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Interview with The Sucklord
INTRODUCTION I first met Morgan Phillips, AKA Sucklord, AKA Vectar, the day the last Star Wars movie came out. He and Bill McMullen (who designed the Shuttlemax toy for Kidrobot) were heading up to the Ziegfield theater here in New York City in full costume to entertain people waiting in line. Since then, Morgan has become one of the most prolific and original artists in designer toy movement. Producing what seems like an unending stream of hand-made art toys, music, fine art, and serialzed short films found on Suckadelic.com and The Original Villain Network, Morgan's brilliant appropriation of supervillains, Star Wars characters, and mass culture have been a continual inspiration for me. Morgan should be an inspiration for anyone wanting to make their own art, their own way, and are willing to work incredibly hard to do it. -- Paul Budnitz
THE INTERVIEW Paul: I remember you created this CD of Star Wars breakbeats several years ago, and Sucklord was out when the last Star Wars opened in NYC, I think at the Zeigfeld. That’s the first time I met you. How did Sucklord come about? Morgan: When I started my art crusade in earnest in 1997, I wanted an avatar to represent me as I pushed my Star Wars Breakbeats remix record. . So I just revisited my childhood Boba Fett racket and added hip hop elements to the gear. Over the next eight years he would continue to evolve into some kind of blinged-out Bounty Hunter Sith Lord that makes action figures. I made my first bootleg toy based on this character. This is when he started to become something more than just a Boba Fett imitation. By this time I was known. I went to all the Comicons and all the Star Wars Celebrations. I was in magazines, documentaries, and all over the web. I had fans. I was no longer just a guy in a cool Boba Fett costume. I was the Sucklord. But now he has to die. Just like I did in 1985, I have to put Star Wars down and grow. Paul: The first Sucklord toy, which has been sitting unopened over my desk for the last 3 years, came broken on purpose, which I thought was totally brilliant. That was one of the most original ideas I remember in this whole toy culture we are part of.
Morgan: Well thank you. That toy, the Sucklord 66, was created out of pure anger and frustration at my failure to find a way to make a proper vinyl toy. The movement was well underway and I was so pissed that I couldn't afford to produce something real!
Another Bitch You Didn't Get to Fuck, Purple Rain Edition, 2007 My answer was to just make a shitty "fuck you" figure that went against everything nice and artsy and well-made. I did them all myself using a really bad mold and cheap resins and an almost empty can of Krylon. All the materials I used were stolen from my job. I actually made the figures while I was still on the clock. The point was to be as punk rock as possible about the process. I exercised zero quality control and kept even the most busted and distorted pieces. That's why some of them came broken. The shittyness was more of an organic shittyness that I just let happen. This was actually when I created the name SUCKLORD. I really thought I was going off the edge. If you had told me that I would be creating 20 plus more characters in this same style over the next 3 years, I would have thought you were fucking with me. Paul: Yeah, well at least you warned people on the packaging that satisfaction is not guaranteed. It is like everything you do is upside down and people are digging it. Morgan: Not everybody digs it. I have my critics.
Cosmo-Douche: Green Envy and Red Revenge, 2008 Paul: What do your critics say? Morgan: Unoriginal, poor quality, copyright infringement, derivative, I don't get it, George Lucas is gonna sue you, your girlfriend is ugly, you can't rap, you pee in jars, you're a fake artist... Paul: How do you feel about it? Morgan: Well I guess it goes with the territory. Anyone who sticks their head up and creates something is bound to have a rock thrown at him. Of course I would prefer universal praise, but I also believe that if you don't have haters you're doing something wrong. Paul: Your work is totally original, both the video and the toys. To me there's an enormous difference between nostalgia, which is basically just taking something from the past and forcing us to remember some old useless emotion about it; and appropriation, which is when you borrow something from the past, mess with it, and make something that is totally original and totally different. To me you're a master of appropriation. Morgan: Yeah, well you're smart and have good taste, that can't be said about everyone out there. People have different opinions. I really don't care when people give me grief. I'm sure the things they like wouldn't appeal to me either. Paul: What’s the Gay Empire about?
Gay Empire, 2006 Morgan: “Hmm, I want to make a Storm-trooper figure, how can I fuck with it? Change the color? What would be cool? Green? Black? How about pink? A pink Storm-trooper? Hmmmm. Maybe he's gay?” "Hey! I'm a big political artist fighting for social justice and initiating a militant Gay Task Force! Buy my toy!!!" Paul: So now you're creating the Original Villain Network online, which is all these short movies of these totally fucked up supervillains and their lives. To me they don't have a Star Wars vibe, I think it's more Justice League of America in some weird alternative universe. Morgan: Well, to me the Original Villains are totally unique. Paul: Who are the characters and where did your inspiration come from?
Morgan: Vectar the Intolerable, The Madman. A drug addled gadget head who is his own worst enemy and wants to destroy Sucklord for some reason. The Crystal Pharaoh. The musical genius, addicted to the life of luxury. Baron Darkowl. The magician, steeped in the occult and is prone to quests for arcane knowledge. Spooky Booty. Vectar's lazy, bitchy, nagging, haunted wife. Crimson Suicide. A stripper-succubus who we will be seeing a lot more of soon. Mary Paper$. A gangster bitch with expensive tastes who will also get more screen-time soon. Then there are some other characters that are more on the periphery that may get bigger parts like Rusty Grillz, Goldy Fox, Boss Chan, Geech, Chinatown warrior. Even the Galactic Jerkbag will have a role. Paul: They all sound like pieces of you. Are there a lot of people watching your stuff and are you selling more toys? Morgan: It's starting to work, but there is so much shit out there, videos and Toy-wise. It takes a lot to hold people's attention. While I am selling more toys than ever and getting a fair amount of views on certain videos, the whole following can still be safely described as a cult. Paul: I totally love the low-techyness of the whole thing. It has this kind of retro feel without being retro at all. Morgan: Thanks. It has to be low-tech 'cuz it's done on a zero-budget. I'm glad that has an appeal, or we'd be fucked. Paul: Where would you like to see the videos go? Do you want to go mainstream? Morgan: Yeah, I have a feature film or HBO series in mind with a pretty crazy future New York scenario. But not for a few years. I want to keep it indie, develop it and home-grow the audience for now. Paul: Back to your early work for a sec. Tell me about what you were thinking when you designed the Sucklord light saber, and when you nailed Boba Fett to a X-wing fighter.
Sucklord's LV Light Saber, 2005 Morgan: Just following the STAR WARS + anything other iconic imagery = COOL formula. The Louis Vuitton Saber came from that place of "we are Star Wars Hip-Hop guys, we need props and costumes that demonstrate that." The Crucified Fett came out of my collaboration with JK5 (interviewer’s note -- JK5 created the Flowbots toys with Kidrobot). He let me go all out with his toy collection and do what ever I wanted to it. I personally don't have any Catholicism in my background, but he does and he's a great appropriator. I just took a page from his book and tried to apply his drawing approach to sculpture. Paul: Has anyone gotten pissed off about that? Morgan: No. Paul: Where did you grow up? Morgan: Greenwich Village in the 70s and 80s. It kicked fuckin’ ass. New York City was real back then. Crazy shit was going on all over the place, it was wild and dangerous and dirty. There were sex clubs. It was less expensive. You could drink and smoke dope on the street. There weren't corny fratboy douchebags in all the bars. There were squats and street life.
Morgan as Sucklord, 1981 Now I get the feeling I'm living in a hollowed-out shell of a city. I miss those bad old days. Paul: I grew up in Berkeley in the 1970s and 80s, home of a zillion flakey hippies and LSD. To all of us out west, NYC sounded like a war zone. We only knew about New York from watching Good Times and Taxi on TV. What kind of things were you doing as a teenager? When did you start making art & music? Morgan: Well, I guess certain parts of the city were pretty fucked up. I didn't really venture to deep into those places, but even the Village was a lot more wild. I just did normal things, like buy dime-bags in Washington square park and smoke them on stoops (when it wasn't oregano). I wasn't too wild. We did like to go up to Times Square and go to those titty-feel spots where you could pay five bucks to stick your finger up a stripper's ass. I never wrote graffiti, I was too chicken-shit. I was really into acid though, we used to trip out in the street at night. I also had a bunch of Lava lamps and black light paintings. You were looking to NY out there in hippieland, meanwhile I was wishing I was living in the sixties! Paul: So funny. Morgan: I always thought of myself as an artist. It was the one area in life that I never felt inhibited. My parents always encouraged me and bought me shit, like movie cameras and computers. (I had an Atari 400. You couldn't do shit with it.) My first attempt at making a toy was in 1978. I had the Greedo figure and I mushed him into a bar of soap to make an imprint, like a mold. then I melted a green crayon on the radiator and poured the wax into the mold. It didn't work, but I've had that bug up my ass ever since. I always wonder what that little kid would think if he could have seen where his little attempt finally lead him. Oh, yeah he's still me, and he's fuckin' psyched... Paul: One day I came down to your studio in Chinatown, it was in a building where I think i once had a laser printer fixed by a bunch of orthodox Jews and Chinese guys who were working together. I mention this just to add color for any of our readers who don't have the privilege of living in New York City.
Morgan's Studio, Chrystie Street, 2008 Morgan: Yeah that place was cool. ESPO was in that building too. That was a great studio. Too bad I got kicked out. They thought my crafts were too toxic, I think... Paul: Anyway, you were pouring all these molds and making the toys yourself. I don't know if everyone realizes that you are (mostly) your own production line. I think you are one of the few toy artists that do that. Morgan: Well I didn't have a choice. I couldn't get a deal or raise the money to do a proper vinyl figure, so I turned to the hands-on on approach 'cuz that was the only option if I wanted to have stuff out in the store.
Molds and other apperatus of production, 2008 Paul: How did you figure out how to do that? Morgan: My pal Charlie Becker was deep into the mold making thing back since 2001, I think. He got me started on learning how to cast things and I just started doing it on my own. Through basic trial and error I figured out a system that works for me and I have been refining it ever since. I finally put out a piece of real vinyl last year. I love it and I will probably make another one, but I kind of get more satisfaction doing the hand made shit. I have been doing handmade toys since 1978 in some form, so it works for me. As far as the package, I just riff off of that old Kenner vibe from when I was a kid. It's the most straightforward way to display a figure of that size and it just further conveys the frame of reference I'm working in Paul: I noticed the pirate record store on your videos... it's sort of the Brady Bunch house where the Villains all live and work. Is that place real?
Pirate Recordings, Chinatown NYC Morgan: Yeah that's a real place down in the bowels of east chinatown that is still there. I just stumbled upon it one day and thought that it was the perfect exterior shot for the villains' headquarters. It's like a bootleg DVD place. I can't believe they had the nerve to give their business such an obvious name. Actually it's never open, so I have no idea what they really do in there. Paul: Too bad you got kicked out of the building on Broadway, I didn't realize you even could get kicked out of a building in Chinatown! So much crazy shit goes on in those little apartments above the restaurants & tourist shops. Where is your studio now? Morgan: I moved to an almost identical spot in the Chrystie Street building. Lots of artists in there. Kid America has his spot there.
Sucklord 600, Silver Edition, 2007 Paul: The ad you made for the Sucklord Vinyl Toy is totally brilliant, it feels like a 6-million-dollar-man action figure ad from the 70's gone to Japan and back and then gone to hell. Are you working on anything new? Morgan: Well thank you again, you're too kind. That's a good read by the way. I was going for that bad Japanese sci-fi vibe. I am actually working on new Original Villain Videos. After we finish the current series, the Darkowl Chronicles, we are gonna move on to another mini- series called As The World Burns. That's a Supervillain soap opera, kind of an ensemble piece that is all about cheating and double crossing with terrible acting and it's played totally straight. When that's finished, probably in the spring we are gonna launch the epic Gangster series called Toy Lords of Chinatown. That tells the story about the Sucklord and his war with Vectar over the Bootleg toy rackets. I shot a bunch of stuff for that in places like Coney Island and the Chinatown arcade. It will probably be like 14 episodes and go 'til the end of 2008. Big project. Paul: Tell me about the band you play in. Morgan: Si*Se'. It's a six piece latin electronic band that started in 1999. The lead singer is Carol C. She's a pretty well known Downtown DJ who made her name spinning Drum and Bass in the late 90s. The producer is none other than the Supervillain The Crystal Pharaoh, but he goes by the name U.F.Low in this project.
On Stage with Si*Se', 2007 I wouldn't really call it MY band. It's their band and I play the bass in it. It has absolutely nothing to do with Suckadelic. Sometimes I feel a little out of place playing such nice, accessible music. But it's been great for the most part. We have 2 albums out. The first one was on Luakabop, David Byrne's old label. Paul: How'd you meet Bill McMullen? I met you guys together at about the same time so I sort of associate the two of you somehow. (Interviewer’s note: Bill created the Shuttlemax toy for Kidrobot, and is generally a brilliant artist of various mediums.) Morgan: 1999. I heard a rumor that there are these crazy Kiss Stormtrooper paintings in this little shop called GOTO in Little Italy. I go to check them out and he was there. It was his store with Tony Chan and they were his paintings. He had my Star Wars Breakbeats CD and we just got our nerd on over Star Wars. I used to go in there all the time and fuck around. We just stayed friends. Paul: You helped JK5 to build that amazing exhibition with him at ALIFE a few years ago, and I think that was the first time I saw one of your toys, the ones you made for the exhibition. I had one, and I lost it somehow and I'm totally sad about it now.
Alife exhibition with JK5, 2003 Morgan: I still have a few of those toys. Ino, it was called. They were cool. We made 50 and each one was different. That whole experience working with Ari (JK5) was fucking mind expanding. I was really into his book Subcon before I met him, and getting a chance to try and use his drawing language in a sculptural manner was endlessly enjoyable. I would go up to his parent's house in North White Plains and stay up there for like 4 or 5 days at a time over a period of 4 months and do nothing but smoke weed, drink beer and make art for 14 hours a day. It was so much fun. It was the most immersive art experience I ever had. Plus, I really got a lot out of playing in his mind. A lot of my work at the time was very literal and representative. Working with him I got more into subconscious, free association approach, which was really liberating. I made like 12 large-scale foam sculptures of his characters, plus a few hundred kit-bashed action figures and 6 giant shrines made of all kinds of toys, art supplies, and religious knick-knacks. Too bad we didn't get rich off of it. I would love to keep going on that trip... Paul: You are just producing a ton of stuff in a very short period of time. What are your work habits like? Do you get up at 8:00 AM each day, clock in on the supervillain time clock, and clock out at 6PM? Morgan: I wonder how all of this stuff keeps happening all the time myself. I don't ever stop doing it I guess. I like to get up at 10ish and have an hour to myself to wake up and drink coffee. Then I'm off and I grind on whatever is on the front burner anywhere from midnight to 4 am. I don't do weekends. I have a 7 day work week. I don't go out, or socialize that much. When I'm hanging out with my friends, we are working on something. We rarely just sit around and bullshit. It's all work. I guess I'm kind of obsessed. I cut a lot of corners and I'm also almost running on empty cash-wise. I work Freelance jobs too. I do model making, I work in a shop in Brooklyn that makes props for commercials. I work for a company in Queens doing Showroom Display. With them I work setting up the Hasbro showroom for Toy Fair. I have a few other gigs that I do. It's a constant struggle to find time to make money and develop this art shit. Sometimes I feel so stretched thin... Paul: This interview is ruling. Morgan: Thanx. These have been good questions. I enjoyed it. Are you gonna use all of it? Paul: Yes.
You can see and buy Morgan's work at Suckadelic.com and on the Original Villain Network. Suckadelic products also available at Kidrobot. |
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The Crystal Pharaoh (making those night moves).
Mary Paper$, "Fuck you, Pay me."
