“Jack Champagne wanted the life, liberty and hot pursuits promised to her. She traded a world of tall trees, dirt bikes and milk money stains for a Big Apple American Dream. Her story begins with Monday Night Footbal, bobble head Jesus, a clock blinking eights and a cassette tape. It ends on blood letter print, the iPod, a Glock 27 and a crimson tulip growing from cracked mortar and broken eggshells. This is her life. This is Jack in Manhattan 1996-2001. Don't mind the smoke... “
How and when did you get started as a writer?
I’ve always been a storyteller. As a boy, my mother would sit me down and say, “Kit—That’s a good story, but you do know that actually never happened.” Typically, I would defend the story, passionately claiming it was true and honestly confused when realizing, indeed... It was only a story. “Only a story” I could sound off on that, but I’ll just say this. “Only a story” is akin to looking at the heavens and saying, “It’s only a bunch of rocks and gas floating around.” When I was ten or eleven, I wrote a 200-page story about an epic battle, being waged in the carpeting of my Lego room. The Carpet Commandos and Rug Rat Rebels were fighting WWIII and I was the only person aware of the conflict, so I wrote about it. I’m not sure what happened to that story, probably on a floppy disk somewhere. In college, a Creative Writing professor told me to switch from Graphic Design to his curriculum, but I rejected the idea. I hated studying anything creative shackled to a desk in a sterile classroom. I announced, “I am a writer—but I will write when I have something to talk about. Right now, I’m late for a snowboarding competition.”
What are the major challenges that you have faced in your career?
Major challenges? Does putting food on the table count? My career as a professional artist is brand new. I spent 10 years pursuing a professional snowboarding dream, but eight concussions turned my head into an eggshell and I got bumped out of all my snowboarding sponsorships and replaced by some seventeen-year-old kid. The same week, a truck ran over my rice-burner. Then a buddy was murdered, then a couple more... I broke down. Now, I have to write. It’s survival. It’s how I’ve learned to function. It’s a compulsion. Without a notebook nearby—Well, I just keep one with me all the time. We don’t have to talk about me without the notebook nearby. I don’t like that version of me. I like me as a writer—it’s the most stable version of me yet. Maybe, I’m just growing up.
Why did you choose to license your book with a Creative Commons copyright?
Why license through the creative commons? I became a fan in 2004. I had just finished making a movie with my production partner Ben Mahoney of http://web.mac.com/freshuan/iWeb/FreshuanFilms/Freshuan.html—Ben is the one who got me into making movies. I didn’t know you could do that. I thought rich people made movies, but he showed me some stuff he’d made. He told me to spend the insurance money from my wrecked rice-burner on a camera. I bought the camera the next day. I started shooting the snowboard park at Breckenridge, Colorado. It was a role-reversal for me. I was behind a camera now—Anyways, two years later I had moved to Lake Tahoe, California and finished shooting a movie we called Gapers Gone Wild. It was a quirky satire we billed as “The Most Extreme Movie Ever Made”. One day I get a letter--Girls Gone Wild is suing us. I got well versed in copyright and trademark law, really quickly. We won. We kept the name, but I learned some things. The simple fact is this—if we don’t change the laws, we will destroy a hundred years of creativity in American arts. The current laws are driven by purely capitalistic engines and are completely disconnected from the nature of the creative process. Read Ezekiel. There is nothing new under the sun. What you say is not unique—language is shared. Our voice is unique, not what we say. No one else can tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk quite like me. That’s the fun. This “life of the artist—plus 70 years”… Let me put it this way: If Napoleon was born today--His last name would be Disney.
What inspires you? How do you stay motivated?
What inspires me? Well, I feel like I covered that earlier, but motivation can be difficult. I don’t have a problem being creative all the time, writing, drawing, shooting, whatever—mostly my big issue is focus. I do a lot of visualization techniques, something I learned from snowboarding. I also pay attention to my diet. I also adopted a kind of monastic existence. Everything I have right now is listed at my old blog, with the addition of my cowboy hat, new boots and jacket. I like it simple—real simple. Inside my head is complicated enough. Got to stay Zen, or things get ugly quick.
What’s next for you? New book, Movie deals?
What’s next? Currently I’m working on a series of short films on the American Dream. A feature length movie adaptation of my novel called
Luxury-and-the-AfterBang is in pre-production right now. I also just finished a two year project with
the mathematicians called Transdimensional Odyssey of Doom. It’s footage from over 100 shows and two national tours, combined with some badass anime we made. Anyone in Washington DC for the inauguration can party with me and Mathematicians at the
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/. I’m also producing a new western on snowmobiles that is something like a Mad-Max/Point-Break mash-up based on a true story. We’re working on financing now. Anyone interested in being a part of that project can contact me through my
Kit Anderson. The next novel is in pre-writing now and tentatively titled “Once Upon A Black Flag; Blood”. It is a historical fiction piece about my ancestor
Bloody Bill Anderson. He taught Frank and Jesse James outlawry, led the first train robbery and the first daylight bank robbery in American history, and was the first to fly the black flag without skull and crossbones. Anything else? Let me think… That’s all that’s fit to mention right now. anyone interested in my novel or any of my other projects should exploit these links:
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/craigja/Desktop/www.kitanderson.com &
Never Cry Jack: A Novel.
