Jesus Lizard / Scratch Acid vocalist David Yow describes himself as “ambivalent” towards baseball, so he brings relatively little bagger to his role in the upcoming “High & Outside”. If the story below, as told to Vice’s Sam Reiss, rings familiar, that’s because the film’s inspiration, Tim Johnson, was one of the more notorious resume-polishers this side of Dino Costa George O’Leary.
So there’s a Kickstarter, and it’s a baseball movie, right?
Yeah. Evald Johnson, the fella who came up with the idea and directed it, his father was–is–a guy named Tim Johnson, and he was something of a baseball player, and after he played, he was managing teams and stuff and there was some controversy at some point with Tim, and honestly, I don’t even know what that is, I’m sure I could find out but nonetheless, it’s not autobiographical but uh…It draws on it? On his baseball experiences.
Yeah, completely, and just the way baseball players deal with each other, their relationships with women and stuff like that, you know.Is it mostly on the baseball field? It seems like most of the trailer was his dad and your character, who works in a nursing home?
Well, to answer the first part of that, I don’t think most of it is on the baseball field. At first it seemed to me the occupation that it centers around–baseball–was almost secondary, like if he had been some executive or something like that. But now, since some time has gone by and I’ve learned more stuff, it is important that it’s baseball. But it’s not a sports movie.It’s more of a noir…
Yeah, and one of the things that Evald has pointed out, was that very often baseball women, like baseball groupies, or girlfriends, or wives, it seems that they take the beating. Not a physical beating, but they just take a lot of shit and continue to come back. Sort of like groupies, in a way.