THE STATE OF CARICATURE

KENT WORCESTER: Would you say at this point that caricature is in a healthy state?

BRODNER: It's a yes-and-no answer. It's in a very healthy state if you consider what's being used in magazines and newspapers. In the press there is a far greater interest in caricature, or portraiture with humor, than ever. If you had gone to the recent Society of Illustrators show, you'd have seen a huge amount of caricature. That's where illustration has gone, to a great degree. When I started out in the 1970s, you had the old guys -- Levine, Sorel, Hirschfeld, and Grossman and then this big gap before people like Robert Risco and Philip Burke and I came along. It was only when the three of us came along that caricature came back.

WORCESTER: Were you all being published in the same kinds of places?

BRODNER: Risco and Burke were in Vanity Fair. Before I was in Esquire I was in Spy, and before that Playboy, in the 1980s. Burke was doing rock stars and politicians, and Risco was doing celebrities. My stuff didn't take off until the Iran-Contra scandal, when the reluctance to criticize Ronald Reagan fell away. I kind of exploded.

WORCESTER: Do you think of your work as sometimes vicious, in the way that Steadman's work can be vicious?

BRODNER: I don't know. I don't try for viciousness. I try to give an honest take on how I feel about something.

WORCESTER: What about "disturbing?" Are you interested in disturbing people, visually?

BRODNER: I am absolutely serious when I say this to you. I am interested in coming as close to the true image in my head, an image that is unbidden when I start a project. When I start a project, my interpretation of Reagan, or Clinton, or Bush, or Ashcroft, is something that comes from my sitting with a pencil and drawing. That process combines the physical act of attacking a face and having everything I know in my head coming through me. The conversation I'm having with myself about this face. It doesn't happen when I'm drawing Johnny Depp for Premiere, but when I am drawing political figures the picture that emerges from my head becomes what my goal is. Bringing the vision to the page. My struggle with the piece is to see how true I can be to my vision. The vision is always influenced by what's happening in the drawing. I usually draw many, many sketches before the final version emerges.

WORCESTER: Does any of this come to you in dreams?

BRODNER: Daydreams. Sitting there at my desk is really daydreaming. It's saying, now, this looks like Ashcroft. But is this the vision of Ashcroft that I want to send out? I keep asking myself this.

WORCESTER: Has anyone like Ashcroft ever asked to buy an original caricature from you?

BRODNER: Oh yeah. Right after Reagan came into office I did a piece for Harpers in which Jesse Helms was playing the tune while Reagan and company danced. Jesse Helms' secretary called me up and asked if Jesse Helms could buy it. I couldn't imagine. He looks like this retarded turtle. But it shows him in a position of power, and that's all that matters. Of course I said no, never.

WORCESTER: What about giving the money to your favorite cause?

BRODNER: Nope. That's not why I did it. I didn't work on the piece so he could put it up on his wall. That's disgusting. [Laughter.]

WORCESTER: Do you ever sell your work?

BRODNER: Here and there, but never to a politician. It's a serious business. But I get approached to sell originals only very rarely. For me the thing to do with the work is to put it in a book. These things live for reproduction, they live to be in magazines. I suppose if I were not particularly attached to a specific piece, I wouldn't mind selling the original. I did only one New Yorker cover, and I sold it, and I'm sorry, because all I have is the money, and the guy has my art.

MAGAZINES AND FILM

WORCESTER: Is there a magazine you particularly identify with?

BRODNER: I had two years at Esquire where I was the house artist. I did the back page that I wrote and drew every month. They let me take tremendous chances. Plus they would call me for almost all the caricature assignments. Then in addition to that I did some journalism; I went to the political conventions in 1988. I went to Atlanta with Peter Davis and to New Orleans with Martin Amis. It's all in the new book. In the world of magazines two years is a good run.

WORCESTER: What about the Nation? Your work shows up there a lot.

BRODNER: I feel close to the Nation. I'm going to art direct the GOP convention issue for them. They're making full-color pages available for the artists. And the New Yorker has been very friendly and supportive.

WORCESTER: Did you get to meet Hef when you did work for Playboy?

BRODNER: Never met Hef.

WORCESTER: Do you want to say something about the stable of cartoonists at the Voice -- Tom Tomorrow, Ted Rall, Ruben Bolling, Ward Sutton?

BRODNER: All are really good. I admire them all. I'm especially fond of Sutton because he takes graphic chances. Rall and Tomorrow are really writers. Great writers. Funny, direct, to the point. Dan Perkins [a.k.a. "Tom Tomorrow"] is very smart. What a smart guy. I love their work. You don't have to draw. I had a back-and-forth a little while ago with Ted Rall on Slate.com. If you Google my name you'll find it. Everyday we'd debate some issue. At one point he said "I'm going to take drawing lessons." And I said "why bother? You're great the way you are." He got kind of upset, like "you're trying to keep it all to yourself. You don't want anyone to develop and learn anything." There's nothing wrong with learning how to draw, but it might wreck what he's doing.

WORCESTER: What kind of response do you get from readers?

BRODNER: People will sometimes give me a hard time via e-mail.

WORCESTER: Do you write back?

BRODNER: Oh yeah, I always write back. Every time I'm on the op-ed page of the LA Times I get hate mail. You know, you're a left-wing tool of this conspiracy or that conspiracy.

WORCESTER: Would you rather do more journalism, or do you like to put in your hours at the drawing table?

BRODNER: To me it's all mixed together. My work is about literal ideas made tangible. The exciting goal is to have the powerful high-octane combination of both. I've done about 40 stories where I've covered events or profiled individuals through illustration. But I'm not doing it any more, because I've discovered film. I've made two documentary films, and I'm working on one right now about a man who has been exonerated on death row in Illinois. There's a case where the words and pictures flow together better than anywhere else. I draw on camera.

WORCESTER: Are you talking about animated film?

BRODNER: No. It's documentary filmmaking that makes use of illustration. I've come up with a rationale for using illustrations in documentary film -- in the place where there are no photos or footage of an event. That's the perfect place for the artist to jump in and tell stories with film. That's the thing I'm most excited about right now.

WORCESTER: What kind of camcorder are you using?

BRODNER: A Sony TRV-900. A three-chip digital camera, and I edit it using Final Cut Pro. It took me about three weeks to learn the software. It's tons of fun.

The film I'm now making is called Dead Wrong. It's about the case of Gary Gauger. Gary is an organic farmer in northern Illinois who was convicted of murdering both of his parents. He was interrogated for 21-and-a-half hours, and the police claimed he confessed. He didn't commit the crime. He was summarily convicted, without any substantial evidence, or motivation, but the judge sentenced him to the death penalty. He spent three years in prison. It was only because of Larry Marshall, a professor at Northwestern Law, and 60 amazing students, looked at the first trial. They carefully combed through the transcripts, and found numerous reasons to revisit the conviction, and they were able to convince an appeals court, and the conviction was overturned. To recreate scenes for which there are no available images, I've turned to illustration on film.

WORCESTER: Black-and-white, or color?

BRODNER: I've shot my footage in black-and-white, and the illustration will be shot in color, but very limited color. Black-and-white has a lot of power. Color has a purpose, but it's not all-purpose.

WORCESTER: Who is the audience for your films?

BRODNER: I don't know. I am doing it for me. This one that I'm working on is the first one I'll take to film festivals. Once the thing is further along I hope to get some grant money for post-production, and enter it into the festivals. It's a good story, it's something that needs to be told. Gary Gauger was in New York last year. He was reluctant to read the screenplay, so I asked him if I could read it to him. He said sure. So he came to the studio, with his wife, and when I was finished he said it was the best telling of his story that he had ever heard. When he said that, I knew that this was going to be a good film. Because all I need to do is illustrate it, and I'm good at that.

WORCESTER: Did you jump from editorial cartoons and illustration, to film, without ever thinking about doing a comic book, or a comic strip, or a graphic novel? Why not do a comic book about this case? Or an illustrated pamphlet? What is so bad about panels, and sequential storytelling?

BRODNER: I do that with the magazines. I have worked that way. Maybe one day when I'm older I'll do a graphic novel about growing up in Brooklyn in the '60s.

WORCESTER: Are there any graphic novels you are particularly fond of?

BRODNER: Maus. Ghost World, which I liked very much. I was very moved by that. Jimmy Corrigan. Chris Ware is brilliant. He's sincere, and the stuff really needs to come out.

FORMAL QUESTIONS

WORCESTER: Let me ask you a couple of formal questions. What kind of materials do you like to work with?

BRODNER: Watercolors. Just about everything that you see of mine is done in watercolor. Sometimes I use pen-and-ink. But mostly I work in watercolor, using Windsor Newton paints and any kind of brush that looks nice. I like a number 2 brush, or a number 3 brush, with a little distance on it, so it holds the paint and you get a fine point. Watercolor is fun; it's a fun medium to use.

WORCESTER: What about black-and-white versus color? Do you have a preference? Does color make everything a little too easy?

BRODNER: We miss black-and-white. It's gone into hibernation. Beautiful black-and-white is completely underrated, and magazines won't use it any more, which is a shame. Color is cheaper than it used to be. It's like what happened to film. There are certain movies that should be made in black-and-white. They're not; they're made in color. And to me that's too bad.

WORCESTER: What's the place of computers in your work?

BRODNER: The computer changes everything. There are a few pieces in the book that were actually generated on a computer. In the early 1990s I played with some software where I could mold a face out of clay, shoot it, go to a one-hour photo place, scan the snapshots, and then put the face into the screen. I would combine that sculpture, which would be colored on the computer, tweaked and adjusted. In addition to that, the software would allow me to add photographic elements, paintings, drawings, altogether in one eclectic and crazy illustration. Nobody liked it, it didn't do anything for my career, but I had fun on my Mac. Now I use the computer to send out my work. An editor might send me a photo of the person they'd like me to draw, and I send back both the initial sketch and the finished product via computer.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #262.]

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