Los Angeles, 1971. Seymour – after discovering three new gray hairs – has to endure four hours by public transport to get to Beverly Hills in time for a meeting with a studio boss. He didn’t take the car because his wife needs it to take their son to kindergarten.
“We’ll give you $5,000 for the script. We’re shooting next week. Your first sale! Congratulations!”
Those words – uttered by a producer – shattered the life of Seymour, the protagonist in Blood of the Virgin (Pantheon Books). This graphic novel is the work of Sammy Harkham, 42, acclaimed editor of the Kramers Ergot comic book anthology. He has been drawing and writing this book for 14 years; It’s one of the most anticipated projects on the American comic scene. The title is the same as that of the script sold by the protagonist, a 27-year-old man who works as an editor in the low-budget film industry.
“Blood of the Virgin” comes at a time when there is no shortage of hymns to old Hollywood, such as “Babylon”, “The Fabelmans” or “Once upon a time in Hollywood”. “If you think about how Tarantino handles it [the film industry]”He’s nostalgic,” notes Harkham. “I’ve tried to move beyond any romantic notion and dig deep enough into it to feel as mundane as life is today.”
Sammy Harkham at an apartment in Madrid on April 4, 2023. Samuel Sánchez
So-called “exploitation cinema” runs through the work, in which directors’ egos flare, budgets are tight, scenes are improvised and big bosses abuse actresses. “In this type of cinema, the subconscious is projected even more intensely than in mainstream cinema… There is an inherent tension between the world of films that are made and the world of films that are made [real lives involved]’ explains Harkham while smoking a cigarette – a habit his main character also adopts.
The 42-year-old author drew inspiration from his parents’ relationship to create Seymour – an Iraqi Jew – and his wife Ida, the daughter of Holocaust survivors who grew up in New Zealand.
“My parents didn’t stay together, but you know, sometimes I would listen to my father talk about coming to Los Angeles with no money … He didn’t work in the film industry, but I noticed that he talked more about his career than his private life. I thought that was an interesting dichotomy – how one thing can be [so present]while the other may wither on a stick,” says the author.
At one point in the book, the narrative perspective switches to Ida. Isolated by her motherhood and disillusioned with her marriage, she goes to her parents’ home in New Zealand in a desperate bid to reclaim what was left of her youth.
“It’s part of my parents’ history. My mom went on vacation and decided she didn’t want to come back, so my dad went after her and tried to get her to come back. I always thought it was very funny,” laughs Harkham.
Seymour’s hackneyed family life is turned upside down even more when he gets a chance to direct a film he devotes all his energy to. The patch of mildew in the master bedroom that he promises to remove at the beginning of the book just keeps getting bigger. Harkham elaborates on the consequences of this neglect: “[For Seymour]succeed in [the film industry] contradicts his principles. The end of the book coincides with the end of production. Seymour wonders, “What’s the value of that?” It begs the question of how we all think about life. Was it worth all the sacrifice?”
Harkham asked himself the same questions as he finished Blood of the Virgin. When asked if he thinks his graphic novel is important, he pauses for a moment. “I think it depends on the day. You know, I think the one thing that literature has always brought to human existence is perspective and a sense of not having answers. In many ways, in literature, we strive for all parts of our brain to be able to express themselves without having an answer. I think the beauty of literature is that you can think about all these things and wrestle them in your head.”
In the book, Seymour is obsessed with the film he is set to direct. Harkham had the same obsession while writing the tale. “My life revolved around this project. particularly [after the pandemic]I led an almost monastic life. It was like taking care of a garden for 14 years and watching the plants slowly grow. My whole brain was in it. Even when I was doing my daily chores — walking my dog, taking my kids to school, washing the dishes — my mind was always on the book,” he says.
Sammy Harkham in Madrid on April 4th. Samuel Sanchez
Los Angeles – the comic’s main setting – is portrayed as a land of opportunity, but also as a graveyard of hope. Harkham, who was born and lives there despite spending part of his youth in Australia, admits he is fascinated by the mythology of the American dream falling on LA.
“It doesn’t matter what street corner I am on… I feel the history and the weight of all the expectations of the people who came to the ends of the continent in search of a place to find their soul. [This city] contains a lot of disappointment,” he explains.
The interlude, which divides the work into two parts, is the only chapter printed in color. It’s sort of a bracket to the main plot, in which we follow the story of Joe – an Arizona cowboy – who moves to Los Angeles in the 1920s and grows from a stage assistant to a mogul in the film industry. The author clarifies his intention behind this chapter: “I wanted it to provide visual context for the main narrative. Because – although it seems [as if] We follow the plot of the cowboy who becomes a film director – behind him we see the city [expand] all around him. For example, readers can see that the LA River was a real river and not a concrete reservoir or anything [Native Americans] lived in the hills above the city.”
The more Harkham comments on his graphic novel, the clearer it becomes that he has left nothing to chance…in what he tells or the way he tells it. For example, his character Joe—a blonde guy with an American name who jumps from landmark to landmark—serves as a counterpoint to Seymour’s trajectory. However, the ending of the book is more unclear. The only thing that is certain is that the three gray hairs that Seymour finds on his head on the first page have turned into a thick mop of gray hair by the afterword. In the title, the word “virgin” could be associated with both the plot of the film and the character of Seymour: a dreamer who loses his innocence as the plot progresses.
Art Spiegelman – author of the masterpiece Mouse – shares his thoughts on this work by a graphic novelist friend: “A tale about storytelling… it evokes the grindhouse movie scene of 1970s Los Angeles and charts the desperate attempts of an ambitious… young man to build a family and a career as a film artist in this seedy world. It’s a book with a lot of heart.”
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