243: Portrait of a Podcast

Hi, this is Dick Miller, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences, and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show.

Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. Provide more cooling in the containment chamber. To your sentinels, we have a rebound. What's he got to be so morose about? Maybe he hasn't found something to believe in.

Oh, he says he believes in art. But all I've seen him do is dribble his own blood on a canvas and smear it around with a stick. You know, some people call that art. It's crap! It's crap!

What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian and I'm coming to you live in a digital recording from the Hilltop Tavern and we're in the midst of the Movie Geek Art Show. The world famous Movie Meltdown sponsored Movie Geek Art Show. Brian, are you drunk? I've had sody pop.

I am a square, if you will. Well, I mean, you could be a rumbus every once in a while. Those are fighting words. Don't be calling me a rumbus. So that would be Vyoka.

Hi. If you remember from last week, she was our guest for that conversation, which was a huge conversation. It was so important that we had to break it up into two separate episodes because we were covering, you know, like art. This is news to me, by the way. Most things are, really.

This is the game we're playing. I see. You are also a featured artist in this show. Which I did want to address. Does somebody have special feelings towards Jeff Goldblum?

I do. How candid can you really be on this show? We are on the internet. We can say whatever the fuck we want. I used to smoke a lot of weed.

And my euphemism for smoking weed was, hey, I'm going to go hang out with Jeff for a while. Because my friend caught me in front of a video saying, watching this... It was a video loop of Jeff Goldblum laughing, and he came in, and he saw that, and he never let me live it down. So that's what it became called. And those days have passed, and.

Are you sure? Yeah, because I get the fear, like Bill Burroughs. I can't do it, man. But I wanted to do a series of paintings about that, and so you got Jeff Goldblum with his shirt off. That's what we got now.

Which I was just kind of referring to as the glamour shot. I mean. That's from the movie, man. And then. Who was it yesterday?

Somebody was kind of excited by that. And then was hoping, I think it was Steve that was hoping you could do a special one without the dinosaur with him with his shirt off. I think that's what's funny about it. Because why is there a velociraptor? Well, then I suggested putting him on a bearskin rug.

Well, I wanted it to be like a beautiful fresco of him pointing to God and God be a velociraptor. Maybe he was like pointing his claw. I am sober. At this point, I'm picturing God going, whoa, I don't know you, buddy. Don't be pointing to me.

I mean. Jeff Goldblum. The masters did it. I don't know. This is a strange, strange thing.

So that is what you're claiming is your inspiration. Yeah. Those were fun times. So I had to. Jeff Goldblum's funny, though, really.

He's a character. I like Jeff Goldblum a lot. He's very special, that Jeff. He's got a good laugh. And he must go faster.

Uh-huh. In several movies, he must go faster. That's his thing, man. Everybody's got their thing. So, aside from, you know, Beautiful Losers, which we'll get back to in a minute, have you seen any movies lately?

Have I seen any movies lately? Man, not any that I want to talk about. There's some that you can't... You're hiding your movies? Well, even when, like, you say it's the radio on the internet and I can say anything I want, some of these movies I shouldn't share with other people.

You know, they're... Personal things? Nighttime movies. You can share those. I've said many a horrible thing about myself.

Well, honestly, I'm a nerd, and I only watch documentaries. You are a nerd. Yeah, and it's, like, it's to the point now where, like, everything in my brain is narrated by an English person because of all the documentaries I watch. They're mostly, like, BDC. So I have an English person, you know, like, talking to me about, like, my French fries and in my homework, in my office stuff.

And it's like David Attenborough. He's like, and now here's the spreadsheet in its natural environment. Because it's all I listen to. So, I mean, I told you. I mean, they're movie pictures.

In your head. Well, they were on the screen. That's how I got the English actor voice. In my brain. So I'm going to have to start, like, requesting that you watch really mainstream like boring only.

If you watch selah with me maybe if you watch 120 days of sodom with me then i'll do that i. Mean i don't want to watch those movies either but i feel like to balance out your you know your your fancy documentaries i'll have to find something with explosions or something. I mean modern modern marvel's explosions i freaking love that show Back in my Jeff Goldblum days, that's all I watched. It was really, it was a bad time. It's like, you know, just an exercise in banality, I guess.

I don't know what else to say. Documentaries are riveting, right? They can be. There are some that. Are really good.

Did you see that one about Cropsey, the scary monster off Staten Island? I've heard really good things about that. I have not seen it yet. You heard really good things about Cropsey? Cropsey.

The actual monster? The monster that kills people. Hey, he's doing the God's work if you ask me. I mean, a lot of people need to be taken out. Cropsey's taking care of them.

You think most of the people on the Charlie Hopps circuit need to be taken out? Wait, they should buy the paintings first and then get taken out by Cropsey? Yes. Okay, I like this. They should support us and... they can get their feet wet and buy a t-shirt.

And then they can buy your Jeff Goldblum, the two that aren't sold already. And then. Oh, really? This is news to me as well. When I got here today or yesterday, one of them had a little tape marked on it.

Did it say banned? Like, don't bring this to this establishment. What is wrong with this girl? But then I think it also said sold. So somebody else out there might have a Jeff Goldblum thing.

What if it was Jeff himself? Well, I saw them earlier, but he looked at those and went, that guy? Really? And then he went over and looked at those kitty cat ones, and he really liked those. Those are really cute.

I kind of wish my cat Milo would put on a scary mask of someone else's skin and chase me around the house and maybe put me in the refrigerator. Or be burned and horribly disfigured. Or that. Because that was my favorite last week. Good grief.

Do we want to acknowledge any other parties? Yes. Taylor. Would you like to be brought in on this? Taylor is my boyfriend and very best friend, and this is true.

Do you claim her at this point? I mean, after this display, you still claim her? Yeah. I'm sorry. All right, so have you seen any movies that weren't documentaries lately?

We watched Super 8 last night. I didn't want to admit that because I thought that was kind of square, but I did watch that. I saw Square. It was good. Do you like the entirety of the movie?

More or less, yeah. I feel like it loses its way, like, halfway in. I love the first part. Like, that first half with the kids. Is, like, amazing.

And then, I don't know, by the end, I'm like, I don't really even care about the monster. And I like monsters. But I was just like, it seems like it loses its focus or its part or whatever. I don't know. It just seems like it gets caught up in that story, and I don't even care about that story.

I'm like, go back to the kids because I really like the kids. Well, it went on a little long, I thought. Yeah. But, you know, it was good. It was Spielberg doing his thing.

It was Spielberg not being Spielberg, because it's just weird that it feels so much like Spielberg, and he didn't really even direct it. I know, because, like, it was real Goonies, and it was real. It was so Spielberg. What was the other thing? It was E.T., man.

Yeah. It's definitely, you can see all these, like, mid-' 80s eras of Spielberg-esque kind of stuff, but I'm like, JJ, back off that guy. He's just so moving in on his territory. Well, Spielberg pays for it. You've got to kind of do it his way.

To me, wouldn't you be a little creeped out if you were Spielberg? You'd be like, man, really? Quit jacking my movies. It seems like he would be a little like, just do your own thing. Don't worry about mine.

I don't know. It would be weird to be producing a movie that looked so much like your own work. That seems strange to me. Spielberg actually had J.J. Abrams strapped and tied down for the duration of the film's making.

But it's okay. J.J. 's into it. Right. But that's why that happened that way.

Spielberg, as we all know, is a sadist. Kind of. A little bit. We've all seen Hook. I love that movie.

How did I know that was coming? I hate, I hate, I hate Pizza Pan. Why did I paint that? Because that's like way better. Like, oh, that's what I'm going to do next time.

I'm just going to do a whole show of just Hook. Rufio. Rufio. Did you like Hook? I don't remember very much of it.

Block it out. Block it out. Don't listen to her. Are you crazy? It's really bad.

Do you have a leak? That's a good movie. So anyway. They can't see you shake your head on the radio. They know.

Who's crazy? They were all doing it at home. Right now, they were just like, oh, it's not. You guys at home. This girl is drunk.

No, no. No, I'm a boss about this, and I haven't even started. But listen, you guys know out there that when you watched Peter Pan fly for the first time, you guys got that little flutter in your stomach. You know that you want to eat that Play-Doh food. In the Disney animated?

Yeah, yeah. I got that little special feeling. Don't even hate on Robin Williams because he's awesome. I like Robin Williams when he can deliver something that's not so Robin Williams-y. What about his hairy arms, though?

They're hot. I mean, that's totally hot. I mean, you've seen his chest. I mean, Jesus, that's nothing. I was forgetting about Robin Williams so much.

Well, I was just complaining about that the other day. Have you seen the commercial for that show that he's got now? I don't have a television in my life. Oh, my Lord. You're one of those people.

How did I get on the show? No, they're giving him like, they're like coming back to television, Robin Williams. And like, I'm like, okay. But then like within the 30 seconds that he's on screen, he's doing the most Robin Williams bit I've ever seen. I'm like, can't he just be like, what's the one where he's developing photos and killing people?

Before you write Robin Williams off. I'm not totally writing him off. I just, I like specific performances. Do you remember that movie where he was blue and he was in that lamp? He came out and was acting all crazy.

Yeah, yeah. And then, like, he had to get his kids back, so he dressed as a woman to, like, do that. And that was real weird. And then you remember when he had a partner and he lived in Miami and he tried to, like, get his, like, kids to get married and stuff? You watch all your movies on YouTube in, like, five-minute super blocks, right?

No. And then you remember that one part where, like, he was getting really old really fast and then, like, he wanted to graduate high. School and he was, like, 40. I remember J-Lo. And then.

Every time I think about that movie, I think about, one, him hissing. There's a part where he's hissing, and I don't know why. And, two, the red gummy bears. I thought it was really romantic that he gave those red gummy bears to her. That was a good Robin Williams movie.

Was it? That whole movie. Okay, that whole thing. Oh, oh, oh. And you remember when he lived there a long time?

Like for like 200 years, and he was a robot, and then he died and had to go find his wife in hell? Remember that? I remember one movie, and it's called Popeye. That movie. And you don't need anything else.

It's all about Popeye. I mean, Robert Altman got it right. Oh, yeah. Shelley Duvall knocking out the hits. I mean, come on.

There's nobody hotter than Shelley Duvall. Okay, I can't even say it. But Popeye's a good movie. Come on. You can't fight that.

What about Toys, though? Toys is a perplexing movie. I think I know. We've got it on the list. We're going to do a whole Toys episode soon.

We've already called it. It's recently, oddly enough. We called it before. I asked Bo to do it on Midnight Movie, too. Bo was, like, he was all for the Toys episode, so he'd be.

Up for it. This is, man, that'll be a weird night. It's all coming together. As long as we can get a special appearance in the theater by LL Cool J. A head is like a shark's fin.

You remember that? You remember that? I think I'm blocking that. You know his name stands for Ladies Love Cool J? Yeah.

Okay, I just had to share that in case... No one knew that. In case people are not 50 years old. That's a really long name. Ladies Love Cool J.

Well, he shortened it. But what's J stand for? J. That irritates me for some reason. Juice.

Ladies Love Cool Juice. He's got the juice. That's true. On a hot day. So you don't get scurvy.

We've all seen him on CSI. I mean, he's got the juice. Really? He's on CSI? You need to get it on one of those TVs.

I live under a rock. He had a Kool-Aid stand as a kid. Really? And that's what it was called. Ladies love cool juice.

And he was like, Shockerberry Finn. And then he became a rapper. I hear his Kool-Aid brings all the girls to the yard. That's right. He was actually a Kool-Aid guy first, and he still has Kool-Aid in his heart.

Don't we all? Diabetes. And then he lost his foot to diabetes. Okay, we're cutting you off. I like that all of your gestures are made holding the martini glass.

Keep that in mind, listeners. It's almost all spilled on me at this point, so it's all good. I'm not really drinking it. This is for show. I like to sit with it.

That seems to be the case. So with that, I think we should get into this week's discussion. Oh, we haven't. Okay. Which is more of you rambling on about craziness.

But at least then you were a little more focused. About your arts. Oh, yes. Because art is important, people. Not that Robin Williams movies aren't.

But if you can combine the two, if you can do like an installation piece of just his hair on his arms. Maybe like a whole hallway. Could it be like giant and then you could walk through it? Yeah, like a double dare. I'm on board with this.

Yeah. I'm on board with this. See if you can get a grant to put this together. I'm sure. I think we really should.

Yeah. They give the Turner Prize to anybody. If there's anybody listening that would like to donate towards this. Please. Kickstarter.

Just send it to Movie Meltdown and then we won't really use it for that. But we need money. More martinis. Just saying. So we will take a break here and we will go down the block and go to a quieter location.

Good night, Neverland. And have a big discussion about art and movies and Beautiful Losers. And then. Yeah, we'll round things out after that. Cheers.

We're a very special show. It's martini time. Hey, buddy, you got the time? No, I don't got a watch to spare a dime. No, but I got two arms and a couple of lines.

Guess what that means? It's marketing time. Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby To. Get ourselves a treat Delicious things to eat The popcorn can't be beat The sparkling drinks are just dandy The chocolate bars and the candy So let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a treat Let's all go to. The lobby to get ourselves a treat.

You are seeing scenes from the next motion picture to play this theater. A motion picture in which you dare not become too involved. You must keep reminding yourself, it's just a movie. It's just a movie. It's just a movie.

It is not for the eyes and ears of anyone under 16 years of age. Color me blood red. Fiendish is the word for it. Color me blood red. This is Adam, and this is a story of Adam and evil.

This is a film drenched in crimson, a blood-spattered study in the macabre. Color me blood red. You must keep reminding yourself. It's just a movie. It's just a movie.

It's just a movie. Color me blood red. It will leave you aghast. Color me blood red. Color me blood red.

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Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. It's time for Sofa Theater. It wasn't really a gallery. It was more of like a party spot.

It was just a place where a bunch of different people who are into super creative stuff used to just come and hang out and get inspired by each other. And now it was really just. A bunch of like bored kids, like a bunch of dumb bored kids. These people were speaking a language that was my language. It was like a language that You.

Didn't have to be smart to understand, you know what I mean? All you had to do was have a heart, you know, and that was enough. I was always super inspired by that. Nice. Into a different area, that's kind of what I wanted to talk about, was that that's one of the things I did like in this.

They touched on it a little, not a ton, but the fact that that little group that they were with, they included everybody as part of that group. So you had Harmony there making movies. I mean, and I think, you know, we've even... focus so much on painting and drawing but like i like that they were including everybody in their little group of misfits even like okay he's making films this guy's in a band this kid skateboards and like he's they were grouping them in like you know their their physical activity was even artistic. Yeah for the sake of just having fun that's what i that's the one theme that i really liked about is that's what sort of knitted together I mean, like I said, I felt like it still kind of drifted from one subject to the next in sort of a lackadaisical way.

But, I mean, I did like that that was the overall theme. It was just, you know, do your own thing. Yeah. For some reason, I thought the documentary about kids skateboarding was actually much more exciting to watch, though. If you saw, what was that, Dogtown and Z-Boys?

Yeah. And I never got into skateboarding at all. I always wanted to as a kid. But, like, up until I was 18, once I stopped, well, my feet stopped growing, my shoes were always, my shoes were always the same size as my age. Like, it was a joke in my family.

Yeah. So, I could never, like, I was, my feet didn't fit on, like, they didn't fit right on the skateboard. Like, I've even had friends who were like, well, no, I know people who have, like, big feet and skateboard and they don't like showing off. Uh they like give me a weird look and it's like yeah yeah. You're probably right but i always wanted to like because it was cool back then i was like i want a skateboard and it was just yeah and yeah she's now making the why don't you get two skateboards like or why don't you get a long board.

I got you know one thing to say rollerblades. That's what you find them in my size you can't do that can't because probably just have to pay you would have skating rinks it's like We only go up to 13, so it's just you sit and you go play the arcade while my brothers have fun. Well, that's why I didn't skateboard, because my brother got into it really early on, and he was so weirdly good at stuff like that. I just, screw it, I'm not doing it. But see, that kind of goes back to what we're talking about with drawing, too.

It's like if you're around somebody who's so much better than you, it emasculates you. It's like. It's sort of that same idea. Well, I never did anything athletic anyway, so it wasn't like I was giving. Up a lot of ground.

But the first time I saw him skateboard... Think of what you could have been. He stood on his hands and went downhill on this hill on our street. That's awesome. And when he got to the bottom, he started walking up.

And I was just like, fuck this. I don't want to skateboard. What are they, $ 60? Skateboarding's stupid. And that was even the dorky kind of skateboarding that everybody was doing.

But in the movie, you see these kids in California. They wanted to surf, but they can't surf. So they got skateboards and they tried to imitate their favorite surfers. And they came up with this style that is like the thing now. But when they first did it, they went to competitions and people didn't know how to judge them because they were just doing something nobody else was doing.

And yet they did pretty well. And there was one of them, the one kid they all thought was a genius, would just make stuff up as he went. They'd never seen him do that move before. He would just And when some of them started getting successful and getting endorsement deals and stuff, he quit. It's just like, no, it's not fun anymore for me.

And he went to prison for something, probably. But it's funny, the same appreciation that the film gives for things like skateboarding, it reminds me of whenever Jackass the movie came out. and critics were panning it, and Roger Ebert embraced it. He's like, this is like true self-expression. He's like, seriously, because these guys are doing something just for the love of it, and it's almost in the vein of old vignettes with Buster Keaton or Chaplin. It's a modern permutation, and it's also grotesque in its own way, but they're... they're true to themselves versus so many other artists where it's just they're trying to do something, you know, to market.

It was an interesting review to read, like, because Ebert, well, I mean, it was always the idea of it's not what it's about, but how it's about it. And he's like, how they went about it is pretty unique. So it's interesting to read his commentaries on that whole crew. He was one of their, like, staunch supporters, which you wouldn't expect. Well, I think there's always, like, it's how you approach it.

And I guess that's, you know, it's how you're looking at it when you're doing whatever it is you're doing. It's like, are you trying to do something artistic with it? Or maybe not even you're not that high-minded, but even something like I've said as I've done this process, and it's like I even look at the way that I piece this together as like I try to look at it from an artistic standpoint, and maybe not as like an original work. I think of it more as like an audio collage. And it's like, okay, so how do I piece this stuff together to make it better than it could be?

Not just slapping things together, but like, how do I structure it so that it's more entertaining? How do I layer this thing in or juxtapose it with this thing? And like, in the end, that has become one of my favorite things. I was talking about that. I was on that You Ate It podcast.

And like, he's just been doing it for like this last year. And he was talking about the way that he does stuff. And I'm like, mine has become a lot about how do you structure it? And when I sit down to put it together, how do I want to put it together? And I feel like I try to do it with some creativity.

I don't know that everybody else agrees or cares, but like, I think something even as simple as that is like piecing audio clips together and trying to do it in a way that, that comes out better than it could be. And I don't know. I think that's, it's just how you look at it. I mean, same thing with like the filmmaking aspect. It's like, you could just go film stuff and be done with it.

But, somewhere along the way, somebody started going, well, what if we just shot it like this? And, like, now we've got all these different styles, and we've got all these different types of shots that, like, somebody got kind of imaginative and creative, and, like, I think it's all how you do it. In the old days, you couldn't do jump cuts, because people wouldn't know where they were. You couldn't show a guy walk up to his house and then suddenly be in a room. What happened?

Time passed. But the language of Just piecing it together evolves. That's what you're doing, and we know what Bo does. I'm curious what other people are really getting satisfaction out of lately. My thing lately, like the only art I can do is when I get to do life drawing, but I haven't been able to do that.

So I've been playing guitar in an empty parking lot at about 3 in the morning. I like you. Nice. That's what I do. There's alcohol involved.

I was going to say, is this a public area that you've taken over? It's not your parking lot. Yeah, it's out in the back of my house. He asked me, like, a couple weeks ago if he could do it, and I said that was fine. You're like, there's that weirdo up my lot again.

There's nobody in the parking lot at this time of night, so it's cool. Yeah, so that's what I do. I get off work. If he wasn't drinking, I'd let him go do it up on the roof instead. It's funny how often people come by and, like, Talk to me.

One guy came up and started rapping, and I have it on video, too. Nice. Because I was working out a new idea, and I. Wanted to remember it, so I had my laptop set up, and this guy walks up and starts. He was pretty good.

I've seen him like two or three times since then. There's always a bunch of weirdos out in the middle of the night. Yeah. Like you. Like me.

Exactly, yeah. So that's what I'm doing. What are you doing? I'm really, really... obsessed right now with drawing on the smallest pieces of paper possible and i can't stop like my sketchbooks progressively get smaller and uh because i keep them and i i probably fill one um i don't know like within two months or something but now it's like post-it notes and it's professional wrestlers on post-it notes i don't know i don't know man i don't have any like. Your goal is to have your artwork on a stamp, but you want to do it the actual size, then hand it to them.

Right. Normally, they do it much larger, but now you've got a goal. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And just pens.

Like, just ink. See, I wanted to do a show, and I'm going to do it. It's just trying to find somebody that actually will let me do it in their gallery. But I want to take all the stationery and stuff that I draw at at my office job, and these, like, really retarded drawings with, like, I just put, like, I write stuff on, it's out of context, or I draw, like, wrestlers, or, like, just anybody, and I want to take them and, like, blow them up to, like, just an insane size. So you see, like, all the lines, and, you know, and you see, like, the inconsistencies in the lines because there's, like, a ballpoint pen on paper.

You know, billboards, I think, I. Know, I know, we were talking in the net, like, my little light came on. Yeah. Yes! I like to.

Do that. I like to do weird videos and I like to write stuff and publish books. Seeing that all of that should be grouped in. I just try to do everything. I do music.

It's fun. I just like that we usually brand art as just the painting, drawing side of it. But I like when this gets a little more broad and I think it could go, I mean, you could almost do another documentary that just sort of looks at how it spills over into everything. But yeah, I like when everything gets kind of grouped in as art instead of just what usually hangs in museums. Well, and it ought to be because it's been a long time since visual art was really the premier art concept.

It's been a long time, but it has. It's like those colleges that got a reputation a couple of decades ago and that lives on, although all the faculty's dead and new and changed. But there's this kind of grandeur about visual art so that people who are clearly doing other arts like to call themselves artists as a title to remind you that it's a form of art. Like, I've never understood why performing artists were different from people who do theater. Because that's what people who do theater, that's what they do.

And they say, well, you know, but it's not traditional theater. Yeah, a lot of times it's not. There's untraditional theater out there. Yeah, there's a tradition of untraditional theater. So I don't know.

That's kind of a funny thing that people do. They have to, like, add the word art to art. To remind you. Now, again, this is not that it hasn't been going on forever, but now there's such a focus on the culinary arts. Oh, yeah.

And that it is an art form, which it is. God bless those people. Yeah, I mean, compared to the way I open a can, I mean, it's an art form. People are taking food more seriously than they used to. Yeah, a lot more.

Food history. I think it's the television that has anything to do with that. I don't know. I haven't watched any of the food things. I do get into, like, I have got into, like, food as kind of a hobby, though.

Like eating hobby? Making food. Oh, I got an eating hobby. I mean, the same as in film, too, because people come up and it's like, what art films do you have right now? All of them?

Yeah, that's sort of. It depends on what your definition is. Yeah, it's perspective. Yeah. I don't.

Know. I guess it's also sort of how you find your style. I mean, I did. to throw it over. I, I, a long time ago did an interview with you, a print version back in the day. And I remember even then asking, like, I said it downstairs.

I think you've come up with like a very distinctive visual style and it's sort of almost your own. I don't see a lot of other people that do what it is that you do. How did you come to that? I guess, because I feel like, At some point you were probably drawing kitty cats like every other little kid. So how do you fast forward to what you do now, which is a very distinctive thing that you do?

I think for me it was, I got, in college I got really into printmaking. And then I got really tired of the buildup of the prints. Like, you know, I had all these prints underneath my bed. And I was like, well, what am I going to do with these now? So then I went through that weird phase where I was like, I'm going to quit making art.

But I couldn't stop. So I started painting. But that, to me, I wanted that same element of layering and painting that I got with the prints. So I started just playing around. Like when I was doing the layers, it would be like these collage journals that I did, and I would copy them, and I'd throw that down as one layer.

And then I'd do a really transparent layer of the same thing but different imagery on top of that, and then just build up from there. So that's what I've been kind of playing with is it started with text, and then it was like patterns, but I had to develop all those things. So. That's what I did. And then it was like, well, what do I put on top of all that?

Cause now it's just a mess of color. You can pick things out, but it's still a mess of color. So then I started playing around with figures to, um, create more of a story. I think it's progressed. I mean, even since then, like that was what, five or six or eight years ago, however long it was ago.

And I think even now, like it's a leap forward as to seeing what you're doing just from that, you know, short span of time there. It's like you, it's, you still continue to move forward and, even within that same style, it progresses and kind of grows in its own weird organic way. Yeah. Well, and now I have that confidence of, Oh, okay, it's going to go this way and this way. And it'll veer off course, of course, but all right.

How do I create something? I don't know. How do I evolve that on some level? I'm always seeking that out. It's fun.

And messy. That's why you have that studio. Yeah. Do you want to claim a story as to how you came to yours? Well, I graduated from UofL with my BFA this past December, and that was actually a rather traumatic experience for me.

Graduating? Well, no, just going through art school. We've talked a lot about your initial need to create when you're a child, and I felt I have come to feel like art school is Did it supposed to suck that out of me and make me think about it from an intellectual point of view? You know, why are you doing this? Have you seen this artist?

They are doing this, but they are doing it better. You know, that sort of thing. This is me. Yeah. It was pretty, it was a pretty bad, I mean, I had a pretty bad experience.

I don't think everybody did, but I think for my personality, it just wasn't, it just wasn't a good match for me. And so now since I've been out of school, I've felt like I'm trying to reclaim my that initial. Trying to unlearn art school. Exactly. And so now I'm painting Still Lives of Onions in my basement just so that I'm painting and I'm practicing but there's no content there and I'm not worrying about what's so-and-so going to say about this.

Which is how it should be. My technical skills and then working towards, you know, when I feel ready, then I can work towards more conceptual work, but just had to go back to basics and exactly try and unlearn everything that's been put in my head for the past four years. I don't know if it's this way with art school, but I've talked to friends who've gone off to film school and they've said pretty much it's almost the same thing when it comes to making movies. And they've said, really, you don't necessarily pick up so many tricks of the trade, but it's almost like this weird trade-off to where it can suppress your desire to have fun at it. But the trade-off is you're, make contacts.

Like, that's the only thing. I don't know if that's the case, though, with art school. But then you're just making contacts with people who also aren't being very creative. So you've got this little group of people. That's the whole thing I'm wondering is just, you know, and I've had this talk with people who want to go into, you know, theater as well.

Just because, you know, the one fellow I used in my films, Bob Moak, you know, it's like he did theater for like 45 years. All around the country. And he's like, I never went to acting school. I actually never even auditioned. I actually, you know, he accidentally got into it and it just like, it was a domino effect.

So it's like, I guess in a very roundabout way, I'm asking, was it worth it to you to go, or anyone? It's like, is it worthwhile to go to college for the arts? I think it's just, for me, I didn't major in art right away. It kind of like, became the thing i could graduate in soonest at some point strategy i was taking drawing the whole time and uh and i was at ufk i'd taken all the drawing they wanted me to take until i took painting and i just didn't react to paint as a material and it didn't even occur to me that well a lot of painters don't paint anyway i can do something but um yeah i had a problem with paint as a material uh And I went to Murray where they had a drawing program where you can do that, but I didn't really find the kind of aesthetic that I could relate to there.

But, you know, there are always students who you can relate to, and there are a lot of different students who have different sensibilities, and some of that can be really exciting. But sometimes you just find people you can respond to and have a kind of conversation with you can't have with anybody else. There were a couple people. There that I met like that. I don't know.

I loved college, but in the end, I did a year of graduate school in printmaking, and I just decided I can't see art and the academic. Life for me. That's what I was going to do. I was going to teach art. That was the plan.

And at some point, my work started going sour on me, and I wasn't happy with it, and I couldn't do anything about it. And both my parents were college teachers. My mother still is. Still teaching after all these years. She's the longest employed faculty member at her college.

And I just didn't want to do it. I don't know. We all have various things that make certain things that should be easy, difficult for us. You know what I mean? Yes.

Exactly. It's like, why can't I just do that now? Yeah. Now I've got stipulations, I've got concerns, I've got issues. And, you know, you try and work with them and maybe you find a way to do what you want to do at some point.

I don't know. I. I saw art school as, like, I was always battling with my teachers. They never really agreed with what I was making. But I just kind of saw it as a chance to learn the techniques.

And so I always kind of knew I was going to paint, but at the same time, I took one semester and one summer of painting and then I threw it away because I realized that I could do that in a basement I could do that in an attic I could do that in a corner I didn't need the big school labs to work on it so I did surface design I did printmaking and I learned a lot of discipline and that I appreciate but I didn't really become an artist until after. Yeah, that's what I took away from school and knowing that now I wish that I had just gone to like a technical school and just learned the discipline of getting myself in the studio every day and just the. Technical skills that I need. But as far as trying to broaden your conceptual work in a school environment, it just doesn't really operate because school is all about homework assignments and structure and lesson plans and how do you let your own individual style blossom, you know, under those stipulations.

So I've said that about schooling anyway, and maybe it's just cause I don't like to, I obviously have a bad experience with it, but, and, and this will be interesting since we have one, someone who works in the field, but, um, I don't know. I've always felt like it's different. I mean, high school is just sort of caps it off. But after that, I've always been like everything college based just seems like it's all just set up to drag it out as long as possible. Um, make things cost as much as possible for as long as possible.

And a party. Yeah, well, and that doesn't help any. Like that seems like it drags everybody down too. So I'm just like, to me, like that technical school idea. I'm like, why don't we just have those set up to you could get in and out and learn what you need to learn and then just go get a job.

Like if there are people that that's all they want to do, they could do that in like, you know, six months, a year tops, and they could work damn near any job out there. But we drag it out for four or many years longer, depending on who it is. And I'm like, it's, I don't know. I think that's part of the problem with the way that things run in our little world anyway. But, I mean, it's so much more ridiculous when it's anything art-related.

Because there's, yeah, there's so little that you just need to kind of get techniques down. And you need to get a little practice maybe under your belt. But, like, the artistic end of it, you're going to find on your own one way or another. So, I don't know. It just seems like that's all part of the big scheme.

I don't know. You're going to find it or you're not. Or you're not but if you're not you again that's dragging it out like eventually you'd get out in the world and you realize this isn't what i want to do and you'll go get a job and you know you'll you'll not do that but you'll come to it on your own terms you won't have it drug out for years and keep doing homework assignments that you probably don't really care. About for me college was overwhelmingly a good deal for one is my parents like that's all they ever wanted like if we got college degrees we could die and. They were just so glad that i wasn't in prison by that point well you know.

They were super supportive so i there's still time easier time than a lot of people did like i wasn't very conscious of paying for it i just got the catalog and this looks interesting yeah And I'd go, yeah, sure, take that. And other people, I'd see them working out degree programs. I'm like, are they, did they fail something? What happened to them? What did they do?

I just took what I wanted to take like an idiot. And I really liked it. And I don't think art school was very good for me, but I don't think it was because it was a bad experience. It was just I didn't really connect with the people that it would have worked better. I did some with some students and with some teachers.

And although I was a drawing major, I hung out in the 3D area, like the sculpture area at Murray was really good. And there was something about them having all the tools there. And people would go there. And so I made these stupid fucking sculptures just so I could hang out because that seemed like the place... That was productive and supportive.

Although, you know, I'm not a sculptor really. But everybody always liked my sculptures. I always had a buyer for every one of my sculptures. Nice. But, you know, I was just down there because that's where the cool people were.

And that's actually something, if anything, it's like I haven't drawn for a while, but I've like sculpted. Just not so much like sculpting. For the sake of making sculpture, but sculpting to do, like, the different makeup and prosthetic pieces. And for me, that's, like, such a relaxing thing. Like, that was the highlight of my summer this year, and last year was just spending, like, 12 hours in the garage.

Like, the only time you go in is to get something to eat, and you come back out, and you just go back into it. You know, even though I was making very, like, grotesque things. Because, you know, this one I had to make, like, a prosthetic parasitic twin for somebody. It's like, I don't know, just giving it, like, the little personality. I'm still in love with it.

You know what I mean? It's... See, that's like a whole new thing. Charming. You know, the special effects kind of stuff.

I mean, that has always sort of existed, but these last, you know, several, you know, all the way up through 70s and 80s, they really started making an art form. So now there's a tech school for that. And that's one of those that, like, you can go learn what you need to learn in that business. But at the same time, too, it's, you know, I've, talking with people who are in that industry, like John Goodwin, I don't know if you've gotten a chance to talk to him in the past, to make ends meet between makeup jobs. He'll go and he'll teach, you know, makeup art.

But, you know, he says now that they're doing the one show, I can't remember the name of it because I've never seen it, the Face Off? Yeah. He said now it's become this big thing where everyone wants to go in it. And he's like, it's a dead profession. He's like, there are more people coming out than there are jobs for.

He's like, the reason that all these schools are opening up is because... now these makeup professionals can get jobs anymore because everything's moving to CG. And so the very fact that they're teaching all this stuff to make more people that are going to follow the dead ends. And he's like, all of us are teaching. None of us went to school because schools didn't exist back then. It's just, you learn through trial and error.

So I, yeah, I just heard that. I was talking to somebody email that lives in LA and they, I think they'd done a lot of stuff in like animation over the years. And it's kind of that same thing. They're like, most people in this industry are out of work or almost out of work because i mean so much of it is computer but even more than that is we're shipping stuff overseas now and like everybody that was working in california now either has to move which again you've seen that i mean how many special effects guys have you brought into wonderfest that like they all live in another country now because that's where the work. Is yeah but that's the cool thing about you know going to Bob and Kathy Byrne's house and seeing all the stuff they got there.

I mean, it's like American Werewolf in London. You barely see the full final werewolf. And going to their house and just seeing all the work that was put into this thing, you only see it for like 30 seconds in the film. I mean, it's just awe-inspiring. Yeah, I worked with a guy once who had built sets for movies.

I'd imagine it's the same thing, too. He said it's really good work if you do carpentry, which is what he did. You get paid really well, but. He said the one thing, you have to resign yourself to putting the finishing touches on a complete street of houses, and they decide not to use it. That's been your work for a month or two, and now we're going to do something else.

Last time I was in L.A., I went to an effects house, and they were showing all the practical effects things they'd. Made for the prequel to the thing. And the fellow was just so jaded, because they had all these cool creatures, and I'm like, this is fucking awesome. And he's like, They didn't even use it in the film. They just went CG because apparently just the producers came in and said, what?

Is this CG? And it's like, well, no. Let's put CG in there. It's like just putting it in there for the sake of putting it in there. It's like this is something that people sculpted and painted and all that.

It's like, no, it's not the cool thing. I'm picturing as the producer actually walked in and pointed at it and went, is this CG? Because he really has no idea. That's good. I don't know.

I mean, I think there is something to that, that everything kind of has its own little art, and it's whether you put that work into it. Again, there's people doing hacky special effects out there, and there's people out there doing, like, really good work, and I think that's true across the board with artwork. I did want to venture in because this just happened, and I think it's an interesting question regardless, even if you're not in our little town here. The the tagging incident that just happened a couple weeks ago that was interesting we don't have to like uh address the artist or the store or whatever but we can give the basic setup i mean we have an graffiti artist and he's become in his mind i guess pretty popular because he puts his stuff everywhere and i have like i mean it's all over by you know where i work and where i live like i see it constantly a new one will pop up and i'm like i you know i I don't care because where it's turned up a lot of times is just like, you know.

It's just industrial stuff. It's a dumpster or it's the back of a building. I hadn't noticed him doing it on somebody's working building before. I hadn't either really, which I thought was weird. I just saw it like under passes and. industrial stuff and I thought it I liked.

It it was an interesting little character and it was very identifiable and that I guess is what comes into play later so the story then goes according to what they're telling us on the news which believe as much of that as you want is then that he had done it on this business downtown that's a very high end gift store kind of thing and they sell their version of art and they sell you know a lot of other knickknacks and, you know, and that kind of thing. And so supposedly he tagged their store on the building itself is what they say. And then in a way, I don't know. I kind of liked, like, if that were the case, I kind of thought that their response to it was funny is they took his artwork, put it on a t-shirt and started selling the artwork.

And, and, Some of the reasoning was also because they had to pay to have that painted over, which, you know, if that's the case, that kind of sucks for them, too. So, I mean, I don't know. There's so many problems with all of this. I don't know. I wanted to get everybody's take on that because that, like, there's so many layers to art.

The guy showed up. And then he showed up, which, again, is a whole other layer. He came in. A scuffle. A scuffle.

And kind of threw a fit and tried to take all the shirts and run out of the store. Because he said it's his copyright. Even if it wasn't, I guess he feels like that's his creation. But then, I don't know. Then I was kind of like, well, if you put it on their building, is.

It your creation? Because you can't just be like, I'm vandalizing things. Yeah. And I did it. Okay?

So you put yourself out there for, like, you know, if you can't travel. Can you trademark a crime? You know, I'm like, is that? You can't sell it. I feel really bad for him.

I was like, that sucks all around. Like, it's all around. It's funny, too, because, like, I was talking to a friend about it, and they were like, he was so, nobody, you know, he was kind of along the lines of the Banksy. He really didn't know who he was. He wasn't, you know, he was doing all this.

And then to suddenly go into the store and do what he did doesn't fit. It doesn't work. It's like, what? Yeah. It almost seems like Is that really the guy?

I know, I kind of wondered that too, because none of this really seems like, like again, even putting it there didn't seem like his move, and then that response just seems like a childish, like I'm going to go in and throw a tantrum in the middle of your store because you did this that, I don't like what you did, but obviously they didn't like what you did either if this is the same person. I know a little bit about intellectual property, and I believe he does have a copyright to his work, It's now, it wasn't always this way, but it's automatic when a work is created. You legally have a copyright, but if you want to protect your work, you need to register it. And also you might not want to distribute it freely in public and even somewhat more than freely uninvited.

Right. That hurts the case that this is something you can protect because it doesn't look like you're trying to. Because anybody can take a picture out on the street and your work might be in it. And that doesn't make it your property. It's a public thing.

I guess I was on the side of it. Put it on a t-shirt. I might have got one of those t-shirts. That's the thing. I was like, if he was smart, what he should have been doing was making his own damn t-shirts.

Because everybody in town knew that. They knew that character. They probably liked it. Most people I knew thought it was kind of fun. You wouldn't even have the screen print.

Just spray paint it onto black t-shirts. And not everybody knows this, but the guy at the gallery is also an artist. And I feel that he appropriated it. I thought it was an interesting response to it because people are always complaining about when they get tagged and I'm just like that, that's a different way to go with them. I'll give them that.

That's, that's, it's, it's smart. I thought it was kind of sarcastic and funny comment to take it and put it on a shirt because that's not, yeah, but to me, graffiti kind of is what it is. It's graffiti. When you divorce it from being graffiti and, It's kind of not the same thing anymore. And that's the same thing.

You transform it. It's as if somebody was standing there wearing a T-shirt and somebody came up and tagged him. It's funny. Well, and that's one of those. It's a very different art form.

You're not putting it on a specific canvas. You're not containing it somewhere. You're putting it on something else. So when you do that and you just let go of it, is it no longer yours? It's different when you sell someone a canvas.

But when you're not doing that, when you just put it somewhere, are you like assuming that it is not your art anymore? You're just letting go of it. How would you guys even react to seeing your art? Like if somebody like your art was so popular that somebody made a bootleg. of your art like that and sold it. Cause I can't help to think that I wouldn't be flattered.

Yeah. That makes sense. I kind of would be too. Cause whenever I've gone to like China, both times, I bring a bunch of copies and everywhere I go, I just leave a copy. Like if I'm in an airport, I just leave it on the chair and I walk off.

Cause I don't care about like making money with them. I like, I just want people to like see them and enjoy them. So it's just, whenever I go somewhere, it's just, or if I'll go to a hostel, they'll always have like, you know, the common movie area. I'll just leave a copy there. And that's like the idea.

That, you know, somebody eventually, I even like it at the hostels. You always have like all the big bulletin boards. I'm like, if you want a free movie right here and I don't say what it is or anything, I just put my, that's good. Just say right to this address and I'll give you one for free. And it's, just to see if I'll get anything back.

I never really have, but maybe one day. That's what I think, too. Like, the first time they'll ever come in, like, I'll get a little envelope. It's, like, just blank inside. I'm like, oh.

It just says, give me a movie. Like, I'll be so excited. I don't care that I have to pay, you know, 20 bucks to send it to someone I don't even know. It's like, Yeah, when I used to have my mock newspaper out in, like, newspaper stands, one day I was driving by and saw somebody putting coins in the box. It was just the greatest day.

To take the picture. You, hold still. Yeah, and I think that's, like, the thing that, I don't know what went down with those two people, but it's just, like, I kind of feel like maybe there's a point missed there. From both sides. Yeah, maybe, like, pride was hurt in some way.

But, man, that's just really cool. Like, I would be totally like, look, they got my shirt in there. Like, in a way. It would be different if he just asked for the usual commission that gallery artists get. Or if he didn't want them out there, he's going to have a hard time preventing it because it's out there.

Because everybody's seen it. Everybody knows. I can take it and put it on a shirt. Anybody can put it on a shirt. I don't know.

I mean, I kind of, I've seen different levels of that, good and bad. I do remember, like, and again, this goes back years ago, some of the early art shows that we were putting together, and I came up with a silly little character that, again, was about four years old, looks like the level of the person who drew it, but that became, like, the thing. Like, I don't even know what made it become sort of the general character of the running show, but, like, it ended up on all the posters. Then after a while, it just became conscious, oh, that's what we're going to throw on there. But in the beginning, it just happened.

And that's what ended up on the poster. And then it so I started putting those posters out there and hanging them around town. So this is sort of a fine line from that. This is just a flyer version of that. But on the good end, I have to say at one point, like there was a weird little like thrift store place and they had this hallway that you would go into and they would always like hang up all these like stuff cut out of magazines and stuff.

And I went in, I don't know, a year or two later to give them another flyer for a new show, and that character was cut out and stuck on the wall back there. That was kind of awesome. I took a picture of it. I was like, look, it's still there. And it stayed there until that place closed.

It was always there, and that was kind of cool. Now, I guess the flip side of that would be that same character, then when money got involved at some point, we signed on to do to make our show part of the big function that was going on in this little neighborhood fest thing. And then someone else got involved in making not just flyers, but they were making banners, they were making postcards, and they, at some point, I guess they wanted, like, the art to showcase our art show. Well, the whole thing was sponsored by a beer company, as most of these things in the world are, and they took that character and put a beer in his hand. I did not appreciate that.

Mostly because they didn't pay me anything for it, you know? So I guess it's that same thing. It's like. They didn't put a beer in your. They didn't, yeah.

I mean, like, I guess... I didn't want it anyway because I felt like I didn't want my... You know, that's our character that was the entire show. You know, I felt like it was representing the whole thing that we've been doing. And so I was like, it doesn't really have anything to do with beer.

It seems... forced and stupid and i don't really personally want it but at the same time i was also like well if you did this with anybody else wouldn't you pay them for their artwork and like if you were going to use it wouldn't you like. It's just a nice it would have been nice sort of thing yeah. Which they again they they claimed you know there was some sort of missed communications along the way even within their little group and they had no idea this was this and this person was supposed to do that whatever bullshit but like in the end i was like they ended up having to make new banners and like, I kind of wanted one. I don't know where they went now. I was like, I sort of wanted it just to be able to prove the story was true.

Doesn't it seem though, like, um, that there, that the, the, I guess the greater populace that they feel that there's no value in art because like for, I don't know, you guys have had to have this happen to you. Like people just come to you and like, draw me a picture. Mm-hmm. They stop what you're doing. And it's almost like they're giving you, like, a gift.

A gift. By, like, giving you something to do. Letting you do that. Like, you love doing that. Like, oh, yes.

Because I never think of anything myself. I need someone to tell me what to draw. And they always ask me to do the things that I am really, I have no ability for. Like, I can draw. But they think I can do like sign lettering it's like my handwriting looks like some sort of obscene graffiti no matter what I do I can't do sign lettering or I can but it takes me longer than a normal human anybody else could do it easier than I can but yeah people make assumptions that you're just there as a resource yeah i kind of just had the same thing because i agreed to do the senior video this past year and i had fun doing it because it's sort of like an errol morris like in all years past it was always just the baby pictures juxtaposed with the cap and gowns to like that green day song.

You know oh yeah i can't remember the name of it but. You know exactly that one and then so i just did one where it was just you know it was like i didn't make any set interviews I just put them in front of a camera where I was behind it and I just let them just battle on about whatever and I did it with like all sorts of kids from the valedictorian to the kid that wasn't even going to walk the line to like this whole mix in between the maledictorian yeah the valedictorian. To the maledictorian and then I just found some way to like interweave all their stories and I was just like I've never done something like that before and I like switching genres with each project so it was fun but then like all of a sudden as soon as I did it like all the parents were like well, there's this fundraising thing that can be done to help out band, or there's this one for volleyball.

I'm like, do you really want me to do what I want to do? There's a difference between me doing something the way I want to do it and me doing something that would be school appropriate. You should do it. All of my projects involve a conjoined twin. Do you still want me to do it?

Eventually, somewhere along the way, you're going to get an Eric Wareheim sort of product. I was going to pick you up for one of those wearable conjoined twins, but I'll have to talk to you later about that. That's doable. You'll have to get over the awkwardness of coming over and me doing a live cast of your abdomen. Because that was the whole thing.

It's like, Andrew Vitito is who it was. And I remember when I was first approaching him about doing this, I like brought the whole like book, you know, because I take all the photos of like all the stages from like the live casting through the, you know, sanding it down and trying to get it where it looks a lot like the original and the sculpting and then everything and the casting again. And I was just like, it's not going to be weird, but I'm going to need to make. A cast of like your abs. just so that way it can go on. And he was just like, oh, sure, whatever.

He was like super cool and then just, so, you know, it's just. Yeah, it gets a little hotter than you'd like doing. Was it a plaster cast or a rubber cast? I do alginate and then plaster on the exterior, which the plaster, it depends on. Plaster is what gets warmer than you'd expect.

Yeah, but at the same time, it depends on like what the humidity is and how long it takes to. Dry because you know. I've done like the full like upper body live casts and that's the one where it can yeah it gets scary yeah I've never did it on myself but I've done it on other people. That's much less scary doing other people yeah it's doing it on yourself. Well you know I can I've had it done on my face but I can pretty much I've done enough times where it's like you know I can tell them bring something to do with your hands which I realize sounds like a euphemism right.

There laughing knitting? You might want to bring an enjoined twin. Yeah, exactly. Have somebody to talk to. There's like several shells, or there's a few shells in my garage where it's just like heads, hands, feet, abdomens.

You still have a popcorn monster? Yeah. I keep everything I make. I'm proud of it. Because I'm like, I made it.

They're like your children. They are. Even though they're made of latex and they're. Just children they are many parents can say that mine can i think that's true i think um i think that i think a lot of people just don't realize i mean what like what you were saying and because i even i like when we started doing the shows like when it wasn't my four-year-old drawing i'd be like. Oh cool you know we need a flyer you want to do this flyer and i I still found myself doing it, and now I look back and go, oh, I guess that's what we're trying to get away from.

I guess if it's within the little group and everybody's sort of working for a general thing, it's a little less obnoxious, but it's still like, I don't know, it's still hard to realize that you need to put value on stuff and give other people's work value. I don't know, I think a lot of people don't realize that, and probably because they think, they have that magic genius thing that happened to them and they can just like, you know, create it. It just comes pouring out. It just happens. And there's a lot of mass produced mass production in our society now.

So it's like, well, you know, why can't I buy your painting for the same price I can buy one at Walmart? Right. It's like, well, there's a billion of those. I knew somebody who made artist books, you know, he brought them in the class and like, um, This girl was like, I want to buy one. I'll give you $ 10 for it.

And he probably spent like six months on this, like binding it himself and everything. He was like, these aren't for sale. It was just like, that was the point. That's what happens. It's kind of frustrating.

In film history, they didn't want to pay Ken Kesey for the movie rights to Cuckoo's Nest. And they had this big drawn-out trial about it. Because they said the movie was only going to help the book. And they said, when the movie comes out, you're going to be first in line. And he said, I'm not going to see your cheesy fucking Hollywood movie.

And he refused to see it for a long time. I don't know if he ever did see it, but at some point he said, well, if it comes on TV, I'll watch it. All his friends were telling him how great it was and stuff. He was like, no, I don't know. I think J.D.

Salinger was like that, too. That's why there's never been a catcher in the rye. And Alan Moore, I don't think has ever seen an adaptation of any of his stuff either. I think Anthony Burgess got $ 25 for Clockwork Orange. Good grief. $ 25.

Good grief. It's a bargain. Yeah, but. John Updike had liked his deal because Hollywood bought all of his books and never made any of them. He said, and then they made Witches of Eastwick.

And he said it was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him. He was just, he had hoped that they would just keep buying them and not making them. That was, he thought, that's the deal. You sell them, they don't make it. It's a pretty good deal, too, actually.

Yeah. I guess that's like a nightmare that's pretty close to what that tagging, I mean, when someone then gets a hold of your work and does whatever the hell they want with it, and it still sort of has your name and your reputation attached to it but now it's this new bastardized version of it that you're like i didn't want that at all so. But it's always going to be kind of like that even if you make it yourself. Yeah i mean you expect if you do it for someone else if you're just making it for yourself that's fine but anytime someone else even if it's just paint my grandma to make this coca-cola ad you know it's like somebody's going to come along and go could you change this part? And that's just, I guess that comes with the character.

I think probably an entire show just made of like authors to where they were commissioned to do a screenplay of their book. And it just did not work whatsoever. Look at Frank Miller's The Spirit. It's like the beginning and the end of that. What happened there?

I don't know. Oh my God. It's a strange movie. It's hard to get through. Yeah.

Did you ever get around to listening to the stage musical version of Lolita? Oh, yeah. It's really good. It is really good. It's surprisingly good.

Her mother's song just really blew me away because in neither of the movies do you get enough of a sense of her as a person, but you do. In that song. She has a character, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really pretty.

I didn't even know this existed. That's crazy. It's pretty good. Is it on a video or film? No.

An actor friend of mine gave it to me. I've got the audio. It was on vinyl at one point. It was the guy who. Did the Bond theme, wasn't it?

What's his name? Was it? It was a major composer. John Barry? Yeah.

I think he did the music. Maybe. It's really well done. Yeah. I think I gave you that and you gave me that Barbie movie.

I can't find the Barbie movie. Is it lost now? I can find you another one. Not that we would ever do that. passing art from one person have you not seen superstar are you not familiar with okay i'm just. Gonna talk about like one of the barbie like oh no i've watched those too okay but those are for totally different reasons.

Hotel room and it was fascinating it was the craziest thing i've ever seen feeling oh man it was so weird. They're weird the new cg ones are creepy i don't know oh man so weird I'm sticking with the bubblegum piece. I was going to say, the last hotel movie I was just captivated. With was when I was in Yunnan over the summer, and I ended up watching a Chinese dub of The Scorpion King, because I'd never. Wanted to see it.

I was watching and just hearing whoever was dubbing Michael Clarke Duncan, their voice just being very soft, and it was just the very antithesis of his voice. It was very odd. It was so funny. And I was just like, I don't even care what the movie's about. I'm just captivated by the surreal nature of this all.

It makes it better. Oh, yeah. There was a movie like that. It was one of the greatest movies I ever saw when I was a kid. It was called Aurora or The Witch, and it had been dubbed through four languages.

And so all the sound was out of sync with it, and it had this weird underwater quality. And I was watching it late at night in the 70s when you have to prop the antenna and move it every now and then, and it. Was barely coming in. It was just the most magic movie. Finally, I got it again, and it doesn't really hold up.

But it was from a story by William Carlos Williams that I looked up and I read the story. It's like, yeah, it's not. But there's something about that movie and the sound being out of sync. That had a strange.... Bizarre obsessive charm to.

It it's almost going back to like Harmony Corrine stuff I would like if I just found one of those. Movies on like a bad VHS tape. That's what he wanted to do like Trash Humpers. Trash Humpers yeah gosh I love that movie but he kind of chickened out he said he was going to leave it around he was just going to leave it sitting around somewhere yeah. Let somebody find it it's funny though in this movie they run clips of like his really early stuff and I'm watching that and I'm like all I see in that is slacker Like, it looks very, which I never really thought of his later stuff, but he seems very much like he's taking from Slacker, which was, like, four years before he was even writing kids.

So he had to have seen, like, the Linkletter stuff and started going, well, I can do that and just make mine a little, you know, he's a weirder guy, I suppose, so his stuff gets a little weirder. But, yeah, that was weird. I'd never seen his early stuff before this. I don't know, to me, like, when I saw Gummo, it was just really hard to believe that that stuff was happening, and somebody was there with a camera filming it. There was this invisible fourth wall thing.

It's like, how can somebody be there filming this? But his work doesn't have that quality for me anymore. It's like, no, I believe it's being filmed. It's very... That's why I'm curious.

About Spring Breakers. I haven't had a chance to catch that. Spring Breakers. It just looks like the very... And tits.

Well, not and tits. It does. It's kind of totally different. Yeah, compared to all of his other stuff, which is what intrigues me so much about it. Yeah.

I don't know. In a way. It loses its way for me. For me, too. It's like, I feel like he's not who he used to be.

I mean, he's free to be somebody else, but. I think he still thinks he's who he used to be. I think he's trying to be Tarantino. I don't see that. But I think Tarantino's trying to be Tarantino.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm just getting sour. I don't know. It's just not the same for me anymore.

I mean, even, like, Lynch and his past couple projects, I feel it's just lost. Except the Barbie commercial. Those are awesome. That was fucking brilliant. The moral of this is we love Barbie.

Yeah, apparently. Yeah. I guess so. Did you see the coffee commercial? Yeah, we made everybody watch it.

It's so weird. It's really awesome. It really makes me want to drink coffee. He's holding the Barbie head and turning it and moving it and doing the voice and talking to himself. He's a crazy person.

He's a genius crazy person occasionally. It's some of his best work. It really kind of is. I wish he'd If there was a law that only he could do commercials, nobody else is allowed to do commercials. They'd be pretty good.

And he could be like, somebody could discover some horrible crime he's committed, and he could be sentenced to creating commercials for. The rest of his life. I like this. In a world where only David Lynch could make the commercials. I would watch that movie.

It would also change the benchmark as to what commercials are, and after a while it would become tiresome, and you'd be looking for people to do something new, and by new, going back. To the way things were. Probably. Eventually. Yeah.

But they would strike you different after that. They would. True. I don't know. I guess, just sort of wrapping it up, I was going to look at, I mean, the way that they break it down... in the movie is sort of how everything, again, they go back to that age thing.

And like, by the end of it, they also like at the beginning, they're giving you that whole, like, you know, everybody starts off super artistic as a kid. And then some people just have it beaten out of them. We've decided, but then by the end, it's funny that they've all like come to a different place in their life. And they all are sort of at these, like very seemingly happy, but a kind of leveled out version where they've become marginally successful. Like, The exception of one or two of them.

Most of them aren't household names. Some of them have just gotten to the point where they're making money and they're having kids and some of them die. There was the spoiler, by the way. Didn't see that coming in this documentary. Once again, you kind of have to watch it first to see that one.

I don't know. Everybody sort of gets to this point where they seem a little different than you do those flashbacks when they were coming up and the hungry artists that they were. I don't know. Do we feel like I think they even build it as your perspective changes as you get older. Do you feel like the artists themselves become totally different people by the end of it, and that their art in turn also does?

Or, I don't know. It just kind of grows with you. I think so. Do you feel like that's happening? Actually, I kind of said it already was with you.

Do you feel like it's going to happen, or is currently happening with everybody who does anything artistic? I feel like it certainly has with me. Yeah. I mean, you go from drawing in your margins, your notepad of some cartoon character you like, To actually really expressing yourself and trying to relate to others via this medium. Until it just becomes like your identity.

And it's not just like something to pass the time. So you grow with it. It's like some weird growth. Like a parasitic twin. We love Barbie and parasitic twins.

Of course. Barbie as a parasitic twin. I'd like to see that actually. Voiced by David Lynch. I think we're on to something.

I was actually in a little movie with Barbie once. She's a pain to work with. I went through the kid movies the other day. He's kind of a diva. Like our family videos, there was a film my daughter directed that I had to play a scene with Barbie.

And it reminds me of this. You know that movie Kids? Like if I was the kind of person who pirated movies and had them on VHS. If you were. If I was.

If I was that person, then I would probably have labeled it kids. And then one day when I was getting ready to send family videos to my grandmother, I came that close to sending her Larry Clark kids. Oh, check out this cool scene with a skateboard. I love that you're making movies with your kids. That's something...

My parents were, you know, too cool to be in our little movie store. We were making them growing up with a family camcorder. It was just my brothers and I and, like, whatever puppets we had. And I'm just thinking it's, like, you can always tell, like, the mood of the house because, you know, you'll have, like, this segment that goes on for, like, a little too long, and just you hear my mom shouting from downstairs. She's like, I.

Told you all once, I want. You to, and it just cuts. It just gets back to, with the pun, it's like, we're back. It's like in almost every one of those, there's at least one of those moments where she's getting ready to just chew us out for not doing something and doing that stuff. You should work that into a current movie now.

Stopping the record. Yeah, that should be in a current movie you're working on now. Every scene ends with your mom yelling at you. I like this. Yeah, I think so.

So I don't know. I do like the way it wraps up. It does sort of give it a positive spin, I guess, if you're an artist, that maybe your life can work out. Like, everybody seems like most of them didn't OD in an alley somewhere. Like, everybody seems like, you know, things kind of work out.

Again, it's a pretty happy movie, so I guess they spun it that way. But I do like they go out on I Don't Want to Grow Up. So that's, you know, I think that gives you perspective there. Well. It would be interesting if they had done it like the 7-Up series and just followed people from the time they were 7.

I think they've got a new installment of. That out now. Sometimes you don't want to see what happens. Looking at that series, you don't. Want to see what happens.

56-Up, yeah. And there was the guy who wanted to be a jockey, and that didn't work out, and he became a cabbie. And then he was having some sort of, unspecified marital issues. I don't know. Sometimes things get a little too close to home you don't necessarily want to see it in a movie because you're probably.

Living it. And then the one guy he was a kid from way out in the on a farm somewhere and he he was like a good student and he became a scientist and everything was great for him he had a great marriage he was teaching he was well respected. And then his work just didn't pan out. Just like so much science. See, in movies, science always works.

But they don't show those 100,000 hours of tedium To find Jack's shit. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of the more striking parts of that series. I mean, that still is true from an artistic perspective as well.

Yeah, I know. I mean, think how many hours you work to get something that doesn't work sometimes. And then even with artists in general, it's like think how many really talented artists just never get anywhere because that's almost the science of it. It's almost just statistics at that point. It's just some people fall through the cracks and it just never happens again.

And that's the movie we don't see in this one. Everybody in this ends up kind of happy and they have lives and homes. No, not necessarily. I don't know. Well, that was the thing about Camille Claudel.

I mean, she had some success, but it just, it was the size it was. And then, you know, even if people are successful for a while, a little time passes and who knows? You know, it's really hard to even want to be in that kind of mode of having all that attention and having to feed off of it and bring something back. I don't know. I think success is overrated.

Well, it's hard to be remembered. I mean, there are so few artists that are names now. I mean, think how many... have been in the world versus the, like, handful that people actually know. And some of the ones, I mean, who were, who were, like, household names who everybody knew, you wouldn't want to. Live that life.

No. You wouldn't want to be that person. And then there are all those artists who, like, wound up rejecting the work that we loved them for, which is really weird. Like, Botticelli turned his back on all his good stuff, and even DiCirico became, like, sort of a, an uninteresting academic painter of still lives and the whole, you know, all the beautiful surrealism. It's like, no, fuck that.

I'm bored with that. It's such a strange phenomenon. And then, you know, speaking of Ken Kesey, there's all the American wrestler writers who write like one or two books. And they're done. Um, And J.D.

Salinger, who I love, but people say, oh, he had a very small, precious talent. He didn't do that much stuff. Well, how much do you have to do? I don't know. Is there like a bucket you've got to fill?

Isn't that the goal, especially in writing? You write the great American novel, you're done? You're out? You know, the funny thing about the great American novel, the guy who wrote Paul Collins, who wrote the book I was talking about earlier about the Shakespeare first folio, He looked up the phrase, the great American novel, wondering where it came from. It's been around for quite a while.

Yeah. It came from England. What do they know? It was a British publicist for Uncle Tom's Cabin. Nice.

Came up with the whole idea, and he said, once you find that out, it seems kind of obvious, like, The whole idea of there being a great American novel doesn't seem very American. Yeah, we wouldn't bill ourselves as that, I guess. Until now, but it's just standard. The royalty of the American novel community. I don't know.

I don't know. Anything else to round out your artistic takes? At least for this time. I'm sure we'll have to return to it somewhere down the line. Are we good?

Have we covered all that art represents for this week? Yeah. We've settled the art matter, I think. Yeah, I think we've ironed it out. So we will take our break and head back to the art show.

I am painting in oil A portrait of a man. Who has taken all the heartaches And all the pain he can. Stand I'm using. All the colors of blue. I have here on my stand.

I am painting in oil. A portrait of a man. I can tell he is dying. Dave, I do not get superheroes. Oh my God, I don't get you.

What don't you get? Towerbot here. Well, the meatbags were going to say that if you're a geek and like podcasts, then you could try Tower of Technobabble at www.toweroftechnobabble.com. Then this started. Well, it's up to you.

I'm gonna get my taser and put a stop to this. Tower bot out. Okay, monkeys. It's nap time. You keep saying you got something for me.

Hi, this is Crispin Glover, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. These boots make a watch, and that's. Just what I'm doing. Why don't these things keep on turning out? Wow!

All of life's. Riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. I see death in his eyes. Oh, yes, I know, I know when he's crying.

It is my tears, my tears that he cries. of how we feel inside I. Mix the paint with my hands. I am painting in oil a. Portrait Yes, we watched your favorite movie, The Cremators. She doesn't even care about the movies that she watched for the show, people.

About two and a half years ago. You've already seen it. We recorded an entire episode and you sat there for it. Like a steel trap. Remember the hippie with the cat on the beach?

That's the best part of the movie. It really is. How could you forget the hippie with the cat? Thank you for coming out. All right, so I guess we have a request to discuss movies, which is more than we usually get on this show.

So go ahead and identify yourself, sir. My name's William. All right. And how did you come about this wonderful art show that you're at today? My buddy Alex, that you know.

That guy? He brought me along. He's not just a random guy that I know. He's also the artist himself who created our Movie Meltdown caffeinated movie geek mugs, which you could be ordering right now on MovieMeltdown.com. I'm just saying.

Why haven't you gotten one yet? You're making Alex sad, is what I'm telling you. Anyway, okay, so you have put up with Alex for years now, is what you're saying. And it's all been leading up to this moment. Just so that you could sit in on our show, is what.

You're telling us. Yes, so that I could share. This this moment i just found this movie and it's you know it's not a it's not a small time movie it was uh it was a hollywood movie but uh a simple man by the coen brothers. We were just discussing the coen brothers with our previous person sitting here. So it's there's a theme there is a theme uh it came out in 2009 and i missed.

It I'm in the same boat, actually, and I haven't even watched it yet. So I know of it. I knew it was a Coen Brothers movie. I've actually heard really good things about it and just haven't gotten around to it. It's amazing.

It's very funny, very subtle. Interesting. There's a lot of stuff about Jewish culture and religion, but it's not so much that if you're not Jewish or if you're not familiar... It's not Fiddler on the Roof. You're going to be out of your depth.

But I don't know. It stars the guy from Boardwalk Empire that... fix the world series that character i can't remember his name but anyway it's. Great what about the movie did you like i really. Like the just the subtlety of the humor like it's that coen brothers humor where a facial expression or just a silent you know someone just being silent will make you laugh they're. Very strange because they will play both like they can be the most subtle directors, writers in the world.

And then at the same time, they will turn around and do a big goofball comedy that usually doesn't even work. Like it doesn't even seem like it hits their audience, but they still like it enough. They keep doing them. So it's kind of strange actually. Have you seen Miller's Crossing?

Yes. It's been a while, but that one's pretty amazing. Yeah. I've been wanting to watch it, but it's, I have a short attention span and it's like two hours long. And every time I'm like, I don't know if I should.

It's one of those, they were just, like, yeah, it was early for them. So you can see them kind of finding themselves. And they, I mean, but they already kind of had the, they had their beats down that first movie, really. So this is like three in for them. And they already kind of, like, get to the point where they have their own dialogue in that.

Like, they create their own world really well. So I should watch it? It's really good. I mean, John Turturro is amazing. It's like he works so well with them anyway, and that's one of those, like, he has the scene stealing.

Oh, he's in that? Again, it's not a huge role, but he steals the movie with his one scene, and, like, that's the one everybody remembers from Miller's Crossing. Nice. So, yeah, it's pretty good. All right, then.

As I remembered, it's pretty good. Well, uh... Well, thanks for letting me be on your podcast. Thank you for sitting in, and yeah, we will go enjoy the musical style of tonight's band. Awesome.

How do we become Addicted to what's wrong Something missing right now. All right, so we are wrapping up things here at the Movie Geek Art Show. We're packing it in. We had to get out of the way. That dude was going to freak out if he didn't play some ping pong.

Yeah, and I have never seen a grown man who's wanted to play ping pong so badly in my entire life. He did kind of look like a tweaker. Oh, Lord. So, yeah, it has been quite a festival here. We've had a good run.

We got some amazing art, which I will be posting on the Facebook page. So if you're not following along, it's your own damn fault. I don't feel bad about it. But, yeah, we're going to put some of the, since so much of that is a visual thing, and we've discussed a few of the artist's work in these last couple of episodes. So, yeah, if you want to put it together and figure out what they're talking about and who these murderous kitty cats are and just what Jeff Goldblum's doing with that dinosaur, you need to go to the Facebook page and we'll post some of the pictures of this very special movie-themed artwork.

So, it's... I've, I like, I'm amazed at the quality of like so much because I threw it out there and I knew a few of the artists along the way, but I had no idea what was coming with a lot of people. And it's just, yeah, the quality on it is just amazing. Yeah. There was some incredible stuff there tonight.

I was quite pleasantly surprised. So, and then need more money to be able to like buy some of this stuff, but you know, hopefully we've actually looked like a few of them had, had gotten tagged as sold. So hopefully some of the artists will come out ahead and, This will actually serve a purpose other than just several awesome episodes about art. Any other activities you guys have been up to? Any movies you've seen lately?

I feel like all I do lately is watch movies, but I don't know that I've watched anything worth mentioning. Let's see. I did watch The Perks of Being a Wallflower the other night. All right. I think we've had a battle somewhere along the way about that one.

There has been a battle, but now I can chime in. I'm still processing it, but for the most part, I enjoyed it, but was kind of disturbed at the same time. So, I don't know. Like, that's kind of my life anyway. You know, I'm trying to enjoy it, but I'm kind of disturbed, so kind of, you know.

I like Hermione. You like what? Hermione. Yeah, well. I still haven't seen it, but, you know, just in general, I like Hermione.

She's pretty great in that movie, so. Alright, we should round it out with that. Mostly because it's dark now and we're loitering in the street. So we should wrap this up and get the hell out of here. I do like that so much of the discussion that we had and so much of the movie that we had watched, it all sort of ties to how art is something that starts in your childhood and so much of it is rooted in the actions of you as a child and your mentality as a child and whether or not you grow out of that.

And I do like that the movie wraps up with I don't want to grow up from Tom Waits. So I think that's how we should get the. Hell out of here. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.

Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Well, when I'm alive, I'm dead at night. I don't want to grow up. Cause you never see me turn out right.

I don't want to grow up. How do you move. When the world is falling? Always changing things. Makes me wish that I could be a dog.

Well, when I see the price you pay, I don't want. To go up. I don't ever want. To be that way. I don't want to go up.

It seems like folks turn into things that. They never want. The only thing they live for is today. I'm going to put on my teeth and I don't want to go up. I don't want to be a good boy scout.

I don't want to have to learn to count. I don't want to have the biggest amount. I don't want to grow. Well, I sent my parents back I don't want to grow up I've been thinking all night And I don't want to grow up. I'd rather stay here in my room.

Nothing out there but sad and gloom. I don't want to live in a big old tomb on Grand Street. When I see five o'clock news, I don't want to go up. And shine their shoes I don't want to grow up Stay around my old hometown I don't want to put no money down I don't want to get that big old loan Work them fingers to the bone I don't want to float. And bloom Fall in love and get.

Married then boom How the hell did it get. Here so soon? I don't want. To grow up People are listening to this. Yep, that's what happened.

I messed with it enough to salvage it. Should a podcast have audio? Should you be able to follow it? There are certain things you can't salvage. Because if you.

Can't hear the podcast and not follow it, is it truly doing what it should be doing? I don't know. I actually once on the street saw a mime in a phone booth. That's awesome. Was he trapped in it?

It was. I was like, because that is going to happen. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by the Oddity Studios, with the opening music performed by the Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!