INTERVIEW WITH MURRAY BALL

I believe you are working on a new book called "TARZAN, GENE KELLY AND ME", when will it be available?

I don't know yet, I've just this minute finished it and I'm in one of those terrible periods when you've finished something and have to start something else. I can be difficult to live with once I finish a piece.

How were your other books like "Sisterhood" and "The Ballad of Footrot Flats" received by the public?

The "Ballad" was received fairly well. "The Sisterhood" was received well by some and quite badly by others. I normally write about things I feel strongly about, but it's all just a point of view and there are plenty of people that disagree with it, so usually you get a mixture of responses. In the case of "The Sisterhood" there was quite a noisy section of the feminists who DIDN'T agree with it. Better than no response at all.

In "The Ballad Of Footrot Flats", it was quite a brave move to have the text in rhyming verse, was there any feedback about that part of it?

Strangely enough, it wasn't intended as a book at all, it was intended as a film script. But films are very difficult to get made. It was just sitting on my desk, so I thought I'd try an entirely different format with a larger size and large colour illustrations.

As a cartoonist, you have said in the past, that you wanted to change the world rather than just amuse, do you think your cartoons have affected peoples attitudes?

Probably not. You get the occasional giant that can 'change the world' but they are few and far between. For the most part the rest of us each have one stone to chuck, and we chuck it in the ocean in the hope that the ocean level rises. But everything that happens changes something. As long as you're trying, that's all you can do.

There was some very strong stuff in your early strip "Bruce The Barbarian" about politics, poverty and apartheid, was there any reaction?

"Bruce The Barbarian" was being published in THE LABOUR WEEKLY- a fairly specific audience. So it was well received, but it was like preaching to the converted. So it wasn't changing things much. Ideally it should have been published in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, then it would have got a reaction. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH wouldn't take it, of course. One of the conundrums in writing is that you tend to only get published in magazines and periodicals that agree with you. Occasionally you can jump boundaries, I worked in PUNCH for a while, and there was quite a wide readership, but my cartoon strip ["Stanley"] was not so overtly political. "Bruce The Barbarian" was much more of a social commentary. So you've got to sidle in sideways. The wider the circle of people you are addressing the more subtle the message.

Do you still do any editorial cartoon work? There is an example of an early cartoon of yours in the book THE CARTOON HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Is there? I'd hoped they'd all been destroyed! No I don't. I have been invited to write a column and do drawings for one or two magazines. But I've just finished a project that has taken a year and a half and now I've got to decide what to do next. Editorial cartoons are too restricting. I've had that grind, where I had to get the cartoon out every day and I don't want to get back into that.

Why did you start in cartooning?

Like most kids, the first cartoons I saw were the Disney cartoon films and I'd draw that type of thing., and cartooning just appealed to me. I really don't know why. Maybe there is a cartooning gene. But just doing the actual drawing isn't being a cartoonist. The older I got, the more importance I placed on wanting to SAY something. The essential element in cartooning is the desire to make an impact, to change something. It's like trying to win an argument. Drawing, you can learn, but you've got to have that desire to thump the world into shape.

"Footrot Flats" reflected New Zealand culture quite nicely, what do you think of all the overseas strips in the papers?

The classic cartoon that appears in most papers is "Peanuts" and I think Shulz's work is brilliant . It's universal to all nations. On the other hand his cartoon strip takes up room in the papers where a New Zealand cartoonist could be portraying NZ attitudes and way of life. I'd like to see more New Zealand cartoonists coming through.

But it is difficult. The papers are getting their cartoons cheaper [from the syndicates] than a young cartoonist who sends his cartoons in. When I first started my "Footrot Flats" strip, I tried selling it to my local paper, and the editor at the time waved a folio of syndicated strips in my face and told me he got them for $3 each. I was asking a bit more than that for my original cartoons. The way I got over it , I got an agent in London and he managed to sell them. But agents can be good and bad. Get a good one and he'll make life easier, get a bad one and he'll rip you off.

On the reruns of 'Footrot Flats" there is no mention of a syndicate, how is that distributed?

My wife handles all the distribution in New Zealand, but I still have agents in England, Australia and Scandinavia.

So it's still running in those countries?

Yes, at the moment, but it's slowing down as the strips come to an end.

Has your wife considered expanding her syndication to other peoples strips?

No, she wants me to stop, so she can retire.

Do you think we will ever see another new strip from you?

Could be, it's one of the things I'm thinking about. It wouldn't be a daily, it would be weekly. It's funny you asking about "Bruce the Barbarian" I was thinking about him this morning, thinking about returning to him in a slightly changed form. I'll wait to see what happens there. I haven't spoken about "Bruce The Barbarian" in years and years and years. Doing that strip, I had virtually free reign, I could be fairly extreme, that was one of the fun parts about doing "Bruce". But it reached only a small audience, for the general public it can't be so brutally frank.

Now with your 'name' wouldn't you have more freedom?

Yes, but on the other hand, your 'name' is only as good as your last picture. The good thing about people knowing your name, is at least they'll look. When you're a young cartoonist starting out, it's hell getting people to even look. And then when you look back at some of the things you were doing, you think maybe they were right.

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