CulturePulp.

CulturePulp 86: Zen and the 'Whiteout' Movie Deal

For the latest CulturePulp comic strip, I sat down with Portland-based comics artist Steve Lieber. We talked about "Whiteout" -- both the 1999 graphic novel (which Lieber illustrated) and the movie adaptation that opens nationwide on Friday, Sept. 11.

Also: Here's a link to the raw text of my full hour-and-a-half conversation with Lieber -- about "Whiteout," how to draw Antarctica, Lieber's almost supernaturally Zen attitude about the Hollywood development process, obsessive research, amateur spelunking, how to extract payment from difficult publishers, how to make a 100-page comic in 20 days, horrible teaching experiences, designing Hello Kitty floats, working for a literal ton of food, and why a 3-D map of Gotham City might be a nice way to appease the continuity gods.

CulturePulp 86: Zen and the 'Whiteout' movie deal (Webcomics Nation)

Mike Russell Interrogates WHITEOUT Graphic Novel Illustrator Steve Lieber! (Ain't It Cool News)

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: Christopher McQuarrie

 

According to Christopher McQuarrie, "Valkyrie" was supposed to be a tiny, fast-moving production. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Usual Suspects" got his friend, "Suspects" and "X-Men" director Bryan Singer, interested in filming McQuarrie's tense, unapologetically old-school World War II screenplay (co-written with Nathan Alexander) -- which recounts a failed conspiracy by German officers to kill Hitler, take over the government and end the war in July 1944.

"Bryan and I were going to make this as a little movie between two giant studio movies that Bryan would make," says McQuarrie. "This was going to be $17.5 million, a little project we were gonna have fun doing, and it was going to be us getting back to our roots: 'From the creators of "The Usual Suspects" comes a different kind of lineup.'"

Fate -- or, more specifically, Tom Cruise -- had other plans.

They took the film to Cruise's studio, United Artists, which "led inevitably to a meeting with Tom, and it was expressly understood that this was not a meeting with Tom the actor -- this was a meeting with Tom the studio," says McQuarrie. "We were happy with that.... We weren't there to ask, and he wasn't there to impose. But out of that meeting emerged this partnership. And the movie took on a life of its own."

By "a life of its own," McQuarrie means Cruise decided to take the lead role of conspirator Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the budget blew up to somewhere in the neighborhood of $75-90 million, and the film found itself the subject of endless entertainment-press chatter -- fueled by Cruise's controversial celebrity antics -- about everything from a rough shoot to budget bloat to speculation about whether the accents worked.

"What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything," McQuarrie says. (He'll lay out in detail how an expensive opening battle scene was always in the script, how the "troubled" test screenings never happened, how Cruise was a thoughtful producer, and how "the accent issue" was carefully considered.) "No one called us to verify any of the stories. And in the cut-and-paste universe of bloggers as journalists, they would just forward the story with their own spin on it -- and all of it was reading tea leaves....

"What I'm most proud of in this movie is that it never stopped being that film that we set out to make," he says. "It got bigger, and we got a lot of toys to play with, but it kept the spirit of that gritty, straightforward World War II movie."

McQuarrie (who also wrote and directed the 2000 cult crime flick "The Way of the Gun," which he grossly underrates) talked for nearly an hour about the myths and facts surrounding "Valkyrie," among other things. An edited transcript follows the jump.

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: Chuck Palahniuk

As promised to readers of today's Oregonian: Here's a much longer (and slightly more profane) edit of my interview with "Choke" and "Fight Club" novelist Chuck Palahniuk....

Chuck Palahniuk says he doesn't mind a bit when smart filmmakers mess with his books.

In fact, Palahniuk -- the author of "Fight Club," "Choke" and several other transgressive cult-hit novels -- encourages the tinkering.

Here's what he says about director David Fincher, who tweaked the ending of "Fight Club": "These people are really, really smart -- and whatever they're going to do is going to be smarter than what I can dictate. My job is not to try to control this process; it's to try and be present and learn from what they're doing."

And here's what Palahniuk told writer-director Clark Gregg, who just finished a no-budget adaptation of "Choke," which opens in Portland this Friday: "For six or seven years, every conversation was me really pushing Clark to change everything he wanted to change ... so that the movie and book would stand alone as their own distinct, valid things.... There was a little bit of browbeating for him to finally accept that he had that freedom. But I think he loved it when he had it."

Of course, Palahniuk is lucky in that his trust has been well-placed: "Choke" is weird and shocking and funny and terrific. It tells the story of a historical re-enactor and sex addict named Victor (Sam Rockwell) who stages choking incidents in restaurants for cash. Victor dropped out of med school to care for his mother, Ida (Anjelica Huston), a former '60s radical fading fast in a mental hospital. Victor's barrel-scraping life plunges even deeper when he courts a loony-bin doctor (Kelly MacDonald) with surprising revelations about his parentage.

Gregg (who wrote "What Lies Beneath" and is best-known for playing Richard on "The New Adventures of Old Christine") shot his film in a blistering three weeks. The resulting lack of visual panache is more than compensated by the film's wicked humor and terrific performances -- especially Rockwell's furious, sympathetic take on a sleazy con man.

Palahniuk forged a writing career in his mid-30s, after stints as a journalist and diesel mechanic. He now lives in the Columbia Gorge and occasionally turns up in costume at Portland Cacophony Society events like the pirate-themed Plunderathon. Mostly, he nurtures his rabid fan base and concentrates on his writing -- which also includes "Invisible Monsters," "Rant," "Survivor," "Snuff" and the occasional journalism assignment.

Palahniuk and I talked about "Choke," Sam Rockwell, Bruce Dern, the power of the "profane something," Shakespeare, the perils of literary fiction, Portland's Cacophony Society, sex addiction, Nazi re-enactors, and fan management, among other things. An edited transcript follows the jump.

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: 'Nobody Scores!' cartoonist Brandon Bolt

Here's the intro to a nice long interview that just went live on The Oregonian's Web site....

Brandon Bolt may be one of the best-kept secrets in webcomics. By day, the Portland resident is a commercial illustrator. By night, he produces "Nobody Scores!" -- one of the smartest, angriest comics on the Internet.

The strip's premise is simple. Four damaged people -- frustrated intellectual Raoul, corporate whore Sara, starving artiste Beans, and wild girl Jane Doe -- share a house and get into all sorts of R-rated trouble. That "trouble" is fascinating for a couple of reasons:

1. It tends to be unusually well-observed, furious cultural criticism that's unlike anything in webcomics. Sara embarks on get-rich-quick schemes that lethally exploit the other characters' weaknesses. Jane Doe goes to absurd lengths to try out the latest "alternative" crazes -- including riot-grrl roller derby and parkour and casual cynicism -- and leaves apocalyptic destruction (and more than a few bodies) in her wake. Beans is cursed with a fatal sense of Gen-X entitlement without any talent to back it up. And Raoul mostly regards the others with over-intellectualized disgust.


2. Also fascinating: the comic's complete ignorance of any sort of continuity. Bolt gleefully and violently kills every character in the strip over and over -- only to hit the reset button for the next installment. A lot of popular webcartoonists fall in love with their own characters and universes, maintaining increasingly unwieldy continuities that are more confusing than satisfying. Not Bolt. He wrecks the joint, repeatedly.

It's all beautifully written and drawn -- really, "Nobody Scores!" is one of the most expressively drawn comics anywhere right now, full of wild emotion and a brilliantly restrained color palate. It evokes nothing so much as the anarchic, ska-influenced comics of early-'90s small-press creators like Evan Dorkin.

It's a raging tone that would be difficult to sustain, but Bolt has somehow done it for over 250 strips since 2006, several times a week -- even though several of these single strips are longer than an entire week's run on most other webcomics.

I caught Mr. Bolt in IM a while back for a long chat about "Nobody Scores!" You can read an edited (but still ridiculously long) transcript of our conversation at The Oregonian's Web site.
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Q&A: 'Nobody Scores!' cartoonist Brandon Bolt (OregonLive.com, May 19, 2008)

Writing (and drawing) about 'Twilight.'

Last March, I visited the set of "Twilight" for the Los Angeles Times and watched vampires play baseball. Here's the resulting Sunday feature.

I also made a CulturePulp comic about the filming of a sequence in which vampires walk out of the woods at 30 miles an hour.
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'Twilight' taps teen-vampire romance  (Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2008)

CulturePulp 72: Vampires on the Carpet (Webcomics Nation)

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: Chiwetel Ejiofor

Since his Hollywood debut (in 1997's "Amistad") the only common thread in Chiwetel Ejiofor's performances has been that they're electrifying -- whether he's playing a Nigerian refugee ("Dirty Pretty Things"), a drag queen ("Kinky Boots"), a spacefaring samurai ("Serenity"), or (as he did recently on the London stage) Othello.

In "Redbelt," the latest offering from writer/director David Mamet, Ejiofor keeps up his habit of never assailing the same role twice. The British actor plays Mike Terry, an American master of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Mike is a quiet, principled self-defense instructor who refuses to "sell out" his martial art, testing the patience of his breadwinner wife (Alice Braga) -- until a series of misfortunes force him to compete in the world of professional mixed martial arts, or MMA.

That's right: David Mamet just made a martial-arts movie. (Actually, he disputes that characterization, more accurately referring to it as a "fight movie.")

"Redbelt," which opened May 9 in Portland, is a strange blend. It mixes Mamet's vivid, specific dialogue (and his love of elaborate con games and male honor codes) with authentic-looking bouts of Jiu-Jitsu. It's performed by an equally strange cast -- one that includes Mamet regulars like Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna, Tim Allen as a drunk action-movie star, and real, weather-faced fighters like Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini and Portland's own MMA legend Randy Couture.

Ejiofor anchors it all with a quiet performance punctuated with moments of perfectly understated, graceful violence -- moments that look like they were just brutal to learn and choreograph.

I talked with Ejiofor about Mamet, martial arts and the chances that we'll see his glowingly reviewed Othello on these shores any time soon. An edited transcript follows the jump.

Raiders of the 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

In the '80s, three Mississippi teenagers filmed an incredible shot-for-shot remake of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. You can see it this weekend at Portland's Hollywood Theatre. Here's a slightly longer version of the story I wrote for today's Oregonian about it.

In the 1980s, Chris Strompolos and two friends, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, filmed a shot-for-shot remake of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in Mississippi. Strompolos played Indiana Jones.

It took them seven years -- using camcorders, friends, family and whatever props they could cobble together.

"Here was this seven-year odyssey of being a total geek," recalls Strompolos, 37. "For me, it represented a chapter in my childhood that was very exciting and very turbulent -- a lot of changes, a lot of parental stuff going on, figuring out my awkward teenage self.... I think for many years, my relationship to that movie was one of embarrassment." After he got his life sorted out and got married, he says, "I never watched it. I never showed it to anybody. My wife didn't even know. I tucked it away."

But then something extraordinary happened. The remake -- dubbed "Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation" -- leaked to the world. And the world was awed and amused by the insane level of detail these young men invested in their homage to Steven Spielberg's adventure classic.

And the world (and a few Hollywood fans) saw fit to make it a cult sensation, changing Strompolos' life forever. In fact, he and Zala are (proudly) hosting three screenings of this remarkable, obsessive act of movie love this Friday and Saturday (April 18-19) at the Hollywood Theatre.

The rest of this fairly incredible saga after the jump.

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: 'Persepolis' creator Marjane Satrapi

As promised to readers of today's CulturePulp comic:

Paris-based filmmaker/illustrator Marjane Satrapi enjoys a richly deserved global following for "Persepolis" -- her sensational comics memoir about growing up during Iran's Islamic "cultural revolution."

The graphic novel used simple, iconic artwork to chart Satrapi's growing cynicism as she lost loved ones to both the Iran-Iraq war and the fundamentalist Muslims who ousted the Shah in 1979 -- and then nearly lost her life after her parents exilied her to Vienna during her very heady adolescence.

Her deeply unstable life between ages 13 and 25 (she's now 38) found her lonely in Vienna; falling in with a bunch of nihilists more interested in hedonism than politics; ending up homeless after falling out with friends and lovers; and returning in shame to Iran -- where she donned a veil, embarked on an art-school education, and jumped into a rocky marriage before taking another stab at freedom.

"Persepolis" was just adapted into a sensational animated feature by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. It's a sneaky story, using simple pictures to make complex points. Every time young cartoon-Satrapi embraces faith, martyrdom or revolutionary fervor (which the artist renders in literal terms, up to and including visits from God), a real-life death, hypocrisy or injustice shatters her worldview. Meanwhile, her Marxist parents -- who'd raised their daughter to be willful and opinionated -- put a very human face on dissent in the war-torn region. Both book and movie accomplish the mean feat of hinting at a smorgasboard of opinions and agonies in a country that Western media tends to depict in terms that can be, well, cartoonish.

And yet "Persepolis" never feels anything less than effortless. The art in both book and film is the best kind of simple, with a clear design ethos at work -- balancing the absurd horrors of fundamentalism and war with humorous moments that make it just bearable.

There's a wonderful moment mid-book when the strong-willed Satrapi puts on a veil and prepares to return to Iran. "So much for my individual and social liberties," she laments, staring in the mirror at her black-cloaked self. "I needed so badly to go home." But by the end of her picaresque journey through adolescence, art-school and oppression, you realize this powerful, stubborn woman no longer has a home.

I interviewed Satrapi for 40 minutes last month, around a lone table in a gigantic empty ballroom in a Portland hotel. She was a ferocious presence, leaning forward and smoldering and talking in torrents. She sat down and immediately fired up a Winston in the middle of the empty room, saying, "I have tested the smoke alarms in all the hotels. None of them go off." She used a small water glass on the table as an ashtray, and doodled a picture of a house on a paper pad throughout the interview. An edited transcript of our entire chat follows the jump.

CulturePulp 67: Jerry at the Junket

In the latest CulturePulp comic -- now available in its entirety at Webcomics Nation -- I meet Jerry Seinfeld at a "Bee Movie" press event in Seattle.

CulturePulp 67: Jerry at the Junket (Webcomics Nation)

Complete  CulturePulp comic archives at WCN

THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: Jerry Seinfeld and 'Bee Movie' directors Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith

As promised to readers of today's CulturePulp comic:

Here's a lengthy chat with Jerry Seinfeld and "Bee Movie" directors Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith. This edited transcript combines two interviews -- conducted  Oct. 3 in two different rooms at Seattle's Fairmont Olympic Hotel.

As our story begins, I've walked into Seinfeld's suite -- and he immediately comments on the color of my raincoat....