Let’s jump back into the interview…
Part 2. The Rise to Chaos
Jimmy Calabrese - Jumping into your high school years, I heard you took a film class that got you interested in film?
Brian Pulido - I was college bound, but I didn't know what my major was going to be, even during my senior year, believe it or not. Until I took a film criticism class where we watched and discussed movies. We were watching this movie "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," and I suddenly understood what film was all about. I knew film had an emotional impact on me and other people, but after watching this particular movie I knew this is what I wanted to do. The way the teacher taught us to view the film made me see the emotional effect it was going for. I just hadn't looked at it that way, but when she began pointing it out I was like "Oh wow, there’s something to this". And right then I applied to just two film schools. I applied to NYU films and Seaton Hall. Usually the rational is that you apply to about ten schools with the hope that at least one won't reject you. Thank my lucky stars I got into NYU. I went to NYU film school starting in the fall of 1980.
JC - When did you start getting into music? When did the love affair begin?
BP - I loved music ever since I could think. My dad had an amazing collection of Jazz and Blues records, and stuck inside his collection was the Sly and the Family Stone album. I must have been about eight years old when I started listening to those records. But even then I was listening to Charlie Parker, Diana Washington, Billie Holiday, and then not long after I got into the Rolling Stones. Right off the bat I was a "deep track" kid. I was into the Rock, then veered off into the harder Rock like Ted Nugent, but the second I heard Punk that was IT.
JC - Do you remember which punk band?
BP - It was the Sex Pistols. I'm not going to debate it, but the Sex Pistols are the single most important band to ever walk the earth. I won't even listen to any arguments about whether New York, California or English Punk is more important. I'm not even willing to entertain it because everything begins and ends with The Sex Pistols. Just the way the Night of the Living Dead is nihilistic, the Sex Pistols annihilated music -- they destroyed it. And as soon as I heard the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bullocks, I played that record consistently for all my waking hours. I learned about everything that came after them; the Ramones, the New York Punk Scene, Dead Boys, Ultravox, Suicide and all the English stuff but nothing in my world compares to the Sex Pistols. So that was my defining musical moment.
Music has always been a back drop for me; music is an identity thing for me. To this day I listen to all sorts of music but I particularly like all kinds of Rock. So that could be Blues, Jazz, Metal, Alternative, Classic Rock, and Punk. I like the Rock. It is very very important.
JC- I've heard that you wrote a story in high school about lunatic Santas. Did you ever end up using that story in any of your comics?
BP - I wrote this story in 9th grade, "When Speaking of Dark Splotches in the Sky" about a bunch of lunatics that escape from an asylum, get dressed up in Santa Claus outfits, and go to this small northern California town an destroy it. I turned that story in to the schools literary newspaper and I disgusted the guy who ran that. In this day and age I'm sure I would have been brought up to the Principle and sent for psychological help. It was really insane. And no, I never used that story again.
JC - At least that story was written well enough to where they didn't think it was the ramblings of a madman.
BP - I guess but it was rejected. They wouldn't run it.
JC- But it didn't get you expelled, so there must have been some merit to it. They didn't think it was a manifesto of murder.
BP- True. All of my anger is taken care of in the fiction I write. I wouldn't want to face the consequences of doing anything real. It’s fun to do all this stuff in fiction.
JC - What was your major at NYU Film? Did you focus on all aspects of filmmaking, or just scriptwriting, editing, directing?
BP - It was pretty well rounded. We were working with real film, 16 millimeter film.
JC - So you have experience cutting actual film?
BP - Yeah, we worked with what was called an upright Moviola. We'd shoot film, the next week we'd get it back, and then we'd edit the actual film, splicing it together. The next week after that, we'd screen it. Then we began using sound, which was magnetic tape essentially, which had to be physically cut as well. In our Junior year we would use what was called a flatbed Steenbeck to cut film, which was fantastic. It was much easier to navigate. At that time I made a film called a Junior Narrative, which was titled “Night Fall”, which was a loose adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story about these lost and lonely lovers who were fated to be together. It was a very nicely crafted movie that was very boring. We did everything throughout the course: edit film, shot film, and wrote scripts.
JC - So when you graduated film school why did you stay in New York and not move to Hollywood?
BP - I actually did fine, working in New York City. When I graduated I didn't have anything lined up. Luckily, nine months out of graduation I got a break. A friend of the family introduced me to this man who was a Location Manager, and he gave me a break. I began working as a PA for the movie “Batteries Not Included”. Off and on I was working that movie for over thirteen months. I found myself working quite frequently in New York, because I found myself a nice group of people who helped me find work from one job to the next. So from “Batteries”, I then worked on “Bright Lights Big City”, and at the same time I got another break and was hired as a Second Assistant Director of the music video “Tougher Than Leather”. The first day the First Assistant Director had a nervous breakdown and quit and I by default became the First Assistant Director, not knowing what the heck I was doing.
JC- Was that Run DMC?
BP - Yeah Run DMC “Tougher Than Leather”. I was the First Assistant Director and way towards the end when a car blows up, I'm the guy running towards the car. Theoretically I get blown up in the car.
JC - Laughs.
BP - That's my claim to fame. That was fun. That's a whole other interview.
JC - You also worked on music videos for KISS and Queensryche. Do you have any stories about working on those?
BP - Sure, what happened is that the “Tougher Than Leather” video got me into the world of commercials and music videos in New York and LA. I started working with a quite a few of the who's who. The first time I was an Assistant Director I was on a song for the movie “Earth Girls Are Easy”, directed by Julian Temple of all people. He directed “The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, The Filth and the Fury here comes the Sex Pistols”. I wasn't so good at my job. I got it done but I didn't work with him again. I was really "green" to be honest with you.
Queensryche was great. I did 2 Queensryche videos. One interesting story was that the first one we did was directed by Mary Lambert, who directed “Pet Cemetery”. I was brought on specifically to corral her, so to speak. Apparently she was very de-focused. I was kind of hired to muscle her through. She was very artistic and not easy to work with. Ultimately after those two days of shooting, the whole thing got scrapped.
My KISS story: I was an Assistant Director for the music video Domino and Unholy. This is my Gene Simmons story, this is great. So we were on Unholy. We were on a stage and I worked with this Producer named Tema Tascantin. Tema was a tough Producer; she could make grown men cry. But now that we were working with this upper echelon of talent she was always very concerned that they were being taken care of. She'd always ask me to make sure the band was happy. At one point Gene comes over, and people were going about doing hair and make up and costumes, doing what they were doing. Tema still nervous looks to Gene and says "Is there anything I can do for you?" And without missing a beat Gene says "You can line up every woman in this place against the wall so I can fuck em." Tema just looked at him kinda nods and drifts off. Amazing.
JC - Laughs. What a character.
BP - Yeah it's KISS. I'm a big KISS fan, so that was really fun.
JC - So how the heck did you jump into comics after being that involved in movies, commercials and music videos?
BP - I realized at one point while I was working with this wonderful Director Darees Auria, who I worked with regularly. Darees made Spanish commercials and high end music videos. We were on a particular shoot, and I just came off working a Mark Romanek industrial, Marks the guy who did the Nine Inch Nails video “Closer”. Something was gnawing at my soul more or less. We were there on set and I had that Talking Heads song that says "What the hell am I doing with my life" and I realized at that point my own goals were kind of on hold. I was an Assistant Director; I was serving others, apposed to having the balls to have my own vision come to life. It was really at that time that I just said “ok, I'll make my play”. Later that day, the Director Darees said “something just happened with you didn't it?” He's like “I know something just happened with you.” I was like “Yeah I can't do this anymore.” He said “Alright man I can see that.” And that was it. That was the last job I did. That coincided with several of my comic projects coming to life within a month of that.
JC - Were you working on comics while you were an Assistant Director?
BP - I was actually. When I graduated from college I was working on long feature films and it was very difficult to get anything done, working 18 hours a day. Especially starting out, it was pretty all-encompassing. I was working on comics as a hobby at night. I had a lot to learn actually, about spelling, grammar, how stories are structured. But I wasn't putting it on a full burner until that particular video when I said I can't do this anymore. It coincided with meeting and being with Francisca my wife. To be honest, I said I needed to grow up and be a man about stuff, take charge of life. That's really what made me start driving hard towards the comic book career. The movie career, at that time of my life- I could not see how I could end up as a Director. I had the inability to figure that part out. So, I skirted out of the film industry, and became a writer and publisher of comics. It was not my stated goal in life, but it was a wonderful creative expression. I remember when Evil Ernie #1 came out, it was the December of 91, and some guy recognized me at a comic book convention, one of the first ones I was ever at. He was like "Hey you’re that guy who wrote Evil Ernie, that comic wasn't too bad." That was like my first compliment on something I did creatively, and I liked it. I wanted to repeat it.
JC - Did anything you learn from film school translate over to comics?
BP - A lot does and a lot doesn’t. Initially it gave me the training to think of the story in pictures, which helped quite a lot. Things like lighting, camera placement, I would always throw that in the scripts, and artists I've worked with are real cool with it.
The fascinating thing I found out in the past couple of years is that there are a lot of bad habits I've developed writing comics that I had to unlearn when writing and directing a movie. In most movies you "show don't tell" when in comics, because of time constraints there's a degree of exposition, because it speeds things up. What I learned making this movie is that a picture is really worth a thousand words. I have to be real careful about being redundant.
JC - Why did you start Chaos Comics? Why didn't you try and enter the already established Marvell and DC companies?
BP - I love all the Marvell and DC comics but I did not necessarily have an interest in writing them. Yes, I've always been entrepenureal and my drive has always been to tell the stories I'd like to tell. I've always admired guys like Stephen King who keeps telling the story he wants to tell, and Richard Matheson. It's not like Stephen King developed his talents and then started writing Agatha Christie novels; his expression is what he wants to say. There's a cost to that ‘cause new and unproven things are really hard to get into the market place. I was very lucky when I started in comics, because it was a time when that stuff was embraced. That was the reason I didn't go into that particular direction.
Lets be honest, the reason I formed Chaos Comics along with Francisca my wife and Steven Hughes was because we had a deal to do another Evil Ernie series with a publisher, but they dropped us like a hot potato and we were destitute. It was either start all over again and look for another publisher who was into our thing, or just start it up. With a $28,500 loan from my father and the efforts of all the people I mentioned, Chaos Comics was founded.
JC - Chaos seemed to start up at the perfect time, right at the boom of independent comics.
BP- There was so much luck involved in retrospect. People say, "Brian Pulido is a marketing generous who can anticipate the market change." I think a lot of it was luck. We came in at a great time, and the comic print runs were gigantic. 2 million wasn't very unusual; Spawn #1 was 1.7 million. Our first comic Evil Ernie Resurrection # 1 we ran 66,329 the way I remember it, so with a wholesale price 2.99 it was hard to make mistakes and not be grossly profitable, although we did make a fair amount of mistakes. By time of Feb 1994 Lady Death became part of a phenomenon called "The Bad Girl" comics, and her sales by August 94 were in the 250,000 print runs.
JC - How long did it take you pay back your dad on that loan?
BP - I offered to pay my father, but he refused to take the money. Conceivably we could have paid him back with the first issue. He always refused me paying the money back. He would say "I'd rather you have your inheritance now." He deserves a lot of credit for the founding of Chaos as well.
JC - You've stated that Chaos was about fun, rock ‘n’ roll and outrageousness. Why do you think rock ‘n’ roll and comics mix so well?
BP - Well particularly then, no one was doing that at all. Back on the 90's we were coming off the time in the world of comics where superhero comics were very stale, and a confluence of independent publishers rose to fill that void. What I wanted to see as a fan didn't exist, things like Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Chastity, stuff we published. It was edgier anti-heroes, and outright bad guys who ran the book and I just didn't see that. Also as a KISS fan, as a rock n roll fan, it was always natural that when we put out a comic book we also offered a button, or a model kit. From the very beginning it always made sense to me. It was just a natural expression on how I saw things anyway. I've always seen them three dimensionally, there's a comic, barware, apparel, an action figure, and it always made sense. That kept showing up, and we teamed up with Clayburn Moore and had among the first round of action figures released into the collectors market. That's when people didn't think that was possible.
Why do comics and rock combine? I don't know why, but they just do.
JC - Last week I read on MTV.com that the rapper 50 Cent put out a new album called War Angel which was inspired by your comic. Are you surprised that your work has influenced the Rap Genre?
BP- I put out a comic called War Angel in 2005. It's about an angel who's bred by God to make war. He stops speaking to her but her mission never changed, so it corrupted her. She's one brutal character. I think War Angel's great but where I'm surprised is that it was an experiment. I was trying to throw as many genres into one comic as possible, so it's a horror / bad girl / western / sci-fi- it's all in there. When you stack those things up, it makes it crazy and inaccessible. War Angel's real name is Serenity, she's a lesbian, she's pitting Warlocks and Vampires against each other, it's really among the craziest stories I've written. That part’s surprising, but it's just cool. 50 Cents is cool, good for him.
MTV Shows
JC - What do you think comics can do that movies can't and vice versa?
BP - Comics can go really far, in terms of genre. Comics can really depart since relatively speaking they cost less than a movie, so you can stack 15 genres up. In the world of very personal comics, like journaling comics, you can be really personal and yourself. The form itself has a lot of flexibility and the budgets are really reduced. I think there's just more opportunity to tell personal stories. There's not always sales there, but there’s alternatives like web comics. You can see a lot more different points of view, where as in today’s movie market you are seeing more and more of these blockbuster sort of films, where it's getting more difficult to do more independent personal films. I still think you can do that in the world of comics without getting too hurt. Comics have some of the most fertile story telling minds like Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and Grant Morrison. These guys are great story tellers, really trippy thinkers. I haven't seen movies incorporate their ideas yet, but really it's only a matter of time because comic books are the breeding ground for Hollywood. They are on a ten year lag.
JC - Did you like running the business of Chaos, or did that hinder you? Eric Powell said that the business side took up too much of his time when he self-published, but then again he spends more time drawing, inking and coloring. How was it for you?
BP – Running Chaos was everything; it was great, it was terrible, and it was wonderful. I really started out as an artist, at one point I advocated the management of Chaos to other people, but that was our most inefficient year. We had 19 employees, our costs were crazy, and I was just interested in being the artist and not the business person. However we started getting into financial trouble, so I had no choice but to buckle down and become the business person. In the last couple of years Chaos was really strained, because we were carrying forward debt and we made some huge mistakes and ultimately we folded. Chaos was everything; it was wonderful and horrific all at the same time. During the time of comic’s boom it was fun, it was like printing money, then it became more challenging and we made a few strategic or financial mistakes and it was heartbreaking. Not only for me, but for the people who worked for Chaos and the fans. It was complicated; it was a lot of life packed into 9 years.
JC – What's your take on education? Sounds like you are pretty pro-education.
BP - For me, I'm like a building block guy. I wish I could learn better than that. I have to take it one step at a time. Take Chaos for example. I seem to only learn by making dramatic mistakes. Now I look back and say I'm a little better at business, because I made so many mistakes. I wish I had the vision of educating myself in business a head of time, so I didn't make all those mistakes, but I'm pro-education to this second. I'm always educating myself in trying to keep current to the best of my aptitude. I'm all about it.
JC - Even the creative type people? Do you think the "artists" need education?
BP- It would be ideal to be purely creative, but it's a little more responsible to educate yourself in the business. If you’re going to be in it for the long run, you need to handle yourself in the business. It seems as if you have to develop both sides. The creative side and business side, if you want to stay in this for a while. For me, working independently as a creative person in my 19th year, it's really required me to educate myself in some stuff that's pretty dull, things like balance sheets, income and expense, developing marking strategies, stuff like that. A lot of these things just simply had to be learned, either that or I wouldn't be doing this anymore. It's important to develop them. It was a terrible mistake that I made, I hired management inside Chaos Comics, and then I turned away and became creative guy again. I abdicated my management and just looked away and whatever happened, happened. If I could do that part over again, I would have managed those people to create a certain atmosphere, instead of looking away. Which is a normal thing for a creative person to say -- I'm going to do my own thing over here plotting the end of the universe, you take care of the rest. That was a terrible blunder because I literally dropped out from management for 9-10 months, and I think that ultimately doomed the company.
To be continued...
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