Wayne White (artist)

Transcription

RYAN GERMICK: Hello there. My name is Ryan and I lead the Google Doodle team. And I'm here with a very special guest at the Googleplex, Mr. Wayne White. Give it up. WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. Thank you. RYAN GERMICK: I'd been a fan of Wayne's work before I even knew there was such a thing as being a fan. His work entered into many millions of American homes with the puppet design and other assorted creativity for Pee Wee's Playhouse. It was years later when I first saw one of your word paintings, the album cover for Lambchop's "Nixon." And then a few years later after that I was in a diner in LA, Fred 62, and I'm like, I know this stuff. And then a little bit longer after that when I saw a beautiful book that was recently produced called "I Will Now Get the--" WAYNE WHITE: Maybe now. RYAN GERMICK: Maybe now. WAYNE WHITE: "Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve." RYAN GERMICK: Right. WAYNE WHITE: Ey. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah. I think today's the turning point for that if I have anything to do with it. WAYNE WHITE: Finally. RYAN GERMICK: Finally. WAYNE WHITE: Today's the day. RYAN GERMICK: September 10, 2012. And it all came together in a really wonderful movie that's coming out this fall. WAYNE WHITE: It's out now. RYAN GERMICK: Technically out. WAYNE WHITE: It premiered September 7. And it's called "Beauty Is Embarrassing." And it's the story of my life and times. RYAN GERMICK: Wonderful. And it's actually going to open up in San Francisco and many other Bay Area locations this weekend. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. I will be in the Bay Area this weekend. It's going to be in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. You can go to beautyisembarrassing.com for the theaters and times. I can't remember them all. But I take it a day at a time. RYAN GERMICK: Like sevenish. 7 PM, maybe. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah, probably. 7 or 8. RYAN GERMICK: Evening time. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. You can call the-- you can see the listings on beautyisembarrassing.com and call your theaters. But I will be back up here. I love the Bay Area. Always have a great reception when we come up here. RYAN GERMICK: Pandering to the local crowd. WAYNE WHITE: I love you all. [LAUGHTER] RYAN GERMICK: And YouTube. You love YouTube. I imagine you love YouTube and the people who watch YouTube videos. WAYNE WHITE: Of course. Are you kidding? I'm on YouTube every day. RYAN GERMICK: Well, you have a lot of new stuff going on. Always moving forward. If we could-- speaking of moving forward. But it's not-- you're not new to art. This is actually-- this is a picture of your great grandfather? WAYNE WHITE: No. It's me. I've been doing these paintings since 1878. RYAN GERMICK: Ah. You aged very well. WAYNE WHITE: I am a vampire. That's how I can do so much. There's so much to talk about just in this photograph. One is that your eyes look really weird. Did you blink or something? WAYNE WHITE: No. Actually, this was done by the great photographer Stephen Berkman. And this is his medium. He uses an original 1860s glass-plate negative camera. It's called an ambrotype. He plays by all the 19th century rules. Uses the same chemicals. He uses only natural light. And this particular kind of film, the ambrotype, does not pick up blue. It does not pick up light blues. Blue reads as white. So that's why my eyes have that creepy white glow to them. Because I have light blue eyes. RYAN GERMICK: That's a terrific answer. Even if it's not true. WAYNE WHITE: It's true. It's true. RYAN GERMICK: I believe you. So I feel like we could talk for the entire time just about this image, because there's all these other images in it. But one thing I love, and I think this kind of sums up in many ways your philosophy. I don't want you to spoil all the good stuff. But the "Hoozy Thinky Iz" image. Could you unpack that? Who do think you are? WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. That particular painting there, "Hoozy Thinky Iz," that is sort of-- and I think a lot of my fellow artists, maybe, can relate to this, and I talk about it in the movie-- it's a feeling of, especially in our culture, who do you think you are getting up there and making a spectacle of yourself? You must have a very high opinion of yourself to go out there and push your so-called "vision" on the world, or to be an "artiste," as people like to call you. That's a subtle way of putting you down. I hate that word. When so-- oh, here comes the "artiste." RYAN GERMICK: I use it just to sort of make fun of the word. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. Double back on it. But this culture does not respect or nurture artists. Maybe the San Francisco area, there's pockets of culture that does. But on the whole-- especially, you can understand, being a Midwest boy yourself. I'm a Southern boy. They do not respect and nurture artists. And you grow up with this sort of insecure feeling of, yeah, who do I think I am for doing this? Because everybody looks askance at me. And it takes a certain amount of ego to be an artist. And our culture also sort of looks down on the ego, as they should, because it can get out of control. But the artist ego is such that you start to question it. Well, maybe I am a little out of control with the ego. And who do I think I am? And it's just the natural insecurity of the human condition to question yourself that way. And it's amplified when you take the artist's path. And it's amplified also when you see people better than you are. Well, who do I think I am? This guy's ten times better than me. I'm humbled by it. RYAN GERMICK: You mentioned respect for artists. That's a good lead-in to-- we have another slide, if you want to show. Talk a little bit about this painting. WAYNE WHITE: This is called "Picasso's Ass Falling Off." Now, this is a secret that I've never revealed when I've said this title or showed this painting. I first heard the expression "ass falling off" from the artist James Rosenquist. RYAN GERMICK: Oh, yeah. He used to be a billboard painter. Another commercial artist turned fine artist. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. He's a very famous pop artist. Very influential in the culture. And I happened to meet him at a party once that I went to with the great Red Grooms, who I also worked for at one time in New York City. And I was like this 24-year-old kid straight out of Tennessee in this room full of these superstars of American art. And Rosenquist was holding court about his days as a billboard painter. This is kind of off topic, but-- he goes, yeah, and I went to the boss that day. I said, boss, I feel like my ass is going to fall off. And I thought about that term for years. And I associated it with art and artists. And that inspired me to have Picasso's ass falling off. And this is just sort of a jab at the king of art, Pablo Picasso. I mean, that's a guy that anybody who's put pencil to paper or tried to make a painting, that's one guy you have to get around or over or through. You have to pass through Picasso Land sooner or later if you're an artist. And this is just kind of like throwing darts at the king. I love Picasso. All artists do. You can't help but. You have to pay respect. But at the same time, this reflects one of my abiding passions in art, is to bring humor into fine art. And to poke pins in pretensions, to rail against the king. That's a very American thing. We hate kings. That's why this culture-- that's why this country was started. To rail against monarchy. To break down class systems. And that's a big part of what humor does, is to break down walls. And to laugh at class distinctions and everything. And to bring everything to a level playing field. We're all hairless apes. RYAN GERMICK: Well, some more than others. So what is it about art that is so afraid of humor, do you think? Is that universal, or do you think it's historical? WAYNE WHITE: It's not necessarily universal. First of all, I consider humor an elevated form of consciousness. I think it's one of the most sacred, valuable qualities we have as human beings. And so why shouldn't it be worthy of the canon of art? Why shouldn't it be in museums and whatnot? I consider stand-up comics, especially people like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin to be fine artists. It's one of the finest art forms there is. But you know, art is famously humorless. Especially critics, curators. A certain type of class consciousness invades art. People go to the best schools, Ivy League schools. Ivy League people control the art world through criticism and through curatorship. And through the fast track that they're on by going to these moneyed schools. Moneyed schools do not want to talk about humor. Humor is considered lightweight and low. It's considered an entertainment. And not worthy of serious contemplation. RYAN GERMICK: Did you ever read the book "Ways of Seeing," by John Berger? WAYNE WHITE: Yes. I've read all-- that's another thing. RYAN GERMICK: You've read every book? WAYNE WHITE: I've read every book there is. No, I-- RYAN GERMICK: Makes it easier to discuss with you, because I-- WAYNE WHITE: I come from this working class, chip-on-my-shoulder kind of attitude, but I've run the gamut. I've read Berger, Clement Greenberg, all the criticisms. I love fine art. I love the higher forms of art. I love seriousness. I love drama. I love the challenges of difficult art. I'm not discounting any of it, I'm just saying there's room for other forms of it. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah. Well, the thing that blew my mind. I was in high school, I think, when an art teacher gave that book to me. And this is less about humor but more about the value of maybe commercial art, was he-- and I totally maybe misread this, so someone could go back and look this up, and this was like 15, 16 years ago. But I remember him talking about fine art having this inherent classicism because it's an art object owned by one person. And with that rarity and scarcity, it becomes a situation of supply and demand and the rich person gets it. And so I think it's interesting-- you've had multi-faceted career we talked about it a little bit. But art that is not exclusive to one person but can still be art seems to threaten that long-established supply and demand. WAYNE WHITE: And Berger, if I'm not mistaken was a communist , or at least a socialist. He was. RYAN GERMICK: There seemed to be implications, yeah. WAYNE WHITE: He was a radical socialist. And he believed in bringing up the thorny problem of class within the art world. And that's a dirty secret of the art world, is it's very much ruled by money. And the moneyed class. And I forgot my direction. RYAN GERMICK: Can I tell you a story why I chose in art school not to go into fine art but to go into illustration as a major? WAYNE WHITE: Sure. Please do. RYAN GERMICK: So I was in-- I feel like I should be looking at the camera. This is a serious moment. I was 18 years old. I went to Parsons School of Design. And the fine arts department has wonderful students and teachers. But when I went to the information session, when they're trying to get you to pick a major, they had free pizza, which was a big draw for me. Poor student and whatnot. And they were going on and on about how wonderful their facilities were. That they had state of the art-- they had studio space right in Manhattan and access to the galleries and museums. And for people that were into sculpture, they had just bought a plasma cutter. And meanwhile, I'm trying to get pizza off of the pie. I'm trying to pull this slice of pizza and kind of trying to keep it cool, but the smart alec in me couldn't help but blurt out, could I use the plasma cutter to get this pizza? WAYNE WHITE: And that went over like a led balloon? RYAN GERMICK: Totally crickets. And then I was like, I don't need these guys. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. There you go. I know. It's like, humor is one of my acid tests for human beings. You know what I mean? If somebody doesn't have a sense of humor, it's over. I can't relate to them. I value humor. And paradoxically, you can't analyze humor and put it on too high an elevation or it kills it. It's this precious little flower that has to grow in a certain way, but why can't it grow in a museum? Why can't it be considered worthy of-- I think it has depth. I do. As much depth as any other form of art. RYAN GERMICK: I agree with you. WAYNE WHITE: The best humor has levels of sadness and all the emotions. RYAN GERMICK: Right on. Can I get the next slide? So this is somewhat of a good transition here. So you grew up in Tennessee, as you mentioned. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. Chattanooga, Tennessee. RYAN GERMICK: Chattanooga. And then you moved to New York. Kind of high-tailed-- you went to college in Tennessee. WAYNE WHITE: I had four years of undergraduate school at a state university, Middle Tennessee State University. I drifted around Nashville, Tennessee for a half year after I graduated. I saw a magazine called "Raw Magazine" put out by Art Spiegelman in 1981. And that inspired me to move to New York, because I saw in that magazine, and his spirit, and the artists in that magazine, the birth of a new world, the birth of a new art form. And I was right. That magazine and that scene in the early '80s in New York is becoming true today in the Renaissance of graphic novels. Go to any comic book store. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah, it's everywhere. WAYNE WHITE: And it all started back then, at least in America, in the early '80s in New York City down on Greene Street in Soho in Art Spiegelman's studio. RYAN GERMICK: When you were in Middle Tennessee University, you also found a community of folks. WAYNE WHITE: I was lucky enough, coincidentally, to run into fellow weirdo oddballs from small towns of the South. And we were all dying to validate each other. We had all come from a suppressed background. We had all been made to feel like outsiders. And suddenly, we were together and reinforcing each other. And I always say, your fellow students are just as important, or maybe more important, to your education than your teachers are. I think you can learn as much from your peers as you can from your instructors and your so-called authority figures. And that's where I first came out of my shell and first learned about art and art history. And just as art as a lifestyle, as something that can bleed out of the classroom, into the streets, become a part of your everyday life. RYAN GERMICK: So it seems clear to me-- and I had a similar experience when I went to-- feel free to check your email or whatever. We can cut this out. So it seems clear to me that that community helped as a launching pad. And I'm sure many of the creative people in the audience and watching this on YouTube or whatever have had that experience. Do you feel like now in today's very connected world-- how do you feel technology is helping people find weirdos and communities that they feel accepted and validated by? WAYNE WHITE: I think it's helping a lot. I think it's helping connect people in ways that are really positive. I'm not one of those guys that rues the day before computers. I'm not one of those guys that believes in a golden age or the good old days. Young people, please, believe this for sure. There's no good old days. There's no golden age that you missed out on. You're not missing out on anything. You're alive right now. Now's your golden age. Don't listen to some old fart tell you it used to be better. Because it wasn't. It wasn't better. What is important is, make this your golden age. And when you get to be my age, don't sit around saying, boy, back in the Google days, back when Google first started-- don't do that. Please, remember this day when I'm telling you. Don't turn into one of those people. Look forward. Keep believing in the future. And change. RYAN GERMICK: Next. So I want to go a little bit back. This is a still from the movie. It's one of my favorite sections. There's a lot of talk in the movie about your upbringing. And about your relationship with both your family, like your parents, but then your new family, which is really terrific, which we'll talk about in a second. But it just goes over-- you have a line in the movie that I love. And this is your sister about to spank you. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. RYAN GERMICK: And you said something like your sister was the person who told you you were going to die one day and made sure you understood the concept. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. RYAN GERMICK: I love that because-- WAYNE WHITE: That's what I'm-- that's what the V.O. is right when this scene is happening. I said, and my sister was the first bad-ass. She was the one that told me I was going to die one day and made sure I was crystal clear on the concept. RYAN GERMICK: So we chatted a little bit earlier and-- WAYNE WHITE: And it's true. RYAN GERMICK: --you were talking about the old fogies talking about the good old days, and how that relates to a fear of death. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. RYAN GERMICK: In a sense. I'm kind of curious how-- if you would unpack that for me. And also, your sister-- you're just a youngin here. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah, I'm like four years old there. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah, and she's letting-- you know, I'm imagining at an early age, this idea of you're an infallible mortal is a pretty heavy thing to learn. But it seems like you take that lesson to heart today. WAYNE WHITE: You know what, I can trace my first existential crisis to that day when my sister very patiently explained to me that we were all going to be dead forever one day. And I remember the feeling when it first pierced me, that that was a realization. And I've had anxiety attacks my whole life about that. And I think a lot of us have the same feelings. I think a lot of us, the mortality thing creeps up on you when you least expect it, and you are short of breath. And you suddenly realize, wow, this is a limited engagement we're all in. And I think that's a painful realization, but I think it's a realization that most artists share. That's one of the motivators, that's one of the engines of art, is knowing that this is a limited engagement, that we're here. Time is precious. And we've got to do the best we can with it. I think that one of the great things about artists, is they take advantage of that time. I think we all have this acute realization that we're mortal. And I think art is sort of, as they say-- the academic term is memento mori. That's one of the big themes of art. It's been there ever since art began. Still lives from the golden age-- here I go, golden age. Still lives-- RYAN GERMICK: Well, as a vampire, you have a much wider perspective. WAYNE WHITE: Still lives from the Renaissance on are symbolic of death. They're called memento mori. Fruit, flowers-- those are subtle symbols of death, and reminding us of the mortal coil. So the realization of mortality is built into art. And that's what gives it its poignancy and power. And that's what gives humor its power. Humor is often a reaction against a-- RYAN GERMICK: Release against fear. WAYNE WHITE: --a release against fear. Facing that horrible truth. So that's why humor should be right up there, along with the old masters and stuff. Because that's what an artist does. He defies death, yet he also comes to terms with it. And that's why art is in the spiritual realm. RYAN GERMICK: Do you want to-- I come from a big family. I'm the middle of five kids. And I know that my siblings did a lot to shape me as a person. And as a creative person. What about you? From what I gather, it doesn't seem like your sister was particularly creative, but your mom was pretty creative. WAYNE WHITE: My mother was the first artist, so to speak, in my life. The first aesthete. Mind you, I grew up in a very-- it was the '60s in the South, which was the '50s, really. RYAN GERMICK: But it's still 10 years above the Midwest, I think. It's still like the future for us. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a blue collar environment. All my father's friends, my father himself, they all work at DuPont nylon factory. There wasn't an artist in sight. There wasn't a gallery in sight. There wasn't a museum. And so the first artist in that kind of environment was my mother, because she loved antiques. She loved to decorate. She took me to antique stores all the time. She admired objects for their beauty. And her sense of interior decorating-- she redecorated the house like every month. So she was a designer. And she was my first idea of someone who could enjoy the visual, and enjoy expressing the visual. RYAN GERMICK: Wanna hit the next slide? So this a shot of your family now. Or from the movie. A couple years back, I guess. And everybody seems really creative. What's it like being almost inverted in a sense, where now you're in a family full of artists? Your wife, Mimi Pond-- WAYNE WHITE: Yes, that's my wife, Mimi Pond, my daughter Lulu White, and my son, Woodrow White, who is an art major here in Oakland at the California College of the Arts. And of course, my wife is a famous cartoonist. A lot of you are familiar with her work. She's been on the national scene since the late '70s. She started out here in Oakland at the California College the Arts. RYAN GERMICK: She wrote the first episode of "The Simpsons." WAYNE WHITE: She wrote the first episode of "The Simpsons." She started out in the "National Lampoon" back when it was a good magazine. Back when it was the "National Lampoon" in the late '70s. She went on to create the Valley Girls craze. She wrote the best-selling book "Valley Girls' Guide to Life." She's done five other humor books. She's working on a 500-page opus about her life in Oakland in the '70s, when punks took over from the hippies. And my daughter is a very talented painter. And it just came to them naturally. It's in the genes. And this is my dream come true, to nurture artists and be surrounded by artists in my own little bubble there in Los Feliz, in Los Angeles, California. RYAN GERMICK: Cool. So I think next-- this is a trailer from the movie. I thought we'd just play it. Just to give people an idea. WAYNE WHITE: This is "Beauty Is Embarrassing." WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. RYAN GERMICK: I watched it twice last week. I didn't have to, and I liked it that much. WAYNE WHITE: And you're still talking to me. RYAN GERMICK: Oh, yeah. I'd watch it again. WAYNE WHITE: You heard him. RYAN GERMICK: It's good stuff. I mean, there was so much packed in there. And you guys should definitely see the movie. Happy to shill for you, it was a great movie. One is that you play banjo, which you didn't bring. WAYNE WHITE: No. CROWD: Aww. WAYNE WHITE: Sorry. RYAN GERMICK: Two is that you dance, which you don't need any banjo for. WAYNE WHITE: No. They say-- you know that phrase "dance like nobody's watching"? I forgot that people were watching. RYAN GERMICK: Well, the third is that-- I want to talk a bit about "Pee Wee." WAYNE WHITE: Sure. RYAN GERMICK: So "Pee Wee" was a special thing in American culture. WAYNE WHITE: It sure was. RYAN GERMICK: It was just so much creativity and originality. And it was a huge hit. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. RYAN GERMICK: I mean, it was a big deal in my childhood. And just basically, as a weird kid in the Midwest, it felt like a breath of fresh air. And I think Matt Groening said it best, when he said--he was referring to "Pee Wee" in the trailer when he said, if this could make it, there's hope for us all. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. RYAN GERMICK: And that's what I took away from the movie, but in particular from "Pee Wee." That's just one of these moments of, you know, the good guys won. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. RYAN GERMICK: How did you go from your New York cartooning into that? And I just want to hear all about it. WAYNE WHITE: Well, like I said, I moved to New York to be a cartoonist. But at the same time, I'd been doing these crazy, wacky puppet shows on my own. Just these do-it-yourself homemade productions. I started those back in Tennessee at the university. When punk rock first hit, I couldn't play a guitar, so I picked up a puppet instead. And I did these things, I called them punk rock puppet shows. The first one was called "Punk and Juicy." And the puppets bled fountains of blood. We would throw bowls of Cheerios and milk at the audience. We'd set fire to the stage. We'd come out and choke members of the audience and provoke fights. It was very confrontational. It was kind of anti-puppet. It was the era of Andy Kaufman and Mr. Bill and, like I said, punk rock. It was all about deconstruction and destruction, you know? It was about kicking down the old conventions and finding something new, taking apart the idea of show business, confronting the audience. Which is not a new idea at all. It was also my idea of art history. I thought of myself as a Dadaist in the tradition of Hugo Ball and all those guys that came out of the aftermath of World War I. RYAN GERMICK: Sounds like the perfect set for children's television. WAYNE WHITE: Perfect. Right up kids' alley. Everybody wants to know about a dystopian future, you know? RYAN GERMICK: Right. Right. What was that transition? Who was the visionary that pulled all of you crazies in? WAYNE WHITE: Well, I kept doing those puppet shows on the side. And everybody thought I was crazy to do it. And lo and behold, that puppet show experience got me the job on "Pee Wee's Playhouse." And that's another lesson I impart to young artists, or people who want to be an artist. Everybody thought I was nuts to do that, to do those puppet shows. They kept trying to give me all this common sense advice-- Wayne, focus. Be a graphic artist. Be an Illustrator. Go where the money is. Use your sense. Quit playing with dolls all the time. But lo and behold, what everybody thought was a crazy waste of time led to the most money I ever made and led to the best career I ever had. That crazy, playing with doll impulse led me to a house in Los Angeles and raising two kids. So don't discount your secret love that you might be a little bit embarrassed or ashamed to do. I mean, that's part of-- the title of the movie comes from that. Often, what we love is a guilty pleasure. Or we're afraid to expose our true, vulnerable self through the things we love. And we're embarrassed, often, by the things we love, or the things we really want to do. But truth is beauty. And beauty is embarrassing. Don't be embarrassed by it. It's kind of like giving you permission to wear your heart on your sleeve. And this culture does not want you to wear your heart on your sleeve, especially when you're young. The prototype for the young is, be wised up and cynical and world-weary. RYAN GERMICK: What's up with that-- WAYNE WHITE: Don't go around so wide-eyed, you're going to get the crap knocked out of you, you know? Build that shell and keep building layers on that shell. Wise up. RYAN GERMICK: So like with the kind of hipster mentality is sort of like a very self-serious-- kind of the opposite of punk, in a way. WAYNE WHITE: The hipster mentality is mostly full of crap, because they don't respect the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the artist. You're supposed to be all world-weary and depressed. And that's supposed to be a cool thing to do. Well, I've been depressed. There's nothing cool about being depressed. True depression is a shameful way to be. And it's anti-life. But back to your question, who pulled it all together? Paul Reubens pulled it all together. Paul Reubens was our champion. He had just come off the movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," Tim Burton's first feature. And he was hot as a pistol. And he had the power that celebrity can give you. And also, he was the rare combination of a celebrity who totally understood art and the creative spirit. And he championed us. He protected us from the network. And also, a woman named Judy Price, who was in charge of children's programming, had the same rebel spirit that he did. And they both protected us from the network. Usually, networks kill everything with their notes and their meddling and their worrying about making money and whatnot. But we were in our own protective bubble. And that's the power of the show. It was a downtown New York art project done by people all new to Hollywood, a bunch of underground cartoonists, painters, and sculptors. And it just happened to be a New York art project that got on national television. And that's exactly its power. RYAN GERMICK: Awesome. Next slide. WAYNE WHITE: And, of course, the genius of the Pee Wee character. I mean, what a great character. He deserves to be right up there with Buster Keaton and all the greats. RYAN GERMICK: So we have a couple slides of your drawings from the time. Talk about-- where did Randy come from? WAYNE WHITE: Well, Randy-- all the characters were already on paper when I came along. I didn't invent the concepts, but I did invent the visuals. And Randy, of course, is a classic redheaded bully. I was bullied by a redhead in school. And I originally wanted (IN SOUTHERN ACCENT) Randy to have a southern accent. But no, they wanted to go with this classic, (DOING CHARACTER VOICE) yeah, kind of Bowery boys kind of thing. So I went with that. RYAN GERMICK: You were also the voice-- WAYNE WHITE: I was the-- (DOING CHARACTER VOICE) yeah, I was the voice. Yeah, smoking's cool, boys and girls. And he's the classic bully that we've all confronted. I mean, one of the classic redheaded bullies in cinema is the kid from "A Christmas Story." But I wasn't thinking of him. I was thinking of my own personal experience. But I was delighted to see that particular redheaded bully. That's another cultural icon, that kid. RYAN GERMICK: What is it about redheads that makes them such bad people? WAYNE WHITE: Well, are there any gingers here today? RYAN GERMICK: I'm just kidding. WAYNE WHITE: I don't know. It's just-- red. You know, seeing red. Red is the flag of danger. Plus, they have freckles. And freckles on a puppet are always fun to do. RYAN GERMICK: We look forward to the comments on the video from that. WAYNE WHITE: And Randy also represents the return to a classic puppet look that we wanted to bring to "Pee Wee's Playhouse." RYAN GERMICK: It looks-- Howdy Doody seems like a reference there. WAYNE WHITE: Howdy Doody, the great Peter Baird, the Jerry Mahoney-- hard surfaces on puppets. The Muppets had ruled the roost for so long with that plush toy, felt, and ping-pong ball aesthetic that everybody and their brother had copied. I love the Muppets. Jim Henson was a great genius. But man, they had cornered the market on puppets. And we wanted to bring back a more classic puppet look. And Randy was a classic example of that. RYAN GERMICK: Another character you worked on was Mr. Kite. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. (DOING VOICE) Yes, and I was also the voice of Mr. Kite. Rain, Pee Wee, rain. And of course, at the time, I was so ambitious and eager, I worked harder-- That's another quality of mine. I was a horrible student. I didn't listen to the teacher. I cased the room. OK, who's the best one in here? OK, I'm going to beat you. It was always a competition with me in a classroom. I wanted to be the best. And I wanted to figure out how to beat everybody else. That's what my sports background has taught me. Maybe a little too competitive. And in that spirit of competition, I did like 50 pages of drawings of Mr. Kites. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah, I wondered-- I saw the numbers. It's like 454. Are those really sequential? WAYNE WHITE: I would go overboard with the drawing and the ideas, making sure that I was running circles around everybody in the room. I might not have been the best drawer or the most talent, but I was damn sure going to be the hardest worker. And so I drew the hell out of-- and it wound up being the simplest thing possible, of course, after all my ideas. And so this is a good example of the design process. But it's also a good example of my over-reaching attitude. And my overworking attitude. Which is a good thing to have. I mean, that's another thing. If you're not the most talented in the room, make sure you're the hardest working in the room. It'll get you somewhere. RYAN GERMICK: Next over there is a clip from the movie, that I kind of cut up about "Pee Wee." Let's check it out. That was great. RYAN GERMICK: I would like that DVD. Of the Pee Wee Herman that no one ever saw. "Pee Wee" show. WAYNE WHITE: Well, hopefully it's going to be on the extras on the DVD that comes out in February. For the movie. RYAN GERMICK: Awesome. So this is one of the word paintings. So to summarize, I guess, you had a really successful run in Hollywood with "Pee Wee" and "Beakman's World" and a bunch of other shows. And then you kind of burnt out. Fair to say? WAYNE WHITE: Yes. The typical Hollywood story. I was overworked. I was over-saturated with doing kid shows and puppets. I was typed as the wacky kid show guy. And I just needed a break from it all. That's where my depression came in. I was exhausted physically. And, like I said, that thing about working harder than anybody in the room, it has its liabilities. And I literally worked myself into a rut. Into a hole. And I had to get out of that hole. And so I thought I would return to painting. But I wanted to do a 180 from this cartoon expressionism. And I wanted to not return to the abstract expressionism I was taught in undergraduate school. So I taught myself traditional painting techniques. I started looking at Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins and the Hudson River Valley school. I bought a book about how to paint traditional oil paintings. And I started doing these history paintings. Again, hearkening back to my Chattanooga childhood-- the Civil War, the Cherokee Indians. The scenic beauty of the place. And I was doing these very traditional kind of history paintings with kind of weird psychological undertones to them. And I was buying thrift store paintings just for the frames. And the paintings started getting a little more surreal, but they were still traditionally painted. And I thought one day, I'm going to put words into the painting. Into a landscape. And I picked out one of the thrift store landscapes for the frame. And right before I kicked the cheap reproduction out, I thought, what about if I just painted on the landscape that was already in there. It would save a lot of time. And so on a moment's whim, sponta-- spontane-- I can't say words today. Spontaneously, I painted the words into the already pre-existing cheap landscape reproduction. And thus was born a series that I call "word paintings." And maybe that's how you first knew of me. That's certainly my most notorious body of work. And it's how I got into the fine arts world. I'm still painting them today. RYAN GERMICK: I want to just give you a shout-out, because there's some really beautiful technical stuff going on with the paintings. The lighting on the letters and the ripples in the water. It's really well done. WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. That was from the years of self-study of oil painting techniques. And doing traditional type of rendering it in paint. These are in acrylic, but acrylic is just fake oil paint. And I only use landscape reproductions. I don't paint on originals. Originals have too much of a human smell on them. Plus, that would be an act of defacement, because then that original is gone forever. These reproductions are just empty commodities. There's thousands, maybe even millions, of these things. And they're like an empty stage. There's no real art there. There's no human presence. But they are a beautiful setting for these words. And I don't think of them as defacement. I think of them as collaboration with the artist. Because I respect his color palette, his sense of light. The environmental-- I try to get the shadows and everything just right. So it's a bit of a collaboration with these long-dead masters of this sofa art genre. And of course, I discovered-- what began as just a jokey gesture deepened as I started to look at it. It references so many things-- Americana, the sense of the past. It's using these objects that everybody can relate to. They've all seen these paintings at granny's house or in their own house. Or at the dentist's office. They're a ubiquitous part of American culture, these prevalent, kitschy things. So there's that reference point. There's art history references. And of course, there's the layer of humor I bring to it. So they were very resonant in a way that I never planned in a million years. And I think a lot of the best discoveries and ideas happen that way. They just kind of bubble up from your subconscious. And you can't pre-plan art. It's being in the moment. The creative act is not an act of analysis. It's just listening to some weird gut-- or some weird voice inside of yourself. And these are a testament to that. RYAN GERMICK: I think we have a couple more to check out. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. This one's called "Just a Picture/ Shunned by Scholars/ Now it Costs $10,000." And that's my tribute to the old Burma-Shave signs. I'm sure a lot of you don't-- ever heard of that. But people of a certain age-- I'm a little too young, even. But in the early '50s, there was a series of advertisements by the side of the road, rhyming signs-- like every 50 yards would to be a sign and they rhymed. And then the payoff would be, Burma Shave! It was a nice little piece of sequential art by the side of the road. And I always loved that. And we had our own versions of it down in Chattanooga with tourist traps, especially the Georgia Game Park. "See three-headed dog." "See blah blah blah." But it didn't rhyme. This is a direct reference to the Burma Shave campaigns. And I'm a big fan of roadside attractions and Americana. And early motels and advertising. And anything that has to do with roadside America, I love. And it's, of course, a sly dig at the pretensions of high and low art. I don't know if it's sly or not. RYAN GERMICK: This one-- WAYNE WHITE: This is a series of works I did where I would pour paint on the picture, let it puddle and dry, and then I would look at it. Then I would tell you what it looks like. To me, that looked like the profile of Norman Rockwell. RYAN GERMICK: I can see that. The long neck, kind of like turtle head. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. You know, we've all seen those pictures of him leaning over with a pipe in his mouth painting. See the nose and the big cranium. And I did five or six of those. Didn't sell a one. Nobody liked these. I love them. Again, it's commenting on the pretensions of art and how people really look at art. None of us-- come on, admit it. You look at an abstract painting and after a while, you start going, hey, that looks like a dog. And it's about cloud gazing. We all love to find shapes. We all love to impose our meaning on the world, a world that's really scientifically chaotic, indifferent, and couldn't care if we lived or died. Yet, we want to impose our human qualities on that world. We're constantly trying to find narrative and meaning in accidents and chaos and in nature. And that's what that's reflective on, both our instinctive view of the world and the pretensions of high art. And it's funny, I think. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. "The Most Expensive Painting in the World." Hyperbole is funny. That painting, too, is about that big. RYAN GERMICK: It should be encased behind like six inches of-- WAYNE WHITE: Yes, like the Mona Lisa. RYAN GERMICK: --bullet-proof glass. WAYNE WHITE: Absolutely. So that's, again, just a pot shot at the pretensions of the world. The insane economy of art. The insane way things accrue value. You know. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah. I mean, back to my plasma-cutting pizza experience. It also became clear to me pretty early on living in New York as a Midwestern teenager that the gallery art system is no less ridiculous than shlubbing to the Village Voice to drop off your editorial illustration portfolio. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. And again, it's all about being-- the art world is fashion. And we all know how absurd fashion is. I mean, if you look to "The New York Times" fashion supplement magazine, it's the most ridiculous thing in the world. Who wears those fashions? Nobody does. I don't understand fashion. These men strutting down the catwalk wearing, like, Speedos with a fur jacket. And they're taking it seriously. It's all done with a straight face. And it's so offensive to human nature, fashion is. I have another painting, it's called "Good-looking People Having Fun Without You." That's the number one message of the media. That's the number one message of the media. Look what you missed. Look what you are missing out on, loser. You better buy this watch or these shoes or this jacket to get in on the party that you're missing out on. And you never find that party your whole life. Even the people at the party aren't at that party. There's this mythic, unattainable, super sexy, super cool ideal that capitalist culture creates and drives us forward by our nose. And it's bullshit. And we live our lives with this insecurity because of that. And I think that's a sacred mission, is to knock down those false idols. The emperor's new clothes kind of thing. To break through that and unite us in the fact that we're all just these vulnerable creatures. And that's just crap just to get you to spend your money. RYAN GERMICK: I am with you. But I saw the show that was at the San Francisco de Young Museum recently for Jean Paul Gaultier. That guy's pretty on point. WAYNE WHITE: Well, you know what There's geniuses in the fashion world. Again, I take these polemical points and it sounds-- I do that for the rhetoric and the passion. And to reach out on an emotional level. But everything is super complicated. I can't hit on all the points. I just have rhetoric. But fashion is an ingenious, fascinating visual form. And there's elegance and beauty to it. RYAN GERMICK: And even humor sometimes. WAYNE WHITE: And humor. There's everything there. RYAN GERMICK: But most of the time it's pretty ridiculous. WAYNE WHITE: But it's really in the hands of money makers. I'm not belittling any fashion designer or anybody who's interested in it, but it gets in the hands of the money makers and they ruin it. Money makers always ruin everything. But we all gotta make money too. Again, another, like-- you can't take any position in this world without it having a direct opposite. I'm finding that out as I go around and become more of a public speaker. I'm often caught up in the heat of my rhetoric, and I'm thinking, you know, somebody could debate me down to the ground on this. But I'm trying to hit these emotional points that we all can relate to. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah. What do we got-- what's our next one? So it looks like-- WAYNE WHITE: It got crazy. RYAN GERMICK: It got crazy. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. I got tired of the straight ahead text. I simply wanted to do variations, and see how far I could push it. These are words made out of a cartoon Western town. You know, why not? And it literally says, "all an act." There's an A laying on its side. There's an L, another L, an A, the C reaching up into the buggy, and then the last T. And I was literally trying to push the idea of typography as far as I could go. And take the street, a Western cartoon-like tourist town street that you'd see, you know, in a comic book. And use those as the post and lintels of typography. RYAN GERMICK: Yeah. Cool. So I just keep trying to push the limits and the possibilities of typography. I think typography is a great art form. And worthy of-- I'm sure a lot of you-- of course, Google is built on the-- a lot of the Google image is about typography. It's an incredible topic, inexhaustible. RYAN GERMICK: This is now actually a physical object. WAYNE WHITE: It's an aluminum cut-out. Laser-cut aluminum that floats about two inches from the wall. It says, "let's have a smirking contest." That's another condition of society. You were talking about earlier with hipsters. It seems like the default position of our society is the smirk. If you're smirking, you're cool, man. You're ready for all comers. You got your guard up. Everything's bullshit. I'm going to smirk about everything. I'm cool. I'm too cool to believe in anything. Nihilism seems to be the default position of our society in so many ways. And the intellectual challenges seem to be who can be the smirkiest. Or who can be the most disbelieving. Who can cut each other the most. It's a cruel world. And why? Why? But it's also funny too. "Let's have a smirk--" that seems to boil it all down. When two hipsters meet, it's a smirking contest. But on a technical, visual level, this reflects my love of sculpture and objecthood. And literally taking the words out of the context and making them a sculptural object. And I love painted metal. This is like painted aluminum. Acrylic on aluminum. RYAN GERMICK: So I think we have-- next is one more clip, where it kind of brings it home back to Tennessee with one of your good friends-- so we'll watch this-- and a project that you did with him. [APPLAUSE] WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. RYAN GERMICK: Well, I just want to thank you so much for bringing so many of your ideas to life. And letting them come alive and sharing with them with us and sharing them with the world. WAYNE WHITE: My pleasure. It's great to be here at Google. RYAN GERMICK: It's been great to talk to you. And if anybody has questions, there's a mic in the center. And you can ask Wayne whatever's on your mind. WAYNE WHITE: Come on up. Please. Make me look good. RYAN GERMICK: What do you got? What do you got? WAYNE WHITE: No? RYAN GERMICK: Can't tell if they're leaving or if they're going to come up. Oh, here we go. JULIE: Hi. I'm Julie. WAYNE WHITE: Hi, Julie. JULIE: And I want to know, how did Neil find you or decide to make a documentary about you? WAYNE WHITE: Well, I met Neil 12 years ago, when he was a young punk right out of Oklahoma. He was an unpaid intern at this design company where I was working. And I paid no attention to him at all. I just thought, please, get away-- give me a sandwich, you know? And 12 years later, he owns that company. That's his company now. That's the kind of guy Neil is. But three years ago, when my book came out, that was edited and produced by Todd Oldham, he got together with me and said, hey, you're hot property now, man. You've got this book. You're in Esquire magazine. Let's do a short film. And that short film grew into a feature film. And here we are three years later. So that's how I met Neil. And three years ago, I really didn't know him still. I thought of him as that young kid from Oklahoma. And our friendship grew as this movie grew. And the movie grew organically out of our friendship. I think that's one of the powers of the movie. There was no set agenda. There was no M.O. There was no outline, no script-- nothing. We just kind of played it by ear. And it reflects our growing familiarity with each other. And his discovery of me. Plus, like a lot of people in their '30s, my work had a big influence on him , through "Pee Wee's Playhouse," "Beakman's World," the Smashing Pumpkins video, et cetera, et cetera. So he was naturally curious because I had this famous stuff I did, but our friendship was reflected in that. And my personal life came out through him. JULIE: That's awesome. Elaine, his sister, is one of my best friends. So she wanted me to tell you that she says you have beautiful eyes. Which you do. RYAN GERMICK: Too beautiful to be captured on film by some cameras. JULIE: Exactly. Thank you. WAYNE WHITE: Thank you very much. I don't why Elaine couldn't tell me that in person. JULIE: We were on the phone on Friday and she was going to-- I was trying to talk her into flying here. And she was about ready to buy her ticket and come. WAYNE WHITE: Oh, well that's very nice. Thanks for relating that information. Yeah. Thank you. Come up. CHRIS: My name's Chris. WAYNE WHITE: Hi, Chris. CHRIS: I'm just curious where you think you might be headed next in terms of creative endeavors. I know you're still working on the paintings, I'm guessing. WAYNE WHITE: Yes. The paintings are an ongoing project of mine that I see no end to. But the thing that I really am interested in is big museum installations, bigger scaled things. Did we see the-- yeah, there was a large George Jones puppet head laying on its side. That's the kind of commissions and the kind of projects I'm continuing to work on. I just did a big thing down in Virginia at the Taubman Museum. I'm negotiating with my hometown of Chattanooga to do a large public work of the words in an actual Tennessee landscape. So I want to scale-- and, as you saw, the big puppet. I'm going to be doing some of those in Orange County next year. Yeah, I want to scale it up and work on a larger scale. And work on the museum level kind of things. CHRIS: Awesome. Thank you. WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hello. WAYNE WHITE: Hi. AUDIENCE: I have a question about the Smashing Pumpkins video. How did you decide on the creative direction for that? WAYNE WHITE: Well, the concept again, just like "Pee Wee," was already on paper when I came along. They had that new album, "Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness." And the graphics on the album were very Victorian and antique. So they wanted something appropriately antique and 19th century for the look. And they hit upon the idea of George Melies' film "A Trip to the Moon." So that was already on paper. And the directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Were friends of mine. We'd always wanted to work together. And they were familiar with the history paintings I had been doing. I hadn't really started the word paintings yet. So they knew I had a love of 19th century techniques and that whole antiquated kind of look. And I love history, I'm a big student of history. And I loved Melies. I already had a big picture book of his that I pored over constantly. So it was a happy coincidence that I could get together and do that. Again, and then I went crazy on the concept and did a million versions of every scene. So that's how that was born. AUDIENCE: Were you helping to actually build the props and the sets? WAYNE WHITE: I did build a few of the actual props-- the moon ship that I'm holding in the scene where I break it and it falls apart. I built that and a couple of the smaller puppets. But mainly, I did these elaborate production paintings. And I gave them to set builders and they built the sets from those. AUDIENCE: Thank you. WAYNE WHITE: You're welcome. We're losing them. RYAN GERMICK: All right. WAYNE WHITE: All right, anyone else? RYAN GERMICK: Going once, going twice. Wayne, it was awesome to have you here. WAYNE WHITE: It was great to be here. RYAN GERMICK: Come back any time. WAYNE WHITE: Thanks for having me. Thank you very much. RYAN GERMICK: Check out the movie. WAYNE WHITE: Thank you. A couple of quick things. There's a brand new app out right now called "Words with Wayne." You can take your photograph, type in your phrase. It'll come up as giant, monumental block letters in the landscape. It's a lot of fun to use. A lot of fun to play around with. Go to beautyisembarrassing.com for a complete list of all the theaters that "Beauty Is Embarrassing" is going to play at all through the fall. And the ones that I'm going to be making an appearance at. Especially in Berkeley, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. That's coming up this weekend. Go to waynewhite.com. There's all kinds of great merchandising stuff there. And there's only 200 of my books left in the world. So that's one of the last places you can get them. You can buy one there. I'll sign it to you. I'll do a drawing in the book. RYAN GERMICK: There you go, being the hardest working guy again. WAYNE WHITE: Yeah. I'm going doodle-doodle-doo. Yeah, and please check out the movie. I know you're all creative people. And it speaks to you. It's a story about the ups and-- a little bit of the downs, but mostly the ups about the creative life. And. I think you're really identify with it. I think it'll give you a shot in the arm to watch the movie. It's my gift to creative people. So enjoy. Thank you very much for having me. RYAN GERMICK: Thanks.