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by R.J. Carter Published: January 1, 2002
He's the writer of such screenplays as Fresh and Price Above Rubies, and is the director of the current hit film Remember The Titans. His latest project: Would you believe: a comic book? I phoned Boaz to talk about his latest venture through Paradox Press, The Remarkable Worlds Of Phineas B. Fuddle, and some of his projects to look for in the future.What prompted you to break away from screenwriting to do a comic book? Well, I'm not really breaking away from it. My brother [Erez] is a fantastic illustrator. His first book was something called The Silent City, which was a wordless graphic novel. He wanted to do something a little bit more accessible, commercial, and fun, and he's always been really inspired by and loves Hayao Miyazaki's movies, and wanted to do something with a sort of fantasy and lightness to it. It's really because Erez wanted to do something, and we were talking, that this idea came up. Were both you and Erez into comics growing up? Yeah, pretty much. Definitely. What comics do you read today, and how would you contrast them to the ones you read growing up? You know, I go on and off of comics because I can get addicted and then not read anything else, which is always a problem for me. So I tend to read a lot of comics for a couple of months and then go cold turkey for half a year, and then start again and go cold turkey for another half a year. Frankly, when I hear Frank Miller or Alan Moore is doing something, I'll pick it up and I'll read it. What we're trying to do here... I felt like, when I was a kid there was a lot of amazing stuff out there, which was the early seventies, and I was still getting the tail-end of the Kirby things and the reprints of the Fantastic Four and the Thor that he had done. And I just loved those Barry Smith and John Buscema Conan, and pretty much all the weird Marvel titles that were popping up in the seventies that for some weird reason I can still remember--Woodgod and stuff like that. Marvel Spotlight. Bizarre crap. But just like everybody else did, I got re-excited about comics when Watchmen and Dark Knight and Swamp Thing were being put out, and I guess then I got crashingly disappointed with what followed afterwards, and I'm still in that crashingly disappointed phase where I just don't see--other than a rare thing here and there--anything that I find remotely interesting. Even our most talented creators, I feel, have somehow let us down in terms of what they're interested in and how they've been approaching comics. I felt like there was a brief moment there with Dark Knight and Watchmen and with Art Spiegelman's Maus that comics really had a chance of breaking out of their mold a little bit, and finding a way to be about things and subjects that could go into the mainstream a little bit more, and they didn't. They just ended up getting more insular. I mean, I don't really care whether Wolverine has adamantium claws or not. I'm too old for that. But I still like comics, and I think that's part of the problem. As I saw--even with this Remarkable Worlds Of Phineas B. Fuddle, which Erez and I did because we wanted to recapture some of that fun and fantasy and all-ages feeling that some of the earlier comics we used to read had--kids aren't reading comics anymore. No one under eighteen reads comics anymore, and no one over thirty... unless they're a freak. (Laughing) Freak #1, right here! (Laughs) You know what I'm saying. I'm thirty-five, and I still read them. But basically what I'm saying--in a kind of maybe too much of a negative slant--is like, we're the people who actually grew up reading comics in an exciting time, and we're still holding on. But no one who didn't grow up reading comics is going to pick up a Spider-Man comic and go "Oh, I really want to get into this." At this point, it's just all about books by fans and for fans. I think a lot of what we were trying to do, in our own little way, was put something out there that felt more inclusive. And that's hard to do, because the market is really just geared toward superheroes and stuff. That's my little tirade. I don't know what I read right now. I mean, I'll pick up anything Alan Moore writes, because I think he's just brilliant. Speaking of Alan Moore, with the success of his recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo's Steampunk, the market seems very ripe for science fiction Victoriana. Did you and Erez intentionally write toward that audience, or was it just good timing? What was the inspiration behind Fuddle--how long had you been thinking about doing something like that? I don't know--I guess good timing. I'd only heard about League well after Erez and I were almost a year into drawing the first issue. It's completely coincidental. Erez--especially that black-and-white thing in the first issue--took Erez a very long time. It's been years. It's been at least two years in the making, or more. At the time, Erez was just dealing with Kitchen Sink, which is since defunct, and had actually started illustrating the first one on spec. Erez just had the idea, frankly. He wanted to do a crazy, time-travel thing about these two professors and someone changing the past to create these worlds. He approached me with the idea of it--the kernel of it--and asked me to flesh it out. It was Erez inspiration to come up with the story; where it comes from, I have no freaking clue. But the story and what happened afterwards was stuff I fleshed out. We always just saw it as an excuse for Erez to draw fantastic architecture. That's all it really was at the time. It's very Jules Verne and H. G. Wells--like Around The World In 80 Days meets The Time Machine. Those were the two books I read. It's quite a departure from Fresh and A Price Above Rubies, and all your realistic settings. Unfortunately, with film, so little of what you actually do gets put out there on the screen. It's kind of a strange feeling to know that Fresh, Rubies, Remember The Titans are the only things that I've directed that anyone can see, and there's so many other things I've written that do involve very different fields and so on, that you'll just never see because they never got made. But this is also Erez's world--I just kind of stepped into it and tried to give it life and fun and interesting stories, but this is not the kind of thing I would do on my own; this is a genuine collaboration. This isn't really your first piece of comic book related writing, though. You did the screenplay for The Punisher back in 1989. Yes, for which no one ever seems to forgive me. Initial fan reaction wasn't really about the plot or how it was acted, but was, "Hey, there's no chest emblem!" You know, honestly, look... I wrote a screenplay that was actually very... I have to say it was quite good, it was quite Punisher. He had the freaking chest emblem, which he spray-painted onto a black t-shirt. It was completely rewritten from page one--the plot was the same, but it was completely rewritten, dialogue and everything, by the producer who felt--as they said at the time--that what I had written was too "comic book-y." Well, gee, a comic book was the basis for the story. Yeah. I think they all felt like idiots when the Batman film came out and did so well, and was quite "comic book-y". But at the time, people didn't trust it. That film paid a lot of bills, but I really felt completely disappointed by the way they presented it. I thought it was a terrible picture. Does your interest in comics manifest itself in your other work? I went out and rented Fresh, and in that movie there are comic book references, when Chucky is arguing... ...I got the Punisher in there! Yeah, he was arguing why Punisher is tougher than the X-Men. Where did that come from? It depends. There's a film I'm working on now called Sympathy For The Devil that is a very hardcore horror film, set in the Pentecostal world of the South, with the devil trying to save the world from God. And you'll find echoes of comics that you've seen and read, although it's really more influenced by other films. But no. Other than the fact that I'm kind of co-writing and possibly directing--if they make it--this Batman Beyond movie, when I don't do something that's comic related, the comics stuff doesn't seem to come into it too much. Do you see yourself doing any more comics in the future? Yeah, I've talked about it with Karen Berger at Vertigo--who I think is wonderful--and we've talked about a few things. Certainly, when Erez gets back from his vacation--he's spent the last two years of his life on this, and he's taking a break--anything Erez does, assuming I have the time, I'd be happy to collaborate with him on. So I do see myself doing some more of this. Are there any plans to take Fuddle to the big screen? It would be nice. Seems kind of big budget... Especially with all that lavish scenery--unless maybe you animated it? Well, that's another possibility. Honestly, it would be wonderful, but who knows? I think it would be fabulous, but we'll just have to see. Let's say a studio calls you up tomorrow and says, "Hey, Boaz, we want you to come write and direct a movie about a comic book character. The budget is unlimited, and you have access to all the best special effects." In this scenario, who (other than Fuddle) would the comic character be and why? Well, that's already happened. I'm co-writing and directing a movie called Batman Beyond, which is based on the animated show. Live action? It's a live action film. Any kind of an estimated release date on that? No, it's not even written yet. It's in the process of being written. I noticed the colorist on the Fuddle is Angus McKie... (Laughs) ...and the characters' names are Angus and McKee. It's kind of a strange coincidence. Erez came up with the name for these two guys, he called them Angus and McKee. I said, "Erez, that's a real person's name," and he goes, "It is?" I think it just vaguely was in his subconscious and he thought it was neat. So we were calling them Angus and McKee years before it was time to color them. And when I showed Erez who Angus McKie [pronounced Mc-Kye] was, and he saw his coloring, he was like, "This would be the perfect guy to color the book." So we actually called the guy up--DC, Karen Berger called the guy up--and said, "Angus we'd love for you to look at this. The characters are actually called your name." I think he did an amazing job--he's a real artist, especially when you see what he did in the second and third issues. Speaking of bizarre coincidences and names showing up in unusual ways, I ran across this while doing pre-interview research on the Internet. By the way, the Internet does scare me on a certain level. When word came out that I was writing Batman Beyond, several interviews--one in particular--showed up on the net, that theoretically I had given, that I had never given! Like, a couple of sites started running an interview with quotes from me, that I had never given. So, literally, in the last two to three months, anything that I've said that's been on the net, I haven't actually said. Except for one or two things, but that's bizarre. That's certainly frightening to find things on the net being attributed to you that you never said. Yeah, it's weird. But, anyway... This is weird--at least I thought it was, but in 2 Chronicles, 3:17, in the Old Testament, King Solomon is building his legendary temple, and the verse reads: 'And he reared up the pillars before the temple...' Yeah, and one of them is 'Boaz', and the other one is 'Jachin'. Absolutely! What did you do, "fuddle" with history to get into the Old Testament? No, our family last name is Yakin, and it's a pretty biblically aware family, so my parents called me Boaz, knowing that it represented the two pillars in the temple. That is so cool! Did you ever find out if there is a meaning behind the two names? Well, 'Boaz' was also the leader of the Hebrew tribes at the time, during the story of Ruth. He married Ruth, and their son was the father of King David, so Boaz is the grandfather of King David. Anyway, in Hebrew, 'Bo-az'--'bo' means 'in Him' and 'az' means 'strength'. So I guess it means, 'In Him is strength.' Whether that's accurate or not, I don't know. But it was definitely done on purpose. |
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