Also on the show, the guys discuss print vs. digital with Mr. Pitarra, go over the contents of his comic collection, and listen as Pitarra makes his bold Eisner Award predictions and promises to deliver a drunken epic acceptance speech should he or Hickman take home an award.

All that and more on this episode of, The Bastardcast

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The Bastardcast: Not afraid of Enrico Fermi.

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I got into Robert Schimmel’s comedy at an inappropriate age. He was a little crude but bluntly honest and keenly observant, and though I didn’t understand all of his material, I fucking adored it.

If Schimmel was on Howard Stern (another comic who I got into at an inappropriate age)I was listening. When his albums like If You Buy This CD I Can Get This Car and Unprotected came out, I blew my allowance on them or put them on my Hanukkah list. I’m quite sure my mother was concerned.

Now, if you know who Robert Schimmel is, then you know that his life ended tragically in a 2010 car crash. You may also know that Schimmel had beaten cancer, a heart attack, and great personal loss in his life, things that he kept coming back from, things that he kept making fun of because he could seemingly always find humor in the darkest of places.

In my humble view as a mere observer, that is part of his great and durable legacy, but there was clearly so much more to the man, and that’s why his brother Jeff is now trying to celebrate Robert’s life with a memorial e-book that will collect tons of stories and pieces from his brother’s life and career.

You can learn more about Jeff’s Kickstarter project by clicking here, but first, I urge you to read our interview with him about Robert, what kind of man he was, and why his is a career that deserves such recognition.

Can you paint the picture of who Robert was as a comic, as a brother, as a friend?

Jeff Schimmel: The best way to describe Robert Schimmel, as a comedian, is to say he was a throwback. He was more like an old school comic than someone from the newer waves. He liked to wear suits onstage, and was most comfortable just holding a microphone and pacing back and forth, head down, talking to the audience. He considered himself to be one of them, but with one major difference. He was saying the things that the others in the crowd were only thinking. If you listen to him carefully, you’ll notice that his vibe is more like that of a mischievous kid who was afraid of getting caught doing something wrong than a raunchy comedian who was just trying to shock you into nervous laughter.

As a brother, he was a challenge. He was always funnier to me offstage than onstage, but that often got me into trouble with our parents. If I laughed during an inappropriate moment, I would instantly catch a backhand to the chops from Mom. But she did it with love. We loved each other like crazy, and when we fought, it was like the worst of enemies going at it. It took me many years to understand that siblings fight, no matter how much they care about one another. But he was there for me and, as a big brother who was seven years older than me, he did all the things a big brother would do, good and bad.

Also, it isn’t really possible to explain Bobby (that’s what we called him) as a brother without including our sister, Sandy, in the mix. She was in between us in age, but there is no such thing as the Two Stooges. Sandy had her own relationship with Bobby that was nothing like mine, and the three of us had another dynamic that we shared, much to our amusement.

As a friend, I would say my brother was probably the best you could ever have. He would literally do anything for someone he cared about. Ask anyone, and they will tell you what a kind, gentle, sympathetic and empathetic man he was. He didn’t just love family and friends, he spent countless hours, year after year, providing support of all types to strangers in need. He rarely spoke about it, because he wasn’t interested in accolades.

Robert had a very honest, very unguarded act on stage and on his appearances on the Howard Stern show that drew from his life and his family’s life. Was there ever a time where you thought he went too far, a time when his act made you wince a bit?

Jeff: One thing you had to know about Robert Schimmel, the comedian, is that he didn’t have a filter hooked up to his mouth. He would just let it fly, and hope for the best. Sometimes, that blew up in his face. But he was willing to take that chance if it meant he could make you laugh, or portray the world in a real way. There were times that I would walk into work, and find co-workers in the hallway, anxious to ask, “Hey, did you hear your brother on Stern today? Is that stuff true?” I remember stopping short and dropping my head, and asking, “What did he say this time?”

Showtime’s ‘Inside Comedy with David Steinberg’ will run a full length interview with Robert Schimmel on Monday night’s episode.

Has this project, the memorial e-book, made you feel closer to Robert, has it helped with the healing or have their been times where — well I imagine you’ve had to go through a lot of old pictures, video, etc — has that hit a nerve as well?

Jeff: When my brother had his car accident, that hit the nerves at once, and no nerves would ever need to be hit again. I think that applies to my Dad and sister as well. I can’t speak for anyone else, nor will I try to quantify their emotions. We didn’t just lose a brother and a son. We lost Bobby, the guy that we knew, and who went on to become comedian Robert Schimmel. Those are two different people, but two people who can’t be separated. Bobby gave Robert things to talk about. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t mean it in some stupid way. He didn’t have an alter ego like some other comedians I know. It’s just that being his brother meant that I would always be identified with him, and that is a plus and a minus. For years, I felt as if I didn’t have an identity unless my brother was standing next to me. I even told a mutual friend, who is a great comedian in his own right, that I’m always surprised when people recognize me if I’m alone.

Away from the stage, what are some of the things about Robert that you want people to know and what inspired you to do this and to share some of these memories with Robert’s fans?

Jeff: My brother worked all over the country, and fans flocked to those shows. But during the day, when those fans were unaware of Robert Schimmel, he would spend hours visiting children’s hospitals. He lost a son, and he never completely got over it, as if anyone could. He couldn’t do anything more for his own kid, but he would go all out to do something for a stranger’s kid. He would buy toys, play with the kids, support the parents who were going through emotional turmoil. And while he was going through his own battle with cancer, my brother would visit infusion centers everywhere, bringing comedy CDs from a myriad of comedians, as well as CD players that he would buy and give as gifts, just so people could maintain a positive attitude and laugh a little bit during treatment.

This has to be a tough question answer, but what do you think your brother’s legacy is both as a comic and as a man?

Jeff: You’re right, this is a tough one. To his fans, Robert Schimmel is an adored entertainer. No doubt about that. To some comedians, he was an inspiration. I don’t want to get too negative here, but you asked, so I’ll answer. Before I began the fundraising process for this tribute project, I thought my brother’s legacy as a comedian was cemented in eternity. Carved in stone, just like the words “I’m A Comedian” that grace his headstone. But it has been extremely difficult to get people to be willing to part with $1.00 to help us create a fitting memorial for my brother. It’s hard to believe, but I think this is a case of “What have you done for me LATELY?” Sure, he worked in great clubs in L.A. and New York, and everywhere in between. But he’s been gone for 2 1/2 years, so they seem to have forgotten that he packed their seats, night after night. If clubs participated in our campaign with just the price of ONE ticket to a Robert Schimmel, we would’ve been done with our fundraising efforts a long, long time ago. They haven’t, and we aren’t.

Please, feel free to say anything you like about Robert and why people should chip in to help you guys get over the hump and get this project funded.

Jeff: Why should people contribute to our tribute project for Robert Schimmel? That’s easy. If you like comedy, you can appreciate his talent. If you’re a fan, no explanation necessary. If you went through harsh treatment for an illness, you can identify with him, especially if you read his book. If you’re just interested in reading very, very funny stories and seeing private video, you’ll love this interactive eBook tribute. The bottom line is this: he deserves a tribute because he’s Robert Schimmel.

Here is the link to check out the Leave ‘Em Laughing Kickstarter.

Jeff is looking to raise $14,250 and as of this article going live, he is just $1,152 short with only 5 days left, so if you feel like you want to support the campaign, give a few bucks, and please share this article and the link to the Kickstarter campaign.

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Despite never claiming the crown in a fancy reality TV competition, Chris Hardwick (aka @Nerdist) could rightly be called King of the Nerds. A stand-up comic, Hardwick burst into our consciousness as the guy who stood next to Jenny McCarthy on Singled Out. Later, he would contribute to Attack of the Show, travel the country MCing panels at various Comic Cons and start the Nerdist podcast. Now, Hardwick is working as the host of AMC’s Walking Dead aftershow, The Talking Dead and his new show, The Nerdist, is about to kick off on BBC America as a part of their Supernatural Saturday’s lineup.

Given the chance to talk to Hardwick on a conference call this afternoon, we asked about his late night ambitions, which Doctor he’d like to bring back for the 50th Anniversary, and the chances of a Singled Out Kickstarter. Before we get to that, though, take a look at what Hardwick had to say when a some of the other writers on the call asked about his new show and whether he would choose The Walking Dead or Doctor Who if forced to make a choice.

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Merging old school, 8-bit video game visuals, synth-pop, and a bit of quirky British humor, Chris Blundell has dedicated 60 hours a week to The Hit Squad, an animated film that tells the story of a reunited 80s band in pursuit of their past glory. Interested? Listen to Chris tell you why you should support his Kickstarter, why re-creating 8-bit animation appealed to him, and why Veronica Mars is not bad for Kickstarter.

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What do a druidic talisman, shape-shifting cat people and Warren Ellis have in common? The answer is Red Phone Box, a fiction anthology currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Led by Salome Jones and Tim Dedopulos, Red Phone Box features stories from Ellis, comics writer Dan Wickline and 26 others, including myself. Speaking with Tim and Salome, I try to get to the bottom of this unique anthology.

How did Red Phone Box come about?

Salome: It started as a web series. I wrote the first story and put it on my website. I got a few people wanting to write for it right away, but it really took off when Warren wrote a little blog post about it. The best thing that came out of that blog post was Gethin Lynes finding us. I shopped for other writers. Asked for names and tracked people down, asking them to contribute stories. For example, Peter Dawes writes vampire novels in his real life. So when a vampire character came up in the book, I got in touch with him and asked him to write a story about that character. I wanted something erotic, so I sought out a writer of erotica.

The biggest epiphany I had was in realizing that Tim could use his puzzle-making skills to help me weave the stories together better. This was the moment when the story cycle was born. Before this bulb went off in my head, this was just an anthology. It became something bigger when Tim agreed to help me fill in the missing pieces.

Red Phone Box draws on writers from around the world. Where did you find them all?

Salome: I can really answer this in one word: Twitter. This is a novel made possible by social media. Everyone who worked on the book is connected to me or one of the other writers by Twitter. This is what creative collaboration and meeting people is in the twenty-first century. We’re living in the future and it’s really a great place sometimes.

If you mean more specifically where were they found… Well, all over the United States, Canada, the UK – both England and Scotland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, another mystery country, Australia, and the Middle East.

Limited Edition RPB print by Ben Templesmith

You’ve described Red Phone Box as a story cycle. How do they fit together?

Tim: Story cycles are collections of independent stories that work together to provide some overall narrative or contrast. This can range from very tightly linked material like James Joyce’s Dubliners down to widely-dispersed collections of material, such as Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos tales. Academics argue back and forth about exact definitions incessantly, which makes for a decent career I guess.

In our case, the unifying pivot point is the Red Phone Box itself – and the history (and fate) which are attached to it. The Box is, well, it’s many things, but it’s often a gateway. The thing about gateways is that sometimes they suck you in, and sometimes they let things out…The different stories permit illuminated glimpses through, so you can see a bit of what is going on. So as well as often interlinking and feeding into each other directly, they also give you changing views into the events happening in the background. Bad things are building, and the future is reaching out to the present.

So while you can enjoy the stories as unrelated tales in themselves, they also work as a jigsaw, slotting together to give you a vision of something much larger and darker. It all takes a lot of shepherding, of course. But the end result is something really rather special, I believe.

How on Earth you did nab Warren Ellis?

Salome: Warren and I have been friends for years. When I was a graduate student studying writing in the US, he was my guru. I even dedicated my thesis to him. When you study writing in an academic setting, there’s a lot of bias against writing genre. I really sought out writer friends who called bullshit on that and Warren was at the front of that line of people for me. So when I started this project, he was very supportive. I was a bit terrified to ask him to write for it. I remember trying to come up with a persuasive argument for how it would benefit him. Finally I just asked him. He really is a nice man and in spite of his protestations, quite brilliant.

At this point, the book is funded. Do you have any stretch goals in mind?

Tim: Of course! The Kickstarter goal is the amount we require to fulfill all the pledge rewards and to get the book actually printed. Our next aim is to set up a distribution deal and get the book into brick and mortar stores. There’s quite a lot of hoops to leap through there, many of which take fairly substantial amounts of money. So that’s our first aim. If we cover that, then we’ll consider bribing another big-name writer to join Warren Ellis in the contributors list. We’re looking into possible candidates at the moment, just in case. After that… Hm, we’ll think of something. A Red Phone Box comic cycle, perhaps?

What’s next?

Salome: We plan to do a second book. We’ve signed up some new people to write it. Some of the current crop of writers will be back. We hope to recruit some big names. We’re still looking for good writers. The second book will be a little more planned out. We want it to take what we have and draw to a kind of finale.

This book is very comic book series like in a way, more episodic in the way of a serial like a comic book. It’s more like life than the structured, plotted out novel or film script. That’s one of the interesting things about it. There are moments where you go, “Oh, those are connected.” That’s one of my favorite aspects of story cycle versus novel. But it’s a bit like herding cats to make it do what you want. So for the purposes of giving a big finish that resolves most of the threads, we need to give writers more specific assignments. This whole thing has been a big, gorgeous experiment. The second book will be a different kind of experiment.

More information about Red Phone Box can be found at http://www.gwdbooks.com/news.html

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A passionate and focused Community community organizer, Catherine Boyd has been mentioned in the New York Daily News, on MTV Geek, and several like sites thanks to the flash mobs and other fan events that she has worked to set up in an effort to bring attention to her favorite show’s perpetual ratings struggle.

Now, in the midst of what may be the show’s deepest struggle, one that isn’t just about ratings, but the very soul of the show, Catherine and her merry band of Community Super-Fans continue doing everything they can to keep the show on air.

In our interview, we ask Catherine why Community inspires her, what she thinks about Dan Harmon’s departure, and the show’s recent struggles.

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This edition of Crowdfund Confidential features an exclusive interview with James Deen, the producer of Cowboys and Engines and the star of Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader‘s The Canyons… aka, that Lindsay Lohan film from the now notorious New York Times profile.

We did ask Deen about The Canyons, his career in porn, and whether he worries about Lohan’s infamy, but this article is really about Cowboys and Engines, a sci-fi/steampunk project that Deen is trying to get funded through Kickstarter. After all, that’s what Crowdfund Confidential is all about — introducing that you to a project creator that is trying to get funding for a comic, film, or other like creative endeavor that is both independent and interesting.

Here’s James Deen… (more…)

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In 2012, All-Star Marvel and DC artist Mike Norton further moved toward creator owned projects, continuining his Eisner Award winning Battlepug saga online (and in collected editions through Dark Horse) while also co-creating Image Comics’ rural noir zombie book Revival and Dark Horse Comics’ brand new costumed hero book, The Answer, which debuts today.

Here, Norton tells us about how he picks his projects, why he doesn’t hide from superhero tropes, how Revival isn’t your typical zombie book, battling zombie fatigue, and if he’d like to see Battlepug live on as a cartoon series.

Along the way, we also discuss the challenges of telling a slow burn story, the appeal of The Answer‘s female lead, and how a costumed hero fits in at Dark Horse.

All that and more with Mike Norton after the jump.  (more…)

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Way back in the year of 1996, a little film by the name of Independence Day came to theaters.  Some you may remember this oft-forgotten flick, mostly because it made freakin’ millions of dollars and was one of the biggest movies of its time.  Featuring a tried-and-true formulaic script involving aliens trying to take over the world and human beings subsequently beating them, a sequel to the film, Independence Day Forever, has been rumored almost since the original was first released.  And it looks like they may finally be about ready to get started, at least if Bill Pullman is to be believed.

Pullman, who played the U.S. Prez in the original flick, had a few things to say about the upcoming project in an interview with Crave Online.  In addition to confirming his involvement, he also talked a bit about…

When it should begin production:

Within a year, yeah, something like that I guess.  I worried about taking this part because it’s heating up. I thought, ‘I don’t know if I should do the comedy’ and I talked to Dean [Devlin] and Roland [Emmerich] and they said, “No, do it. We’ll work around it. If it goes, we’ll work around it.”

Whether he’ll have to take some time off from his current 1600 Penn television paycheck:

Well, I don’t know if it needs to be hiatus.  I think they’re willing to work around shooting.

And about his and Will Smith’s (potential) involvement:

The Will Smith part of it may be ongoing but I think there’s strategies for both. I like what I have to do in both of them. I’m not in an old age home in a wheelchair being wheeled out for one more moment. It’s a very interesting conception of what happens to Whitmore between then and when it picks back up.

I can’t say I was a fan of the original, but there will certainly be plenty of people happy to hear that ID2 is finally looking like a real thing.  So prepare for yet another dose of alien vs. human action-packed mid-grade cinema!

Thanks to ScreenRant for the heads-up.

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Veteran nerdy musicians Paul and Storm, of w00tstock! fame, are already known for their nerdy music and catchy Twitter hashtags but they’re about to catapult into geek royalty with their new show Learning Town. The show, which centers around the shenanigans of the duo as they try their hand at children’s television, premiers on Geek and Sundry January 15th. Check out the interview below to see Paul and Storm dish about being nerds, setting puppets on fire and what makes them geek-out.

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