It started with Bill Murray, as most things of note likely do. The last two years had been rough as a freelance VFX compositor. The strikes were necessary, but the work didn't just dry up; it fled the country. Those who we used to look to for work or as the reassuring voice in the LinkedIn feed went from saying “It’ll pick up after the strikes” to “Probably during the summer of 24” and then it became “survive till 25”. The number of friends who were losing their homes or posting how long it had been since they’d had work, like marks on a chromakey wall, was soul-crushing. We floated along with odd commercial jobs, selling collectibles I'd picked up when work was good and the missus' steady-but-not-enough teacher salary…but barely. Working in movies was the dream, and then it was just the 4am panic attack. I wouldn't be the first to compare working as a VFX artist as similar to being in an abusive relationship. It hurts you, exhausts you, threatens to leave, so you take whatever attention it will throw your way and you keep thinking that maybe, someday soon, it will get better. Like it used to be. Fun, exciting.
Early this year I got a good gig working for an incredible studio in London. A couple of weeks became a couple of months. I should have been working my way back toward being blissfully hopeful about the industry's resilience.
But one day, I hit LinkedIn to search for studios to apply to. A friend who had just a month ago been so excited to get work said the project was cut short, and she was looking again. Another said it had been two years since industry work. Oscar-winning VFX artists driving for Uber and DoorDash to make ends meet till the next job had just hit their one-year anniversary. And then I saw it…
“I'm betting it will pick up in mid-2026 and get back to normal. Just hold in there.”
(He hit me again, but I'm sure he didn't mean it.)
I dont think I am alone in there being a point in certain relationships where something glides in between the folds of your mind like an icepick and you realize it's over. There was before when you were holding on to some illusion of what the relationship was, and then the after, where the studio lights come on and you realize what a mess you’ve been spending your hours in.
I wasn't breaking up with VFX, but I was certainly ready to move on and find something to give me that subtle joy of a regular direct deposit showing up in the bank account. This is an ongoing mission, so I'll have to update as it changes. Oddly enough, the more I look for a full-time job, the more random meetings I've had with folks wanting to add me to their freelance roster, and I've kept busy with commercial work. Keep trying to get out, keep getting pulled back in.
But there was one thing for sure, I wanted more time to just make things, and a freelancer spends a lot of time marketing themselves, looking for clients, building that BRAND! Like it or not, a creative is a brand whose work ethic, visual style, and online presence all end up being more memorable than that resume and demo reel, so make em shine! But that all takes a lot of time out of your week, and that means less time making art. A full-time job, mundane or not, means money is coming in, and all that time you were spending trying to pull in new clients can be spent writing, painting, making a mess of things, and building worlds. You can create your own work in either path, but you get the same amount of sand in the glass either way.
Around the time of this mental shift, PlanetComicon hit. Its my favorite and longest attending nerd gathering in Kansas City. It's possible I have such a soft spot for it because their 2001 show was one of the last times I got to spend much time with Dad before he passed away, though it was a tiny show then compared to the three-ring circus its become post-COVID. I go for two things: meet celebrities and meet creators. More and more in recent years, some of those creators are friends.
The celebrities on the list were David Tennant (I grew up watching Dr Who with dad, the newer ones with the Missus and now the newest with the creepy kids). Christina Ricci was next, my generation's goth queen, just as Winona Ryder was for the Genx’ers and Jenna Ortega is for my girls. She reminded me of a friend from high school in her energetic conversation with everyone who went through her line, but the look in her eye when I hit the photo op later in the day was that of a fellow introvert who is cosplaying as an extrovert and is absolutely exhausted…and I immediately felt a kinship.
The creator of note was Skottie Young, as his frenetic inkwork and absurdist storytelling are an inspiration. Id recently discovered the work of Wally Wood and felt there was a thread of that in Young’s work. Wandering through Artist Alley and the vendor booths after, it struck me this year more than ever how the majority smear together in an giant wash of ink and paint covering the same batch of pop culture characters and are ultimately unremarkable. There are fantastic artists in there, within and out of that blur of superheroes and scifi swordfighters, but many are hoping to get noticed by retelling the same characters rather than throwing something unique. I know they are capable, but the popular probably sells more, at least until you’ve been putting your own stuff out there for long enough it becomes the big thing. The problem is those short term sales cant lead you to that long term gain and its a heckuva thing to invest that time. But those that do have a light to them that draw in the other creatives and opportunity.
So morose with the thought of having accomplished some things college me would be overjoyed with and yet getting to create less than that same college me, I left Planet and within a few days was driving to the other side of the state to see Bill Murray in concert. Yup, Groundhog Day Ghostbuster was on a short tour with The Blood Brothers (not his actual brothers, which is a little disappointing because Id love to see Joel and Brian Doyle out there rocking with Bill). I decided to turn the drive into a bit of an search for inspiration (and eventual White Castle run).
We live fairly clost to Uranus, Missouri, which is exactly the type of tourist attraction it sounds like. There is a fudge factory, a gift shop full of dad jokes. They have a freakshow, which I bought a ticket for. The gal at the desk had tattoos and fangs to look feline and apparently moonlights as a sword swallower and part time geek. After going through the exhibit, which included a Sloth from the Goonies mask in their Pinhead corner, I chatted with her as I perused the magic shop. This was her happy place. She got to meet new people, do weird things and be herself.
Uranus Fudge Factory Freakshow entrance and magic shop.
Id seen a meme that week on hotels above $100 and slightly below $100 and laughed because it couldnt be…and then I got to my $89 hotel in St Louis and life imitated (bad photoshopped) art.
The hotel was surrounded on two sides by a massive cemetery and another by the airport. There was some form of construction business next door where some gents with an amazing speaker system in their van played mariachi music loudly to celebrate the end of the workday. I swore their music was coming out of the hotel's speakers as I walked through the parking lot. What acoustics.
After getting my key at the front desk, I passed two box fans blowing the smell of wet dog down the hallway. I got to room 115, thinking that was what she’d said when giving me the keys. I figured if it wasnt right the key wouldnt open the door. It opened the door and as it swung wide, I could see the bare legs and feet of a guy on the bed surrounded by snack wrappers. “Hey!”
I shut the door and tried the next one. The key card opened that one as well but no bare feet (and sadly no snacks) this time. I took my keys back to the front desk to trade them out as she was on the phone, calming down the guy whose snack orgy Id interrupted. I dont know how it played out for him as I went back to my room and changed for the concert while trying to decide whether the water stain on the ceiling looked more like a cartoon bloodhound's face or Spain.
Murray was playing at The Pageant, which had chairs packed in shoulder to shoulder. I lucked out and two seats to my right went unoccupied until halfway through the show, two cute blondes about my age decided to shift down to chat in a haze of IPA and perfume. The set list was kind of standard American rock and blues. Johnny B Goode, a few songs written by a local blues legend, etc. Mostly, Murray just played bongos or tambourine, wandering about the stage looking like he was having the time of his life. Three or four songs had him out front belting the lyrics very much like his SNL Star Wars, those near and far wars or Scrooged end scene skills. A really fun show. Afterwards, while waiting for the crowd to clear so I wasn't standing in the mass, the blondes told me about themselves. Pleasant, handsy, single moms enjoying a night out. “My first concert was Joe Cocker, I was 17 and pregnant with my first, so it had to have been…” I was back in college, realizing I didnt know how to respond to aggressive flirting other than polite chatting and discreet mentions of my wife (which I didnt have as a response in college, but in this case, it wouldn't have helped.) “Oh, but you are here on your own? What are you doing after the show?”
Bill Murray singing at the Pageant.
After the show, I went back to my lovingly dilapidated hotel room, wishing I'd written down some of the songs that Murray sang because I'd already forgotten all but two or three, and thinking about the things that did change since college. All of the great art things I was going to do. Writing, movies, famous by 27. The energy of a life that hasn't met a mortgage or 100-hour work weeks yet. But between the concert pulling me back to that youthful artist mindset, the contemplation of individual creative expression at Planetcomicon and feeling like the movie industry wasnt reliable enough for a serious relationship anymore, I realized I needed to start completing some of the sketches and scribbles I had filled notebooks with over the years until I ‘could find the time to do them right.’
What cemented the need to finish things and book-ended the trip with a surprisingly wholesome interaction was a gentleman in a rural gas station bathroom. I'd seen him going in with his wife while I gassed up. Moving slowly, leaning heavily on a walker. Maybe 60, heavier set. After finishing with fuel, I went in to use the restroom, passing his wife standing nearby. The stall door was shut, but shoes were sticking out underneath, and he was obviously sitting on the floor inside.
“Are you okay?”
“Sir, I've fallen. Can you get help?”
Hoping to spare him some dignity after I couldn't jimmy the lock to get in to help, I got a clerk who had a tool that popped it neatly. A younger kid, probably a local footballer, came in to use the restroom, and the three of us offered to help lift the gentleman onto the toilet and scooted his walker to one side after making sure he hadn't hit his head.
“Oh no, I'm fine. I just slid off the seat. No balance. Brain surgery a decade ago. We have to call the fire department; they have a thing that makes lifting easy. It's what we always do.”
So his wife called the fire department while I stayed to keep him company. I'd been through two spine surgeries which has left me with nerve damage in both legs, so I'd spent a lot of time with a walker in the past and still have crap balance. I could relate easily enough, even though his trials were greater than my own. Soon enough, the fire department arrived, and I vacated to give space, wishing him godspeed. He was charming and happy, despite being stuck on a dirty bathroom floor with his pants half down for almost an hour. His example of not letting things outside your control get you down was an inspiration that kept me lit up all the way home.
This was early April 2025.
A couple of things to add to the mental grist mill that I've pulled inspiration from latel,y and hopefully you will as well.
The illustrations of Georges Beuville. His children's book artwork is amazing. So much energy in simplistic, well-calculated brushwork that looks effortless. I'm only sad that finding copies of his work here in the States is so difficult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da10nmDmJOg
I've been reading up on Ozark folklore and superstitions and one of the authorities on the subject is Vance Randolph. Most of his work was published in the 1920s and 1930s and his book Ozark Magic and Folklore is one of his most famous. It is terribly laid out if you want any sort of flow or narrative structure as each chapter is grouped together by “Crops”, “Weather Sign”, “Ghosts” and then each paragraph within is an anecdote about something he has been told by Ozarkians over the years. Sometimes they contradict, many times he says I could find no proof, but they are all there. Good for basic knowledge of what things from a century ago persist in the area and what faded out that I hope to use as flavor text in a novel Ive got pages of notes put together over the last decade.
Ozark link
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ozark_Magic_and_Folklore/txnhppn0SrwC?hl=en&gbpv=1
I recently talked the Missus into watching B-rated horror movies with me when I realized she didnt recognize a few actors I was hoping to see at an upcoming Horror Con. Ill speak more to the list and that convention next post, but one we watched was Critters, a personal childhood favorite. Not too scary or gory, an easy entry into the genre. One of dozens of ‘small, impish, evil creatures that terrorize a family or group’ that became commonplace in theaters/vhs after the success of Gremlins in 1984. I feel like Critters is the most exemplary of the group (and Critters 3 was Leo DiCaprio's first film role).
Critters trailer in case you would like a sample.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRGyKnW3zW4&t=1s
Till next time, creepy kids….
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