Joe R. Lansdale
MOJO STORYTELLER
David Byron chats with Joe R. Lansdale
David Byron is the founder of NVF Magazine, an online publication that promotes new voices in horror fiction and film. His past special guests include Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Edwin Neal of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. His latest projects include Queens of Scream: The New Blood
***
Introduction by Chet Williamson:
My buddy David Byron asked me if I'd be interested in doing an interview with my ole pard Joe Lansdale for NVF, but I declined, since I'd already conducted a lengthy palaver with Joe a year or so ago for Weird Tales. Still, I offered to write a very brief intro to the interview if David conducted it.
Joe does a lot of interviews, but in every one you'll find his distinctive voice saying pretty wise things, and this one's no different. David's tone is more conversational and jocular than mine had been (I always tend to interview "for the ages"), and Joe loosens up nicely here. Reading it gives the flavor of sitting in a quiet room with a friend, sharing stories and swapping yarns, and there isn't a better guy to do that with than Joe. Read on, and feel the mojo!
Horror Garage: Howdy Joe! How's the weather in Texas? It's so cold here, the brass monkeys are wearing thermal undies.
Joe R. Lansdale: It's cool and wet here, but pretty pleasant, though according to the weather guessers, that's about to change and it's about to turn cold and nasty.
HG: Sounds fun! I just picked up a book the other day entitled Horror Writers On Horror Film, and lo and behold, you were in there! I knew there was good reason I bought that book. I got the impression from your article that you grew up really enjoying the old drive-in theaters. Me, too. Was your love for that era -- and its films -- an inspiration for your book The Drive-In?
Joe R. Lansdale: I don't even remember writing that article unless it's the one called "A Hard On For Horror." That was about my love for low budget horror films. I don't like them straight across the board, it depends on the film. But, yes, that grew out of my love for drive-ins and drive-in movies and all the fun I had there, and the fact that there were certain types of movies that showed there that showed nowhere else, as well as some that did, and some second run movies from what Joe Bob Briggs used to call hardtop theaters. Truth is, I don't quite have the passion I used to have for low budget horror films because now there are a lot of better made, better budget films than there were before. Still, some are so good, or so goddamn bad, that they are still on my list of favorites.
HG: Yeah, I hear ya. I've always enjoyed your Hap and Leonard novels, too, one of my favorites being The Two Bear Mambo. Could Hap and Leonard possibly be based on real-life characters?
Joe R. Lansdale: They are a mixture of people, though Hap is primarily me if I hadn't met my wife and had had a mid life crisis -- I didn't have time or need for one -- and I had made slightly different choices. All this would have been without all the shooting and the like, I think, but I could have ended up a lot like him. Hell, in many ways, I am a lot like him. I get older though, and I've stopped aging him and Leonard as I wait sometimes years between their adventures. I have a new one, Vanilla Ride, about them coming out summer of 2009, and another will follow in 2010, plus I have a partial, Blue to the Bone, and another that have yet to be finished and find a home. One of them may turn out to just be a long short story. I like the guys, though, and one reason there's been a delay is they were with Warner -- now Grand Central -- and my new publisher didn't want to publish novels about them when the back list was owned by someone else. Now, all the back list of the Hap and Leonard series, plus audios of their adventures, and possibly a film -- been close several times before -- is forthcoming, with me writing the screenplay. The current book that may be a film is the first in the series -- Savage Season.
HG: I understand you are a Burn Notice fan -- me too! That Bruce Campbell is real hoot, isn't he? You had a funny story you told me once, about you and your family and Bruce going out to dinner, and a waitress recognized him. Tell me that one again.
Joe R. Lansdale: Yeah, I really like Burn Notice. I watched it because I like Bruce, and then I got hooked for a lot of other reasons. I wish it would get on a slightly more regular schedule. The martial arts in it are very good. The story is Don Coscarelli, Bruce, my wife and daughter and myself went to dinner here in Nacogdoches, and a waiter came over and told Bruce he looked like that guy in Army of Darkness, and Bruce told him, "Yeah, I get that a lot."
Joe R. Lansdale: We would have left it at that, but my daughter and wife couldn't keep their mouths shut. They told him, said it was him.
HG: Poor old Bruce... he is going to have to start wearing a mask to go out and eat. Speaking of Bruce, were you happy with the job Don Coscarelli did on the film Bruce was in, Bubba Ho-Tep? I really enjoyed it, myself. I believe that was adapted from one of your stories?
Joe R. Lansdale: I adored Bubba Ho-Tep. I think it's Don and Bruce's best film, hands down. Ossie Davis is one of my favorites, so I was really happy he was in it.
HG: I totally agree. You often mix horror and humor into the same story, as in the tale "The Night They Missed the Horror Show." Do you think that some writers use this as an escape? Sort of a creative outlet for their own fears?
Joe R. Lansdale: An escape. A way to make a statement. A way to work out demons. A way to deal with fears. That story actually has a number of true and "told for true" events I heard about. I linked them together for that story and made a lot of stuff up too, but the tone and the feel is right for where I grew up, the attitudes then. "Night They Missed the Horror Show" is my favorite of all my stories,and for lots of reasons. It changed my life as a writer, it became somewhat famous and has resold over the years, and it was a story where I felt I had learned how to write about the things I wanted to write about in the way I wanted to write about them.
HG: And a grand job you did of it, too. I understand you are acquainted with Chet Williamson. He seems like a real nice guy. What do you think a literary collaboration between you and him would be like? I think it could prove to be very interesting...
Joe R. Lansdale: Chet and I are very good friends. I met him at a convention many years ago, and I really wanted to meet him because I was a fan of his work. I'm especially fond of his short stories, and wrote the intro to his short story collection, and it is so good. As for how a collaboration would be... I don't know. We've edged around that with film scripts and comics, but it never quite happened. Most of the time I think writers do their best work alone -- at least in books and short stories. We are very different kinds of writers, so I don't know how we would blend. I'm a poor planner. I never know what's going to happen from one day to the next, except in a few rare cases where a story came to me in a flash, or it built in my head over time. I'm more of an idea and emotion writer than a big planner. I like a compass, not a map.
HG: Okay, here is one for fun: If you could trade places just for one day, with one of your favorite characters from one of your favorite books, who would it be?
Joe R. Lansdale: None of them. I like my life too much.
HG: Haha yeah, not to offend you, but I don't blame you there. Okay, here's another: What exactly is a "mojo story teller?" And, while I'm at it, what exactly is a "splatterpunk?"
Joe R. Lansdale: Actually, my wonderful webmaster, Lou Bank, came up with Mojo storyteller based on my use of the word as part of my title Mucho Mojo. It just means magical storyteller. But I didn't name myself that. I like it though. Splatterpunk was a horrible idea because it limited writers to fit a certain type of fiction. I may have written some stories that fit that definition, but I didn't want to define my career by it. It's clever, but frankly, I hate it. My friend David Schow came up with it. I think he and a few others wanted to make it a literary movement, and as soon as you can put a pin in it, put a name to it, it's over with anyway. I know a lot of writers who killed their careers with that label, and I was afraid it would get me even though I never embraced it; it puts too big a monkey on your back and again, for me, it's not accurate when it is used to define my career. It's a word that ended up in the dictionary, though, and David Schow is given the credit, accurately.
HG: No joke? I figured you'd have said Skipp and Spector. What triggered your interest in the martial arts? Hey... maybe you and Chuck Norris could do a film together...
Joe R. Lansdale: My father was forty or so when I was born and had been a wrestler and boxer from time to time at fairs during the Depression. He had picked up some judo and jujitsu, so he was my first instructor of self-defense and sparked my interest for life.
HG: If you could meet your favorite writer(s), who would it be? And... what would you do to entertain them? Dinner and drinks? Pizza and a DVD? Or... a verbal reading of "The Night They Missed the Horror Show"?
Joe R. Lansdale: I've met some of my favorites. Robert Bloch. Richard Matheson. Ray Bradbury. William F. Nolan. Andrew Vachss, who is a dear friend and brother. I'd like to have met Flannery O'Connor. We'd have to have had fried chicken and gravy and taters.
HG: Sounds tasty. By the way, how's your book Leather Maiden doing? Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
Joe R. Lansdale: I won't know how Leather Maiden is doing until royalty time, but I think it's doing pretty good.
HG: Well, Joe, I know you are a busy man, so I will let you go for now. Any last words before you leave us?
Joe R. Lansdale: Hmm... last words? Nope!
HG: Cool. Take it easy, Joe.
END
