#ganzeer says

[ganzeer]

Sneak peek at the work Ganzeer is doing for CounterCurrent19 in Houston, TX by Ganzeer says

[ganzeer-reviews]

THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY By Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy o-o-o-c

Madness. Sheer and utter madness.

I must admit that before MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, I hadn't even heard of Brendan McCarthy, which is a damn inexcusable shame. But to be fair, the work of Milligan & McCarthy hasn’t really been part of the dialogue in comix culture. Not even when it comes to talking about the impactful indie work that fell outside of the mainstream; you never hear their work cited alongside that of Frank Miller's SIN CITY (which, before the 2005 film release was only really known in pretty small circles throughout the 1990's) or Eddie Campbell's ALEC or Dave Sim's CEREBUS. But that silence is in no way reflective of the duo's influence.

About a year ago, I listened to an interview with Neil Gaiman for the British Library podcast focused primarily on the RAMAYANA and Gaiman's involvement in adapting it for DreamWorks. When asked if he had a particular style in mind when working on the various [never-produced] treatments, Gaiman was quick to point out Brendan McCarthy's work on ROGAN GOSH, which Gaiman describes as being birthed from Brendan's "Road to Damascus moment, where he ran into a pile of comics in India, and just went 'I love this, there's art stuff here that I've never seen in the West,' and started doing stuff and playing with it." He also goes on to describe ROGAN GOSH as "one of the most interesting moments of fusion between Indian and British and American comix culture."

Naturally, I immediately looked into getting my hands on some ROGAN GOSH and discovered that it was reprinted in the pages of an over-sized hardcover titled THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY published by Dark Horse Books in 2013 and retailing for only $24.99 (down to $7.19 as I type this). Although a horrendously produced edition (pages are actually falling out in less than a year since purchasing it), I'm still happy to have gotten my hands on it because it has been blowing my mind ever since. Not least because of the work itself, but because it simultaneously exposes a very vital almost secret history of comix lost to... I dunno,an obsession with the founding of Image Comics and the less than negligible work its founders produced? If there was ever a demented, revolutionary punk rock duo in comix, Milligan & McCarthy definitely fit the bill.

ROGAN GOSH first appeared in REVOLVER, a short-lived anthology magazine for mature readers published in the UK between 1990-1991. GOSH was finally collected by DC Comics/Vertigo into a 48-page one shot in 1994. It is perhaps because of the book's modest page-count that it is never mentioned in the same breath as say THE SANDMAN or PREACHER, or THE INVISIBLES or other long-running titles central to the Vertigo imprint's identity. But hey, Aristotle's POETICS is no more than a sodding 44 pages, which is sometimes all you need to jump-start a revolution.

In Milligan and McCarthy's own words, surrounded by "long and bloated 'concept album' comics", they were more interested in "the short, sharp, throwaway pop single. The type you danced to. The type you had sex to."

While the above statement can most be applied to their series PARADAX (also featured in the book), it pretty much hits the nail on the head with the majority of their collaborations, including ROGAN GOSH.

By the duo's own admission, it is not only difficult to describe what ROGAN GOSH is about, it is even pointless to ask. What may have been originally conceived as a “sci-fi Bollywood BLADE RUNNER” rapidly evolved into something far more demented. It starts off with Rudyard Kipling in Lahore en route to a place "where men of all castes come to sleep the sleep of dreams." Essentially, an opium den where "karmanauts can relieve a man of the curses of his sins.” If you think that opening scene will give you any idea of what follows, you are sorely mistaken. Kupling is entered into a "jasmine-scented dream of the future" where we are transported to psychadelic trip after psychadelic trip involving completely different characters:

- A man named Raju Dhawan waiting on another named Dean Cripps at a Tandoori joint called "Star of the East" - The blue-skinned Rogan Gosh on the run from the "bloody-tongued, dark destroyer" Kali together with a small idol of Kipling. - Raju Ghawan as Rogan Gosh together with Dean Cripps on the run from robotic hindu "Karma Kops". - Rogan Gosh as a bull-riding ancient Egyptian cowboy of the future, roaming through the mythic land of Wild Bill Osiris and Horus Thuh Kid.

If none of this makes the slightest bit of coherence, well that's because there is nothing coherent about it. Rather than there being any kind of train of thought, it's more like a train blown to bits upon the detonation of atomic dynamite. Shards of ideas floating around a nebula, jabbing into each other with every turn of the page. It's bizarre stuff, heavy on logic-defying captions almost as much as the explosive visuals. If you, the reader, let yourself go, you'll find that the synergy of text and image in ROGAN GOSH will drag you around a strong relentless current of spicy thought soup. Washing ashore an island of utter confusion is inevitable, but not without a sense of thrill retained from the memories of the surrealist storm that was.

Imagine a comicbook operating along the logic of say, PROMETHEA, 8 years prior to PROMETHEA's publication and without any of the rigorous explanation of the world's mechanics the way PROMETHEA delves into. Instead you're just thrown into it and left to make connections entirely on your own. That's what ROGAN GOSH feels like; a weird transcendental spell cast in comicbook form.

It isn't a coincidence that Milligan & McCarthy share something with Alan Moore other than British citizenship. All three after all did get their start making comix in the indie music paper SOUNDS. Moore with ROSCOE MOSCOW in 1979, and McCarthy et Milligan with THE ELECTRIC HOAX in 1978. This discovery, although new to me, was not at all surprising, as I find that I am typically drawn to creators who cut their teeth in avenues that fall outside of "the mainstream". Where the ones "in charge" understand little about what they’re doing, where anything goes and opportunities for mad experimentalism aren't stifled.

The greatest discovery in THE BEST OF MILLIGAN & MCCARTHY for me has been the duo's work on FREAKWAVE, a comic that, by Brendan's own admission, was directly inspired by MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR which Brendan became obsessed with during his surfing getaway in Australia in 1981. After which Brendan coerced Milligan to co-write a "Mad Max goes surfing" treatment Brendan could pitch to Hollywood. Hollywood didn't bite, but the duo did get to produce it as a backup strip in the pages of VANGUARD ILLUSTRATED published by Pacific Comics in 1983. Pretty straight adventure story initially (well, as straight as Milligan & McCarthy can muster anyway), with the most striking aspect of the strip being character designs and world building.

FREAKWAVE is a post-apocalyptic punk-rock drifter who windsurfs a flooded Earth in search of floating trash he can live off. He battles it out with disease-ridden humanoid "Water-rats" and psychopaths in gasmasks wrapped in old tin cans and the random cultural ephemera of old. FREAKWAVE would later resurface as a punk-absurdist Tibetan Book-of-the-Dead story in 1984's STRANGE DAYS, an anthology showcasing the work of Milligan, McCarthy, and Brett Ewans published by Eclipse Comics. It only ran for 3 issues, but Warren Ellis says it "landed like a hand grenade from another world", which is still exactly what it feels like going through its contents 34 years later today. It is especially in the pages of STRANGE DAYS' feature comic FREAKWAVE that you see Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan really rocking out like some kind of alternative comicbook band, the pages crackling with the energetic buzz of an electric guitar. Brendan especially reaches peak McCarthiasm, with 90% of his visionary work on FURY ROAD appearing here first on the page a good 31 years before blowing people's minds on  screen.

Which, by the way, how fucking cool is that? To be asked to work on the sequel to a film that inspired your scarcely read comicbook. And to be asked specifically because of your work on said comicbook?

Not to mention that FREAKWAVE, although given a pass by executives in Hollywood, very likely influenced the movie WATERWORLD in 1995, at the very least in terms of look and production design, which let's face it was the only really good thing about the film.

Nothing will give you that good kick in the balls to go off and make comix (or any ill-advised pursuit) more than looking at the work of Milligan and McCarthy. If a big part of the draw of comix for you is that it is medium void of filters between creator and reader, well then that cannot be more true of Milligan and McCarthy's collaborations. Because there are always editors keeping creators in check, or heck, even self-inflicted inhibition on the creator’s part. Not for Milligan and McCarthy.

Never for Milligan and McCarthy.

[Available on Amazon]

Ganzeer November 23, 2018

[oumcartoon]

La Nouvelle bande dessinée arabe

Arab artists were the stars of this year’s Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême, Europe’s premier comic con.

This coterie of artists has long gathered at festivals in Algiers, Beirut, or Cairo. But now, they were treated to a grand welcoming in Angoulême, the city of comics. (French speakers, see coverage in Le Monde or VICE of a landmark exhibition of new comic art from the Middle East.)

I contributed an essay to book that launched at Angoulême. Simply titled La Nouvelle bande-dessinée arabe, it is just that: a richly illustrated assortment of Arab alt-comix.

It includes knock-out strips from acclaimed zines Lab619, Samandal, Skef-Kef, and Tok Tok and drawings by Mazen Kerbaj, Rym Mokhtari, Lena Merhej, Joseph Kaï, Ganzeer, Andeel, Tawfig, Golo, Migo, Twins Cartoon, Othman Selmi, and many others.

From my essay:

“What were or are the golden ages for caricature in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East?” asks veteran American journalist Victor S. Navasky in his 2013 book, The Controversial Art: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power. Here’s the thing: One needn’t venture very far to find the Middle East and North Africa’s comic renaissance. Just hop a flight to Cairo or Beirut or any Maghrebi capital, where over the past decade, a vanguard of Arab illustrators has come of age.

But for those who can’t spare the journey, the book is a rare tour of Arab comics in translation. The colorful format, a zine-like compendium of oodles of artists, brings out the best of the comics themselves.

From Algeria to Iraq, Jordan to Morocco, and everywhere in between, a new generation of comic artists is drawing upon this archive of graphic storytelling, caricature, and sequential art in the Arab world. That this book, the first collection to bring together a wide collection of Arab comics and translate them to French, would have the appearance of a zine—a mix and medley of voices that capture the cacophony of the quotidian and fantastical in the Middle East—is particularly apt. The most audacious Arab comics have first been published by independent collectives, launched at urban spaces, sold at art galleries and cafés, and devoured by young readers eager for the next edition.

What is also distinctive about Samandal and like-minded zines that have gained cult followings in Algeria, Egypt Iraq, Morocco, and Tunisia is that they are horizontal collectives motivated by art, not fame or profit.  Another thread that connects many of these comics is an urban sensibility. This is also an impetus behind Egypt’s comic ‘zine Tok Tok, a collaborative publication that has published 14 issues since 2011. The diversity 
of images from a multitude of artists
call on the reader to experience 
Cairo, to take a deep breath and look around, to sit in an open air ahwa (coffeehouse) and
drink a tea and talk to people. 

“I wanted to be in direct contact with the street,” says Tok Tok cofounder Mohamed Shennawy. In his narrative sequences, the reader can almost smell the megalopolis, a bustling city of noise and light pollution that is film never catches. The stories of Shennawy and his collaborators also capture the social inequalities and dynamics of a city in flux since the 2011 revolution. Tok Tok is a call to 
engage with its complicated history and to challenge censorship.

“Géographie”, Joseph Kaï. Samandal, Liban. 2015.

***

Order La Nouvelle bande dessinée arabe here.

[elifthereader]

🇬🇧April and spring is here! Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you want to hug all the blossoming trees and just read under them all day? 🌸💖 Well I do! And my April books are ready. ☺️ . I’ll read four nonfiction books, a graphic novel and a novel this month. (And two other books for my book clubs) I must say, I’m excited about these nonfiction books. And I think I like nonfiction more than fiction nowadays. Is it about age? Am I getting old? 🧐 What are you reading this month? . 🇹🇷Nisan ve bahar tüm güzelliğiyle gelmedi mi? Mutluluktan tüm çiçeklenen ağaçlara sarılmak ve günü altlarında okuyarak geçirmek istemiyor musunuz siz de? 🌸💖 (Gerçi sürekli dans etmek de geliyordur içinizden eminim 💃🏻☺️) Çiçekler gibi umutların da gün yüzüne çıktığı bu ay neler okuyacaksınız? Ben kitaplarımı seçtim bile. ☺️ . Dört güzelim kurgu dışı, bir roman ve bir çizgi roman okuyacağım bu ay. (Ayrıca iki kitap kulübüm için iki ayrı roman.) Fark ettim de kurgu dışı kitaplar için romanlara kıyasla daha bir heyecanlıyım şu sıralar. Yaşla mı ilgili dersiniz? 🧐 Siz neler okuyacaksınız bu ay? . . . . . #aprilbooks #apriltbr #tbr #tbrpile #toberead #nonfictionbooks #nonfiction #graphicnovel #okumahalleri #okunacakkitaplar #soetsuyanagi #thebeautyofeverydaythings #nineteenthcenturyart #thegreateconomists #morning #theapartmentinbabellouk #howwedisappeared #lindayueh #ganzeer #allanjenkins #diversebooks #bookpile #booksbooksbooks #kitap #kitapkurdu #okumaaşkı #sakura #homeplants (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvuDifflMqT/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1eojk6aza2ak4

[comicsbeat]

https://twitter.com/jesse_hamm/status/963675642217852928

§ Spiders do spin webs out of their butts, so why not kleenex? This is perfect branding.

§ Happy Valentine’s Day! Back when people mailed things, it was my greatest joy to buy packages of horrifically themed Valentines and give them to friends and coworkers. Now we’ll just have to settle for these Overwatch Valentine’s Day Cards from last year.

  § Seriously, they still make them, but now the internet has let me down! How can there be no tumblr or Flickr account devoted to these “real” Kylo Ren Valentines! Am I going to have to buy a box myself? Until then, these charming concepts by RebChan will have to do.

§ I guess it all comes back to wrestling.

§ For a proper Valentine, Tee Franklin talks about Bingo Love, her romance comic that’s out from Image.

What made you want to tell the story as a graphic novel?

Frankly, I didn’t want Bingo Love to be a monthly series. This is a story that wasn’t meant to be told with cliffhangers – “come back next month to see if Hazel leaves her husband” – this is a love story and should be read as a novel. Just because it’s told with Jenn St-Onge’s amazing art and Joy San’s mind-blowing colors, doesn’t mean that it had to be told every month. When you pick up a romance novel – let’s say from award-winning and Queer author, Rebekah Weatherspoon – you’re getting yourself comfortable to read a book, not 20 pages and wait until the following month for the next 20 pages. If I decide to create another Bingo Love book, I’m sure it will be told as a graphic novel. I have no immediate plans to make it a monthly series.

    § Hellboy is coming back and creator Mike Mignola is talking about it. Did we ever think he was really gone forever?

Mignola also says that there were even indications in Hellboy in Hell that Hellboy’s story would last longer than the series itself: “In the very beginning, like the first couple pages, Edward Grey and Baba Yaga are saying he has these couple last things left to do. He does some of them by the end of Hellboy in Hell, but if you do the math there’s one or two things that he still didn’t do. I always knew, ‘well s–t, the poor bastard has a few things he can’t get out of doing.’”

§ Lauren Weinstein (Normel Person) is the guest on the The Virtual Memories Show podcast

§ It’s been a while since a new issue of Ganzeer THE SOLAR GRID came out, but its still in the works. YAY!

§ Vertigo Comics will never die! That’s because Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish will star in The Kitchen, a film based on the Vertigo mini by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. “Straight Outta Compton” writer Andrea Berloff will direct from her own script. The story is about mafia wives who take over the family business when their husbands are imprisoned so, yeah, it sold itself.

§ Stan Lee may have had some health issues lately, but he still had the energy to Stan Lee Hilariously Troll Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary.

§ Speaking of that 10th Anniversary photo, at Newsarama George Marston used it as a jumping off point to discuss how far apart the Marvel TV and Movie universes are now. As in, very.

But now, with Avengers: Infinity War bringing together nearly every Marvel movie hero – and leaving out characters like Agent Coulson, Daisy Johnson, Daredevil, and the Defenders entirely – it seems that the idea that Marvel’s TV and film endeavors are all part of one big continuum soldiers on in theory and speculation only.

Where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. once referenced the events of Marvel’s films and welcomed the occasional guest star like Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, or Marvel’s Netflix shows would drop references to the “Battle of New York,” we now have three separate worlds connected solely by the studio banner that accompanies them.

Poor Agent Coulson!

§ Finally, someone let the cat out of the bag that Zack Snyder was actually fired from Justice League. I didn’t know that there was any real question about this. Snyder’s family underwent a terrible tragedy around the same time, and it just didn’t seem polite to dig around too much, but it was also the perfect smokescreen to bring in Joss Whedon. Occam’s Razor, people. What they REALLY should have done was just have Whedon write the script and Snyder direct it. What a fun movie that would have been!

Kibbles ‘b’ Bits 2/14/18: You must be my Valentine, Reinhardt § Spiders do spin webs out of their butts, so why not kleenex? This is perfect branding.

[ganzeer]

Graphic Novel Formats – Part 5

The last in the series of videos about graphic novel formats. Here I focus on Joe Kubert’s JEW GANGSTER, and talk about why I’m completely obsessed with the book’s format.

[ganzeer-reviews]

MANHUNTER By Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson

o-o-o-o

One of the best exercises in plotting I've ever seen came in a comicbook I don't think I'd normally be interested in picking up: MANHUNTER.

Yes, it has the names of Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson on the cover, but it's a comicbook called Manhunter for Christ's sake. Look at what this supposedly fearsome Manhunter is wearing, my God. But, Warren urged me to check it out and I have never been disappointed by a Warren Ellis recommendation to date. Lessons learned from this slim collection are numerous. First of all, it is an absolute joy to read! Which was such a breath of fresh air because more than once in the past few months have I found myself dropping a book out of sheer boredom. MANHUNTER will engage you from start to finish. I started reading it one night before bed, and found myself finishing it the next morning over cereal at the kitchen table, almost unable to put it down. Now if that ain't good storytelling, I don't know what is. As far as escapist fiction goes, forget DOC SAVAGE, or heck Michael Moorcock's ELRIC novels even (blasphemy, I know), but your blueprint for good ol' fashioned escapism is right here, because what Archie Goodwin did with this is pretty much toss in every pulpy plot trick known to man. Clones? You bet. Moles? Check. Conspiracy? Check. Super-healing? Check. Suspended Animation? Check. Teleportation? Yup. Mind-controlled machines? Oh yeah. Betrayal? Of course. The book has it all, but what's most impressive is how it was all fit into such a slim package. Before it was collected into this 72-page edition in 1984, MANHUNTER ran as an 8-page backup story, serialized in a 1973 run of DETECTIVE, who's lead character was Batman. Sales were low, and the title needed spicing up, but Goodwin realized that he couldn't get away with doing anything too radical on the Batman. A backup story starring an unknown character, on the other hand, he could play with. A whiff of editorial genius pushed him to tap into the then young Walt Simonson, who did with Goodwin's loose plots some really groundbreaking work. If, like me, the notion of drawing or writing a 9-panel grid has ever brought about a feeling of dread, MANHUNTER is your remedy because Simonson will sometimes do a 13-panel page, and it will look beautiful, designed. The storytelling is clear, natural, and effortless. Somehow, the 9-panel grid looks like a walk in the park after studying Simonson's work on MANHUNTER.

Goodwin started out writing "Marvel style" on these with Simonson. Essentially, rather than giving Simonson full scripts, he gave him plots. Walt would then take these plots and use them to rough up his page layouts, which Goodwin would then use to work in dialogue and captions. Such was the collaborative nature of this thing that by the 3rd or 4th episode, Goodwin no longer wrote the plots and instead just talked them out with Simonson. Ideas bounced back and forth between them with such excitement that you can actually feel it reading the comicbook. Sure, it's rather hoaky in many parts, but it's good hoaky. And in a very short amount of time you somehow find yourself growing rather fond of this ridiculously dressed man who calls himself Manhunter. His adventures take him from Nepal to Marakech to Istanbul, Japan, and Nairobi. It's rather genre defying in that it's part spy thriller, part detective mystery, part super-hero adventure. All of this in 8-page episodes! I don't recall ever seeing that before. A true masterclass in condensed adventure-storytelling.

Now, everything I've mentioned so far is evident of MANHUNTER being made up of a great deal of plot, and nothing much else, which goes against my argument for "sly escapism". And I think that towards the last episode when it came time to end the story, Archie Goodwin realized that if his story didn't have some kind of point to it, then all the amazing plotting he'd conjured up would amount to absolutely nothing. So he gave it a point and it's a really good one [spoiler alerts are for pansies]. He made it a story against the idea of resurrection and prolonging of life. A story about accepting death when it is time to die. I may be giving this fun little adventure tale more depth than it calls for, and I fully acknowledge that there's no way in hell this comicbook will interest anybody not already interested in comicbooks about costumed superheroes. It definitely doesn't transcend the genre in the way something like, say, WATCHMEN does, but you can be sure that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were informed by the storytelling techniques employed in MANHUNTER if nothing else.

Ganzeer August 19, 2017

[ganzeer]

THIRD CINEMA, NINTH ART

She takes a seat at the bar and lets her eyes wander across the busy cafe, examining its patrons. The look in her eyes is not one of fear, guilt, or paranoia, no. She won’t be giving away her emotions that easy. Instead, you are placed in her shoes and are allowed to feel whatever you want to feel. You see a variety of men and women casually chatting away, friends gathered around a table, and a young boy licking at his ice cream cone, completely oblivious to the world around him. It is hard being in her shoes, but this changes nothing, for as soon as the woman finishes her drink –slowly... avoiding suspicion – she pays her bill and makes her way out. She leaves behind a bag slyly tucked away under the bar stool. Inside it, is a bomb. This takes place in THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, a 1966 film by Gillo Pontecorvo. So believable was that cafe’s explosion – and a great many other scenes in the film – that when the film was first screened, it came with a title card at the beginning that read “Notice: Not even one foot of newsreel or documentary film is included in this picture.” The subject matter of film was the Algerian struggle for independence from French occupation, which lasted well until 1962, not long after France itself had its own struggle with Nazi occupation. The irony completely lost on the French. There are some really morally agonizing scenes in the film that still have resonance to this very day, including a scene where two Algerian “freedom fighters” drive a van into a crowd of people! One comes out of the film with really conflicting feelings about a great many of the tactics used by Algerian revolutionaries, but you do not for a second question their cause, which is liberation from a discriminatory imperialist occupation. Italian director, Pontecorvo, while clearly biased in favor of the Algerians, brilliantly managed to bring out the tragedy of loss of life on either side of the conflict. By largely relying on non-actors, and shooting the entire picture on location around the boulevards of Algiers and the alleyways of the Casbah, Gillo Pontecorvo created a work of fiction that is as close to documentary/newsreel footage as a feature film could ever be. Yes, there is a main cast of characters that the film follows, and there is a particularly villainous French colonel, but ultimately, the film ends up becoming less about any of these characters and more about the greater cause all these people are in conflict about. This is Third Cinema, a movement that grew in opposition to the profit-centric movies of Hollywood, and the auteur-centric films of the French New Wave. Profit and the artist’s persona both take a back seat in favor of the subject matter. Four manifestos, all out of Latin America, are said to have contributed to the movement’s formation – back when manifesto’s mattered – but one particular manifesto by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino is said to really outline the genre. Published in 1969, three years after THE BATTLE OF ALGIER's release, the manifesto is called Toward a Third Cinema. It starts off strong and unflinching:

In an alienated world, culture - obviously - is a deformed and deforming product. To overcome this it is necessary to have a culture of and for the revolution, a subversive culture capable of contributing to the downfall of capitalist society. In the specific case of the cinema - art of the masses par excellence - its transformation from mere entertainment into an active means of de-alienation becomes imperative. Its role in the battle for the complete liberation of man is of primary importance. The camera then becomes a gun, and the cinema must be a guerrilla cinema.

Third Cinema, although nowhere nearly as known today or discussed as the French New Wave, was hugely influential. In the late 60’s, THE BATTLE OF ALGEIRS was pretty much required viewing for any young American opposing the Vietnam war. Its fingerprints are all over the rogue cultural output of 1970’s America, even that output which falls into the category of the escapist-entertainment-that-ushered-in-the-death-of-serious-filmmaking. Case in point: Star Wars. Squint your eyes during the BATTLE OF ALGIERS and you’re basically watching Jedi rebels fighting to bring down the Empire. As a matter of fact, the Jedi robe is a replica of traditional Algerian clothing worn by men in the Casbah. The set for Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine was built right next door in Tunisia.

Sure, Lucas drew much inspiration from America’s early pulps, French bande dessinées, and Moebius’ storyboards for Jodorowsky’s unproduced DUNE, but without pitting a bunch of ragged rebels against a relentless empire, none of that would’ve mattered.

One of the primary goals of the movement was to create films that the: 

System cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs. 

As such, one might consider THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS an extraordinary piece of Third Cinema given that it was banned from French television til as recent as 1999. On the other hand, the movie seems to have been appropriated for use contrary to its purpose. In particular, by the Pentagon, which regularly screens the film for officersas a study in “terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare”, particularly in Mid-East countries occupied by the US. Gillo Pontecorvo could not have imagined that his film would be reverse-engineered by the imperialists of the future. Third Cinema’s manifesto contains much that is still relevant today, to a great many people everywhere, not just the "Third World."

The anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of the Third World and of their equivalents inside the imperialist countries constitutes today the axis of the world revolution.

Contrary to common belief, Third Cinema was not a movement deemed exclusive to the Third World, but was also made to include "their equivalents inside the imperialist countries". Where the manifesto's worldview may be limited is in seeing the struggle as predominantly a class struggle between the Capitalists and the masses. Perhaps not limited, but maybe slightly outdated.

Yes, the impoverished suffer the most, and they do constitute the vast majority of people living on the planet, and yes, still to this day they are mostly in countries of the Third World. But recent events around the world have been making it evermore clear that the need for liberation is not exclusive to people living under foreign occupation, or people living in poverty, but is shared by a vast mixed class of people living under the tyranny of their very own fucktards. Who themselves are an odd mix of wealthy capitalists, impoverished conservatives, and perpetrators of war. The need for something other than a Third Cinema –or Third Culture for that matter– is becoming evident. Our understanding of cultural colonization now reveals something far more complex than that of 1966. A third, fourth, or fifth cultural practice just won’t cut it. What we’re looking at is Third Squared. Culture #9 essentially. Still, Towards a Third Cinema contains much that will resonate with cultural practitioners today.

How could the problem of turning out liberation films be approached when costs came to several thousand dollars and the distribution and exhibition channels were in the hands of the enemy?

The duo make glorious arguments. Such that any “revolutionary cinema” produced within the established systems can only ever be the “progressive wing of Establishment cinema.” It is for similar reasons that I’ve been serializing my graphic novel, THE SOLAR GRID, the way I have. I don’t need some dude with a desk job to tell me my protagonist’s conflict ought to be obvious on the very first page, or that I can’t be depicting blowjobs in a comic whose protagonist is a pre-teen girl, or that I can’t be having her say "the N word". Even those working in the more literary vicinity of publishing seem to be constrained by some rather conservative compartmentalization of fiction. Exempli gratia: a child protagonist means it should be a YA book, visual depiction of sex is for porn, or… YOU MUST HAVE A MAIN VILLAIN! This is a problem, not only because it is severely limiting to the possibilities of artistic expression, but because it views people at large as consumers of ideology rather than creators of ideology. There is plenty of space for artists to suggest previously non-existent ideological landscapes within their work, allowing for the “consumers” to create their own ideologies from there. The gatekeepers of cultural production are failing to see the writing on the wall, which couldn’t have been made more clear than with MOONLIGHT winning Best Picture at the Oscar’s, and LOGAN’s trailer being set to a Johnny Cash song. Big changes are coming. They’re coming to art, to culture, and even to “entertainment.” Buckle up and get ready, because the next decade will be one helluva ride. Culturally, it’ll be the best we’ve seen since, possibly, the 60’s.

Ganzeer Los Angeles, CA March 11, 2017

[ganzeer]

The reading at Tattered Cover in Denver (Aug 9) went surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because I was seated next to Nathaniel Popkin, y'see, who is a poet and author of not one novel, but two. Naturally, I was a little intimidated. This was only my third ever book-launch type event, and possibly only my second public reading. I have of course been speaking publicly since as far back as 2008, but that's different because it doesn't involve reading from a piece of paper. It's just talking from your head really (at least for me it is), and that's easy because it's what we do all the time. Public reading, however, is different. Because although it is reading, it shouldn't feel like reading. It needs to be a little performative, with sentences flowing rhythmically with pauses at just the right parts. Sometimes certain sentences need a second or two to sink in. You may want to change your voice just a tad per each character, sound agitated when the character is agitated, or jolly when it's a festive scene, that sort of thing. You also need to maintain a degree of eye contact with audience members. You can't have your face stuffed in the book the entire time, but you also need to not lose your place on the page. It ain't easy, folks.

The audience laughed at the funny bits, and was dead quiet for the tense bits. All in all, things went well. Nathaniel and I –having only met in person for the first time– had astonishingly good chemistry, and were adequately challenged by Angela Evans' questions (journalism before friendship, y'all), and the audience had many things to ask and chat about as well. Resulting in a book event that lasted a good two hours. Tattered Cover were nice enough to reward us for our bravery with engraved copper bookmarks. Whatever your bookmarks are made of, I want them all, because they always come in handy (death to the dogearers). I read the book over the weekend just prior to the event, and was so struck by the stories and essays that I really began to question Nathaniel and Stephanie's sanity for including me at all. It is an incredibly powerful book,and I feel greatly humbled to be a part of it. No time to relish in "accomplishments" though, for there is yet much to be done.

Ganzeer August 18, 2018 Denver, CO

[ganzeer]

There's too much stuff. Pointless stuff, unnecessary stuff. Stuff that hardly does what it’s meant to do. I recently had to replace my MacBook's charger for the 3rd time since I bought the damn thing, and I keep having to mend the straps on a backpack I bought at a design museum, of all places. And a pair of shoes I bought only last fall have more or less disintegrated. There was a time when people would steal shoes off of fresh dead bodies for Christ's sake, because that shit was built to last.

We pride ourselves on shooting probes out to Mars, and designing cars that can drive themselves, yet when it comes to some of the most basic things, we seem to be failing. We claim to evolve yet we are clearly devolving on so many levels.

What if every single human act was backed by a manifesto? A personal one even, would we still be making shit?

How many people go to school just to get a degree, instead of out of a genuine desire to learn? How many people go to conferences just for the networking, to promote their brands, rather than a real want to cross-pollinate? How many brands make shit just to put their logo in people's faces, rather than out of a desire to actually introduce something new and useful into society?

Enough is enough! We are tired of meaningless newsfeeds and conversations that go nowhere. We do not need more books by writers who have absolutely nothing to say. We do not need more songs about cheating girlfriends, or your glorious jet-setting lifestyles. We do not need another video-game that allows us to impersonate a ruthless killing machine sent to invade another country.

We want the things in our lives to be there because they are necessary. Because there is a vacuum that needs filling. We want every human action to be deliberate, and purposeful. If everything in our world was done with passion–true genuine passion–would we ever put "Yellow 5" in our cheese, or film dumb comedies about getting drunk in Vegas? Would our television programs be smarter, more enriching, or would they still constitute talk-shows geared to promoting the free giveaways under studio-audience seats?

It's time to cut the bullshit. It's time everything–every human action, every product, every task, every building–everything we did was done with purpose beyond our pathetic little egos, beyond short-term gains. It's time everything was done for the greater good, for the world at large.

It's time everything was a manifesto.

Ganzeer March 22, 2018 Denver, CO

[ganzeer]

OH ART, WHERE ART THOU?

May 1879, an independently published satirical journal –a precursor to the “zine”– printed a crudely illustrated political cartoon showing the ruler of Egypt, Khedive Ismail Pasha, standing next to an auctioneer offering up the Sphinx and Great Pyramids in exchange for British Pounds. Foreign buyers and dignitaries gather round with interest.

The paper was called Abou Naddara Zarqa, or “The Man in the Blue Glasses” and the force behind it was a sole individual: James Sanua, an Egyptian/Italian Freemason Jew who indeed wore blue spectacles and identified as an Egyptian Nationalist. The publication of this particular cartoon was only three years before the British officially occupied Egypt, making it a rather accurate premonition.

Although Sanua produced the paper entirely on his own from a small printing shop in Paris, located in the Passage du Caire –No, really!– its influence cannot be understated. The reason it was produced from Paris is because that’s where Sanua went into exile after two failed attempts on his life were made by the Egyptian regime. This after 15 issues of the paper had been produced from within Egypt all in the span of just two months. Being heavy on satirical criticism, and being the first ever Arabic publication to employ cartoons and colloquial Egyptian Arabic in its writing, the Khedive knew that it had the power to undermine his rule, even in a country boasting a population of, at the time, over 5.5 million of which 94% could not read or write. But still, Abou Naddara was influential nonetheless. According to Blanchard Jerrold (1826 - 1884), a prolific English journalist and author of Egypt Under Ismail Pacha, which appeared in print a short time before the Khedive’s forced abdication, “[Abou Naddara] was in every barrack, in every Government-office. In every town and village it was read with the liveliest delight.” Often times, people gathered round in the coffeeshops to hear it read out loud to them. Such was the popularity of this unconstrained journal –which in its heyday reached a circulation of 50,000 copies– that the Khedive wrote to Sanua in Paris promising titles and fortune should he refrain from further violating the ruler’s dignity. This is according to Sanua anyway (it’s hard to tell fact from fiction with these damn satirists, isn’t it?). Sanua’s reaction, being the gloriously outspoken person that he was, was to publish the Khedive’s letter in full. Through his work, James Sanua may have brought a number of innovations to the Arab-speaking world, such as the use of colloquial dialect and political cartooning in mass print media, and before that, the introduction of colloquial Egyptian dialect to modern theatre, the precursor to Egyptian cinema, which is still the most influential across the Arab world today. But in reality Sanua was galvanizing a very Egyptian tradition: satire. 81 years prior to the launch of Abou Naddara Zarqa, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. A campaign that lasted only 3 years and ended with Napoleon fleeing the country and leaving his troops behind, thanks in no small part to the Egyptian brand of satire which sent the European despot into fits of “narcissistic rage” according to Avner Falk in his book Napoleon Against Himself. One French prisoner of the British –who intervened in Egypt to keep it from French influence– had this to say: “When I was in Egypt… it would have been beyond my power to prevent the population from speaking freely in the coffeehouses. They were freer and more independent in their speech than the Parisians. Though they submitted to slavery in everything else, they meant to be free in that respect. The coffeehouses were the castles of their opinions.” In a cave not far from the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut to the south of Egypt is a piece of rather rebellious graffiti that is a few thousand years old. It depicts what is thought to be Hatshepsut, female Pharaoh of Egypt from 1478-1458 B.C, bent over and getting penetrated from behind by her Chancellor and royal architect Senenmut. Although the female Pharaoh’s rule is largely considered prosperous by most historians, this piece of graffito may be a clue as to the control enacted over Hatshepsut by her Chancellor, and the general resentment felt by the populace towards that dynamic.

Was the Pharaoh actually romantically involved with her Chancellor or was this piece of artistic expression something of an exaggeration? A sort of... satire? In my mind, that’s not really the important question to ask, because the Ancient Egyptians believed that the spoken word had an effect on the physical world. And even more powerful than the spoken word was the written word. The thing is though, throughout much of Ancient Egyptian history, words and pictures were interchangeable things. The act of carving such an image, of manifesting the idea into physical form, even if in a far away cave visited by no one, would have enough of an impact on the physical world to make it true. If the cave was however visited –even if by a select few– then such an impact would almost be guaranteed. If Hatshepsut and her Chancellor were not actually romantically involved, perhaps the witnessing of such a vulgar piece of graffito by a peasant or two, even in secret, would create enough “buzz” around their relationship that they would indeed eventually end up romantically involved. Or, if not, they would still be remembered as such long after they’re dead, no matter what the reality actually was. Such is the power of words and pictures, especially ones charged with satire. As Alan Moore, self-proclaimed shaman and arguably the greatest anglophone author of our time is quoted as saying: “Bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skillful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself. And if it’s a particularly good bard, and he’s written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you’re dead, people are still gonna be laughing at what a twat you were.” In that sense, there is no magic greater or more powerful than the magic of words, which we’ve already established is interchangeable with images. What that means is that words and pictures, Art essentially, is magic. And with it, one can actively change the world. Perhaps that is why the Old English term for “be” was also “art”. With that notion in mind, one cannot help but feel completely disheartened by the vast majority of art produced and exhibited today. Art that lacks intent, wielded by individuals who seem to be completely unaware of the magic at their fingertips. Of course there will be artists, very good ones at that, who will say that this here publication is not a work of true art. How can it be spoken of in the same breath as anything produced by a Duchamp or Pollack? They will say the same of James Sanua’s work, an individual never cited in their art history books. This of course is understandable, as there are a great many among us who cannot get past the need for legitimization from big old established institutions. But rest assured, for the original journals of Abou Naddara continue to be successfully auctioned by the likes of Sotheby’s and Christie’s today. Art aside, there are those with legitimate concerns surrounding the propagation of fake news. But as the fantastic English author Neil Gaiman once said “'Once upon a time' is code for 'I’m lying to you'.” Personally, I don’t see why the words “Breaking News” can’t be used to that extent as well. In fact, I’m sure they already are to some degree or another, even by those claiming to be telling the truth. I’m willing to bet that James Sanua would’ve agreed. Mark Twain definitely thought so. I should point out, though, that everything in this here article is true by the way. No, really, I promise you. 100%.

Ganzeer Los Angeles, CA January 24, 2017

First published in ALTERNATIVE FACTS, a fictitious newspaper created for the exhibition MAGIC CITY in Munich, and later Stockholm. Also appeared in Ganzeer’s newsletter, RESTRICTED FREQUENCY, on April 22, 2017.

[ganzeer]

REVIEW THE THREE STIGMATA OF  PALMER ELDRITCH By Philip K. Dick

Barney Mayerson is head of the Pre-Fash department at P.P. Layouts in New York City, the department responsible for foretelling what will be fashionable before it is fashionable. His suitcase is his psychiatrist, Dr. Smile, which he's using to drive him mad enough to get out of being drafted to the colonies on Mars.

Emily, Barney's ex-wife, is now married to Richard Hnatt who attempts to sell Emily's handmade ceramics to P.P. Layouts. They could make a lot of money if Mayerson agrees to the purchase and has the ceramics miniaturized for Perky Pat layouts, a miniature world that people can inhabit by taking the drug Can-D, which most colonists on Mars do to "escape" the horrible living conditions out there. Knowing his ex-wife's handiwork all too well, Mayerson rejects the ceramics. This prompts Hnatt to accept an offer from Chew-Z Manufacturers, a newcomer to the interplanetary hallucinogenic drug trade.

Meanwhile, Palmer Eldritch has returned to the Solar System. His ship reportedly crash-landing on Pluto. The UN is simultaneously seizing shipments of Can-D, which is still technically illegal. This throws a wrench in P.P. Layouts entire business model. It later becomes clear that Palmer Eldritch has connections with the UN, and he himself is responsible for the import of Chew-Z from beyond the Solar System, a lichen he promises can deliver eternal life beyond the constraints of our physical realm. Unlike Can-D which has far too many limitations.

Philip K. Dick has constructed a rich, highly imaginative world in this unassuming 233-page novel, which is eons ahead of the time it was written in 1964. The cast of characters is rather vast, and their conflicting interests across the Solar System is an ideal basis for an intriguing, even nerve-wracking plot. There are parts in the story that will surely break your brain, not least of which are the drug trips. One such trip is a trip within a trip, and boy is it trippy. One of my favorite parts in the book is how Hnatt and Emily, now with enough money from their sale to Chew-Z, make for Munich to get in on some E Therapy, a rather sketchy treatment that allows people to "evolve". Their reasons for doing so is the possibility of an improved social standing, because everyone in the high-society "'papes" seems to be doing it. Needless to say, it backfires, but the narrative doesn't really follow that thread to the very end, nor does it tie it to the other story threads, many of which are left to hang loose by the end of the book.

Perhaps the novel's greatest downfall is the three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which the book is titled after: steel teeth, metallic right arm, and artificial eyes that provide Eldritch with a vast wide-angle view. Apparently, Palmer Eldritch is a permanent fixture in the worlds manifested by Chew-Z, although not necessarily appearing as Palmer Eldritch. What gives him away, however, are these three stigmata. Why these stigmata are completely undesguisable, it isn't really clear. Why Eldritch appears to anyone under the influence of Chew-Z, it isn't really clear either, but it is suggested that he may not actually be Palmer Eldritch at all, and instead may be an extraterrestrial from beyond the Solar System shaped in Palmer's image.

It's a wild ride, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH, that's for sure. It certainly isn't a perfect book, but there are enough ideas of maddening brilliance to warrant a read. Or two or three.

Ganzeer Denver, CO September 25, 2017

[ganzeer]

REVIEW LISSA: A STORY ABOUT MEDICAL PROMISE, FRIENDSHIP, AND REVOLUTION By Sherine Hamdy, Coleman Nye, Sarula Bao, and Caroline Brewer

Upon first glance, LISSA comes off as the sort of book that I would not at all be interested in. For one, the art style isn't the type that typically attracts me, because it is the sort of style that one would generally associate with books geared to a much younger audience. Secondly, the book, upon first glance, seems to deal with the Egyptian revolution in some fashion. This isn't in itself a bad thing, but because the Egyptian revolution is too grand and important a topic, I find that most graphic novels that have dealt with it in the past have done so rather poorly. Understandable given the weight of the subject matter which demands quite a lot from anyone attempting to tackle it. Thirdly, the book is published by the University of Toronto Press, a publisher of academic books. Since graphic novels aren't exactly their specialty, I suppose there is the tendency from the average comix reader to assume that these people couldn't possibly know the first thing about publishing a quality graphic novel and would, very likely, produce something that is quite subpar. Fourthly, I had never heard of any of the creators responsible for producing the book, and so assumed they probably wouldn't know the first thing about creating a graphic novel either.

I must say, I was wrong an all accounts. I started reading the book and I could not for the life of me put it down. I started reading it in the morning, and did not put it down before finishing it that very evening, after one long uninterrupted sitting. My, what a masterpiece!

The story follows Anna, the daughter of an American expat in Cairo who works for a multinational oil company. Anna's mother is suffering from Stage 4 cancer, a terribly difficult time for young Anna whose only real comfort can be found through her best friend, Layla, the daughter of the building's caretaker. A most beautiful and ultimately unusual friendship given the differences in class, race, and culture. By the time Anna must leave Cairo for college in the US, her mom has already passed and she has developed a fear of inheriting the breast cancer gene herself.

Years pass, and the Egyptian revolution breaks out. At this point, Layla is a med student already dealing with the complexities of classism at Cairo University's med school. She volunteers for the makeshift clinics tending to the protestors wounded by the regime's heavy-handed response. Anna, still in touch with her childhood friend, is compelled to return to Cairo and try to help the cause. Anna sees people actively sacrificing their bodies for a greater cause, while she is considering obliterating part of her own body as a preventative measure against getting breast cancer, for which she discovers she does in fact have the gene. 

And that doesn't even cover half of it. The story, through Anna and Layla's friendship, and through the relationship each one has with their own family and society at large, all against the backdrop of the Egyptian revolution becomes an examination of cultural differences as well as cultural intersectionality. It's a book about hope and sacrifice, and the effects of capitalism, not just on societies but also on modern medicine, and the environment. Such a complex work that somehow ends up becoming nothing less of a piercing examination of life itself in the 21st century.

A truly groundbreaking masterpiece that should be required reading for every human being alive.

(A note on the art: The art may come off as deceivingly weak, but upon a close reading, one finds that the art actually does a superb job at communicating all the emotional complexities inherent in the story, and as such it becomes difficult to deem the art as anything but effective. Which indeed makes it powerful.)

Bravo and thanks to all the creators involved. True unsung masters of the graphic novel medium.

Ganzeer Denver, CO September 22, 2017

LISSA is currently available for pre-order in both hardcover and paperback.

[oumcartoon]

Create and Critique

Washington friends: Join us on June 2, as we consider emerging trends in the visual and literary cultures of the contemporary Middle East and their relationship to politics. 

The half-day symposium, convened by the Institute of Current World Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS, will bring to life some of the questions this blog has sought to address over the past four years.

Comics, paintings, and fiction will set the stage for a new way of thinking about a region that is too often reduced to security considerations.

Please register here.

(Poster by Ganzeer)

[ganzeer-reviews]

THE BAD BATCH By Ana Lily Amirpour (& various)

o-o-o-o

This is one fucking weird movie, but I actually really liked it and I'm not sure why. Logically speaking, I really shouldn't like it. I mean, there's hardly a likable character in the entire thing. What little dialogue is in it is actually really slow and kind of off and pointless. But it stays with you long after you're done watching it. Or at least it has with me. A 20-something year old girl is dropped off by the police at a fenced off desert, where she is hunted down by cannibals. She manages to escape and make it to a self-sufficient community called Comfort, where besides having drugged out raves, inhabitants grow their own vegetables and raise bunnies. Up to here, the movie has you gripped by the balls and is pretty fucking flawless. But after that the story zigzags into these completely irrational directions and, despite being really slow and moody (appropriate for the desert setting), it all ends abruptly on a whatever sorta note. So: I can see why so many people really fucking despise this movie, including the two friends I saw it with. But: This is the first time in a very long time I've walked out of a movie and actually felt like; if I could, I'd actually like to own an original print of this film. It is absolutely gorgeously shot. The post-apocalyptic set pieces in the desert are made up of the debris of our current very average world, but the assemblage is peak style and super artistic. I get that it's very easy to write the whole thing off as some kind of millennial hipster Burning Man bullshit, but you can imagine a society of white suburban John Wayne-like family men hating on Dennis Hopper's EASY RIDER for reasons not entirely dissimilar. The equivalent of the long-haired hippie biker of the 70's is probably the millennial hipster of today, who is often shat on by the generation that came before. Which is why I suppose THE BAD BATCH isn't really made for the current generation of film critiques or Rotten Tomatoes voters, hence the really poor reviews it's been getting. Its audience is likely only within the millennial crowd, who unfortunately will probably not even hear about it before the film's director, Ana Lily Amirpour, is sent to Hollywood jail and denied the privilege of directing ever again. I'm hoping that won't be the case though, because if anyone can make a unique film right now on a nickel-to-dime budget, it's Amirpour, as demonstrated by her previous masterpiece, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. I would argue that THE BAD BATCH is the EASY RIDER of this generation, but that would be selling the artistry of Ana Lily Amirpour really really short. It might be more appropriate to compare her to 70's Jodorowsy whose EL TOPO was viewed religiously in late night exploitation theaters. Indeed, if such theaters still existed to this day, you can imagine them being the perfect viewing venues for THE BAD BATCH, where a contemporary crowd of young, high 20-somethings would likely frequent regularly just to watch the picture over and over and over again (although, it might have to be annexed to a craft brewery or artistinal coffeehouse for that to work). Amirpour has reportedly stated "I don’t make a film to tell you a message," so if you're expecting to walk into a film that is spoon-feeding you what it's about, or where every action is supposed to have some kind of payoff as per the conventional storytelling mechanics of the Hollywood film school, then you will certainly be disappointed. We find out at a much later point in the film that this barren desert is where "the bad batch", society's unwanted, is sent. So you find yourself assuming that maybe... these outcasts will break out and fight back? Or maybe we focus on the internal struggle within this desert prison and we have the cannibals facing off with the people of Comfort? Or maybe our heroine takes it upon herself to enact full-on revenge against the cannibals? The story never goes there though. Instead, much like the film's protagonist, you're tossed into a world that makes little sense, where people say shit that has no meaning and will lead to absolutely nothing, and you just go with it because that's actually what we do in real life most of the time. Not that you won't come out of THE BAD BATCH with something. It's a work of art where new meaning can be derived from the whole experience as per each and every viewers own persona, where new meaning can be derived each time you watch it. It's a work of art created by someone who might've tossed a young Jodorowsky, Lynch, Tarentino, and Miller into the blender, and chugged that shit down right before marching on set and declaring ACTION! The soundtrack is also killer (way better than BABY DRIVER's, by the way), and I am very much jonzing to hear it on vinyl (not them shitty iPod buds).

Ganzeer July 8, 2017

[ganzeer-reviews]

EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS By Peter Biskind

o-o-o-o-o

When the two [John Wayne and Dennis Hopper] were working on True Grit, Wayne once flew his helicopter in from the minesweeper he kept at Newport Beach, landed on the Paramount lot, swaggered onto the soundstage with his .45 hanging from his belt, and bellowed, "Where's that pinko Hipper? That goddamn Eldridge Cleaver's out there at UCLA saying 'shit' and 'cocksucker' in front of my sweet daughters. I want that red motherfucker. Where is that commie hiding?"

Like the war between old gods and new in Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS, EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS chronicles the battle between Old Hollywood and New. Well into the 60's, Hollywood was still churning out the glamorous musicals and John Wayne Westerns that were popular in the 50's, but America was a different place that the big studio bosses didn't quite get or understand. Anti-War protests and the Civil Rights movement were taking hold. The already popular Nina Simone began addressing racial inequality in her songs, and Bob Dylan became the most popular singer/songwriter in the country, second possibly to The Beatles, who, even they –mere pop artists– couldn't avoid addressing the horrors of the Vietnam war. Television was new, and it was on TV that you could get a glimpse of people like Bob Dylan and The Beatles, who neither looked, sounded, or behaved like anyone on the silver screen. Television was also where you could see mad, groundbreaking ideas for the first time. Things like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone were miles ahead of any feature-length film starring John Wayne or Elizabeth Taylor. As the studios began to lose a lot of money, the control enacted over film-making was relinquished to smaller production outfits, which started giving directors full control over how they made movies. So radical were the results that first time filmmakers like Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese became stars almost overnight. And yes, you read that right. Dennis fucking Hopper. EASY RIDER is America's first biker movie, and thus spoke to Americans at the time in a way that no other film ever had. According to Biskind, it largely involved Hopper dicking around on set. The "set" being America's open roads. Nevertheless, it cost $501,000 to make, and brought $91.1 million in rentals. A huge, and very unexpected, return on investment. It won the First Work Award at the Cannes Film festival and was nominated for two Oscars, and Hopper was subsequently christened by LIFE magazine as "Hollywood's hottest director." It was 1969, and the gates of Hollywood finally swung open to welcome American counter-culture for the majority of the 70's. Arguably, the best decade in American film-making until Spielberg and Lucas showed up to introduce the formula for what would become the, ugh, summer blockbuster. The book is a treasure trove of "New Hollywood" history, and delves with great detail into some of the horrors, trials, and tribulations involved in making some of America's greatest films. Warren recommended it to me, after I had listened to this NPR interview with Coppola about the difficulties faced in making THE GODFATHER. And let me tell you, what is revealed in that interview is nothingcompared to what's in this here book. Not just in regards to Coppola, but pretty much every American filmmaker who rose to prominence in the 70's.

Paul [Schrader] made the call to his agent, Michael Hamilburg, said, "This is The Godfather meets Bruce Lee. It's gonna sell for sixty grand. You get a third of the money, I get a third, and Leonard [Schrader] gets a third."

Hamilburg gave them $5,000 on the spot. The brothers arrived in L.A. around Thanksgiving and rented a tiny apartment on Bicknell in Venice, a block from the beach, for $90 a month, which Hamilburg paid for. They took the bedroom doors off the hinges, stole some cinder blocks from a construction site, set up two desks, one in each bedroom, facing each other. The only other piece of furniture was a massive butcher block coffee table with wrought iron legs. They rented two electric typewriters, wrote three drafts in about eight weeks. They wrote around the clock, twenty, twenty-two hours a day, worked ten hours, slept one, very little food. Toward the end, around Christmas of '72, they were running out of money, even though they were spending less than a dollar a day, $7, $10 a week for food, stealing plastic envelopes of ketchup from restaurants, making tomato juice. "We sat down, took a good look at the script, and said to each other, 'We gotta write it one more time,'" recalls Leonard. "We were just wiped out, needed to find the energy to write one more draft. For us, the only surefire source of that big a jolt was guilt. We talked about, 'How we gonna get' – you didn't wanna go out and rob somebody – 'the guilt?' My brother said to me, 'We'll go to Vegas, lose our money, we'll feel so guilty, so pissed off, we'll come home and finish the script.'"

And sure enough, they did. And a couple paragraphs later:

Says Leonard, "There was an auction, sixteen bidders, it was the highest amount for original script ever sold at that point: $325,000."

The film that came out of it, THE YAKUZA, directed by Sydney Pollack, is... well, alright. But it did open the gateways for Paul Schrader who went on to write TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, and eventually direct his own films, like HARDCORE and AMERIAN GIGOLO. But not before screwing his brother over.

When the dust settled, instead of an easy three-way split, The Yakuza money was split 40-40 between Paul and Hamilburg, with Leonard getting only 20 percent. "I wanted to have that sole screenwriting credit, so I made him take shared story credit," says Paul. Leonard looked the other way, pretended it hadn't happened.

Even though THE YAKUZA was originally Leonard's idea for a novel, before his brother convinced him to co-write it as a screenplay with him. Such personal stories aside, one can't help but see the overarching parallels between then and now. Like Old Hollywood back then, Hollywood today has been riding the wave of an old formula – the summer blockbuster – since well, the 80's really. Like Television in the 60's, the Internet has sprung up as the new media outlet through which one can experience things a little closer to today's equivalent of "counter-culture." The internet became home to some of Cory Doctorow's first novels, it is where the art of Molly Crabapple first saw the light, where live video was being broadcast from the heart of the Arab Spring, where people are Tumbling their homemade unairbrushed porn, where kids are producing microfiction using cell phones, and where you can hear Kim Boekbinder sing Pussy Grabs Back in response to Donald Trump. Again, there is a sense that big media outlets are stuck in their old ways, producing things that are far removed from the pulse of now. But if recent hits like MOONLIGHT and GET OUT are any indication, it seems like Hollywood may be catching up. MOONLIGHT is an honest portrayal of homosexuality in an African American community. GET OUT unapologetically tackles the horrors of racism by way of a popular genre film. One of them won the Oscar for best film, and the other is the highest grossing film by a writer/director in the history of American cinema. These are game-changers that tell us that the decade to come will be nothing short of a cultural revolution. And that excites me.

[Available on Amazon]

Ganzeer April 29, 2017