Interviews – Retrenders

Interview with The Great Showdowns Artist Scott Campbell

October 24, 2012 by Al Woo 1 Comment

Scott Campbell (known professionally as Scott C.) is an American painter and illustrator who also works as Art Director for the brilliant game development studio Double Fine Productions. We recently got the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his wonderful new book The Great Showdowns – a collection of his 130+ paintings showcasing the greatest confrontations in film, where we find out how his love of movies has influenced his life, which one showdown would “rule them all,” and just how awesome Neil Patrick Harris is.

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RTNDR: The Great Showdowns has over 130+ film-inspired paintings and you seem to be a serious fan of cinema and the confrontations presented within them – so have you watched all of these films in their entirety and what is it about these struggles that lead you to draw them?

Scott C: I have seen all of the films in the book and almost all the films on the site, but i must confess that there are a few that i skimmed. There were some that i recognized as culturally significant, but just never felt like watching them. Heh heh. But there were always moments that stuck with me through the years, even if just moments from the TV ads! But pretty much most of them i have seen through my many years of existence. But most people have seen as much as i have, i have just started painting them all. I do absolutely love watching films though. They have influenced every part of my life since i was a kid from the clothes that i wore to the jokes that came out of my mouth. When i was younger, my favorite films were a part of my identity. And struggles are something we can all identify with, whether it is struggling with an enemy or struggling with a menu to figure out what the heck dish to order. There are so many moments that have stuck with me through the years and it is crazy how much nostalgia just floods back when I go back and watch those films. I love exploring those moments and i love assembling them into an epic mix tape of great film moments.

RTNDR: There are many more Showdown paintings on your website, GreatShowdowns.com, but we wanted to know how did you decide which paintings would be included in this art book?

Scott C: The book collects my favorite of the first big chunk of them. Some of the more obscure ones we did not include in the book. We have obscure ones in there for sure, but we tried to choose ones that would be most enjoyable for everyone to figure out. With plenty of good obscure ones though, don’t worry. The project is ongoing, so there are plenty for more books in the future!

RTNDR: Our editors’ favorite 80’s movie is Top Gun and they tried looking for a Top Gun showdown in the book to no avail – that got us to asking were there movies that you really wanted to draw for but thought that it just might not work? Did you consider painting TV series-inspired showdowns?

Scott C: I’ve done Top Gun twice! But maybe i wasn’t into how they turned out enough to include them in the book. I know that the most recent one was made too late for the book, the volleyball scene. The first one was Maverick versus Iceman. But anyway, there are for sure showdowns that i havent figure out how to make yet. I really want to do a Memento showdown, but i want to do him with his shirt off and all his tattoos and i can’t figure out what he would be showing down with. Some movies aren’t unique enough for me to find good visual elements to work with, like war movies or westerns. I have done TV shows and video games for special events. Like that LOST event that happened at Gallery 1988 a few years back. But for the Great Showdowns site, i am sticking to films. That is my rule for now! Just because you have to have rules and I’d be opening a huge can of worms with TV shows that i am not ready to open just yet.

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Filed Under: Art, Books, Featured, Interviews Tagged With: artist, epic showdowns, illustrator, NYC Comic-Con, Titan Books, top gun

Interview with Resident Evil: Retribution Author John Shirley

September 26, 2012 by Al Woo Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, the 5th film installment of the Resident Evil franchise opened in theaters plus the Resident Evil 6 video game will be released on October 2, 2012. For fans who can’t get enough of Resident Evil, a book adaptation of Resident Evil: Retribution has also been released through Titan Books written by cyberpunk/sci-fi author John Shirley. The book will showcase Alice and her team as they fight the powerful Umbrella Corporation and the deadly T-virus that has taken over the world. We had the opportunity to ask the prolific writer a few questions where we discuss his favorite authors, recommended readings, and Milla Jovovich.

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RTNDR: Before Titan Books had approached you to work on the Resident Evil: Retribution novelization, were you familiar with the franchise? Was there anything specific in the Resident Evil world, such as the characters or maybe the mix of horror and science fiction, that drew you to this project?

John Shirley: I like writing novelizations, now and then, it’s fun to do, not terribly difficult for me since I have written scripts (eg, THE CROW) so I grasp pretty well what the scriptwriter intends visually. Certainly, horror novelizations are fun. And the novelization job gave me an excuse to watch all the Resident Evil movies, in preparation, which, in turn, gave me an excuse to watch the beautiful, scantily clad Milla Jovovich for hour after hour. Milla of course plays the main hero in Resident Evil, Alice. So how can I complain about that gig?

RTNDR: You’ve also written both the Doom and Constantine film novelizations, so we were wondering, what is your process or how did you go about writing movie novelizations? Do you get a script of the movie beforehand or maybe even get to preview the film? Also, is there a lot of interaction between you and the film company?

John Shirley: I get a script yes, but these days they are very close with their DVD previews because they don’t want them to be leaked on the internet … not that I would ever do that. As a scriptwriter myself, I’m not a fan of movie piracy . . .

They send me the shooting script and *usually* it’s the true shooting script, the final-final, but I remember with Doom they changed it anyway when I was well into the novelization so I had to rewrite it. But that’s all part of the business. And some interaction with the film company may be part of novelizing, but usually there is an intermediary at the publisher. They forward any questions I may have. I try to familiarize myself with the franchise, so I don’t have too many questions. Nowadays there are “wikis” that give a lot of information, so I rely on the fans who organize those too. They’re usually accurate. But in the case of Doom I had played all the games and related games already; in the case of Constantine I was aware of the John Constantine (Hellblazer) comics. The movie diverged from the comics but the character was pretty close in a lot of ways. Of course, Keanu Reaves’ character was American, not British as the original John Constantine was. I later wrote a couple of John Constantine: Hellblazer novels for Pocket Books. You can still find them on Amazon … and those I based purely on the comic books. It’s the British John Constantine. So I’ve “novelized” two separate versions of the character John Constantine. And in one of the books I explain (somewhat humorously) the discrepancy between them, in an indirect way.

I work from the script by visualizing scenes and then turning them into prose, but also — especially with an action-oriented story like Resident Evil — I have to flesh it out, create some new characters, get into new point of views, find ways to explore the back stories of the main characters without contradicting what we know about them. It can be tricky. I always work to flesh the story out “organically”, so it’s all of a piece and natural and creatively done, rather than “padding” it. That is, I do my very best to write the novel so everything is entertaining and creative, and not just something to fill out the book.

I sometimes order related book material — eg, I ordered a big book about Resident Evil, a sort of guidebook, to use as a source, but I had to be clear on the way the Resident Evil movies differ from the game Resident Evils. Fans of the games seem to really like the movies — but they’re aware that they’re not completely consistent in all their character histories, arc and so on with the games. It’s as if the games and films take place in parallel but separate universes. So I had to keep all that in mind …

Interview with The Twenty-Year Death Author Ariel S. Winter

August 3, 2012 by Stephen Jang Leave a Comment

Next week on August 7th 2012, Titan Books will be releasing Ariel S. Winter’s debut crime noir novel “The Twenty-Year Death.” Our Retrenders staff had a chance to interview Mr. Winter and talk a little about the book, his influences, and more:

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RTNDR: How did you come up with the idea to start The Twenty-Year Death? What inspired you to write not just one story but three complete novels written in the style of three different iconic mystery writers?

Ariel: I originally set out to write a different book. It was going to have a frame narrative, and within that frame would have been full novels of various genres. So it was in that context that I wrote Malniveau Prison in the style of Georges Simenon. When I decided to jettison the original idea but keep Malniveau Prison and expand it into what became The Twenty-Year Death, it only made sense to continue with other pastiche/homages. The character that I was going to follow from book to book was an American writer living in France in the 1930s, and so many of the writers who did that in real life, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, ended up writing for Hollywood at some point. And Hollywood led naturally to Raymond Chandler in the 1940s. So with ten years between the first two books I figured there should be another ten years between book two and book three, and the list of choices of master crime writers from the 1950s was basically Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith. At the time, I’d read more Thompson and his style fit better for the subject of the book.

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Filed Under: Books, Interviews Tagged With: crime, crime novel, detective mystery, noir, The Twenty-Year Death, Titan Books

Interview with Luke Chueh

June 13, 2012 by GuestContributor 2 Comments

Here at Retrenders I had the pleasure of interviewing Luke about his just released book, The Art of Luke Chueh – Bearing the Unbearable published by Titan Books, and got to know a little more of the painter and graphic designer.

RTNDR: I see this book is a great collection of your paintings, acrylic statues, and even showing your skateboard art, but we know you have an amazing collection of vinyl work. Will we see a book highlighting your vinyl art?

LUKE: I think creating a book of my 3-D work would be a great idea. Maybe in couple years after I’ve built up a large enough portfolio.

RTNDR: How would you categorize or characterize your art or should we even categorize art?

LUKE: Years ago, I used to spend time thinking of new names for the genre of my art. I always felt “Lowbrow” had demeaning connotations and “Pop Surreal” only told a part of the story. Word combinations like “Post Brow”, “Idealized Art”, or “Contemptorary” became labels I threw around. But lately I’ve sort of “come to terms” with Lowbrow & Pop Surrealism. To dismiss these would be to dismiss the artists whose work inspired label, and if fans and critics consider my art to be of the genre, then whom am I to tell them they’re wrong? But to be completely honest, I would prefer having my work simply recognized as “contemporary art” (ie. Art that is characteristic of the present).

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