The Idler

Conversations: Gilbert Shelton

From Idler 7, December 1995

Gilbert Shelton is the legendary underground comic artist and writer. Born in Houston, Texas, he currently lives in Paris with his wife after stints in New York (where he lived with Terry Gilliam), Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the Sixties he worked on New York’s Help magazine, creating his most famous strips, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat in 1969. Here Shelton talks to Adam Porter about Paris, pot and pets, amongst other things.

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Idler: How come you are living in Paris?

Shelton: I’ve been here for about ten years now. I still feel like a tourist a lot of the time, but I guess I knew there were different ways of doing things to what was, and is, happening in America. I know lots of Americans say it, but you can’t avoid the crime. There’s only a very small chance of anyone shooting a gun off near me when I’m out at night in Paris. In San Francisco there is a far higher chance. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be shot or robbed with a gun.

The tide of creeping conservatism was something I preferred to avoid as well. I never really had any special hassle myself, at least I don’ t think so. What usually happened is that some State or Police force would target the retailers or the distributors of the Freak Brothers and give us trouble. It never really gets back to the authors. I guess I was lucky. But that’s something that’s been going on in America for ages. The Christian fundamentalist right are … scary. I just didn’t want to be involved. The whole way that America wants stupid people in power, and the way they want to remove anyone with any ideas or any education, get rid of the bright people. But then it’s going the same way here too.

Idler: Is America really a stupid nation?

Shelton: You should see how shocked all the European kids are who are on exchanges there. They are always the cleverest kids in the class and they don’t expect it. All the American kids learn are these rather odd ideas about “self assertion” and “aggressivity”. They learn to tell everyone how great they are without knowing anything. I think the whole nation should go back to school, myself.

Idler: Do you have any problems getting back into America for the holidays?

Shelton: Because of the dope thing? No, never. I’m still an American citizen. I go back to the States about once a year, but I don’t miss much. I guess the thing I miss the most about the States is the food. French food is wildly over-rated. I hate the way, if you are in a reasonably fancy restaurant in France, everyone is so reverential about their food. The way it is so quiet and everyone sits around for five days completing their meal. In America we certainly want to eat faster but we like to do it in a kind of sociable way and of course with big portions. The food in France is a bit pretentious.

Idler: Is the pot good?

Shelton: Yeah fine. Personally, I’ve always smoked just as much as I could get away with. There is no doubt that weed does not help you in any way to be creative or spontaneous but if you have thought out what you want to do then that is not a problem. I guess you actually have to have more planning in your life if you smoke weed, otherwise you would never get anything done. Also certain people have their own tolerance level. The two men I work with, Paul Mavrides and Gehart Seyfried, and I were asked to judge a Dutch home-produced competition with all these different weeds like skunk and super skunk and double super wild skunk. They gave us six spliffs and asked us to come back the next day with marks out of ten for each of them. Now Paul can smoke a whole load more than I can and he dutifully did exactly as they asked. Of course, I smoked one spliff and was so stoned there was no point in smoking any other of the others. So I just gave them all the same mark and didn’t tell anyone.

Idler: How does it affect your work process?

Shelton: Like I say, you have to plan. Alcohol is a better drug for doing things and, well … marijuana is not. I work on average three days a week depending on what we’re doing at the time. I’d like to be able to work faster, that’s for sure, but that’s only so I can spend more time wandering around Paris looking at things. I avoid deadlines like the plague because they stress me out too much. But we keep things ticking over. Believe me, you can always get plenty of things done by taking it easy. I think there should be wild hemp growing in the parks and everyone should be able to pull off a branch or two and take it home with them. It wouldn’t be a problem.

Idler: Do you have cats of your own?

Shelton: Sure. I’ve always had cats. At the moment I have two called Tache and Gipsy. Tache is a mad shitter because Gipsy is a new addition and only young and Tache, resenting this, has taken to showing how pissed off she is by shitting all over the house. It’s a bit of a problem because they aren’t too much trouble, apart from the shitting and pissing, and they have this amazing way of being very graceful and also hopelessly clumsy. They can also seem clever but completely dim at the same time. It’s what makes them fun, I guess. Fat Freddy’s Cat just does everything normal cats do but in a shorter space of time. He also has great appeal to people who aren’t quite as into the Freak Brothers, the dopehead side of things. And of course the kids love all the shit jokes.

Idler: And you invented Fat Freddy’s Cat by accident?

Shelton: Not quite. We had a change over from a comic to a tabloid-sized newspaper and in these pre-computer days we had an extra two inches at the bottom of the page to fill. So we ran these four picture, short cartoons of Fat Freddy’s Cat to fill the space and it was a big hit. Kind of an accident I guess.

Idler: Are cats cleverer than dogs?

Shelton: No way.

Idler: Are you one of those cartoon buffs?

Shelton: Not really. I don’t have a collection or anything like that. I’ve never been into those superhero comics like Marvel Comics or DC, they were too silly. Sci-fi bores me. No, in the early Sixties I was influenced by Robert Crumb’s Zap Comics and a character called Beadle Bailey, a misfit soldier, was an inspiration. I started doing a strip called Wander Warthog with the late Tony Bell when I worked on Help mag where Terry Gilliam was assistant editor. But I would say that my favourite cartoonist is a British guy called Leo Baxendale. He invented the Bash Street Kids and Lord Snooty. Of course, it isn’t as good now, but the original Bash Street Kids were great drawings and great characters. I hear they tried to change it and the public went mad. They tired to make Plug pretty and had to give in.

Idler: Will they legalise dope in the near future?

Shelton: No. If anything, it’s going to get worse. There are powerful interests in keeping it illegal, like the drinks industry. There might be some home grown stuff that doesn’t get you in so much trouble but no, I don’t think so.

Idler: Can you tell us how to grow nice stuff at home?

Shelton: I’m useless on it. You have to make tops (buds) and don’t let it go to seed. The tops come about in the Autumn but I’ve never been able to do it. Sorry. There is a book that tells you how to do it … oh, what is it called … hmmm … sorry, I can’t remember its name.