Weirder and Weirder

Occasionally, we receive notice of an event too late to include it in our listings. This happened this week in an odder than usual fashion, which is fitting, for it concerns an odder than usual subject—the life and work of the cartoonist Gahan Wilson. A regular contributor to this magazine who is revered for his ghoulish drawings and wholly unique sense of humor, Wilson gets the royal treatment in a new documentary, “Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird.” I had received a phone call from the director of the film, Steven-Charles Jaffe, at home, alerting me to an upcoming screening. This was highly unusual, but not too surprising. In addition to editing the listings here, I also submit cartoons. I recalled one Tuesday at the office many months ago, when a film crew was following Wilson around as he dropped off his weekly batch of drawings. At that time, Jaffe took my name; now, months later, he was holding a ticket for me for the screening of his film next Tuesday, March 4, at 8, at the IFC Center. As it turns out, he will be interviewing Wilson there, too.

For the film, Wilson executed a drawing for Carver Skateboards, a company run by his friend Neil Stratton. In my exchanges with Jaffe, he revealed how he got Wilson, who is in his late seventies, to engage with such a youthful activity as skateboarding, along with a little bit about how he got interested in the project in the first place:

I’ve been working on the film for four years and shot over a hundred and seventy-five hours of footage. During that time, I moved to Venice and met Neil Stratton, who revealed that he was a big fan of Gahan’s work, too. Putting my producer’s cap on, I made an intro between Gahan and Neil, knowing full well I’d film Gahan designing and painting the skateboard graphic. Gahan was very excited to do this as he had never designed a skateboard before and it gave him an unrated, uncensored opportunity. Gahan has never skated, but has enormous admiration for those that do skate. I’ve known Gahan since 1989 and have admired him since 1962, when I was introduced to his work by a friend who was celebrating his First Communion by sharing his father’s Playboy magazine with me in the woods of Stamford, Connecticut. As I was flipping back and forth between naked women and Gahan’s cartoons, my friend had set the field we were standing in on fire! So, in an instant, I had experienced female nudity, Gahan Wilson, and my friend’s pyromania. I’ve been an avid fan of Gahan’s ever since.

Here’s the clip.—John Donohue

Inside The World of Gahan Wilson - The Playboy Blog 10/30/2007 07:45 AM

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http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/10/inside-the-world-of-gahan-wilson.html Page 1 of 4 Inside The World of Gahan Wilson - The Playboy Blog 10/30/2007 07:45 AM

good.”

It was an honor to be at the festival to celebrate the film with Gahan and the director and his crew. Gahan has created a profound body of work and continuesto give us remarkable cartoons that we publish to this day. Steven-Charles Jaffehas done an outstanding job of revealing the man behind the art.

http://www.playboy.com/blog/2007/10/inside-the-world-of-gahan-wilson.html Page 2 of 4

The Sag Harbor Express 10/20/2007

"I just ﬁnd it so odd," says director Steven Charles-Jaffe. "People know his work when they see it. But they don't know him."

It was for this reason that Jaffe set out to document the man behind the cartoons. "Born Dead, Still Weird" is Jaffe's ﬁlm tribute to Wilson, who is not only a hero of sorts to him, but also a friend. Jaffe spent the better part of three years following Wilson in his daily routine in Sag Harbor, retracing his childhood footsteps in Evanston, Ill. and interviewing, editors, publishers, friends and fans about his work.

"I'm such a devotee of Gahan's work and have been since I was 11 years old," Jaffe notes. "How could you not make a movie about him?"

While the second part of the ﬁlm's title is self-evident, the ﬁrst part comes from the strange story of Gahan Wilson's birth. In 1930, Wilson's mother was given too much of the twilight drug used in those days to endure labor. She was knocked out so completely that Gahan was born blue and unresponsive. He was labeled stillborn andplaced in a box. But the family physician who happened to be passing through thehospital at the time thought differently and rushed to retrieve the infant whom he revived with alternating cold and hot running water from the faucet. Thus began the strange life of a weird genius.

Like many a young boy, Jaffe ﬁrst discovered Gahan Wilson's work inside an issue of Playboy. The year was 1962 and the event was a friend's First Communion party. The friend had swiped his father's copy of the magazine and retreated with Jaffe to a quiet spot so they could give it a once over. For Jaffe, it wasn't the nearly naked women that most intrigued him (in those days, they were somewhat clad), but rather his ﬁrst glimpse at a Gahan Wilson cartoon.

"I couldn't believe it," recalls Jaffe. "It cheered me up and made me realize there was hope outside of the world of men in gray ﬂannel suits."

"For years I followed his work. I was one of the few male readers of Playboy wholooked for Gahan's work before anything else."

When he entered the ﬁlm business, Jaffe thought it would be interesting to make an animated ﬁlm of Wilson's material. So he set out to ﬁnd him by looking for an agent, but had no success. Then Jaffe was the executive producer of the blockbuster ﬁlm "Ghost" and suddenly, his access changed.

"Someone asked 'Who do you want to meet?'" recalls Jaffe. "I thought 'Gahan Wilson.'"

The connection was made and Jaffe and Wilson met in 1989. They have since become good friends and have developed some projects together. Although the animated ﬁlm Jaffe has long hoped to make with Wilson has yet to happen, "Born Dead, Still Weird," the story of Wilson's life, will have its world premiere when screened at the ﬁlm festival next week.

From an upbringing chock full of bizarre neighborhood characters and a fascinationwith the macabre, with Wilson's work come inevitable comparisons to that of Charles Addams. But there is something different about Wilson's point of view of the world.

The Sag Harbor Express 10/20/2007

In his cartoons, the adults often have no control and are hardly parental ﬁgures. This put the responsibility squarely on the children, who are often left to their owndevices to ﬁgure things out and sort through the demons, as it were.

Jaffe also notes that Gahan Wilson was doing cartoons about global warming and the destruction of the environment long before the Kyoto Protocol, and among hisdevotees is Al Gore, who has a signed Gahan Wilson cartoon hanging in his ofﬁce.

"With no disrespect to Charles Addams, I still love his work," says Jaffe. "But Gahan has always had an interesting political slant to his cartoons."

"It's interesting, in the movie we show the ﬁrst cartoon he sold," says Jaffe. That cartoon shows a dead bird on the ground and a little boy saying to his father, "Oh look, the ﬁrst robin of the season."

"How far back does his concern go?" asks Jaffe. "You could say that ﬁrst cartoon he sold is political and it is about the environment."

Jaffe's ﬁlm illustrates how difﬁcult the business of cartooning can truly be, even for someone of Wilson's stature. During ﬁlming, Jaffe was given access to the New Yorker's "ﬁrst look" day where hopefuls line up in the hallway to pitch their best work to the magazine's cartoon editor. As might be expected, there are far more rejections than acceptances, and even then, few of the accepted pieces will end upmaking the ﬁnal cut. Among those waiting his tum to show his stuff is Gahan Wilson. At the end of the day, Wilson's offerings are not among those making even the ﬁrst round of cuts.

"Until I was there rolling the cameras I couldn't believe it," says Jaffe. "I never thought of it that way. I'm sure a lot of people who read the New Yorker have no idea what goes into it."

"Humor is subjective. Every reader has their own opinion," he adds. "But if it wereup to me, I'd make it mandatory that a Gahan Wilson cartoon go in every issue. He's a living legend."

Unfortunately, the world that legend lives in is changing and the ﬁlm also makes it clear that publishing is no longer the ﬁeld it once was. Cartoonists are ﬁnding it harder and harder to ﬁnd outlets for their material. Yet as Jaffe shows, Wilson continues to toil away every day at his home in Sag Harbor, creating work that mayor may not eventually ﬁnd its way to the pages of a national magazine.

"He loves his work," says Jaffe. "He's got an incredibly sharp mind. I'm sure in no small way the work he does and the manner in which he does it every day keeps hismind young and fresh."

And just like his unorthodox birth, Wilson still has the ability to surprise. The ﬁrst day that the crew traveled with him aboard the Hampton Jitney and ﬁlmed his day in the city, Jaffe asked Wilson when his next cover for the New Yorker might be coming out.

"He looked at me and said, 'I think it might be this week,'" recalls Jaffe. "Sure enough we stopped by a newsstand and there's the wonderful cat cover he did."

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