For No Good Reason Page #5

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that lets it through

and onto paper,

and the anger is expressed.

It doesn't matter that

I'm pleasant one minute

and then I'm suddenly

vitriolic the next.

They go together.

It's perfect.

Well, this is a little

booklet I put together

to celebrate

the 50th anniversary

of the Universal Declaration

of Human Rights.

And so it's introduced

and illustrated by me.

Article 1.

All human beings

are born free

and equal in

dignity and rights.

They are endowed with

reason and conscience

and should act towards one another

in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to

all the rights and freedoms

set forth

in this declaration.

Article 3.

Everyone has

the right to life,

liberty and

security of person.

Article 4. No one shall be

held in slavery or servitude.

Article 5. No one shall be

subject to torture or cruel...

Article 6. Everyone has the

right to recognition everywhere

as a person before the law.

Article 7.

AH are equal

before the law

and are entitled

without any discrimination...

Nothing in

this declaration

may be interpreted as

implying for any state,

any right to engage in any

activity or to perform any act

aimed at the destruction...

People actually had the

balls, had the foresight,

had the understanding

of human nature,

to say, "We don't just talk about it.

We write it down."

Then we remind ourselves

of what human rights are.

What I'll try to

do is draw things

because I'm angry at these people

who are cheated and swindled.

That's who my enemy is.

That's my object,

the object of my protest.

I just wanted to

be taken seriously

as an artist who was

doing serious cartoons.

The age of miracles.

A pocket-sized, folding,

electronically controlled,

motor-driven, single-lens

reflex camera

that quite simply

does the impossible.

Come a bit closer.

Focus. Train.

Touch the

electric button...

And the impossible

happens.

In minutes, you have a finished

photograph of dazzling beauty.

That is the Polaroid

SX-70 experience.

Yeah, that's better.

- Ready?

- Yeah.

It worked.

There's no film in it.

I wanna do it again.

Yes.

In 1996,

I published With Nails,

which was a compilation

of film diaries,

and I wanted, um...

the fly covers on the inside of

the book, the back and the front.

I thought it'd be

a good idea

as Ralph was

so emblematic to Withnail.

I asked Ralph if he could come

up with a drawing or some idea.

And he said, "Oh, come down

and, uh, we'll do paranoids."

He took pictures of

well-known people,

or characters like Bela

Lugosi or John Travolta,

and then would

stick them on my face.

That one worked.

Yeah.

Okay, we're onto

something now.

Now, let me play with

these ones for a minute.

And then work on the

Polaroid when it was still warm

and fiddle around so that the

two images melded together.

They're directly on the...

Done onto the film.

Onto the film.

While it's still...

While it's still...

I was after

getting the real person

and then doing

something to it.

I was actually trying to get

a good picture of somebody,

then distorting it,

to look like

one of my drawings.

it was the essence

of my work

to distort and yet

maintain the likeness.

I thought, this is great, so I

just fiddled with each one I did,

and made that happen, made them

move in an expressive way.

And I thought, "Well, that speaks

to me as my kind of drawing."

That's what I like,

you know.

So I started doing them of the

Queen and, uh, Princess Di.

And that was Fergie, which I

thought, "That's coming out well."

And I thought,

"I've got a book here."

So I did a book of it.

Anyway, they all came out

like that,

and there was one,

and it's this one.

We were at the Jerome

Hotel in Aspen,

and there was

a sort of reception

and David Hockney had

been invited as well.

And then I saw

David in the bar.

So I went up behind him,

had the camera ready,

and I said, "David."

And he turned round like that

and I went "Click, bash!"

And the thing

hit him, you see.

And he said, "It won't

come out, you know."

Goddamn know-all.

It came out as one

of the best, actually.

Can I pick it up?

Does this

sound distorted to you?

Okeydoke.

The war file...

One more time.

Sorry, Ralph.

The war file, 1963, 2003.

I protest,

I protest, I protest,

I protest vehemently

against the war.

I protest vehemently

against the war.

I'm seeking out every drawing

I've done since the '60s,

which in one way

or another displays

the irony of our

crass stupidity.

I will miss some things.

There are so many.

I know nothing

will be solved,

but I do it for my

sanity and world peace.

Our leaders are mindless,

arrogant and insane.

The thing

about Ralph's work is

it was just the energy,

the anger,

the venom that

was just spewed out,

and that's what I loved.

I wish I'd had that kind of ability

to explode like Ralph does

and still control it

at the same time.

The problem with protest is

we were the protesters

and we got old

and we got tired.

We screamed and shouted and we did

change the world to some degree,

but not as much

as we'd like.

And that leads

to depression

and a sort of sense

of semi-impotence,

which I think after a while

begins to just wear you down.

You realize that you

did make these changes

and you see a new generation

of people coming up

who are the beneficiaries of

a lot of the noise we made,

and they don't give a damn,

they don't give a toss.

They're into shopping.

So it gets very hard

to know what to do with this.

Ralph can't stop.

I don't think I can stop.

We'll go to our graves

shouting and screaming and making noise

and nobody will listen.

To John Dillinger

and I hope he is still alive.

Thanksgiving Day,

November 28th, 1986.

Thanks for the wild turkey

and the passenger pigeons

destined to be sh*t out

through wholesome

American guts.

Thanks for a continent

to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a

modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds

of bison to kill and skin,

leaving

the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties

on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American Dream

to vulgarize and falsify.

Like 1987, '88,

around then,

I was asked to do these records

with William Burroughs,

and that was so connected to

the world of Hunter and Ralph.

And, of course, Ralph adored

this when he heard it.

He liked the beginning

and the montage.

You know, it was all

these worlds meeting.

Thanks for "Kill

a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for prohibition

and the war against drugs.

Thanks for

a country where nobody

is allowed to mind

his own business.

Thanks

for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for

all the memories.

All right,

let's see your arms.

You always were a headache

and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last

and greatest betrayal

of the last and

greatest of human dreams.

'Cause that type of writing,

that type of drawing,

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