An American Animator in Canada

Marv Newland burst onto the animation scene nearly 40 years ago with his oddball student film Bambi Meets Godzilla. Since then, his subversive, raunchy, and surrealistic short films have earned him and his studio International Rocketship worldwide notoriety. S.W. Conser catches up with Marv in Vancouver BC, on the final leg of the Words & Pictures road trip. Originally aired October 31st.

Platform International Animation Festival Did you know that the biggest animation event in the country is happening this summer, and the host city is Portland? Tune in to Words and Pictures to hear the preview from event organizers, Marilyn Zornado and Shawn Bowman. Originally aired April 24th.

S.W. Conser hosts a discussion with sculptor Joe Liptak about an exhibit on Viewmasters that the 3D Center is mounting. Also an episode of History Detectives coming up in June takes place at the 3D Center.

Words & Pictures welcomes celebrated stop-motion animator Teresa Drilling. Dividing her time between Portland and London, Teresa has brought alive characters for Aardman Animation ("Wallace and Gromit"), Sesame Street, and most recently, the American version of "Creature Comforts," airing on network TV this summer. Plus, she's got a lot to say about Jungian archetypes. No, seriously.

Special for the Platform Animation Festival - Originally aired on Words & Pictures on June 26, 2007

Rose Bond and Dryden Goodwin introduce the free animation installations that have been appearing in the Pearl District during the Platform Animation Festival. Rose is a celebrated local animator and visiting artist Dryden Goodwin has been featured at the Tate Modern Gallery.

Award-winning authors/film historians Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck have been rescuing forgotten animation from archives and festivals and collecting it on their website Cartoon Brew Films.  S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge catch up with Amid and Jerry following their appearance at the Platform International Animation Festival.

Hundreds of artists, writers, and self-publishers converge on Portland State University every August for the annual Zine Symposium.  Organizers Claudia McBarron and Patrick Devine offer a rundown of this year's events, joined by local cartoonist Erika Moen.

Mike and Laura Allred, the award-winning team behind such offbeat comics as Madman, The Atomics, and Red Rocket 7, sit down with Words & Pictures host S.W. Conser to discuss contemporary art, dream inspiration, and film adaptations of their work.  Recorded during the 2007 Stumptown Comics Festival.

Up-and-coming Portland cartoonists Ryan Alexander Tanner (creator of the Xeric grant-winning comic Television) and Farel Dalrymple (author of the graphic novel Pop Gun War and artist for Marvel's offbeat title Omega the Unknown) share stories of building collaborative art scenes in Portland, perpetrating media hoaxes, creating comics for the Rose City Rollers, and occasionally managing to break into the big time.

Marjane Satrapi's celebrated graphic memoir Persepolis has been adapted into a major motion picture which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  S.W. Conser talks to Ms. Satrapi about animation for adult audiences, Persian art, Iranian politics, and the role of women in bringing about cultural change.

Jim Woodring is responsible for some of the most mind-bending art and stories in the alternative comics scene, and his new book Seeing Things collects the most recent of his iconic imagery and nightmarish narratives. Jim is joined in the studio by Bob Rini, co-founder of the Seattle cartoonist collective Friends of the Nib.

S.W. Conser goes behind the scenes at the locally-produced opera Too Much Coffee Man: the Refill, and chats with Stacey Murdock, the baritone in the title role, and Shannon Wheeler, the creator of this unlikely pairing of the worlds of musical theater and alternative comic books.  Originally produced for the April 8, 2008 edition of Stage and Studio.

Newly elected president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Ted Rall has courted controversy across the globe.  He's reported from war zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stared down right-wing pundits on the Fox News Channel, and written numerous books including Revenge of the Latchkey Kids, Generalissimo El Busho, and the recent Silk Road to Ruin.

S.W. Conser talks with author Jeff Gordinier about his new book X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking.  A droll overview of media and culture in the information age, Jeff's book offers cautious hope for our future.

Filmmaker Todd Darling's purchase of a smoke-belching snowmobile led to a cross-country odyssey to unravel the mysteries of deregulation in the Bush era.  S.W. Conser talked with Darling about the resulting documentary A Snowmobile for George on the eve of its Portland premiere.

Words & Pictures visits the Stumptown Comics Festival and talks with award-winning web cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of the outlandish and wildly popular comic strip The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Words & Pictures welcomes guest Mike Konopacki, a labor cartoonist who collaborated with author Howard Zinn and historian Paul Buhle to create a comics version of Zinn's A People’s History of American Empire.  S.W. Conser talks with Konopacki about the power of images to raise public consciousness and the challenges of mixing caricature with historical portrayals.

S.W. Conser talks with Jacques Boyreau, curator of the SuperTrash Film Festival, about overlooked cinema and Portland's festival culture.  Jason Leivian joins the conversation to discuss the gallery show of Supertrash poster art currently at Floating World Comics in downtown Portland.

Just in time for the 2008 election, investigative reporter Greg Palast has published a comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, with the cooperation of Robert Kennedy Jr. and cartoonists Ted Rall (America Gone Wild), Lloyd Dangle (Troubletown), and Lukas Ketner (Witch Doctor).  KBOO's S.W. Conser talks to Greg and the comic artists about steps that citizens can take to counteract voter fraud and suppression.

Election Night Radio Theater: Cable news talking heads make sure they don't miss a single weasel word during coverage of Barack Obama's election.
Pundit: Randall Howington
Reporter: Kathy Fors
Written by S.W. Conser with Randall Howington

Words & Pictures travels north to Bellingham, Washington, to visit Canadian comics and animation wizard Michel Gagne, whose work runs the gamut from the abstract jazz-inspired film Sensology to concept design for Disney and Pixar. 

Gagne's bewildering take on the Dark Knight for DC Comics (Batman: Spore) infuriated traditional superhero fans, and his recently unveiled project Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet breaks the mold for computer-based gaming.  Recorded with the kind assistance of KUGS-FM Western Washington University.

S.W. Conser asks Chicago political consultant Don Rose what listeners can expect from the new Obama administration.  Chicago's rich mix of rough-and-tumble precinct politics, racial and ethnic ferment, and grassroots activism on urban and human rights issues has deeply influenced Obama's political career to date.  A longtime champion of progressive causes and candidates, Rose mentored Obama's chief campaign strategist (now senior advisor) David Axelrod, and has butted heads with chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

For the first time in three decades, Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman (Maus) has gathered his early groundbreaking comics into one volume.  The new edition of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! includes a new graphic memoir opening a window into both a personal and cultural history of the late 20th century. 

Art talks with S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge about comics as high art, breaking the media censorship of the Danish Muhammed cartoons, and creating picture books for children and grownups.

Stop-motion animator Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) spent more than three years bringing the Neil Gaiman story Coraline to the big screen.  On the eve of Coraline's world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival, Selick sits down with S.W. Conser to talk about art, commerce, and the future of hand-crafted animation.

Behind the Screen is a new radio program covering independent filmmakers along with local screenings and festivals.  In this pilot episode, Toni Tabora-Roberts gets a preview of the Cascade Festival of African Films from co-director Mary Holmstrom, and S.W. Conser talks with Coraline director Henry Selick on the eve of the film's opening night premiere at the Portland International Film Festival.

Hosts S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge sit down with Don Hertzfeldt, award-winning filmmaker and co-founder (along with Mike Judge) of the touring festival The Animation Show.  A young animator who embraces the pre-digital tools and techniques of the previous century, Don plunges his simply-drawn yet evocative characters into such poignant, bizarre, and hilarious short films as Everything Will Be Okay and I Am So Proud of You.

Dark Horse Comics president Mike Richardson returns to Words & Pictures to preview the 2009 Stumptown Comics Festival, running April 18-19 at the Lloyd Doubletree Hotel.  The festival is preceded by a benefit dinner on April 17 for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. 

Mayor Sam Adams has declared April to be Portland Comics Month in honor of the strong base of independent talent making their home in Oregon.  Mike is joined by comics artist and PNCA instructor Neal Skorpen, who is leading a collaborative workshop at Stumptown on The Instant Graphic Novel.

S.W. Conser interviews artist, author, filmmaker, and culture-jammer John Law about his explorations of off-limits structures, his history with San Francisco's prankster brigades The Suicide Club and Cacophony Society, and his co-founding of the Burning Man Arts Festival. 

John's short story collection The Space Between, based on his lifelong fascination with bridges, has just been published by Furnace Press, and his documentary Head Trip follows a trio of iconic giant Doggie Diner heads on a cross-country odyssey.

Words & Pictures pays a visit to celebrated Portland animators Joanna Priestley and Joan Gratz. 

Joanna is the founder of the local animation society ASIFA-Northwest, and Joan is the Academy Award-winning creator of the films Creation and Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.  Their fiercely independent visions can be seen this Thursday evening at the Hollywood Theatre screening Words Worth a Thousand Pictures: Contemporary Animation about Language.

A short story by Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring about the wonders of childhood and the mysteries of the great wide world is brought to the radio airwaves by director S.W. Conser and the One Take Pony players: David Chelsea, Zoe Loranger, Emily Young, and Mike Russell.

B-movie auteur Lloyd Kaufman is one of the most prolific independent filmmakers working today, his Troma Entertainment production company responsible for cult classics such as The Toxic Avenger and Cannibal! The Musical.  Lloyd joins S.W. Conser to discuss media monopolies, guerrilla filmmaking, and his new book Direct Your Own Damn Movie!

A short story by Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring about the wonders of childhood and the mysteries of the great wide world is brought to the radio airwaves by director S.W. Conser and the One Take Pony players: David Chelsea, Zoe Loranger, Emily Young, and Mike Russell.

Portland artist Arnold Pander has teamed up with Brother Jacob to create projects as diverse as nightclub murals and erotic short films shot in infrared.  The Pander Brothers' latest releases are the independent film Selfless, an identity theft-themed thriller with an existential twist, as well as the self-published graphic novel Tasty Bullet, about an energy drink with strangely alluring properties.

S.W. Conser welcomes back to KBOO Rose Bond and Mack McFarland to offer a preview of Boundary Crossings, a two-week animation institute at the Pacific Northwest College of Art which features screenings, symposia, and gallery exhibitions.  Rose and Mack discuss the emerging concept of "intermedia," and are joined by artists Daniela Repas, Todd Tawd, and Sonny Wilson, whose work Reduced Conception won the Animation Installation award at the 2007 Platform International Animation Festival.

Behind the Screen now airs the fourth Thursday of every month on the KBOO Radiozine.  In this premiere episode, Toni Tabora-Roberts reports from the Time-Based Art Festival, Natalie Butto talks with Homegrown Documentary Festival curator Ian McCluskey, and S.W. Conser previews International Home Movie Day with local film preservationist Tom Robinson.  Plus, a calendar of events featuring news from the world of independent film and video.

S.W. Conser previews International Home Movie Day with local film preservationist Tom Robinson.  This segment originally aired on the August 28 premiere episode of Behind the Screen.

Lucy Knisley, author of French Milk, and Erika Moen, creator of DAR: A Super-Girly Top-Secret Comic Diary, join Words & Pictures' S.W. Conser to discuss cartoon travelogues, online journaling, collaborative art-making, and the fine line between Renaissance iconography and porn.  Warning: explicit content.

As part of KBOO's Africa Special, artist Rupert Bazambanza joins Words & Pictures by telephone from Kigali, Rwanda, to talk about his graphic novel Smile Through the Tears, a memoir of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi population of Rwanda.

Special thanks to Trillium Shannon for her invaluable production help, as well as Jenka Soderberg and Mimi Villarqui for their excellent translation skills.

Comics artist  Josh Neufeld met and talked with survivors of Hurricane Katrina while volunteering with the Red Cross in 2005.  The result of these conversations is the graphic chronicle A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a critically-acclaimed collection of first-person accounts from the Crescent City's various cultures, races, income groups, and neighborhoods.  S.W. Conser spoke with Josh during the 2009 Wordstock Literary Festival.

Special thanks to Emily Young for her invaluable production help on this program.

S.W. Conser and Natalie Butto profile the inaugural PDX African American Film Festival, the 36th annual Northwest Film and Video Festival, the Siren Nation Women's Arts Festival, and Stage 13's monthly evening of Russian cinema and culture.

Words & Pictures travels to Steamcon, Seattle's steampunk convention, where Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett are debuting their historical magnum opus Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel.

Thanks to Lyn Moelich for her engineering help on this program.

On the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Organization ministerials in Seattle, six Portland activists recall the dramatic events of November 30, 1999, and discuss the continuing reverberations of the first major street protest of the wireless age.  Featuring stories from Laurie King of Portland Jobs With Justice,  Patricia Rumer of Jubilee Oregon, youth activist Andrea Townsend, and KBOO Radio correspondents Andrew Geller, Rolf Semprebon, and Daniel Flessas.  This hour-long special is hosted by S.W. Conser and edited by Paul Monday.

Syncopated is a new anthology of non-fiction "picto-essays" created by a broad range of contemporary comics artists, including Alec Longstreth and Sarah Glidden, who join host S.W. Conser to discuss this unique storytelling form.

Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Graham Annable now makes his home in Portland, where he recently drew storyboards for the film Coraline.  A leader in the new generation of indy cartoonists, Graham brought together the team behind the comics compilation Hickee, and now brings a graphic sensibility to the short-story form with his critically-acclaimed Book of Grickle.

Portland artist and self-styled "war junkie" Joe Sacco has carved out a niche in the publishing world for his war reportage comics.  For twenty years Sacco has plunged into global hot spots to bring back detailed graphic stories of civilian bystanders.  His books include Safe Area Gorazde, Notes From a Defeatist, and Palestine, which won him an American Book Award and led to a Guggenheim Fellowship.  His latest book Footnotes in Gaza takes us back to the Palestinian refugee camps to reveal first-hand accounts of a massacre that was officially suppressed for fifty years. 

Host S.W. Conser welcomes Dame Darcy, painter, fashion designer, reality TV star, and frontwoman for the band Death By Doll, as well as the creator of the charmingly macabre comic Meat Cake.  Formerly based in New York and L.A., Darcy currently finds the murky climate of Portland much more to her liking.

In the runup to April Fools' Day, host S.W. Conser welcomes the creators of some of Portland's quirkier film screenings.  Mike Shkolnik previews the sixth annual Faux Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre, while Vortex, Nevyn, and Crystal of the Human Canvas Project talk about their film/performance collage of video, live audio, and movement.

S.W. Conser talks with Jeremy Franklin-Ross of Seattle's agit-prop art collective Department of Culture about the Portland debut of Smash Putt.  Is it a touring interactive art exhibit or an industrial-demolition-style miniature golf course?  You be the judge.

S.W. Conser welcomes Stumptown Comics Festival director Shannon Stewart and Stumptown Comic Book Foundation president Kaebel Hashitani to talk about upcoming events this month — including the cartoon art show at the Portland Center for Performing Arts and the Comics Fest April 24-25 — now that City Hall has kicked off the third annual Portland Comic Book Month.

Oregon Cartoon Institute founders Anne Richardson and Dennis Nyback are working with cultural organizations around the state to spotlight the historical importance of locally-grown animators and cartoonists.  They're joined in the studio by musician Heather Perkins, OCI's artist-in-residence, who is composing an original concert piece inspired by Bugs Bunny and (Portland-bred) voice artist Mel Blanc.

R. Sikoryak is a artistic chameleon who got his start in comics with the Art Spiegelman - Francoise Mouly compilation RAW, designed covers for the New Yorker, and created the G.W.Bush "Decider" character for The Daily Show.  His new book Masterpiece Comics boasts a hilarious and eye-opening collection of "mashups" in which such classic literary figures as Franz Kafka's Gregor Samsa find their iconic counterparts in the likes of Peanuts' Charlie Brown.

This audio file is the membership drive version of R. Sikoryak's appearance on Words & Pictures.  An expanded version of the interview will be added to the site soon.

Host S.W.Conser visits local do-it-yourself film screenings held in nontraditional settings, including a barbecue and double-feature night at the Watershed industrial arts community center hosted by Deadletter B, a monthly screening for cinephiles at Mother's Velvet Lounge curated by Paul Harrod, and Asher Loverdi's cockeyed Saturday Morning Cartoon show at the Waypost Cafe.

Distinguished Professor of Education and Fugitive Days author Bill Ayers has teamed up with cartoonist and ex-Portlander Ryan Alexander-Tanner to adapt his groundbreaking education textbook into comics form.  The result is To Teach: The Journey, in Comics.  Host S.W. Conser asks Bill and Ryan about their struggles to translate mountains of text into narrative art (while avoiding Fox News cameras during the 2008 election); Bill's fights against the No Child Left Behind juggernaut; and the transformation of a famous mug shot into a cartoon icon.

S.W. Conser and Jennifer Chavez follow two teams from the Portland 48 Hour Film Project around town as they attempt to produce a finished short film in the span of a weekend.

A page spread from Shannon Wheeler's Gulf coast sketchbook shows a sand-cleaning machine on the beach at Grand Isle, La.

Too Much Coffee Man's Shannon Wheeler returns to Words & Pictures, and he's had a busy year.  He's become an occasional cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine, written and drawn a Captain America story for Marvel's Strange Tales II, and most recently visited the Gulf states in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill with the local group PDX2GulfCoast.  Oregonian columnist Steve Duin joins Shannon to talk about the pair's adventures in and around New Orleans, and the upcoming graphic novel that they're writing together.

Ted Rall and Matt Bors spent the month of August traveling across Afghanistan without official handlers, meeting the local residents and sending stories back to their blogs in comics form.  Ted is the immediate past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and author of several books including the recent Anti-American Manifesto.  Matt is a syndicated cartoonist whose work appears occasionally in the Oregonian; he's also illustrated the stories for David Axe's book War Is Boring.

Additional web-only stories of Ted & Matt's Afghani odyssey can be heard at this link.

Ted Rall and Matt Bors generously stayed around the KBOO studios following their live radio appearance of October 11 to tell more stories of their unembedded travels through Afghanistan.

The original live radio appearance of October 11 can be heard at this link.

Ted Rall's 2008 interview with Words & Pictures, including the tale of his near-death experience at the hands of the Taliban, can be heard at this link.

S.W. Conser and Toni Tabora-Roberts talk with two renegade filmmakers who strive to balance a strong personal vision with a collaborative working environment.  Alex Cox is the director of Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, and several other cult classics, and recently the author of the book X Films.  Olivier Bonin worked closely with several groups of artists and engineers at the Burning Man Arts Festival to produce the new documentary Dust and Illusions.

Special thanks to Jennifer Chavez for producing this month's film calendar.

Words & Pictures pays a visit to the Maryhill Museum in the sleepy Columbia Gorge hamlet of Goldendale, Washington, where the works of 40 Pacific Northwest comics artists are currently on display.  Back in KBOO's Portland studios, we chat with Sarah Oleksyk, one of the featured artists at the Comics at the Crossroads exhibit and author of the forthcoming graphic novel Ivy.

For its seventh anniversary show, Words & Pictures returns to its Northwest roots with guest Barry Deutsch, an up-and-coming Portland cartoonist whose debut graphic novel Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword has just been published by Amulet Books.  Hereville has been drawing rave reviews with its modern folk-tale story of a troll-fighting eleven-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl.  Barry also talks about crafting political cartoons for Z Magazine, Dollars and Sense, and his own website LeftyCartoons.com.

In this year-end edition of Behind the Screen, S.W. Conser talks with Portland documentarians Myron Lameman and Dan Schaefer about their current projects.  Myron is the director of the upcoming film Extraction, about the effects of Canadian oil sands mining on the ancestral homelands of his nation, the Beaver Lake Cree.  Dan's films Figaro and Mania will be shown at January's OpenLens Film Festival in Eugene, where Dan will be this year's host and workshop leader.  Also on the show is OpenLens director Eric Ostlind.

Crispin Glover is an actor, author, independent filmmaker, and the impresario behind Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, which includes dramatic narrations of his illustrated books Rat Catching and Oak Mot.  His most recent feature It Is Fine - Everything is Fine is the second film in a planned trilogy and a fantasia in the style of a 1970's murder mystery.

Twenty-five local cartoonists attended a special dress rehearsal of Puccini's Turandot at the Portland Opera, where they captured their impressions of the evening in comics form.  Comics Night at the Opera is the brainchild of Portland Opera's publicity and publications manager Julia Sheridan, P.R. and marketing coordinator Claudie Fisher, and CulturePulp's Mike Russell, who join S.W. Conser in the KBOO studios.

Words & Pictures tours the studio of comics artist, illustrator, voice actor, and bon vivant David Chelsea, teasing out the twists and turns of a thirty-year career in the lively arts.

David's new book and DVD set Extreme Perspective! For Artists has just been published by Watson-Guptill.  Years in the making, the book features surprising tips and entertaining background history about the role of perspective in art, and the DVD includes resources useful to both mainstream and experimental cartoonists.

A book signing is scheduled for Saturday, March 12, from 2 to 4pm at Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland.

Special thanks to Emily Young for editing this month's show!

Doug Whyte, Film Action Oregon's new executive director, shares his visions for community-based programming at Portland's Hollywood Theatre.  Doug is joined by Dan Halsted, curator of the Grindhouse Film Fes

Portland Mayor Sam Adams is fitted for a superhero costume by local costumed-event organizers Alter Egos Society, and plans an appearance at the Stumptown Comics Fest to benefit homeless youth advocacy group p:ear.  Meanwhile, live in the studio, author Gan Golan introduces his epic graphic novel The Adventures of Unemployed Man, brought to life with the help of co-author Erich Origen and a cast of legendary action-hero artists.

Two very odd and popular webcomics are collected in book form by mainstream publishers, while their creators continue to innovate on the fringes of the internet.  Axe Cop, a fever dream of a comic featuring gun-toting dinosaurs and ninja moon warriors, is written by six-year-old Malachai Nicolle and illustrated by his 30-year-old brother Ethan.  Dash Shaw's BodyWorld originated as the digital equivalent of a biblical scroll, telling the otherworldly yet strangely familiar story of a quiet community entranced by a plant with telepathic powers.

Special thanks to Mel Reslor, who edited the Dash Shaw segment, and to Liam Delta for his recording assistance on the AxeCop segment.

You can support KBOO and add to your graphic novel library during our Spring Membership Drive by clicking here and joining at the $60 level.  Enter the appropriate code below.

Axe Cop   Ethan & Malachai Nicolle    BK AXECOPn1

Unemployed Man   Gan Golan & Erich Origen    BK unemploy

War Is Boring   David Axe & Matt Bors    BK warbored

Marc Moscato and Sarah Mirk of Portland's Dill Pickle Club introduce a series of comics highlighting unsung moments in Oregon history, and discuss their collaborations with local photographers, architects, tour guides, and middle-school students.

Slow Wave creator Jesse Reklaw and Gazeta anthology publisher Lisa Mangum join Words & Pictures to shine a light on the world of non-narrative comics and talk about the Comics Certificate Program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

The Northwest Film Center, in collaboration with Teatro Milagro (Miracle Theater Group) has produced a series of short documentaries about significant objects in the lives of local residents.  Filmmakers Maya Muñoz-Tobon and Ivonne Saed, along with musician and editor Geraldo Calderon and School of Film faculty member Sue Arbuthnot join host S.W. Conser to expand on the concepts of remembrance, displacement, iconography, collection, and value.

For this month's show, Ally Fields and Kate Fletcher drop by the studio to tell listeners about the upcoming Kumoricon anime convention in Vancouver, Washington.

Then, host S.W. Conser pays a visit to the Po'Boy Art studio to talk to some of Portland's preeminent poster artists, Emek, Guy Burwell, and Dan Stiles, about the past and present of poster art, and to Jason Brown and Chris Haberman, curators of the Rock/Paper/PDX group show exhibiting at the Performing Arts Center.

In this extended version of August's Words & Pictures show, host S.W. Conser spends a little more time at the Po'Boy Art studio talking with some of Portland's preeminent poster artists, Emek, Guy Burwell, and Dan Stiles, about the past and present of poster art, along with Jason Brown and Chris Haberman, curators of the Rock/Paper/PDX group show exhibiting at the Performing Arts Center.

Brock Fansler and Eva Aguila, the creators of the Portland Community Media show Experimental Half Hour, are bringing their mix of cutting-edge music, choreography, video art, and improvised performance to The Works, the after-hours venue for PICA's annual Time-Based Art festival.  Host S.W. Conser talks to Brock and Eva about the future of cable access, the local and international live performance scenes, and the challenges of guerrilla cooking.

Words & Pictures celebrates its 100th show with PEN Literary Award-winning graphic novelist Daniel Clowes, whose newest book Mister Wonderful is an oddball romance first serialized in the New York Times Magazine.  Also dropping by the studio is trademark-infringing cartoonist Brendan Douglas Jones, whose epic webcomic Breakfast of the Gods has finally been released in print form.  Finally, we'll hear from Ron Diamond, the impresario behind the traveling short-feature showcase The Animation Show of Shows.

Expanded audio content of the Daniel Clowes and Brendan Jones interviews coming soon.  Check back soon with Words & Pictures.

Meanwhile, you can support KBOO and add to your graphic novel library during our Spring Membership Drive by clicking here and joining at the $60 level.  Enter the appropriate code below.

Mister Wonderful   Daniel Clowes    BK mister

Host S.W. Conser previews the locally-sourced Northwest Filmmakers Festival, which runs from November 11th through the 20th.  Thomas Phillipson introduces listeners to the 5th annual BarCamp "un-conference," a free leaderless event designed to encourage local filmmakers to meet and exchange information.  Back at the KBOO studios, Chel White and Laura McGie talk about their debut feature, Bucksville, the closing night film at the NWFF.  And as always, Jenn Chavez brings listeners her calendar of the most offbeat film events for the coming month.

Additional audio of Chel White and Laura McGie to be posted soon.  Check back in at the Behind the Screen page.

For over 25 years, Chel White has been breaking new ground in both animation and live-action filmmaking - mining poetry, mythology, and his own dreams for material while pioneering such technologies as Rapid Prototyping and Smallgantics at Portland production house Bent Image Lab.  Now, with the assistance of producer and co-writer Laura McGie and a number of grants and awards, Chel has directed his first full-length feature.  Bucksville has been chosen as the closing-night presentation at the 2011 Northwest Filmmakers' Festival.

Comics artist and animator Vera Brosgol drew on her own immigrant childhood for inspiration in creating the character of Anya, the haunted teenager at the heart of her debut graphic novel.

The creative team of Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan follow up their epic steampunk saga Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel with the companion book Frank Reade: Adventures in the Age of Invention.  Combining the artwork and storylines from forgotten dime novels with real events of the Victorian era, Anina and Paul bring the swashbuckling character of Frank Reade back to life, warts and all.  As in Boilerplate, meticulously sculpted miniature models find their way into the "archival images" of Frank Reade, leading readers to wonder where reality ends and fiction begins.

Anina and Paul will be appearing around Portland throughout the month of February, along with local costumers and scale models of the vehicles.  More information will be available at FrankReade.com.

Director Todd Haynes (Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story, I'm Not There, Mildred Pearce) and animator Joanna Priestley have similarities beyond making their homes in Portland and spotlighting themes important to women.  Both filmmakers are big believers in collaboration, improvisation, and artistic reinvention.

Host S.W. Conser talks with Haynes and Priestley about their work and about upcoming events, including a screening of films created by homeless youth as part of Outside In's Guerrilla Theatre Youth Film Festival.

Note: Previous Film Show programs can be accessed at KBOO.fm/BehindtheScreen.

Extended audio of Todd Haynes' interview will be posted soon on KBOO's website.  Check back in at KBOO.fm/TheFilmShow.

What happens when an industrial Krautrock band gets mixed up with the radical Red Army Faction in 1970's Berlin?  Find out on this special expanded edition of Words & Pictures' Winter Membership Drive special.

Joining us in the studio is Courtney Taylor-Taylor, co-founder and frontman for protean Portland band The Dandy Warhols.  Courtney has teamed with chamelonic artist Jim Rugg and actor/musician/historian Donovan Leitch to craft the new graphic novel One Model Nation, set in an alternative version of Berlin where the burgeoning era of glam, noise, and punk meets the explosive anarchy of the Baader-Meinhof gang.

As part of KBOO's Winter Membership Drive, limited copies of the One Model Nation hardcover will be available as thank-you gifts for your $60 pledge of support.  Also available at the $60 membership level will be the One Model Nation companion CD Totalwerks Vol. I (1969-1977).

You can join KBOO by clicking here and entering the appropriate code (below).

One Model Nation hardcover   Titan Books    BK ONEMODEL

Totalwerks Vol. I (1969-1977)   The End Records    CD ONEMODE

Director Janet McIntyre and Executive Producer Kelley Baker discuss the new documentary Faded: Girls and Binge Drinking, which follows the lives of four Portland teens from diverse backgrounds but facing similar struggles.  Jenn Chavez talks with Janet about the March premiere of Faded at the Northwest Film Center, and S.W. Conser asks Kelley about his new book Sound Conversations with (un)Sound People and about making independent films on a shoestring budget.  Meanwhile, visiting filmmaker Linda Knowlton brings her documentary about girls adopted from China to the Portland International Film Festival.  Somewhere Between is screening as part of PIFF's Global Classroom film program for high schoolers and teachers.

Portland comics writer, novelist, and script doctor Greg Rucka is an Eisner-award winning author whose lean prose runs the gamut from espionage fiction to thriller to noir.  An experienced martial artist and former EMT, Greg is the creative force behind the Queen & Country and Gotham Central series, and has teamed up with local artist Steve Lieber on the Whiteout books and with Matthew Southworth on the new graphic novel Stumptown.

The animation and sculpture of John Frame is currently on display at the Portland Art Museum as part of the featured exhibition Three Fragments of a Lost Tale.  S.W. Conser talks with John about the process of transforming his own waking dreamscapes into the animated work-in-progress The Tale of the Crippled Boy.  Back in the studio, Faux Film Festival curator Mike Shkolnik is joined by actor Barry Bostwick, who is starring in all three feature films at next weekend's festival.  And Jenn Chavez brings us the monthly film events calendar.

The creative team of Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich are rising stars in the comics world and featured guests at the upcoming Stumptown Comics Fest.  Artist Joëlle is illustrating the Troublemaker books for Janet Evanovich, and writer Jamie is the prolific author of both prose novels and graphic novels, including the popular Spell Checkers series where mean girls meet witchcraft.  Their collaborations run the gamut from the fractured romance of 12 Reasons Why I Love Her to the classic noir of You Have Killed Me.

For this special membership drive edition of The Film Show, animator Bill Plympton and Alexia Anastasio discuss their upcoming visit to Portland to kick off the Great Northwest Film Tour, coordinated by the Oregon Media Production Association and McMenamins.  Alexia is the director of the documentary Adventures in Plymptoons, which follows the very independent and often anarchic career of Bill Plympton, leading up to the recent mayoral proclamation of May 26 as Bill Plympton Day.

Also in the studio is David Weissman, co-founder of the Queer Documentary Film Festival, the only U.S. festival of its kind, now celebrating its sixth year at its new home the Kennedy School.

As part of KBOO's Spring Membership Drive, a limited number of VIP passes to see Adventures in Plymptoons, with Bill and Alexia in attendance, will be available as thank-you gifts for your $60 pledge of support.

You can join KBOO by clicking here or by calling (503) 232-8818 or toll-free (877) 500-KBOO.

Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and author of the graphic novels Fun Home (Time magazine's Book of the Year 2007) and the just-released Are You My Mother?, is the guest on a special hour-long membership-drive edition of Words & Pictures.

In this extended version of Words & Pictures, we welcome Matt Bors and Ted Rall back to the KBOO studios for a freewheeling and often hilarious conversation about the burgeoning field of comics journalism.  Two years ago, Matt and Ted had just returned from an unembedded fact-finding mission to Afghanistan.  Since then, Matt has become the 2012 winner of the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning and a driving force behind the international media platform Cartoon Movement.  Ted's latest work, The Book of O(bama): From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt, has just been published by Seven Stories Press.

Best-selling author and foreign correspondent Chris Hedges and comics journalist Joe Sacco tell more stories of their collaboration on the book Days of Destuction, Days of Revolt, as well as their adventures reporting from trouble spots both at home and abroad.