"Don't like it? Do something else" : the many lives of David Avallone
Screenwriter and comic book writer David Avallone takes us on a wild, untold, mostly pulp journey.
Welcome to Runaway, a magazine all about expectations, reality and the inevitable crash.
In case you missed the Saturday issue (aka the one about Sublamp): I started doing longform interviews over the handful of days my laptop was out of commission. The instant effect was so refreshing and energising, I've adapted on the fly. Brand new essays are coming soon, but meanwhile, I’ll be featuring two independent creators a week. After all, social media has been making it even harder to discover work, might as well resurrect the Big Weekend Culture Magazine, and on a bloody Substack too.
(Skip to the end for a treat.)
“Jack of all trades” is a label that doesn’t quite fit David Avallone, not anymore it doesn’t: two decades of odd jobs in the movie industry turned into a surprising second life as a happy, successful comic book writer. I spoke with him on the eve of Yet Another Launch for the Elvira series over at Dynamite Comics.
Topics include: growing up to become an old man with great stories, the making of early Nineties direct-to-video softcore flicks, working as an electrician on movie sets, Marvel, Vertigo, Dynamite, meeting Joe Quesada, Kevin Eastman, Warner Brothers, starting a new career at 49 years old, writing for Elvira and with Cassandra Peterson, writing Doc Savage without having to read his Wikipedia page, “the girl next door... if the girl next door was a Catskills comic working blue after midnight”, the legacy of pulp icon Michael Avallone and his 200+ books, and the pleasure of finding a way to make it all work.
Very early on in our acquaintance, you told me your biggest dream was to become "an old man with a lot of great stories". Considering you had an enormous and varied creative career spanning decades at this point, I'm starting to see what you mean. BUT: by far the wildest tangent you sent me on was the time you told me you were involved with the writing and production of ‘90s direct-to-video softcore movies, back when you were super young. Walk me through HOW THAT HAPPENED.
I think it's more common in the film industry than you might guess. In the late Eighties and Nineties the VHS/cable TV boom was in full swing, and the easiest way to get your film rented or picked up for cable distribution was nudity. If you wanted to make a living and weren't in one of the unions working on big studio films, those were the movies available to work on. I actually ghost-wrote and ghost-co-directed two films for a famous (infamous) and wildly entertaining purveyor of this kind of sexy action movie. But even in my very blue collar incarnation as a grip or electrician, I worked on a lot of exploitation movies of all kinds. Horror, action, "erotic" thrillers, science fiction, martial arts, etc. But even within those genres, there was almost always a nude scene or five. I was an electrician on SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART III -- directed by Monte Hellman! -- and there were a couple of nude scenes in that, including the first one by Laura Harring, who later had an iconic sex scene with Naomi Watts in MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Even David Lynch did it, even in art-house films.
And we're backing up already: this "blue collar incarnation" of yours as a grip and an electrician is new to me. Did you start working on film sets as a way to get your foot in the door, or was it your choice of job and you became a writer along the way ?
The summer of my junior year at Bard, a small New York company made an indie film on campus right after the semester ended. They gave intern gigs to any student who was willing to work for almost-free. (I think I was paid $225 for three weeks of backbreaking work.) I jumped at the chance, though, and was assigned to the lighting department. I learned how to be an electrician (the movie kind) and also had the grips train me in what they did.
It was, as you might imagine, an eye-opening experience. I knew it would be hard work, though, so I wasn't discouraged. Making movies is hard work. One of the first things my mentor (and later close friend) at Bard, Adolfas Mekas, said to me, was, "You already know that making movies gets fingers dirty." (He was Lithuanian and often mangled idiomatic phrases, but I knew what he meant.)
I worked on one more movie in NY, as a grip, and then a few months after graduation I came west to Hollywood. I didn't end up working as a grip or electric again for a few years, but it was always a job classification I could go out for.
I never wanted to be a grip or an electrician... or any of the other jobs I've had on film sets that weren't writer or director (or even actor sometimes.) I didn't want to be a first assistant director and I kinda hate producing. I didn't want to be a director of photography or a script supervisor or an editor (which was my main job for many years.) But I had to pay the landlord and so I took the gigs I could get, and do, and working on movies was always way more interesting than some other "straight" job. I had amazing experiences and met great people and I learned the craft of film-making from every angle. I have no regrets. And I'll be honest... I also learned that sometimes the movie is made by the first AD and the script supervisor and the DP and the editor and the director is just the guy who gets the credit for all the work they did to keep him propped up.
To sum up, though... when I came to Hollywood I had zero connections and no particular way in. I didn't have a single illusion that the studios were just DESPERATE to read my script and sign me to a ten-picture deal. I didn't buy into that delusion, and the delusions fostered by the Sundance boom hadn't even begun yet. (I never bought into those, either.) So I put my head down, got the work I could get, and made my own stuff when I could.
Let me skip to the Now for a minute here. You've become known for your work as a comic book writer, and you've been collaborating with Cassandra Peterson for the series centered around her signature character, Elvira. When did you jump into comic books as "your main thing"? Obviously it paid off, but was it an opportunity you pursued, was it something you tried as a writer and you turned out to be very good at … ?
I had a great opportunity to get into comics around 2002. I met Joe Quesada at a party, and he asked if I had any interest in writing comics. I had never really considered it -- after all, I was already in an industry that had its own challenges and barriers to getting work done. Of course... I definitely had an interest, and Joe said I should send Marvel a writing a sample. I did, and they loved it, and slotted me into a new writer program they had going at the time... but what they wanted next was a first issue of a whole new original comic series. That's a lot to ask for, and I didn't have anything lying around. I did eventually come up with a premise I liked, and start on an issue, but by the time I got to that stage their new writer program had evaporated. Once I got started in the industry over a decade later, I filed the "Marvel" aspects off that premise and pitched it at Vertigo. It made a little bit of headway then stalled out.
That's the time it didn't work. In 2014, it came around again and I was ready this time. I was burning out on making films, and editing films. Aside from a web series and some shorts, I hadn't really made anything that felt like MINE. I'd also had some bad experiences with crooked producers and incompetent directors and that'll wear you out. A friend and colleague read an old script of mine, thought it was excellent, and offered to recommend me as a writer to some comics editors. They introduced me to Joe Rybandt, top editor at Dynamite Comics, at my favorite bar during San Diego Comic Con. We got along very well and he said he'd look for something for me to do with them. Writing ability aside, I think I was also attractive to Dynamite because they had the license on all the 1930s pulp heroes at the time... and there are fewer and fewer writers every year who can write Doc Savage without having to read his Wikipedia page. I did end up writing both Doc Savage and The Shadow for them, which was bucket list stuff in any medium.
Joe offered me a series -- a spin-off from a Bill Willingham series called LEGENDERRY and no that's not a spelling mistake. I read it, had some ideas of where to take it, and they had me call Bill to tell him what I had in mind. He okayed my pitch, and I was off. Unlike the last time, in 2002, I did a DEEP dive on writing comics as a craft. Reread the Scott McCloud books. Read some of the Will Eisner books. Studied the comics I loved more closely than I ever had. I took it seriously.
I was 49 years old, starting an entirely new career I had no real experience in... and I recommend that, honestly. It was invigorating and I'm still invigorated.
Joe liked the work, and Dynamite alone has kept me employed in the industry since 2014. There's been a few down-periods but not many, and I've found work with other publishers to supplement what I get from Dynamite. I will say, with no false modesty, that it turns out to be something I'm very good at... and just as importantly, it turns out to be something I enjoy immensely. I have creative freedom in comics I never found in film/TV, and ironically being a comic book writer has led back around to the best work I've ever had as a screenwriter.
I'd say you’re living probably the second oldest dream creative people have: number one is still "being discovered out of the blue" (because the one-in-a-million, lottery-ticket, lucky shot myth is still very much alive all around the world), but "having a meaningful life in another medium" is a close second. Kudos to you.
You've been busy promoting your Elvira comic books, which is something you've been working on since (check) 2018. In this case, you write stories about a character - our beloved Mistress of the Dark - but you're also involved with Cassandra Peterson as a close partner. I would imagine such a project brings its own set of challenges: you have Elvira the character, you have the flesh and blood entertainer who gave her life, both need to be in the equation. What's been your work mode in this case?
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Cassandra makes it all very easy. She is protective of her brand and the Elvira persona, but it's so perfectly and vividly realized -- decades before I come along -- that she's a very easy character to write. I don't struggle with "what would Elvira say here?" I just have to come up with situations to drop her into that will lend themselves to her brand of comedy, and it unfolds naturally from there.
When I started writing the character, I did take a moment to analyze and understand it, and the key is that she's not at all like the other icons in that genre. While Vampira and Morticia Addams and their soul-sisters are very sexy... they have a languid, feline grace and reserve about them. Elvira is, in her way, the girl next door... if the girl next door was a Catskills comic working "blue" after midnight. She took a trope that was always played the same way and stood it on its head. I think that's why Elvira's been so popular for so long.
Your father Michael Avallone was a prolific writer himself, releasing more than 200 pulp novels through the years under a plethora of pen names. You've been keeping his legacy alive - you do run social media accounts about the Ed Noon, P.I. saga - and you seem to be incredibly close to Michael, still, in a way. Has there ever been any element of his work philosophy you carried over in your own production ?
My father's key quote is this: "A real writer should be able to write anything: from a garden seed catalog to the Holy Bible." There are exceptions, of course, but I think this is true. He was a storyteller’s storyteller, and I hope I picked that up from him. I love getting a challenge, from a publisher or an editor. "What would you do with _____? How would you write about _____?" I love solving those problems and coming up with something every single time. Dad woke up at 6 or 7, walked down to the corner to get a cup of coffee with friends on their way to their jobs, and then came home and sat at the typewriter all day, breaking only for lunch.
That's how you write 200 published novels. He had no patience with people who complained about writing, and I feel pretty much the same way. Don't like it? Do something else. He approached his work with joy, and so do I. Are there days it's hard, or a slog? Sure. Sometimes you have to dig deep to make something work and that's frustrating. But that is the job. Find a way to love it.
He had a card over his desk, and since he passed it's been over my desk: Nobody Asked You To Be a Writer. You can parse that a number of ways, I'm sure, but I think it's related to what I was talking about above. You asked for this, buddy. This is the life you choose. Love it or do something else. You have that option. Love your choice, or make a new one.
Last question: I started this project once I fully appreciated my overall frame was (still is) "expectations, reality and the inevitable crash". Looking at everything you've managed to accomplish over different mediums, is there one moment that stands out to you as a case of "expectations crashing into reality" ? And is there any lesson you learnt in the aftermath ?
Oh, there are a lot of those. I can remember the first feature film I ghost-co-wrote and ghost-co-directed. I also worked in the editing room. And I put my heart and soul in it... even though it was VERY MUCH another man's film, and filtered through his sensibility, which was quite different from mine. When I sat in the screening, seeing it with an audience for the first time... I was reminded, after all that hard work, that this would never be "mine", was never going to be a great movie -- by design. I had been so caught up in getting it made, I was mentally glossing over all the stuff in it that made me cringe. When the movie was reviewed in Variety, the reviewer said, "It feels like two different movies." He was right. The cinematographer sent me the clipping and said, "Hey, look. He noticed your work."
So that was a heartbreak and a lesson. It didn't change how I worked: even the worst film I ever edited got the best I could possibly give... but I saw the project and the process with clear eyes. I never again sat in a screening thinking a movie was going to be very different than it was.
In comics I've had an incredible amount of creative freedom. Cassandra has let me do almost anything I wanted with Elvira, and has been very supportive. My creator-owned comic with Kevin Eastman, Drawing Blood, is completely an art project that is EXACTLY what we want it to be, without one scintilla of compromise. I never really had that in film, aside from a few shorts.
All that said, sometimes working in someone else's sandbox is a joy. Writing Batman and Catwoman for BATWHEELS delights the Hell out of me, even with the (logical) restrictions placed on that work by Warner Brothers. You always find a way to bring your own perspective to the material, even while coloring inside the lines. That's a big part of being a professional writer, and I love it. I love all of it.
And now:
You can buy David Avallone’s books on Amazon
You can listen to his podcasts, plural: there’s PULP TODAY and THE WRITERS BLOCK
Or, OR, you can keep up with all things David by following him on Twitter (he’ll let you know if he leaves for good)
Sunday notes:
The past few months of Outsider Lit and its constant drama had soured me on the whole scene, but, credit where credit’s due, pretend to be shocked, I just had new work published at SAND Journal and Apocalypse Confidential, and both journals have done a remarkable job at promoting their latest issues. Take a look.
Never underestimate the power of SPITE.
In case you missed it, we just had a riveting chat with ambient music dude-wonder Ryan Connor, also known as Sublamp. Here it is:
