{"id":200679,"date":"2021-03-12T19:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/abraham-riesman-on-stan-lee-film\/"},"modified":"2021-03-12T19:00:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T16:00:22","slug":"abraham-riesman-on-stan-lee-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/abraham-riesman-on-stan-lee-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Abraham Riesman on Stan Lee \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Abraham Riesman on Stan Lee \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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The legacy of Marvel Comics maestro Stan Lee<\/strong> has been muddy for decades. Even as the supposed mastermind behind the early days of Spider-Man, Thor, and the Fantastic Four evolved into a beloved international icon with cameos in every Marvel film, controversy nipped at his heels. At the heart of it all: the constant rumblings that he didn\u2019t actually co-create his most famous characters, and that he went out of his way to bury the talented artists who worked alongside him.<\/p>\n

The new biography True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee<\/em><\/strong> explores Lee\u2019s life in detail, unraveling mysteries, asking troubling questions, and coming to grips with the the fact that this icon\u2019s life was full of contradictions, half-truths, and shifting narratives. Author Abraham Riesman<\/strong> isn\u2019t just a biographer, but a detective, forced to dig deep and even rub elbows with a number of shady figures.<\/p>\n

True Believer<\/em> is a harrowing read for Marvel fans, but the stories within this book should prove fascinating to anyone with an interest in history and culture. Lee\u2019s childhood as the son of immigrants in New York City is a window into a fascinating world. His years in the wilderness of Hollywood, where he strived and failed to make movies<\/a>, is illuminating. And his final days, where Lee was surrounded by men and women who seemingly meant him only harm, are heartbreaking.
\nI recently spoke to Riesman about True Believer<\/em>, which is available anywhere books are sold. Our conversation included what it is like to explore the Stan Lee archives, why so many fans and professionals alike are so quick to defend Lee at any cost, and what we are to make of one of the most important, and complex, legacies of the 20th and 21st centuries.<\/p>\n

Congratulations on the book. It seems like people are talking about it, which is certainly a good thing.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, it is. I have no idea if it\u2019s translated into sales yet. I haven\u2019t gotten that data. But it\u2019s certainly got a lot of attention. I\u2019m very lucky. It was a topic that I think a lot of people care about, and I\u2019m very glad that it\u2019s gotten the attention it\u2019s gotten.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a photograph in the book of you as a kid getting Stan Lee\u2019s signature at a Comic-Con. Sometimes there\u2019s this narrative around this kind of subject, like, \u201cClearly you hate Stan Lee, you\u2019re out to get him.\u201d But clearly, you grew up with this being important to you. This must have been a painful process more than anything else.<\/b><\/p>\n

Not really. It\u2019s not so much painful as intriguing. I have no ill will toward Stan on an ad hominem basis, and also I did not grow up idolizing him. I got a signature from him at Wizard World Comic-Con in Rosemont, Illinois in I believe it was 1998, that\u2019s when the photo\u2019s from. But he was never a big emotional figure in my life, which I think benefitted the book, ultimately. It wasn\u2019t that wrenching of a process. There were wrenching aspects of it just based on human empathy. Reading and learning more about his family life was, at times, uncomfortable. To get back to your original point: I don\u2019t hate Stan Lee. Nothing of the sort. I did not come here to write a hatchet job. I am not trying to cancel anybody. I\u2019m trying to muster up evidence and tell a coherent true story as best I can. Some people don\u2019t like it, and what can I say? I hope people will give the book a chance and see that it is not me trying to tear something down, but rather trying to build a story.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll jump right into this, which I think is something a lot of people have a question about. There\u2019s this article that was published on The Hollywood Reporter from Roy Thomas [who worked with Lee at Marvel], where he essentially tries to take down a portion of your book. Do you have a response to this article?<\/b><\/p>\n

Sure. I mean, everybody has their views about Stan, and some of them are very passionate. When it comes to criticism of the book, all I can say is that there\u2019s basically no factual errors that anyone points out. It\u2019s not that I got my facts wrong, it\u2019s that people disagree with the interpretation or sometimes the tone. And that\u2019s their right. It\u2019s a written work. In a way, it doesn\u2019t belong to me anymore. You can make whatever evaluations you want about it. But again, I tried to tell a balanced story, I tried to marshal the facts and stick to them. What I say to critics is that I hope you give the book a chance and I hope you understand that I did my level best to be as close to exactly what happ<\/a>ened as far as I can tell as I could. If the story that resulted is something that you find to be unfair to Stan, that\u2019s up to you. But I did my best to be as fair as I could.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like you\u2019re just making wild accusations. There\u2019s research in this book. The one that strikes me, the one that made me put the book down and talk to my wife about, was the radio interview that he claims gave him the inspiration for Thor. But you just logically look at that and say, \u201cThis does not make sense. This is clearly a lie,\u201d and not in a \u201cI\u2019m out to get him\u201d way, but in a \u201cthe timeline doesn\u2019t make sense\u201d way. The historian aspect of this \u2013 you\u2019re picking through the evidence of a man whose life is shrouded in so much mystery. How much of the detective work was a surprise to you?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I mean, there were definitely things that popped up that I was certainly not expecting. Listening to the audio recordings that [Lee\u2019s former manager] Keya Morgan provided for me in Los Angeles, the recordings of Stan yelling obscenities at his daughter or about his daughter or about his former road manager, and being paranoid and racist and homophobic. That was evidence that I worked for months to try to get access to, and I did, and it was more shocking than what I even thought I was going to hear. Although, I don\u2019t want the book to be reduced to the salacious revelations that I found, it does fill out a larger picture of who Stan was behind closed doors. A picture that even people very close to him did not really get to see. Only if you were in the inner, inner, inner circle were you really able to see Stan be that way. That kind of detective work obviously led to some revelations. And yeah, just doing the math on things sometimes led to interesting realizations. Such as when you start breaking down, okay, he said the origin of this character came from this conversation, but that conversation probably couldn\u2019t have happened based on the available evidence we have. Or, this story of how this character was created changed over and over again over the years. That stuff, it was surprising. Not so much in a \u201cI\u2019m so shocked\u201d way, but it kind of makes you realize that every story you tell in your own life, somebody could go fact check at some point, and it induces you to be a little more truthful or at least clear in the way you talk about things.<\/p>\n

The book does emphasize that Stan was really, really good at a lot of things. I\u2019m a managing editor at a website. I know how hard it is to manage talented people. I think there\u2019s something to be said about a man who could have wrangled that talent, edited that talent, and been the public face of that talent. In many ways, to me, that\u2019s enough. Rather than trying to complicate your own legacy.<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I say in the book. One of the great tragedies of Stan\u2019s life was that there were a lot of things that he was unambiguously good at, and those were general<\/a>ly not the things he chose to emphasize. He chose to put the spotlight on things that he claimed he did that there is a lot of doubt about. He emphasized that he was the great ideas man, when it\u2019s unclear whether the ideas behind these characters and stories were really his. He pitched himself as this great writer when he wasn\u2019t writing scripts. He was writing dialogue and narration, sure, but he was not doing the first pass at the drafts. At the same time, he was not saying, \u201cI was a great editor,\u201d which he was in a lot of ways, or \u201cI was great because I created the interconnected continuity of the Marvel universe.\u201d That was another thing that was pretty unambiguously him, but he didn\u2019t choose to emphasize. So yeah, it\u2019s interesting. It raises a lot of questions about human nature and the degree to which we all do that. We all have the things we do that we want to be known for that are not necessarily the things we\u2019re known for, and that can be frustrating. But when you go against the grain like that, you can at times end up getting caught in a lie. Or at least getting caught in a situation where people are doubtful about your claims about yourself.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s just too cute of a comparison, but it really feels like if you want to put it in historical context, Stan Lee is the Thomas Edison to Jack Kirby\u2019s Nikola Tesla. You have a guy whose great talent is overseeing an army of geniuses versus a guy who\u2019s more singular.<\/b><\/p>\n

You know, that\u2019s not for me to say. But there are parallels between any number of other creative or inventive processes that involve multiple people, where you have one person who\u2019s a very good salesperson and a good manager and a good public face who can get a lot of recognition, and another person who is not as good at selling themselves or at being a raconteur. And those people can fall by the wayside to a certain extent. It\u2019s harder to make pronouncements beyond that, but I see what you\u2019re saying. You can find parallels in Apple with Wozniak and Jobs, you can find parallels in Disney with Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. There\u2019s countless stories where you have these singular human presences that become iconic, and it\u2019s always more complicated than just one person was behind all of this.<\/p>\n

One thing you reference a few times was visiting the Stan Lee Archives. My movie-addled brain pictures you walking into an underground vault like Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code<\/i>. <\/b><\/p>\n

[laughs] Not quite.<\/p>\n

Can you describe what that experience was like?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a library. There\u2019s a center, in this building called the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. And it\u2019s just a reading room you go to, like any university archival reading room. It\u2019s pretty nice, it\u2019s airy, it\u2019s got sunlight. And you just request boxes, and boxes come to you. I did not have time to read all of them, because I was only there for five days. I just had to go, \u201cThis one I want, this one I don\u2019t need,\u201d and she would go scan them. And I would watch little bits of the video they had or the audio they had and ask for that to be digitized later. But it was a fascinating experience. I was astounded at how much Stan and his late wife, Joan, left to the university. It was almost 200 boxes worth of stuff donated between the early \u201880s and the early 2010s. There\u2019s a lot of material there, and I encourage anybody who\u2019s interested in Stan to go visit. It\u2019s a little bit of a pain in the butt to get there, but it\u2019s free to the public and totally fascinating.<\/p>\n

There are so many interesting revelations that seem to have come from this. So many notes about failed project. Arguably, he never created truly significant work after the \u201860s, but you can tell that he never stopped working, and never stopped shedding certain obsessions. Including the one that stuck with me: his obsessions with photo captions as a form of entertainment. That\u2019s what struck me, but in your time researching the archives, what recurring trends did you notice that jumped out as you as something that was interesting or weird?<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably actually the one, in terms of trends, at least. Throughout his career going back to the \u201850s all the way up until at least 2008, he was really obsessed with this idea of doing goofy captions to news<\/a> photos, archival photos, or works of art. He either got that off the ground or tried to in a bunch of different forms over the course of the decades, and once you\u2019re sort of looking at it all in the archive, it starts to become clear just how prevalent that was for him. It was just a medium and a mode that he found very funny, and basically no one else did. It never took off, and over and over again he pitched it and either it didn\u2019t happen or it did happen and it landed with a thud. There\u2019s not so much a trend, but I was shocked at how many home movies were there. That\u2019s not his work, but I was very surprised that Stan and Joan had donated all these VHS tapes of just camcorder footage they\u2019d taken at Christmas parties they\u2019d had as family, or just families hanging out. That was somewhat surprising to see.<\/p>\n

Seeing all of this laid out, it\u2019s all available for everybody to go see it, it makes it all the more surprising for anybody that has a knee-jerk reaction to criticism about Lee. Certain Marvel filmmakers I saw tweeting out the THR story, saying \u201cdon\u2019t read the book, and read this instead\u201d \u2013<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, really? I knew James Gunn did that. Who else did it?<\/p>\n

James Gunn is the one I saw. As someone who likes James Gunn but also understands that things aren\u2019t so simple\u2026I\u2019ll paraphrase a quote from your book. Somebody refers to Stan Lee as a good guy but not a great guy.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, [former Marvel writer and editor] Gerry Conway said that.<\/p>\n

Do you think that\u2019s because when you meet Stan Lee, as James Gunn has on numerous occasions, he is a very nice, pleasant man. He\u2019s a kind man. He has great stories. Do you think that\u2019s why people are rushing to defend him? Because he simply was a nice person?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, look, people love him. He\u2019s been great to them. He was not, to the average person that he interacted with, cruel or mean. He was a jovial and genial guy to deal with, which goes a long way. But it\u2019s not the full story. I\u2019m not saying, \u201cActually, you should hate this man.\u201d I\u2019m just saying there\u2019s more to a person\u2019s story than what the person shows you. And that, in a way, I kind of had an advantage in that I didn\u2019t get to interview Stan for this. I\u2019m sure there were things that I would have loved to know, but Stan was not the most reliable recounter of his own information either through bad memory or dissembling, but he also didn\u2019t have the opportunity to sort of put me under his spell the way he did with a lot of other people. Put under his spell in a relatively benign way. You meet him and you fell in love with him, was the case with a lot of folks. That is hard to shake, and it\u2019s hard to write an objective biography of someone you really deeply love or deeply hate, and I didn\u2019t have those feelings either way toward Stan. But people who do love him, I get it. I get why you\u2019d be upset with this book, and I was not trying to upset anybody, and that\u2019s sometimes how it goes. A lot of it had to do with his personal charm. As Gerry Conway said, when he said he\u2019s a good guy not a great guy, that was something that was echoed by a lot of folks that I spoke to who knew Stan and were really enamored of him, but were also fully aware of his shortcomings and things he did that they weren\u2019t so happy about. That was kind of the nature of knowing Stan on a deeper level, I think.<\/p>\n

The back third of True Believer<\/i> is harrowing for different reasons. This is the first time, I think, where I\u2019ve read a biography where, in the pages before the acknowledgements, somebody comes off as a genuine villain \u2013 not in a comic book way, but a person who I hope gets locked up. But then you thank Keya Morgan in those acknowledgements because you have to because he gave you so much.<\/b><\/p>\n

He gave me a lot. I\u2019m very lucky that Keya [Morgan, who faces allegations of elder abuse against Stan Lee<\/a>] was as much of an information broker as he was.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the balance there? As a journalist, it\u2019s a line you\u2019ve gotta walk every day. But it\u2019s also like, \u201cThis guy\u2019s giving me a lot of stuff that\u2019s good for my book, but I\u2019m also pretty sure he\u2019s a monster.\u201d Is that a line you had to walk?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know all the details, and there are a lot of things that are still question marks. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt. So I\u2019m not ready to call anybody a monster. But I do think there was an interesting balance that had to be struck there. Of course I\u2019m going to thank Keya Morgan. Keya Morgan was instrumental to the success of this book. Does that absolve Keya Morgan of any potential sins? No, but those two things can co-exist for me. As long as I\u2019m being a respectful professional about it, I think you can have both of those things present. Those things being acknowledgement of his help, and also acknowledgement of the accusations against him.<\/p>\n

When Lee passed away a few years ago, I said I was waiting for the biography that was going to really have the space and time to acknowledge how complicated Lee\u2019s life really was. I think your book came out at the right time, where enough time had passed for us to really think critically about this. In your mind, as his biographer, what is Stan Lee\u2019s legacy? If we acknowledge that the legacy that he painted for himself is not one that\u2019s entirely truthful, as the mascot, the figurehead of early Marvel, does that hold as much power?<\/b><\/p>\n

One thing I\u2019m trying to put across that there are these things that Marvel should be proud of him for, or thank him for, such as the concept of the shared Marvel universe. Or such as the wrangling of talent. Or even just the letters pages. The letters pages were enormously helpful. They were instrumental. People who read those comics came back month after month, week after week, because they wanted to interact with Stan and see what Stan\u2019s interactions with other fans was like. Stan still has an enormous legacy for Marvel. Without Stan, I don\u2019t think Marvel succeeds. I don\u2019t think you could have had the Marvel revolution without a Stan Lee. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m trying to say his name should be banished from the Earth \u2013\u00a0far from it. He\u2019s somebody who really was crucial for the success of Marvel and therefore for the comics medium and the superhero genre, and that\u2019s not something to sneeze at. You just have to take it also with the fact that a lot of his legacy was built on falsehoods or dubious claims or exaggerations and so on. So, just because his legacy should change doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t deserve a legacy or that he has none.<\/p>\n

Someone pointed this out to me and I\u2019m not sure I agree with it, but I wanted to bring it up to you and see if you had a reaction to it. In an age of superheroes, where superheroes are the dominant form of media<\/a>, are we just not equipped to deal with the idea of our heroes being flawed people? Marvel built its legacy on flawed heroes, but it feels like people aren\u2019t ready for this sometimes.<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, the trouble with the flawed heroes is they\u2019re still heroes. Superheroes, at least in really mainstream depictions, especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it\u2019s really hard to depict somebody with true moral ambiguity. It\u2019s always that they do things that they regret, or that other people think are bad, and then they feel bad about them and move on, and we forgive them. That\u2019s not how humans necessarily work. Part of the point of this book is that there are no superheroes. There\u2019s only us muddy individuals who shouldn\u2019t be heroes. I just don\u2019t buy the idea of setting up a human being as something infallible and someone who should be emulated in every way. I think that\u2019s a dangerous way to approach humans, because they\u2019re actually messy and they\u2019re often less than scrupulous in their morals \u2013 myself included, you, everybody. Superheroes, even if they have things they do that are not so great, they\u2019re still held up as better than you and me, and as people who save the world and who deserve our gratitude and our admirations. I just think that\u2019s often how people get away with stuff in the real world. You take a politician and say this person\u2019s like Superman, or you take an industrialist and say this person is like Tony Stark, whatever \u2013\u00a0all of a sudden, you\u2019re not paying attention when they do bad things. Or, they do bad things and, as I said, you just forgive them because you go, \u201cWell, they mean well, and they\u2019re on the side of the angels.\u201d I just think that\u2019s a dangerous way to order society and to structure celebrity. So yeah, superheroes are the dominant mode, but superheroes may seem morally ambiguous, but more often than not, they\u2019re just tortured, which is a different thing.<\/p>\n

You mention in the acknowledgements Marvel Comics: The Untold Story<\/i> as being a big reference point for you.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, great book!<\/p>\n

Amazing book. I\u2019m recommending that people read them together because they both paint a really interesting picture of the time.<\/b><\/p>\n

Thank you, that\u2019s an honor.<\/p>\n

So what other books do you recommend if people want to read more about comics? What\u2019s your reading list?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh goodness, I didn\u2019t prepare this. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story<\/i>, definitely. If you want more about Stan Lee, the first real biography of Stan that came out in 2004, called Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book<\/i> by a guy named Jordan Raphael and a sadly now-deceased journalist named Tom Spurgeon who was one of the great journalists of comics. Anything by Thomas Spurgeon is worth reading. His loss was devastating for the world of comics journalism and comics history. The Ten-Cent Plague<\/i> by David Hajdu is another good one, about the moral panic about comic books in the \u201840s and \u201850s. Stuff Said<\/i>, that\u2019s another good one if you\u2019re looking for more about Stan and Jack and Steve, about Lee, Kirby, and Ditko. There\u2019s a book called Stuff Said by John Morrow that analyzes a lot of that.\u00a0Why Comics?<\/i> by Hillary Chute. That\u2019s a big fat one that really tells you everything you need to know in a lot of ways about the concept of comic books.<\/p>\n

Last question: favorite Marvel movie of any of them.<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great question. Logan<\/i>, I\u2019d say Logan<\/i>. I love Logan<\/i>. If you mean Marvel in general as opposed to Marvel Cinematic Universe.<\/p>\n

Yeah, anything across all of the years.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, Logan<\/i>\u2019s my favorite one. I\u2019ve seen it four or five times and I cry like a baby every time I watch it. I think it\u2019s a very, very good movie.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

True Believer<\/em> is available now.<\/p>\n

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