ScreenAnarchy Talks To Legendary Illustrator And MIRROR MASK Director Dave McKean!

I don't think it's any exaggeration at all to say that Dave McKean is a legendary figure in certain circles, his illustration work on Sandman alone would be enough to guarantee that. The man is one of the most distinctive visual artists in the world whether his work is presented on the page or, increasingly, the screen. And so when the news broke a good while back that McKean was preparing a DVD release of his early and seldom seen short films it was met with great excitement. The project was titled simply Keanoshow and while it was fraught with delays and, sadly, could not be cleared for release in America, the DVD has now arrived and McKean was gracious enough to sit and talk with us. The following interview was conducted by good friend to the site Don Hill.

DH: You started off doing illustration and filmmaking, and just covering all the different things you do, you are a musician, you run your own independent record label, my goodness! I understand you are into cooking, as well?

DM: A little bit, yeah.

DH: I had heard about a Q&A you did with Neil Gaiman, where someone stated that the mark of genius could be measured by the strange foods they ate. Neil immediately mentioned that he had just been to your place, where you had served him apricot pizza.

DM: Right.

DH: So in doing all these things, I'm curious as to what your influences are, whatever the medium might be, whether music or visual or film. Who inspires you? Who has influenced you?

DM: Well, all sorts, really. Everybody and anybody. I think like most people I started out being sort of particularly interested in certain things that were very obvious and I wore those very loudly on my sleeve. And then you get to a point where you start looking at everybody else's work, and try and work out what you do. And so lots of other people have been influential, but they tend to sink into the general soup rather than be very obvious. So all sorts of painters and illustrators and filmmakers and musicians and animators. And then sometimes the people I work with. I just been doing a book with a great chef (you mentioned cooking). I've just been working with this guy, called Heston Blumenthal, who is an amazing molecular chef. And his attitude to everything, and his openness and his sort of natural thinking has been a big influence. I don't know how it will come out in my work, particularly, but it's been great to work with him.

DH: You’ve been making short films for almost fifteen years now . . .

DM: Not that long, actually. The first film I made was "The Week Before", and I finished it in 1998. So it's just coming it's just up on ten years.

DH: Was the transition between short and feature length films a difficult one? What were some of the challenges presented?

DM: It was difficult in that I've never really worked with lots of people in anything else that I do. At the most I'm working with a couple of people doing a book or something like that. Working with a whole crew and cast of actors and an animation studio. Obviously that's completely different. And that actually was all fine. I really loved working with the actors. And the gang of animators we got were all students fresh out of art school, and they were all great. The hardest things were, ah . . . The budget was very low, so there was no room for error. And you can only get to the point where there's no room for error when you've got a lot of experience, and I don't have a lot of experience, either. So getting it right every time was not only difficult, it just wasn't possible. I made lots of mistakes and they're cumulative. Once it's there, you can't really get rid of it, you have to work around it and it never goes away.

DH: Kind of like jazz?

DM: I guess so, yes. Well, certainly like a live recording. Not really anything you can do about it. In the editing room, you can do a certain amount of massaging of the material, digital effects and I know how to use a lot of the image editing programs and things like that. You can play with it a little bit, but if you've got a clunky performance and you didn't notice it, it's not the actor's fault because it doesn't fit. And because you didn't spot it in time, or the cameras weren't in the right place. And any of those sorts of basic things. You take your eye off the ball for a minute, or there's just ten problems to deal with, you manage to deal with four of them, but the other six escape you. All of those reasons. Obviously you're faced with compromised material. So that was all difficult. The way the film got started in the first place was not a very good situation, even though at the time it seemed extraordinarily lucky. Neil and I wrote something very quickly, and it was accepted immediately and they gave us the money to make it. So at the time we thought we were very lucky, when in fact it needed more work and what they should have said was "There's a couple or really good ideas in here, but I think it needs a few more drafts to develop a bit. We would have whined and complained, but actually would have been better for it.

And then in the end the sheer slog of trying to do 70 minutes of animation on a tiny, tiny budget. I was doing 18 hour days and we couldn't afford to get help in and the equipment we had was at the bleeding edge of technology at the time anyway. So, that was failing all the time. So it was pretty miserable, actually, making it, and I wouldn't want to do it that way again . . .

DH: I know you still have a couple other film projects in the making, I'm just wondering if maybe those have been put off a little bit, just to give yourself a breather, or if you're under obligation to fulfill them. Between 'Varjak Paw' and 'Signal to Noise', different projects that have been in the works for a little while.

DM: I'm not really under any obligations. I've been trying to get 'Signal to Noise' going with various people, and certain people have been very positive about it. It's just very difficult to get it going. It's a difficult story, it's told in a very experimental way. And although it's a very cheap film to make, it's still a few million dollars, and getting someone to write a check for a few million dollars is difficult. 'Varjak...''s a much more commercial proposition and hopefully Henson's have some luck placing that with a studio. But even that, you know. I came out to LA to pitch it to the studios with animation departments that might be interested. It's very, very difficult. They have a very, very narrow template of what they perceive an animated, family film to be, and if it steps even a paw print outside of that it can't be done. And it's got big loss. You know, it's funny in places, but it's also quite dark in places, and characters die and there's a lot at stake, and even though they’re just cats, you know. I hope it's quite dark and dramatic in places. That just puts people off.

DH: It seems that people want cinema to be more of an escape these days. They don't want to deal with real issues unless it's "based on a true story" or a documentary. Something that we can watch and neatly put away afterwards.

DM: Yeah, that's right. There seems to be a lot of great work being done in documentary at the moment because it's very strange and interesting times we're living in. So it's ripe for documentary. It's odd that films are being called "gritty" and "realistic" and "dark" and all that, and yet still there's a guy dressed as a bat that's entered the story. So it's strange times, really.

DH: Have you, over time, found a running theme in your work, or is it more about sharing ideas and continuing a conversation?

DM: I think the latter, really. I mean, I kind of see it as all the main thing, whether it's a painting or a comic or a story or a piece of music or what have you. At the end of the day, I don't have a specific axe to grind. I'm not doing very political work or anything like that. I just have a point of view of the sort of way I think the world works and what's important in life, and just try and put that down on paper. I don't really do much work that is kind of "jobbing" illustrations or just adding my name to someone else's superhero stories or something like that. Most of the work I'm doing, I'm trying to make it personal. So it's that sort of response.

DH: Your graphic novel 'Cages' and short film 'The Week Before' demonstrate that you know how to tell a story, but they seem to be stories about the creative process.

DM: Yes. It's not a very original story ('Cages'), but in life you need a balance between different elements. But at the end of the day, I can't see anything truer, really. There's a certain amount of work that I'd like to do that's my own and personal, and then a certain amount that is working with somebody else, like Neil (Gaiman) or is commissioned in some way. And I think they are good foils for each other. I couldn't spend my life doing commissioned work. I'd go mad. But at the same time I think it's probably pretty unhealthy just to be navel gazing. I think it's good to interact with other thoughts and other pressures and other opinions.

DH: Also in your art, I notice in all the work you do there's a tension between beauty and brutality, for instance in your photography book, 'Black and White Lies' where you have these nudes mixed with thorns, and what not. In 'Mirrormask', you have a great mix of whimsy and darkness that creates a fantastic tension.

DM: Again, it's just how I see things. It's not really, particularly conscious. I'm not trying to make sort of morbid images or dark images as some sort of pose, it's just how I see things you know. I think there's obviously very beautiful things around. I think that people are capable of doing beautiful things and great things and terrible and awful and selfish things. There's no way of escaping that, really. So I don't really want to concentrate on one or the other. Obviously getting something like Sandman you get a lot of people concentrating on the dark side, the gothic aspects, those sorts of things. And I think they're important and interesting, but not the complete accretion of everything else. So the humor in 'Cages', the humor in 'Mirrormask' and the kids books I've done with Neil, that's just as important, I think. You don't really understand one without the other.

DH: Is there a medium you find your self going back to, to clear your palette, clear your head? What do you do to unwind, whether art-related or not?

DM: Yeah. Everything to a degree is quite populated, except drawing a picture or just playing piano. Everything else, if it's film, then obviously, it's complicated. You need a lot of money, you need a lot of people and a lot of time, and it's very difficult. And even doing a book, you know, it's a process. It takes a lot of time, and then you need a publisher. It's all very, very . . . It's a big commitment, and it gets complicated. And the experience, the pleasure gets watered down by just the everyday aspects of getting a product from your brain out into people's hands. Whereas just sitting down and making a drawing of something, or sitting down and playing piano, whether there's somebody there or not, it's a complete pleasure, and it's nothing to do with making a living or doing regular business, or making a product. Those few things I try and do everyday, and I still really love doing them.

DH: If someone just reading this interview were not familiar with your work, what would you consider a good place to start to experience your work?

DM: I think as far as film goes, I haven't really done much, so I think 'Keanoshow', this little collection of short films that's come out. I'm still very happy with those films. They were all made for no money and they're very raw and quite simple, but it was my film school, and my way of discovering what ... how I could make films that felt like they were mine, rather than just another film that anybody could have made. And that's not to decry everybody else's films. I'm a big film fan and love lots of different films from all eras that I didn't want to just add another one to the pile that was just another anonymous film. I wanted to try and do something that was like my world. So I'm very happy with those. As far as comics goes, obviously 'Cages' is my own personal one, so I'm happy with that. Then there's one or two other things I'm happy with: 'Wolves in the Walls', the children's' book I did with Neil, and some of the little drawing books I've been doing recently. There isn't really one thing that is going to sum up everything because it's never going to happen. And that's probably a big mistake. I think when you start out thinking, “Right, this painting's got to sum up everything I know and everything I feel.” Well, it never does. All you find is over time, that previous ten years' work starts to say something about what you have in mind, but that's about as clear as you can get. It never comes down to one book or one piece.

DH: Is there any art that you would consider "essential"? What do you think everyone should see, or hear, or watch?

DM: That's a huge question! **sighs** God. Well, there's probably a few favorite people who I think epitomize great music-making or song-writing or drawing or film-making, and they're probably fairly obvious. And they tend to be the people who I think have taught me the most in looking at their work, they've taught me. Big on (Egon) Schiele and Lorenzo Mattotti have taught me how to draw. Not that I ever took lessons with them, because Schiele died 80 years before I was born, but because looking at their work and seeing the decisions that they've made and knowing what they were looking at, a house or a landscape or something, you can see how they translated life as a drawing and they taught me a lot.

And then, you know, so many others. I think Miles Davis and Picasso sum up the perfect artist in as much as they were just never happy and just never settled, never repeated themselves. As soon as they get comfortable, they move on to something else. Even if it turns out to be rubbish, they'd much rather be making original rubbish than good stuff that they'd done and are now safe doing, which I think is a great lesson in life. And then just so many others, really.

DH: On 'Keanoshow', in the "Show and Tell" documentary, you state that you got into film-making, because you felt doing illustrations was becoming "too safe" for you. I'm sure that you don't see film-making becoming safe too soon?

DM: (laughs) Certainly not. I can't imagine film-making ever getting safe, cause it's just such a . . . I mean it's like trying to herd cats, you know. It's a ridiculous medium to work with. And every day having 5000 problems, and people asking you questions every minute, and you have to get it right every day. It's an impossible medium to get right. And I think if it was possible then the film-makers who have all the experience and all the resources in the world would get it right every time, and they don't. Nobody does. Great, great film-makers still make terrible, terrible movies. And good ones, as well. But they don't get it right all the time. And I think that's obviously because it's just such an irrational, chaotic medium.

DH: I've heard a quote attributed to George Lucas that films are never finished, merely abandoned.

DM: Um, yes! Exactly. I think there was another quote saying "Films are never finished or abandoned, they just need a bit more work on the third reel." Or the third act, I should say. That seems to be a constant one.

DH: That's about all I have. Were there any thoughts that you had, anything else you wanted to say? Any final thoughts?

DM: (laughs) Not really. I suppose this interview has some connection with the 'Keanoshow' DVD?

DH: (embarrassed) Yes! I'm sorry I haven't mentioned 'Keanoshow' very much!

DM: That's OK, It's only going to be officially available in Europe, because we can't clear the rights to some of the music in America. But hopefully people can buy it anyway. It's just a little more difficult that going down to your local Tower Records.

DH: I know that Amazon still has copies here in the States.

DM: Um . . . Actually, they shouldn't. And they'll probably be withdrawn soon. Some of the stock got out before they could really withdraw them, but we can't officially sell them in America.

DH: I've been sending people to Amazon, like "You better grab these quick!"

DM: Yeah. Exactly. As soon as I get the stock sent back to me here in England, I'll supply outlets here and I'll sell them from my website. And they probably will be available through amazon.co.uk. It's just a little more frustrating that, you know, it can’t be available directly in America. We have to do it this way, unfortunately.

DH: I know that had to be frustrating, because 'Keanoshow' has been in the works for two or three years at least?

DM: At least that, yeah. And I've been working for well over a year just on clearing the rights. And we were given complete "thumbs up" right the way down the line, until this very, very last little stumbling block, and I can't seem to do anything about it, so unfortunately it just has to be that way.

DH: I am so sorry. Out of my own curiosity, with Feral Records, you plan on having your own website up soon. Are you planning on having online availability for the label? Do you have a next release coming up?

DM: I've been talking to Ian Ballamy a little bit, on and off about getting back to Feral Records. The problem was, again, I mean, it's probably like everybody else. Record sales have contracted hugely. We never really sold very much anyway. It wasn't strictly a vanity project in as much as they did make a bit of money and they did contribute to Ian's income a bit. But it's never a money making process making avant-gard Scandinavian jazz. (laughs) Nobody's becoming millionares selling that kind of music. So it was simply for the pleasure of making them. And for me, making those boxes, I'm really very proud of sort of the illustration and design that went into the boxes. But they became completely impossible to make financially; the prices were going up. So we had to stop, and then we did 'Mirrormask', and we were both completely busy, anyway. So we're sort of coming down to relaunching, in some form. But they won't be as elaborate, and they won't be in those boxes. But hopefully we'll have another release or two in some form over the next year or two.

DH: Well Dave, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Thank you!

Interview by Don Hill