Written by SaraJean Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Chris Gore of Film Threat about his take on publishing a children's book and running a website. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Chris Gore and his book Celebrities Poop at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

I got a chance to catch up with everyone’s favorite cine-file, Chris Gore (aka the Silver Fox to Attack Of The Show fans), to talk with him about the book he has for sale at his booth and what is coming up for him in the future.

SaraJean Greenaway: So we are at Phoenix Comic Con 2016. Chris, please tell me about your book and recording Celebrities Poop. What inspired you first to record this and then turn it into a book?

Chris Gore: Well I’m a big fan of the book by Taro Gomi, it’s called Everybody Poops and Everybody poops is a book that teaches children that every single living thing poops. And I think that sometimes in our society we forget that celebrities also poop because we put celebrities on a pedestal. So when I was getting ready to record my comedy album I thought, well I don’t want to just put out a comedy CD because people don’t buy CD’s anymore, they pretty much just download comedy albums off of itunes. But I thought, well what am I going to do, just give people a download code? I thought I would do an art project that is one part book and if you buy the book you get this download code to download the album. So I had my daughter do 47 paintings of celebrities taking a shit and I think the opening one is – I’m really proud of, it says, “Oprah makes a big poop. Justin Bieber makes a small poop.” So she did these paintings in the style of the original Taro Gomi book Everybody Poops book and put it together to do an exact parody page for page of Everybody Poops.

SJG: And how old was your daughter when she worked on this?

CG: My daughter she actually did this when she was 19 or 20, so she’s actually an adult, but she’s a very accomplished artist and skipped a grade in art and I’m really proud of her for having done this with me.

SJG: So this project just spoke to her as an artist?

CG: Yeah, yeah. No she was a good sport to do it and it’s just a different way to like, it is sort of a novelty book right? Like Go The F-ck To Sleep? It’s kind of like that, but the book is available as an audio book because I actually read the book to everyone at Phoenix Comic Con. Then it’s available as a physical book and then you can also get a digital version of the book and you can just download the comedy album on itunes. And it’s the first comedy album- at least that I know of- that has its own theme song. There’s a theme song to Celebrities Poop. Oh and I have a funny story to tell. So you can buy the book Celebrities Poop on Amazon and it was temporarily shut down. So it was shut down and I received an email from BrandProtect@harpoproductions.com, it was basically Oprah’s lawyers they shut down my listing on Amazon. I’m not a big Oprah fan and I had this exchange with the attorney who was very professional and extremely polite. The crux of the conversation ended like look, we don’t have a problem with the fact that your book has a painting of Oprah taking a poop, that’s not the issue. The issue is you can’t use Oprah’s name in the description of the book, so as long as you delete Oprah’s name in the description, no problem. So I re-wrote the description of the book, did not include Oprah’s name and then Amazon put my listing back up. So even though I am not a big fan of Oprah, I’ve got to say that I appreciate the fact that her lawyers treated me very well. I can’t not like them.

SJG: Ok, that’s amazing.

CG: So yeah, I’m the kind of person that when I approach any project, whether it’s a film or TV or website, I like to do something a little different. So this is my debut comedy album and I wanted to do something special.

SJG: Well ok. So last night you briefly mentioned your follow up project to Celebrities Poop, can you tell us a little about that?

CG: The next project is called Girls Eating Hotdogs at 2am. It’s also a comedy album that will come out. I’m doing a poster which is a mosaic of 100’s of women eating hotdogs. So here are pictures of some of the girls who are friends of mine on Facebook, so it’s all a bunch of Facebook friends of mine, women, eating hotdogs in cute ways, and they all gave these to me. Then what I did was a poster, a mosaic that’s all girls eating hotdogs and this will be a poster. So the next album will be a poster and you get the download code for the album.

SJG: How long until that comes out?

CG: Give that one a year. I’ve been working on new material and it takes some time to do that. So that’s the next project. I am also looking at relaunching Film Threat and I’m working on a couple web series and a movie.

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SJG: That’s awesome. Is there anything you can tell us about the movie?

CG: I can tell you about the movie. It’s actually a documentary about Film Threat Magazine in the 90’s. Film Threat kind of paralleled… Film Threat Magazine basically covered independent film. It was created as a fanzine in 1985 and I was approached by a documentary filmmaker. I have been approached over the years about doing a documentary on Film Threat and finally was approached by a guy I really trust, Runa Lind, and partnered with producer Steve Bannatyne who’s been an Oscar nominated producer and they’re making a documentary about Film Threat. I’m writing the book the documentary is based on, Film Threat Sucks and it’s all about the rise and fall of Film Threat the print magazine. But I am relaunching the website sort of as a way to do other projects.

SJG: Well I had seen you had a Kickstarter to help relaunch the website in the past.

CG: Yeah, it did not make it.

SJG: Well my husband and I were backers.

CG: Oh really, well did you want to see the trailer? This is not public.

(Chris took me to a private link on his phone and proceeded to show me a very awesome, very retro 90’s stylized trailer seeming to document much of the history of Film threat. It felt very gritty and looked very interesting to someone who was a kid and teenager of the 90’s and grew up with film threat and all the movies it discussed. This trailer made me very excited to see what the documentary has in store.)

CG: So for the documentary, it’s basically a documentary period piece it’s set in the 90’s. We digitized over 100 hours of VHS footage from the 90’s and have scanned 5,000 photographs. I’m the executive producer of the project and I have been working on this documentary for the last year, as well as writing the book. But you’re the first person I have actually talked to about it. This is not going to come out for like 2 or 3 years. So 2 or 3 years, that’s how long it takes to make a documentary

SJG: We get just like a first glimpse into it.

CG: Yeah so this is the first you’re hearing of it.

SJG: Well I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it and for giving me a sneak peek at the trailer.

CG: Oh thank you. I hope you thought it was interesting.

SJG: I did, it looks so interesting; I’m very excited to see what happens with it. So one last thing, where would people go if they wanted to buy your book or check out your new works?

CG: They can go to www.celebritiespoop.com or you could also just go to www.chrisgore.com or follow me on twitter.

Also Chris told me that I could let everyone know that inside the book Celebrities Poop, there is an illustration of Olivia Munn pooping. He also says she does not even know that, so I have added the picture, see below.

Creator Conversations

An Interview With Chris Gore of Film Threat (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Nerd Team 30