by Daniel Robert Epstein
“I don’t want to be involved in any adaptations.”
– Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh gained enormous notoriety (not to mention a huge cult following that overflowed into the mainstream) when the film adaptation of Trainspotting was released ten years ago. Since then he’s written a number of other books chronicling the adventures of various fuckups, including a sequel to Trainspotting called Porno. Welsh has just released The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, yet another narrative about fuckups — but this time it’s fuckups on their way up in the restaurant world. The protagonist is Danny Skinner, a restaurant health inspector who is also trying to figure out who his father is.
Read our exclusive interview with Irvine Welsh on SuicideGirls.com.
By Alex Dueben
“The story opens with Rachel climbing out of a shallow grave.”
– Terry Moore
For many years Terry Moore has been one of the most significant and important cartoonists in America. His long running series Strangers in Paradise was one of the major comics of the 1990s and the black and white series won many awards including an Eisner Award, a Reuben Award for Best Comic Book from the National Cartoonists Society, and a GLAAD Media Award. What struck most of us reading the comic at the time, and even today, is how the book stands out not just among comics but among all media for its treatment of sexuality as the complex, often uncertain and fraught thing it is as his characters struggle with the lines between friendship and romantic love, attraction and affection.
Moore has written some comics for DC and Marvel including Birds of Prey and Runaways, but his focus continues to be his black and white comics which he publishes through his own Abstract Comics. Since Strangers in Paradise ended, Moore produced the science fiction adventure series Echo which has just been collected in a complete volume. His new book, which has just started being released, is Rachel Rising. It opens with a lengthy, creepy sequence where the titular character climbs out of her own grave. This fall Moore also begins to serialize a book How To Draw. A regular at many comic conventions this year, we conducted this interview over e-mail as Moore bounced between many states.
Read our exclusive interview with Terry Moore on SuicideGirls.com.
By Alex Dueben
“I think it looks like no other comic out there.”
– Matt Fraction
Less than a decade ago, Matt Fraction was a young comics creator writing graphic novels like Mantooth and The Last of Independents. Today he’s an Eisner Award winning creator and one of Marvel’s top talents, writing Invincible Iron Man and Thor in addition to this year’s big crossover event miniseries Fear Itself.
This year sees the return of one of his most well known and beloved creations. Casanova is more of a cult hit than anything, but it’s an intense and devoted cult that has followed the book over its two miniseries. The third miniseries, Casanova: Avaritia, features art from award-winning creator Gabriel Ba (The Umbrella Academy and Daytripper), who drew the first miniseries (and whose twin brother drew the second one). We spoke with Fraction by phone in advance of the first issue’s release on September 7.
Read our exclusive interview with Matt Fraction on SuicideGirls.com.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
“They can certainly attack me when I’m not there.”
– Al Franken
Man I love this job! After three long years of wooing I finally got a chance to talk with the legendary comedian Al Franken. After many successful years as a standup comedian and Saturday Night Live writer, Franken has released a number of hysterical and popular books such as Why Not Me? and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. When Franken released Lies and the Lying Liars in 2004, esteemed filmmakers Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus followed and him and documented the experience. Now its all been put together in the film Al Franken: God Spoke.
Read our exclusive interview with Al Franken on SuicideGirls.com.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
“I do more Romero than Romero”
– Max Brooks
Who ever thought that Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio would get into a bidding war over the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft? That’s something even Nostradamus wouldn’t have predicted, but it happened. Said bidding war was over the rights to Max Brooks’ wild new zombie book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which tips its hat to Studs Terkel’s The Great War — but rather than featuring interviews with people involved in World War Z, the book investigates nearly every aspect of what would happen if there were a real zombie infestation in today’s world. Brooks is definitely an expert on all things zombie, having written the bestselling Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.
Read our exclusive interview with Max Brooks on SuicideGirls.com.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
“It reads like some stoner wrote it.”
– Tommy Chong
Well, its official: hell has frozen over, the fat lady has sung, and Tommy Chong has quit smoking pot. Apparently after you smoke weed everyday for 50 years and then are forced to quit cold turkey when youre thrown in prison, you lose your taste for it. Hopefully that will never happen to me. I got a chance to talk with Chong about his time in prison, his new book The I Chong which lays out his philosophies and whether or not he thinks Cheech Marin has sold out.
Read our exclusive interview with Tommy Chong on SuicideGirls.com.
By Fred Topel
“I want to write to what seems like a fitting ending to the series.” – Charlie Day
FX introduced the new season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to the Television Critics Association with their series of four unique TV spots. With one spot for each character, they feature the gang in overly dramatic situations that are innately hilarious, because it’s the gang.
Charlie Day’s was a Miracle Worker spoof where Danny DeVito teaches him to read and pump water. Charlie’s character is known to be illiterate. After the gang’s presentation to the critics, I got some quality time with Day as he walked from the stage to his next interview. It was a little shorter than the usual interview, but still a solid walk and talk. The Sunny gang and I go way back. At one TCA party, I rode Santa Monica pier rides with Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney, and I was on the set of their classic “Charlie Writes a Musical” episode.
Day created the show with Howerton and McElHenney and hired Kaitlin Olsen for the FX show. Danny DeVito joined the show in season two, and the gang has relentlessly practiced hilariously bad behavior. They regularly take the politically incorrect position on hot button topics like abortion and the economic crisis (see episodes like “Dee and Dennis Go On Welfare”).
As with any success, movies came calling. Day has costarred in studio comedies like Going the Distance and Horrible Bosses. His next movie will be Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Sunny is signed for at least two more seasons on FX and Day addressed all of that, plus his standards of The Green Guy and Charlie’s crush on the waitress in the time we had.
Read our exclusive interview with Charlie Day on SuicideGirls.com.
