Casting Call: Illustrator

No couches or any Harvey Weinstein funny business, I promise

I’d like to kindly and respectfully ask my followers and subscribers to contact me if they know an illustrator who would be willing to work on a graphic novel that’s already completed as a film script.

I can’t pay a penny, but the work is finished and I’ll split the profits 50/50 with anyone who wants to take a stab at it. I’ll sign a contract to that effect, but there are absolutely no promises that we’ll ever land a deal.

Moreover, and this is important: It has to be someone who’s not triggered by the outrageous and inappropriate.

The story is a ridiculously absurd and violent reworking of Euripides’ Electra, but definitely sleazy and transgressive, more like Richard Kern and David Lynch than Pasolini’s austere take on Medea. It’s set in the California desert in a town full of speed freaks and small-time crooks. I think it’s original and very funny, but it is not really a mainstream piece of work intended to be pitched to Netflix. I wrote something that I thought would make someone like me laugh my ass off, and I did not censor myself one bit or worry about offending publishers. I don’t think it’s a tent pole mega-flick, but I do think it’s accessible enough to be to able turn a small profit.

I had a friend who was slotted for the job, but he doesn't talk to me anymore after I refused to support Biden’s child-murdering/proxy war/censorship extravaganza, which I like to call the “Genocide Joe Trifecta.” He sees it as a moral failure on my part. No joke – I’m learning a lot about people. So probably don’t ask anyone who reads WaPo or watches CNN. I know you’re a hip enough audience to understand what I mean by that.

Visually speaking, I like a lot of Japanese graphic art and animation, including the more far-out stuff like Suehiro Maruo, and I love Q Hayashida’s artwork Dorohedoro (highly recommended). I also like the work of Maria Llovet, and I dig old pup art, too, like Virgil Finlay and Raphael DeSoto, as well as a lot of the cover work for cheap paperback novels and science fiction magazines. That’s the sort of visual vibe I’m imagining, and there are some samples here to peruse.

I don’t like to see artists forced to legitimize themselves by pointing to past success, and I don’t talk about my work away from this blog because I don’t like to distract my readers from important political and social concerns. I have no need to pimp myself here. I’m not trying to get a date or impress someone I used to know in high school. But since I’m asking for an illustrator, yes, I’m a fairly well-known literary translator and have published some fiction, academic writing, and cultural criticism as well. Some people like to know that, so now you know. But honestly, the best prose stylist on the planet — IMHO — is a person with whom I’ve kept correspondence over the last four decades, which began around the same time the Berlin Wall fell. He doesn’t have any money or fame, and he’s never published a word. He only cares about songwriting, but I can tell you that I’ve learned infinitely more about writing from that epistolary relationship than I have from any university lit course or college writing workshop.

So I don’t care who you send me. As long as they have chops and are no more than reasonably neurotic, it’s all good. Still, some people won’t work with writers or artists who haven’t published or released anything: another unpleasant reality that we could change in a non-capitalist society free of massive, centralized state bureaucracies and militarized police forces.

I don’t want to perpetuate any part of that world, so I don’t care who you send me. As long as they have chops, it’s all good.

Anyone interested can message me here in case if you know someone who may be interested.

A million thanks to those of you out there who follow me because I know that you’re smart and compassionate people, and I also know that means life’s a bastard for you sometimes.

Semper Fi,

Pauly

PS – Posts like this will be few and far between, and in fact, you may never see one again. But like all people with creative pursuits, I have to make the most of what I’ve got, so I hope my followers will excuse me for using this page as a classified ad, just this once. I assure you, I’m not going to turn this blog into a commercial for my other projects. You’ll never see me discuss or pimp my other writing projects, including this if it ever comes to fruition. I have posted this all over social media because it’s very difficult to connect with other people who are willing to roll the dice on a project like this, so thanks for your patience.