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As the liquor flows, so do the stories from the entertaining writer, including tales of his father
By Wade Gum |
Posted July 1, 2006 1:45 PM |
On Friday night, Warren Ellis stood at a podium with mixed drinks on both sides of him, cigarette in hand, to pull an all-nighter in front of a ballroom packed with extremely vocal and excited fans.
”Good evening, I’m Stan Lee,” said Ellis as he took the stage. “I invented Spider-Man. I wanted him to shoot webbing out his a** like a real spider. Steve Ditko got upset about it.”
Ellis delivered a speech that centered on the importance of storytelling to humans throughout their entire existence.
”We tell ourselves stories to reveal things to ourselves,” said Ellis. “Anyone who tells you they write to an audience is an idiot or a fake. If I’m not responding in some gut way to what I’m writing, you’ll never see it. Writing happens on my own. It has to come from me and spaces in my brain.”
The author shared some stories about his father who traveled the world as part of the merchant navy. ”Dad and I had a similar history of drinking,” said Ellis. “We could both down an entire bottle of something without trying. Before we went to work. Now I know at the drop the point at which I can’t return from. Which is about 11 drops from now.”
After a giving the audience a brief recess to refill their drinks, Ellis returned to the stage and sat down in a lounge chair to begin what he described as “Uncle Warren’s story time.”
“I’ve been drinking since 1984 so cut me some slack here,” said Ellis as a preface to the question and answer session. He received no such slack at the beginning, as fans jokingly asked him such questions as “What is Planetary about?” to which Ellis replied, “I can have you beaten up any time I like for f***ing with me.”
On the subject of Planetary, Ellis estimated that issue #26 will be released in October and #27, an epilogue issue, would be released around Christmas. The script for #26 is finished but Ellis has to work around John Cassaday’s schedule. “I have to deal with how many pages Joss Whedon has for him in between weeping over his ‘Wonder Woman’ script,” said Ellis.
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 Revisiting a topic from Ellis’ earlier speech, a fan asked about his own forays into the world of magic and psychedelic sessions. “I haven’t gotten to the point where I dug a cave under my own house like Alan Moore and I’ve never used it to get a girlfriend like Grant Morrison did,” joked Ellis.
Ellis recounted his elegant dinner with Spider Jerusalem fan Patrick Stewart, at which Stewart’s first spoken words to the author were, “What do you know about killing rabbits? Tell me how to kill them Warren. I know you know.” The actor had a terrible problem with wild rabbits at one of his estates. Ellis also related the story of when Stewart met Prince Charles and had the sudden urge to head butt the royal figure because “that’s what Spider Jerusalem would do.”
When asked about what stories he was most passionate about, Ellis replied that there are many hidden stories in Transmetropolitan that are true and mean a lot to him. Ellis also stated that Scars is the only book he’s written that has disturbed him from start to finish and feels that only readers with children can really appreciate how disturbing it is.
A fan asked Ellis what he’s thinking as he sits down to write Nextwave “You’ve read the book,” said Ellis. “Quite clearly I’m not thinking about anything. I’m just spouting utter f***ing gibberish onto the page. Nextwave is an absolute dissolution of the superhero genre. There’s nothing of worth in it whatsoever. It is explosions. It is people getting kinked. It is people getting kinked and then exploding.” To thunderous applause, Ellis then added, “I will fight anyone who says otherwise and afterwards, they will explode.”
Several questions were asked about Ellis’ upcoming project for the AMC cable network and the differences between writing comics and writing for television. “I write comics drunk and that’s the big difference,” said Ellis. “The main difference is the levels of control. I can control all the levels of detail in writing a comic.” Ellis lamented the bureaucratic creative process of working in television.
As the night wore on and after many profanities were spewed, Ellis took some time to think of the children. “Is there a kid in the audience?” asked Ellis. “I think there was but he died. When was it that his dad took him home? Was it the dead hookers bit? ‘Come on son, we have dead hookers at home.’” The audience, including the kid whom Ellis unknowingly overlooked, roared with laughter.
Due to his interest in religion and science fiction, Ellis was asked about his thoughts on scientology. “I don’t want to say anything,” said Ellis. “There might be a scientologist in this audience who will burn my house down and Tom Cruise will be standing naked on the ashes with a baby in each arm with three eyes and L. Ron Hubbard T-shirts.”
Other topics broached by Ellis included his visit to New Zealand with Grant Morrison, where “the food was so bad that someone from England is talking s*** about it,” and a story where a mother refused to buy her daughter a comic because she wanted to use the money for cigarettes and the author gave the girl money and stood watch as her mother bought her the comics.
As the session ventured beyond its second hour and the exhausted crowd began to slink back to their bedrooms, Ellis’ response to the question of “What’s your favorite thing in the world?” said what everyone had on their minds while still remaining trademark Ellis.
”Sleep,” replied Ellis.
”And whiskey.”
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