There was a lot going against this Bryan Lee O’Malley print reaching my hands. I don’t usually buy prints, it might even be more accurate to say I’m anti-print and always prefer to buy original art, though once a print would lead me to obtaining original art decades later and now that I think about it hopefully the same happens for me with Tillie Walden art in the future.
Also, while O’Malley is a rare creator that gets my dollar on any new project he does, he is a bit of an anomaly in that I don’t to date put any of his previous work in my personal pantheon even though the film adaptation of the work he is best known for, Scott Pilgrim, somehow exists as the most odd of, I think, perfect films, even as it delivered on to us by the glorious Edgar Wright to little financial fanfare I love that film.
Instead, I keep buying O’Malley much for the same reason years ago I bought China Mieville novels, for that tangible feeling and belief that somewhere, maybe ahead or maybe already existing hidden in parts within what had come before, lies a potential masterpiece.
When O’Malley misses you still feel you’re on the brink of something that could have been great and it’s an experience that is often times more exhilarating than consistent quality execution if one spaces their projects out far enough from each other. I recall reading his Seconds when it first came out and every turn of the page felt like the only thing between me and something monumental and while it didn’t land there it was exhilarating.
I also may be the only person who will admit he doesn’t give a shit about Twin Peaks.
I just missed it the first time around and attempts at catching up have never felt right, it always had the feeling of being just minutes outdated on any occasion I promised I’d rectify this apparent gap I have in essential TV.
I will give the catalog of people I perceive to be auteurs a chance and revisit their catalog but Lynch has never been that to me, even as I know it’s his true warranted place in the field, an ultimate artist respected by other artists across mediums, his output reverse engineered into elements by others to use as their own tools, a true breaker of rules.
But to me all that doesn’t overcome that he’s the guy who made a uniquely and monumentally awful Dune movie, and being a kid who found science fiction by randomly picking up Chapterhouse: Dune off the shelf and somehow fell in love, that’s among the most grievous of unforgivable of actions.
So how and why did I get this Bryan Lee O’Malley Scott Pilgrim/Twin Peaks mashup print?
Part impulse buy, part the aforementioned legit curiosity of all of the artist’s work, and mostly a good cause. O’Malley sold a bunch of these in support of Puerto Rico, something all of us should be able to get behind unless you are racist trash, and I got wind of it on twitter and jumped on it before they were all gone (I didn’t think they’d last long).
I guess that’s the long winded way of just posting a pic and saying I bought a print but that was everything that flashed across my mind in the seconds between me seeing it on twitter and buying it. I guess now that I think about it we shouldn’t expect less from an O’Malley Wally Brando/Michael Cera/Scott Pilgrim pop culture gestalt.
And against a lot of odds. I kind of love it.