Broken Frontier

Writer. Actor. Occasional boxer. Guest on Letterman. Jonathan Ames has a rather diverse resume. A former columnist for the New York Press, his amusing anecdotes have been collected in three books, starting with 2000’s What’s Not To Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer. His novels include I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man and Wake Up, Sir!, the latter two of which are currently in development as films.

Ames also manages time to perform with the New York based company, The Moth, a non-profit performance group devoted to promoting storytelling. The multi-skilled scribe has also had his first OGN released through DC Comics and Vertigo. The semi-autobiographical The Alcoholic details a young writer’s struggles with a laundry list of life’s vices and is illustrated by Dean Haspiel (Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter).

BROKEN FRONTIER: Reading your biography, it appears that you may have had the classic traits of both class clown and nerd. Is that still the case?

JONATHAN AMES: I don't think I was class clown -- I kept a low profile, though maybe that's not true, I was editor of the school newspaper.  So I was neither nerd nor clown; I was a hybrid, a fuel-efficient, confused self-loather who was, nevertheless, curious about life and craved adventures.  This is still the case.

BF: Have you ever had to face negative consequences from telling all your secrets?

JA: If I have, I've forgotten them.  Life rushes by, time rushes by, but the red shoes go on dancing forever.  That's a line from "The Red Shoes".  The point being -- life is going by so quickly, I don't what the hell has happened, positive or negative.

BF: How does your creative satisfaction differ when you're appearing on stage, or screen, or with Letterman on The Late Show compared to seeing one of your books on the shelf?

JA: Performance is ephemeral and kind of athletic -- alive in the moment and then quickly over.  It can be quite thrilling.  Books are a little less ephemeral.  But I feel as detached from my books as I do from a performance.  As soon as something is over, it's over.  I'll look at a book, I wrote and vaguely recall -- "Oh, yeah, I sort of remember writing that." 

BF: Was it initially difficult to "play well with others" when working with TV and film studios after being a columnist for so long?

JA: No, I like people.  Collaborating can be challenging, but it's not unlike any other social interaction -- one has to be ruled by the guiding principle of being kindly yet knowing when to stick up for yourself, which I'm not very good at, but I'm trying.

BF: How familiar were you with the comic book world before The Alcoholic?

JA: Not too familiar.  But Dean Haspiel taught me a lot and I read a bunch of graphic novels.

BF: How has the process of writing a graphic novel differed to essays, novels or screenplays?

JA: Like screenplays, there's a certain formula and you have to be quite concise, since there's not a lot of room for words in the panels.  In describing what I wanted written in the panels, this was the most like prose writing -- making things clear in words so that it could translate visually.  Normally, you do this for a reader to create a visual in their mind, and in this case, it was for the artist, Dean Haspiel, to create a visual in his mind and then draw it.  Other than that, the essential aspect of storytelling, universal to all media, were in place: Don't bore the reader.

BF: Can you see yourself working in the comics medium again?

JA: Yes.

BF: Was it more cathartic than painful to write The Alcoholic?

JA: Wasn't painful.  Not sure it was cathartic.  But I like to make things and I like to try to entertain people, so the process was cathartic.

BF: Are you still a "mildly perverted young writer?"

JA: No, I'm middle-aged now. 

The Alcoholic is out now from DC/Vertigo Comics priced $19.99