An Interview with the late John Callahan, cartoonist, circa 2005

Last week, the latest Gus Van Sant feature, “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot,” opened in U.S. theaters. A biopic of the late Portland cartoonist John Callahan, it stars Joaquin Phoenix in the title role -- one that in decades past had been coveted by William Hurt and Robin Williams, with Billy Crystal and John Ritter also having been discussed as possibilities.

Back in 2005, before podcasting became a huge DIY and online listening activity, I was doing character voices for a science-fiction audio show called “Dry Smoke and Whispers.” One of the co-creators, Marc Rose, was (and still is) a crack audio engineer and voiceover artist himself.

He and I devised the idea of doing a podcast about creative folks and creativity. I would interview writers, painters, musicians, stage directors, and even chefs about their process and the practical facets of pursuing their work. I decided to call the show “Straight to the Art.”

With Marc handling all the technical facets, I could focus on finding and interviewing the guests. We had prepared half a dozen shows to roll out when the host, Purecast Media, shut down. Another bright idea down the drain.

One of the people I interviewed was Callahan. He wasn’t hard to snag. We lived in same neighborhood of Northwest Portland, and I occasionally saw him motoring the sidewalks in his wheelchair or hanging out at a coffee shop.

So one afternoon I sat with him at the Starbucks at NW 23rd and Overton, not far from his home, and chatted about his work. I still have a digital copy of that interview, so I transcribed it this week.

[NOTE: I am not going to reproduce photos of Callahan or his work without authorization, so I’ve taken a couple photos of the park that opened last fall to memorialize him, as well as the Starbucks where we chatted, and uploaded them below to beef up some clipart. You can see some photos of Callahan and some of his cartoons on the above-linked pages, as well as on his official website.]

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Hi! This is David Loftus with “Straight to the Art,” a program about creativity and how writers, musicians, and artists do their magic.

Today I’m talking with the cartoonist, John Callahan. His weekly cartoon outrages and insults readers all across the U.S., with crude and rude drawings that ridicule politicians, nuns, feminists, alcoholics like he used to be, quadriplegics like he is today, and all ethnic minorities without discrimination or favoritism.

When people laugh like hell and then say, “That’s not funny!”, you can be pretty sure they’re talking about John Callahan, according to P.J. O’Rourke. Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” said, “Rude, shocking, depraved, tasteless … Callahan gets called all the adjectives cartoonists love to hear.” Dave Attell of Comedy Central said, “His cartoons are like kissing your grandma; if it’s so bad, why does it feel so good?”

Callahan’s autobiography, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, tells the story of the car crash that left him a quadriplegic at 21, his years of alcoholism and recovery, the dysfunctional caretakers, and his happy discovery of a career in cartooning. . . .

Q: I wanted to say up front that I am half Japanese, I am proud of my Asian-American heritage, and I am outraged that you draw cartoons making fun of Asian-Americans far less often than blacks, crips, or nuns. Why the discrimination against my people?

CALLAHAN: Ha ha ha, that’s funny.

Q: Why do you think people get angry about your cartoons?

CALLAHAN: I don’t know, really. I’m the last one that would ever know the answer to that question, I guess. It sounds so silly and presumptuous of me. I’m aware of the balance of things in society, and I just feel a sense, if somebody has a thin sense of humor or no sense of humor at all, I can feel their presence, and it’s fun to pop their balloon. I singlehandedly balance the yin and the yang in the universe, here.

Q: How many papers carry your cartoon regularly?

CALLAHAN: It varies so much. It used to be 80, now there’s more like 25 and 45.

Q: And are they committed to printing it every week, or is it kind of optional?

CALLAHAN: Committed to printing it every week, yeah.

Q: Is Willamette Week basically your home paper?

CALLAHAN: Most people don’t have the luxury of being published in their hometown. It’s fun to have your cartoon or your column or whatever in the town in which you live, because you have a little, you know, ability to be sensitive to the needs and the pulse of the town.

Q: You also get really quick feedback!

CALLAHAN: Yeah, I know. Yeah, really quick feedback, like rocks through the window with a note attached.

Q: Willamette Week’s a fairly alternative weekly: They print four-letter words in their reviews and news stories all the time. Do they print everything you send over, or have the editors ever tried to talk you out of running an idea, or asked you to tone it down somehow?

CALLAHAN: Well, they very seldom do that. That’s the thing with [then Managing Editor, now Publisher] Mark Zusman. I mean, there’ve been times when there’s been such a huge outcry against one of my cartoons. The Patti Smith one, there were actually letters to the editor for eight or ten weeks running.

Q: What was the Patti Smith cartoon?

CALLAHAN: It was a cartoon about Patti Smith when the Pope of several years ago was endearing himself to rock stars, and I thought it’d be funny if he reached out to Patti Smith -- I think she’s the most unlikely, you know. So I had the Pope singing her song (oh god, don’t make me go through this again!) “Rock and Roll Nigger” -- which is one of her famous songs.

But that word -- it was misunderstood because most people don’t remember, really, Patti Smith’s context, or at least that song. The song, it doesn’t mean “nigger” in the sense of the races thing; it means nigger in the sense of being an outcast, or being --

Q: Just like John Lennon’s “Woman is the Nigger of the World.”

CALLAHAN: Lennon’s thing, yeah.

Q: You poke fun at angry, supposedly humorless feminists a lot. You must have friends who consider themselves feminists; do they all enjoy your feminist cartoons, or do they sometimes tell you: lay off, John?

CALLAHAN: Yeah, a lot of ’em say that, but a lot of ’em have a sense of humor about the feminist cartoons. I kind of had a baggage thing to grind against the feminists for many years. And a lot of times I think I’ve been lucky enough to not be shot or killed on the street. To the point where now I’ve worked it out: I don’t feel such baggage about it. I had a little strange, you know, beginning/send-off from females in my early life, and it kind of led to a lotta fear of strongish women, you know?

Q: You’ve cited the late Mad Magazine cartoonist Don Martin as an influence. What did you inherit from his work, for example?

CALLAHAN: Well, you know, I used to trace or kind of copy his cartoons as a little child in my aunt’s house. Up in Irvington area, up in 30th and Klickitat Streets in Northeast. In the summer out in the backyard and stuff, I would draw his cartoons. I loved the spirit of his goofy guys with the bent tennis shoes and stuff. And then strangely, in about 1990 or ’91, I came home to my downtown apartment in Portland, and I pushed the answering machine button, and it was a message from Don Martin. He’d gotten my number and was calling up to say that he was a fan of my cartoons.

It was unbelievable, it was a surreal moment, you know? And so he was championing me when I was kicked out of the Miami Herald, eventually, um, years later. I think he’d helped get me into the Herald. 

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Tuesday was the eighth anniversary of Callahan’s death, at the age of 59, from complications of quadriplegia and respiratory problems. In part two, which I’ll upload in a couple of days, we discussed his work schedule, erections and orgasms, Tom Waits, and the Callahan cartoon that The Miami Herald spent $45,000 to kill.


Go to part 2 of the John Callahan interview.