Tex Gresham is an Los Angeles-based writer, director, and visual artist. Originally from – you guessed it – Texas, Gresham didn’t start reading or writing seriously until his early 20s.
“I did a lot of manual labour jobs for a long time,” he said, when I caught up with him via Zoom (somewhat) recently. “I just was not interested in any of that.” What he was interested in was trying to make movies. “I’d try to write my own movies and they were absolute dogshit,” he laughed.
Fast-forward to 2023. Following an undergrad in creative writing in San Diego and a graduate degree in screenwriting from UNLV, Gresham is the author of Sunflower, Heck, Texas, Easy Rider 2: Sleazy Rider (with KKUURRTT), as well as the writer and director behind Mustard, a feature length film. Recently, he released Violent Candy (House of Vlad), a collection of heartbreakingly twisted, touching short-stories and the photo collection Photos of LA I Took Recently From My Car (Filthy Loot). I recently caught up with Gresham over Zoom to talk about writing, empathy, and what makes him go Hell yeah these days.
SB - You’re an author, screenwriter, visual artist. How do all these elements inform how you approach your projects? How do you know which story you tell in which way? And how does working in these different mediums affect or influence your work in others? Is there some bleed through? Tell me how that all works for you.
TG - Usually, I think of what’s the most non-boring way to tell a story? What’s the most non-boring way to present the idea? If it’s something like just an emotion I’m having, or something that’s more of a simple thing, I’ll write a poem. But if it’s a character I want to explore, that becomes something I’ll have to go into a story about. The story and the screenplay thing, those I’m never really sure which one is which. Novels … that’s rough. If I know I want to invest a long time into it, I’ll turn it into a longer thing. But if I don’t want to spend years on it, it will reveal itself for what it is. Visual stuff is always spur of the moment, for me. I’m just now planning a new photo book, where I’ll actively shoot things for this new one, which is something I’ve never done before.
Let’s talk about Violent Candy. How did the stories here come together? Where did these stories come from and how long have you been working on them?
They’re stories I’ve been working on for years. It almost got picked up by someone, years ago, so it’s been a thing for a while. I’m glad it didn’t get picked up, because I wrote more, added more, changed more, and I realize the collection now is all stories where I’ve explored somewhat the same thing. it. It’s the obsession that I had for a while now coming together in a different way.
Someone mentioned at some point that it was a question of me putting out some of those stories for shock and awe or base level responses, but, like, look, I’m not going to tell you how to read my book. I don’t want to be that guy. But I feel like if you get through the entire thing and you don’t finish that last page and realize what everything has been going towards, that there was always something bigger in the conversation, then I’m sorry I didn’t do good enough for you on that. But there’s a whole conversation being had in the book, and I hope when people read it and they find that conversation and become a part of it. It is a depressing book. What’s new for me? But I want people to feel that by the time they turn that last page, there is a glimmer of hope. Though it’s depressing and dour, there is hope at the end with a little sunshine to welcome you out. I want to give you that little pat on the back at the end, I promise. You’ll get through it. When you pity your character, you end up writing a diary of pity and poor-me for characters. It’s like, sure, we all walk around depressed in some way. But if you have empathy for a character you can explore what’s making them feel like garbage, in a way that might help someone reading that story realize something. When I read something and I feel like garbage, it clicks something in my brain and I’ll catalog that story and look at the author’s name and be like, Thank you for what you did today. I think that takes the hard work of really engaging with the character you’re creating in an empathetic, more meaningful way than pity or sympathy.
You’ve got an interesting mix of first, second, and third-person narrative here. Is that a conscious decision to play around with these forms, or is it intuitive for you as to how you approach each story?
A lot of the times, it’s a conscious decision. Sometimes it’s a feel thing. With second person, sometimes there are stories that I want you to feel a part of, like you are in and you can’t escape. I work best in second person, I think that the you-form feels more comfortable to me. I’m not a big first-person narrator guy. Sunflower is all written in the third person, and I got to a point where I didn’t want to do that anymore. But I don’t want to overuse the second-person because it can get boring and repetitive and all that. But it was a conscious decision as to what stories I wanted you to be a part of versus what stories I wanted you to watch.
You mentioned you didn’t start actively reading until later in life. Who are some writers who you feel you felt you’ve connect with, in particular with short-fiction?
It feels like everyone – well, not everyone, but – starts with Stephen King, at some point. That’s like, Oh, OK this what a more cinematic short-story feels like. Almost all of his short-stories have that cinematic flair to them, which is why most of them have been made into something. That kind of informed me as to how to do that that way. I had never really read a lot of collections by people, but I had read a lot of short-stories from people that I felt were good, from anthologies and things like that. Michael Cunningham’s “White Angel” I think is a fantastic story, one that maybe some people have taught in college or grad school. But it’s one of those stories that really shows you what foreshadowing is and imagery and recurring imagery and how to use it and not be cheesy with it and create an interesting story. There’s the David Foster Wallace short-story about the burned children, that’s three pages long and it’s probably one of my favourite short-stories. There’s Don DeLillo’s “Videotape”, that’s another one of those that changed my life. Elle Nash’s Nudes is one of the best short-story collections of the last 20 years or something like that. Ottessa Moshfegh’s collection of short-stories, those kinds of things. Friday Black (by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah), that’s a good short-story collection.
You put out Easy Rider 2 a few years ago, with KKUURRTT. How was that process of collaboration like, and what do you get out of working collaboratively, rather than just working away by yourself?
KKUURRTT always someone that I’ll go, “Ah hell ya he’s got something out”, cuz he’s my bud. We’ve worked on a lot of stuff before. We worked on a script for a pilot of a TV show. We did a spec script for the TV show Atlanta. We had so much fun writing that. It was one of the easiest things I’d ever done. We just went back and forth writing in the scene together. If they had put it on the air, it would have been one of those episodes people talk about years later. Him and I writing (Easy Rider 2) was so fast, so easy, so fun. We just had a Google doc open and we went back and forth, chapter to chapter, every day. We were almost 100 per cent in agreement on everything, because we were on the same page. We wanted to tell the same story. I think we have a complimentary thing where we can get on each other’s joke and story level and realize what’s being told. We’re also good at calling each other out on lies and bullshit. We’re trying to write another one right now, which is super slow going, because I think it has way more ambition. It has a form, a progressive story that needs to happen, so we’re trying to figure it out.
Who are some folks, whether their writing or whatever, who keep you excited about working in this format? Are there folks who you’re excited about when you see a new story or piece by them drop?
Of course, the people you’re friends with you’re always gonna go “Hell yeah!” when they’ve got something out. Those are all givens. (But) I’m in this mode right now where I’m not really excited about anyone, specifically. But I’m looking at how many people are putting out how much stuff and I’m like, this is cool. I’m getting excited for the amount and the ease that stuff is able to get out there. We’re not all having to, like, sit there and appeal to The Paris Review and mail stuff out. I was mailing stories, like 20 copies out of one story, spending 50 bucks in postage to try to get it into these 20 literary magazines for a while. Now, we can submit stories and do this online. Hell yeah.
Violent Candy’s out, your new photobook is out. What’s next?
I have a project I’ve been working on for a while with other people. It should be interesting. It’s similar to The Callisto Protocol thing, an audio thing, which I can’t really talk about yet. But it should be fun. I’m excited for it. I’m trying to write two other novels, juggling them and a screenplay right now: a straight-up horror novel, and I’m trying to push myself to write, not a feel-good but not a downer, depressing novel, where there’s struggle but it’s all for good. So who knows if that’ll work out.
You can get Violent Candy delivered to your door, pal! Check it out!