Also in 2015, Double Life Press is publishing a three volume anthology series featuring all of Viharo's standalone novels called "The Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection," along with another omnibus called "The Vic Valentine Classic Case Files," which will include four novels from the 1990s, "Fate Is My Pimp," "Romance Takes a Rain Check," "I Lost My Heart in Hollywood," and "Diary of a Dick," plus a recent short story, "Brain Mistrust."
Viharo's unique brand of "gonzo pulp fiction" combines elements of eroticism, noir, fantasy, and horror. For many years he has also been a professional film programmer/impresario and live music booker. He now lives in Seattle, WA with his wife and cats.
Gef: Some
of your books have found a new home this year with Double Life Press,
re-released in three volumes. How did that come about and was there
much nail-biting over which stories would best complement each other?
Will: The
founder of DLP, writer Craig T. McNeely, contacted me last year,
asking me to contribute to his new pulp quarterly, Dark
Corners. I obliged with a sick
little thing called “Short and Choppy,” about a horny, homicidal
dwarf. He dug it so much he asked to read all my novels for review.
He wound up writing a very flattering, comprehensive piece called
“Will Viharo: Unsung Hero of the Pulps” for DC. Then earlier this
year, when he decided to start his own small press, he asked if I’d
like to have my standalone self-published novels reprinted in
definitive editions, as Gutter Books did in 2013 with my novel Love
Stories Are Too Violent For Me
(initially published in 1995 by Wild Card Press of San Francisco,
long defunct). At first I was hesitant to relinquish creative
dominion over my work, but since my “selfies” were dying on the
Next DLP is giving the four 1990s
follow-ups to Love Stories Are
Too Violent For Me the same
treatment, in an omnibus called The
Vic Valentine Classic Case Files.
Basically, DLP is officially archiving my entire backlog of books,
and I am eternally grateful.
Gef: The
first novel you ever wrote, Chumpy Walnut, you wrote back in your
teens. I imagine that was a time when you hadn't really had the law
of the writing land laid down for you as far as what to write and how
to write. And considering the subject matter and style of your
subsequent books, the law of the land wasn't something you were too
intimidated by, am I right?
Will:
Chumpy Walnut
was inspired by all the classic B&W movies I grew up watching in
the 1970s, while being raised by a right wing guru cult in South
Jersey, specifically the gangster movies of Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey
Bogart, The Bowery Boys, and Abbott & Costello. I first conceived
of Chumpy as a talking walnut in a comic strip, but I didn’t think
I was a very good artist, so I reinvented him as a foot tall human,
largely due to my insecurities about my own height. Stylistically the
book was influenced heavily by one of my favorite writers at the
time, Damon Runyon, and the 1955 movie version of Guys
and Dolls. It’s a mishmash of
real life trauma and vintage cinematic/literary aesthetics. Like all
my work, it’s a very personal book. I wasn’t concerned with
current market trends, and I’m still not, which accounts for my
persistent obscurity, despite my determination and output over three
decades now. For me, writing is a therapeutic journey. Being a high
school dropout supporting myself with shit jobs since age 16. I never
learned how to treat it like a business, which is why I’m still
struggling at age 52. I was 19 when I completed the first draft of
Chumpy,
and despite the fact I had a New York agent via author Paul Zindel,
whom I met in the Writer’s Unit at the Actor’s Studio in L.A., I
wound up self-publishing it in 2010, replete with my original
illustrations, also included in its first official publication by DLP
this year.
Gef: One
of the cool things about the new covers is how they kind of harken
back to the Gold Medal Books or other vintage paperbacks. Did you
have much influence in the direction of the cover art or did you just
luck out?
Will: Both,
since luck is always an essential ingredient of any success in this
industry, and most fields. When I self-published these novels,
2010-2011, I was able to secure the artistic services of the poster
artists who had contribute to promoting many of my Thrillville shows,
like Rick Black (Fate Is My
Pimp/Romance Takes a Rain Check, Down a Dark Alley)
and Miles Goodrich (Chumpy
Walnut), as well as frequent
guest, horror hosts Mr. Lobo and his wife Dixie Dellamorto (Lavender
Blonde), along with artists I
met via my Thrillville network (Rick Lucey, I
Lost My Heart in Hollywood/Diary of a Dick)
and Christopher Sorrenti (Freaks
That Carry Your Luggage Up to the Room).
The cover image of my self-published edition of A
Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge
was an erotically evocative piece I discovered online and purchased
the rights to via the Canadian artist/photographer, Mike Fyles.
When it came time for the definitive DLP
reprints, I already had a new cover image for Mermaid
from British pulp/Marvel comics artist Mike Fyles, who had contacted
me out of the blue with a spectacular spec piece he did reimagining
Mermaid
as a 1960s men’s magazine fiction piece, then again as a 1950s dime
store paperback. I loved it so much I promised him if the book was
ever reprinted, I would use that image, and so I did, almost exactly
as he had first presented it to me, except with the one change I
suggested – “zombifying” the bar patrons leering at the hula
dancer. That way, the new cover adequately represented the
surrealistic, dreamlike, eroticized horror of both Mermaid
and its companion book in the first volume, Freaks
That Carry Your Luggage Up to the Room.
For the cover of Volume Two, I asked Matt Brown, who had created the Gutter Books cover for Love
Stories Are Too Violent For Me,
to illustrate the scenario of a sexy, naked babe holding a gun on a
nervous sax player, since that image would encompass the themes of
both Lavender Blonde
and Down a Dark Alley.
Matt was the official storyboard artist for Christian Slater’s
screenplay of Love Stories,
a personal passion project for the True
Romance/Mr. Robot star since he
first optioned it back in 2001, having miraculously discovered it in
a West L.A. bookstore, and immediately connecting with the character
of Vic Valentine. Despite coming as close as storyboards, with a
producer and target budget attached, needless to say the project is
still lingering in development hell. But the upside is I got to meet
Matt, who contacted me via Facebook after completing the storyboards
in late 2012. When Joe Clifford (now author of the #1 bestselling
thriller Lamentation),
acquisitions editor for Gutter Books, contacted me about reissuing
Love Stories,
since at that time the book was long out of print even as the movie
adaptation was finally being fast-tracked by Christian, who planned
to both star and direct, I suggested Matt for the new cover.
Christian gave us permission to use Matt’s visage of him as Vic
Valentine. Matt’s classic pulp style perfectly suits my
sensibilities. We share a lot of tastes in retro aesthetics. In fact,
his storyboards remind me of the animated TV series Archer,
on which Christian now has a recurring voice role!
Anyway, Matt and I had been wanting to work
together again, so I tapped him for the cover of The
Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection
Volume Two, as well as the Vic
Valentine Classic Case Files,
where once again his visage of Vic evokes a young Christian Slater.
For Volume Three – Chumpy
Walnut and Other Stories –
fast rising, in-demand artist Dyer Wilk created this amazingly
authentic used-paperback image, based on my crude sketch of a little
dude poking out of some bountiful cleavage. For inspiration I sent
him pieces by Dobie Gillis
author Max Shulman, and Dyer picked up on it immediately. We were on
the same wavelength and in fact we share the same birthday (April 2)!
Dyer also “colorized” one of my own Thurber-esque illustrations
for the back cover. Actually, Dyer designed all three covers for The
Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection,
incorporating the original artwork by Mike and Matt, adding his own
flair to the font and back covers, including the stylized author’s
portrait of yours truly.
So the general cover concepts were mine,
with Craig’s input and blessings, but I was very lucky to be in
touch with such talented artists who could realize my ideal vision so
perfectly.
Gef: A
lot of your stories have titles as catalysts. Does much in the way of
plotting come into play when writing or are you more at home with
driving those dark roads without a map?
Will: I
almost always start with a title, the first and last lines, and only
a rough idea of what I want to say. Mostly it’s a specific mood I’m
trying to recreate and preserve for posterity, directly inspired by
true-life circumstances as well as external influences like movies
and music. I sometimes write down a single paragraph outline but I
hardly ever stick to it, preferring to improvise as I go, writing my
characters into corners, and letting themselves write themselves out.
That way I’m kept in as much suspense as the reader, at least
ideally. For me, as both a writer and a reader, I’m much more
concerned with the voice than the plot, since it’s the personalized
authorial perspective that makes any work of art unique.
Gef: Among
the first volume is A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge, which is
one of your personal favorites and also one of the more personal
stories you've written, if I'm not mistaken. Was there a catharsis
with this book or is it simply a matter of pouring yourself into the
work of writing and pieces of you are bound to nestle into the words?
Will: I
consider Mermaid my
favorite and most representative work because it encapsulates so many
of obsessions. It was cathartic in the sense that it marked my
return to writing fiction after a 12 year hiatus, during which I
pretty much gave up my literary career (though still freelancing
non-fiction pieces about pop culture) in favor of a full-time, stable
career as a film programmer, and basking my local “celebrity” as
lounge lizard/B movie impresario “Will the Thrill,” in truth as
much a fictional creation of mine as Chumpy Walnut or Vic Valentine.
I actually began writing Mermaid
right before the Parkway Theater and Thrillville (initially called
The Midnight Lounge) took off in 1997, and right around the time I
met Monica, who became both my wife and my “lovely assistant,” on
stage and off. Then in 2001, the same year we got married at the
Cal-Neva Resort in Tahoe in a Rat Pack/Elvis/mariachi themed
ceremony, Christian Slater contacted me about optioning Love Stories,
which had already been pretty much forgotten, even though,
ironically, it was the reason the owners of the Parkway – and
founders of Wild Card Press – had asked me to host my own live
movie show, in order to promote the book.
When Speakeasy Theaters (the Parkway’s
parent company) suddenly crashed and burned on painfully short notice
in 2009 – a very high profile and controversial implosion - my
backup career as a programmer/publicist went down with it, though I
took Thrillville on the road, then later reinvented it as a monthly
tiki bar movie night at Forbidden Island in Alameda (now home of the
original cocktail, “the Vic Valentine”), and later franchised it
at The New Parkway, opened in 2012 by totally different people.
But mostly, I returned to my first and true
love, writing. By the time I resumed writing Mermaid
– I had abandoned it after about 25 pages – my brain had been so
warped by a decade of grindhouse indulgence and backstage melodrama
that the result was this nightmarish, David Lynchian hodgepodge of
dark, erotic, cinematic imagery and semi-autobiographical angst.
Gef: What
would you say is the saving grace of pulp fiction?
Will: Raw
honesty about base human desires and motives, exploiting our common
primitive instincts with a purity you won’t find in mainstream
fiction, which panders to a mentality of
self-denial/delusion/aggrandizing and hypocritical censorship. For
these same reasons I prefer “grindhouse” cinema to most popular
movies. I just dig the authentic grit and grime of the human
experience – however “offensive” to delicate sensibilities -
over the sanitized sap that commercialized, corporate-driven popular
culture spoon-feeds the public at large.
Gef: You
recently moved from California to Washington, Seattle to be specific,
so how has the climate for writing differed between the two regions?
Is it too early yet to gauge how the region is affecting your
writing?
Will: Well,
ironically, I finally left the Bay Area after (mostly) happily living
there for three decades because I was sick of the relentless sunshine
and incessant warmth, particularly Indian Summers, which always
ruined my Halloweens. I was raised in New Jersey and missed the
seasons. I left L.A. for San Francisco in 1985 for the same reason –
I hate the
sun. S.F. and the East Bay were a lot foggier and cooler than L.A.,
at least until the past few years when the drought and climate change
ruined it for me. Of course, the Pacific Northwest is not immune to
global warming and my first two summers here have been hit with
historic heat waves, and even the other seasons have been warmer than
usual. Still, it’s a lot cooler and wetter in general here than in
CA, just not as much as I was hoping, at least not so far. I’ve
always felt creatively inspired by “gloomy” weather. Cloudy and
55 degrees is my ideal comfort zone (and Seattle’s norm, in better
times). Anything over 70 degrees and I get cranky. I just hope the
Emerald City (which has been turning depressingly yellow due to this
unprecedented heat) starts living up to its infamously non-stop rainy
rep soon, because while I love it here overall, culturally and
aesthetically speaking, the current weather conditions are seriously
bumming me out. In fact, I haven’t done any
creative writing lately. I just mope around inside my air-conditioned
apartment, impatiently awaiting autumn so I can go comfortably go
outside again, like reverse hibernation. Fortunately I completed two
whole novels before summer showed up and spoiled my artistic muse and
ambient therapy, at least temporarily.
Gef: What's
the worst bit of writing advice you ever got, or what advice do you
wish would stop being circulated?
Will: That
if you write what the public wants, you’ll make money at it. It’s
always
a dice roll. There is no surefire formula for success, however
carefully calculated. Plus, unless you share your reader’s
enthusiasm for the subject, your attempt at cashing in on a current
craze will be quickly exposed as the interloping fraud it is. At
least that’s my take on it. But I can only follow my own passions.
It’s impossible for me to write with a specific audience in mind.
“Write what you know” is still the best advice, I think, even if
it probably won’t “pay off” in the end. It all depends on your
motivation. Some write to make a living. I write to live. The advice
I always give? Quit now. If they keep writing, that means they share
my curse and are beyond redemption anyway.
Gef: Films
and filmmaking has also been an influence on your reading and
writing. Has there been anything particular from your experiences in
screenwriting and even just absorbing cinema that you've carried over
into novel writing?
Will: My
work has always been extremely cinematic in nature, because watching
movies is my favorite pastime (next to sex, which is why they’re so
erotic, too), and my biggest influence, next to music (and my own
life experiences), even more than other literature. That’s why
they’d be so easily adaptable to film, I think, unlike a lot of
similarly offbeat books. But due to their rather extreme content,
most would be tough to sell to a profit-conscious producer,
especially in this “play-it-safe,” creatively conservative,
blockbuster-dominated era.
The only time I’ve tried adapting one of
my novels into a script was when Christian asked me to collaborate on
his screenplay for Love Stories,
definitely one of my more accessible works. It’s not a medium I’m
very comfortable with, ironically enough, because it’s basically a
skeletal blueprint for someone else’s vision. When I write a novel,
I’m the producer, director, editor, and soundtrack artist, plus I
basically play all the parts. That creative control is addictive.
However, Christian’s script basically transcribed my novel almost
verbatim. He just had me rewrite the script and set the action in
South Florida instead of the Bay Area, the setting of the novel,
since at the time he lived in Miami, and flew me out there in June
2012 to do some location scouting. He was very gracious in bringing
me aboard the project, since when most authors have their work
optioned, even famous ones, it’s like, “Thanks. See you at the
premiere.” But Christian wanted me directly involved. I signed a
contract with his agency and everything. He’s one of my biggest
fans. It’s very flattering, if puzzling, since he owes me nothing.
This was all his idea.
Anyway, given my background and interests,
it made sense to me that one of my books would eventually be made
into a movie, and I’d become a professional screenplay writer. That
seemed like the next logical step, professionally speaking. It really
felt like manifest destiny when Christian contacted me directly in
April 2012 for the first time since he’d optioned it in 2001.
Everything was finally falling into place, when it inexplicably
stalled again, and frankly broke my heart and crushed my spirit. Both
the project and my career are on indefinite hiatus now, and it’s
almost literally killing me. Along with this freak Seattle heat
wave. I feel almost totally out of sync with the universe lately.
Hopefully things will get back on track soon.
Gef: Along
with the Thrillville collection, what other projects do you have
cooking, and how can folks keep up with your shenanigans?
Will: Well,
interestingly enough, despite my ongoing depression due to external
forces beyond my control, like the fickle whims of Hollywood and
cruelly deviant weather patterns, this has been perhaps my most
productive year ever. Besides selling our beachside Alameda condo and
relocating to an entirely different city and state, where my wife is
now enjoying and excelling at her PhD program at the University of
Washington School of Drama, I have The
Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection
and the upcoming Vic Valentine
Classic Case Files to proudly
pimp, thanks to the totally unsolicited and extremely welcome
championship of Craig T. McNeely – definitely the brightest spot in
a dark era. Additionally - and I have to give myself props here,
given the intense circumstantial opposition - I have also completed
two brand new novels since moving to Seattle, both largely set here.
Coming up first, and fast, is The
Space Needler’s Intergalactic Bar Guide,
my second sci-fi collaboration with my friend and amateur scientist,
Scott Fulks, who also commissioned me to write our first epic, It
Came from Hangar 18 (2012). This
time it’s a shorter but no less ambitious effort, since in addition
to my consciously outrageous retro-pulp and Scott’s real, hardcore
science, it will contain original cocktail recipes, mostly created by
Becca Morris of Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge, which I mentioned
earlier. It officially launches at Tiki Oasis in San Diego this
August, where I am also co-presenting a panel on vintage sci-fi pulp
culture with Scott and soundtrack artist Neil Norman of Crescendo
Records, sponsored by Angostura Bitters.
Everything you’d ever want to know about
me and more is on my website, www.thrillville.net
Cheers.
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