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Mark Matcho on his New “Watt O’Hugh” Animated Teaser

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[The Watt O’Hugh“weird-western” podcast drama, available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts, has just aired the first of eight new episodes; a brief animated teaser that brings author Steven S. Drachman’s characters to life has just hit the internet. In this article, Mark Matcho, the artist behind the teaser, describes his work and inspiration.]

This animated teaser was inspired by film serials of the ’30s and ’40s, like Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, and The Phantom Empire, starring Gene Autry. There’s something compelling about the overall aesthetic of those shorts — the type, pacing, and music — and I wanted to evoke a similar vibe with this trailer. I used artwork I’d done previously for Steven’s three book covers, in hopes that the different settings and depictions would further the idea of Watt O’Hugh as a time-hopping, daredevil adventurer. I wanted it to be fast-paced and exciting, like the inspiration I was drawing from, and indeed, the books themselves.

As far as what a Watt O’Hugh movie might look like, my default position is: I like stuff to look like it was done in the ’30s and ’40s! I think the timeline of the books lends itself to a similar treatment. In any case, I’m excited for the possibilities this series has to offer, and I’m looking forward to seeing Watt O’Hugh brought to life on the big screen.

Click below to watch Mark’s animated Watt O’Hugh teaser.

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MARK MATCHO is an LA-based illustrator and visual artist. His bold, concept-driven illustrations have been featured in publications far and wide since 1990, and his work has been selected and recognized in the award annuals American Illustration, 3 x 3, Society of Illustrators, The Society of Publication Designers, and Print’s Regional Design Annual.

Chickadees Talking

Editor’s Choice: Audere Conversations

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We’ve interviewed some interesting writers and artists in Audere, and if you’ve never heard of some of them, then this is the opportunity to learn more.

We interviewed the idiosyncratic filmmaker Kevin Schreck, who made his name with a great documentary on the animator Richard Williams (more on him here); the screenwriter Chen Drachman, on her new film that imagines a family’s Passover secret that will change history; Leonardo DiCaprio (the actor), whose long-ago (probably) earliest interview surfaced in these pages; the great, pseudonymous and anonymous novelist, Torsten Krol, who granted his first interview in many years to Audere, and so many of the great Chickadee Prince authors, like the post-war novelist Jay Greenfield, legal-thriller writer Ed Rucker, poet-novelist Pen Pearson, Donna Levin, the author of contemporary women’s fiction featuring characters on the autism spectrum, and even an interview with Steven s. Drachman’s fictional character, Watt O’Hugh.

We also featured a series of lively political debates between novelist Alon Preiss, on the left, and iconoclastic conservative Alan Levy, on the right.

Take a look.

Image by Suju/Pixabay

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Steven S. Drachman: The Pilgrims and their War on Christmas

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CHRISTMAS GREETINGS: Here’s a Christmas story, about the Pilgrims and that endless “War on Christmas.”  I’ll tell it as quickly as I can; it actually has a nice message, if you make it to the very end.

The War on Christmas

Year after year, we hear and read about this terrible “War on Christmas,” allegedly perpetrated by the American liberals and their traitorous allies in the media. The whole idea began with Henry Ford, who called it “the Jewish War on Christmas.” The current Christmas warriors (on Fox News and conservative radio) have dropped “Jewish” from the name of the crusade, but I can sort of hear them mutter it under their breath. (“Move to Israel,” Bill O’Reilly once suggested.)

The counter-revolutionaries’ premise is that this country was founded, from its Plymouth Rock beginnings,  on Christian values, and that Christmas celebrations were an essential part of Pilgrim/Puritan practice.

The former premise is basically correct, as far as it goes – the Pilgrims did come here in part to observe their particular brand of Christianity.

But the latter premise, that Christmas was an inherent part of that practice, is as incorrect as you can get.

Governor Bradford’s View

Many years ago, my mother showed me our family tree, which confirmed that an ancestor, on her father’s side, had arrived here on the Mayflower. Some time later, unable to find the document, she confirmed to me that the ancestor in this country was a man named William Bradford. She has since passed away, and the document has never turned up. So believe what you will; as for me, I believe her.

Bradford’s wife mysteriously fell off the Mayflower without anyone noticing, and she drowned.

Bradford himself eventually became the first governor of Massachusetts.

One of his first legislative (dictatorial?) acts was to ban Christmas.

He believed, first, that December 25 was not actually the birthday of Christ his Lord, and that lying was a sin, and that therefore celebrating Christmas was a celebration of lying.

He also believed it encouraged drunken hooliganism, which he also considered a sin.

He believed, thirdly, that the 25th truly marked a pagan holiday, and to celebrate a pagan holiday was a sin.

The First War on Christmas

The earliest American governor not only banned Christmas on the 25th, he declared Christmas “a Sacrilege” and the “exchanging of Gifts and Greetings” a “Satanic Practice” (see official announcement, left), he banned Christmas singing and merrymaking and forced everyone to work in the fields on what might have been the coldest day of the year.

I don’t agree with most of this. If you don’t know when someone’s birthday is, you should celebrate it anyway! And I’m in favor drunken hooliganism, up to a point. I’m opposed to lying, but celebrating someone’s birthday on the wrong day isn’t exactly a lie.

The Ban is Lifted!

Somewhere along the way, some of his descendants wound up Jews, and here I am.

Every year on the 25th of December, in honor of my earliest American-Christian ancestor, I don’t celebrate Christmas.

But I wish a joyful one to all of you who do, and as Gov. Bradford’s rightful heir, I hereby rescind his prohibition on December 25th merrymaking (go ahead and drink your nog), and I furthermore waive your obligation to work in the fields.

You’re welcome.

Merry Christmas, and a very Happy and Festive, Healthy and Prosperous New Year to you all. And Happy Holidays, if you prefer.

^^^

Parts of this article have appeared on Steven S. Drachman’s blog in a different form. Drachman is the author of Watt O’Hugh and the Innocent Dead, which is available in trade paperback from your favorite local independent bookstore, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and on Kindle.

Illustration,  “The Puritan Governor interrupting the Christmas Sports” by Howard Pyle (1883).

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Drachmans in the Old West, and the Oxford Comma

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Steven S. Drachman: I came to the role of “Author of Westerns” in a weird sort of roundabout way. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was writing these literary urban novels just as everyone was getting sick of “that kind of thing.” My agent at the time suggested that I write a continuation of a great cancelled show that I was more than a little obsessed with, a SF Western. Discussions actually got relatively far along, but nothing came of it, and eventually he suggested that I write my own, which is how Watt O’Hugh came about. I did really immense amounts of research on the old West, and I think it comes off, now, as accurate and authentic, other than the dragons.

It helped my own imposter-syndrome whenever I read about the secret history of Jews in the old West.

None moreso than the following story.

Harry Arizona!

A man named Harry Arizona Drachman was the first American born in Arizona territory to two American (that is to say, not-Native-American) parents, Philip and Rosa Drachman, who ran a cigar store, and are pictured above.

Intentionally or not, Harry Arizona Drachman has a beautiful rhythmic sound to it. (Sing it to the tune of “Gary, Indiana” from The Music Man. It scans quite nicely.)

I almost wish that I had a son, so that I could name him “Harry Arizona.”

A Drachman-ish Western Memoir

His sister, Rosemary, wrote a memoir entitled Chicken Every Sunday, which tells of her experience growing up Drachman in the early Wild West.

Unfortunately, when the very Drachman-ish book was turned into a play, and then a movie, the Drachmans were renamed “Hefferen,” which is an Irish name derived from the Irish name “Ó hIfearnáin,” which means “demon.” (I am not sure why anyone would take the name “demon,” but it is somewhat appropriate if you believe – as some but not all of us do – that the name “Drachman” comes from “drachenmanner,” a German word for Dragon-man, which means that in the old country, back in Emmendingen, we were either dragon-slayers or irascible coots with a dragon-like temper.)

Natalie Wood, as Ruth Drachman!

So Natalie Wood, who plays the role of the Jewish Ruth Drachman in the film, is referred to constantly as the Irish Ruth “Hefferen.”

This was later adapted for TV as The Hefferen Family, a sitcom that aired once and was not picked up. It could have been called The Drachman Family!

(Thanks to the Jewish Museum of the American West.)

Sex, Lies and the Oxford Comma

Also, this week marked the 30th anniversary of the film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

As you can see from the screen grab to your right, the New York Times chose to punctuate the film’s title as Sex, Lies and Videotape. The Times’ style guide generally does not include what is known as the serial, or “Oxford,” comma. As you can see below, left, the correct title is Sex, Lies, and Videotape, with the OC intact.

As I have said before, I am not at all a fan of the Oxford comma. The main reason is that OC aficionados tend to be overly enthusiastic, insisting that the English language is completely incomprehensible without it. This is clearly not true (sometimes the OC helps to clarify, sometimes it does not), and I oppose things that are not true. It is a style choice, not a rule. I don’t like it, so I don’t use it, unless necessary. If someone else likes it and uses it, that’s fine with me. I am a very open-minded guy who respects and appreciates diversity.

Live and let live

So whether or not to use the OC in a film title is up to the discretion of the filmmakers. Someone made an artistic decision here, which should be respected. The title of the film is Sex, Lies, and Videotape, not Sex, Lies and Videotape.

^^^

Steven S. Drachman is the author of Watt O’Hugh and the Innocent Dead, which will be published by Chickadee Prince Books on September 1, 2019; it is available in trade paperback from your favorite local independent bookstore, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and on Kindle.  

Julianne dragon picture

Watt O’Hugh author Steven S. Drachman: WHY DO WE WANT TO BELIEVE IN DRAGONS?

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Why do we want to believe in dragons?

In 2012, a while after my first, somewhat dragonish book came out (The Ghosts of Watt O’Hugh), I wrote a little essay in which I asserted a ridiculous belief that dragons are real, adding, “I fully understand that I am probably completely wrong about this. Wouldn’t be the first time. But I will go on believing in dragons, because it’s nicer to believe than not to believe.”

By 2014, when my second book came out (Watt O’Hugh Underground), I guess I couldn’t really maintain this pretense anymore, but I still wished that dragons were real, and I wondered why.

So I wrote a follow-up piece for Suvudu, the really excellent science fiction website, examining this weird wish. When Suvudu went out of business, all its articles migrated to another really excellent science fiction website, Unbound Worlds. That one went under as well, and now this little essay, which is one of my very favorites, can be found nowhere on the web. (The link that used to lead to my essay now leads here.)

The reaction to my piece really interesting to me, because the basic thesis was that we, as humans, all have things we force ourselves to believe, even though we know that they are not true. But people would read my essay (with its title, “Why I believe in dragons”), then forward it along with some kind of supposedly supportive exclamation, like (in one case), “Moi aussi!”

Dragon-believers missed the point! Which is, why do we believe in nonsense?

Anyway, here it is again. It was originally published with an illustration from my daughter, who was 11 at the time, and which I also reprint here. I am not sure it is exactly what appeared last time, but it’s the latest draft that I can find on my computer.

I still kind of believe in dragons.

I love dragons as much as anyone

For the past few years, I’ve been writing a series of books about a gunslinger named Watt O’Hugh and his quixotic battle against a seemingly beautiful secessionist movement called Sidonia. But beyond the rip-snorting derring-do, careful readers will catch an obsession with dragons, and an apparently sincere quasi-scientific insistence that they really existed.

Is there a scientific thesis for the belief that dragons once existed?

This is the basic argument: All across the globe — in Israel, Asia and Europe – denizens of civilizations with no connection to one another, and thus no shared legends, reported dragon sightings. How could such a thing have happened if dragons weren’t real, a lost link between the dinosaurs and the birds, featherless flying reptiles, full of anger and love?

But there’s more to it than dispassionate science and history.

Why do I want to believe?

If dragons existed, then I take my name from an early band of ancestors, fearsome German/Jewish drachenmanner, or dragon-slayers.

But if dragons never existed, then, as my great-grandfather speculated in his autobiography, I take my name from an early bumbler who wandered from Greece to Galicia and tried to spend Greek coin (drachmas) at the local inn, causing much hilarity and an insulting nickname (Drachma-mann) that to this day my family has had to wear like a dunce cap.

I prefer the former theory, although I recognize that the latter is the more likely.

Otherwise – Drachma-mann! – I must hear the thousand-year-old taunts even now.

The villains in my book are “Sidonian” secessionists, who rule a Utopian society, and they offer their followers mathematical certitude, a warm security blanket that strips of us our sloppy humanity and makes us slaves. We all have delusions about ourselves and the world and the way things should be, and Sidonians use them to trap us.

Is it okay to believe in nonsense?

Is it indeed harmless to believe passionately in lies that make us happy?: I might win the lottery; global warming is probably nothing; I was put on this planet for a purpose; there could be fairies in the garden; everything happens for a reason; I’m just a cog in this big corporate machine and blameless for its crimes; the boss respects me a lot; there is some sense to Life; there is Hope after all.

In fact, foolish myth-making is a terrible sin, a kind of giving up, refusing to solve our problems and humanity’s problems. But casting loose our foolish myths is beyond human capacity, which is why disasters have befallen us, and why we are doomed.

Therefore, for all sorts of reasons, not least of them my empathy for that Greek man whose genes and social awkwardness I have inherited, who proclaimed himself an outsider when he showed a drachma at a Galician inn, whose first name is forgotten but who became a laughingstock forever, it makes me happy to believe instead that he never existed, and that dragons were real. One story is heroic, the other pathetic. I choose to believe the heroic one.

Watt O’Hugh and the Innocent Dead, by Steven S. Drachman, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books on September 1, 2019; it is available for pre-order in trade paperback from your favorite local independent bookstore, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and on Kindle.  

Front Cover- innocent dead for publicity

Steven S. Drachman, on Ferocious Sand Crabs, Roaming Time, Storming the Gates of Hell and Taking the Cure in Sharon Springs

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Watt O’Hugh and the Innocent Dead, by Steven S. Drachman, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books on September 1, 2019; it is available for pre-order in trade paperback from your favorite local independent bookstore, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and on Kindle.  

AUDERE: It’s been five and a half years since the last Watt O’Hugh book. Why wait so long?

DRACHMAN: Right after the last book came out, I pursued a project involving a new proposal for peace in Israel/Palestine, which took a lot of time. I wrote a Kindle single, did a TedX talk, wrote for a webzine and so on.

How did that work out?

Everything is fine now. Everyone is getting along great. Turns out, one man can really make a huge difference. You’re welcome, world.

And Watt fell by the wayside?

I never stopped thinking about him! This volume opens with Watt down in the Hell of the Innocent Dead, fighting a huge and ferocious sand crab, just where Book 2 left off. Watt spends much of the book in this weird realm, building an army to storm the Gates of Hell and free the World Above from the clutches of Sidonism, which is the evil Utopian totalitarian movement that Watt’s been fighting since Book 1.

How has Watt changed?

He still aspires to utter cowardice, but it’s getting less and less easy for him.  So I think he is beginning to accept his destiny as a hero, though he will never quite embrace it.

Also, in Book 3, he learns a lot more about the rules of the road in his own particular corner of the multi-verse. There is a lot of ridiculous pseudo-science, which I hope will be funny, but I guess because I’m getting older, my own confusion about the nature of existence has spilled onto the pages, here and there.

Watt has always had one foot in the world of the living and the world of the dead, and now he’s turned into sort of a ghost, but just a temporary ghost, because he’s entered Hell through a hole in space and time, not the usual way. Hester, his love from Book 2, is in the World Above, building her Z’vulunite Kingdom, and he haunts her periodically. When you’re in Hell, you can haunt the world of the living. Hester doesn’t mind.

Why did you set so much of the book in Sharon Springs?

It’s where my grandfather summered every year, when he was a little boy, at the end of the 19th century and the very first few years of the 20th century. He and his many siblings published a kids newspaper called the Sharon Springs Moon. I grew up pretty interested in the place. I was interested in it for the same reason I was interested in Leadville, Colorado, which also plays a big role in Book 3.

Sharon Springs was this amazingly glamorous resort town, and its magical waters could make you live forever, so when Watt needs to take the cure, there was really only one place I could think of. I also wish I could have visited it myself, back in the 1880s, when this book is set, so I got to visit it vicariously. But it also fits with the theme of the book, because within a matter of a few decades, the luxury hotels were gone, the springs were gone. You really feel the ghosts there. The local experts were really helpful to me in researching it, so that I could depict it accurately.

Explain the book’s dedication.

I dedicate the book to Marc Grinker, Hans Bielenstein and Raymond Kennedy. Back in the 1980s, I was a teacher at the Stanley Kaplan school. Grinker was another teacher there, who became a friend and sort of a mentor. He went off to become a law professor in Chicago, and died a few years later. He was a big inspiration to a lot of people, and there’s still a scholarship in his name. Raymond Kennedy was a great novelist, and he was a teacher of mine at Columbia who encouraged me a lot. He wrote a novel called Ride a Cockhorse, which became a classic after his death. And Hans Bielenstein was a really accomplished professor of ancient Chinese history, and a lot of the things he taught me are in these pages.

Will we ever see the rest of Watt’s adventures?

Maybe I will tell the story someday, but for now, I’ve finished a trilogy, it stands on its own, and I hope it will satisfy anyone who has been waiting patiently all these years.

My daughter is urging me to write some short stories that continue to tell the story. I’ve got a standalone story about the “Coney Island Skirmish,” a small-scale battle that takes place in 1911, after the second War Between the States, and the 1905 battle that is mentioned frequently throughout the trilogy. So that may see the light of day.

What else can you tell us about that?

After the second War Between the States, New York City is occupied by Sidonia, and I wrote a set piece in Gotham in the 1920s, which involved Watt O’Hugh the Fifth, Nancy Cunard and some quite over-the-top espionage. It’s pretty violent, and there’s a lot of jazz. I think you would like it.

Watt Face for Audere

10 Questions with Watt O’Hugh the Third (from the Herald-Tribune, 6/15/1936)

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Reprinted from the New York Herald-Tribune – June 15, 1936

Our older readers may remember Watt O’Hugh the Third as the hero of various dime novels that circulated back in the 1870s, battered copies of which were still passed around among our less discerning lads as late as the 1890s. His more enthusiastic fanatics may even have managed to spot his Wild West show, which played New York’s now forgotten Hippodrome theater (the first one) in 1874, before closing quickly and ignominiously. Since discovering his story, and his alleged heroic exploits in Little Mount, I have wondered what had ever become of Mr. O’Hugh, who has over the years variously been described as dead or “on the lam.” He has now turned up, age 94 or 95, living in some squalor on an inactive western ranch, living off the last bits of a small fortune, the source of which he will not disclose. He agreed to a brief interview on two conditions: the state in which the ranch is located will not be identified, and I bring a case of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes, brand not specified. Mr. O’Hugh looks every bit his age, but he is still an imperfectly handsome man recognizable from old photographs.

 

NYHT: You seem to spend a lot of time sitting here on your front porch and telling tall tales to the town’s children.

O’Hugh: Not tall tales. God’s honest truth. I tell them about time Roaming, the dragon I spotted in Utah, the ghosts that guided my aim and made me the greatest living shootist in the West, some time back.

Fire breathing dragons are well-known to be mythical creatures.

Dragons are the lost link between dinosauria and birds. A few survived into the 19th century. They haven’t been spotted in many years. You are correct that they didn’t breathe fire. Cold blooded reptiles couldn’t breathe fire. That would be ridiculous.

And you are a time traveler.

Time Roamer. We can visit, but we cannot change a thing. “Traveling” somewhere implies fully possessing a time and place, which Roamers cannot do. We are like the wind, like a shadow. I’ve spent many days and years in the past and in the future. It’s hard to get out of your blood, once you get good at it. It’s addictive as opium but has its frustrations. It’s because of my Roaming that I am writing my story, and writing it so fast. I finally roamed to the day of my death and it is coming sooner than I had hoped, but later than I had any reason to expect, given how often I’ve been shot in the head.

How often have you been shot in the head?

Once or twice. In any event: more often than I would have preferred.

What do you expect to come of this memoir? Will you send it to Harper & Bros? Are you the new Hemingway?

Ha. A real Lum and Abner, ain’t you?  I don’t know what I’ll do with the book. I may bury it in the sand. But one day it will be found and published, by a rather unlikable has-been in the 21st century. A really despicable bastard, without a redeeming quality, other than his admiration for me.  Kirkus will have some nice things to say about it, though they will mistake it for a novel. Peter Keough, a famous film critic in the future, will call it “rip snorting.”

Quite a remarkable prediction.

Believe what you want. It’s men like you, city men, skeptics, who have chased the magic out of the wilderness that America used to be. I have seen a dragon scurry across the cloudless sky in Utah, I did fly among the snowy stars in Wyoming with a woman of the dark arts, who promised me eternal life. Poor Oscar Wilde and I saw deadlings rise in a mountain city in Colorado, we really saw a whole army of them. And I fought in the first battle of Sidonia, back in 1905.

Sidonia? The legendary magic city nestled in the Montana valley?

Not legendary. I wish that it were.

Have you been to Atlantis?

No. There was never an Atlantis. But I’ve been to the Chinese Hell of the Innocent Dead. For example. That’s as real as your ass, and even more frightening. Giant ferocious sand crabs, just for starters, and it goes downhill from there. It’s the 6th level of Hell.

Out of?

Eighteen.

Can you – you, the remarkable hero – possibly have any regrets, after this apparently spectacular life of adventure?

I have one regret. Involves a woman. Don’t want to talk about it.

At this, the indomitable, possibly lunatic O’Hugh heaved a heavy sigh, took a heavy drag on his cigarette, took a heavy gulp of whiskey and looked up at the stars. And our interview came to a close.

Watt O’Hugh’s memoirs are available wherever books are sold, or on-line.

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