Dear Mr. Watterson examines the series, as well as the early works and known influences of Watterson; a notoriously private man who ended the strip at the height of its fame. He has since shunned nearly all public appearances and interviews (including Dear Mr. Watterson), and has declined the sort of highly lucrative licensing agreements that earned Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz over a billion dollars in his lifetime. It remains his firm belief that the work should stand on its own artistic merits.

For Mr. Schroeder and his production partners, the documentary has been a labor of love that has taken over 6 years to complete. Its budget of roughly $120,000 was financed entirely through Kickstarter. Now on the festival circuit, Dear Mr. Watterson has begun to attract attention and win awards. The project features an impressive array of interviews with Watterson’s peers and more notable fans, including Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed and actor/writer Seth Green.

Mr. Schroeder spoke with me back in March of 2013.

Tell me a little bit about the origins of the project. It’s clear that Mr. Watterson’s work had a strong impact on you and your production partners, but what led you to explore the topic in a film?

I’ve loved Calvin & Hobbes since I was a kid, and at one point several years ago, it just dawned on me how much the strip still meant to me.  And I’ve never met anybody who didn’t like Calvin & Hobbes.  You either weren’t very familiar with it, or you were a fan.  And as a filmmaker, project ideas had come and gone for a while, as I’d lose passion about them over time.  But with Dear Mr. Watterson, the idea stuck, and nearly 6 years later, we’ve got a movie.

How difficult was the process of raising funds through Kickstarter, and how did you build awareness of it? Did the excess amount raised expand the scope of the production?

We’ve actually done 2 separate Kickstarter campaigns, raising a total of about $121,000.  By late 2009, less than 9 months after Kickstarter had launched, we had been working on the film for two years already, moving at a very slow pace, and limited by major budget constraints.  We could basically spend what I could afford to put towards the movie myself.  Kickstarter provided what seemed to be the perfect solution to fund the film: a platform that would enable us to turn to fans of the strip to make it possible.  We had already been trying to create a little bit of awareness about the project though Facebook, because we wanted to involve and include fans in the movie itself.  So, in December 2010, we started our first campaign, with our to raise $12,000, which seemed quite daunting. By the end of our 90 day campaign, we had doubled our goal and the stakes had been raised. We suddenly had 359 Backers who were very invested in seeing us succeed.

Even with the money from our initial Kickstarter campaign, however, we were still a very low budget film, and we had to be careful in our spending.  By the spring of 2012, two full years later, we were deep into post production, and it was becoming clear that in order to finish the film in a timely manner and not make our first Backers wait endlessly for the film, we needed to raise additional funds to finish up. Our new goal was $50,000, and after at first wondering if we could pull it off, we ended up nearly doubling our goal yet again, bringing in another 1,724 new Backers.

People have asked me for advice about Kickstarter, and I always have to point out that we were successful in large part to the topic of our documentary.  Fans of Calvin & Hobbes are everywhere, and they came out to support us in a big way.  But I would surely not say that it was easy.  Running a Kickstarter campaign takes a lot of planning and time and effort.  You need to think hard about your rewards and the costs involved in fulfilling those rewards.  We will spend over $4500 just on postage to send out rewards.  While Kickstarter was a perfect way for us to fund Dear Mr. Watterson, and I’m happy to have the additional duties of administering to all of our Backers and fulfilling their rewards, Kickstarter is definitely not a solution to all funding quandaries.

The 2012 Best Documentary winner, Searching For Sugarman, also deals with a reclusive artist whose peak years seemed disproportionately small compared to his talents. Are there any investigative elements to your film regarding Mr. Watterson and his life? Were any attempts made to contact him?

The film is really about the personal impact that Bill Watterson has had through his art, and not about his life.  And because of his wish for privacy, I felt that one boundary we would set was that we would not pursue Watterson or his family for interviews. It was just simply too clear to me that he had no wish to participate in a film about him and his work.  We do explore his career, especially some choices he made, but we leave his personal life to him.  I have not tried to contact him directly, but we do know that he is aware of the project.

Although it was one of the most popular and best-selling 4-panel comic strips of its day, Calvin and Hobbes remains an exemplar of a declining format in a fading industry. Amidst such realities, can its lasting influence really be measured? Or, did you find that its footprint stretched beyond its medium?

That’s a big question. I can say for sure that its footprint has stretched beyond its medium. Although this isn’t referenced in our film, we learned that animators are often big fans of  Watterson’s work. We’re aware of a number of Pixar directors who are fans.  And I think anybody who works in a creative field can look to Watterson and Calvin & Hobbes for inspiration. That’s actually fundamentally what I think Dear Mr. Watterson is about: how did Watterson have such a big footprint?  He understood the potential of the medium he worked in, he had respect for the artists who had come before him, and he dedicated himself to make his strip the best it could be. I think those are pretty good guidelines for standing out in whatever you do.

How has feedback on the film been so far? Are there any concrete plans for distribution?

At this point, we’ve got 2,083 Backers and other fans waiting patiently to see it, but only a small number of people have seen it.  And most of those people have either been working on the film or are friends or family who would probably not tell me they dislike it to my face, so the feedback has been good. Within a matter of a few weeks, we will have screened the film for several audiences, and I hope the reaction continues to be positive. I would say our distribution plans at this point are anything but “concrete.”

Do you have any forthcoming projects that you’d care to discuss?

No room in my brain right now for anything but Dear Mr. Watterson….
The website for Dear Mr. Watterson can be found here.

The original ‘World of Darkness’ was an expansive 1990′s supernatural role-playing series that used in novels, video games, and pen-and-paper gaming. Second only to Dungeons and Dragons in terms of sales and influence, it shifted from the Tolkien-derived tradition of hack-and-slash adventuring to a dark, modern tone that favored intricate plots, extensive character development, incisive social commentary, and challenging literary themes. Achilli was a key writer and designer for the company, working on popular products like ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’, ‘Werewolf: The Apocalypse’, ‘Changeling: The Dreaming’, and many of the updated reboots of each title in the mid-00s.

In 2006, White Wolf merged with CCP Games (makers of ‘EVE Online’), and saw its creative output slow to a trickle before ceasing entirely. A rebirth came in 2011, when many key World of Darkness properties were acquired by former White Wolf writers under their new company, Black Onyx Path Publishing. Using Kickstarter to work with their old fan base, Onyx Path Publishing launched a 20th Anniversary corebook of Vampire: The Masquerade, with an eventual plan to develop new content for all of their old properties. One of their most recent and popular outings has been Children of the Revolution, a rogue’s gallery of richly detailed Vampire characters drawn from the series’ extensive mythology and from elements of real world histor.

Justin Achilli spoke with me in April of 2013.

You’ve had a long career in game design, working across numerous genres and multiple mediums. How did you get started in the field, and what about it initially appealed to you?

My break into gaming came at White Wolf, where I was hired on to handle player support for the (Werewolf) Rage (Corebook) that launched back in ’95. I was doing a bunch of odd jobs in Texas, but the White Wolf opportunity was something that I enjoyed in and of itself, so I took the chance to get paid for it. That was 18 years ago, holy smokes.

What led to the decision to revive the World of Darkness setting under Onyx Path Publishing, and why have you chosen to go the route of Kickstarter? Have you been satisfied with the product and sales thus far?

The first book we revisited actually was done as a CCP book, in-house. We were talking about what we wanted to do for the 20th anniversary of Vampire the Masquerade just after the first Grand Masquerade in New Orleans. A few ideas came up, from an art book to a special collectible. I volunteered to do a 20th anniversary edition of the game the players have always been faithful to, and we ran with it. It gained a lot of momentum internally. 

I left CCP that May to work on ‘Assassin’s Creed Revelations‘, and when I had finished my work there, Rich Thomas and Eddy Webb were talking about transmedia opportunities for the World of Darkness. The first ideas on their slate were to take game publishing into a nontraditional model, and Rich was a big proponent of the Open Development model I had put forth for V20, in which the players could see and comment on the drafts as we worked on them. This gave us direct feedback from the players who would be using the books, so I volunteered to lead the charge with Vampire’s revived titles.

I’m pretty happy with both the books themselves and the sales. It’s a strange step, going from the old three-tiered model of publisher-distributor-retailer to a direct relationship with the player, but it’s a great time to be doing it. Other Kickstarters have gone bigger than we have, but Onyx Path at this point has succeeded at every Kickstarter it’s run, which is a nice track record, and speaks well to how the players receive the idea.

White Wolf’s ‘World of Darkness’ franchise was very steeped in the conspiracy theory and End Times lore that was very pervasive in the pre-millennial 1990s. To what extent do you think that these themes are still relevant in the second decade of the 21st century? What did you want to update in terms of story and game mechanics?

I think the themes are still relevant, but we’ve changed the presentation a bit. If you look at some of the questions the original printings of Vampire asked, the World of Darkness it presented then was almost naive in what it posited as “our world, but darker.” The X-Files was also out at around that time, and they both definitely feel like products of the early 90′s. Now the world’s conspiracies are much more out in the open and they attack you if you call them out on their presence, and Vampire has inherited that world.

When it comes to systems and setting, it does well for us to have some stark extremes that serve as examples for highs and lows. Modern America exists at around Humanity 5, but I didn’t lower the default from 7 (ED: Vampire characters have a morality scale from one to ten; ten being saintly and one being monstrous), for example. You’ll see a lot more of the Kindred’s reaction to such things in the upcoming book Anarchs Unbound, for a start. This was a great title to show how the Kindred have adapted, as the Anarchs are the Kindred sect most in tune with how the mortal world works. They’ve matured from the rebellious teenagers of the Damned to a more direct and capable sect. This might well be the age of the Anarch ascendant.

Do you feel that there is much chance for growth in the future of table-top gaming- either in terms of role-playing games or board games? Or, will it remain a niche activity as electronic media continues to extend its dominance over all areas of global entertainment?

I think this is a golden age for tabletop gaming, actually, but I’ll expand the definition to include desktop gaming. For example, I now play more frequently via Internet hangouts than I do around the table. It’ll remain somewhat niche because, let’s face it, running a tabletop gaming and coordinating people’s schedules around it is a lot of goddamn work, but the fact that gamers can cast their nets wider for players is a huge boon to the hobby. For example, Mark Rein-Hagen, who came up with the original concept and design for Vampire, plays in a tabletop game Google+, and he’s in Georgia (near Russia, not above Florida). All it takes is the effort.

Can you talk a little bit about your responsibilities at Ubisoft Red Storm? Does your work as Senior Game Designer put you in charge of specific aspects of game creation, or are you more involved in overall project management?

I’ve been fortunate in that most of my work at Red Storm has been direct and hands-on, with me doing a lot of the design. Compare that to my work on Assassin’s Creed Revelations and the Facebook games I worked on, which involved much more project management. Frankly, I like doing design better. I’m well organized and timely and I like directing projects, but when it comes right down to it, I like building game systems and seeing how players use them. It’s what’s enabled me to freelance, as well — I design by day and I design other stuff in the evenings (so it’s a good thing I enjoy it).

Do you have any forthcoming projects that you’d care to mention, either at Red Storm Entertainment, Onyx Path, or anywhere else?

Red Storm is an Ubisoft studio, so I’ll mind my NDA and let their marketing arm decide how to handle those particular pieces of information. But Onyx Path has Hunters Hunted II coming out soon, which hit something crazy like nine stretch goals, so that book is being expanded in size and should be available soon. Toward summer, we’ll have ‘Anarchs Unbound’ Kickstarting, so that’s on the horizon, too. And of course, I’m working on my own project that takes advantage of some of the previous experience I had working on Ravenloft and Scarred Lands. I’ll likely announce that in summer, but you’ll need a standard set of polyhedral dice to play it, if you catch my drift.

The official website for The Onyx Path is is here. Children of the Revolution can be found for sale here.

Justin Achilli can be found on twitter at @jachilli, and on his official website.

In 2010, the UK division of Harper-Collins published her book “The Illustrated Signs and Symbols Sourcebook: An A to Z Compendium of over 1000 Designs”. This colorful, expansive tome explores an extraordinary breadth of topics, as dictated by Ms. Nozedar’s voracious curiosity and meticulous thirst for detail. One can learn of the literary, historical, and religious meanings associated with a myriad symbols, shapes, colors, minerals, animals, numbers, and cipher texts. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the arts.

Ms. Nozedar spoke with me in late February of 2013 about her career, her interest in symbology, and how being deaf until the age of seven has shaped her entire view of the world.

I was hoping that you could tell me a little about your career in the music industry. What were some of your personal highlights at Rhythm Kings and later Arista/BMG Records? Did you find that your experiences influenced any of your later work as an author?

It was accidental. I was in a band which ground to a halt after my drummer got deported back to Australia after he was discovered hiding in the back of the van during a routine customs search after a tour of Ireland. Me and two friends happened to go to a club in London a short while later- a real ‘toegazing’ series of bands which at the time we found tedious as heck.

However, there was some incredibly exciting new music coming out of the USA – it was the beginning of the dance music era. So we decided to see if we could release some of our favourites in the UK. Daniel Miller of Mute Records gave us office space and we had a hit with an import within the first few months of operating. We then went on to produce our own records.

What led to your study and exploration of symbology? Are there any concepts or ideas that are of specific interest to you? Your “Signs and Symbols Sourcebook” seems pretty comprehensive across all topics.

I’m interested in the origins of sounds, language and thought; no mistake that the Bible says ‘in the beginning was the word’. If you give something a name, you have an implied mastery over it. Knowing a name is power. I was deaf until my ears were fixed when I was seven, which might have given rise to a life-long fascination with trying to work out a world without sounds or words.

I’d imagine that becoming aware of an entirely new sense is something that can’t really be understood unless you have experienced it. Do you still remember the moment when you first became capable of hearing?

Although I can guess that there must have been sounds before it. In the hospital, from the hospital to home, etc, my Dad got hold of a kitten to welcome me home. I remember very distinctly its mewling as a totally miraculous thing. I can hear it now actually. I guess it was the combo of kitten plus small child having a far greater impact than anything else!

Speaking in broad strokes, have you found any overarching symbols that you find have a similar meaning across cultures? Are there universal markers, old or new, that transcend boundaries? (e.g. The Red Cross, perhaps) 

The Red Cross is a good example of a constructed symbol that sweeps across linguistic boundaries. Most people recognize it and it must be a comforting sign in a war zone. Speaking of war, the white flag is pretty universal, too, although its message of truce is not always respected.

Some had gestures and symbols we might not know the precise meaning of, but their shape and attitude are generally pretty straightforward, with no need for words. The exclamation mark…a hand facing you, palm up - ’no’, ‘keep away’…there are lots and lots. With (my) book, I really wanted to show people that, beyond the trappings of religion/faith/whatever you care to call it, we are all the same. The symbolism of animals and birds, too, tends to be shared and it’s easy to see why.

On the other side of the coin, what are some symbols or motifs that surprise you in how wildly different their meanings can be? The contrast of the Swastika in World War 2 Europe and in Hinduism springs to mind. Or, how the color white can represent purity in the west and death in the east.

Again, you’ve pulled out the perfect example for modern times. The swastika is likely to be a sun symbol, ancient as the hills, possibly derived from the process of basket weaving. It was not the symbol that was evil during the Nazi reign, but what was pasted over it. Black cats are lucky in the UK but in the USA they’re the opposite. we think that vultures are scary harbingers of death but in ancient Egypt they were revered, not only as a Goddess, Nekhbet, but as the favoured bird of the Pharoah. The snake too, in Christian imagery, is a symbol of evil. Yet, in Hinduism it is seen as the symbol of healing and transcendence.

Modern, industrial nations now face the problem of disposing hazardous waste that could remain dangerous to life for thousands of years. One conundrum the designers face is how to construct universal symbols that would warn people away even from these containment areas after our civilization and language have passed on. Any suggestions? Are there certain images that are hardwired for us to interpret as threatening?  Future generations may depend on your answer!

Heck, that’s some responsibility you’ve laid on me! red as a colour of danger is prehistoric. Add a diagonal black cross and a palm-up hand and we’ll probably be safe, but the random factor is human curiosity…wouldn’t you want to open up the box somehow?

What are you working on now? Anything that you’d care to mention?

Yes….but first. a quick advertisement from our sponsors. My 11th book just came out. ‘The Encyclopedia of Native Americans’ is exactly that. it’s out via Harper Element, who also publish Symbols. I am also pretty hot on plant identification and I wrote a book called The Hedgerow Handbook, very big in Britain but definitely a brit-centric book. Writing this book – which looks at the edibility and medicinal uses of wild herbs – not only inspired the Natives book but the book I am working on right this minute, which is about sweets and candies. Many of them started as medicines; add sugar and the emphasis changes. these little chunks of deliciousness also have strange and eccentric stories to tell.

I would LOVE to do a volume 2 of Symbols. I have enough material. Watch this space…..

Adele Nozedar can be followed on Twitter: @hedgerowguru.

Her works may be found on Amazon and BN.com, as well as other retail outlets.

The subject of Gelb’s film is Jiro Ono, the 85-year-old Japanese master sushi chef considered to be among the finest in the world. Jiro’s legend comes from a lifetime of singular devotion to his craft; a devotion whose intensity and clarity are rare and atavistic in a modern era of fast food and mass production.  His unassuming restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, holds a mere 10 seats and is located in a subway station in the Ginza district of Chuo, in Tokyo. And yet, at $300-a-plate and with a one month waiting list, it is one of the few eateries in Japan to earn the supremely prestigious Michelin “Three-Star Rating”. It has received high praise from chefs Anthony Bourdain and Joël Robuchon, and is a favored stop for celebrities and dignitaries the world over.

With this rich character as his subject, Gelb’s 81-minute film delivers a masterfully-executed, elegant meditation on craftsmanship, family, entrepreneurship, Japanese history, wholesale economics, and even environmentalism. It is an extremely promising outing for a first time feature director and will surely be a tough act to follow.

David Gelb spoke with me in late October of 2012.

What are some of the documentaries that have influenced your own filmmaking style? Were there any that specifically informed the production of Jiro Dreams of Sushi?  

I was very much inspired by the BBC miniseries Planet Earth, as well as the film Baraka by Ron Fricke and the films of Errol Morris.  I loved the cinematography and the way they used music.  I wanted to tell my story in a similar style.

Jiro is no stranger to being interviewed or to being on TV, but having a foreign filmmaker follow him around for a couple of months was certainly different for him. With Yamamoto, I told Jiro that I wanted to tell his story from his perspective, that I had no personal editorial spin and that I just wanted to learn.  I approached it from the perspective of a student, and I think he appreciated that.  Jiro saw this as a way to convey his message to a large international audience. Also, politeness goes a long way in Japanese society, so I was very careful with my manners.

Jiro just wants to make good sushi, and he wants to share his perspective on sushi with those who come to the restaurant.  Jiro feels his work speaks for itself, so he doesn’t need to do a song and dance in his presentation of it.  As long as the customers are polite he has no problem being a celebrity.  He wants the restaurant to continue to thrive after his sons take over, and his legacy is important to that end.

Have you spoken with the Jiro or his sons since the documentary aired? Have you gotten any feedback from him and his staff?

The restaurant has since been packed with foreign customers.  Business is booming and they are thrilled.

These forces you mention are jeopardizing the future of delicious all over the world, not just Japan.  It’s a real issue that people do care about, but there is a large lobbying force in the fishing industry trying to suppress the issue.  Unsustainable fishing is unfortunately very profitable, so its an uphill battle.  Jiro feels very strongly that the desire for profit must not be so shortsighted, and that resources must be preserved for future generations.

I’ve teamed up again with the editor and producers of Jiro Dreams of Sushi to start an entertainment marketing company called City Room Creative (www.cityroomcreative.com).  We make movie trailers and posters applying Jiro’s philosophy to our work.  We love movies and editing trailer is a blast.  We actually did the Jiro Dreams of Sushi trailer ourselves.  I also am looking at some interesting documentary projects and narrative films as well, but not sure what is next just yet.

David Gelb can be followed on twitter at: @ThisIsDavidGelb

The official website for ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ can be found here.

The official website for Sukiyabashi Jiro can be found here.

Artspace launched in March of 2011, the vision of co-founders Catherine Levene- now CEO- and Christopher Vroom- currently the Chairman and EVP Artists and Institutions. The site’s primary focus is high-quality, lower-cost items, although it does feature a handful of multimillion dollar works by icons of the global art scene. Navigating the nascent intersection of online commerce and art sales has proven tricky for many, but Artspace has thus far hit the ground running. In addition to securing critical financial endowments, it has also established partnerships with dozens of prominent institutions, galleries and publishers. Among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Guggenheim Museum of NYC, the Almine Rech Gallery of Paris/Brussles, the Rena Bransten Gallery of San Francisco, and Princeton Architectural Press.

In a manner similar to other online sellers, Artspace utilizes the unique possibilities of the web to tailor one’s experience to his or her interests and tastes. Visitors can develop their own gallery, explore similar works, and link their findings to social media. The site’s editorial section, hosted on the “collections” page and overseen by Goldstein himself, provides a wealth of information on the history, personalities, and current trends of contemporary art. (Among the most useful for all would-be sophisticates such as myself is a handy pronunciation guide to the names of many prominent contemporary artists)

Goldstein spoke with me in early October of 2012.

When did you first join Artspace, and what appealed to you about the company?

I came on board back in February [2012], and while there were a few things that drew me to the job I was mainly attracted to the possibility of creating a platform for first-rate editorial content on an e-commerce site. Having worked all over the journalism landscape—freelancing for legacy print publications like New York magazine and the New York Times, and editing both in print at ARTnews and online at Artinfo—I’ve witnessed firsthand the increasing challenges faced by traditional publications, which are suffering dropping print circulations and dismal online ad sales.Clearly a new model is needed, and the prospect of building a hybrid editorial/sales operation from scratch and trying out a few fresh ideas was immensely appealing.

Also, I was very impressed by the team that had started Artspace, and the tremendous quality of the museum, gallery, and nonprofit institutions that have partnered with the site. Then, at the end of the day, I was won over by the no-brainer simplicity of the site’s core concept—offering affordable contemporary artworks by great artists with a straight-forward click-to-buy purchasing process and excellent shipping—at a time when the major competitors in the art ecommerce space all lack the same kind of conceptual clarity, simplicity of use, and no-bull messaging. So all of this seemed to combine into an irresistible package, with the cherry on top being that I can walk to work in the morning from my apartment in the East Village.

Is there an overall style, aesthetic, or movement that the site tends to favor over others?

The great thing about contemporary art is that it’s so incredibly multifarious that it’s impossible to truly  engage with its entirety while playing favorites, and, editorially speaking, I’m drawn to tackling the whole waterfront. That said, our affordable price point means that—while we do offer unique sculptures, paintings, videos, and other forms—the majority of the work on the site comes on flat pieces of paper, often as a drawing or print. So there are a lot of drawings, archival prints, photographs, text pieces, and other 2D works. Aesthetically and movement-wise, however, we’re pretty omnivorous.

To what extent do you think that social media is changing the nature of the commercial art world? What are some ways that Artspace tried to navigate this new and unexplored landscape?

Well, social media is swiftly changing everything from politics to basic communication, but the commercial art world has actually been fairly slow in fully plugging into the social world in a truly effective way. Journalism, on the other hand, has not, and social media is in the process of replacing old-fashion means of distribution—oftentimes it is the single highest driver of online traffic, and we’ve seen that when it comes to Artspace’s editorial too. Being a site that combines both art commerce and editorial, we’re gradually feeling out our approach, and it’s becoming clear that we are uncommonly well positioned to take advantage of social media considering the way that it privileges visuals and ideas, both of which which art has in spades. But it’s a work in progress.

If the rise of the internet can allow artists to sell their work independently, what is the value of a site like Artspace to artists? Is it an abrogator that adds legitimacy?

The fact is that anyone can sell anything independently, but it’s the difference between offering your apples on the side of the road to the few people who happen by or in a high-toned grocery store with knowledgeable salespeople to explain to a whole lot of customers why your apples are so tasty. In other words, it’s all about context, and in the art world that holds especially true considering that so much art is tricky for the uninitiated to fully appreciate, requiring experts to tell the good from the mediocre. Since everything that we offer on the site is screened by our curators and world-class partners—which, as galleries and museums, are the chief connoisseurs of contemporary art anywhere—people can know that what they find on the site is vetted and high-quality, and that makes people more comfortable paying for it.

Can you explain the nature of your gallery and museum partnerships? Is it sales related? Promotional? Have older institutions proven more resistant to adapt to the digital age?

I’ll explain the way it usually works. When a gallery puts on a show of new work by an artist, it will display the biggest, most expensive, show-stopping pieces in its main space to appeal to its top collectors and wow critics, but it will often also have lower-priced works that it sells to those in the know out of the back room. After the show closes, however, the gallery is no longer as incentivized to promote the lower-priced works—it’s just not what the dealers want to spend their time pushing—so these works tend to pile up, no matter how great they are. Then, with museums, many of these institutions ask major artists they work with to create special editions that they can sell at their fundraisers and galas to help support the museum’s operations.

When these events are over, the museums—which fundamentally aren’t commercial enterprises—aren’t equipped to sell the remaining editions, so they just pile up and collect dust. What we offer our gallery and museum partners is a way to offer this inventory to a worldwide audience without them having to lift a finger, and we frame the artworks with first-rate editorial features that make the pieces understandable and appealing. It works, and it’s win-win all around. As for whether older institutions are resistant, I think you’ll see that any of that resistance is quickly melting away. In fact, we have a few partnerships in the works that may come as a surprise to a lot of people.

Who are some of your own favorite artists that currently have pieces on sale with Artspace?

We have work by so many artists I love, from Robert Rauschenberg to Bruce Nauman, that it’s tough to claim favorites. But so far the one piece of art I’ve bought off the site was a “Feuerchen” sculpture by Ragnar Kjartansson, if that’s any indication.

Zero Day won Coccio ‘Best Director’ at the Slamdunk Film Festival and earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination. Its critical success gave him the opportunity the to write and direct his second feature, The Beginner. More recently he has collaborated with Derek Cianfrance, director of the Academy Award-nominated 2010 romance/drama Blue Valentine. Their highly anticipated crime/drama, The Place Beyond the Pines, features an all-star cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Rose Byrne, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes and Ray Liotta.

Coccio spoke with me in mid-July of 2012 about his background, career, and future ambitions.

How did you get started in film, and what- if any- formal education did you receive in the craft?

My older brother was the original movie maker in the family. He is just one of those people that is so naturally creative that he seems to not need the structure of a medium as a vehicle to express his creativity. Whatever he needed to do to accomplish whatever insane, wonderful thing he thought of, he’d do it. It’s like that old saying, “talent does what it can, genius does what it must.” That omnivorous approach to technique that he had eventually started involving the 8mm camera and the VHS camcorder. I liked working on my brother’s movies at first because I liked to act in them. I then found out that making movies was the most fun thing ever. I loved the collaborative aspect most of all. In high school, we heard of this other kid who liked to make movies, and in seeking him out to collaborate on a school movie project, he and I became best friends and constant collaborators. So throughout high school and beyond, my brother and closest friends and I made movies together almost as a celebration of our friendship. It was something fun to do that left a record of us having hung out together and laughed and enjoyed each others company.

I went on to film school at the Rhode Island School of Design, which I loved and where I got a very unique education in movie making. Many of the professors there had gone to the short-lived MIT film program in the early 70s. The other kids in my classes were all extremely talented people – many of them in the way my brother is talented. That meant that, unlike me, they were not necessarily interested in the more mainstream approach to narrative filmmaking. And I found that extremely exciting and challenging and interesting. That experience really shaped my approach to trying to tell the same old, solid, mythic stories in a new way.

What are some of your major film influences? 

My mom and dad always loved movies and had good taste in them. In the 80s when I was a little kid, we would always go see great movies: all the wonderful late 70s/early 80s blockbusters that were so well-made, so entertaining, so beautifully crafted. After my folks split up when I was 10, I remember a big bonding thing between my mom and I was to rent all the movies by a certain director, like Sergio Leonne or Akira Kurosawa, and watch them all in a row.By the time I was in high school and college, there were just a ton of terrific independent or smaller films in theaters – it was an embarrassment of riches. I like to think of it as spanning from Goodfellas and Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing my freshman year of high school to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore/PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights the year after I graduated college.

That stuff influenced me, no question. But I think the influence of my brother and my friends and my college classmates and professors might have been equal or greater than that of other movies I saw. I really, really, REALLY wanted to impress my brother, my college classmates (who I thought were just much more creative than me) and my professors. That desire, in part, still drives me today. Probably more than the influence of Goodfellas.

I guess what was really the common denominator of all the movies and people that influenced me is that they were all trying to do something with their work. They were all trying to make something you would remember.

Your first film, Zero Day, was produced in 2003 when the Columbine Massacre still weighed very heavily on the national consciousness. Was there a specific reason why you chose this topic? What kind of budget did you have to work with and how long did it take to develop? Why did you opt to go with a “found footage” approach to the story?

On the day Columbine happened, I was at a pizza place in New York. There was a TV on there and it was just showing this shot of a high school from a helicopter. The sound was off, so it was very confusing, but ominous. I went home and found out what had happened. My first thought was that I was surprised this had not happened already. It seemed to make a sick kind of sense. From there, I knew I really wanted to make a movie about this kind of thing. I’m not sure why. Maybe I wanted to make a movie out of it to try and understand it myself. It seemed like a modern expression of an ancient Greek tragedy; fate, blood, catharsis.

At first I thought I wanted to make a movie of the actual Columbine, and it had to be epic in scale and vision; as Terrance Malick or PT Anderson would do it. But 1999 was just a year and a half after graduating college and I realized that was not going to be possible for me. I also remember thinking, ‘who the hell wants to finance the most depressing story ever told?’ I figured, ‘some day.’ Then, I got into a car accident and almost died and I realized I had to just go do it any way I could.

I started researching Columbine and found out that the two kids had video taped their preparations. And this was not long after Blair Witch came out. It just all fell into place for me. The found footage approach seemed to the perfect technique to make this movie cheap and effective. At the time, those home videos were not available to the public, nor would they be until I was long done with my movie, so imagining them for myself became part of the creative play that made the project so exciting.

I started researching and writing in the spring of 2001. I had this temp job where I could accomplish a day’s work in an hour, and then I would spend the rest of my day writing. I moved up to Connecticut in June, the same month I had my auditions. I started shooting on July 4th, 2001 and was almost finished shooting by September 11th. My actors and I had a really interesting view of the suicide attackers from 9/11. We saw them as larger scale, geopolitical Columbine killers. I remember we did the ‘suicide note’ scene after 9/11, and we were very influenced by suicide bomber’s last videos.

There was no budget. I bought a couple cameras, feed two teenagers fast food for a couple of months and paid for gas. The most expensive day by far was the shooting scene, but even that was relatively cheap. I think the shooting budget was like 13k? And perhaps 5k of that was the shooting scene? I put the whole movie on credit cards, of course. Zero Day is actually why I have such a great credit rating to this day.

The transfer to film was by the most expensive part of the movie, not to mention not having a job and living off credit cards while I took the around to film festivals. That was how I got into debt, ultimately, not the production budget.

It seems that one of the central ideas of Zero Day is the motivelessness of film’s climax. Certainly, the protagonists make some Iago-like justifications for the evil they feel compelled to do, but it often seems that their motives are as elusive to them as they are to the people who will inevitably dissect their actions. Do you think that there is a futility in trying the to understand logic behind these sorts of events? Or is there a larger lesson here?

I think the only answer I ever found for something like Columbine was the two kids’ friendship. Their relationship was like a vehicle that takes them to this especially awful place. Maybe they would have gone there by themselves. Certainly, there have been plenty of ‘lone gunmen.’ Either way, from a dramatic perspective, the relationship was fascinating to me. I spent my high school days doing bizarre, inscrutable projects with my brother and close friends; projects that brought us closer together and made our relationships as intense or more intense that some of my high school romances. I guess in that way, I could identify with these guys. But the specifics of their project were so terrifying, so brutal, so cruel, unfeeling and unnecessary. What was the moment where they said, ‘Hey! I got an idea! Let’s massacre innocents together!’ Was there even a moment like that?I really liked the idea that, through the first-person narrative, you get as close as you dare to these kids, you hear them say, ‘we did it because of this or that,’ and still, you have no satisfying answers. There will never be a satisfactory answer to something like Columbine. I don’t buy any of the pat answers peddled by different people after the massacre. What I respect is someone going through their own process to make a sense of what happened; trying to find their own answer, or trying to just find a way to accept it.

Also, I wanted to make people like these characters in spite of what they were going to do. I may have cheated in this aspect; I may have made them too likeable to be capable of what they eventually do or I may not have shown enough clear signs of anger or instability, but it’s a movie, so, bite me. Seriously, though. In real life, I have no doubt that the parents of Dylan Klebold or the parents of Seung-Hui Cho loved them and saw them 100% as victims of their respective massacres. And that’s how I see them too. I wanted to manipulate the audience into feeling the same way, Maybe even mourn these monsters a little.

If you look up Zero Day on tumblr, you find these high school kids who clearly like to watch the movie again and again. I think it’s similar to why I like to watch Goodfellas again and again — these are bad people who do unforgivable things, but still, you really do enjoy hanging out with them.

Can you talk a little bit about your forthcoming movie, “Beyond The Pines”? You seem to have assembled an impressive cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Rose Byrne. How did the project get started, and long has it been in the works?

Zero Day brought me some bigger opportunities. I had another script I wanted to direct and my agent and manager shopped it around. No one wanted to do it, but one producer was interested in my writing and directing an adaptation of a short story she had the rights too. I read the short story, hated it, and said, ‘I loved it! Let’s get to work!’ Basically, I used the short story as a flimsy jumping off point to write a script I wanted to do anyway. And I was on my way. This was a real producer with real money and relationships with solid cast possibilities. But I had never written a script in this context before, and never had a relationship with a producer before, and the whole thing started to fall apart slowly and painfully. I did draft after draft for free, but in the end, the producer and I just did not have good chemistry. I could not let go of the opportunity, though. Making movies was all I wanted to do with my life, and as rewarding as Zero Day was, I really did not want to do something the same way again. I wanted to grow. Anyhow, on the down-slope of that situation, my agent told me a client of his was looking for a non-guild writer to write a movie for him. The pay was teeny-tiny, but I figured it would be an opportunity to learn how to write without being emotionally involved in the same way I was for my flailing writer/director project. I decided to meet with this guy at the Donut Pub in New York City. This was Derek Cianfrance, before he made Blue Valentine. To me, he was just some guy in the Donut Pub with tattoos. He had a very simple idea that he wanted me to write. It was simple, but it had epic proportions. I saw it as like a modern equivalent of ‘Giant,’ or something like that. I immediately had a lot of ideas for how to do it, and I set to work. Talk to me again when the movie has come out, and I can get specific about that process. I’ll say this: I suggested that the movie be set in the kind of town I grew up in, Schenectady, New York. He told me his wife was from Schenectady. So, in looking for a title, I found out what ‘Schenectady’ means. It’s a dutch derivation of an Iroquois phrase which means, ‘The Place Beyond the Pines.’

Derek is a person who starts from a place of fluidity first and foremost. I am a person who likes to work from structure. I think because of this, it was a terrific collaboration. It was also a lot of drafts. I did something like 21 drafts. Over three years or so. At the time, I was working at a job which I hated, and paying off my debts from Zero Day. After my writer/director opportunity officially died, there was just nothing. All quiet on the western front. But writing for Derek was very fun, challenging and inspiring, and I decide to make another micro-budget movie, this time on HD. It was a free-form adaptation of the prodigal son called The Beginner, and Cal was my main actor. That project was really more of a free-form voyage of discovery than Zero Day ever was, and working on it while I wrote The Place Beyond the Pines was a great way to see new possibilities in both projects.

Somewhere along the way, Derek directed Blue Valentine, and I started to realize that Hollywood was going to give Derek a very big opportunity to make his next movie. I remember thinking that any day, Derek could be shown a script that he would rather make than ‘Place Beyond the Pines,’ and I had to do all that I could to keep him in love. Paradoxically, I think, the way to do that was too keep the material alive; and not perfectly resolved. Derek’s process involves a LOT of discovery on set. He is the polar opposite of Hitchcock. I had my theories about the story and the plot and characters as I wrote, but what really mattered was how the questions posed by the script motivated Derek to work through the answers on set and in the editing room.

Last summer, Derek and a cast of huge movie stars shot this script that I wrote about my home town in my home town. I only visited set for two days, but it was a surreal experience. If my first impetus was to take this writing job as a way to learn screen-writing without being as emotionally involved as I would be if I were going to direct the script myself, than I was very naive. I even thought that since I was aware of how screenwriters typically feel about what happens to their work, I would be immune to that feeling; especially since I directed my own work and planed on using whatever opportunity came from writing Pines to direct in the future. Again, this was very naive. As a writer, you are convinced the story you so thoughtfully told on the page is nose-diving into corn field.

Once I saw the rough cut of the movie a few months ago, I was very relieved. And I also really learned an important lesson about movies – plot means little to nothing. Story and character are all that matter. No one watches a movie again and again for a plot. People come back to see a story that means something to them and to be with characters they enjoy spending time with.

With the continued rise of the internet, major Hollywood studios are increasingly turning to sequels, reboots, and franchise nostalgia in order to rake in profits and maintain cultural hegemony. Does this paint a bleak future for indie filmmakers, who are generally starved for money and exposure even in the best of economic times? Or, is this an opportunity in disguise for indie film to distinguish itself?

I think that this, too, shall pass. The current blockbuster model is not eternally sustainable. I also think that if it were an eternal state of affairs, then good story tellers could find a way to tell these stories well. I think true indie filmmakers have never had it so easy to actually make their movies. Theoretically, they have never had it so easy to get their work to an audience either. But, it’s probably harder now for an indie movie to become a cultural touchstone or event. I am very curious to see what happens next. Making movies is not like making music, so the way that music has adapted to the internet market place is probably not an accurate model for the way movies will or should adapt.

Do you have any other forthcoming projects that you’d care to mention?

I am working on something I hope to direct, but I can’t talk about it yet. I am working on screenplays for hire, but I also can’t really talk about those either.

Day Zero is now available on Netflix as well as Epix.

Discussion of the sport’s technical elements is usually eschewed in favor of the NBA storylines, teams and personalities which have proven compelling to so many in recent years. There have been 46 episodes produced since the podcast’s premiere in 2010. It has since gathered a following among several noted NBA blogs, as well as comedian Tom Scharpling, producer of the popular radio show, “The Best Show on WFMU”.

Hertzog (27) is Pennsylvania native and Temple University graduate who is quite active in the city’s stand-up comedy scene. He is also the founder of the ”Friendship” movement, which encourages the city’s comedy community to join together for charity events. Gethard, (34) (whose brother Chris is interviewed elsewhere on this site) is a writer and comedian from West Orange, NJ,  who has lived in Philadelphia since graduating from La Salle University. He is also the former host of “Bedtime Stories”, a former weekly stage show which catered to the city’s comedy scene.

Gregg Gethard spoke to me in mid-May of 2012, in the midst of the NBA playoffs.

Tell me a little but about how you and Aaron first started working together. When did you launch the podcast, and how did it evolve into the current format? What made you choose to mix basketball and comedy? 

The show was originally three of us — me, Aaron and our friend Dave. It was pretty much Dave’s idea for us to do a NBA podcast. The three of us are all big basketball fans and we decided to do one. We started two NBA seasons ago. Anyways, we stopped doing it after four or five episodes because of time constraints. I was starting to commute from Philly to NYC for my job and Dave was starting grad school. 

Aaron still wanted to do the podcast and I really, really, really missed doing it, too. We tried to restart it with Dave but he was just way too busy. So Aaron figured out how to upload a podcast and it became what it is now. 

Our first ones with Dave were VERY NBA heavy. But I have a tendency to stray off topic. Dave was very good with reigning me in. But once he left, it became what it is now. I think it works better now. Aaron and I love basketball. But we’re not going to break down plays. We’re not NBA experts. There are also a lot of really great podcasts for hardcore NBA junkies. But what we can do is be funny however we want to be funny. Basketball’s just kind of the one thread linking episode to episode.

Basketball itself lends itself to comedy. NBA fans have a ridiculous attachment to certain players. People do root for their local teams but the more hardcore fans appreciate teams that they don’t live near and players from all over the map. I think the personal connection is due to the fact that NBA players don’t wear hats or helmets. You see these guys facial reactions and emotions. Comedy is all about personal connections to an audience, too.

I like to describe it as “20% NBA talk, 80% of us just being silly.” You don’t need to like basketball to like the podcast — in fact, we have a few people who have reached out to us who don’t know a thing about basketball and like it. It helps if you do, though. Of course, this works against us — if you like basketball you might get chased off about me talking about being accosted at the gym by a man who kept on calling himself “daddy” in the hot tub. Or if you like us rambling, you’ll get chased off when we talk about Dirk Nowitzki.

How long do the episodes generally take to develop? Is there any sort of production team involved, or is it just you and Aaron? What kind of equipment is used?

The episodes take pretty much no time to develop. I’ll show up at Aaron’s. We’ll decide what we want to talk about. We’ll each have a few notes about what we want to talk about. Aaron hits record and off we go. We really just brainstorm for 5-10 minutes.

We do have “special guest” episodes where we have a guest who is doing a bit. These take a bit more time. I usually come up with the idea, but all I do is come up with the premise for a character. For instance, we did one where we interviewed the Home Depot manager who interviewed Boston Celtic Delonte West for a job. It turned out he was also a strident Tea Party member.

For that, we asked our friend Jim Grammond to help out. Jim’s a comic in Philly and incredibly smart. He flushed out a ton of the details — added in the Tea Party stuff, in fact. Jim’s our most frequent “guest” since he can really talk knowledgeably about any topic. We also have had Becca Trabin on a few times — she lives with Aaron and does improv and is very, very quick with her thought process. We’ve also had our friend Pete Keumple — who is more or less the third host, actually. My friend Mac from Boston also recently joined us as “Dikembe Double”.

For the character bits, we do write down a few notes before the show. We do try and have a narrative to each one, but they’re all the same. I play the straight man (which is awesome — I’m NEVER the straight man!). Our guest will be antagonistic to me but will try and convince Aaron of the merits of his cause. Aaron will fall spell and will become brainwashed by our guest. Sometimes, we’ll think of an idea during the recording and we’ll jot down a note to take it to a new direction or for a funny line Aaron or myself think of.

As far as production values — we have the absolute lowest production values. Aaron has two microphones and a mixer. He plugs it into his laptop and records with Garage Band or something along those lines. Then he uploads it. We do know the production quality sucks but we don’t really have the money or time to upgrade our equipment. I think, though, the low-grade nature of what we’re doing is a huge part of its charm. We have a following because of what we’re doing and aren’t fooling people by having all kinds of bells-and-whistles.

What have been some ways that you’ve tried to spread the word about the show? Has it mainly been by word of mouth?

When we started, the only people who knew about us were the three other people in the Philly comedy community who also liked basketball. We slowly expanded via social networking — Twitter, Facebook, etc. So word of mouth helped at first.

The BIG leap, though, was because the great Tom Scharpling was a fan of the podcast. Tom’s the host of The Best Show on WFMU, which is my favorite comedy thing in the world. He also was a writer/producer for Monk and has worked on a bunch of other projects. He’s also written and directed music videos for Ted Leo, Titus Andronicus and Real Estate. He’s also a gigantic NBA fan. Dave sent him a link to a few episodes and he got in touch with us and said he liked them. He also pushed them on his show and on Twitter. And then, seemingly at random, he started talking about me on his show and recruited me to become his new “protege”. Since then, I’ve become a regular caller to his show and am known as the show’s “villain” more or less. I was also lucky enough to be a live guest in the studio a few months ago.

A lot of comedy fans and NBA fans found us that way. And word of mouth has spread from a bunch of prominent NBA bloggers, too.

Essentially, we got a really huge break with someone who has a huge fanbase plugging us. He really didn’t have to do that. It’s almost completely ridiculous that someone I’m a huge fan of discovered our podcast and liked it enough to push it. We pretty much owe 99.9% of our listenership to him, probably.

In a recent episode you expressed your opinion that the present-day NBA is just as compelling as it was back during its heyday in the late 80s/early 90s, when it was populated by legendary players like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. Can you elaborate on that?

There are SO many great players and plot twists in the NBA right now. The league doesn’t have MJ, Larry and Magic to carry its flagship. But it has LeBron, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Kobe, the big three on the Celtics, Derrick Rose, etc. Seriously — there is no bigger narrative right now in sports than if LBJ can finally win the big one. When you add on that he’s such a divisive figure, it just makes the story even better.

Back in the 80s and 90s, there were only a handful of teams that mattered. You knew that, in the end, it was going to be either the Celtics, Lakers, Pistons or Bulls (or Houston when MJ was playing baseball). There were a few pretenders like Portland and Phoenix and Seattle and Utah. But, when it came down to it, there were a handful of teams that could win.

Now? It’s so unpredictable. There’s Miami. There’s Boston. There’s Chicago (when healthy). Orlando almost stole a title a few years ago. In the west, Dallas had a terrific run to get Dirk Nowitzki his title and also recreated his legacy. There’s Kobe trying to make one last stand. There are the OKC Thunder, who are America’s team and have the talent to become a dynasty if they figure out how to get it all together. There’s even a team like Memphis who are as good as anyone when they’re hot. Or the Clippers who are the ultimate “they have great highlights but are they actually for real?” team. And then San Antonio’s also trying to grab one last title in their amazingly consistent run.

The NBA has a dearth of young talent. There aren’t ANY knuckleheads amongst them. LeBron’s the most hatable of everyone in basketball but that’s because he’s a prima donna and not because he’s fired a gun at a stripper.

The NBA is just fantastic right now, even though the lockout is causing guys to tear ACLs left and right.

Even the most casual basketball fan is aware of the big personalities in the league right now (LeBron, Kobe, Durant, etc), but who were some of the lesser-known players and teams that you found interesting this season? I recall a recently episode where you discussed your love of the 2011-12 Memphis Grizzlies squad, which you seemed to regard as a band of entertaining misfits. 

Even though they just got bounced, I love the Memphis Grizzlies. They’re a team of cast-offs and guys known for having insane tempers who have come together, using the slogan “Grit and Grind” as their mantra. They just play tough defense, get rebounds and do nothing flashy. Their best player is Zach Randolph, who has punched out a bunch of teammates on teams past. They have Marc Gasol, who everyone ripped as second banana to his brother but is now really good. They had on the court at one point this playoff series Hamad Haddadi — the first Iranian born player in the NBA — and Gilbert Arena, best known for being a lovable wildcard who ruined his legacy by bringing guns into a locker room and jokingly challenging a teammate to a duel.

Kevin Love has become one of the most remarkable guys in the league. He has one of the weirdest games of all-time. The guy’s just a beast of a rebounder but is also one of the premier three point shooters in the league. And he’s done this while having a knee condition. Minnesota became everyone’s favorite non-playoff team this year because of him and Ricky Rubio, their young point guard sensation from Spain.

I also love Rajan Rondo on the Celtics. He’s an amazing point guard who can do literally anything but shoot the ball with any consistency. He also has such a sour demeanor that is somehow entertaining. I also am a huge fan of Andre Iguadola on the Sixers. He gets ripped constantly in Philly by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. He’s one of the best defenders in basketball who can play four positions. I love James Harden, the sixth man on the Thunder who just flies around the court. Kenneth Faried on the Denver Nuggets also has won my heart — he just loves playing professional basketball and it shows. DeMarcus Cousins on the Kings could also not be more intriguing — he has the talent to become a Hall-of-Famer but loses his mind constantly.

I also have to profess to loving the Knicks this past season. Not one team has ever had a season like they did. They sucked to start the season. They became a global phenomenon with the awesome Linsanity run. (And I think Jeremy Lin is going to be a very good player.) They then struggled and got their coach fired. Then Carmelo got hot and they went on a huge run to end the season. And then Amare punched some glass. Seriously — what a surreal season!

What would you say are some of the show’s leading comedic influences? Do you and Aaron have a similar comedic sentiment?

Aaron and I do think the same things are hilarious. He’s more a fan of current stand-up like Louis CK and those guys than I am. I think the best stand-ups we have now are awesome, but I just can’t keep up with what everyone’s doing.

As far as my influences for the show — I have been a radio nerd for as long as I can remember. The Best Show is an obvious answer. So is Howard Stern. The reason why those shows work is because Tom and Howard both put their personalities on the airwaves and it lets people in. I started doing comedy in order to tell the ridiculous stories that come up routinely in my life (an attribute I share with my brother) but then started performing more character stuff. The podcast lets me just be myself on the air. I’m not afraid to say anything about myself in public and I think people appreciate that. 

Sports radio is also a huge influence on me, too. I listen to a ton of sports radio. The guys I like the most — Francesa, Mike Missanelli here in Philly — are so personally invested with what they’re talking about. They’re passionate and it shows. I think I have that on the podcast, albeit not necessarilly about sports. 

Your podcast have been vocal advocates of the Philly comedy scene. Are there any comedians or groups in the city that you would recommend?

There is SO much good comedy in Philly! Our best known export is Doogie Horner who had a fleeting moment with fame courtesy of his brilliant performances on America’s Got Talent. Chip Chantry’s consistently hilarious. A local sketch group called The Feeko Brothers should really have an Adult Swim show by now. Brendan Kennedy’s stream-of-conscious stand-up is as good as anyone in the world’s when he’s clicking on all cylinders. Another great sketch group are Secret Pants, who more-or-less have defined what Philly comedy is and can be. And another group is Camp Woods, which has become a collective more than a sketch comedy group.

As great as Philly comedy is, I think we can do more. A few Philly comics have made the move to NYC or LA. And more are on the way, if rumors are to be believed. But I definitely think we could do more in hopes to reach a national audience. A few of us have made videos which have gone viral (Secret Pants, in particular) but that’s catching lightning-in-a-bottle. We can do more to present ourselves to the entire country, I think. We managed to capture a national audience — hell, I was even interviewed on an Australian podcast and we also have a regular listener from New Zealand. It’s possible now to reach a large audience anywhere in the world, but we have to organize and analyze the best ways to do that.

We do have a great comedy scene in Philly. From where it started (when there was almost no alternative comedy in Philly) to where it is now (there’s arguably too much comedy) has been remarkable to be a part of and to watch develop. But we have a challenge now in figuring out what the next evolutionary step is, especially for those of us who stick around and don’t move to greener pastures.

Do you two have any plans use the show to bridge into other projects? Or are you simply trying to grow the show as it is?

We’ve been lucky enough to get involved with some other projects because of the show. There’s a guy named Jon Solomon who has been involved with Princeton’s awesome community radio station (WPRB) for years. He has a 24-hour Christmas music marathon every year which I’ve been a fan of for a really long time. He asked us to take part this year with a story about Christmas and we did. I’ve also written for a few basketball blogs — most notably the amazing Negative Dunkalectics website which I think is the best basketball website in the world and their football spin-off Thus Spiked.

We’re very happy with how the show is currently constructed. The lack of planning really works in our favor. I like things that are free-flowing. I love This American Life but sometimes it’s just sooooooo forced. That part I hate. It doesn’t sound natural. Ours may not sound polished at all but it’s 100% natural and happens as is.

We also really want to do a live show at some point. We don’t know what or how this will look like but it’s something we definitely want to do.

As far as growing the show — we definitely want to do more of the character stuff. That has gone really well, we think. I also have a scripted show that I think is one of the best things I’ve ever written (which sounds really hypocritical from the previous paragraph). I just need to edit it before we record it. We also really keep meaning to write more for our website but finding the time is just too hard.

Episodes of The Holding Court Podcast can be found on its website: http://theholdingcourtpodcast.com/, and it can be followed on twitter @holdingcourtpod.

Aaron Hertzog’s website can be found here

It is also available for download on iTunes.

After some trial-and-error, Savage struck on his most popular character to date: “Skweezy Jibbs”, an impoverished, dim-witted, and hapless wanna-be street hustler who frequently regaled his viewership with (rather unimpressive) tales of sexual and financial conquest. Savage played the character as if it were real for the first few years of its existence, using every element of Youtube’s interface to maintain the illusion (even if his actions sometimes strained credulity). And while Skweezy might, at first blush, appear to be a crude stereotype, Savage’s clever writing and impeccable comic timing conveys a subtle, but undeniable depth of pathos and social commentary.

Savage eventually chose to reveal that Skweezy was a fictional character, and has used him as a calling card with which to present his other projects and characters. His new work has demonstrated a chameleon-like ability to shift seamlessly between disparate personalities. As is emblematic of the digital age, Savage’s growing online popularity has created professional opportunities not possible before.

Savage spoke with me regarding his career, and ambitions, and Skweezy Jibbs in April of 2012.

You mention in one of your videos that your background is primarily in radio. Can you expand a little bit on your experiences and talk about some of your creative influences? How long did you work in that medium, and what made you choose to move to Los Angeles? Had you always wanted to work in entertainment?

I was in radio for close to a decade, having worked my way up from minimum wage board-operator/phone screener to program director in Florida before giving that up to go to a larger market. I worked there for a few years, getting more into talk radio and also breaking into television with a local sketch comedy show. I was in my mid 20′s at that point and made a decision with my creative partner at the time to take the big leap to L.A. Two weeks before we left, he told me he met a girl and was staying behind. Unfortunately, he owned all the cameras/computers, etc., and all the plans we had were based on “us.” I made the move on my own, and it was a very rough couple of years just trying to figure out what the hell I was doing/going to do.

A little on my background. I had the “luxury” of being raised in a very strict, fundamentalist Christian household and basically wasn’t allowed to do much of anything. I actually was just talking about this with my roommate yesterday cause I got jolted into remembering a really embarrassing story. I was about 7 or 8, and had become a pathological liar because I got tired of answering questions like “Why don’t you have a Nintendo?” with answers such as “Because my mom says they’re demonic and the demons come through the TV screen and make me sick,” so instead I would just say “I’ve got a Nintendo and ALL the games” to make myself sound less like a freak. I told that particular lie to a kid in my class, and invited him over (never thinking he would call my bluff), and sure enough there came a knock on my door one Sunday morning. The kid had gotten his mom to drop him off so he could play Nintendo with me. What he got instead was a sermon from my mom about how evil Mario was and then an apology from me. Then my mom invited his mom over, and proceeded to try to “save” her as well. She refused, so we kicked them out and headed out to church ourselves. That was my life.

As if that kind of shit wasn’t bad enough, that was also my last year in school, and I was pulled out and homeschooled from that point on. And I learned a lesson about lying. Not to stop, but to lie bigger. The devil’s in the details. So I went through a period where I told ridiculous lies to everyone and got real good at it. And never to hurt anyone, but just because I felt so alienated. I wanted people to like me, just like anyone else. It’s just not as easy for us weirdoes.

In addition to all that craziness, I was also the one telling jokes and stories. My family is actually full of storytellers; it’s our way of bonding. My favorite memories as a kid were of me, my dad, and my brother all telling stories and my mom just laughing and laughing at them. It doesn’t happen as much like it used to, but when we do get together and let it happen, we’ll fall right back into it again. Another way the men in our family bonded was with old movies. My brother and I weren’t allowed anywhere near the new stuff, but we were immersed in the classics. Most kids my age grew up with Jim Carrey and his ilk; we grew up with Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Errol Flynn, Claude Raines, and “I Love Lucy”. Lucille Ball and Laurel and Hardy were fantastic, but my god did I love the Marx Brothers. I’ve probably seen “A Night at the Opera” 300 times. I definitely stole a lot of my early inspiration from them. As I got older, I really fell in love with the dryness of Norm MacDonald (meeting him and making him laugh hard repeatedly is a fond memory of mine) and the sharpness of Chris Rock. But creatively, I also learned that real inspiration is far better cross-borrowed. That is, if you’re a musician, don’t look to music for your ideas. Look everywhere else. Same with comedy. I find my inspiration anywhere from life experience to my favorite science fiction books.

Once I was old enough to look beyond the way I was taught to think and actually think for myself, a whole new world opened up to me. I had never seen or heard most things that many kids my age took for granted. The first time I owned secular music was when I bought “Thriller”. Probably the same first album for a lot of kids. Except I wasn’t like, you know, 6. I was 17. I had to wait til I got my first car and I could only listen to it in that fabulous Grand Marquis since it wasn’t allowed at home. That lack of culture hit me full throttle and all at once, and I consumed so much art/media in my late teens and early 20′s that I felt like a kid. I’ve always been curious, and the repression melting away into pure freedom was a huge accelerant to my inquisitiveness. And, as ironic as could possibly be, my ultra conservative parents are a writer and painter, respectively (go figure). So I have the desire to tell stories and make people laugh, combined with wanting to experience all the things I wasn’t allowed to growing up, tossed in with the fact that creating things is in my blood.

You have said that the “Skweezy Jibbs” character and his Youtube videos began as a satirical extension of your own experiences upon first moving to Los Angeles (i.e. your time living with an elderly roommate was mined for comedic material). What else did you draw upon to create the persona, and what was the aim of the project?

Skweezy started off as an experiment to keep my acting skills fresh after I had to drop out of acting school. The original goal was simple; to see how much I could get away with as a ridiculous character and still have it be believable. I mined content from everything I could, from popular trends to true life experiences to amalgamations of things. I grew up poor and kinda white-trashy, and Skweezy is still not as crazy as some of the people I knew growing up. The big difference is that in real life, their shit was just really sad, so there was definitely a challenge of making it more funny than miserable – at least for the viewer, if not ever for Skweezy. As I’ve evolved, so has the character. It had to. I felt guilty about younger audiences looking up to Skweezy, and I also felt creatively bankrupt with him for a while, so I pulled the plug and originally “revealed” him as a gay British writer.

There was a third reason for the reveal as well, and that was because I didn’t want to get pigeonholed as Skweezy. I have so much stuff that I do (I’m editing my first novel, I have two feature screenplays, I have a non-fiction book about radio sitting on the back burner, an animated show that I pitched, and so on and so on) and I didn’t want to be only know as “Skweezy,” and not only that, be so convincing that no one can take me seriously because they don’t even know he’s not a real, white-trash loser. Now, I did to that myself – I orchestrated Skweezy’s “realness” from the beginning with so much fake “real” information across the web that very few people ever knew the truth for a couple years. But how the fuck am I going to get noticed by a producer or director or whatever if I’m so convincing that I’m immediately discarded as a loon? Poe’s law in full effect. And sure enough, right after I made my first reveal video, I got hit up with three big offers in Hollywood that resulted in some really good opportunities for me. So it ended up being good timing. Now the secret is out, and Skweezy is more popular than ever, and it gives me more freedom to try different things (including injection of some of my own personal beliefs into the character). The pressure to constantly outdo myself is greater than ever, but that’s a lot better than the pressure of not having anyone give a shit about anything you do, hahaha.

The videos are crafted to gift the illusion of being done on the fly, with little preparation and by you alone. How close is this to reality? 

Pretty close. I’m very self-sufficient (comes along with the “homeschooled” thing), and my whole life is based on challenging myself and then seeing if I can figure out how to come out on top. Few things excite me more than being told I can’t do something. I’ve met a lot of great young talent in my years, but so many of them only know what they were taught in film school or by movies or in acting classes. I’ve read a dozen scripts that are pretty damn good but can’t be made for less than tens of millions. Which is awesome, but all you’re doing is playing the goddamn lottery. Same with actors I know. One of the scariest things you learn when you come to L.A. is that it’s not like home. I’d like to think I’m pretty funny. And then I got to L.A. and in every room, and every class, and every audition, and every party, and even every fucking 711 line for 2 for $2 Big Bites there are people funnier than I am. It’s quite overwhelming at first. So I know all these comedians and actors that have been here longer than I have and you’ve never heard of them, and some are lazy, and some get dissuaded, but some are putting in the work and getting auditions and it really is THAT hard. It’s a fucking circus. So I just said “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself. What do I have? A shitty camera? A 99 cent store hat? A toilet paper roll? Let’s make something happen” and BOOM, there it goes. Creativity doesn’t come from getting what you want. It comes from taking what you have and saying, “Well what can we do here?” Everyone needs to read Robert Rodriguez’s book, “Rebel Without a Crew.” Specifically the “10 minute film school” part (I think that’s what it’s called). If you REALLY want to make stuff, any stuff, read that. It will change your life.

As far as how each video is made specifically, it varies. A lot of the older videos are one take, straight through. Some were done in one take, some took a dozen and I picked the best one. I’ve also literally spent 5 hours filming straight through and scrapped it more times than I can count. If I’m “on,” I’ve been blessed to be able to put out something I’m really proud of in one take. If I’m not feeling it that day, I could film the opening 30 times to get something that works. I don’t release stuff I don’t like/respect.

The old videos used to just be based around bullet points. I’d have certain checkpoints I needed to hit, and certain punchlines that I needed to hit verbatim, but other than that I worked freeform around those. The new videos are usually entirely scripted. It has allowed me to get much tighter and make much sharper points. As such, because they’re all fully scripted, I can’t usually film them straight through anymore so I’ll break it down into a few parts.

Since revealing Jibbs’ fictional nature, the personality has developed (something of) a moral center and a (slightly) higher intelligence. More recently, a video about Jeremy Lin ended with a surprisingly poignant monologue about the character’s struggles with poverty, addition, family tragedy, and the (somewhat desperate) notion that religion and the American Dream would bring him wealth no matter what. How much would say that the scope of the character’s satire has changed? Do you have an larger goal in sight for the project, or is it simply a good way of maintaining an online presence?

I think I answered most of this with what I said in 2, but I’ll add one more thing. I am currently working on a live action Skweezy pilot with an incredibly talented writer who currently writes for a well-known TV show. I’m going to keep him anonymous for now since I don’t know if he’s ready to reveal himself, but he presented me with an incredibly good script that really hits the edginess of Skweezy’s universe while keeping the appeal of pathos of the characters. Hopefully we’ll be pitching it to networks this summer. Besides that, I’m keeping myself open to almost any path that Skweezy could take me. I never would have guessed Skweezy would have been what would be opening the most doors for me here, but I’m happy that’s the case.

With the massive shifts currently taking place in media, do you see Youtube videos like yours as ends unto themselves? Or, do you think that actors/artists should instead view the internet as a training ground for their craft?

There is a quote I like from a guy named Eric Hoffer. “In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” That one mentality is the difference between success and failure, in my opinion. I’ve been really getting into eastern philosophy and they talk a lot about the same thing. The mighty oak is strong and revered. And then the mightier storm comes and knocks it out of the ground, roots and all. But the bamboo, thin and seemingly weak, bends effortlessly in the harshest of winds. SAME SHIT HOMEY.

Referring back to my actor/director/writer friends that are super talented yet fight for years just to get two lines on CSI, many of them still scratch their heads about all this Youtube/internet stuff. I told one guy how much I made off of one very lucky video I had and he couldn’t believe it was as much as he made for a week’s work on a feature film. Plus, I got 2 million views that month. 2 million people seeing my writing/acting/story development/talents/whatever. For better or worse. Now that said, I’m still barely scraping by financially. But I am scraping by my own work exclusively, and that makes any artist smile. I’d love nothing more than to break into TV and film and even successful novel writing, but to turn my back on anything that allows me to create and have an audience is silly. And I think the only thing holding back a lot of my peers is simply conditioning. No one pays 30k a year to go to film school to learn how to hold a camera up in front of themselves and then upload it to Youtube. But that’s a huge part of the future, and more importantly, the present.

Any advice for young actors starting out in the Hollywood trenches that are looking to make a name for themselves?

Good fucking luck. Or not. Those are your two options. All these stories you hear about how Christian Bale made it or Phillip Seymour Hoffman or Michael Fassbender or even huge Youtube stars with half a billion views or anyone that’s “famous” tend to leave out the absolute most important part of the story. Luck. For every Daniel Day Lewis there are 100,000 that are just as good, just as dedicated, and just as skilled. What very few will tell you is that all Hollywood is for the most part is a lottery. So you better be doing what it is you’re supposed to do on this planet and having some fun in the meantime, otherwise you’ll get eaten alive and left bitter.

The “Or not” I refer to is my preferred plan of attack. I plan on getting nothing. No help, nobody seeing my work, nobody giving me anything. So I do it myself. I could sit around waiting for a part, or I could create it myself. I could hope a good script crosses my path. Or I could write one myself. I could hope to be cast in a movie, or I could cast myself. One of my goals for the next few years is to make one of the features I wrote. I wrote it in such a way that it could be filmed easily for under a hundred grand, and with some creativity for possibly under 20k. And if I meet and befriend some really funny actors, I’ll guilt them into doing it for free and we can knock the budget down even more, haha. You can wait, or you can do. And it’s a lot more fun to do. If you act but can’t write, partner with a writer. If you’re a damn good writer but can’t act, get some actors. Make something. Use it to pull each other up a level or two. I currently have a half hour pilot up on Youtube (released in 4 parts so far to make it more digestible to the internet audience) that looks and sounds as good as anything else on the internet. It’s not “quite” TV quality, but it’s damn good. Fully professional video, sound, music, editing, and so on. It would probably surprise people to hear that it cost $1000. It would probably really surprise people if they knew it was actually only the cost of feeding the cast and crew, so total cost is probably in the $80 range. For a mostly-professional looking half hour pilot. With the amount of technology out there and the tools available, there’s just no excuse to not create at least a variation of anything you’ve ever wanted to create.

Do you have any other new projects that you’d care to discuss? Your Youtube page features a new comedy series, and you seem to be branching out with some new characters.

If anyone wants to check out the pilot I mentioned, it’s at Youtube.com/thegentlemenpirates. Start with Heaven Scent, Chapter 1. I’d love to be able to say, “Check out my new show on Fox this fall,” but I’m not there yet, haha. Maybe with a lot of luck and more work, that could change by the end of the year.

Skweezy Jibbs’ Youtube channel can be found here. His Twitter feed is here.

Tim Savage’s website can is at www.timnasium.com.  

Already accomplished in his field, the German-born, Rochester-raised, California native saw his creative career enter a new act with the 2011 publication of 420 Characters. This anthology of hypershort stories, each of which does not exceed the length denoted in its title, began as a writing exercise that Beach created for his Facebook status updates. With a profound imagination and economy of language, Beach crafts micro-tales that are sometimes fantastical, occasionally grim, and always intriguing. The author’s surrealist artwork appears throughout the collection, punctuating an overall tone of mystery and strangeness.

420 Characters has earned praise high praise from publications like Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and the New York Times, among others.

Lou Beach spoke with me about his work in April of 2012.

How long had you been creating these stories before deciding to make an anthology? All told, how long did “420 Characters” take to compile and edit?

Probably about six months before the idea of putting them in one place, a website, was hatched. It took perhaps nine months to compile and edit and another year to publish…it’s a slow process.

Do you view any of the pieces in “420 Characters” as seeds for a larger story that you might want to explore? Or, are they stand-alone works?

They are all stand-alone pieces, though there are themes that I keep returning to, even with the longer pieces I’m writing now – alienation, disfunctional relationships, crime, settings at sea or in the West.

Who are some of your literary influences? Was writing prose something that you had always cultivated as a side interest?

Oh man, I hate that question…the “Which 10 books (records, movies, et.al.) would you take to a desert island?”…I always feel that the 11th or 43rd choice is being slighted by not making the list. Also, whichever author I’m reading with enthusiasm at the moment is the new favorite. It ‘s not that I have fickle tastes, it’s just that there are so damn many terrific writers. I’d always wanted to write but for whatever reasons, I gravitated to visual art. I don’t think of the writing as a “side” interest, just another aspect of my need to create narratives, visual or literary.

Social networking sites can be rather murky when it comes to questions of content ownership, with status updates and photos often being stored indefinitely. Was there ever any concern that Facebook might try to assert some sort of control over the material?

No, that never occurred to me. If that were the case, I would have stopped posting and gone elsewhere, a blog perhaps, to make the stories public.

I was hoping you could talk a little about your artwork, which you have stated is strongly influenced by the Surrealists. Were there any particular artists or works that stuck with you during your formative years?

Ernie Kovacks influenced me as much as any “museum” artist did. His sly and comically surreal view of the world just felt right to my young mind.

When working in surrealism- in fiction or in drawings- are there particular motifs or ideas that you set out to explore, or do you tend to work “on-the-fly” and let your unconscious mind work more actively?

Yes, I tend to follow the subconscious and once it’s laid the groundwork, the more conscious aspects such as editing come into play…then it’s work. I don’t particularly view myself as a surrealist, though the influence is obvious. I think most of the stories are grounded in a naturalistic style.

Do you have any forthcoming work that you’d care to mention? Any new fiction?

I’m writing daily, teaching myself how to write longer pieces; reading and absorbing how other writers work and I’m about to jump back into some new collage work.

Lou Beach’s website can be found at http://www.loubeach.com/

The 420 Characters website can be found at: http://www.420characters.com/.  It features sample chapters, as well as recorded readings  by actors Jeff Bridges and Ian McShane.

His graduation short film, Procrastination, displayed a wide array of techniques and styles, as well as a wry sense of wit. It earned a number of awards, including “Best Animation” at the 2008 NYC Shorts Festival. Kelly has since gone on to prolific career in commercial animation, winning awards and joining the “Nexus Productions” company. In early 2012, he appeared as a speaker at Dublin’s 2012 “Offset Festival”, which attracts noted artists and designers from all over the world.

In the United States, Kelly’s most-widely seen work to date  is the 2011 stop-motion commercial “Back to the Start”, commissioned by Chipotle Mexican Grill to emphasize the company’s stated commitment to organic farming. Set to a Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”, the two-minute piece tells the life’s story of a livestock farmer who turns to industrialized factory farming over the course of his career. Starting with the best of intentions, these tactics soon spiral out of his control and create a product that is abhorrent and poisonous. At the climax, the farmer makes the decision to revert back to the non-industrialized methods that began his career. Using cartoonish figurines and no of dialogue, Kelly’s meticulously detailed work demonstrates a truly impressive level emotional range and technical artistry.

“Back to the Start” has received widespread critical recognition since it first appeared on the internet, earned mention from Fast Company, Boingboing.net, The New York Times, and countless blogs. The short was recently aired in its entirety during the commercials of the March 2012 Grammy Awards.

 Your first short film, Procrastination, won a number of awards. How long did it take to create, and was the intention to demonstrate a wide range of styles? 

We had a year to make it (it was a graduation film at college) but i ended up making it in the final 5 months because i’d spent the first half of the year trying to making something else that was rubbish. Like the ninny I am. So it got to January and I dropped the previous project and started on this one. It was a little late in the day so I thought that instead of making one film, i would make a series of mini-films based around the theme of procrastination. It was nice and freeform – they were all individual so there wasn’t really any rules: they could be black and white or colour, 5 seconds long or 30 seconds long. Partly this came out of my frustration with animation – its such a process-heavy thing that sometimes it can be possible to forget to have fun with it. After I had made about ten or fifteen of these little films I stuck them together and ended up opting to make one frankensteinian film – and things progressed from there. In hindsight it looks like I was trying to make an animation showreel, but I promise that wasn’t the intention when i was making it…!

Your web bio indicates that you got your start in graphic design, and still work occasionally in this medium. Why did you decide to transition into animation, and who were some of your chief influences in the field?

I wasn’t a great graphic designer – for example I love typography but I am terrible at it, so instead I would end up trying to make illustrations for every poster or brochure I designed. I think a grounding in graphic design was incredibly useful for me though, and informs how I work now in a big way.

In terms of graphic design i was a fan of the usual suspects; Paul Rand, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Herb Lubalin, some London-based design studios like Graphic Thought Facility [ http://www.graphicthoughtfacility.com ], and Spin [ http://spin.co.uk ], and I still have a swelling collection of graphic design annuals from the 70s and 80s. I was also drawn to people with a design background that turned their hand to illustration, people like Milton Glaser [ http://www.miltonglaser.com ] and Geoff McFetridge [ http://championdontstop.com ]. As well as a trillion other influences.

What are some of the programs and tools that one needs to be proficient in, in order to work as a modern animation professional? Is it difficult to keep up with the changing technology, or is that simply a natural part of working in the industry?

By its nature animation is a technically-driven medium – whether you make stop motion films or computer generated 3D animation. The danger is that you can sometimes be tempted to let the technical side take over altogether. I try – not always successfully- to try and make sure the idea or story is the most important part in anything I work on.

In terms of changing technology sometimes it can be difficult to adapt for sure, but I am a software geek at my heart and love learning new software and ways of working. For 3D animation – an area I only have a little experience in – most people seem to use either Maya, 3D Studio Max or Cinema 4D. For 2D animation there are lots more programmes such as Flash, or After Effects.

I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about the Chipotle commercial that you recently worked on. Did you initially pitch the story concept, or did they come to you with an idea in mind?

It was a dream brief – very open. Chipotle approached us asking for an animated film about a farmer who resists so-called ‘factory farming’ techniques (after meeting them and some research we found out that this is a term used to describe complicated industrial practises like keeping livestock indoors and use of antibiotics and growth hormones – not dinnertime conversation). So the challenge was to try and make a film including lots of heavy topics without making people feel like they had been lectured to.

So we worked on a film proposal here at Nexus, and had the idea of making it one continuous shot that would tell the entire story in a sort of flow-chart / domino effect style. Also, we thought it would be more interesting if the farmer actually took up some of these industrial practises rather than resisting them – it makes him a more fallible character, a bit more human. Or at least as human as a 10cm puppet can be. Chipotle were nice to work for, very trusting throughout – this is a necessary trait with stop motion because there isn’t really any going back after you have shot the animation. Not all clients understand this…

From conception to execution, how long did the commercial take to create? What sort of budget did you have? What was the thinking behind the character/creature design and colour palate?

We had about a month and a half leading up to the shoot, the shoot then lasted another month, and then we had one last month of post production (i.e. taking all the wires, rigs and mistakes out of the stop motion footage). The visual side was finished but after that the music took a long time – about eight months in fact – and although we weren’t involved in that side of things, I was really pleased with the end result.

In terms of the design we were given free reign. The initial brief was to make the film out of paper, but I thought it could be nice to mix a sort of train-set background aesthetic with graphic-looking characters and buildings. The hope was that this would create a fresh sort of look for the film but really we had no idea how well those two styles would sit together – if at all – until we first day of the shoot when we put a character onto the set. I built up a set of colours that sort of worked together and applied these to the designs of the character and buildings. It was incredibly satisfying to design a pig in 2D, and a few weeks later be presented with a physical interpretation by model-makers Artem [ http://www.artem.com ].

Many of your projects, the Chipotle commercial included, have been produced using stop-motion animation. What appeals to you about that technique, and what other styles do you have at your disposal?

Good question – stop motion works for me for a variety of reasons. Firstly I love the problem-solving aspect of it – e.g. ‘how do we make something that looks like bubbling antibiotic fluids?’ (Answer: KY jelly with plastic balls floating in it). It can be quite a slow process, and for people coming from a film / live action background it can almost seem like directing in slow motion. For me however, this is a positive – with a model build and shoot there are so many discoveries and happy accidents that happen along the way. Also, on each of my projects, I’ve lucky enough to be able to collaborate with some amazing brains like Matthew Cooper, [ http://matthewcooperfilm.com ], Graham Staughton [ http://wearetheartdept.com ], Alasdair Brotherston [ http://www.alasdairandjock.com ], Joe James [ http://www.animatedjoe.com ], amongst many others.

It’s possible to create the effect of stop motion animation digitally but – to use a creaky music analogy – equally you could argue that its possible to create the sound of an acoustic guitar, grand piano or drums on computer too, but you wouldn’t always want to. For various reasons, I think (and hope) there will always be room for making things in this way.

Overall this kind of animation is a tiny part of what Nexus do. Mostly they make 3D animation, which is something I’d love to try properly myself sometime. I have done bits (there is some ropey 3D in ‘Procrastination’) but never had the opportunity to make any longer-form stuff with it.

Do you have any projects coming up that you would like to mention?

There are a few things on the boil including a stamp design a music video, hopefully they will all make it out soonish rather than laterish.

Samples of Johnny Kelly’s work can be found at http://www.nexusproductions.com/directors/johnny-kelly

A behind-the-scenes featurette of Chipoltle’s “Back to the Start” video can be seen here.