On Head Cleaner, VHS Tapes and Self-Hatred, a Conversation with David James Keaton
I’ve been meaning to bring back conversations with authors and other creative people I find interesting on the site for a couple years now. They are time-consuming and complicated to put together, but you guys clearly enjoy them, so here is one with author, professor, cinephile and shower scene researcher David James Keaton, who has a new VHS themed novel out this week called Head Cleaner.
It’s complicated to love, but ultimately rewarding, like Keaton himself is complicated to love and ultimately rewarding. This is largely a failed interview because it seems that neither of us had the time or focus to be serious about it, but I decided to post it anyway because it is really the experience of what having a conversation with David James Keaton feels like. So sit back, relax and enjoy.
Also, buy Head Cleaner if you’re into weird, nostalgia neutral fiction. Next conversation will be more normal, I promise.
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Ben: So, what's with you and VHS tapes, man? This book is not just about movies, It's about the object too. What do they have that, let's say, Blu-Ray don't?
DJK: The biggest problem with Blu-rays is they're blue. It sounds like I'm kidding but I'm serious. Every one of them is packaged in blue. If you buy the movie RED it's gonna be blue. Who wants Men in Blue? Nobody. Blue Dawn? No. Blue Men Can't Jump?
Also if you play VHS tapes on a nice tube TV it looks better than a DVD on a flatscreen TV. It has a richer/sharper image. DVDs on flatscreen TVs are more soap-opera-looking, and Blu-rays all look like crystal clear TV shows. You need some of that haze, some of that Muybridge intangibility between the horse's legs, to feel like you're watching a movie. VHS tapes are elso a better archive of material and can't be revised (usually). Like the other day I came across a movie with an old Raiders of the Ark trailer and it didn't have the dumb name change to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Thumbnails for the cover art of streaming movies seems to change weekly, and they get worse every time.
Streaming and Blu-ray cover art is usually hideous. Look at this mess.
Now compare. Here's the VHS:
Ben: You almost had me with the technical argument, but is this also part of an obsession with an analog world that doesn't exist anymore? A world you and I have known? Some type of melancholia?
DJK: Maybe a little. I don't get nostalgic watching movies on VHS until I see those old trailers. An old movie trailer at the beginning of a VHS tape is worth a thousand trips down old-media lane.
Ben: With the same guy doing the voice over narration? Everyone then hired that dude.
DJK: I think that I start from a place of nostalgia but almost always end in a place of hostility, even if I love it. Especially if I love it.
Ben: That's interesting because I definitely feel this hostility in your work. Where does it come from?
DJK: Self-hatred!
Ben: Now you're getting really interesting. Take the time you need to respond, but what is that self-hatred about?
DJK: END OF INTERVIEW
Ben: Alright. The plot of your novels is kind of an excuse for you to explore your characters. Who was your favorite character to write and why was it Randy?
DJK: Yeah he was fun, and it was sort of as an exercise in starting with someone the most unlike myself and slowly dragging them towards something resembling humanity (not that I'm particularly human). Similar to Mike Leigh's movie Naked where he begins with someone completely irredeemable and by the end... he's still irredeemable! But you kinda get it? Flipping character traits is also a fun game (especially by telegraphing it with everybody trading shirts before they trade personalities).
Also since they're kinda/sorta avatars of their generations (Gen X, Y, and Z) it's fun to have them put on and take off those masks a few times.
Ben: Wait, Eva is gen Z?
DJK: Gen Y, then kinda Gen Z as some of Teegan rubs off on her. Maybe. Who can say!
Ben: Aaaah Teegan is sort of the elephant in the room, is she? She's not really there, but her aura takes a lot of room. People get offended with her like they do with most GenZs
DJK: Yeah that makes sense, she's not there but also all over the damn place (they character's seems to see her at every drive-through, etc.)
Ben: By the way I loved the free Kevin Smith jab. It was so uncalled for and ironic since this is basically a bizarro universe version of Clerks. Why do you hate Kevin Smith?
DJK: What, that's all Kevin Smith love! I don't remember any Kevin Smith hate.
In fact, I initially got the idea of having Randy and Jerry switch personalities from Dogma, where Affleck and Damon slowly become each other by the end.
That movie takes a lot of grief but it's ridiculously well-plotted and laid out, character-wise.
Ben: I mean, don't know anyone like the Kevin Smith fan Nate. Have you ever seen people like him in real life?
DJK: Ah yeah I make fun of Kevin Smith FANS, not that's a much easier target
Ben: Why do you hate Kevin Smith fans then?
DJK: Because I'm a Kevin Smith fan. It's like you're not even listening to me.
Ben: WHERE IS THE SELF-LOATHING COMING FROM, KEATON?
DJK: It's a very important component for any well-adjusted human being. Probably.
Ben: YOU'RE NOT ANSWERING MY QUESTION
* twenty-four hours go by *
Ben: You're kind of obsessed with alternate realities, aren't you? It's a theme that transcends everything you wrote (or almost). What were your first experienced with alternate reality in fiction?
DJK: I don't know if I'm into alternate realities as much as I enjoy misremembering things. Probably my first memory of alternate realities or parallel universes was from watching The Twilight Zone, episodes like The Parallel from the original, or Wordplay from the first reboot where someone realizes words suddenly have different meanings, which he has to relearn.
Ben: The book does feel very Twilight Zonish. Is there something you misremembered that really freaked you out? I have this memory of a PSA when I was a kid where you could see someone's blood get poisoned in real time, but I'm not sure it ever existed
DJK: That sounds similar to a cartoon I saw as a little kid that sent me into hysterics.
Ben: Tell me about it
DJK: Back in those Twilight Zone days there was a cartoon I caught between movies that I've never been able to track down. It was on Showtime, where they had these short, animated clips to fill time between films (it's where most people saw Godzilla Vs. Bambi), so this cartoon was supposed to be funny, too. It showed an entomologist running around in a field with a butterfly net, catching butterflies, then suddenly this even-bigger net swoops down and snatches him up instead. Camera pulls back, and it’s a huge butterfly carrying the squirming man in his net, flying back to a big cave. In the cave, the butterfly yanks the man out, gives him a cursory glance, then smack! Sticks him up on a wall with a giant pin. The camera pulls back again to show the wall is covered with men, all impaled on pins, heads lolling, and the butterfly sitting at a desk, drumming its fingers all bored.
I can find no evidence of this short cartoon ever existing.
Ben: Is that where you started hating yourself?
DJK: No.
