Interview: Artist Skinner and Director Allen Cordell Discuss ‘ART SHOW! WITH CAPTAIN SKINNER’

PopHorror: This show is like a love letter to PBS and Bob Ross but also a complete meltdown of those things. What made you want to twist something that’s comforting into something that’s cosmic and chaotic?

Allen Cordell: Um, well, I mean, Bob Ross had a very good run making very straightforward painting television show. I’ve always been a fan of stupid comedy, and I know Skinner and I know his personality. I just thought, let’s combine Skinner with the sort of crazy, chaotic sensibility of early Adult Swim shows and make something really weird.

Skinner: Sure. Yeah, I mean, Bob Ross is a dude who’s painting very mellow stuff, right? So the experience is mellow. The experience matches the aesthetic. With us, it’s like this is the experience you get with the psychedelic nightmare artist. And Mark Kistler from Secret City, Commander Mark, that’s sort of the Captain Skinner thing. It’s an homage to that. He showed kids how to draw and that really influenced so many artists that I know. It’s a PBS show and it takes place in outer space.

Allen Cordell: And it takes place in outer space.

Skinner: Yeah.

Art Show! With Captain Skinner: Building the Nightmare

PopHorror: It’s also like the Tales from the Crypt comics a little bit, or things like that. Each episode features a finished piece of artwork. How much of that creation is planned ahead of time and how much do you allow to just form in the process? How do you decide which concept to use?

Allen Cordell: We have a list of subjects that we want each episode to be. Like the first episode we’re like, let’s call it science and have it be about science. Then Skinner came up with the Jack Kirby helmet. That’s a way to talk about science.

Skinner: Yeah, every episode has a theme and then I kind of come up with what would be cool for each theme, image-wise. So, each episode has a theme, we build off that. The space cowboy talks about that particular theme and then there’s a lot of room in between for improvisation, talking, chatting. Me and Allen are actually having a lot of organic interaction during the show. Of course, you don’t see Allen. I mean, Allen is there. The edit is Allen being there. But yeah, it’s a pretty good balance of both. I’m actually impressed that it even worked.

PopHorror: It does have some of that Adult Swim energy going on too. There’s slapstick, body horror, psychedelic stuff. Where do you draw the line between funny and disturbing, or is there even a line?

Allen Cordell: I don’t think there even needs to be a line. I like to sort of blur that line. I’m interested in things that are disturbing and funny. Sometimes I think things can be both, for sure.

Skinner: The disturbing part can be funny. I think we’re kind of in that realm of let’s see what is possible with that stuff. Rooting around in the disturbingness to find the humor is sort of the thing.

Allen Cordell: A lot of Skinner’s artwork is very intense and inspired by horror. But Skinner himself is a very funny person. So it makes sense in the context of the show to bring humor and horror together.

Art, People, and Process

PopHorror: So, does the TV format or video format change the way that you look at your artwork?

Skinner: Not really. To be honest, the experience of being around people and being creative is so much more rewarding and makes me feel so much better than just the endless hours of being alone, listening to podcasts about horror stuff or different things.

When I’m watching the show, I have a lot of experiential emotional memories of what it was like to actually make it. How fun and exciting it was building something and just feeling really good about being around these cool people. I don’t even really see the art so much as I have this memory in my body of “Like, oh, I have to return to this. I gotta go back to being around people. It’s fun.”

PopHorror: When it comes to the lengths of the episodes, they’re like 15 or 16 minutes. Did that runtime shape the pacing or impact how you proceed with your artwork? Did you feel rushed at all?

Allen Cordell: When we shoot each painting, it takes about an hour to two hours for Skinner to paint it. The 16 minutes is just once we’ve cut out all the dead air, all the stuff that’s not funny. It usually ends up being around that long naturally. Then it becomes this sort of stream of consciousness nightmare thing.

Skinner: I think so much of the show is getting revealed as Allen’s making it. There’s a lot of trust and faith that Allen has, sometimes more than I have, because I’m a full-on nihilist from birth. He’s just like, no, it’ll be cool. We’ll do it like this. We’ll make it like this. And I’m like, I don’t know. And he’s like, no, we’re gonna edit, it’s gonna be cool. And I’m like, okay.

Allen Cordell: Skinner’s very worried the whole time.

Skinner: I’m worried because I’m traumatized.

Allen Cordell: Skinner also knows I’m gonna throw fart sound effects in there.

Skinner: Which is fine. I don’t care.

Art Show! With Captain Skinner Season Two(?) and Saving the Universe

PopHorror: So, are you planning on sustaining this as a concept and having multiple seasons, or is it just going to be a one-season thing?

Allen Cordell: If the powers that be want more seasons, I would love to do more for sure.

Skinner: This is what I’m imagining. We finish this season, right? It becomes a cult hit. They do a season two. Streaming services, there’s a bidding war. It’s going insane. It gets picked up, we get super rich. I get a crazy motorcycle. I crash it. I’m like, oh no, I took everything for granted.

Then I turn my back on being a scumbag celebrity and I go paint for sick children in hospitals and try to heal the world that way. Then Allen says we gotta get back together for one last season. I come back out of retirement. We do another season. We become like the Beatles. We bring world peace. We heal the world by annoying everybody with fart jokes. Nobody thought that would be the way, but we did and we fixed everything.

PopHorror: Well, personally sometimes I wonder if there’s a right combination of words and actions that could totally improve the world. I wonder what that would be. Maybe it’s something totally off the wall and zany that nobody expected.

Skinner: Wait, I like this. This is kind of a cool philosophy. Because how do you unfuck the universe, right? How do you undo it? It’s like that character from Superman, Mr. Mxyzptlk. He’s a cosmic imp. The only way to defeat him is to get him to say his name backwards. That’s what we’re trying to do. Get the world to say its name backwards with an art show. We’re trying to fix everything. It’s the opposite of fascism. It’s the opposite of Big Macs.

Music, Money, and Free Flow

PopHorror: All right, so how much does it cost to get you to do artwork for an album or something like that?

Skinner: If you’re a band in high school, I’d probably do it for ten bucks. A little bag of brown weed or something. But if you’re a big-time band, it’s thousands and thousands.

Why, are you in a band? You want me to do art for your band?

PopHorror: I just make my own music. Barely anybody listens to it. Some of my albums suck, but some of them are all right. It’s experimental weird stuff. I know almost nothing about music.

Skinner: I want to hear it.

PopHorror: I could send you my least crappy album.

Skinner: You gotta send it to me, dude. We gotta hear it. We gotta work this into season two Art Show.

PopHorror: This is probably also going to be a podcast episode, by the way. My podcast is barely listened to by anybody, so it’s not a threat or anything.

Skinner: What do you mean, “a threat”?

PopHorror: You know, it’s not quite the threat that I would want it to be to the establishment, man. The powers that be.

Skinner: Yeah, we need to do that.

PopHorror: Well, I enjoyed talking to you. It was nice and free flowing.

And that pretty much sums it up: psychedelic nightmares, PBS nostalgia, cosmic imps, and the sincere belief that art, friendship, and maybe even fart jokes could nudge the universe in a better direction.