Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3

by Carnell, Thom

  Tom Savini’s My Little Princess.

  See what I mean? So, that wouldn’t work, either.

  What is your opinion of the Alien Autopsy film?

  Umm... It’s either a horribly mutated guy or there was an alien walking around.

  It was interesting. At several conventions which I attended, it was the one topic I kept hearing about from FX people. It was all they could talk about.

  Really?

  They seemed really fascinated by it.

  Don’t forget now. It’s only valuable, those opinions, if the facts that were given were true. If it is in fact a 1947 film. If everything they’ve told us about it is true, then it’s truly amazing, but if any of that is false, then we’re opinionating on false evidence.

  How do you think the breakthroughs in computer effects will impact what you do?

  Oh, I think it’s going to impact it greatly. I heard talk that there’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in the planning where he plays 34 different people and there’s no makeup in it. It’s all CGI.

  Does he have that kind of range, do you think?

  Well, I don’t know. Does he need it?

  Now I'm hearing things like George Lucas is planning entire scenes without any actors at all.

  Well, those guys don’t like the idea that film goes through sprockets, but we look to them for their new innovations. I’d be anxious to see that. A director or makeup guy opens up a toolbox and pulls out the tools they need to achieve that job. If those are the tools and you can use them properly, go right ahead. You don’t owe anything to anybody.

  There is a sequel to your book Grande Illusions coming out.

  Yeah, it’s called, Grande Illusions Book Two.

  What can you tell me about the book? I know you’ve had certain people writing certain chapters.

  Well, I had Greg Nicotero write a chapter, and I used his journal on Day of the Dead to write that chapter. It’s going to be twice as thick, or more. There’ll be more films in it, more than the first book, not just more films. A lot more technical stuff. It’s dedicated to anybody that ever worked for me because I’ve learned as much from them as hopefully teaching them something. It’s got an introduction from Dick Smith. It’s a lot better written. I’ll tell ya, there were so many editorial mistakes in the first one.

  What else is going on for you?

  Well, Rodriguez, we don’t have an agreement or anything, has intimated that I’ll play on his Zorro for Spielberg against Antonio Banderas because I’m a tournament fencer. I sent him a bunch of fencing tapes. Hopefully, that will happen. I just signed a deal today to direct a thing, if they get the property. I can’t give the title out, though. I’m finishing up the last chapters of the book, putting captions on the pictures. And, just personal stuff. I’ve sculpted full-sized busts of Frankenstein and Ardath Bey for Diamond Distributors through Sara Karloff. They’re already done.

  Is this at all in conjunction with her drive for the postage stamps, or is that separate?

  Well, that’s something else. I did the Frankenstein, and the sculpture stays intact after you make the mold. I had Karloff sitting there so I just sculpted Ardath Bey, with the fez and everything. I sent her some photos. She likes them and sells them.

  Tim Cridland

  When we started the magazine, there was a lot of buzz in the underground about “body manipulation.” These days, piercing, branding, and scarification are all topics that even Middle America has a cursory knowledge of. About the time Carpe Noctem was coming together, the Jim Rose Circus was making its first rounds of touring. I expressed interest about it all to a friend of ours who knew Tim and setup an interview. This interview was done with Tim when he was in Seattle and working the door at a theater. The thing was… when talking about some of this stuff, it’s one of those things where, unless you’ve actually done it, unless you’ve pushed a meat skewer through the belly of your bicep, it’s hard to tell someone else about what it takes to do such a thing. But Tim does an admirable job. Years later, we ran into Tim (as he performed under the name of Zamora) at Knott’s Scary Farm in Southern California. He invited me up onto the stage where I and three other big guys stood on a board (which had been placed over his chest) as he lay on a bed of very sharp nails. He asked that we bounce up and down on the board to verify that there was no trickery being perpetrated. When he got up, there were small puncture wounds all across his back. Tim’s the real deal, man - impressive, scary, and unnerving in the best possible way.

  "Off The Deep End" with the Torture King

  What can you say about a man who willingly sticks meat skewers through his face? One might say he is a brave adventurer pushing the envelope of pain and its tolerance. One also might say he is a man someone needs to watch...carefully...and for a long time. And watch they do...in droves, filling auditorium after auditorium. Tim Cridland was, until recently, a member of The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and toured extensively in the Lollapalooza Tour. He is now knockin’ 'em dead in a one man show that is nothing short of astonishing. In his show, Tim thrills his audience with such feats as putting white hot metal in his mouth; pouring molten lead on his body; shooting electricity through pins in his chest; standing on eggs without breaking them; glass eating; walking on broken glass and sharpened swords; resisting blows from clubs, metal rods, blades and spears; and the ever popular needles through his arms and face--all the while consistently making it look easy.

  ~*~

  Describe, for those who have not seen your act, what it is you do.

  I'm doing, basically, a sideshow style act, but I'm doing stunts that you'd perhaps see in sideshows of yesteryear. They don't have these anymore. Things like sword swallowing and fire eating as well as some more extreme stuff which I'm most known for, such as a human pin cushion act where I stick skewers through my flesh and muscle tissue.

  How long have you been doing this?

  Well, I've had an interest since a very early age to some extent or another. I remember reading about the fakirs in India when I was in elementary school and finding that quite interesting, and something I wanted to pursue.

  What were your parents' reactions when this interest started to manifest itself? Was it something they were concerned about?

  Now and then. I would do some things in school and generally teachers found out about it and weren't too happy. Other students would react most certainly.

  In the course of your show, you do deep muscle piercing. Can you describe the "head space" (if you will) that you attain to do something along those lines?

  I don't have any "formal" discipline at all, but I have been doing things that would be called self hypnosis for quite a while. So, I go into a self-hypnotic state where I can change my perception of the pain. What would be perceived as pain, I perceive as just another sensation.

  Is it a matter of "getting on top of the pain" and being able to "put it into a box" and distance yourself from it?

  It's not so much distancing myself from it. I guess sometimes I could see it as I dissipate it. [It's like I] shoot it away from me. It's going out from me. It's not like something where there is no sensation at all. I'm not saying that I've turned it into "Oh, I'm getting pleasure from it" but the actual awareness of the pain has changed from being something that I'm going to really react to and have a hard time with to just another type of sensation as though someone were touching me or had their hand on me. If I didn't feel I could really hurt myself pretty badly. I'm aware of what I'm doing - I know where to go through [with the needle] and not hit any arteries.

  Is that knowledge borne out of trial and error or...

  Well...if it's borne out of trial and error, I prefer it to be other people's trial and error, and then I'll find out. [laughs]

  Do you have any background in anatomy?

  Not at all. I do my research. In everything I do I want to know exactly what I'm doing and try to figure out exactly what's going on.

  What was your first piercing?

  The fir
st was the forearm, with sewing pins.

  "There's Tim, in the sewing basket again!"

  Pretty much! [laughter]

  Is there anything that you have ever tried that was too intense and you were forced to stop and you've had no desire to try it again?

  I wouldn't say so really--no. I've gotten close to getting injured recently. But I'm not going to stop--it just means I have to figure out things a bit better. There's one thing I was doing where I get a staff, a big dowel stick, and it's broken over my back which is basically a Kung Fu thing...

  This has something to do with Wu Shu?

  Yeah. I'm doing what would be martial arts...they call it "Qi-Gong", which is making it so that you can resist blows and getting hit with blades. I'm doing a number of these in my show recently, and I'm trying to get more, but recently I had a somewhat of a failure, where the stick stayed and I broke.

  Was that at the cost of a rib?

  Almost. My back was pretty messed up for a few weeks afterwards.

  Can you give us your thoughts on the "trendiness" of the current piercing fad?

  I don't know how trendy it is. There was a point when the book Modern Primitives came out and it was the big trend. That all seemed to die down. Then all these models get their belly buttons pierced, that's something everyone seems to be doing. When things are "trendy" that's kind of a bad thing, because that means that they are going to die eventually, but I think that probably some of these piercings are going to stay around for a while.

  Do you think they've always been around and it's just the public consciousness that has come full circle?

  Well, I think that there's been a lot of progress made in the piercing [industry] so that they've made them safer and more available, with the jewelry made for it and better techniques and getting people trained on how to do it properly. It's made it a lot more accessible. I don't have a lot of permanent piercings. The piercings that I have been doing have mostly been temporary. Maybe call it "skewering" to distinguish the two, but I recently got a few permanent piercings.

  Why did you and The Jim Rose Circus part company?

  There's the big question! Basically, we just had different directions that we were going. I was really more into getting more intense with the skewering and things like that. That wasn't the direction he wanted to go. There were many other factors, but that was one of them.

  Is that the same reason why Matt "The Tube" Crowley left that show?

  Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that happened in the background, it was basically standard "show biz" stuff; you'll hear these stories. It's nothing that hasn't happened before in other areas of show biz, but basically people had different ideas.

  Have you seen the latest incarnation of The Circus Sideshow? What did you think?

  I haven't seen the latest, latest one; I saw a latest version. Word comes to me, people tell me about it. I think it's even changed now beyond that. I know they are doing the Nine Inch Nails tour, but I haven't seen that one.

  With whom are you presently working?

  Presently, I'm doing most of the performing myself. I'm hoping to get more people involved. The performance is being narrated by a man by the name of Dr. Ray Van Stark and we present it very much in the style of a "mondo movie" from the early sixties. It's a very sardonic type of quasi-scientific narration. We're not presenting it so much in a barker style at this point anymore. We made it more like a movie come to life.

  You say that you'd like to add more people?

  Yes, I'm hoping to be adding more people to expand the show to make it more...well actually, some of it is to take some of the pressure off of me. I'm quite sure there will be some additions in the future.

  I read your recent article in The Nose (Issue #24). When did your interest first get sparked in medical oddities?

  I've been interested in oddities, in general, from a very young age. My chief interest, if you wanted to put a finger on it, is oddities.

  Are you finding that a lot more people are getting curious about it? I've seen stores crop up in Los Angeles on Melrose Boulevard that deal in different bones and sculptures made from bones and what have you.

  There are some books and things out, too. I've seen the books and things for sale in TV Guide; the medical curiosities from nineteenth century books. I think it used to be very common to have these exhibits and sideshows or even hoaxes that are supposed to be medical oddities. I would say, yes, a resurgence. There's just not a place to look at them anymore.

  Had you visited the places listed in the article?

  I visited the first three (Museum Vrolik, Amsterdam Medical Center in Amsterdam; Mutter Museum, College of Surgeons located in Philadelphia; and Tulane Medical School in New Orleans) and the other ones I've just heard about and tried to get to. A lot of times you have to bring a medical student or bring a doctor or something like that. They're really not supposed to be for your entertainment, but that doesn't mean that you can't get entertainment from them.

  Can you tell us about your newsletter?

  Off The Deep End is kind of exploring people's extreme beliefs, as the title says. I'm going to the fringe (people that have strange beliefs) and finding what they can't believe and basically focusing on that. So, it's this weird, weird science, conspiracy theories, and paranoia; things like that are in there.

  Can they also get an itinerary of your performances in it?

  I'm getting a mailing list together for a newsletter for not only the itinerary, but also to have information about medical museums, performances of the past, human oddities and things like that. [It would also have] information on shows, how to buy any t-shirts, videotapes or whatever I may be getting together.

  If you are interested in getting a copy of "Off The Deep End", send $3.50 per issue, or if you want to write Tim about anything, his address is Post Office Box 85874, Seattle, Washington 98145.

  Jon J Muth

  Here’s another bucket list moment. I was working at comic shops back when Muth did his DRACULA: A SYMPHONY OF MOONLIGHT AND NIGHTMARES. If you haven’t seen it, the book is gorgeous; beautifully detailed watercolor portraits that are both realistic and impressionistic at the same time. Fans of both vampire lore and Fine Art illustration are highly advised to search it out. We got to meet up with Jon due to our friendship with Allen Spiegel who was Muth’s agent (as well as another CN alumni, Dave McKean, Paul Lee, and Thom Ang). Later, Muth did a cover for our Issue #13. Again, this interview is heavy on the artist’s process and the act of creation. A kind and gentle man, Muth is one of my favorite artists and one of my favorite interviews.

  Ethereal Ephemera - The Art of Jon J Muth

  In the art world there are many who ply their trade and are content to simply scratch out a meager living. Then there are those who furiously assault the canvas and their audience with a vengeance that is almost homicidal in an effort to purge some inner demon. There are still others who paint as a kind of therapy. There is another more elusive artist cut from a mold forged in emotion and held together by the welds of compassion. Such a person strives for the beautiful and revels in the chiaroscuric play that can speak volumes in a single moment captured on canvas. Their sensitivity to the world around them makes them true artists, not merely someone attempting to turn a gift into an exchange of coin. These journeymen possess the ability to take cerebral images and transform them into sights which bring to the surface of the viewer the very same emotional upheaval felt when originally observed. Their art is no mere passion, it borders on obsession. Obsession cut with an almost frightening understanding of the human condition.

  Jon J. Muth is such an artist. His work instantly transports you into an ethereal netherworld of light and shadow; a willowy landscape of water-colored fauna where phantom women walk in melancholic consideration. His art is the stuff of which dreams are made. His encyclopedic knowledge of the subtleties of shadowplay has served to rank him among the elite in his chosen field. His work on such books as Dracula - A Symphony In Moon
light And Nightmares, Moonshadow, Meltdown and M have proven that he is without equal in the depiction of the ephemeral.

  ~*~

  I understand from reading your book Vanitas that you studied in Vienna.

  Yes, just briefly. I went to see the Traum und Verlich Keit Dream and Reality exhibit in 1985 in Vienna, which was essentially the Secessionists; people like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

  Did that experience change the way you looked at what you were doing? Did it have any impact?

  I don't know if I would say that it changed what I think I was doing, I think it simply enhanced my understanding of the importance of drawing. You know what was the greatest experience for me in Vienna and it had nothing to do with art? I spent some time in the Vienna Central Cemetery and it's an extraordinary place. All of the graves are manicured and very well taken care of and the grounds are just beautiful. I spent some time there and took some photographs. I was there in the middle of the day, and there wasn't anybody around. I really didn't see anyone, except in some of my photographs there is this one tiny figure that keeps showing up in the distance. I haven't got a clear picture of the figure and I was in many different places taking these photographs. There was an elderly woman, all in black. I think probably what happened was that I ended up taking pictures and maybe took a group of them, and because this place is so vast and labrynthian, I just didn't realize that she was there. It was kind of odd. I came upon one part of the cemetery [where] I didn't see any graves. It looked like a wooded area and after all this very polished, manicured landscape it was kind of nice to walk into the wild of this wood. As I was walking in, I recognized that there were some things underneath the green of the undergrowth, and I saw that they were graves. In fact, they were all Jewish graves. It was a pretty profound experience. I thought that this was an extraordinary thing, running across all these graves and having them be the Jewish section of the cemetery, and I realized quickly, that it was an extraordinary malevolence that had initiated the lack of care around this particular area. The fact is, there just wasn't a Jewish population to keep that section of the cemetery up. So, Vienna was a lot of things. I think that studying in the museum there was nice. I was exposed to the originals of a lot of pieces by Klimt and Schiele that I had only seen in reproductions before, and that's always a great experience.