that you're interested in. What was your history?

Well, I'll tell you in a second. But basically, when I thought about it, it was the canvas of... It was the five-hour thing that ended up being the determinant because I realized that I didn't have to do the trial. Right. I could go back and explain the context, get into the history of Los Angeles, of the LAPD, get into OJ's time at USC, the dynamic I understood about him being a black kid coming from Potrero Hill, going to this lily white university that's super conservative, that's also next door to Watts, that had exploded in violence a year and a half before he came there.

I already knew that. And so if I could tell that story, then I'm in. And so that's what got me was the history because I was a history major in college. This would have been like a huge American studies thesis. Right. And that's how I kind of approached it. Right. It feels like that in a good way.

You know, thesis sometimes is a word that people are like, what? In fact, I still think I have dreams about somehow like having an assignment my senior year that I haven't even started. I was like, oh, I have to come up with an idea. And it's February and it should do in March. Well, what is your what is your background personally? And then, you know, in terms of film, so your history major. but where'd you grow up? I grew up in Washington, D.C. And what's your background? Background how?

Like what's your family like? You got a Jewish name. I got a Jewish name. My father is one of those. He's a Jew. My mother is black. She's from South Carolina. My dad's a Jew from Minnesota.

So I grew up in a biracial household, multi-denominational household. It comes through religion. And I have two older brothers. I come from a pretty serious family. In what way? Not a lot of jokes. But what was the tone? Were they progressive? Were they- My parents were, yes. My parents, my mother was a civil rights lawyer in the south she was the first black woman to pass the bar in mississippi that's pretty she met my father who was an aide for robert kennedy in mississippi in 1967 so you are not only my family yeah you're you're a legacy of uh of the original civil rights progressives yeah yeah and in fact i think my parents were it's debated i it just became debated but until about six weeks ago i always understood that they were the

um the first couple after the loving decision to get first interracial couple to be married in the state of virginia is that true yeah i think now it might be third my mother recently said i think we might have been now third now now now that you're older the truth is it was we were mythologized something like that i've been trying to break down the mythology for my entire life i knew it but so this thing that uh that you did with the oj thing i mean i have to assume that even knowing the history, that once you got into it, once you started putting together some of the archival footage and the narrative, that it kept growing. Oh, yeah. It kept growing. It went from the initial conceit, which was five hours for television.

Yeah. Which would be, and you would know this better than I do, as you have a show with commercials on TV. Right. Whatever percentage of it. So it would be four hours and 20 minutes, whatever it would have been. And because I had no greater understanding of how to make a five-hour film as I would a 20-hour film, I just sort of went into it.

And we amassed enough material, characters, interviews, footage, that as we were going through the process of editing, within a few months i said to connor the aforementioned guy who commissioned the project in the first place i said you know i think we need five hours not five hours for tv and then a month later i said i think we need six hours yeah and he kept being like fine yeah i'll figure it out yeah and you know that was our operating principle for the next few months.

We got to cut what was an 11-hour cut down to six. Right. Which seemed hard but reasonable. Wasn't it seven? Well, no. Then we finally showed a rough cut. It was a little over seven and a half hours. We had a day where we went to a screening room in New York at ABC.

A bunch of people. It was a long day. Came out of it. And Connor said, well, why don't we just make it seven and a half hours and it ended up being at seven hours and 44 minutes and so i couldn't at that point i couldn't have gotten it down to six hours so i was like yeah that would be great well the fascinating thing about it and i know there is historical precedent for singular documentaries being you know what hours what show up yeah show up yeah that's the precedent that's the only one keep going i challenge you keep going that was the only one i thought of

actually yeah but i i was i was protecting myself from looking stupid and thinking that there's got to be more than just show up yeah well having and i haven't seen i've seen bits and pieces when i was a kid so right but, had you done docs before? Yeah, I've done, this is my fifth. Oh, well, I had done four feature length docs, all for, I worked at HBO for 12 years. Which ones did you do? I did all sports docs. So I did a doc called Magic and Bird, Courtship of Rivals about Magic and Bird, basketball

players. I did one about the Brooklyn Dodgers called The Ghost of Flatbush. Magic and Bird, basketball players. I did one about the Brooklyn Dodgers called The Ghost of Flatbush. And one called The Curious Case of Kurt Flood about Kurt Flood, who's a baseball player, who sued Major League Baseball in 1969 to be a free agent. So you're a sports fan. I am a huge sports fan.

And OJ Simpson was probably a little before your time. Just before my time. So he retired in 1979. I probably started watching sports in 1979. But you knew about him. Oh yeah, he was a big part of my childhood. He was. I mean, mainly through watching him dodge people on Hertz commercials.

Right. Which I would then do when I was in airports. Your dad or mom sports fans? My dad was a sports fan. I think my dad having three sons, I'm the youngest of three. I think he was not the greatest athlete in the the youngest of three, I think he was not the greatest athlete in the world.

Right. And I think he had the wisdom to put a ball in all of our hands when we were young and said, go out there and play. Yeah, yeah. Be a better athlete than I ever could. Oh, that's good. And so we were all sort of, that's what we did. So the interesting thing about OJ is that, and I don't know if, I mean, you obviously know it, that, you know, as the narrative

goes on and, you know, he's claiming to be above race and just a person, you start to realize that, you know, he's just about OJ. Like that he's trying to sort of maybe not intentionally present himself as racially progressive, whereas he's really completely narcissistic. No, that's correct. He's not aggressively about race one way or the other. It's I'm about me and I'm trying to do what I want to do, which is to be famous and to be loved. Right. But it wasn't about dissolve the color line.

No, it wasn't like I don't like being black. It wasn't like i'm trying to you know make some statement about being race neutral right it was more like here's i'm on this path to this place the way for me to get to that place is to not be outspoken about matters of race to not be political and militant at a time where white America might sort of look at me and go, oh, I'm not. But what was interesting, though, and if I'm remembering correctly, very few of his intimates really or the people that were even judging him who were black called him a Tom. No, I mean, and also that's a loaded term.

I mean, I look at, you know, I think that whether it's revisionist history or the way that we've tended to think about OJ. Yeah. In the present is that he was that. And to be very dismissive of the choices that he made. Uh-huh. And I looked at especially when you look at him being 21, 20, 21 years old. Yeah.

And I know what I was like when I was in college. Like, there's a lot put on him at that age. Uh-huh. like when i was in college like there's a lot put on him at that at that age and that he came up and was that just because he was a great athlete all of a sudden there's this expectation because you have this group of militant strident guys who are over here saying you have to be about this but including muhammad ali and jim brown and oh yeah these were some serious cats and by the way they were the and they were the cream of the crop when it came to um black athletes and this was like the justice league yeah bill russell louis cinder even who was oj's contemporary across town at ucla was already political and talking about boycotting the 1968

olympics and so that was the climate that oj arrived at you know arrived in when he got to to usc but it's like now oj is in this place where no one's political there. Yeah. No one's black there. Right. And everyone's kissing his ass because he's a football star. And he detaches from it consciously, though. He does do that.

And so when Harry Edwards, who was the great famous sociologist who was a professor at San Jose State at the time, organized something called the Olympic Project for Human Rights and he was organizing athletes to potentially boycott the 68 games in Mexico City. He came to OJ because of his prominence as an athlete and wanted him to join the movement, and OJ said, famously, I'm not black, I'm OJ. Right. And he was like, I'm going to do me. Yeah.

And that's not me. Right. You know, I'm going over here, and the weird thing about OJ, especially the way that the space that he occupies in our culture now i mean before all this shit happened he was a trailblazer i mean oj took a path that went that way yeah he said i want to um be on tv and i want to hawk products and yeah sign deals with chevrolet and rc cola before he'd ever play in the down in the nfl yeah and i i was fascinated by that so in some ways the one different story is oj has this pioneering pitch man this race neutral non-political black athlete and he really begat michael jordan who begat tiger woods right and he set he in some

ways he set that paradigm right and so i mean look how much that has to do with the story i mean to me it has to do with the story because ultimately where we get to with his trial is the level of of symbolism you know in terms of him becoming this symbolic black figure yeah the amount politically that people invested in him it was it was this great irony right and so that's what all this is about which is seeing this weird juxtaposition, seeing these ironies and going like, of all people. How did you break this up in your mind as an arc? When you saw the content you had, you've got, I imagine, three parts. That's correct.

And how did you see them? In fact, the film existed in three parts until the very late stages. Literally three parts. Literally until very late stages, which was essentially what encompasses now the first two parts. Everything leading up to the murders in June of 94, everything through the trial, including the verdict, and then everything after. Right. That's how it was sort of broken up in my mind. And even the way we had three editors working, they were working on those separate chunks.

And then when it became official that we were going to do, that it was going to be as long as it is, which meant, oh, they're going to do 10 hours of television ultimately, and they wanted us to break it up into five parts, I had to sort of figure out a mechanism to make it five parts versus three. But the point being is that was kind of the structure in my head as far as the narrative. You know, the trickier part is where you're going to intercut in the first three hours the story of the LAPD and the community with OJ's story. That was, like, fascinating for me because I think I was politically detached at the time. And, you know, arguably, you know, arguably,

you know, I remember the chase. I remember the, you know, cause I was doing a television show at the time. I remember it, you know, capturing the nation,

but I did not get hung up on the trial. I didn't either. And, uh, I did, I was detached from it, but, but,

but that aside, the politics and the, the, um, the racially charged atmosphere of Los Angeles, the history of it was not something I knew. Where were you at the time? New York. You were at OJ? Yeah, I was in New York.

Do you remember actually watching the chase? I do. Where were you? I was at HBO Downtown Productions. What year was that? 94. June 94. June 94. June 17, 1994. Yeah, I feel like where I was was in those offices where Short Attention Span Theater was.

Oh, okay. When I was hosting that show. Because I think I did that 93, 94-ish. Because I remember going in, they had TVs up, and I'm like, what's happening? Right. And that was that. I remember that. Yeah.

If I'm not mistaken. I mean, it's sort of a, look, I've thought about this a lot. It's an interesting commentary that that's this shared event that we all have as far as remembering where we were. And it's a television event. And it's not John Kennedy being assassinated. It's not Martin Luther King being assassinated. It's OJ in a white Bronco.

Right. On the 405. Right. That's true. And it's crazy. Yeah. But like I thought what was amazing about what you were able to sort of kind of bring together in some kind of like I imagine like not completely serendipitous way, but I could

feel what must have been your excitement at the at the sort of levels you were able to kind of engage well i mean you it's by just juxtaposing by just montage oh yeah that you were able like i just could see i almost think i felt your excitement as the thing grew into like this multi-level sort of um it's not even an expose but it's it's sort of like a a kind of like a serendipitous investigation of everything that defines the media right now the legal system and and race relations in this country no there's definitely a sense that no matter what i'm doing and telling a story that took place in the past, I don't even need to talk about what's happening in the present. It's so connected.

Yeah. Like it's the birth of that predatory tabloid television. And then also like in under, in, in, once he becomes, once he sells out celebrity culture in general. So they're, they're all operating. Oh, I look, I think there's, there's a real sense, and it's hard to convey this in the doc, but if you follow OJ's trajectory, it is consistent with the trajectory of us in our culture. Right.

As far as OJ chose this superficial path. He came up in the most substantial of times, and he became most famous in 1968, the most volatile year in 20th century America, arguably. And when you look at his fame, how he became famous, it's like there's this downward line that you can draw as far as how our culture has devolved. And he's a wonderful lens to sort of explore that. I had not been privy to or morbidly fascinated with

to the point of compelling me to really take in that murder. Good. And you spend a lot of time doing that for us. And it's important to see how fucking savage that thing was. Fucking savage. And I think the importance of that is, and frankly frankly i'm like you i i didn't engage with it that much either if at all but when you then look at what the trial became and when you look

at how everyone the amount of people by the way in the media in this in this city alone who have come up to me and say i put a pool in my house because of the oj trial you know or i did that you know you're like yeah do you know what happened yeah do you see these pictures like you you need to see this and for all you know whoever wants to maintain um a certain sort of like i don't believe he's guilty but you know maybe this happened or maybe he he knew he was he was somehow response like oh he might have known who was there or he's there there's someone else there or whatever, dude. Just look at the pictures and it forces you to engage with that crime and whatever level of complicity you believe he had.

Because I don't think you can look at him the same way afterwards. No, hell no. And just like that one detail of like, you know, he went back to both bodies to cut some more. Whoever did it. Whoever did it. Whoever did it. By the way, just tell me, what was, yeah, before you watched this, so like you said, you didn't watch the, you didn't care about the FX series. Before you watched this, what was, if someone said OJ, like, are you just like, I don't

give a fuck about OJ. So, did you just not engage with this at all? Did you have an opinion about his culture? When I heard about your movie? No, no, no, no. I'm just in general, the story. So like, say a year ago, someone was talking to you about OJ.

Would you just be like, yeah, I don't really, it's not for me. Don't care. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say I didn't, I wouldn't care. And I, you know, obviously I lean more towards the reality that, you know, that he did do it and was complicit.

And as time goes on, that nothing else was revealed. That would have changed your opinion. Right. That you had to sort of take it for what it was. But the nuances of what you did in terms of even really realizing that whether he did it or not was not necessarily important to the people that were championing him. Mm-hmm. That's right. And I'm not talking about the lawyers.

Correct. That's correct. That is correct. Because when you document the history of injustice, racial injustice, towards that community, and abuse and violence and death that you know at some point it's like killing's not you know we see it all the time but we don't see it from this side you know and now i mean look the complicated thing is you could believe that he's guilty you could watch the film and say i believed before and now i believe more than that he's guilty. You could watch the film and say, I believed before and now I believe more than ever he's guilty.

But I also may have been rooting for him to get off or I actually believe he should have. Those are all, to me, rational responses to watching this because of that history. And there are very real mistakes that were made by the prosecution. The argument about proving something beyond a reasonable doubt, the burden that were made by the prosecution the argument about you know proving something beyond a reasonable doubt um you know the burden of proof is on the prosecution and when you listen to the other juror not carrie best the younger juror yolanda crawford yeah and

she's very um rational in her response to it she listened to the evidence and she believed the prosecution fucked up and that's why she chose you know to acquit oj and you go yeah it is more complicated in the way this has been reduced and the goldman stuff was was sort of fascinating because you know the pain of that family and the the sort of crusade of that father which you know as somebody who you know like is weirdly american and geared towards these narratives that that are compelling that you know, during that realizing that he became the annoying guy. Oh, he was he was in some ways he was Inspector Javert. Like he was like out.

That was he was obsessed with getting OJ. Right. Getting justice. But and of course, it's personal. Yeah, it's his son. I mean, and that's what's and that's another fucked up thing like how how does the victim of this story become someone that you're looking at you're like dude pull back a little bit it's very sensitive all of it and it's very

complicated and it's made even talking about it very complicated because there's a sensitivity I feel like we all had, myself, producers, editors, in putting this together. Then all of a sudden, and you're not at all guilty of this, this is a wonderful conversation. But there are people who just want to boil things down to a certain essence. Right. And I'm like, no, I spent all this time doing not that. And I don't all of a sudden want you to say so what do you really think about oj and and i'm like i don't i just i just put all that out there think for your fucking yeah well that you're gonna have to deal with that you know the the horrible kind of like limited uh intelligence

of the media community just by virtue of what they think they need to do is that you can't there's no way you can really explain or render down what was achieved with the documentary it's got nothing to do you know with anything in particular that's that's correct like in the sense that you know you can't because the conversation when you start having it about it you know it's like because people go like so what'd you learn about oj it's like it's not it's not about it's not really about oj specifically you, it's like, because people go like, so what did you learn about OJ? It's like, it's not really about OJ specifically. You know, it is very particular in what it focuses on, but what it implies and what it implicates and, you know, what it sheds light on and the questions that it poses are very

big and broad and multifaceted. More so than any, this is a story that demands no judgment. Right. This is a story that demands like, I'm going to talk to as many people that come from all sides and just let them say their piece. I'm here to hear you and then I'll put it together in a way that sort of is fair to everybody. Yeah.

And then the viewer can decide. Did you reach out to him? Yeah. I wrote him an email. They have something called Jmail. Jmail. Yeah. Jmail.

Jmail. I wrote him as long as there's a certain amount of characters you're afforded. Yeah. And I went up to the limit. Never heard back. I waited. I waited a long time because it's not as if this whole project was contingent upon whether OJ participated or not. And it's not as if O whole project was contingent upon whether OJ participated or not.

And it's not as if OJ is not on the record saying what he has to say for all time. And I waited until I was done with all my interviews. And I said, look, man, I'm doing this thing. I've interviewed 72 people from all across the spectrum. I didn't want to reach out to you until I had done my homework. I have done my homework. I know you've not done an interview since you've been in jail. But if you would be willing to grant me a half hour interview,

I'll take it. If you want to sit with me for a whole day, I'll take that a whole week, whatever you want. Nothing. Crickets. Really? Didn't bother me. No. Why should it? I mean, like you said, it was not necessary. It was not necessary. And I don't believe that he would have been the most forthcoming of interview subjects. Well, the only thing that would have been interesting about it is how he handled it. I mean, I wouldn't expect him to be forthcoming at all, but how would he work it? Well, that's

in the end, it's like if you're someone who enjoys interviewing people and you get to interview OJ Simpson in prison, I'd be like, oh, please, I would like that challenge. And now, so like the life of the thing is now on ESPN, and I know you showed it in some theaters. It was released in the theaters for a week in New York. For Oscar consideration?

Yes, to qualify for awards. Right. Having said that, it was at Sundance. Yeah. They played the whole thing at Sundance. At Tribeca. In one sitting? Yeah. Oh, no, no. They played it in two parts at Sundance. Yeah. They played the whole thing at Sundance, at Tribeca. In one sitting? Yeah.

Oh, no, no. They played it in two parts at Sundance. They played the first three parts in one sitting. We had a break, and then they played the last two. At Tribeca, it was one long day. They had intermissions after part two,

intermissions at part four. How was it received? It was great. I mean, the day at Tribeca especially, because it was consistent, no one left the theater. Yeah.

And so, it turned into this very communal thing, where people come out intermission and talk about what they'd seen and they went back for more. I do think you clearly have to prepare yourself if you're going to a movie theater. For seven hours. Yeah. It's like it's light at the beginning and it's dark when you leave. But for me, it made me realize that as much as I conceive this as one story and one documentary, which I did, I'm also smart enough to know that who the fuck has time to sit and watch something for seven hours and 45 minutes. But that people responded and sat in their chairs and were actually engaged made me realize, no, this is actually how it should be seen. I mean, who the fuck doesn't want their movies shown in the theater?

I mean, and so, like, when I've been out here for a few weeks and it was playing at the Lemley's in Santa Monica and I popped in because it's great to just like check out and see. And so that was a trip for me. Yes. There's this, you know, it's being, it was put in the theater for that reason. No, I mean, I wasn't trying to get you defensive. No, you'd be allowed. That's fine. I'm uncomfortable with the whole thing.

It's fine. I understand. I just like having my movie in theaters. Why wouldn't you? And it deserves to be in theaters, and this should make you comfortable. I thought it was incredible. Oh, thank you. It was completely provocative, completely engaging, jarring, educational.

educational it made you confront your own sense of of morality and and self uh and you know who you were in relation to this information in this event or series of events good stuff man thank you i'm telling you folks it's not just about OJ. You've got to watch this thing. It'll blow your mind. Underground comics, as I used to call them when I was a kid, were some of my first portals into the grown-up world, into the world of sex, into the world of drugs, into the world of just basic neurotic insanity. When I was young, when I was in junior high,

seeing R. Crumb stuff, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, all the Zap stuff, seeing how a penis actually went into a vagina, the actual logistics of it. Saw that first in an underground comic. And part of the legacy of these original underground comic artists, obviously moving through Zap and through Fantagraphics. This guy who I'm about to talk to,

Daniel Klaus, is really, really one of the greatest. And his most recent graphic novel is called Patience. You can get that wherever you get books or through fantagraphics.com. So right now, I'm going to engage with the genius that is Daniel Klaus so your dad went to India and he came back

yeah I don't know why did he go it was like somebody he was working with had some deal going on there it was some shady deal that my dad was involved in. What did he do, that guy? My dad, you know, he was a really brilliant guy

who got a PhD in engineering from the University of Chicago and then accidentally got my teenage mom pregnant and had to go work in a steel mill. So he was like a character out of a movie, like super smart guy work in a steel mill. So he was one of the, like, he was like a character out of a movie, like super smart guy working in the steel mill. Yeah. Just a guy that, uh, one, one misstep. One, one.

Yeah. One like frat, frat house party, you know, gone too far. That was it? My mom. Yeah. My mom lived two doors away from the frat house. And she wandered over. I don't know.

I don't want to know the detail. Really? I do not want to. So, like, he was on a trajectory to be an engineer. And then he's like, well, now I got responsibility. Now I'm at the steel mill. Now I'm a family man. Right.

And that's where he did his work all the way through? Steel mill? No. My parents divorced. They were like the vanguard of divorced parents. What year was this? 62. I was born in 61.

They waited one more year. Yeah. I once asked my mom, like, why was I born? Like, you guys were like just really arguing and stuff. And my mom said, you know, we used like four different kinds of birth control. And I was like, all right. Like I was like the little guy who made it through. Persistent.

Exactly. So, yeah, so they just, you know, they got divorced. And then he quit the steel mill. And then just random things guy? He was a brilliant guy. He wanted to make his own stuff. So at one point he made his own race car that was at the highest level that actually was like raced in Indy 500, not Indy 500, NASCAR races. Really?

Yeah. He built a race car? He built a race car like from scratch. So you would go over there and there'd be cars and parts and things up on lifts? Well, it's very calm my mom left him for his driver he's like he built the car and he had a guy who was like his driver and she left him for the driver she and the driver opened a uh garage yeah repaired foreign cars on the south side of chicago oh yeah and then the driver of my stepdad died in a race

in like 1966 when i was five years old so my mom is now like running a shop on the south side of chicago an auto repair shop yeah so my whole childhood is cars grease yeah grease so and i don't even know how a car worked i was just like it's like you know if your dad's an accountant yeah i don't want to i don't care so you get like just those steel drums full of oil yeah oh yeah it was all that the rags the tools you know dubious men very dubious men it was uh it was a lot of you know like i i mean i have a childhood memory of like eating eating like a giant you know some kind of wire that was used for uh for you know some kind of wire that was used for uh for you know some kind of repair thing and i was like mom i ate this wire and they're like oh

shit you ate the wire yeah now we have to go to the hospital kid ate the wire i uh uh did they get it out no i think i think it's still yeah it's like lodged shows up in the part of the biology the screening yeah well yeah i had a grandfather who owned a hardware store, and there was always this crew of men, these old dudes hanging around talking about stuff. And it was like, I always was very impressed. Yeah, yeah. They all seemed to have lives. It's a weird thing about having people that do those kind of professions in your life

or just have those kind of, you know, dudes around. And when you know how to do like practical things. Yeah. No, no, you don't use, you use like the duct tape. Sure.

Exactly. You know, is that soldered? What? Right. You're like, can you do it? Like when,

and then when you're an adult and you, you have a home, you know, you start to be taught that stuff and you're like, I had no idea that that's how the, you know, when you just put basic plumbing, you gotta have that tape, that silicone tape in there so it'll seal it. Right.

And it's like a miracle to you. I'm only at the, finally at the age where I sort of get like, oh yeah, your house has all these pipes and tubes and like, it was just a miracle before that. So you plug it in and it works. Oh yeah. Now I'm like, oh, there's like the wiring. Right. Somebody figured that out right somebody figured that out they figured that out not only that when something goes wrong when you own your own house there's that moment like i hope someone fixes it exactly it's like where's the landlord oh shit that's me god damn it i've got like i keep looking at these trees as they

start it's going to take a branch to enter my home before I'm like, I guess I got to call a guy. I got to call a tree trimmer. Come do that. Yeah. Well, where did you, so you grew up all in Chicago? I grew up on the south side of Chicago, yeah. So you're a Chicago guy all through, through and through. Pretty much.

Well, no, I consider myself a Californian. I've been here 24 years. But Chicago's like like only in recent years have i grown to appreciate that that is one of the great cities that has its own tone its own sort of um sense of uh identity like there aren't that many cities that have that in this country yeah it's true like chicago is definitely its own thing and the people that come from there are are chicagoan yeah no you can i mean i often i'll uh like be out here in california and i hear somebody's voice and i'll go like what part of andersonville in chicago did you grow up you know you can pinpoint it you grew up you're two years

uh older than me so we kind of had the same stuff coming at us in a way culturally. But I didn't, did you have brothers and sisters? I have an older brother. That was what caused my parents to get married. Oh, he was the guy. What's the age difference? He's 10 years older. Oh, so you had a portal. You had a portal in.

Yes. That guy was well into it. Oh, yeah. He got all the brunt of it. I escaped. But you had, if, you had the, if he was, so, 10 years older, so that means, like, so you're born in 61. He's 51, yeah. So, right.

So, like, by the time the late 60s come around, you were living with it. Oh, yeah, completely. What a gift. Yes, yes. Yeah. Because, like, there's something about, like, you know, when I when I read, going through your stuff, I have not been, I was compulsive about graphic novels and about the world of comics that you come from years ago.

Sure. I read The Eight Balls. Sure. And I read Bag and I read Burns and all the guys that were doing that stuff. I was a Crumb fan to a certain extent, obviously, when I was a kid, but I kind of missed that. So it was all very important to me. So I'm going

through this stuff, looking at 8 Balls again. I'm like, I read all this once. It's a part of my life. You know what I mean? And the new book is great. The new novel is great. I don't know how to refer to them is a graphic novel yeah we hate that word but we use it the graphic novel it's a graphic

novel what would you rather call it i see that's a problem we all like oh that word is stupid but then we can't come up with a better yeah i would just say a comic but right but then people think it's the you know the floppy kind of comic so right i don't care i don't care it's like you know in a way it's good we don't have a good word you know once you have a word that defines you like my generation of comics we weren't underground we were we never had a good word for us so that's why we can still do comics if we were if we had a name for us like the post-modernists right right we'd be done we just like oh they were done you know right but we're still but we have no name but when um but when you started i like i have to like because i was never i never came to comics through marvel or through any of that shit it was not my means

of escape i just didn't i didn't have it so by the when i came into comics when i was a in junior high it was like a rack at a head shop. So it was, there was that, you know, the rack of, you know, the Freak Brothers, Crumb.

Dope comics. Dope comics and High Times in the back and I used to love the Lampoon, the stuff that they used to run. Absolutely. You know, Von Bodie,

is that his name? Yep. And who was the other guy that did the weird ones? It wasn't Gahan Wilson but there was another dude who had a real vibe to him in Lampoon. I can't remember.

That stuff just blew my mind. Yeah, that was my big influence, all that stuff. Yeah, like who specifically? And when? National Lampoon, there's a woman named MK Brown. That's her?

Yeah, she's incredible. That shit was like the best. Yeah, she was so unappreciated and just like so ahead of her time. I didn't even know it was a woman yeah yeah but that's the one k brown yeah she did those weird kind of float they're almost all the characters almost yeah they're always kind of floating and there's really beautiful dialogue and it's real it's like a beckett player right it's really good what was her story she you

know was a big deal when lampoon came around around. And then when Lampoon ended, all these great artists, like, there was nowhere to go. You know, my world of comics hadn't been invented yet. Right. There was the undergrounds, and they weren't quite that. You know, they were not in that. So they didn't ever fit into that world. So they just all wound up doing, like, children's books, things like that. You know, just illustrations, things like that.

There was no world. books, things like that, just illustrations, things like that. There was no world. It's weirdly, it's interesting to me that there is, that once you learn this craft, the craft of art and layout and all that stuff, that on some level, a lot of comic artists are designers to a degree, right? You got to be everything. Graphic artists. You got to be 15 different things to do it.

So it's just interesting that if you have an outlet like you have or like mk brown did in the 70s where you you can really express yourself and and and create a tone and and you know deal with existential issues you know which seems to be the real theme of underground comics pretty much outside of drugs and pirates and space travel right that you know the the the i think the what the guys at zap laid down was sort of a template right in mad magazine yeah mad mad certainly was the beginning of it all right and but like mk brown like the thought that she could just go and do greeting cards or children's books right but what about the great what about all that weirdness yeah i know where bring it back yeah so so when did you realize it?

Because you're in this environment where you're hanging out at, what, auto repair shops and what do you have? Sitting on the floor. Car parts around. That was the beauty of having the 10-year-older brother is that he just, you know, he became a hippie and it's like, here's my comics. He just like left me. I moved into his room when he left home.

But like what kind of hippie? Was he like a peace and love hippie or just a drug hippie? He was a drug hippie. He was way into the world of it. So it was like, because there was the invention of the hippies, which actually had social purpose. And then there was everyone like, well, we can fuck and smoke pot and do acid. I never heard any of the peace and love in my home. No, it was just rock and roll. Yeah, it was just like, all right, I can fuck and smoke pot and do acid. Yeah, I never heard any of the peace and love in my home. No, it was just rock and roll.

Yeah, it was just like, all right, I can, you know. Was he like a good guy or a bad guy? He's a good guy. He's a good guy. Still around? Yeah, he's still around. But it was, you know, he had a lot of tough years because of that era. What happened?

Just, you know, he got into drugs and stuff. You know, and I was just like, you know my parents were they were the they were the proto 70s parents who were just like it's you know live on the street and you know live life and you know they were supportive of it in a way yeah yeah in a way like they were just not they didn't they didn't pans off they were hands off they were hands you know what you know now that i i'm a parent you know it's like for years i just thought that's fine and then now I look back at all the parents of that era and they're like, what the fuck were they doing? Don't they were – well, my parents were the same way because they were – whatever they came from or whatever they thought it was supposed to be had shifted.

Right. So they were in this identity crisis as adults. They were like, what do we do? Yeah, and they were like, we got to divorce and get married. Find ourselves. Find ourselves. Find ourselves. And just every. Everyone can party now.

It was. You mean we can just have sex and get divorced? Yeah. Yeah. Kids will be fine. Yeah. Yeah. They're all right.

They're okay. Look at them. They're happy. He dressed himself. Let him go outside. Oh, man. Because like there was like that element of sort of, I remember when I was a kid, you just wandered and it was okay.

But when I was eight, I'm going to take the bus to the thing. Yeah, it's like four buses to the comic store. Right. And I would all the time get beaten up and just all kinds of horrible things happened to me that if it was my son, I'd be horrified right now. You wouldn't let your kid get on a bus at 11? At 11 years old or whatever? I would turn myself into the police if i ever did that but you could do it when we were kids it's weird because on some level weird the environment was it was even worse then too it was more

dangerous it was worse but i don't know they're they're the the kind of um isolation and moral bankruptcy that is upon us because of technological advances has become problematic. There's a lot of people sitting at home looking at things all day long that they shouldn't, and it does have an effect. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah, they go out into the world and they're like, I'm still in the thing. Yeah, right. I'm in the shooting game.

Yeah. Or whatever it is. Whatever it is. Sex or, yeah. Right. I believe that it does sort of you know fuck you up it's especially when virtual reality hits we're going to be in such a scary world you know yeah people are going to be wandering around just like that still in the yeah yeah well there's

something to do that because like like in thinking about those early comics like this stuff um you know that crumb was doing and and uh and my experience with those zap comics, like this stuff, you know, that Crumb was doing and my experience with those Zap Comics was, and I've talked about this a little bit before, that was the first time I saw sex. Yes,

It was the first time I understood how it worked, where it went in, like, you know. I don't know if they had it right.

I'm not talking about intimacy and love, but like, just the apparatus of it. just even that part, I was a little, I was like, what the hell am I looking at?

Well, there was one panel that I remember in the, like, I went out and bought the book. It was the History of Underground Comics. Yeah, yeah, sure. That the B. Dalton booksellers. Yes, I remember that. And there was a once, I think it was Spain Rodriguez piece in the middle where it was a Cosmos thing. It was like just two.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. They're connected. They're fucking. I'm like, that's where it goes. Like that just goes. I got it. But it blew my mind. I i mean it like changed me forever i remember learning the word blow job from a s clay wilson comic oh yeah i'm like what is that like i you know of course you go like why would you blow it maybe like just staying up all night like what the fuck it took

a lot of clearing and asking all my friends they're. They were like, I have never heard that. And then there was the one idiot that never had one but said that you did. They do blow. You know? Right, right. You're like, what? Really? And made up some story. Yeah, it feels really good.

It blows bubbles. It's happened to me many times. Yeah. Even though I'm 11. But, like, you had all these, like, you must have, like, weird hippie girls and freaks coming into the house all the time, just wandering around. Literally, I'd be home reading my DC comics, and a naked man would just wander through

my room. It was that kind of world. Lost on acid. Like a strange, naked man. He's lost because he no longer knows where the room down the hall is. I have this vivid memory of my brother and all his friends really stoned watching Leave It to Beaver in reruns. It would be like 1969 or so.

And every word that was said on the show, they were like, like just cracking up. And I was like, why is that funny? They're just yelling at Eddie or what? You know, it's not funny. And they were just like cracking up. And that's when you knew something else was happening. And when I knew, like, I don't want to ever use drugs. Oh, is that really?

And you didn't? Never did. Because of that. Well, I had a lot of other experiences that made me think, like, I don't want to, like, relinquish my brain power. Right, right, right. Because I really saw it affect people in ways that made them unpleasant. Yeah.

But it's sort of interesting, too, that somehow or another, the way, even in your early artwork, that there was something that the tone of the time that you created, even in its surrealness, was something not nostalgic, but definitely not psychedelic. No. It seems to be rooted in almost a 50s motif. Is that possible?

I was certainly, yeah. I mean, I think I was so kind of traumatized by the 60s and growing up in that world that I was like, I want to go back to like 1961, right before it all fell apart, and rethink life from that point on. That was a conscious decision. It was sort of unconscious, but I got, when I look back on my work, it's very clear.

That's what I was doing. I was like going back before all the, all the craziness hit my life to try to like, okay, let's say everything was fine. And we lived a normal life from that point on. Well, that's what,

that makes a lot of sense because what that did. And I was noticing this this morning, what that did is it put a lot of sense because what that did and i was noticing this this morning what that did is it put a lot of weight on the characters to carry the the the weirdness of humanity that they were you know i feel guilty about well no no but you know you know i mean like if you had these settings and you had these people that were sort of dressing even in bits and pieces of different eras. That's true. Trying to make sense of the identity you were creating for them. But underneath it was usually this kind of, it's not carbuncled, but there was an awkwardness to everyone in their attempts to put themselves together.

Well, yeah, I think you're right. They're all going, why did he make me do this? What did he say? He set me up. Yeah, exactly. It's like a chess piece. It's like, why are you putting me out in the middle of the board? Just to mock me.

I'm going to be crushed immediately. It was hard enough when I was just a thought. That's right. Look, now I have to wear this. thought that's right look now i have to wear this well do you ever like do you think about where you know uh you know outside of you know the crumb influence that you know that sort of window into humanity where you know the weight of discomfort is is personified all the time where is that something you you manifest because of yourself i'm just talking thinking out loud well yeah i bore that myself you know i was i was trying to get out all the you know all the inner turmoil that i had on

you know hoping i could exercise it in some way of course that never works it's not right it art is not good therapy at all you don't think so i don't know how do you find it is you're like well i did the problem with art being therapy is that you know once you resolve some of the fundamental issues that needed relief you know then you're in a pattern so so when the next sort of turn has to happen for you personally you know the courage required to do that uh is is is harder than it was when it was desperate yeah does that make yeah that does make sense yeah i know what you mean because like you know to do that is harder than it was when it was desperate. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, that does make sense.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Because it's like saying to you, like this new book, Patience, is great. It seems to be a lot of what you were working towards and all the themes are there, including a more sort of thorough science fiction element. Well, maybe, yeah. That's debatable.

Well, no, I'm not saying that it was technologically possible. Okay. But as a real thread through the theme of the book, I don't know that I'd seen that before, but you've done a lot of work that I'm sure I missed. But if someone were to say to you, why don't you do a thing about your kid in the life at home? You'd be like, ugh.

Oh, yeah, I have to live that yeah i need to get out i could do it but i would have to make it about something that's not that at all right oh that's right you know sub uh sublimate is that it sublimated you're sure yeah but uh but at the beginning this story the idea that because like almost it's a theme on this podcast where, you know, I talk about, you know, who, who guided you, the older brother that, you know, that, that you were able at that point to say like, I'll take the comics, but, but not the rest of this. That's right. Yeah. That even the music to some degree was sort of like, cause it's usually about music where you kind of, we thank God for the records, but, but it seems like you sort of turned your back on the 60s thing completely turned my back on all that because

it was too chaotic what do you think chaotic and well in the comics that i was left in that room were i felt and i didn't figure this out till years later but i felt like this is like the weird record of the bad years that i missed you know i missed all the bad years with the parents that my poor brother had to endure. And all those comics were from those 10 or 12 years. And I thought, that's not something we're ever going to really talk about. That was his ticket out, you thought.

Like, this is how he got relief. Well, it was that, but it was also like, here's the story that you missed in these comics. Oh, really? I would read these comics. This was before I could read, actually. I'd read the comics and i would look at them and i and they were all just these weird 60s comics where all this crazy stuff is happening and the images are all you know they were comics done by like guys with ptsd who'd come out of world war ii and they're just filled with

crazy like what you know like just just like um a lot of similar stuff to in my book, Patience, where there's people whose like flesh is exploding and just crazy like body dysmorphia and stuff. That's, you know, they're just the guys hacking out comics. They're not thinking about it. Right. This is coming from their psyche. And it was something about like it was an expression of this like post-war PTSD. These characters who were our dads basically drawing these. And it's what led to like my brother being a hippie, you know, is like that kind of disconnect.

Right. The next generation is like, I don't want to be like these cranky old men who are lost in their own weird world. Yeah. I want to be free and love and no war and none of that, you know. Right, right. And so the comics feel to me no war and none of that you know and right right and so so the comics feel to me like this perfect expression of that like a tormented generational cry for help yes couldn't be articulated thank you do you remember specific images and stuff that like like that kind

of blew you away and said like you know this this is how i want to express myself so there's so many i mean you can't even articulate you know just there were images like where superman would turn into like a devil and have an evil devilish sneer and right and you know like i remember there's one where uh jimmy olsen superman's pal has this uh contraption he puts on his head that's called the helmet of hate. And he becomes like this hate monger, Hitler type guy. Yeah. And just stuff like that.

You know, who could think of that? So those are almost like, they're almost passing moments. Oh, they're all individual. It could be like one panel. It's all one panel. It's not, the stories themselves are all cobbled together, but those single panels where you're like, what the fuck? Right, right.

And that could have been one of that guy's, the artist's bad days. Yes. You know, like, so you were actually, so you were extrapolating emotionally these moments that didn't quite add up and that were too, you know, surreal and aggressive to really make any sense on some level but that had you know more power more uh visceral impact than like any the story any other work of art though like as individual things yeah hit me like oh my you know wow yeah yeah this is right because this guy is not quite aware of what he's doing he's just sending the straight from the

back of his reptile brain right onto the page into my little brain. There's one guy I got really obsessed with in the last couple of years, this guy named Bob Powell, who did these horror comics in the 50s. Every single one of them, practically, is about some creepy little homunculus guy who's like a mad scientist,

or like a normal scientist, who's like a mad scientist or like a normal scientist. Yeah, yeah. Who's got a beautiful, distant, icy assistant, like a female assistant. And he's trying to create some creepy monster to either like imprison her or impress her. Yeah. And of course, she's just like repelled by him to the very end. And then he just destroys her with this like wall of flesh or whatever. And just every story is like that.

And you're like, why wasn't this guy arrested? But see, now when you made all these assumptions. Wait a minute. No, no, no. But like what you were experiencing and how you historically contextualize it, that this was a generational thing and that comics were different and these guys. And to be clear, I did not think of this at eight years old. No, I know, I know.

But have you gotten any sort of validation on that? Have you met some of these guys or did you learn more about them? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, a lot of them weren't – some of them were GIs. You know, some of them really saw, like, heavy-duty combat. A lot of them didn't. A lot of them, you know, were wimpy artists who got out of it somehow but just the that generation sure yeah even the guilt of not doing that i think and that's interesting the sort of like the strange you know uh noise of humanity

that gave birth to the 60s wasn't just a political thing that there was something teeming at the core of that how and now that you talk about it how could it not of course i mean everybody's just sort of like the the greatest generation could you imagine being a fucking d-day or like at any like you know taking one of those beaches like just well and it's not like you'd just come home and be like i'm now a normal dad in the in the 50s you'd just be so and you couldn't talk to anybody pdsd has existed since warfare it just wasn't diagnosed as that like he's a little shell shocked you know he's like he's talking to the curb you know like it's the culture just absorbed

it somehow right and i realized a certain point all the stuff i'm sort of drawn to is comes out of that like uh like film noir yeah is obviously that right you know the guys coming back and they're these haunted broken men right you know and's all, that so clearly leads to the 60s, which leads to my thing, you know. So you were able to sort of like, so that's interesting, because in the way you're talking about it, and the way that you constructed some of the early comics, that there was an element of time travel that happened all at once,

that you had these characters that were seeking an identity right you know outside of the 60s and and part of the 50s like because i think that like uh you know ghost world and and eight ball to some degree actually helped define what became post-punk culture in a way yeah on a fashion level yeah you know what i mean like yeah you didn't see a lot of that like you like you probably are somewhat responsible for young, you know, women who shopped at thrift stores to decide that those glasses that their grandmothers wore were like, oh, these are pretty cool. Well, certainly they existed. But I, you know, I think I gave them the character that they'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm, you know, that's my, my identity is in that realm. You made them feel less alone and then more people did it. Right. And now Warby Parker is making a fortune. Yeah, they are. I've advertised them. So what, what, where did you

learn how to do the, the, the craft? That was all, you know, trial and error, really. When I was about 13, I don't know, maybe first year of high school, I realized I don't have any friends. What am I going to do? So I was like, I guess I'll stay home in my room and draw comics all day. That was my way of communicating with the world, even though nobody read them. Right. But did you feel like, because I imagine being in high school at that time, what are we talking about, the early 70s? Yeah, 70s. We're just all, you know, bell bottoms and rock and roll and like, you know.

I was very alienated. Yeah. I hated all that stuff so much. Really? So much. So much. I was so, I was like the guy punk was made for because it was destructive of all the stuff I hated. Not that I even really liked.

Do you remember when that happened? When you got your first punk record? Well, I remember when I learned about it. There used to be a TV show that was every third week, instead of Saturday Night Live, there was a show called Weekend with Lloyd Dobbins in the 70s. Nobody remembers this. And he had an episode about the punk rock scourge of England. And I watched it and I was like terrified.

I was like, oh my God, these people are horrible. You know what? Horrible, horrible monsters. And then like two weeks later, I was like, I kind of want one of those records. Like all of a sudden it seemed really appealing to me. And that's what got me into it. Well, it's the same. It seems like the same fascination that you got from those comics

that where you were able to see past the terrifying into this kind of like, no, this seems pretty reasonable. Maybe I should join them. And do you remember the first punk record? It was the first Ramones record. Oh. That did it?

Yeah. And you're like, finally, I have a voice but i never the trouble was that was that's still my favorite one like i never got found anything i liked as much as that i spent like five years like okay there's gonna be another you know and that was no there was they were the best and nobody else came close but you were able to uh did you at least when you were going home and making your comics what were those those about? Were they attacks on, was it you teaching a lesson to those who roam the halls? They were some of that.

They were some of that. I do really mean caricatures of my teachers and stuff like that. One year we had this big art show in school where you're supposed to show your art on the school walls. And so I cut out all my mean drawings of teachers and students and glued them on this big piece of cardboard and turned that in. And it was like in the era of the 70s, wherever all the teachers had to go like, that's really great. You're really creative. But then like from then on, all my grades like plummeted. They were literally like, everybody was like, fuck him, you know, but but they but they had to be really supportive like your drawings are great i love that um that that that

it was that there was an element of uh that you were fueled by a certain spite well and i kind of was gaming the system it's like i knew everybody'd have to be supportive and it was exactly the kind of thing they didn't want anybody to ever do. Right. They just wanted, like, your photos of flowers. So you get to laugh the sinister laugh of a guy that won. Right. Right.

Won a hollow victory that led to nothing. No, are you kidding? It led to you realizing the power of the comic. Maybe so. Maybe so. Yeah? Well, like, I noticed that about, even when you watch

the Crumb documentary that Zweigoff did, and you went on to work with him, but that, there was such, he's such a quiet, thoughtful, incredibly brilliant,

festering guy. Right. And he was able just to, you know, destroy the world. Sure. With his comics. Oh, yeah. He was a very passive-aggressive guy, too.

And he was able to become just purely aggressive in a way. Yeah, and just do it all. And actually change the way people looked at you. Yeah, yeah. And that's an amazing outlet. It's a feat, yeah. So where did you learn to do art i mean did you you left chicago right and you went i went to art school but i can't say i really learned how to

do art there i i learned it from studying other artists and just copying and doing just where'd you go to art school new york to pratt in new york yeah for the full run yeah full run back i had a scholarship and so it was literally just like, here's a four-year break in my life where I don't have to get a job. But from Chicago to New York, did you love New York? Oh, yeah. I mean, I was like, that's the main reason I went to art school, because I could not wait to go to New York. What year was that? 79.

All right, so it was before it got, you know, it was still kind of dirty and horrible. I was still a taxi driver. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First time I was like, I'm going to go to Times Square square and i got out and got mugged within like five minutes is that true yeah yeah yeah guy just like immediately saw the i was such a rube there's the midwest there's the kid you know with the open stair looks like he's 14 gawking at the you know porn theater yeah guy just immediately came over and just like, give me your tokens. I was like, I don't have any tokens. I just got.

Tokens? Yeah. Subway? Subway token, yeah. Oh, the old Subway tokens. Yeah. Yeah. So what did, were you able to get, go see the Ramones?

I did. I did. Yeah. Was that great? Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it was mind boggling. Were it CBGBs? No, it was Irving Plaza.

Yeah, they weren't, they were bigger by 79. They were too big for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you go to a lot of shows? Yeah, yeah. Did you become part of that culture a bit? No, I was always too solitary and contrary. You know, any scene I was involved in, I would become, like, you know,

contrary within that scene. So then I became – you winnow yourself down to having no possibilities basically what do you track that to i don't know that i think it's just a good it's a good policy i think you have to deal with other people's expectations or needs or like judgment i just well i remember as a kid like i was a huge baseball fan as a kid but my dad would never take me to a game. I was just, I want to go to a game really bad. Finally, when I was 12, my dad took me to a Cubs game in Chicago.

I couldn't have been more excited. I got there, and then all the people around me were just these drunk, fat guys. I was like, I don't want to be part of this community. I just remember thinking, I don't want to ever go to a game again. It was just such a such a letdown well that's interesting because so many and this is like i mean an easy connection but so many of your characters are kind of pathological outsiders they're just yeah they're kind of like you know emotionally or physically you know hobbled in terms of like having any chance to integrate yeah yeah into into society those are my people how does that happen how do you get how do you develop a relationship with these characters

once you you kind of summon them well that's that's the that's that's the hard part i mean i have to spend a lot of time with them before I ever draw them. Is that true? Really? Yeah. Once they emerge kind of unbidden, it's almost just like they're conjured from the flames or something. And you have this character. You know what they look like. You kind of know what their vibe is. But then all of a sudden, the more you think it over, the more you think it through, they start to come alive. And then when you start to draw them, then they really are like, they have to be real. Like, I have to feel like I'm transcribing these real people's lives. Does your relationship with the characters, once you build

it, determine how much they're going to show up or how much you commit to them? It's really, you know, what good are they to me? You know, are they going to keep me entertained? Are they going to have an interesting story? I want to draw characters just brushing their teeth for no reason. I want them to be in their most dramatic, interesting moments. And there's something about the way, I think you and the ones that I really noticed, and I think it's because I grew up at the same time as you, and I can't really put my finger on it because there's a poetry to it that is hard to describe, but is his name

Charles Burns? Charles Burns, yeah, sure. That those, the black hole stuff. Yes. That there's an area of creepiness and moral swipperiness to just, it's almost like a townie thing. Right. That there's an element to these people that they're not, they don't look like they live in cities, they don't look like they live anywhere, but they're completely relatable

in the sense that it almost all feels like when you see somebody that is resonating something, even if they're just walking by you. Sure. That you're like, oh, that's all of this. It has a vibe, yeah. And that you guys seem to live in that vibe to some degree. I'm certainly very aware of those people in the real world. You see somebody in the airport that just has this singular vibe to them.

And you immediately are like, okay, this guy is one of my characters. I feel that all the time. And I could project into him some great story just by what he's giving off, that uncomfortable, weird feeling that he's got or something else. The guy in the sweatpants cutoffs or whatever with his belly out and the wrong hat on. Yeah. the wrong hat on. Yeah. And it could even be like a completely normal looking person that just has some kind of an uncomfortable thing about them or just something that they're giving off that's like

they're hiding something or they're, you often see people who just have a naturally anguished expression. Yeah. You know, their, their, their brow is knitted, you know, like, what's that all? You know, it's like, it's, why would you grow up where that's like your resting face is to look like you're, you know, you're being terrified by like a giant spider in a cave or something. And there you go. There's your comic. Well, what what when was the was always the intention to was there ever an intention to do just straight art?

Or was it always to do comics? Oh, well, I always wanted to do comics, but I didn't want to write my own comics when I started. The part I enjoy still is the drawing part. I always think of myself as a drawer. And I used to try to find people to write stories for me. And I'd, you know, like, you're a smart guy. Write a comic story. And, you know, nobody, it's really hard to do for one thing.

And I'd be like, no, I don't want to draw that. I want to draw this thing I'm thinking. And then one day I realized, like, I've got to write my own stories. And you just had the, you know, you had the freedom of mind to let them, to let the characters sit sometimes. So like there, and I think that's a crumb thing too, where it doesn't have to be closure. No.

Yeah. No, there's to be like an emotional thing underlying everything that feels right. You know, it's, I mean, it's probably like doing a comedy set. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it has a certain flow to it. Sure. You know, that's the ending and doesn't have a narrative necessarily. No, not narrative. But in comedy, generally the audience is expecting to be able to go like, it's done.

That was the end. Oh, I get that it was done. Yeah. There was a punchline there. Right. And it seemed to have closure. Is it done? Yeah.

Or did he have to go to the bathroom? Yeah, yeah. I try to explore that a little bit. Right. Is it finished? Thank you. So you're a comedy fan? Yeah, yeah.

I didn't used to be. It's funny. I remember years ago, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross wrote to me. That's like 1993 or 4. And they were like, we're doing this show for HBO. That's a comedy show. Right. Mr. Show.

And I was like, I just pictured two guys in suspenders in front of a brick wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just thought like, I don't want to, comedy is horrible. You know, I just thought of it as that world of comedy that existed in that world. And then, you know, and then when I finally saw the show, I was like, God damn it. Why didn't I do that? Oh, really? They wanted you to write?

No, they wanted me to do the logo for the show and do like an animated thing. Right, right. And I liked that. They seemed cool guys on the phone, but I just had no faith in it, and I'd never seen any of that. Oh, because your idea of what comedy was, was that just that tacky kind of like comedy, like evening of the emperor. Like Kipa Dada. Oh, really? Like that kind.

Sure. That world, you know. Sure. And I don't know. It just felt old-fashioned or something. You had not kept up. I had not kept up. And I, you know, on TV still at that time, it was still the old world of comedy pretty much.

Sure, sure. And then I started meeting people like Dana Gould and Patton and all those guys. Yeah, I think you might have invented those people. I think I did. That you're responsible for Patton. I designed Patton. I think you did. Yeah, on some level. No, no, I really, you know, I knew Patton when he was very young, you know, probably 22, 23. Yeah. And, you know, when he moved to San Francisco, I had just moved there as well. And he was definitely a full-on, you know, when he moved to San Francisco, I just moved there as well. And he was definitely a full on, you know, comic art, you know, morbid culture. Sure. Weirdo shit nerd. Yeah, I know. First time I met him, he was fully formed without a doubt. Yeah. And and but like, you know, I know you did a did you do a record cover a book cover for him or an illustration? He had a TV pilot and I did a thing for that. Yeah, yeah. And so how has comedy influenced your work?

Stand-up per se? Well, you know, I was thinking how I got really into the structure of a set, of a comedy set, and just how does that work? And, you know, like everybody else, I watched comedy and never thought about it once. Just the guys telling a bunch of jokes. And then I started to get how it how it all goes together, how you set up the thing. Yeah, you have the pacing and that, you know, even if I didn't find it funny at all, I got really impressed with comedians who could make that work over over a full set and build up, always be funny. The callback. The callback and just the like saving your good joke for the right time. Oh, right.

And just the whole flow of it. Right. To me, it was a kind of a beautiful, free form narrative structure that we all kind of know, you know, we feel it, but we don't think about it. It's storytelling, but with jokes. Right. Knowing where that comes.

Was there a comic that you saw that the most with or that you go to? You know, one guy I think about all the time is Stephen Wright. Sure. Because his humor seems like something you couldn't write. Like, it has to happen to you. Right. And a lot of my writing is like that. Like, I can't just sit down and, like, what's going to happen to you. Right. Like you, and a lot of my writing is like that. Like you, like I can't just sit down and like, what's going to happen?

Like it has to, it has to appear in my head and come to me. And I can just imagine him sort of being, you have to be receptive. And I'm sure he's very receptive to that. Have to be receptive and have a pen. And have a pen. And some writing paper of some kind. And I'm sure he works very hard to hone those jokes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But nobody else could sit down and write a Stephen Wright set. No, no, no, it's completely singular. Singular. What I noticed with, before I, we don't need to go book to book necessarily, but I was looking at Wilson before you came over, and like some of you guys do this, like I know that, you know, Crum can, but he doesn't too much but like Spiegelman certainly does that there was almost sort of like

a celebration of your ability to do several different comic styles yeah I would like to not think I was just showing off no no no there was intent oh yeah I mean what happened was I had that book all written in little tiny stick figure drawings.

That character just popped into my life one day, and all of a sudden I couldn't stop writing. Based on the feeling you had about a real person? It was. Actually, my dad was dying in the hospital, much like Wilson's dad is in the book. And I went to sit with him. You know, this is the end. And I thought he's going to give me, like, this is where this very quiet, you know, self-involved man, not self-involved, self-focused man.

Right, because he's coming to the end. He's coming to the end, and now he's going to offer me, like, the words, you know, the things he's never said to me. He's going to tell me. And as I was sitting there, I realized that is so not going to happen. He's in his own thing. He doesn't. He wants nobody there.

He just wants to like figure the shit out on his own. And so I was like, well, what? And I was like, I don't want to like check my phone. It seems like disrespectful. So I got out my little sketch pad and I started just I was like, I'm going to write a little comic and see if I can amuse myself. While you're sitting next to your dying father. While I'm sitting next to my dying father. I was like, I'm going to do, you know, the yin and the yang.

I'm going to do the opposite. And so I just made up this character sort of a cranky version of myself based on like my traveling that I'd done to get there. And then like three days later, I had done hundreds of the, I mean, I just couldn't stop doing these little doodles. And then I went home and I'd been working on this big ambitious graphic novel thing that I was doing. And I just immediately took that and threw it in the flat file and started working on Wilson and started drawing these. And I could, at first I was like, what style am I going to draw this in? Cause some stories, some little pages were very serious, some were funny. And I started trying all these different styles. And then at a certain point I was like, Oh, I should just do it like

this. Just each one has its own presence and own style. And that somehow worked. Do you feel, uh, do you feel that, that, that, that because that happened when it happened, that emotionally that you were able to process the grief? I think it helped. I think it helped. I look at that book and I have some kind of peace with my dad somehow through that book. Was it a troubled relationship not really no but he was just very like non-demonstrative and and you know let me go on my own you know he's very much about like you're you know you have your own life i'm not going to intrude but you know but you always want you dream your whole life of that like i

want to tell you about the you know that we have a lot of money you didn't know that right right surprise surprise guess what i've always been a billionaire right yeah i just got to make this map to where the check yeah oh or just even like i i liked your comics or you know he was just like he would never have said that yeah so he wouldn't have never no it's it's weird what you have to well that's sort of that lesson you learn that if you don't somehow put a reasonable self-parenting mode into your mind, you're fucked. Yeah, you're fucked. Yeah, and usually you're fucked for a good long time before you realize that. Right, right. You know, that book was largely about dealing with that and then, you know, about the other struggles of, you know, becoming a parent.

I was, you know, just had a kid right before he died, so. Yeah. And you had a health scare yourself, right? I did. I did, yeah. I had open heart surgery. That was fun. I can't fucking.

Yeah. Like, what happened? I had, like, a lifelong birth defect that, you know, it's like if it was on my ear or something. What the hell is that on your ear? Yeah, right. But it was, like, my heart. And I had this huge heart valve that was, like, didn't connect. And so it was never quite working the whole time, my whole life.

And I was, like, 40, I 40 i don't know 45 something like that and all of a sudden i would be like walking up a hill in san francisco and i was like i gotta sit down on the sidewalk i'm tired you know and i just thought like that's what happens when you get to be 40 40 and everybody's like no i don't think so you know i think other people can walk up a hill you know and so i went to the doctor and he was like oh my god you know this sounds like it was like you know and uh and i went to the cardiologist you know flopping piece it was just a flopping like you know walrus tusk or something and they sent me to uh you know not emergency surgery but pretty quick and i had to eight hours of surgery well oh my god but but the great thing about it, it's this, I got this old like war vet guy

who went in and like, you know, I don't, I can spare you the details. No, don't. The chest, you know, they literally saw your breastplate

open with a saw, like a power saw. Yeah, yeah. You open it up and you're dead basically for eight, I was out for eight hours. You're on like a life machine

that keeps your heart and lungs going. They bypass your heart so they can work on it? But your heart is stopped for eight hours. But basically, the surgery is this beautiful origami kind of thing, like where they sew it and fold it into this thing where it's actually structurally stronger than it would be as a normal heart. And so now, I go in the cardiologist, like your heart is beautiful. It sounds like it's amazing, you know? So it's like better than it would have been if I just not had anything.

So it's like, it's one of the rare, you know, huge life-changing things that you come out and you're like, I feel great now. Instead of like, I feel a little diminished from that. Yeah. And did that happen after your father died? No, a little before, a couple of years before. So you had little diminished from that. Yeah, and did that happen after your father died? No, a little before, a couple years before. So you had a deal with that. Yeah.

Like you had it, like I imagine when you're going into open heart surgery, you're like. I was done. I was totally checked out. So now I kind of, I do feel like, I know what it's like to die a little bit. You know, I was really like, I was like said goodbye. I had all my affairs in order, you know. Really? Yeah.

Oh my God. And your wife just was sort of like, what did you. like i was like said goodbye i had all my affairs in order you know really yeah oh my god and your wife just was sort of like what did you she was shot in deep shock yeah yeah yeah every once in a while she thinks she goes oh my god that happened you know it's weird right yeah you put it in a different part of your brain when that's a ptsd in itself totally totally and you came out of it and when you woke up was it like you know it was so weird to wait just like you know she said i woke up and like lurched like a zombie like i leapt up and like you know reached out like i was trying to escape did you find that you were like i i noticed when when i see public personalities who go through open heart surgery that, did you find yourself more vulnerable or more sensitive or more, like the idea that you literally, your heart was way open.

No, I felt tougher in a way. I felt like anything, people would be, oh, I got stabbed or something. It's like, yeah, big deal. It took a cannonball to the chest, basically. And was there a threat of you dying or needing, you know, like, I mean, when you were going in? Oh, in the surgery, I think it was, he was quite horrified at how bad it was. You know, I think it was like, I really got the greatest guy in the world who did it in

the way he did it. Because otherwise they can give you like a replacement valve that you have to get switched out every 10 years. You know, that would have been a nightmare. Oh my God. That's a, well, good. Congratulations. Yeah 10 years. You know, that would have been a nightmare. Oh, my God. That's, well, good. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah, I know.

I'm lucky. But it didn't, like, I don't see any surgery in your comics. Is there any surgery? No, I haven't really done, it's more sublimated of just, like, you know, crazed violence that happens out of the blue, you know. After that happened, I would have these dreams were just horrible. You know, people were eating me alive. And so, you know, just horrible nightmares came out of that.

Yeah. So I've really repressed it because, you know, you're just completely out for the whole thing. Like I didn't feel any pain the whole time. And it was. But then when you woke up, I imagine looking at the scar that was. It was intense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about Ghost World because that was sort of something that really hadn't happened where a comic like that becomes a film that becomes very popular and it won awards, right? Yeah. Did you get an Oscar? We didn't win an Oscar, but we got nominated. Yeah. A beautiful get an Oscar? We didn't win an Oscar, but we got nominated. Yeah. A beautiful mind beat us out. But Ghost World, how did you feel? Because I remember having an attachment to the comic.

And that if you're a person that can read graphic novels, I think some people just don't have it. To sort of put the picture and the text together subconsciously, that it works and a world is created. You have a relationship with that, I imagine, certainly as the artist, but even as a guy who read it. I was always like, how are you going to create that space? And I think Zweigoff did a pretty good job with that. that you know that you had these again like we talked about before that your characters are carrying the you know the burden of of history in a way yeah right that you know how do you how do you make them live in that sparse environment how did you feel he did with that i you know i was i was around for the whole thing yeah i wrote the screenplay with him and uh-huh um and he was real

nice to just sort of let me he was like he sort of admitted like i don't really like get these girls as well as you do and so he would let me make all the calls for you know like what they're wearing and like what their rooms look like and all that stuff so i felt you know i felt like it was i was a big part of it i felt like you know he he made really good film. You know, it's really hard to make a film out of, out of another work, you know, it's, it's not easy at all. And, and I felt like he brought some energy and life to it that if we just transcribed the comic, it just wouldn't have been there. Was that because he did the Crumb documentary, was that part of your appeal to him

and him to you in a way? It was, you know, I met him after the Crum documentary. I had known of him for years because Crum always draws pictures of him and they're in a band together and all that. And, you know, I met him and I just felt like, okay, he's somebody I could totally understand their sense of humor. I know where he's coming from. You know, he's like a, you know, from the Midwest and, you know, we just have this similar...

Right. He's probably 15 years older than me. Yeah. But he was sort of the older brother that I didn't quite have around. Right, right. The one that wasn't terrifying? Yeah. Chaotic?

Yeah, who was around. I don't know. He felt like somebody I could totally get along with, and I thought, if I'm going to ever make a movie, it's not going to be anybody who I get along with better than this guy. Right. And you did, too. Yeah, we did, too. Art school, confidential. What I learned in watching those movies was that it's very hard to get the specific depth of characters that are created in a graphic novel from actors.

It's very different. Yeah, because in some ways they're more human in the graphic novel. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I'm doing comics, to me that's the ultimate sort of one-to-one communication. Like I'm drawing it myself. Nobody's touching it. Yeah. It's just me. You're reading it. You're not, nobody's over your shoulder going, look at this panel. You know,

you're, it's a complete one-to-one communication. Right. And if you're watching a movie, it's, you know, 700 people making it for an audience of 400 or, you know, five on your couch or whatever. It's a very different thing. And you're conscious of that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, usually the best movies are made out of a short story where you just yeah like um you have you can fill in the gaps it's great when you start with a character um and you have and you have a kind of a simple through line right and you have that and you say you know okay i know this character and then you bring it to life. But when you have to start cutting out, you know, like we had to cut out 15 years of this plot because it's just, you know, it's a 900-page book. And add a guy. And add a guy.

To accommodate the cut of the 900 pages. Right. We just added a guy. Right, we just added a guy. He explains it all. Yeah, that's the problem. But this one, Patience, the new book which which i enjoyed a lot and it's fresh in my mind i know it's it's weird when i start looking at all the stuff of yours that i

read over my life sure that like i'm like oh my god i read all this stuff but it sits in a place you know you occupy a place in my mind that that that is a a style and a form and characters and it defines certain things about the way i think and about how i see things in the new book like it looks like like you but it feels like were you a little looser with the drawing i was you know as the longest book i've ever done by many pages and so i was trying to keep i was trying to keep it where it looked somewhat uniform in the style but that to me every page has a different kind of presence to it. You know, there's a lot of different things going on.

Right. Visually that I didn't necessarily want to telegraph for the audience, make it really apparent. But for me, it's it's it's you know, it's just a different flow throughout the whole thing. And also, like, you know, from the very beginning, there's an's an inkling like you know once you see what the story is right you know there's a couple ways that can go just be just by and i'm not a huge you know science fiction nor am i guy right but you do start to sort of like like oh uh like is he going to erase himself right you know like uh you know is he going to solve the crime isn't he just by virtue of going back in time, even if he does anything, doesn't that fuck everything up? Right.

Yeah. Believe me, that was not stuff I love having to worry about. But I got into it, you know. Yeah. I mean, as much as this is a narrative that's maybe the most, you know, easily understood narrative I've done, or, you know, the most sort of mainstream-ish narrative I've done. It was, it required, it was almost an experimental book for me. I was trying to do something that, that I had to really occupy myself with, like the, the flow of the story and the narrative. And I was hoping that

would free up my mind in other ways, which it did, you know, it made me able to do those crazy images and it all came out of that. Right. So you had to sort of, maybe for the first time, like really lay down the story first? Yeah. Right. Well, that's one of those great things where you have, like in comedy, if you, you know, you set something up at the beginning and then there's a callback later and people think you're a genius.

Right. You know, like, oh, that's from the show before. How did he do that? Yeah. Well, there is that element where you set up this stage of characters, but the narrative is displaced by the time travel thing. So you don't really know the significance of any event. Right.

You know, other than, you know, she's murdered and I don't think I'm spoiling anything. But you did see recurring characters going, how's this all going to play out? But the one that ultimately ends up playing out, I didn't see it coming. Good. Okay, good. I worked hard. I worked hard. Well, that worked.

Yeah. I mean, my hope, and of course, this is impossible in this world, was that people would read the book having no idea what it was. You know, they're just, oh. I didn't. Good. Oh, good. And I was sort of expecting like, you know, like I looked at the cover, I'm like, well,

here we go into some borderline sad lives. Right, right. And that's how it began. You know, the first 10 pages are worrying about their money troubles. And I really wanted people. Classic you. I wanted people to, okay, I get it. You know, this is good.

And then turn the page like, what the, you know. And then 20 pages later, like, wait a minute. How did we get in the future, you know? Yeah. But now, you know. Definitely did work like that. Now every review that comes out it's it tells like 90 of the story it's so you know it's like it's like well you know

norman bates kills janet lee in the shower and then great things happen you know then it's that's play out then his mother you know yeah it's just yeah you know and i'd forgotten that i'd gotten so busy that you know i don't make the time to read graphic novels because I fucking eat them up. They're actually something I can do. It's hard for me to get through a whole book. But if I sit down with the graphic novel, like I did, it was just the other night. I'm like, I didn't stop. I went all the way.

Great, yeah. It's an hour and 10 minutes or something you know it's it's like a short movie yeah it's what we all want we wish movies were like that but but also like it's just interesting when who is the audience for it now in you know you know yeah because like i i know your stuff right and and you know and it's like i've had this conversation about stand-ups too you have this window right where you're culturally relevant right and then you're still doing what you do and you're you're growing in it and you're evolving but your audience is sort of like i got kids i got well it's probably easier just to buy a graphic novel than to go out to the comedy club so it's you know that's well you're benefiting there that's true yeah you know and i really have a lot of there's like

really young you know people like late high school sure they're like red well they're like you and i were with crumb like there's there's always the great thing about what you do is that it's all there to be discovered right and and you can discover it for the first time like you know you're not bringing any baggage you don't have to go to youtube it's like look this this is a book that i found and and you're showing it to a kid's going like who the what is that yeah and it's all new there was a girl last night who told me she grew up in some like tea party town in some crappy you know central valley town and um and just was so alienated just felt like you know she's like real oppressive christian family and stuff and she said she was in a used bookstore and found a beat up copy of Ghost World and it like changed her life. And that to me was just like, that's

worth everything. Oh, that's the best. It was the best thing, you know? Yeah. It was like, you know, like there's that moment that some people who live in pain have where, you know, because you're so caught up in these patterns that, you know that insulate you from allowing the external to destroy you, that becomes your life. And then all of a sudden, you're given the gift of this thing that makes you go like, oh, there's another world out there. And that it wasn't just like on Instagram. It was like in a used bookstore. That to me was like, oh, you know, that's what I dreamed of. That moment where somebody, you know, feels, you know, not alone, invalidated. Yeah.

And not like a freak. Right. And they're like, I'm going where the freaks are. Yeah. And now she's living in LA. Yeah. So I was like, all right, you made it. You saved her.

You made it. So, like, I know there's a struggle, you know, certainly with comedy. Is your mom still around? Yeah. I know there's a struggle, you know, certainly with comedy and, but is your mom still around? Yeah. That, you know, when you, you know, you feel finally like you're, you're, you're validated to them, you know, where they don't just sort of like, well, you know, when you're done with this.

When you go become a dentist. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my mom, the auto mechanic had not, didn't, couldn't pull that on me too well, you know, cause she had really followed her own crazy. Right own crazy right right so so she's always been on board and yeah you know yeah totally yeah she's she's certainly never voiced any complaints but do you uh but having done some work for the new yorker not that she sounds like necessarily a new yorker she is a new yorker person yeah yeah so that was that a big deal that's the biggest deal i mean that was

the tragedy of my life as i was when my dad was in that hospital yeah my first new yorker cover was coming out yeah he died two days before it hit the stand and that was like all my life you got to do a new yorker cover that would be the you know doing he said that was his thing for his whole and he was a in you a fan for every minute of my life. Yeah. And he was telling the nurses in the hospital, he's doing a New Yorker cover. Oh, really? And they were like, what?

I don't know what that is. Yeah, yeah. And so that was just the ultimate, like, fuck you from God, that he didn't get to see that. Yeah. That was literally, that's when you know there is a God and he's a malevolent creature. Oh, is there? Oh my, I hope not. It's bad.

We're in bad shape. I've dismissed the possibility. Yeah. Do you struggle with that or no? No. No, my family couldn't have been more atheistic. It's a relief, isn't it? It is.

It's because you think that if you had the ability to suspend your disbelief or were were brought up with that that you wouldn't seek all these different outlets to express your you know your your your own struggle with the seven deadly sins i mean yeah that that's the beautiful thing about the seven deadly sins is that they're built in man right so you you know and nobody's gonna kick them, you know, if all you do is, you know, beg for forgiveness for indulging them, then you don't get to sort of celebrate the struggle. Right. I mean, on the flip side, I really had to, like, devise my own morality in a way, you know, because you're not given that as a young kid. These are, like, the moral principles that you guide your life by, you know because you're not you don't you're not given that as a young kid these are like the moral principles that you guide your life by you know it was just all i had to sort of observe the way the world works and kind of figure out like what do i really believe you know in a moral sense

when when what what are they like in a general way oh and that people are you know, are generally, you know, craven and troubled and uncomfortable, and they're going to do a lot of things to relieve themselves. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think there's some, there's some, you know, screenwriting principle where it's, you know, I'm not, that I don't necessarily believe in, but it's something like, you know, all your characters are trying to work towards a place of comfort. You know, they're trying to make themselves more, like, comfortable, you know, relaxed, happy, you know, and all that. Right. And they're going through all these obstacles.

And it's, you know, I sort of think of every person is looking for that, you know. Yeah. Everybody wants respect and they want that kind of mental satisfaction, that kind of feeling of everything's okay. Whenever I think about the human race, I'm impressed. We've got things pretty well together compared to how it really could be so horrifically chaotic and it's kind of miraculous. Yeah, and it's not because of law necessarily. No. That's what always sort of fascinates me because I remember years ago, you know, there's no reason it shouldn't just be a chaotic clusterfuck out there every day. It really should just be just horrific post-apocalyptic world.

You know, if, you know, sort of half the people in the world had their way it would be like that and there's the the other half that somehow right compensate for that you know right well that's why you know it's at least when you see somebody like trump become a reality like oh there they are they're yeah right they're the ones that right it might make it difficult for everybody and it's so easy to feel like, you know, he's just going to take over and become the dictator, and then we're in Nazi Germany, and then we're, you know. The one good thing about a democracy, even a failing one, is it's a little tricky to pull that off. Yeah, yeah.

You'd have to get a lot of states on your side. You'd have to, you know, get a lot of local police on your side. The military has to turn on its own people. A lot of things, obviously, it's happened in history history and you don't want to be that guy that says, could never happen here and then all of a sudden be doodling on a piece of shoe leather in a camp somewhere. I mean, I've always been really fascinated with conspiracy theories, but they never make sense because you just, how many people do you know who can coordinate anything? Well, that's exactly right.

Like a phone call. My observation about conspiracy theories is they serve the same purpose as religious dogma yeah is that you know to to make sense and have a feeling of control over something that that is makes no sense and can be read many ways it just becomes this unprovable set of dogmatic things right that people commit to yeah yeah that that's the fucked up thing about religion and those kind of things in general is that, you know, the truth is not relevant. Right, right. No, and they state that, you know, it's about faith.

Yeah. And that's what, but yeah, but I love the brain power that goes into a conspiracy theory and just that kind of Byzantine, you know, building of world. It's like writing a comic very much. Right. And it's all about what you were saying before is it's human beings, you know, trying. It's another manifestation of human beings trying to feel safe and comfortable in a way. Right.

I mean, certainly through writing characters and a lot of unpleasant characters, you know, I've found, I've always tried, you know, I often start with a character like Wilson, who's sort of an off-putting guy. And my goal is to find a way to love that guy by the end of the book. And that's, you know, certainly that I can, I can do that with, with, you know, maybe not with Ted Cruz. Right. But, you know, but with some poor schmuck at the Trump rally, you know, it's easy to think like, who is this guy? How did he get like that? Well, some of your characters would definitely be there.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that's great, man. It was great talking to you. You too. So, are you doing anything else down here? You just doing book stuff?

You got any TV projects or movie projects happening? There is a Wilson movie coming out. Really? In the fall, yeah. Who's playing Wilson? Woody Harrelson as Wilson. Wow. Yeah.

He's very good. Yeah. He can do anything. I saw him do two days of shooting, and it was hilarious. It's already shooting? Who's directing it? It's this guy, Craig Johnson,

who's made a film called The Skeleton Twins with Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Oh, right. People like that movie. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. And Laura Dern plays Wilson's wife. Oh, that's great.

It's good, yeah. And you wrote the script? I wrote the script. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I'm excited. And what's the release date on that? It's fall. We don't know the official date yet.

And the new book, Patience, is great. And it was an honor talking to you, man. Oh, you too, man. This was really fun. He was amazing, right? Some of that interview is going to stay with me, just the way he sees things. It's weird, the ones that stick. But that one's going to stick.

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