About Art: Bob Johnson
About Art: A place where artists talk about art. Interviews with actors, comedians, writers, and visual artists discuss what inspires them, the truth about their industries, and what they hope to achieve.
About Art’s interview with graphic novel creator, musician, and screenwriter, Bob Johnson.
This interview has been condensed for clarity.
Bob Johnson is a writer and musician. He created Head Wounds: Sparrow (as Robert Johnson) with his writing partner, John Alvey in 2022. It was published by Legendary Comics and produced by Elvira Lind and Oscar Isaac’s production company, Mad Gene Media. This is how I first encountered his work. You can follow Bob on Instagram @johnson_rg and Mad Gene Media @ madgenemedia for more compelling art.
About Art: When did you realize you were a storyteller?
Bob Johnson: I don’t see myself as an artist.
I always have these grand visions for no reason. I’ll be waiting for the owner to come out of the store, and I’ll be standing in the parking lot looking up at a cloudy and I’ll see angels doing battle in the sky. One of the bigger pictures in Head Wounds is where the demon truckers and the angel bikers, they’re called Purgatorials, are going towards one another. One has a sandstorm behind it and the other one has a thunderhead cloud moving with them towards this collision and in the middle of a desert. That’s where all my stuff comes from. I can never stop writing. I dream stories. I can close my eyes just about any time and lay in the quiet and watch a movie I’ve never seen before or hear a story in my own head without really trying. It’s always been that I write, and I write and I write and I write.
Writers, we get to you know, kind of smorgasbord and collect the bits and pieces that we want and put them on our plate and then turn them into you know, actual characters who want to go from their false identity to live in and their true essence. I love the idea of getting behind the eyes in between the ears of something other than myself.
About Art: What medium do you primarily work in (what form(s) does your storytelling usually take)?
Bob Johnson: Oh, all of them. Screenwriting. I draw sometimes. I write stories. I mean, I don’t do it all professionally, you know. I don’t try to sell everything. I can sing and play the guitar, you know, moderately well, and I write good lyrics and sometimes, I can get people to join me.*
About Art: What drew you to your art?
Bob Johnson: It’s the closest thing we have to magic, you know, it’s a conjuring. It’s really different from anything else that we do. It’s something deeper more spiritual more connective tissue between human beings. Through song, through story, through art. Some things are better felt than understood and there’s a magic in creation and sharing that creation with others in conversation with the universe.
It’s like no matter how good you get or how great it is if you’re not feeling it and you’re not like connecting with others through it, then it’s useless.
That’s why I write. I’m having a conversation with the universe and whoever wants to reach a hand out of the darkness and connect.
About Art: What do you wish you had known before you started this journey?
Bob Johnson: Yeah, nothing. It’s like a story. I wouldn’t want any spoilers. I’m not that kind of person where I’m trying to predict the future or I’m not trying to manifest everything in my own favor. All I can do is try to be there when it happens. Whatever it is.
About Art: What are you glad you didn’t know?
I’m glad I didn’t go to film school because it’s good for me not to know the rules.
About Art: What makes you passionate about your art?
Bob Johnson: I mean, I’ve told this story before when I was doing the rollout for Head Wounds, but I kind of fell out of it. I kept writing of course, but it wasn’t showing anybody. I got into a corporate job and I was making plenty of money, but then I got stage 4 cancer out of nowhere. I thought I was going to die. They thought I was gonna die. I didn’t want to take chemo and it took six years to get me to take it. They monitored me the whole time and I just remembered how much I loved writing. I remembered how much I love sharing my writing and my stories and my music and all the things that I enjoyed doing and that’s basically how I got back to this place. I started aggravating Oscar [Isaac] which I do anyway, but aggravating him with art.
I was like “Well shit, I’m better, right? You know, I don’t particularly love my life sitting in an office”. You know, like numbers and analysis and making everything is as streamlined as possible, writing contracts, crap like that. It just never really fit me. I was pretty good at it, but I didn’t enjoy it. So, you know how I might die poor, but I’ll die writing. Life is better now. And I’m not sick anymore. Somehow. I did do the chemo thing and it worked really well after six years of telling the doctors to fuck off. I got a little sicker and I had to take it more on the chin and listen a little bit better and do what they said.
Here’s the crazy part. I used to have all these anxiety attacks where I’d end up in the emergency room or just wandering around the house like I’d lost my mind and I couldn’t slow my heart rate down. As soon as I found out that I had cancer all the anxiety went away. I haven’t had an anxiety attack since. Cancer cured me of my anxiety, which is pretty wild. Losing the burden of being afraid to die is something that freed me up to do what I wanted to do in my life. It’s the reason that I’m writing now. The reason that Head Wounds got made and I got to work with the people I’ve gotten to work with because I was like “Fuck it, you know, this is gonna end and there’s nothing you can do about it. So, you might as well do what you want to do.”
About Art: An artist’s journey can be a lonely one. How did you find support and collaborators to keep going and not give up?
Bob Johnson: I was really really lucky. I mean, I began performing and writing and all that stuff when I was very small in a church. Then I just fell into a group of very talented people in a public school who wanted to make music, draw, and paint. Everybody would get together almost like a little community and critique one another brutally sometimes and it’s kind of like a little punk rock hardcore group of people. It just seemed to work.
You know, and it was cool to watch and be a part of. Oscar was definitely part of that group. John [Alvey], my writing partner, was part of that group. We’ve been doing it since we were in high school and we’ve always just written. Stage plays, stupid movies that we recorded on our parents’ camcorders, or whatever we could find. Just having a good go from comedy to horror in a heartbeat.
About Art: What is your ultimate goal? What does “success” look like to you?
Bob Johnson: I hate that word. I’m writing. Success to me is me writing. Breathing. I’m alive and I’m writing. And I’ve never moved the goalpost on that. That’s always been the thing. If I don’t make another dime on it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if another thing gets published. I made it possible to do the thing I most love doing with the people I love doing it with. I’m a total success.
About Art: What would you like to change about your industry?
Bob Johnson: It’s gonna be what it’s gonna be. So, it’s kind of ridiculous question.
I’m not going to be the King of Writing, the King of Art, and the King of Movies. That’s not gonna happen. So, it doesn’t matter what I want it to be.
What I can control is how I perceive it. Another human being as promising and as fucked up as I am is on the other end of this email, on the other end of this phone call, and on the other end of this conversation, I’m having with you. There’s another human being who’s as messed up and amazing as I am and I have got a tear away all that structure and tear down all those walls and see that human being and interact with that human being and never ever ever forget that they’re like me. I’m like them. We’re the same thing.
The whole industry is made of people. It’s easy to forget with this big technological revolution that the voice on the other end is a person. All the assholes on the Zoom call matter because they’re humans and every one of them is their own story.
The industry is not talking to you because there’s a big wall between you that they’ve constructed. How do I bring that wall down? How do I get them to talk to me? How do I get them to laugh? It’s all part of the beauty of the whole thing.
About Art: Do you feel your journey would be easier or harder if the industry were more inclusive?
Bob Johnson: My dad used to say “You’re no better and no worse than anyone walking this earth”. He wanted to tell me that we all have the same capacity to damage or heal. He always wanted to remind me of that, you know, all the shit that people think separates them. You’re not better or worse than anybody. The person you’re talking to or not talking to depends on the wall that they’ve constructed. How do I bring that wall down? How do I reach that person? It’s a human. If you remember that, you’ll be fine.
About Art: How do you use your art to affect change?
Bob Johnson: You can make somebody smile who otherwise would not have. Fuck, man. Why do we write these stories? So that somebody at the end of the day who’s been busting their ass all day at whatever their job is their eyes hurt from staring at a screen or their back hurts from carrying sheetrock around or their feet hurt from walking the mail from one house to another can have an escape from all the bullshit. You’re making them laugh. You’re making them feel. You’re giving them peace when they otherwise don’t have it and that’s fucking awesome. And you don’t have to be there for it. It’s always going to be the same thing: connecting with another human being and making their day, their life, and their moment, a little less shitty.
About Art: What does an artist need most to make really good art? Passion? Talent? Something else?
Bob Johnson: [laughs] I don’t know. Get out of your own way. Be honest. Explore the human condition. My dad, you know another Dad quote, he said “Every piece of fiction you read doesn’t have to be full of shit just because it’s fiction.”
Innovation comes from not knowing you can’t so be yourself. You want to be torn. You don’t want to be sure don’t write about things you’re sure about. Nobody wants to hear that shit. Because if you’re sure about something you’re probably wrong at some point. But you can’t be wrong if you’re not sure. So if you’re genuinely not sure about something you’re not going to tell people a bunch of stuff that they already know. You’re not going to generate a bunch of echoes at people. You’re going to give them back an honest assessment of a situation that’s probably totally fucked up inside one way or another.
They’ll still decide whether you’re right or wrong at the end of the movie or the book or the pamphlet, whatever. But you can give them a lot of a lot to think and a lot to feel, a lot to work through which is cool.
About Art: What are you working on next?
Bob Johnson: I don’t know if there will be a next book [Head Wounds]. We’re still waiting to find anything out. I am working on three things and they’re all pilots. They’re all speculative pilots. One’s cosmic horror straight up. One is more machine horror and the other one is…I don’t know yet. I’m building around with John and I really haven’t decided a lot about it, but I really like the scenes that we’ve come up with. And it can still skew. a lot of different directions something supernatural but supernatural dark comedy. It’s fun. I’m writing one pilot after another and I’m throwing in people’s faces and making people read them and knocking on all the doors that I can.
*About Art editorial note: Sometimes, his buddy Oscar Isaac joins him. Bob wrote a beautiful love song to Death called “Sweet Lady Death” while Oscar wrote the music. It’s hauntingly gorgeous and you can watch this wonderful performance filmed by Elvira Lind. Highly recommend it for your listening and viewing pleasure from these amazing artists.
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