Portrait of the Cartoonist as a Middle-Aged Bear
An Interview with Tim Barela
By Ron Suresha
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Tim Barela (yes, pronounced "Bear-ella") is the celebrated Bear artist and creator of the popular Leonard & Larry comic strip. The strip, which ran first in Gay Comix in 1984 and then in the Advocate, is currently featured in the national edition of Frontiers magazine and on the Web at www.frontiersweb.com. Tim has always demonstrated his fondness for Bear-type men in his artwork; he even penned a one-shot Grizzly & Ted cartoon for Bear issue #4. Tim is author of three collections of Leonard & Larry strips: Domesticity Isn't Pretty, Kurt Cobain and Mozart Are Both Dead (a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in humor), and Excerpts from the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall, which was released more than a year after this telephone interview was conducted. Tim has enjoyed and nurtured his relationship with the Bear community over time, offering his talent and artwork for various Bear causes and, every so often, especially as Larry has grown balder over the years, drawing a "Bear" cap on his character's head.
While visiting southern California in October 1999, I stopped in sunny Temecula to meet Tim. When he arrived in town to pick me up, we walked toward each other with bemused grins on our faces. Tim remarked, "You're a lot smaller than I thought you'd be!" To which I shot back, "Well, you're a lot bigger than I thought you'd be!" At which point we laughed and embraced.
Tim was gracious enough to spend the afternoon and evening with me on rather short notice. He showed me all around his colorful and historic hometown, and we had dinner at a charming bistro. Then we went back to Tim's house and he showed me his etchings - honest! When he showed me the inked-in boards for the upcoming three installments of Leonard & Larry, it felt like I was getting insider information.
The part of the evening I most treasure in my memory came next, when Tim disclosed that he'd written a children's book but had never shown it to another writer. I was delighted to hear of this project and insisted that he read me part of it. We sat down in his kitchen and Tim began to read to me the story of Mozart's mouse, who . . .
Well, I won't give away the whole marvelous story here, but before I knew it, Tim finished reading the last page and set down the manuscript. I thanked Tim for so abundantly sharing his day and talent with me, and we exchanged a warm bearhug, just as my ride arrived to pick me up.
Ron: The title of your new collection of Leonard & Larry strips is "Excerpts From the Ring Cycle in Royal Albert Hall" -
Tim: - Which is a line from one of the comic strips. I usually like to choose a punchline from the strip that's amorphous and ambiguous, that really has no direct meaning to anything, so that the reader has to go into the book and find out what I'm talking about.
Ron: How else do you enjoy making your readers work?
Tim: I will not automatically show visual humor. I've always felt that something is funnier if you don't show the pratfalls and all the action sequences. I like to leave a lot up to the reader's imagination.
Ron: Did you develop this approach over time? Originally, Leonard & Larry was more of a "gag" strip: each strip would end with a punchline. Now, of course, the content is richer and more continuous.
Tim: Well, originally the strip appeared in the Advocate just once a month. So, the punch lines had to be much more decisive than they are now. The Advocate's editorial staff told me that they did not want continuing story lines. All that changed when I went to Frontiers [in 1990] because I was doing the strip every other week and, as far as my editor there was concerned, I could do any kind of story line I wanted. Eventually it evolved into what my old editor referred to as a "soap opera" - it goes on and on and on!
By now everybody's gotten to know the characters and their situations so that I really don't have to spell things out. People already know how the characters are going to react in certain situations and all I have to do is suggest something and it's immediately funny to established, longtime readers. It's a wonderful position to be in because I can be more creative with my writing.
Ron: So having a sitcom-oriented strip was what you had in mind all along?
Tim: Oh yeah, that's my writing style. I'm a child of the late 60's and the 70's. I grew up with television and my greatest influences were the sitcoms on TV. That's why Leonard and Larry is such a sitcom-type comic strip. When Theatre Rhinoceros launched a stage production of Leonard and Larry in 1994, the playwright asked me, "How should Leonard react to Larry?" and I said to him, "Think Alice Cramden from 'The Honeymooners'!"
Ron: And he got it then?
Tim: Yeah! That is exactly how Leonard reacts to Larry: dry, deadpan. Larry flies off the handle, he's emotional, he overreacts, he does stupid things, and Leonard just stands back and watches it all. He reacts in a very calm, evenhanded - but sarcastic - manner most of the time. So I naturally relate to old TV sitcoms.
Ron: But like more contemporary sitcoms, your story lines are rather complicated, and at times pretty bizarre.
Tim: That's just the product of my own twisted, fertile imagination.
Ron: How do you create your stories? Do you work from an outline that covers a period of time, or just see how the story unfolds as you go along, or is the process something else?
Tim: All of the above. [Laughs.] I did have a recent story that is going into the new book: the story line involves Larry's gay son and his partner and their lesbian roommate, all getting together to have a child. Now, on top of of this, I had already done this thing before about Larry becoming a grandfather - twice - and so I thought, "Oh, how boring. What can I do?" So I fixed up one of the characters who's straight and single with Larry's ex-wife, and he got her pregnant. So, Natalie, the lesbian roommate, and Larry's 45-year-old ex, Sharon, were pregnant at the same time! That meant I had roughly a nine-month time window. Then, once I got toward the end of the nine months, I got terrible writer's block, and it just went on and on! I had to add layers and layers - it got so complex and so convoluted. I couldn't believe I'd written something so incredibly ridiculous - but I did. These things just organically evolve sometimes, even though you have a time frame to work with. But that story line finally did get finished, thank God. I was really glad to move on to something else. I'd been drawing Larry wearing the same shirt for about three months.
Ron: It must have been getting kinda skanky.
Tim: I hope not. It was a nice shirt.
Ron: Which brings up something else about your personal life that has made its way into the strip: your fascination for western wear?
Tim: Oh, my cowboy fetish! It's just part of my midlife crisis, yet something I've always, shall we say, appreciated. I've always, in all of my comic strips, had one character or another who has dressed like a cowboy. It's always appealed to me but, being a rather large, long-haired biker type myself, I never thought that I could get away with dressing like that. Lo and behold! My midlife crisis took over, and I thought, What the hell! I'm going to do this anyway. And it's been downhill ever since. [Laughs.]
Ron: How do events in your life influence what happens in the strip? Can readers see in the strip some reflection of your life?
Tim: Insofar as we were just talking about someone going through a midlife crisis, I guess I was anticipating that in a way, because Leonard and Larry are just a couple years older than me. God knows, I have no idea what it's actually like to become a grandfather. I'm just using my imagination.