Friday, December 21, 2018

AND SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS!

So many holiday classics reappear—like reindeer soaring across the sky—on our television screens every Christmas:  Miracle on 34th Street...It's a Wonderful Life...A Christmas Carol (to name three).  Here at Creation Point we have our own Yuletide tradition, a short Christmas tale of mine called The Truth About Santa Claus:  offered annually as a kind of cyber Christmas present.  My way of wishing all of you who visit this site the happiest of holidays and the most magical of Christmases.  I offer it again this year—along with a trio of wonderful illustrations by my friend and collaborator Vassilis Gogtzilas.  So while you're sitting by the fireplace waiting for Santa to descend, sit back, relax and enjoy!

THE TRUTH ABOUT
SANTA CLAUS

“THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS!”

He’d been thinking about it for days—ever since he heard Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo announce it on the school bus—and he didn’t believe a word of it, not one word.  (Well, maybe ONE.)  But Cody had to be sure, absolutely, positively sure—

—and that’s why he was hiding behind the couch at midnight on Christmas Eve.



His mother was there, asleep in his dad’s old easy chair, the reds and blues of the Christmas tree lights making her look peaceful and happy and impossibly young.

The tree, by the way, had not ONE SINGLE PRESENT underneath it.

That didn’t make sense.  If there WAS no Santa Claus, if his mother was the one who bought the presents, wrapped the presents, stacked them under the tree, then how come she hadn’t done it?  How come she wasn’t awake RIGHT NOW arranging them all?

He got scared.  Maybe there wasn’t going to BE a Christmas this year.  Maybe Mom had lost her job and they didn’t have any money and so she COULDN’T buy him any presents and—

And then Cody glanced over at the windows and noticed that it was snowing.

Or was it?

If that was snow, it was the WHITEST snow he’d ever seen.  It was snow as bright as moonbeams, as bright as sunlight, as bright as...

Stardust.

Quickly, but quietly (he didn’t want to wake his mother), he scurried to the window and looked out.

It was coming down and coming down and COMING DOWN all across town, whirling and whipping, spinning and gyrating, out of the night sky.  Glowing so brightly that it almost hurt his eyes to look at it.  And Cody saw that it certainly wasn’t snow, and it absolutely wasn’t rain, it wasn’t ANYTHING he’d ever seen before.  But each drop, no...each flake, no... each BALL of glowing WHATEVER IT WAS, seemed to pulse and spin, soar and vibrate, as if it were alive.

And the stuff, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS (and he knew now that it was magic.  He just KNEW), wasn’t collecting on the streets, wasn’t piling up on the rooftops.  It was MELTING INTO (that’s the only way he could put it:  MELTING INTO) every house (no matter how small) and apartment building (no matter how big).




EVERY house and apartment building.

EVERY.

He looked up.

And there it was:  coming RIGHT THROUGH THE CEILING of Apartment 3F, HIS apartment, swirling, like a tornado of light, around the chandelier and then down, down, down—

—STRAIGHT FOR HIS MOTHER.

At first he almost yelled out a warning, “Mom!  Wake up!  MOM!”  But something made him stop.

Instead of yelling he ducked back behind the couch and watched, eyes peering over the top.

Watched as the light-tornado wheeled around his mother, so fast, so bright, that he could hardly even SEE her.  But he COULD see her.  Most of her, anyway.

And what he SAW...

The light poured in through the top of her head, through her eyes, through her chest, through her toes.  It lifted her up—still sleeping!—and carried her out of her chair and across the room.  And as she floated—

—she started to change:

Her hair became white, her nose became red, her belly ballooned like the most pregnant woman in the history of the world.  Her feet grew boots, her head grew a hat, her nightgown grew fur.  An overstuffed sack sprouted, like a lumpy angel’s wing, from her shoulder.  And then—

AndthenandthenandTHEN, it wasn’t his mother there at all, it was him, it was SANTA CLAUS!  STANDING RIGHT THERE IN CODY’S LIVING ROOM!  Santa Claus who, with a laugh (exactly like the laugh Cody always knew he had, only better) and a twinkle in his eyes (exactly like the twinkle he’d always imagined, ONLY BETTER) reached into his sack and pulled out package after package, present after present, and placed them, carefully, like some  Great Artist contemplating his masterpiece, under the tree.

When he was done, Santa Claus stood there, grinning and shaking his head, as if he couldn’t BELIEVE what a beautiful tree this was, how wonderful the presents looked beneath it.  As if this moment was the greatest moment in the history of Christmas, as if this apartment was the only place in all the universes that such a Christmas could ever POSSIBLY happen.

And then the MOST amazing thing happened:

Santa Claus turned.

He turned slowly.  So slowly Cody couldn’t even tell at first that he was moving at all.  And—slowly, SLOWLY—those twinkling eyes, that Smile of smiles, fixed itself on the two boy-eyes peering, in wonder, over the top of the couch.


And what Cody felt then he could never really say:  only that it was better than any present anyone could ever get.  Only that it made his heart so warm it melted like magical WHATEVER IT WAS, trickling down through his whole body.  Only that it made him want to reach out his arms and hug Santa Claus, hug his mother, hug his father (and FORGIVE him too, for running out on them) and his aunts and uncles and cousins (even his Cousin Erskine who was SUCH a pain) and Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo (who really wasn’t so bad most of the time) and all his  friends and teachers and the kid in his karate class who always smelled SO BAD and, embarrassing as it sounds, it made him want to hug everyone and everything in the whole world including rabbits and snakes and trees and lizards and grass and lions and mountains and, yes, the EARTH HERSELF.

Cody wanted to hold that gaze, to keep his eyes locked on Santa’s, forever. (Or longer, if he could.)  Wanted to swim in that incredible feeling, drown in it, till GOD HIMSELF came down to say:  “Enough!”

Except that he blinked.  Just once.  But in that wink of an eye, Santa was gone.  Cody’s mother was asleep in the chair again and, for one terrible moment, the boy thought that the whole thing must have been a dream.

Except, under the tree:  THERE WERE THE PRESENTS.

Except, out the window:  THERE WAS THE SNOW, the rain, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS, shooting up, like a blizzard in reverse, from every house, every apartment building.  Shooting up into the heavens, gathering together like a fireball, like a white-hot comet—

—and fading away into the night:  going, going...

Gone.

Without so much as a tinkling sleigh-bell or a “Ho-ho-ho.”

Not that it mattered.

Cody looked at his mom.

Cody kissed her.

“I love you,” he said.  And he was crying.  Happy tears.  Christmas tears.  Like moonbeams, like sunlight.  Like stardust.

Mom stirred in the chair, smiled the softest sweetest smile Cody had ever seen. “I love you, too,” she said.

And then she drifted back to sleep.

Cody sat at her feet, warming himself, warming his SOUL, by the lights of the tree.

And soon, he, too, was drifting off to sleep.  And as he drifted, a wonderful thought rose up, like a balloon, inside him.  Rose, then POPPED—spreading the thought to every corner of his mind.  Giving him great comfort.  Great delight:

“One day,” the thought whispered, “when you’re all grown-up, when you have children of your own.  ONE DAY,” the thought went on...

“It will be YOUR TURN.”

Merry Christmas.

Story ©copyright 2018 J.M. DeMatteis
Art ©copyright 2018 Vassilis Gogtzilas

Sunday, December 2, 2018

BALLOONING

Had a great conversation with the great John Siuntres for his Word Balloon podcast. We covered everything from Constantine: City of Demons to Impossible, Inc., The Girl in the Bay and the state of superhero cinema.  You can listen to the show below:

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

STAN AGAIN



I’ve been looking at various press reports on Stan Lee's passing, most of them sincere, some of them extraordinarily inaccurate. Saying, as one did, that Stan was just a guy who "filled in the balloons” in stories by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko is as wrong as saying he created all those stories and characters himself. And to laud Stan as a superb PR man (which he was:  Without Stan’s ability to sell Marvel to the public—to charm, coax and cajole an entire generation of readers—those books, no matter how brilliant, might never have found an audience) while dismissing his contributions as a writer is just as bad.   

The reason some folks are resentful of Stan is because for years the Marvel Myth portrayed him as the genius behind it all, while the artists just drew his stories—which we know wasn't true. By most accounts (and here’s Stan himself talking about it in a 1968 interview), the plots for the early issues were collaborations, with significant input from Lee; but, as time went by, both Kirby and Ditko were plotting the stories solo, creating characters and whole universes out of their imaginations. They were both visionaries and their contributions to Marvel were incalculable.


That said, Stan did so much more than just write copy that mirrored the artists’ stories. Only people who don’t understand how comics work could think that. As I know from personal experience, you can profoundly change a story in the dialogue stage, bending plot and character to your vision. And as both editor and scripter Stan had tremendous leeway...pun intended...to do just that.  (I’ve heard tales of Stan actually cutting pages of artwork up and then pasting them back together—changing the order and meaning of those pages—so that he could tell the story his way.) In fact, some of the bitterness that arose between Stan and Jack, and Stan and Steve, was because Stan changed things in their plots that they viewed as fundamental.


In the end, the key word is collaboration. Lee and Kirby—who co-created the bulk of Marvel’s characters in those early days—were like McCartney and Lennon: the creative tension, the conflicting visions, the desire to one-up each other, made the stories stronger. Same with Lee and Ditko (who was, perhaps, the Bob Dylan of 60s comics?) where, from all reports, that tension was even stronger.  Together they created something that they never could have created alone. It’s not one side or the other—it’s not “there’d be no Marvel without Stan Lee" or "without Jack Kirby" or "without Steve Ditko."  It was all three. Each of these men brought a unique point of view, and unique talents, that, when melded together, birthed the Marvel Universe. That creative Big Bang changed comic books forever.

And we’re all the better for it.

©copyright 2018 J.M. DeMatteis


Wednesday, November 14, 2018

NERDS

Here's a conversation I had with the Just Us Nerds podcast, discussing Constantine: City of Demons and other fun things.  Enjoy!

Monday, November 12, 2018

A LITTLE MORE STAN...

I have friends in the business who knew Stan Lee well and spent lots of time with him, but I only encountered him face to face on a couple of occasions.  In 1980, when I’d just started working for Marvel, Stan was still occasionally in the office.  One day I was making copies of some Gil Kane Conan art when Stan ambled up with some papers he needed to copy.  Like a loyal courtier I allowed the king to use the machine first—and I wouldn’t be surprised if I bowed as I humbly backed away!    

Years later—I think it was 1997—when I was working with producer Chris Columbus and director Carlo Carlei on an early incarnation of the Daredevil movie, I came home to find a message from Stan, telling me, with great enthusiasm, that he’d read my treatment and thought it was the best filmic interpretation of a Marvel character he’d ever seen.  I was, as the British say, gobsmacked and quickly called him back.  I’d like to say I was more confident than I’d been all those years before, but I was still intimidated by this man I’d adored since I was twelve years old and barely grunted out my words of thanks.  But when I was in Los Angeles a few months later, I called Stan and he invited me to have lunch with him at the fabled Friar’s Club.  This time I was able to actually form coherent, reasonably intelligent sentences and we had a lovely meal.  But the whole time there was a star-struck kid in my head screaming:  "Holy crap!  It’s Stan Lee!  I’m having lunch with Stan Lee!!


That star-struck kid is incredibly sad today. 

And so am I.

REMEMBERING STAN


Stan Lee has died.  Even though it’s been clear, in recent years, that Stan was struggling, fading, the idea that he isn’t on the planet anymore is simply heartbreaking.  

Contemporary comic book readers can’t possibly understand how different the 1960’s Marvel Comics were from everything else on the stands.  DC’s comics—for all their imagination and artistic flair—were pristine and sculpted, All-American and squeaky clean to the point of being nearly antiseptic:  no rough edges, no raw emotions, nothing messy at all.  If you looked at the Marvel books, especially in the early days of the line, it was all mess.  The covers said it all:  lurid colors.  Captions screaming for your attention.  Oversized word balloons with thick, black borders around them.  Artwork so primitive it was frightening.  The Marvel Universe was everything a kid in love with super-heroes and science-fiction could ever ask for.  It exploded my imagination—and I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.

There’s been much debate, down through the decades, about the relative contributions of Stan (who was Marvel’s editor, art director, and head writer in that formative era) and his collaborators.  From my perspective, Stan’s contribution was incalculable.  Even if, hypothetically, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (both of whom were absolutely essential to the company’s success, it couldn’t have happened without those two visionary geniuses) plotted every single one of those stories on their own, Stan created the vibe and the mythos of Marvel Comics.  He did it with cocky cover copy and the warmth of the Bullpen Bulletins pages, the hilarious footnotes and scripts that managed to be absurdly pseudo-Shakespearean and yet utterly down to earth at the same time.  Most important were the absolutely relatable (especially to a boy on the verge of adolescence) characters, constructed of equal parts angst and humor and, most important, heart.  Stan put his passion into those pages.  They clearly mattered to him, and so they mattered to us, as well. 


If Marvel hadn't cast its magic spell over the comic book industry, changing the creative rules of the game, there's a very good chance I would have left comics behind in junior high school (for the record, the first Marvels that hooked me were F.F. #54 and Spider-Man #40, at the tail end of the seventh grade) and never even considered writing them.  And I'm sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, of comic book creators who would say something similar.  You simply can't underestimate the impact that Stan had—and still has, all these years later. 

Thank you Stan, from the bottom of my heart, for all you’ve given us.  Excelsior!


Wednesday, October 31, 2018

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The candy's by the front door as we await the first ghouls of autumn.  Hope you all have a wonderful, and suitably spooky, day.  

(And if you need some macabre entertainment tonight, you can always stream Constantine: City of Demons—The Movie.  But you don't have to!)

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

MEETING LENNON...AGAIN



It's October 9th, what would have been John Lennon's 78th birthday, and in honor of the occasion I'm happy to once again tell the tale of my two encounters with my rock and roll hero. I originally posted this story a few years back, in two installments, but I've taken the opportunity to edit them together. Enjoy! 

                                                        ***

In January of 1975, I was twenty-one years old, attending Brooklyn College (drifting through Brooklyn College is more like it; academics were never my strong suit), playing music, writing songs, dreaming of rock and roll glory—and, simultaneously, an equally-glorious writing career. I’d been in and out of bands for years, partnered with some terrific players, but among our crowd of Brooklyn musicians, there was no one better than Jon Cobert. Jonny was an extraordinary piano player—but he was also the kind of intuitive genius who could pick up just about any instrument and make memorable music. I may not have been sure about my own rock and roll future, but I knew, we all knew, Jonny was headed for great things. As noted, I was writing songs on my own—had been since I was fourteen or fifteen—but Jonny and I often wrote together, as well. I crafted the lyrics—a few of them quite sublime, many of them truly atrocious (and, happily, long forgotten)—and Jon, with far more consistency, would provide the superb musical bedrock. (Three of the songs we wrote together—"April Rainbow," "I Can Fly" and "Don't Wanna Live in Yesterday"—appeared on Jonny’s CD, Here’s Your Canoe, and you can listen to one of them here.)

In those ancient days, Jon was in a band that, at various times, was called Dog Soldier, Community Apple and, the name that seemed to stick, BOMF. The band was managed by Roy Cicala, who ran one of one of Manhattan’s premier recording studios, Record Planet, East. Roy was also a skilled engineer—one of the best in the business—who’d worked with John Lennon on Imagine, Some Time in New York City, Mind Games, Walls and Bridges and Rock and Roll. Not surprising that RPE was Lennon’s studio of choice in New York or that BOMF’s destiny and Lennon’s became temporarily intertwined. The band added hand claps and vocals to some Walls and Bridges tracks, appeared in now-classic videos for “Slippin’ and Slidin’” and “Stand By Me” (more about that later) and backed Lennon up for his last major television appearance—a very odd affair called “A Salute To Sir Lew Grade”—wearing outer space jumpsuits. Lennon also provided lyrics for a song that BOMF recorded called “Incantation.” (The song was never released, but I remember it as a throbbing, voodoo-inspired rocker, with lyrics in the “Come Together” vein.)

That night in January of ‘75—if I’m remembering correctly, it was a Tuesday or Wednesday, I know for sure it was a weeknight—my old friend (and brilliant drummer) Cliff Hochberg and I were bored and, looking for something to do, drove into the City—if you lived in Brooklyn, you never referred to it as Manhattan, it was just the City—to hang out at the Record Plant with Jonny. (Something we did regularly because...well, wouldn’t you?) There was nothing of any major (or even minor) import going on that night: we were just drifting from the band’s rehearsal room to a little songwriting studio that had been set up for Jonny. At one point, I was sitting alone in the hall when I saw Roy Cicala walk by. A moment later, Cliff appeared, with an excited expression on his face. “Do you know who’s here?” he asked. “Yeah,” I replied, not sure why Roy’s appearance had Cliff so elated, “Mr. C.” “No,” Cliff said; and then, after a suitably dramatic pause (hey, even if he didn’t pause, he should have), he added: “Mr. L.”

Cue the thunder and lightning. Cue the orchestra. Cue the earth shaking beneath our feet. John Lennon was in the building. John Lennon: the man whose music and wisdom, anger, wit, lunacy and honesty had fascinated and inspired me since the Beatles invaded America when I was ten years old.

A moment later, Jonny appeared. “Hey,” he said, casually (he, of course, knew there was nothing casual about it), “you guys wanna meet John?” By the time he’d finished that sentence, Cliff and I were racing down the hall ahead of him, like two demented roadrunners.

Lennon was in Cicala’s office and that’s where we (along with several of the BOMF boys) were headed. When we stepped into Roy’s outer office, we heard a distinctive nasal voice—a unique mixture of Liverpool and New York—from inside. It was a voice I’d been hearing for most of my life, but always on television, on the radio, on the record player. But now that voice—and the source of that voice—was on the other side of the wall. I’m sure my cheeks drained of color: it's a miracle the top of my head didn’t blow right off. Cliff and I exchanged looks of wonder—he was as much a Beatles fanatic as I was and (almost) as big a Lennon fan—and then we filed into the main office.

Roy was there, along with his then-wife, Lori Burton. May Pang—John’s girlfriend (this was during the infamous “Lost Weekend,” when John and Yoko were separated)—was, too. And Lennon was there—right there—looking...well, real. The only time I’d ever seen him in person was in 1972, at the Madison Square Garden “One to One’ concert—and I was way up in the cheap seats, under the influence of...well, that doesn’t matter. But this wasn’t some distant figure on a stage or a flickering image on the television. This was an actual human being—looking somehow more fragile, thinner, and shorter than I’d imagined. And yet, somehow, larger, too: every inch the rock legend; wearing a long black coat, a white scarf tossed across his shoulder, a bottle of Kahlua in his hand, all topped—or perhaps bottomed—by cowboy boots with spurs (yes, spurs). He’d been out to dinner with Pang and afterwards they’d haunted some record stores, where Lennon had purchased a pile of 45s that he’d stacked up on Roy’s turntable. “Disco,” Lennon said, indicating the new and unfamiliar sounds coming from the speakers. “Gonna be the next big thing. It’s all you’re gonna hear for the next ten years.”

None of us had ever heard the word disco, let alone the music, but this was John Lennon, after all, so we took it as gospel (good thing. Turned out he was right). There was some more chit-chat and the bottle of Kahlua was passed around (I wasn’t a drinker, so I can’t comment on the quality) and then, soon after, it became clear that Roy, John and their partners wanted to be alone. The audience with the Pope of Rock was over. As we all filed out of the office (well, the other guys filed out, I’m pretty sure Cliff and I floated, five feet off the ground), someone inside put on John’s exquisite Walls and Bridges track “Number Nine Dream,” which had just been released as a single. “No, no,” we heard an agitated Lennon bark, and it was very clear that he meant it, “get it off, get it off.” (So much for the Great Lennon Ego).

We regrouped back in BOMF’s rehearsal room, Cliff and I sharing our amazement, shock and wonder at what we’d just stumbled into; Jonny delighted by our jaw-dropped stupefaction. (And let’s face it, despite the fact that the BOMF boys already knew Lennon, each new encounter was something special for them.) I don’t think we’d been in the room for more than ten minutes when a figure appeared in the doorway, holding a guitar: Lennon. He wanted to play some of this new disco music that had so captured him and wondered if the guys were up for it. Needless to say they were. There was only one problem: Lennon didn’t have a guitar pick. Cliff quickly offered up his Brooklyn College ID card. It was a clumsy substitute, but Lennon didn’t seem to mind.

So there I was, on a random weeknight, sitting on the floor of this small rehearsal room in the middle of New York City, while—maybe three or four feet away from me—John Lennon was playing guitar, urging the band on, jamming away. It was completely surreal. I mean, what were the odds of this happening? Cliff and I exchanged occasional looks of astonishment—but not for too long, because we didn’t want to take our eyes off the magician in front of us, perhaps for fear that, if we looked away too long, he’d just disappear in a puff of smoke. (Five years later, he did.)

BOMF's drummer was having a little trouble getting the distinctive disco beat down—not surprising, since it was a very specific, and, at the time, very new, rhythm—and Cliff, I later found out, had to restrain himself from leaping up, knocking the guy to the floor and taking over. (And I’m sure Cliffy would have nailed that beat instantly, too.) I, meanwhile, was watching Lennon’s hands fly across the guitar neck, studying his every move (there was a rhythmic effect he got by muting the strings and using the pick percussively: I’ve been doing the same trick ever since).

I don’t know how long this off-the-cuff, extraordinarily private concert went on—time, as you may suspect, had taken on a very distorted, other-dimensional quality—it might have been fifteen minutes, it might have been forty-five; but, eventually, Lennon satisfied his disco-craving and was done. That’s when he turned to me, offering Cliff’s ID badge. “Here’s your credit card,” he said, assuming I was the guy who’d given it to him.

You might think this was my opportunity to be witty, profound or, at the very least, gushingly fannish. It was certainly a chance to say something to this man whose life and work had meant so much to me for so long.

Didn’t happen.

In the movie version of Woody Allen’s Broadway play, Play It Again, Sam, there’s a scene where Woody’s character, Allan Felix, is on his first post-divorce blind date. Felix is a barely-functional, sputtering, jittery nervous wreck, a walking disaster, and, when he’s introduced to his date, the only thing he can do is wave like a moron and emit a guttural caveman grunt: “Nugh!” That’s pretty much what I choked out at Lennon—”Nugh!”—as, bug-eyed, I pointed to Cliff, clumsily indicating that it was his “credit card” and not mine. Lennon returned the ID badge, then quickly vanished back into the land of myth and Kahlua.

And that, in and of itself, would have been as memorable, and embarrassing, an encounter as I could have ever asked for. But this was just a set-up for the second, even more memorable and far-more embarrassing, encounter that would come, a few months later, on a sunny afternoon in March (the 18th according to Wikipedia—although they got the name of the recording studio wrong, so who can say for sure?) when I got to spend a day watching Lennon and BOMF film videos for the recently released Rock 'n' Roll tracks “Slippin’ and Slidin’” and “Stand By Me”—both intended for a British television show called The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Looking back, it’s amazing that I was allowed in at all. Jonny C and I were good friends, of course, but I suspect it helped that we were also songwriting partners: a number of songs we created together were part of BOMF’s repertoire and, as a result, we were both under contract to the aforementioned Roy Cicala. (The contract sounds impressive, but it didn’t lead me to rock and roll fame and fortune. Jonny, on the other hand, has had a long, successful—and well-deserved—musical career.) In any case, on that sunny March day, I skipped my classes at Brooklyn College (something I was in the habit of doing, anyway), hopped the subway into Manhattan and hustled over to West 44th Street, where the Record Plant was located.

As I recall—and, in retrospect, it’s fairly astonishing—there was no security detail to pass through: I just walked in, headed straight for the studio and opened the door. There, leaning over the sound board was John Lennon, who looked up, peered over his glasses and said, in that sharp, utterly distinctive Liverpudlian voice, “Is this the place?” I scanned the room, looking for Jonny C—who was my ticket in—but he wasn’t there; so, utterly intimidated (just because I’d encountered Lennon before didn’t mean I was any less overwhelmed by his flesh-and-blood presence), I muttered, “Uh...yeah, it is, but I’ll wait outside...”, closed the door and retreated to a nearby couch. I probably would have sat out there all day if a couple of the BOMF boys hadn’t come by, noticed me and alerted Jon to my presence.

Jonny C promptly appeared and ushered me into the studio—where I was soon sitting comfortably in a chair in the engineer’s booth while, on the other side of the glass, John Lennon and the band ran through take after take of “Slippin’ and Slidin’” and “Stand By Me” for the film crew. (BOMF was actually miming to prerecorded tracks from the Rock ‘n’ Roll album. Lennon, though, was doing a live vocal.) Anyone who’s followed this blog for more than five minutes understands how profoundly JL—as a Beatle, as a solo artist, as a human on the planet—has inspired me; so I think you can imagine what it was like for me to sit there, for hours, watching him perform, running the band through their paces (miming, as I learned that day, isn’t as easy as you’d think); one of the greatest vocalists in the history of rock and roll singing take after take: laughing, joking and, well, being John Lennon.

And yet as I watched Lennon work, it seemed as if—despite more than a decade as one of the most famous, admired men on Earth—being on camera, the center of all that attention, made him uncomfortable. His attitude, his bearing, wasn’t that of the Clever Beatle, the peacenik sage, the political firebrand: it felt as if he’d retreated into Hamburg John, the young, rock and roll tough guy. It was a subtle thing and there was certainly none of the aggression or anger that often got him in trouble: he was, as expected, charismatic and charming. Still it seemed to me that he was wearing a mask to protect himself and keep the world at bay. In a few short months he’d retire completely from music to concentrate on being a husband and father (by March of ’75 “Lost Weekend” girlfriend May Pang was gone and Lennon had reunited with Yoko, who was pregnant with Sean) and it’s clear—in retrospect, at least—that he was, in fact, sick of "riding on the merry-go-round" (as he sang in "Watching the Wheels") and was preparing for his retreat. Soon he’d be shedding all his personas and reconnecting with the person he’d been before the Beatles. Until then, he’d keep pretending to be some version of Famous John Lennon.

There was a telling moment when, during one break between songs, he muttered—it was more like a discussion with himself than a request to the group—”Anybody got any coke?” (And, no, he wasn’t talking about Coca Cola.) A second later he shook his head. “Nah,” he said, retracting the request, “if I do that, I’ll probably bite Tom Snyder’s head off.” (He was scheduled to tape an interview for Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show that night. You can watch it here.) The coke request seemed like an old reflex, the immediate denial of the request reflecting a high level of post-”Lost Weekend” self-awareness—and a signpost to the new, family-centered life that was waiting for him at the Dakota. (It’s very possible I’m reading into this—after all, I didn’t know the man, who am I to analyze him?—and yet, given my own intuition and the insights Lennon himself provided in interviews he gave after his emergence from his five years of House Husbanding, it feels true.)

After they ran through both songs a number of times, Lennon and the band took a break and the musicians filed back into the engineer’s booth. Everyone was standing around chatting, the vibe amiable and low-key (well, I was low-key on the outside, but in my head I was doing backflips and screaming “John Lennon! I’m standing here with John Lennon! Dear God—how is this even possible?!”). Jonny C took this opportunity to formally introduce me to Lennon. “John,” he said, trying hard to sound casual (yet knowing full well what a Momentous Occasion this was for me), “have you met Marc, my lyricist?”

Lennon quickly looked me over and then offered a perfect, deadpan Lennon greeting. “Hello, Marc my lyricist,” he said, as if "my lyricist" wasn't a description, but my last name.

So there I was, standing face to face with John Winston Ono Lennon. He’d just greeted me with a clever quip and I desperately needed something to say in reply. It was like flash cards were flipping over in my mind, each one stamped with a possible answer: I could tell him, I thought, studying the cards, how much he means to me; how his Beatles music—from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “I Am The Walrus”—completely rocked my world and my consciousness; how John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band—aside from being one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music—helped get me through an incredibly difficult period in my life; how brilliant I think Walls and Bridges is. There were so many things I could have said, but I rejected them all. I kept returning to the fact that Lennon had greeted me with “Hello, Marc my lyricist”—and I knew I needed to come up with a matching quip, something sharp and witty. In the name of symmetry, it had to begin with “Hello, John my...” But “John my” what? My internal computer frantically scanned the Lennon archives, recalling a story about JL meeting Chuck Berry, during the taping of a Mike Douglas Show; how Lennon—always a teenaged rock and roll fan at heart—greeted Berry by calling him his hero. (Keep in mind that all of these mental acrobatics actually happened in a matter of, at best, two or three seconds. Subjectively, it felt like an eternity.)

And then it clicked—and I had my reply.

“Hello, John, my hero,” I said. As soon as it came out of my mouth I felt like a total fool. This wasn’t cleverness, this was revealing myself as a transparent Beatles fanboy. I was certain my idiocy would get me ejected from the building, unceremoniously tossed out onto 44th Street and banned from the Record Plant for life. To my immense relief, the group laughed—not at me, they actually seemed to find my answer amusing (or perhaps they were just acknowledging the unspoken fact that they all felt the same way)—but Lennon had an odd reaction. For a moment—just for a moment—he pulled back, as if he couldn’t believe One Of Them had gotten in: another wide-eyed, open-mouthed Beatlemaniac trying to make him into the god he didn’t want to be. He recovered quickly, but I’d noticed—and it underlined the sense I had about how uncomfortable he was wearing the fame he’d been cloaked in since 1964.

Soon after that, Lennon and the band went back to work, finishing up the videos. The last bit of filming was of the musicians in the booth, gathered around the sound board, listening back to the tracks. I was hoping no one would realize I was still there and I’d get myself immortalized on film with John Lennon—but Jonny C quickly gave me A Look and I knew I had to retreat. In the end it didn’t matter: the film of that day had been forever imprinted on my mind.

A little later, Jonny and I were heading upstairs to the band’s rehearsal room and we found ourselves standing in the elevator with Lennon, who was also heading up. This would have been the perfect chance to say something, anything, else and perhaps atone for my humiliating “my hero!” outburst—but I couldn’t get a word out. The elevator stopped, Lennon went his way and we went ours.

My time with John Lennon was over that day, but Jonny’s wasn’t. Not long after the Rock ‘n’ Roll videos were filmed, Lennon recruited BOMF to appear with him on the Salute to Sir Lew Grade television special. This time the band didn’t just mime, they actually got to record—and perform—a new version of “Imagine.” This turned out to be the last public performance of John Lennon’s lifetime. (If you’re wondering about the two-headed masks BOMF had on, this was apparently Lennon’s way of commenting on Sir Lew’s two-faced business dealings.)



As for me, looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, and the knowledge of the tragic fate that awaited Lennon outside the Dakota in 1980, I’m far less embarrassed by what I said to him at the Record Plant that day—and far more grateful. He was my hero and I got to tell him that.

That’s not humiliation, that’s grace.


copyright © 2018 J.M. DeMatteis

Sunday, October 7, 2018

BERGER BOOKING



Thursday at New York Comic Con was Berger Books day, the main focus of which was a great panel, hosted by my old friend, and legendary editor, Karen Berger and featuring (among others) Ann Nocenti, Dean Haspiel, Christopher Cantwell and Corin Howell.  And speaking of Corin...

The reason we were on the panel was to announce our new, four issue mini-series The Girl in the Bay.  Here's a description from the Berger Books press release:

In 1969, seventeen-year-old Kathy Sartori was brutally attacked, her body hurled into Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay. Miraculously, she survives, fights her way back to the surface, only to discover that 50 years have passed, and an eerie doppelganger has lived out an entire life in her place. Kathy soon confronts not just this strange double, but the madman who "murdered" her five decades earlier. Will he, and the dark entity that lives inside him, hold the key to Kathy's missing years? Or will Kathy become a ghost of herself and be forced to live out what remains of her life on the edge of the world that she desperately wants to be a part of?



Karen and I have been friends for many years (how many?  She was seventeen and I was twenty-one when we met).  We've worked together on multiple DC and Vertigo projects and it's a true joy to be collaborating with her again.  And having an artist as talented as Corin Howell (that's her in the picture above) along for the ride is the icing on the cake.

The Girl in the Bay will be out in February.  Hope you all come along for the ride, too.








Saturday, October 6, 2018

CONSTANTINE AT THE CON

Just got back from a couple of packed days at the New York Comic Con.  Day One was spent promoting the new Constantine:  City of Demons—The Movie, which is coming out on DVD, BluRay and other formats on October 9th.  We had a great panel, with a huge enthusiastic crowd, and you can watch the entire thing below...



And here are a few more photos from Constantine Day.  That's Rachel Kimsey (the voice of Angela) on the left, followed by producer Butch Lukic, designer Phil Bourassa, actor Damian O'Hare (the voice of Chas), JMD and the CW Seed's Peter Girardi in the picture below.




Huge thanks to the amazing Gary Miereanu and his equally-amazing Warner Brothers team for making it a memorable day.

(Be back tomorrow with some photos from Friday's Berger Books panel.)

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

REMEMBERING BREYFOGLE



I just heard that Norm Breyfogle, one of the definitive Batman artists of all time, has passed away.

I had the pleasure of working with Norm on The Spectre and he was a wonderful collaborator:  his drawing was powerful, his storytelling impeccable and he really thought about the stories.

Norm would call me up just to ask questions and discuss the philosophy underlying my scripts.  He had a questing mind that dug deep—and that depth was reflected in his dynamic artwork.

A terrible loss and, at only 58, way too young.

My heartfelt condolences to Norm's family and friends.



Tuesday, September 18, 2018

IT'S HERE!

A box just landed on my front porch stuffed with copies of Impossible Incorporated #1. My buddy Mike Cavallaro and I have been developing this project—which tells the tale of seventeen year old Number Horowitz and her band of cosmic adventurers—for years now and it's profoundly gratifying to finally hold the book in my hands.

The first issue is on sale tomorrow and I hope you all buy it and, of course,  enjoy it!

THE JOY OF ZECK

Here's a clip from Sunday's Kraven's Last Hunt panel where I talk about the joy of working with an artist and visual storyteller as gifted as Mike Zeck.  You can find more videos from Cincinnati, and other interesting things, on my recently launched Youtube Channel.

Enjoy!

ALERT

If you've posted a comment to the blog today and haven't received a response it's because Google is having some kind of issue that's preventing me from replying.  As soon as it's fixed, you'll hear from me.  Thanks!

Monday, September 17, 2018

KRAVEN LIVES

Had a really nice weekend at the Cincinatti Comic Expo—and especially enjoyed the Kraven's Last Hunt panel with my amazingly gifted collaborators Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod.  

I'm constantly amazed by—and grateful for—the long life this story has 
had:  treasured by old fans, still being discovered by new ones and continually in print.  We never dreamed we'd still be talking about KLH more than thirty years later. (Marvel just put out a new deluxe edition last month, featuring our sequel, Soul of the Hunter, along with a number of other Kraven-centric stories of mine.)

In the photo below, that's Bob M on the left, Mike Z in the middle and yours truly on the right.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

BEGINNINGS

When I started in comics, the primary purpose of the DC anthology books—titles like House of Mystery, Weird War Tales, House of Secrets—was to find, and train, new writers and artists.  You didn't need to be published to get in the door, you needed to show that you had talent worth cultivating.  I used to call it the vaudeville of comics:  Those books were a kind of small-town theater where you could learn your craft before graduating to comic book Broadway.

The short story format provided a fantastic storytelling education:  You had to deliver a fully-realized plot, character arcs, and convincing dialogue in five to eight pages.  Working on those stories taught me so much.  And it certainly helped that my teachers were legendary editors, and wonderful people, like Jack C. Harris, Paul Levitz  and the late, great Len Wein.

I’d love to see more regularly published anthologies on the market today.  It's great that the business is attracting accomplished screenwriters and novelists, but I'm sure there are many talented people out there, with no credentials, who could benefit from being trained by experienced editors.  And the industry will benefit, in turn.

(If you want to know how my first comic book sale, to DC's House of Mystery, came about just click here.)



©copyright 2018 J.M. DeMatteis