Bill Watterson Interviewed!

I liked the way Mental Floss magazine described the achievement of one of their reporters:
“Jake Rossen managed to do something we thought was impossible—he snagged an interview with the legendary Bill Watterson!”

I loved the first question to the author of Calvin and Hobbes:
“You had an idea, executed it, then moved on. And you ignored the clamor for more. Why is it so hard for readers to let go?”
The answer was equally interesting:
“Well, coming at a new work requires a certain amount of patience and energy, and there’s always the risk of disappointment. You can’t really blame people for preferring more of what they already know and like.”
The guy doesn’t ever brag, does he? So unlike Calvin!

Asked if he would consider animating his creation today, he replied:
“If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs.”
Amen to that. Watterson is not a big fan of the digital medium either:
“Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own.”

I did not know this aspect of his fight with the syndicate:
“I had signed most of my rights away in order to get syndicated, so I had no control over what happened to my own work, and I had no legal position to argue anything. I could not take the strip with me if I quit, or even prevent the syndicate from replacing me, so I was truly scared I was going to lose everything I cared about either way.”

After Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson took up painting. Why didn’t he publish them?
“Calvin and Hobbes created a level of attention and expectation that I don't know how to process.”

Does the guy have no flaws at all? Well, he doesn’t mind being remembered. So when it comes to Calvin bumper stickers on cars, here’s his stance:
“I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.”

Check out the entire transcript here.

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 21, 2013 at 5:02 PM

    Yes, Bill Watterson is a person of conviction and inner strength. That is the way of many people whom we label "great", while the domain in which their "greatness" comes through may vary. I certainly admire Watterson's unwillingness to align with the 'normal for many' tendency to immerse in commercialism.

    Having said that, when I read this as coming from Watterson, “If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs”, I could partly agree with that sentiment. But there are times when good literary work also finds good drama/movie adaptations. Yes, there will be differences of certain details and even focus but they can certainly present themselves as good complements, having some merits surfacing that the written words cannot induce in us.

    I recall this, though this is not something to strengthen what I said - just in passing I add this. RK Narayanan's novel "Guide" was a book of acclaim by the author. It got filmed in Hindi. RK Narayanan expressed deep disapproval of the movie, saying it distorted his expression pretty badly and the whole thing was disappointing. I never saw the movie but I remembered this remark by the author. Years later, one of my senior colleagues, who was a friend of mine and who was well-versed in literature and had a taste for good things, remarked thus, "The movie 'Guide' is one movie that I consider a great movie. It touches you with a lovely portrayal of life". Though I gaped when I heard him say that, over the time I realized that a portrayal in another media does take a very different form, as I knew in this case that the whole story got transformed to fit a different i.e. North Indian, society. Nevertheless some depth and purport still got retained to benefit a different receiver.

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