An Interview with John Reed

“I think ultimately art will be the last science. Once we’ve come up with virtually all the answers, the one thing that we will still not understand is creative expression.”

Things on John Reed’s Desk:
Microphone
Computer
Bunny Puppet
Another Bunny Puppet

John Reed is a third-generation New Yorker, a second-generation artist. I admire the joker in him, or what he has described as “the criminal, or more aptly, the artist in all of us.” He’s created six books of prose and poetry, including Snowball’s Chance, a parody-sequel to Animal Farm written after 9/11, in which the forest creatures rise up against the capitalist farm animals and destroy twin windmills. In Free Boat, he takes aim at love, character, fiction, poetry, and linear time (Free Boat, he jokes. The last sign you’ll ever see). According to his satirical novel, The Whole, all of Reed’s books are actually written by a snarky ex-girlfriend. According to his publisher’s bio, he’s dead.

I meet Reed on a rainy October afternoon at the Tribeca Tavern, on the block that inspired his most recent project. He points out the former site of the fabled Magoo Tavern: it’s now a giant pharmacy. Behind us, locals discuss corporate politics and destination weddings. In the 1970s and 80s, Reed grew up here, on a very different kind of block.

In The Sky Is Blue With Lies: Tribeca Phaedra, Reed reimagines Euripides’ incestuous love-and-revenge story in the 1970s Tribeca of his childhood. Nine bargoers—a modern Greek chorus—tell the tragic tale of a Phaedra and Hippolytus (now 20th-century New Yorkers, Fara and Po).

The film is a no-wave mash of interviews, narration, and what looks like scraps of 1970s home videos. The Greenpoint Film Festival categorized it as a documentary. “Documentary?” I asked. True to form, he is both frank and obscure. “It’s 90% documentary,” he explains. “Wait”, I say. “You mean: Fara and Po are real?” “Oh no,” he says. “That part is made up. But everything else is real.”

We adjust the mics to tune out the din of the bar. “I wouldn’t want any scandals,” he jokes, and we laugh. Scandal is the order of the day right now. Yes, yes, I laugh, too. Of course not. But the thing is, I do have a question I need him to answer, and I’m not sure how it’s going to go.

I want to talk to him about his recent film, artist collaborations, and decapitalizing creativity.

I also want to ask a more difficult question, about remaking narratives from cultures in which women didn’t tell their own stories. Specifically, about remaking the story of Phaedra. He’s game for the conversation.

...