{"id":7540,"date":"2011-02-01T09:48:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T16:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/?p=7540"},"modified":"2011-02-08T09:53:40","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T16:53:40","slug":"an-interview-with-artist-eric-drooker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/en\/an-interview-with-artist-eric-drooker\/","title":{"rendered":"An interview with artist Eric Drooker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Eric Drooker at his studio in Berkeley. Photo Hanna Quevedo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

Eric Drooker is a painter and graphic novelist who lives in the Bay Area. He started out in New York creating political street art in the 1980s, his paintings now often appear on the cover of The New Yorker and hang in various collections. He most recently designed the animation sequence for the film \u201cHowl\u201d (2010) directed by Ron Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and starring James Franco.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The film is based on the life of the iconic poet Allen Ginsberg, a prominent figure of the Beat Generation, and the landmark obscenity trial in 1957 that involved his groundbreaking poem, \u201cHowl\u201d. Drooker and Ginsberg were friends and collaborated on projects together before Ginsberg died in 1996. \u201cHowl\u201d was released on DVD January 3, 2011 on Amazon and the graphic novel is also available.<\/p>\n

This past MLK day, El Tecolote had the opportunity to sit down with him in his Berkeley studio and ask him about his animated contribution to the film, Ginsberg and his own approach to art.<\/p>\n

What is your background and how would you describe your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was born and raised on Manhattan Island. Virtually all of my work is about the metropolis. It\u2019s not necessarily always New York City, and it\u2019s not always recognizable, but it\u2019s usually about some big city somewhere with tall buildings. In that sense, it\u2019s mostly autobiographical. The city is my muse.<\/p>\n

How did you meet and befriend Allen Ginsberg?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was just a character from the neighborhood. He was very organic \u2013 just someone you saw in the streets. I was quite young when I first saw him. I was 8 or 9 years old, and my mom pointed him out to me on the 14th Street cross-town bus. I didn\u2019t attach too much significance to it until I was a teenager when I started reading some of Ginsberg\u2019s work, and I liked where he was coming from. But by the time I was in my twenties, I would see him around, and I found he was very approachable. Not only was he accessible but very encouraging to people in the arts\u2014music, poetry and even visual artists like myself. He was curious to see their work and giving them constructive criticism and feedback. So I consider him to be one of my teachers.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/strong>
Allen Gingsberg & Eric Drooker. Photo by Denise Kiem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tell us about Ginsberg and the Lower Eastside during the time you lived there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lower Eastside was very similar to the Mission District. It was the Latin quarter. It was a Spanish speaking neighborhood\u2014not Chicano but mostly Puerto Rican\u2014and Ginsberg was just a part of the city. He was just a vivid example, or specific example, of the metropolis, like the Brooklyn Bridge is a vivid part of the infrastructure of the city or the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty. There were just as many poets and artists in the Lower Eastside as [there are now] in the Mission District. The neighborhood was overflowing with creative energy. At least it was then. It\u2019s less so know since it\u2019s been largely gentrified, but when I was coming of age in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a hotbed, not only of political activity, but cultural activity: music, art and poetry.<\/p>\n

How did you eventually collaborate with Ginsberg?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It turned out that he was familiar with my work from seeing it on the street–in the form of protest posters. I was always one of the most conspicuous artists who was always re-pasting work on the street during the \u201880s and \u201890s when we had a lot of confrontations with the police. It was the peak of the squatters\u2019 movement.<\/p>\n

When he realized I was the artist responsible for so much of the street posters, he suggested that we collaborate on a street poster together\u2014which we did. And we ended up doing a series of collaborations pairing his poetry with my paintings and drawings and it culminated in this book we did together called \u201cIlluminated Poems\u201d. It came out in 1996 and he died a few months later so I think it was his last book published in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

How did you get involved in the film \u201cHowl?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman started making the film they were shown my book, \u201cIllluminated Poems,\u201d that I collaborated with Ginsberg. Based on that, they were interested in perhaps using some of my artwork in the documentary, but when they came to the studio, they saw some of my graphic novels, and that\u2019s when the light bulb went off over their heads, because they saw I was doing this sequential art, and to a filmmaker, a graphic novel looks like a storyboard. So they said, \u201cHey! You could animate this.\u201d I learned through production that graphic novels and storyboarding for animations have major differences. They are both examples of sequential art, which has been getting more respectability in recent years with the commercialization of graphic novels.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowl\u201d is arguably one of the most important poems of the twentieth century, if not certainl<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>y for the Beat Generation. What was your approach to stay true to a poem, by which its very nature is always <\/strong>subject to varying interpretations? Do you think your imagery might change the meaning somehow?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adding a picture to poem changes the experience in a way because if you are just looking at a poem without pictures, you are forced conjure up an image in your own head. That\u2019s one of the magical things about poetry. That\u2019s why it\u2019s risky–even creatively dangerous–to add pictures to a poem–especially one that is famous. It\u2019s the same way as it is a dangerous thing to make a movie out of a book that is a classic where everyone already has their own idea of that the characters and landscape should look like. So I had to be careful that I wasn\u2019t being too literal. I wasn\u2019t simply illustrating but bouncing my pictures off of his words. The pictures all have to stand on their own without needing words just like the words of the poem are able to stand on their own and then we put them together. That was my approach rather than seeing it as an illustration job.<\/p>\n

How is making an animation sequence different than making a painting or print. Had you worked with animation before this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had little experience with animation. The producer hired an animation team of 50 animators to bring my art to life. Animation is so labor intensive as an art form. You can\u2019t do it by yourself, you need to be in a group. It\u2019s more like being a bandleader. You are composing your music and then you are putting a really good orchestra together to interpret your work. The studio was interpreting my artwork. It was adding pictures to Ginsberg\u2019s words but it was magnified a thousand fold. The picture is just on a page but it exists in real-time with the spoken poem. It\u2019s in temporal form like music or theater or cinema. I had to keep up with the rhythm of the poem. Each chapter of \u201cHowl\u201d has a very specific rhythm. I was trying to be harmonious with the stanzas of the poem. I was extremely pleased with the way it came out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The second chapter of the poem, with Moloch,\u00a0has\u00a0intense rhythmn and imagery. What was your approach to animate that part of the “Howl”?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well that was the chapter that always grabbed me the most so I fleshed that out a bit and researched the history of Moloch\u2014the pagan god of fire and war who was worshiped by the Canaanites and ancient Hebrews. They way they worshiped Moloch was by sacrificing their children to him. The same way we do now, the same way Barack Obama even worships. He my call himself a Christian and go to church on Sunday but during the week he\u2019s sending teenagers to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, or he\u2019s simply sending out unmanned drone planes and bombing children and civilians in places like Pakistan.<\/p>\n

So I tried to bring it up to date. I saw an opportunity to bring \u201cHowl\u201d\u2014which was written over 50 years ago and was a critique of Cold War America–and make it subtlely about now. I used a scene with burning oil fields–which aren\u2019t in the poem\u2014and scene in which children are thrown into the fire and then morph into soldiers being marched into Moloch\u2019s flaming jaws. So that\u2019s where I was trying to have the most social critique in that chapter.<\/p>\n

What did you think of James Franco\u2019s portrayal of Allen Ginsberg?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was skeptical of even hiring an actor to play the young Ginsberg. It\u2019s a risky thing to do. It\u2019s done a lot in movies and docudramas and it\u2019s usually done with lame results. It\u2019s usually really corny so I was nervous when they were hiring an actor, James Franco, who I had never heard of. But I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. He was amazingly good. It was much more convincing than I had expected. I met with him before the film and he picked my brain a bit\u2014not so much about what Ginsberg was like but what the neighborhood was like in order to widen his scope of the person. The guy really did his homework. I also gave him several recordings of Bebop music\u2014Charles Parker, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. It\u2019s not only what Ginsberg and Kerouac were listening to but trying to emulate. They aspired to improvise and be spontaneous like those artists.<\/p>\n

Ginsberg is well known counter-cultural figure but the film seems to have an element of patriotism regarding the necessity of free speech in democracy and the willingness of even conservatives to uphold such ideals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It certainly has a patriotic flavor but in a way that was twisting it around trying to make it legit \u2014 this poem that was partly homoerotic and had a lot of social critique \u2014 that even that is considered protected speech. I feel that the filmmakers overall watered down Ginsberg. They didn\u2019t get into the politics and it didn\u2019t have the subversive feelings of the Ginsberg I knew. Even as an old man, he was pretty subversive and blacklisted from the mainstream media. Anytime they had him on, he would immediately talk about the CIA importing cocaine into the country when Reagan was president during the Contra-gate. He was always drawing attention to contemporary politics. The film just really focused on the young Ginsberg\u2014just coming out of the closet\u2014and I suppose that\u2019s enough for a subject for a full film right there. You can\u2019t put everything into a movie. So I think the filmmakers did a fine job and it was perhaps a wise decision on their part to just focus and view him through that lens.<\/p>\n

Did Ginsberg ever reflect on this event with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not so much. He was always very engaged with the present and that is what was amazing about him. In fact, he didn\u2019t always like reading \u201cHowl\u201d all that much. He didn\u2019t want to over do it and wanted to read his newer poetry. What he did dwell on was his relationship with (Jack) Kerouac and (Neal) Cassidy. These are people that he was in love with and they both died young in their forties. He couldn\u2019t get those guys out of his system. He was constantly dreaming about them and writing poems about them.<\/p>\n

What do you think about the state of art and politics today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I think art continues to be a potent means of communication and of persuading masses of people to question not only authority but to question their own values. If you\u2019re just standing on a soapbox or writing an article in a newspaper, not as many people will listen but you have a beautiful melody, image or an rhythm that\u2019s so contagious, you are going to get a huge crowd\u2014a young crowd that are literally moved.<\/p>\n

If you want to talk about art as a form of propaganda, it\u2019s the most powerful means. That\u2019s why advertisers or corporations are always hiring the best artists to do their ad campaigns whether it\u2019s Apple Computers or you name it.<\/p>\n

Throughout history it hasn\u2019t changed much. Whoever was in power always was hiring the best artists like the Vatican. Now it\u2019s the corporate state. Even for myself, I\u2019ve seen a piece of my artwork used to advertise for the Ipad. It\u2019s hard for an artist not to be co-opted. The artist needs to pay rent and eat food too. A certain amount of prostitution is usually necessary if you want to support yourself with your art.<\/p>\n

When we are talking about political or radical art, it\u2019s usually where the artist doesn\u2019t expect to make a cent, because if you expect to make money off of it, you have to tone it down a little bit. When I did my street posters in the late 1980s, not only was I not expecting to make money, I wanted to remain anonymous, because if you signed your name on them, the police could bust you.<\/p>\n

What do you want people to get from this film\u2014especially the younger generation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the reasons I jumped at the offer when Epstein and Friedman contacted me was I thought this would be a good opportunity to bring \u201cHowl\u201d and Beat literature and politically outspoken art to a younger generation that I think is more visually oriented than it was 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping people enjoy the film. It\u2019s about candor and openness, some one finding their own voice as artist and finding one\u2019s own path. Being true one\u2019s own voice and having the courage to speak up and stay with it even if it is not immediately recognized.<\/p>\n

Do you have any other projects in the works?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m working now on another animation project. A young animator is interpreting the final chapter of my last book \u201cBlood Song\u201d. It\u2019s going to be a short\u2014about a seven minute long film. Of course, as I have learned, seven minutes is an extremely long time in animation. I worked on \u201cHowl\u201d for two solid years and it totaled up to be about 20 minutes of animation that\u2019s woven in the feature-length film.<\/p>\n

Eric Drooker will be giving slide lectures on “The Art of Animating Howl'” on Wed, Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m. @CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St., San Francisco and on Wed, Mar. 16, 7 p.m. @The Jewish Community Center, 3200 California St., San Francisco. Also you can check more of his work at <\/em>www.drooker.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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