INTERVIEW: Jeff Conolly & Ben Daniels

Published May 31, 2016 | By Folklore

By Dave Dubrow

Jeff Conolly and Ben Daniels, authors of the extraordinary novella Detroit 2020 (reviewed here) were kind enough to sit down for an interview.

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What projects have you worked on together, other than Detroit 2020?

Jeff: This is a dumber origin story than Night Man. Ben used to be on this video game podcast that I liked. Instead of sending fan mail like a normal human I sent in ridiculous parody songs full of inside jokes. Most of the hosts were rightfully unimpressed, but Ben seemed to like me for some reason. I ended up writing for that site. Later when Ben started Terrorphoria he asked and I wrote for that too.

Ben: Jeff and I collaborated on multiple podcasts, as well formerly working on the now defunct video game blog Splitkick.com.

Tell us about the process of co-authoring a novel. What were the ups? The downs?

Jeff: I’m like a creative squirrel. Over the last decade I’ve tried to be a stand-up comedian, an academic, a musician, a video game pundit, a swanky literary author, etc. I’m like a destitute man’s James Franco.
Ben is like a brick layer. He’s careful and smart with his time. He doesn’t match my erratic energy, but it doesn’t matter. Every day he sets down a brick. He isn’t fazed when people like me set down 43 bricks in one day, because while we are off whittling, parasailing, and spelunking he just keeps on keeping-on, setting down bricks till he finishes the house.
I would try to go way off the reservation, pitching Detroit 2020 video games and podcast plays. Ben would just smile and say, “That sounds great, but I think we should focus on chapter three.” So we’d write chapter three.
You have to find your fit to co-author well. My manic nature was perfect for drafting. I’d race ahead pumping out words faster than Ben would probably ever want to on his own. His more methodical nature was perfect for tidying behind me. With as fast as I move when I’m writing, I really struggle telling instead of showing. Ben kicked ass at really slowing down and giving the gory details. If you loved some gross, violent visual from the book, it’s likely that you have Ben to thank.
In the end, I can no longer tell who wrote what. The words aren’t really mine or his, but the amalgamation of some hive mind. That’s when co-authoring is the best, in my opinion.
I don’t really think it was difficult for either of us, but neither of us have any ego issues. Then again, it’s our first album. Check in again after the wheelbarrows full of money and Yoko shows up.

Ben: The ups were having someone with a similar sense of humor to bounce ideas off of, and the fun conversations over Skype. Figuring out how to coordinate meetings around our schedules was a challenge. Luckily we figured out some ways to collaborate more efficiently with software like Google Docs.

Your love of balls-to-the-wall action films comes through loud and clear in Detroit 2020. Which movies had the most influence on the book?

Jeff: Growing up, the CANNON films practically had their own basic cable channel. Because of the wonder of TV edits I was permitted to go straight from Sesame Street to Chuck Norris. Those movies get a lot of flack these days for having more between the legs than between the ears, but as a kid I loved them un-ironically.

Ben: All of them. If I had to choose the top five probably Evil Dead, They Live, Robocop, Street Trash, and Hobo with a Shotgun.

If Detroit 2020 were to be made into a movie, which songs would be on the soundtrack?

Jeff: I actually made a soundtrack on Spotify that I used while I wrote that’s public. The Mark Has Been Made by Shadow System would open it up. Rudy by Shocore would play as the credits rolled.
At one point we had the entirety of Take My Breath Away written into the book in lieu of a sex scene. One of us smartly cut it for legal reasons and because it totally muted a pretty alright tire iron joke. Okay, it was mostly just the joke thing.

Ben: Easy answer, since Jeff already created a soundtrack to the book. You can follow it free on Spotify. https://noeticpulp.com/2016/04/06/detroit-2020-the-soundtrack/

Tell us about your favorite scene in Detroit 2020?

Jeff: The tire iron joke.

Ben: Probably the “auto jousting” battle. I’m a huge fan of Mad Max, and it was particularly challenging to write an action scene that encompassed almost an entire chapter. I think it inspired the most creative arguments between Jeff and I, but turned out better for it.
The city of Detroit is a near-perfect example of a real-life dystopia, especially when you consider that it used to be the economic capital of America. Is there a social or political message behind Detroit 2020?

Jeff: We aimed to tell a good story first and have a few laughs. Constantly making sure the reader is getting a political message while writing is like repeatedly asking if your partner is having a good time during sex. It’s well motivated, but it ruins the experience for everyone involved.
That said, we did make the villain real life Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. It’s funny, we both lean kind of left, but because we mocked Kwame Kilpatrick in this one there are a lot of Republicans that have messaged me like, “Alright, way to take down the democrats.” It wasn’t about Kwame being a democrat or a republican. He was a really bad dude that used an already struggling city as means to fund a lavish lifestyle and did all sorts of illegal stuff to maintain it. The actions they were able to prove to put him in prison are bad. The things we can only speculate on are far worse. We made him a murderous cyborg in our book, but the real life version is much scarier because it actually happened.

I wonder if those Republican fans will be just as jazzed when we tackle Rick Snyder in the next one?

Ben: This question made me laugh, because initially we had no intention of injecting our personal politics into the book, but when we began testing our final draft with people, we got feedback about the social and political satire we had created. So, now we tell everyone “Yeah, all that socio-political subtext was TOTALLY intentional” because it makes us appear smarter than we actually are. If there’s a message to be heeded, it’s probably “Never trust a cyborg.”

Jeff, on your blog you’ve talked about making your own Pootie Tang. Tell us a bit about that. Is Detroit 2020 your Pootie Tang? If not, what would be?

I love Detroit 2020, but it definitely isn’t for most people. I mean, even if we lure in a NPR listener type with the political satire they will run for the hills when they hit the gratuitous violence. Also, there’s that giant dildo.

The point of the blogpost was that everything Louis C.K. did early on when he was first showcasing his voice was very similar. He didn’t try to imitate what others were doing. He did weird stories and jokes only he could tell. He talks about that specifically in an interview—I think it was when he was on WTF with Marc Maron. Besides Pootie Tang, he wrote for the short lived Dana Carvey Show and feels responsible for it getting cancelled since the very first sketch was Bill Clinton giving an oval office address while he fed kittens from his many lactating udders. But today, those artistic “failures” have become legendary and part of the story of his overall success.
Indie publishing started as a blue collar, creatively freeing thing. Publishers don’t get your bizarro fiction about Hitler running a 90s record store? Damn the man, save the Reich! Produce that weird piece of media on your own and throw it up for the world to see!

But people like to eat, and that’s cool, but they started asking “How do I make money at this fiction thing?” And now the whole community is at an impasse and its very creative soul is at stake. The common wisdom is slowly becoming not “tell the story only you can tell” but “tell the stories that you already see making heaps of cash.” This isn’t even big picture genre stuff like “write about vampires.” It’s worse. “Make sure the Vampire is a dude who’s name starts with E and he kisses the human girl by page 75.”
Ben and I aren’t always on the same page, but we definitely are here. Refining our own alchemy might take longer than the gold rush, but eventually mines dry up.

Ben, tell us about the transition from media critic to content creator. Has publishing a novella changed your critical outlook?

If anything, it has made me more critical, especially of my personal work. Blogging and critiquing have a somewhat ephemeral nature. Your words tend to fade over time once the thing you’re talking about is no longer new and shiny. When you write a book, it’s out there for the long haul. You want it to be the best representation of your skills at that time. It’s also more intimidating to put your own creation out there for judgment than to cast your opinion on the works of others. However, I feel it’s more rewarding as well.
What’s in both the immediate and long-term future for the Ben Daniels/Jeff Conolly writing team?

Jeff: Two more celebrated projects, one overwrought disaster, and then twenty years of a “Chinese Democracy” that no one is sure will ever come out.

Ben: The sequel to Detroit 2020, and then maybe another project leaning a bit more towards horror? I don’t want to commit to anything Jeff will yell at me about on Skype.