Bullz-Eye: So The Game is now officially a game.

Neil Strauss: Yes. In a matter of speaking. [Laughs.]

How weird was that? Was it an idea that you came up with, or did someone else pitch it to you?

Yeah, I don’t think I ever would’ve come up with that on my own. [Laughs.] But now I’m really into it. Now I really love it. There’s two elements. One, it’s really fun – Adam (Kornblum) made a game, and I made it into more of a game that I’d want to play with my friends – and, two, it’s just kind of fun to have a game. It’s kind of a childhood dream. It’s not just Monopoly or Sorry! or Mousetrap or Chutes and Ladders or…there’s this game 221B Baker Street, which is, like, a better Clue. [Laughs.] But all those games…I’d always wanted to do a game, but what I think really motivated me to want to do it was that Adam contacted me, and…I didn’t know him at all, but sometimes in the deluge there’s a compelling email where we sit around and think, “Maybe we should contact this guy.” And he had done a game for Hasbro, so he had some credibility there. He said he had made a game based on the books I’d done already that he’d been, like, taking out to bars and playing there just to meet women. So I thought, okay, this guy’s field-tested his idea, he’s not just writing about an idea that he’s come up with while he’s sitting in front of his email. I guess he’s now engaged, so obviously it worked to some degree. [Laughs.] Anyway, I thought, “Okay, let’s kind of entertain this and take it seriously.” And he sent it over, and I kept just playing it with different friends and then adding tweaks and changing it and adding new types of cards. Like, I really wanted the game to be something that you play in bars but, like, for example, when I’d go out, I’d end up bringing people back to my house and I’d be, like, “Fuck, now what do I do with them?” And the game’s kind of like social lubrication, a way to get to know people and having everybody having fun and laughing and bonding without any awkwardness.

You said Adam got the ball rolling, but when someone’s playing the game of The Game, what’s something that you personally added to the game?

I think a couple of my favorite things are the Neg cards, where, like, whoever has the worst driver’s license picture or the most wrinkled shirt loses points. [Laughs.] It’s, like, I thought, what’s fun is people laughing at themselves and their own foibles in a non-malicious way, where you’re teasing someone like they’re friends might tease them. Another favorite is the Secret cards, which are basically…it’s a secret social mission to pull off over the course of the game. For example, if you make up something conversationally and someone else in the group believes it’s true, you get two points. So all through the game there are these two layers: the game itself, and the social mission. And it’s a fun layer. It’s a fun form of manipulation, because you’re, like, “How can I get everyone to believe this and get my points?” The social dynamics part is something that, as far as I know, hasn’t been seen in a game yet. There are games with fun challenges, tests, points giving and taking, but where you’re actually trying to execute a social mission within the group…? That’s where it becomes unique.

It definitely seems that you don’t have to be single or on the market, as it were, to enjoy the game.

Oh, definitely not. In fact, we had a dinner party a few nights ago, it was about 12 people, and I’d say about eight of them were couples in serious relationships. So, no, it doesn’t matter at all. Either it’s good to get to know someone or it’s just fun to play with friends. But, I mean, my girlfriend and I play it all the time. It’s fun to go to a party and bring your own game. By the way, you only do that at parties with really good friends who are proud of you and can appreciate that you have your own game, and not with casual acquaintances who are, like, “Why is this asshole bringing his game to our party?” [Laughs.]

Having brought up the fact that you have a girlfriend begs a question about the original book: how quickly did you admit to her that you were the guy behind The Game? Or did she know from the get-go?

Uh, yeah, at this point, I think I’m kind of screwed. I kind of have to say it up front, because if I don’t, one of these things happens: they know the book already, their friends are going to tell them, or they’re going to Google me and find out. Better that I be the bearer of the news. [Laughs.] It can definitely make it more difficult as far as getting people to trust anything you’re saying. I think my only recourse is to be as sincere as possible, because everything is tainted with suspicion.

So what was the original impetus for writing The Game? You’d written in the medium of pop culture quite a bit prior to that, certainly, but…

I think the initial impetus was being a rock critic at Rolling Stone and The New York Times and going to all these shows, which are carnivals of flesh and sexuality, really. But that’s rock ‘n’ roll. [Laughs.] And I’m just the lonely guy with the notepad watching everybody else have all the fun, hoping that maybe some girl’s going to come up and talk to me because I’m writing something in my notepad. And then I’d say, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to this show next week and these other shows the following week, if you want to come with me,” and I assumed that was going to be a date, and…I remember once I met this girl at one, and she ended up making out with the guy sitting next to me. And I was, like, “What the fuck…? What’s wrong with me?” So it really came not from a desire to go underground and assume an identity and be an investigative journalist or even to write a book but, rather, to help get over my own problems with women. [Laughs.]

So what’s the status of the movie version of The Game?

It looks like…they’re in casting mode for the movie version, which I think is probably a great leap forward. [Laughs.] I’m always hesitant. Until the day they begin shooting, I don’t believe it’s going to happen. But it’s definitely the closest it’s been.

Is that how you feel about the movie version of The Dirt as well?

No. Unfortunately, I’m a lot less certain about The Dirt. [Laughs.] But, by the way, The Dirt‘s script is fricking incredible. This guy Rich Wilkes wrote it, and…I think it’s the first book of mine that was optioned for a movie, and that was, what, 10 years ago now? I don’t even know how long it’s been anymore. And, literally, people come up to me who’ve read the script for The Dirt that haven’t read the book, and they’re, like, “Great script! I really need to go read the book now!” That never happens. I just hope…they’ve got to make it. They’ve got to. I just don’t when it’s going to happen. But if you haven’t read the script, you really need to. He really captured it well. I read it, and I was, like, “This is why I don’t write the scripts for my own books. I never could’ve done as good a job as he did.”

Of the other books you’ve collaborated on with musicians…well, I’m hard pressed to believe that The Dirt can be topped, but do you have another favorite experience among them?

Well, I’d say the Marilyn Manson book, but all my books were kind of crazy experiences. The Marilyn Manson book was really the first, and it was fun. The fun books are when a band is just getting huge and they’re sort of really enjoying the decadence of that. I remember when I first went out with Marilyn Manson, calling my friend back home and saying, “I think I’m gonna die if I’m on tour with this band.” [Laughs.] And then I did a book with Dave Navarro which was just crazy, because I basically kind of lived with him for a year while he was shooting up cocaine every 15 minutes and heroin every few hours. Doing that book, I thought he was going to die.  I can’t even really explain it. I mean, I got a call from him once, and he said, “Dude, I’m overdosing.” I’m, like, “Fuck, man, what do you want me to do?” “I just want you to make sure you record this and get it in the book.” I’m, like, “Okay, I think you’re going to be fine, if you’re worried about wanting me to record this.” [Laughs.] But, yeah, that was really, really dark, that book.

We had a weird experience with him right when the new Jane’s Addiction album was coming out. We had a chance to interview him – this was actually my buddy David who did the interview – and he’s trying to ask Navarro about the album, and he just has almost nothing to say. Finally, he’s, like, “I thought this was for a guy’s site.” Apparently, he just figured we were going to be asking him about porn stars.

Ah, so he wanted to talk about that stuff and not the music…?

Yep. He had almost nothing to say about the music.

Yeah, it’s funny. I suppose it shows where his mind is at these days, huh? [Laughs.]

Has there been any book that you’ve attempted to write that fell through, either because the person ended up not wanting to give you the go-ahead for all-access that you’d anticipated?

There are definitely books where I’ve met with the person and decided not to write the book, for sure. And there were even, like, very, very famous people whose books would sell well. But they weren’t willing to go to the mat and say everything and were, y’know, too worried about how they were gonna come across or what they looked like, so I didn’t take them.

Did any of them eventually move forward with someone else?

Yeah. But I don’t want to call them out. [Laughs.] And there were a couple of books early on that I kind of started to write but never got past the first chapter. I thought it’d be fun someday just to put out the excerpts from unpublished autobiographies. Some of them were of kind of funny characters. There’s one I’m doing right now, though, that…I can’t say who it is, but it…I mean, the person’s telling me these stories, and I can’t even focus, they’re so intense. And it’s not someone you’d ever guess, but when you hear who it is, you’ll be, like, “Okay, that makes sense.” But it’s not someone you’d ever guess.

Can you say if it’s a musician or an actor?

Someone from the music world. Musicians have better stories, y’know? Actors have to behave to get a job. Musicians don’t. Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen behave a certain way and lose their jobs, but rock stars do it and get raises. [Laughs.] No one would have blinked an eye if a rock star behave the way Charlie Sheen has.

How did you make the jump from writing articles to writing books?

I think the transition was…I started out doing an article on Marilyn Manson for Rolling Stone, and I originally took it because I just didn’t like him. I just thought, “This guy’s a big phony,” and I’d never written a negative article, but I was just going to call this guy out. And then I ended up really liking him and ended up writing a positive article. So his book editor contacted me and said, “Hey, how’d you like to try writing a book?” And I said, “Sure,” but I remember I put it in the contract that if I didn’t like it, I could remove my name from the book itself. I thought, “Hey, this way I get experience writing a book, but I’m not on the hook for it.” [Laughs.] I probably wrote for…I don’t know, but probably for at least ten years before writing a book. And I probably wrote other people’s book for five, six, seven years before I finally had the balls to write my own book. So it’s really been a slow build. But the good news is that by the time I finally wrote my own book, I had so much writing experience that it held together.

With Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, the content is a significant jump forward from The Game. I think a lot of people might’ve envisioned you as being a one-trick pony, like, “Oh, the pick-up artist guy,” but that’s a much deeper topic.

Exactly. And, y’know, I think that’s the whole thing. [Exhales loudly.] God, all the topics I want to write about are so deep. My biggest challenge is…I’ve got four books under contract that are non-collaborations, and they all require so much research and immersion like Emergency did. But I think the secret is that you just write what’s interesting to you. You don’t write what you think other people are going to like. That way you’re passionate about it. I remember thinking I could sit there all day trying to figure out what people are going to like and do surveys and things like that, but I think they’ll like anything that you’re really passionate about and connect with and communicate well. I’ve read plenty of books on subjects that I wasn’t interested in that were great books.

I’m sure there were several moments while writing Emergency that would qualify for this, but…was there a particular revelation you discovered about the financial situation in America and the economic downturn that was just heartstopping?

Well, you know what really got me? The fact that people aren’t worried about anything in the world until it affects their wallets and their bankbooks. Do you know what I mean? Like, what gets people more panicked than anything is when gas prices go up. More than terrorists acts, more than natural disasters, more than all these things that are more likely to happen than a complete economic Armageddon. People in various places are experiencing earthquakes or wildfires or tornadoes, yet no one really thinks about themselves until they suddenly go, “Omigod, gas prices went up,” and feel it in their own bankbook. That seems to be the only way to get people to respond. And that was just sort of…worrisome. And disappointing. If you look at the Great Depression, the people who survived that were, like, “You suffer, and it makes you stronger. You survive.” You learn to have community gardens, you learn to economize your resources, and in the end, having to struggle and suffer isn’t so bad. I was surprised and yet not surprised that the big epiphany was that no one takes anything seriously until it hits their own wallet.

You’ve had some pretty high profile pieces in your career, including your piece about Kurt Cobain’s suicide and the Eric Clapton profile you did for The New York Times. Is there an article you’ve written about someone perhaps not as immediately notable that you’re particularly proud of?

Yeah, for me, I think it’s the article about Paul Nelson (“The Man Who Disappeared”). He was a music critic at Rolling Stone, and…basically he gave Bob Dylan these Woody Guthrie albums and said, “Oh, you should check these out!” And Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan. He signed the first punk band – the New York Dolls – to Mercury. And he was just a great rock critic. Unlike the Lester Bangs style, he had a very literary style. And he died alone of starvation in his apartment, just completely neglected and with 10 years of writers block. It was very humbling. You spend all this time, you care about culture and film and music, you sacrifice personal relationships to culture. He couldn’t have personal relationships. He could only have relationships with culture. And in the end he died alone. I mean, you sit there, you write all this copy, and in the end you think, “Well, what am I doing with my life? What is it adding up to? I’m not going out at night because on my deadlines. What am I doing?” It was a very brooding, humbling article to write. It took me so long to write it, just because it struck so close to home. You just don’t want to end up like him, because, y’know, he had an estranged son, an ex-wife, and…he was forgotten about.

Just to wrap up, as a TV critic, I have to ask you about The Product, the series that you, Navarro, and Cliff Dorfman (Entourage) were set to do for FX. It obviously never made it to air, but how far along did it get? Did you make a pilot, or was is strictly a concept?

Yeah, The Product was an actual pilot, it made it over to FX, but they didn’t greenlight it in the end. I’m actually doing a show now that…I guess it hasn’t been announced, but I’m writing a show for HBO. We’ll see what happens with that. But, you know, it seems like a lot of writers…now, I’m not saying I’m the same pantheon here… [Laughs.] But you look at, like, Ayn Rand, William Faulkner, they did some of their worst work in Hollywood. In the end, it just kind of sucked up a lot of their time and kept them from doing the writing they really should’ve been doing.

Steve Jobs
By Walter Isaacson

This isn’t just a great biography. Isaacson is a very talented writer, historian and storyteller who’s written about great men such as Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein. Jobs is also a fascinating figure, but the difference here is that Steve Jobs just passed away this year, and we’re able to read about a man whose accomplishments and impact on society are so fresh in our minds. Practically everyone who reads this book can relate to Jobs’ inventions and innovations, making the story that much more compelling.

This was made possible because Jobs gave Isaacson access during the final years of his life, and Jobs was willing to open up and let Isaacson see him for who he was, warts and all. We see a man who was both brilliant and petulant. He was extremely passionate but often rude and insulting. We see how Jobs’ obsessive attention to detail and passion for products led to his stunning successes, as well as some of his more spectacular failures.

One of the more fascinating story lines involves his rivalry with Bill Gates. Jobs was obsessed with total control over his products and insisted on closed systems so he could control the user experience. Job relied on his intuition and his maniacal attraction to beauty and simplicity. Gates believed in open systems and was eager to license his software to a wide variety of partners, even if that meant sacrificing the user experience and quality. Gates was the clear winner early as PCs dominated Macs and Apple almost went bankrupt, but Jobs had the last laugh as he pushed Apple to revolutionize consumer electronics with the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad.

The book is a great read, and it’s a great gift for anyone who likes biographies or is interested in technology or business.

Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness
By Neil Strauss

On the back of this book, which is a compilation of interviews and other wild stories from Neil Strauss’s career as a rock journalist, Strauss states, “You can tell a lot about somebody in a minute. If you pick the right minute. Here are 228 of them.” Strauss is a master storyteller, and we got our first introduction to his work years ago when he wrote “The Game,” which in our opinion is the best book you’ll on pick-up artists and dating advice for men. Strauss uses some of the same skills he learned as a pick-up artist to get celebrities to talk to him. His use of a mind-reading illusion to get Britney Spears to open up to him is a classic. Strauss recounts all sorts of bizarre encounters, from shooting guns with Ludacris, being kidnapped by Courtney Love and being told off by Prince. As a writer for Rolling Stone he had access to everybody. The book is very entertaining and makes for a great gift for fans of music and/or celebrities.

The Big Show: Charles M. Conlon’s Golden Age Baseball Photographs
By Neal and Constance McCabe

Is baseball starting to get its groove back? The American Pastime has had a rough go recently, particularly with the steroids scandal that upended many of the great records that helped define the game. Baseball’s glory days now seem so long ago. Yet Major league Baseball has been getting some good news, as they avoided the labor troubles we’ve seen in football and basketball, and we’ve just come off one of the most dramatic World Series comebacks in baseball history.

This book compiles golden age baseball photographs taken by Charles M. Conlon taken between 1902 and 1942. The book features over 200 portraits, and the authors include well-written profiles of the players featured on each page, including quotes from the players themselves. Photos include baseball great such as Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Phil Rizzuto, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig. Many of the photos have never been published, and this makes a great coffee table book. Baseball fans will love it.

Fortunately, this is a problem which can now be easily remedied, thanks to a new coffee-table book from Titan Books entitled “The Avengers: A Celebration – 50 Years of a Television Classic.”

Written by Marcus Hearn and kicking off with an introduction by John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, it’s a fantastic collection which delves into the original “Avengers” series (alas, “The New Avengers” doesn’t rate) and offers a tremendous number of photographs, many of which you’ve likely never seen before. Mainstream America never really felt the same kind of love for the series as the Brits did, and God knows the 1998 film didn’t help the situation any, but if you find yourself feeling giddy as you flip through the below photo gallery (Emma Peel does tend to have that effect), you’ll want to pick up a copy of this book for yourself…or, if your wallet’s feeling a bit light as the holidays approach, you could always add it to your Christmas list.

Then again, I’ve heard reports that Santa is actually an agent for The Ministry, so he probably already knows you want it, anyway.

Let’s put aside for a moment the commentary that comes with a book like this, that it is a symptom of just far pornography has crossed into mainstream pop culture, and whether that is a good thing. The real problem with “Dirty Sanchez Nation” is not the subject matter (though that is a problem) – it’s how the subject matter is handled. Simply put, Marz is an atrocious writer, both technically and creatively. When he’s not writing such grammatically plagued lines as these:

“Typically your so drunk you just keep eating.”
“Just as you’re about to burst, pull out and shot your load into her…”
“For all the girl’s who want to…”

He’s spinning poetry like this:

“When you hit her in the shitter with the one-eyed critter…”
“Smacking someone in the face with your purple headed yogurt slinger.”

Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. It reads as if he wrote the entire book in an hour, and didn’t ask anyone to copy edit it. (There’s hardly a comma in sight.) The organization of the chapters is also laughably bad, with several call backs coming before the setup, a cardinal sin of comedy. For example, why list a variation on Butterface before listing Butterface, or create a section called “Cumshot Surprises” and list Facial, the most basic move, last? Lists like this should go from the simplest moves to more complex (or in this case, sicker) stunts, yes? And really, he couldn’t look up the proper spelling of Sasquatch? (It’s spelled ‘Sausquash’ here, ugh.) We’re also convinced that there is no such thing as a Flaming Amazon, because no woman would ever let a guy set her pubes on fire.

And yet, these many things still aren’t the book’s biggest problem.

No, the biggest problem is the book’s tone, which is of the ultra-misogynist, ‘Bitches ain’t shit’ variety. Take, for example, his description of a Strawberry Shortcake, missing punctuation and all: “Smacking some dirty whore in the face after you just blew your man goo on it creating a red and white pastry treat look.” Some dirty whore? Is Marz that unaware of the deep-seated self-loathing in his words? Another move begins, “While getting head from some skank…” Yes, the 17 girls you bragged of fellating you freshman year in your bio must be very proud to know that you think they’re skanks. The big question, though is: if you had sexual relations with 17 different women in a year, guess what that makes you?

The line between sex and violence here is stretched to the limit, and while Marz didn’t invent this stuff, he’s selling several of them like they might be fun to do, despite how humiliating, irresponsible or harmful they might be to the other party. There is a way to mine comedy from this subject; unfortunately, Marz couldn’t be bothered to take the extra effort to find it, and chose the easier, ‘ha ha girls are all dumb sluts’ path instead. We’re not sure which is worse: his demeaning view of women, or his lazy, lowest-common-denominator approach to comedy. Look at those chapter titles: “Gay Shit”? “Ugly Bitches”? This book is aimed squarely at the douchebag crowd.

“Dirty Sanchez Nation” is informative but needlessly hostile, not to mention occasionally ridiculous (is there really a phrase for blowing snot in a girl’s vagina, as if anyone would ever do such a thing?). It’s a book for people who think that any woman willing to get naked in front of them should be punished for doing so. Case in point: Mudslide, where Marz actually suggests that guys laugh after they blast diarrhea in a woman’s face. To quote the Avalanches song “Frontier Psychiatrist,” that boy needs therapy.

We’ll leave you with this, a line from Marz’s (obnoxious) bio: “…he began his career in acting, playing minor roles in both soft and hardcore pornography before finding his true calling in writing.” True calling in writing? That might be the funniest thing here. (Flying Armbar Enterprises 2010)

Here’s what Titan’s press release on the tome has to say:

During 1975 and 1976, renowned underground photo-journalist Kim Gottlieb, and her husband, Island publicity head Jeff Walker, documented what is now widely recognized as the Golden Age of Reggae. Over two years of historic trips to Jamaica and exclusive meetings in Los Angeles, Kim took iconic photographs of the artists who would go on to define the genre and captivate a generation. Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae features candid and intimate photographs of all of the musicians, artists and producers who brought the reggae sound to the international stage, including Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer,Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Jacob Miller, Third World, Lee Scratch Perry and, of course, Bob Marley. Kim’s photographs include never-before-seen performance shots, candid behind-the-scenes footage of Bobs home in Jamaica, and exclusive records of key moments in reggae history, such as Bob’s first US television appearance, the historical Dream Concert with Stevie Wonder in Jamaica, and Bob meeting George Harrison backstage at the Roxy in 1975.

Acclaimed rock journalist and director Cameron Crowe (“Almost Famous”) introduces this volume with a rousing foreword describing the time he accompanied Jeff and Kim to Jamaica to witness the burgeoning music scene there. Reggae historian Roger Steffens writes lucidly about the significance of those early years in reggae, and describes the pivotal moments documented in Kims photographs, many of which have not been seen in over 30 years, and many more of which have never been released to the public. Intimate and revealing, Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae is a rare and beautiful record of one of the most exciting moments in music history, told through the photographs of a true artist.

Titan kindly provided us with several shots from the book for your viewing pleasure. Don’t be surprised if you’re tempted afterward to click here and order a copy for yourself.

There are some artists who transcend their musical genre, and given how many people have a copy of Legend in their CD collection without having a single other reggae disc to accompany it, it's fair to say that Bob Marley is one of those artists. If you're a fan, then you may be interested to learn that Titan Books has just released "Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae," a collection of photographs of Mr. Marley and many of his musical peers, all taken by Kim Gottlieb Walker during 1975 and 1976.

Here's what Titan's press release on the tome has to say:

During 1975 and 1976, renowned underground photo-journalist Kim Gottlieb, and her husband, Island publicity head Jeff Walker, documented what is now widely recognized as the Golden Age of Reggae. Over two years of historic trips to Jamaica and exclusive meetings in Los Angeles, Kim took iconic photographs of the artists who would go on to define the genre and captivate a generation. Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae features candid and intimate photographs of all of the musicians, artists and producers who brought the reggae sound to the international stage, including Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer,Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Jacob Miller, Third World, Lee Scratch Perry and, of course, Bob Marley. Kim's photographs include never-before-seen performance shots, candid behind-the-scenes footage of Bobs home in Jamaica, and exclusive records of key moments in reggae history, such as Bob's first US television appearance, the historical Dream Concert with Stevie Wonder in Jamaica, and Bob meeting George Harrison backstage at the Roxy in 1975.

Acclaimed rock journalist and director Cameron Crowe ("Almost Famous") introduces this volume with a rousing foreword describing the time he accompanied Jeff and Kim to Jamaica to witness the burgeoning music scene there. Reggae historian Roger Steffens writes lucidly about the significance of those early years in reggae, and describes the pivotal moments documented in Kims photographs, many of which have not been seen in over 30 years, and many more of which have never been released to the public. Intimate and revealing, Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae is a rare and beautiful record of one of the most exciting moments in music history, told through the photographs of a true artist.

Titan kindly provided us with several shots from the book for your viewing pleasure. Don't be surprised if you're tempted afterward to click here and order a copy for yourself.

As such, Bullz-Eye is going to try to tackle more stories from the medium…and when I was sent a copy of “Ides of Blood,” a new series from DC / WildStorm which is – at least according to the press release – not entirely unlike a blend of “True Blood” and “Rome,” it certainly seemed like something that our readership might be interested in learning more about.

God bless DC’s publicity department: they quickly put me in touch with series creator Stuart Paul, who gladly answered a few questions for us about his own introduction to comic books, the origins of “Ides of Blood,” his semi-controversial decision to have characters in ancient Rome use modern colloquialisms, which of DC’s stable of superheroes he’d like to take a shot at writing, and much much more.

Since I’ve seen the phrase “new to comic books” used in conjunction with your history of writing for the medium, what’s your personal background with comics? And don’t be shy: if your memory stretches back that far, feel free to offer up the very first comic you remember buying.

My childhood experience with comics was pretty limited. Other than reading the occasional issue of Moon Knight or X-Men at my friend’s house, the only comics I personally bought were “Star Trek” comics—mostly “Next Generation” and some of the original crew that took place in the post-”Wrath of Khan” time period. It wasn’t until college that my girlfriend reintroduced me to comics through Sandman. Once I realized there were comics for adults out there, I started reading them more and more. Initially, I stuck with the superstars—Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Brian K. Vaughan, Garth Ennis. I was kind of a Vertigo whore at first. I guess I still kind of am, but not as much. I have to hear a lot of good buzz about something before I’ll invest in a whole series like Walking Dead, but I’ve definitely branched out. Once I discovered Urasawa’s Pluto, I started getting into manga more. Right now, I’ve got 20th Century Boys, Basilisk and Lone Wolf and Cub to read. I also went through a period of reading a lot of DC superheroes. Jeph Loeb’s Batman stuff is my favorite. Sometimes I’ll still read X-Men, but it’s pretty rare for me to read superheroes these days. My favorite series right now is probably Okko. I think Archaia is doing some of the most creative and well-made comics today. Also, Chew is the only series I read on a monthly basis. Everything else is TPB’s, although the iPad is kind of changing that.

There’s been much talk about how fans of both “True Blood” and “Rome” will find much to enjoy in Ides of Blood. Is that combination what led to the concept for this series? If not, what were its origins, and how do you feel about those points of comparison?

No, neither show existed when I originally came up with the idea and wrote the first draft. I mean, I don’t have a problem with people using those as points of reference. It’s an effective shorthand, but it’s the type of thing you’d bring up in a Hollywood pitch meeting. The problem is that you don’t necessarily know what connotations those shows have for the reader and also, they’re such current references that it makes the comic sound like it’s just trying to exploit the zeitgeist. I mean, if you said it’s “Gladiator” meets… well, actually, “Dracula” might have too much baggage attached to the name, so I guess “True Blood” probably is a good descriptor. The point is, I don’t mind the comparison, but I do think it has as much potential to put-off readers as it does to draw them in. Anyway, the concept for the series came out of boredom. I don’t really like vampires, so it started as a challenge to myself to figure out what I’d have to do to make vampires interesting to me. Julius Caesar just popped into my head.

Are you at all concerned about a possible vampire backlash, given how many of these bloodsuckers are popping up in pop culture nowadays, or do you think the creative setting of ancient Rome will be enough for vampire enthusiasts to grant you some leeway? (i.e., “Okay, I thought he was just a bandwagon jumper, but I have to admit, this is something we haven’t seen before.”)

The backlash has definitely been a factor, and I think it probably has somewhat hurt the comic’s reception. I’m just as sick of vampire stuff as the rest of you. And it’s easy for people to assume, especially when you’re dealing with a genre-mash-up like this, that the idea came out of some douchebag who was, like, “What’s hot these days? Vampires! What else is hot these days? Ancient Rome! What if we put them together?” But like I said, I started working on this idea five years ago, long before anyone had even heard of “Twilight.” That being said, I think that a lot of people have kept an open mind and thought the concept was cool enough that they’d give it a try. By the end of the first issue, I feel like we proved that we weren’t just in it for the quick buck, but that this is a fully-realized world that is truly trying to do something original. A couple of reviewers have even said that they picked up the book not expecting to like it but the comic changed their mind. It won’t work for everybody, and there’s some people who won’t let their mind be changed no matter what, but I am very grateful to those who came to Ides with an open mind and let themselves buy into the world.

Speaking of vampires, I’d be curious about some of your favorites, especially if your list contains any obscurities that you’re particularly proud of and would like to trumpet.

There aren’t many. There really are only two I can actually list as favorites. The first is “Let the Right One In.” It’s just brilliant filmmaking. The mood is so powerful, and the relationship between the kids is unique. I’d never seen a story like it before. The other is “Martin.” This is a George Romero movie about a kid who thinks he’s a vampire but doesn’t actually have supernatural powers. He goes around drugging women with hypodermic needles and drinking their blood. It’s very 70’s and sexual and psychological and it has a fantastic ending. The same girlfriend who introduced me to Sandman showed me this movie. I ended up marrying her, which I think was a wise choice.

I like Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, but neither of them to a fantastic degree. “True Blood” has some boring characters, but it just got awesome with the King of Mississippi. I like Murnau’s “Nosferatu” better than Tod Browning’s “Dracula.” It’s a shame “Shadow of the Vampire” didn’t live up to its potential.

One of the things about the miniseries that threw me at first was the characters’ usage of modern colloquialisms. Was there any point when you considered using some semblance of era-accuracy with their dialogue? And what would you say to those who might find themselves disconnected from the concept because of the decision to go this route?

It’s been a very divisive choice, and I totally get why it might not work for everyone, but there’s a couple reasons I went this way with it. At first the book was going to be a “For Mature Readers” title, so I was going to have people use profanity, much like “Rome.” But when Wildstorm told me I couldn’t do that, I changed all the curses to Latin. This actually worked fantastically, and I was happy I took out the modern profanity. But apparently this didn’t fly either ‘cause they didn’t want kids Googling Latin curse words. Personally, I think anything that educates kids about foreign languages is a good thing, but so be it. So when I needed another way to express things, I decided to go colloquial with it. It’s how the characters would have sounded to each other.

Plus, I thought it fit the genre. As the story became more of a noir, I though it would be cool to give it a bit of a pulp, Mickey Spillane flavor. More importantly, we’ve seen attempts at realistic dialogue before. It usually ends up with everyone sounding like the Royal Shakespeare Company. I also feel that the idea of realism or accuracy in dialogue in period pieces is a fallacy. First off, these people didn’t speak English—they spoke Latin. So already by translating it, you’ve altered everything. A lot of nuance of specific concepts is immediately gone. If you accurately translated what these characters actually said, it wouldn’t sound right to our ears. A lot of people also seem to think that simply using more formalized dialogue and adding “fuck,” that somehow you’ve reinvented the wheel. I disagree. That’s one of the reasons I think “Deadwood” was brilliant. It was not historically accurate. It was David Milch’s version of the Old West—and not just regarding curse words. Those were the most eloquent *********** I’ve ever met. I mean, you’ve got these uneducated miners and tinhorns who speak better than most college professors with their ditchwater Victorian monologues. The thing is, he was expressing an aspect of the Old West and interpreting it in his own way. The words weren’t authentic, but the interactions and spirit were.

Look, man, everything should be tried at least once. Would I want all period pieces written with modernized dialogue? Of course not. That would be terrible. But if it’s not appropriate for an alternate-history pulp-noir swords-and-sandals yarn where Julius Caesar has conquered Transylvania and made vampires into slaves, when is it appropriate?

How did you and Christian Duce first cross paths? Did DC / Wildstorm put the two of you together, or had you already known him? And how did your vision of what the characters would look like evolve after he came onto the project?

Shannon Eric Denton at Wildstorm put us together. We didn’t really have any direct interaction until after Christian had penciled the first couple issues, so there weren’t any discussions about the character designs. Fortunately, Christian is a brilliant artist who has an uncanny, almost telepathic ability to visualize what I’m trying to express in my scripts, so he pretty much nailed the characters.

Actually, my favorite character design he came up with is for one of the minor characters, Cassius. I wanted Cassius to be a sort of blowhard puppet who follows whatever Brutus says, since Cassius has traditionally been more of a Lucifer figure, and there’s just something about Christian’s character design (it may be the mutton chops) that fills me with glee.

Ides of Blood is a creator-owned series, of course, but given the chance, which of DC’s established heroes would you be interested at taking a crack at one of these days?

That’s a tough question. I have a great idea for a Flash limited series that also plays around with ancient history that I would love to do. That being said, I really like Batman. It would be a really enjoyable challenge to find new ground to cover for his character. Green Lantern would be fun just because I could do lots of stuff in outer space. But really, other than the Flash idea, if I had my pick of the litter, I’d probably have to go with Superman just because he’s Superman. You can create such amazing images with his powers, I’d love to see what unique situations I could put him in. Also, I feel that unlike Batman, there’s a lot more to his character that hasn’t been mined yet.

I’ve seen the trailer for “Orion Slave Girls Must Die,” so it’s clear you’ve got more than a little bit of a “Star Trek” background as well. What’s your favorite memory (or memories, if you can’t narrow it down) of attending either a “Trek” or comic convention? And feel free to divide it into “fan” and “creator” memories, if you need to do so.

Ha! Yeah, man. I loves me some Star Trek. DS9 is my favorite TV show of all time. I guess my favorite Trek convention memory is when my parents and I went to my first convention in Pasadena and John DeLancie, who played Q, was speaking. Instead of telling old Trek anecdotes or a Q and A, he read a short story he wrote. I don’t remember the title, but it was about a guy who is playing dice with the devil for his soul. At the end, a fly lands on the die and takes a shit, changing the number so that the guy loses. Being a story about demons and fly-shitting, my parents were mildly scandalized, but I was totally enraptured by the story when he was telling it. In fact, he’s the only speaker whose presentation at all stuck with me.

Looking back, how much growth do you see in your work as a screenwriter between “Confessions of a Late Bloomer” and “Orion Slave Girls”?

Man, someone’s been using IMBD! Well, they were both student projects I wrote while in film school, and the first things I’d written that I didn’t direct myself (and had actual budgets). “Confessions of a Late Bloomer” was really a reflection on my high school experience. I think it’s well-made and director Jen McGowan did a great job with it, but it’s not really told in my voice. It’s pretty conventional. I feel it was less about expressing my POV as a writer and more about proving to myself that I could apply the things I was learning in school and make a basic 3-act movie (albeit a short one). “Orion Slave Girls” definitely had more of myself in it. Whenever I’m strapped for ideas, I usually end up coming back to “Star Trek” in one way or another. It was more inspired by that thing in college where you realize you and your high school friend are going down different paths in life. I think the gags are more clever in “Orion,” and obviously the style and subject matter are more up my alley, but I’m not sure how much actual growth you can see between the two projects, particularly since the final product was the director’s creation as well as mine, but I definitely think I felt more comfortable with playing around with the narrative structure in “Orion.”

And, lastly, are you keeping your fingers crossed that “Ides of Blood” might serve as the kickstart for a gig as a screenwriter? Also, given how quickly Hollywood is snapping up comic projects for development, I’m curious if you’d even finished punctuating your pitch for DC / Wildstorm before you’d been approached by a studio. Mind you, I’m not necessarily asking for specific details. I’m just wondering if indeed there’s been movement on that front for “Ides of Blood” already.

(Sighing) It’s a pretty common Hollywood story. I write film and TV as well, so the way this all started was that I wrote Ides of Blood as a screenplay. I got it to DC’s film people, and they thought it would make a great movie, so I wrote up a pitch for the comic series that we sent to Wildstorm. So we were doing the whole reverse-engineering thing. Afterwards, we started prepping the film pitch. Then DC went through this reshaping, which put a halt to the project, so right now the prospects of a film are in limbo until the new guard decides what to do. These things happen all the time, though. I’ve learned not to believe anything is a sure thing in Hollywood because it can all fall through up until the last possible moment. Hopefully DC will pick the project up again and indeed hire me to write the screenplay, but really there’s no guarantee. I wish every comic creator had right of first refusal to write the screenplay. I find it somewhat heinous that the WGA offers no protection to screenwriters who became comic writers and now face the prospect of getting bumped off their own creation. But, when you’re a young writer, you just have to go in, pitch the hell out of yourself and hope for the best.

Closing note: Paul dropped a line a few minutes after answering the last question, clarifying, “I hold no grudges against any of the staff at DC. They were nothing but supportive of me and Ides.” I hadn’t got the impression that he might’ve felt otherwise, so maybe you didn’t, either, but I figured he’d still prefer it if I included his clarification, so there you have it!

Whether or not you’ve had that “a-ha” moment in your life in which you’ve found your true passion and can engage that passion without it feeling like work (most of the time), you need to read Peter Buffett’s new book, Life Is What You Make It. Buffett, of course, is the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, but lucky for the son, his dad as well as his mom let Peter follow his own path to success–one involving music and, eventually, philanthropy.

What Buffett does in this book is not to just tell his own story, but to give tips along the way about how you can forge your own path. He talks about ultimately finding a passion to stoke your own internal fires rather than to just earn a paycheck and aid in fulfilling someone else’s dream. Throughout the book, you’ll be nodding that in fact he’s right–that you were or are in scenarios he is describing, or that he’s describing the lives of people you know and love.

Most of all, this is one of those books that is truly inspirational. I know the effect it had on me is this–that all of my back burner projects need to be seen through rather than revolving on various back burners. Because having a job or business you love is only part of what makes us whole, not the only thing that defines us.

Of course, when Buffett does talk about the various paths he’s taken, it’s a fascinating read, though he’s probably too humble to actually agree with that. He talks matter-of-factly about his success with early MTV bumpers and with music for Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” blockbuster. But Peter and his wife have found the most fulfillment in starting the NoVo Foundation for helping to empower young women to find paths to success themselves.

What’s unique and remarkable about Life is What You Make It is not the content itself. It’s the point of view, as well as the lessons it teaches–namely, that money isn’t the be-all, end-all. Happiness found through following passions and giving back are what really matter most, and Peter Buffett is living proof of just that.

Peter Buffett website