RAD TALK#1: Discussing Noir with GNARLFIELD
Interview by Joey Gantner
Le Samouraï by Gnarlfield.
This interview was originally conducted some time last year over Google Chat. I was hard at work on a crime comic and wanted some related bonus features for when it was printed, but the project became much more grandiose (and is now the graphic novel I’m currently slaving over) and sadly this got lost in the ether.
It was a fun chat – I don’t get to talk about noir as much as I’d like to, and to know someone else who loves the genre as much as I do is a great feeling. I’m glad this interview now has a place to exist.
Gnarlfield is one of the most talented artists I am privileged to know. You can purchase his legendary “Weed Jesus” shirt here or check out these 2 digital comics he was cool enough to let Rad Fort publish. He’s always posting killer art on his Tumblr and he will appear in Cosmic Cyst, an anthology of the coolest comics coming out on Rad Fort/Value Shock this Spring.
Joey Gantner: Hey duder.
Gnarlfield: Whaz slappening?
JG: Making some pasta. Did you know that it’s the food of poor people?
Gnarlfield: I believe that would be ramen noodles, actually. Well, “officially”.
JG: Sure, officially. Pasta is like the lower middle class poor people food. The sauce is where it gets pricey.
Gnarlfield: True dat. And that shit don’t keep!
JG: It’s a race for sure!
Gnarlfield: A week after you open it, yr pickin the mold out of yr jar. When good pasta goes bad, it goes evil. That’s my new stand up routine. Just an hour and a half of rants about pasta.
JG: What would be your name? It would seem like you’d need a name for a shtick like that.
Gnarlfield: Guido Linguini. Ey what kinda pasta is you makin’, guy?
JG: Some kind of shape. I don’t remember off hand, though I know it’s not my favorite one which is radiatori. It puts the rad in radiatori.
Gnarlfield: Nice. Bowtie?
JG: No, and I haven’t had bowtie in what seems like years which is odd because I fucking love bowtie.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, that shit rules. Anyhoo…
JG: So this is the interview, right now. Should we get to it, or should I change the focus of this from noir to pasta?
Gnarlfield: Hmmm. I think I’m ready to move on.
JG: Fair enough.
Gnarlfield: I mean, there’s no way we can cover the world of pasta in one interview.
JG: No, that would have to be a 10 part series at the very least. Maybe an interview per noodle shape.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, that sounds good.
JG: What was the first noir film you remember watching and loving?
Gnarlfield: Hmmm… Probably D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival). Definitely the first noir I remember watching and being like “this is a noir”. I might have seen other ones before I knew what a noir was.
JG: Yeah I know what you mean.
Gnarlfield: But yeah, that movie is classic. It’s a pretty good example of the genre.
JG: I didn’t realize until watching Double Indemnity in film studies that I was watching a noir film. It didn’t hurt that the teacher had straight up explained the genre before viewing.
Gnarlfield: Yeah. Plus, it’s such a loose genre.
JG: Oh, certainly.
Gnarlfield: Maybe I mentioned this before, but I wrote a twenty page paper on Blade Runner as noir.
JG: I don’t think you did.
Gnarlfield: I mean, it’s all there: Deckard’s anti-hero, multiple femme fatales, the goofy detective narration (which the studio made them add in, btw).
JG: Yeah, they removed it in later cuts though.
Gnarlfield: But yeah, the scene where Deckard pretends to be a human rights inspector or whatever, that’s basically pulled directly from Bogi‘s role in The Maltese Falcon.
JG: No shit! I never put that together, but now it’s blowing my mind.
Gnarlfield: Yup, there’s a direct correlation, and there’s a bunch of other instances of homage/reference plus the high contrast lighting, the pointlessness of the whole plot, the deadbeat city, etc.
JG: I think that time of noir films might be my favorite. When color was into play for a few years, but they still found a way to drench everything in shadows.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, there’s some good neo-noir from the 70s. The Friends of Eddie Coyle comes to mind.
JG: And things were obviously less censored. Men could be men. They could swear and kill like a man should.
Gnarlfield: Kill kill kill.
JG: Did you ever see Robbery? It’s by the same director. Peter Yates.
Gnarlfield: Oh sick, no I never saw it.
JG: It’s one of his first films, it was a UK flick based on a famous train robbery. The car chase in the beginning is out of this world, and it’s what made Steve McQueen hire him for Bullitt.
Gnarlfield: Word, another one I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t seen. Touch of Evil is another rad noir, a lot of people see that as the last official noir film.
JG: Also the last time a white man was hired to be Mexican, I believe.
Gnarlfield: Haha totally, except definitely not, they just got sneakier about it.
Case in point: Carlos Mencia.
JG: Yeah, isn’t his real name Ned?
Gnarlfield: I think I heard something like that.
JG: Also a famous joke thief.
Gnarlfield: And he purposefully changes the way he talks and shit. Some Tyra Banks bull, pretty much modern minstrelsy.
JG: What is it that appeals to noir to you? I was trying to figure that out myself recently, and I think it’s seeded from watching Westerns with my father as a child. I think that the noir tough guys are a natural progression from the cowboys of the wild west.
Gnarlfield: I see that. I dunno, I think maybe because I started really getting into noirs when I was in college. I never really saw the masculinity appeal, especially because there’s often a lot of weird latent homosexuality and stuff.
JG: Oh sure.
I think also it’s just that the world seems to be against these guys and I feel like that way too often.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, definitely and I think a lot of the attraction for me is that they’re the original cool guys. Like, they’re fucked and they don’t give a damn.
JG: Out in a blaze of glory.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, exactly. I really like that. A lot of the writers and directors were downright abusive to their characters.
JG: After being force fed so many happy endings, the appeal in noir could be that it always concluded realistically.
Gnarlfield: And I like that it usually shrugs off the typical morality of Hollywood at the time. Which usually means somebody’s gotta get it in the end, but at the same time, you’re still rooting for the guy with the questionable morals.
JG: Do you lean more towards the private investigator side of the genre or more to the criminal end?
Gnarlfield: I dunno, I guess it depends. I guess I like the detective stuff because the plots have a tendency to get obfuscated to the point of surreality. By the end, you’re just like, “what the fuck is going on, who the fuck is that guy, how did he get here, how did I get here, and why is everybody dead?”. Murder My Sweet is a fave, and that definitely has a plot that one of my favorite film profs would call “delirious”.
JG: What about when the two elements come together? An example being in Out of the Past where Mitchum’s character is very much a PI until he finds himself on the criminal end of things.
Gnarlfield: Sure, that’s what the anti-heroes are all about. It’s usually a good guy (more often than not, a PI) getting mixed up in crime and then there’s stuff like The Big Clock, where they’re criminals, but with a good cause.
JG: Have you seen any great noir films that were made in last few years?
Gnarlfield: David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence has a serious Out of the Past vibe and I love that movie. Cronenberg is definitely one of my favorite directors, and his newest direction, with the kind of ultra-violence theme is pretty cool. Really thought-provoking. Plus the acting in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises is so weird. It’s almost over-acted, but just restrained enough to just put you in a really weird state.
JG: Did you read the History of Violence comic?
Gnarlfield: Actually no. But I should.
JG: Have you read any noir/crime comics?
Gnarlfield: Good Q. Yes. Not a lot, but definitely some. There’s one in a Fantagraphics anthology called Hotwire #2 – “Outing” by Tim Lane. It’s more of a vignette, but the style is really noisy.
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by D. Clowes feels like a noir, at least in the delirious tone of the narrative.
JG: Yes! Totally!
I would recommend Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, there are 6 volumes out now but they are all killer and done by guys who really know and love the genre.
Gnarlfield: I’ll check those out.
JG: Darwyn Cooke also adapted some of Richard Stark‘s “Parker” novels and they turned out great – Parker being the basis for Point Blank and a shitty Mel Gibson movie.
Gnarlfield: Haha. Lethal Weapon?
JG: Payback!
Speaking of novels, have you read a lot of noir books? Because I have not.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, that’s something that I kind of want to get into, but then again, there’s still so many noir films that I’d rather watch and a lot of what appeals to me in film noir is the visual aspects, along with editing and a lot of the details of the acting. But I’ve always wanted to read The Big Sleep and some of the other Marlowe stuff.
JG: Those seem like the standards.
The only one I’ve picked up is Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn, because it was described to me as “surf noir” and was also the basis for the movie Point Break.
Gnarlfield: Haha, surf noir?
JG: Yeah and it’s an accurate description!
Gnarlfield: That could be either mind-blowing or terrible.
JG: It was drastically different than Point Break though. It’s basically about a dude who’s sister is missing and he moves to California to infiltrate the surf crowd she hung with.
Gnarlfield: Haha, ‘surf gang’. Oxymoron?
JG: I believe so!
Gnarlfield: Does it end with everybody getting stoned and the dude forgetting about his sister and chilling in California? And opening up a Big Dog apparel franchise?
JG: I still haven’t finished it. I started reading Blood Meridian and got distracted. I’m terrible at juggling books.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, I don’t remember the last time I read a book over like 150 pages. I dunno, i don’t have time for that shit.
JG: It’s horrible and a very American thing to say, but films and comics are just easier.
Gnarlfield: If I can’t finish it in like a day, then I’m probably never going to finish it.
JG: Exactly.
Gnarlfield: I’m almost ok with that.
And I was an english major! LOL.
JG: Classic.
My pasta just finished, so I’m going to wrap this up. Do you have any desire to create any kind of noir comics? I know we’ve talking about doing a screenplay which is still an excellent idea.
Gnarlfield: Yeah, I’m down for whatever. I think it would be a good chance to work on some really high-contrast, shaded stuff. Plus, I’d relish the opportunity to come up with a really ridiculous plot.
JG: I think you’d flourish at it, I really do.
Gnarlfield: Yeaaaah boi. Hope so.
JG: Well thanks for taking the time out to chat. It’s weird to talk like this is an interview because really you’re my pal and we both like chatting about noir shit.
Gnarlfield: Fun shit!
JG: Fuck yeah!
Night of the Hunter by Gnarlfield