#wayne shellabarger

[deadpresidents]

Are there any good books you've read on the various Vice Presidents(specifically Biden)?

For Biden, I can’t give a high enough recommendation to Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption (BOOK | KINDLE) by Jules Witcover. It’s a fantastic look at Biden’s tragic yet inspirational life, most of which has been spent in the service of others. Here’s my review of it from when it was released.

Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes: The Way to the White House (BOOK | KINDLE) is a book about the 1988 Presidential election and a half-dozen of the top candidates during the cycle, but it’s also a very revealing look at Biden, and probably more so when it comes to his personal life than his unsuccessful candidacy for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination. As I warn everyone when recommending What It Takes, you better pack a lunch if you decide to read it because it’s a massive book (over 1,000 pages) and Cramer’s style isn’t for everybody. However, it’s also the best book ever written about Presidential campaigns.

Some other recommendations for books about the Vice Presidents or institution of the Vice Presidency include two more titles from Jules Witcover, who is probably the foremost Vice Presidential historian (and a damn good political journalist and Presidential historian, as well). Witcover’s older book is Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency, written during the Vice Presidency of the infamous Dan Quayle who gave Witcover plenty of material. Witcover’s more recent book is The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power (BOOK | KINDLE), released in 2014 and including biographical sketches on VP from John Adams to Joe Biden.

Another more recent book is Joel K. Goldstein’s The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden (BOOK | KINDLE), which focuses on the Vice Presidency since it finally became a truly influential position beginning with Walter Mondale in the Carter Administration. The modern Vice Presidency that we are familiar with today and seems to gain more power and influence with each new Administration would be unrecognizable to nearly every Vice President in American history who served prior to the 1970s.

Veeps: Profiles In Insignificance: The American Vice Presidential Pantheon from Adams to Cheney written by Bill Kelter and illustrated by Wayne Shellabarger is an extremely entertaining and, yes, fun book about our Vice Presidents -- many of whom have been super weird dudes. It features individual profiles on the first 46 Vice Presidents and a handful of some of the more memorable would-be Vice Presidents who were on the wrong side of the Electoral College tally after Election Day. If you’re looking for something really fun to read and packed full of fascinating, odd, and all-around surprising facts about VPs, this is the book to get.

One last recommendation is actually a free one that you can check out online. Since one of the Vice President’s few Constitutional roles is as President of the Senate, the United States Senate has a GREAT resource on the institution of the Vice Presidency along with information on the Vice Presidential Bust Collection and in-depth individual biographical profiles on every Vice President in U.S. history. And, like I said, the best part of it is that it’s free on the U.S. Senate’s website along with a ton of other awesome historical resources put together and made available by the Senate Historical Office. Definitely take some time to check that site out.

[movieposteroftheday]

2018 US one sheet for PIONEERS: FIRST WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Designer: Bret Wood; Illustrator: Wayne Shellabarger

Poster source: Kino Lorber 

This essential collection of new 4K and 2K restorations, produced in association with the Library of Congress, shows how women directors shaped the language of early cinema. Includes work by Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché, and Zora Neale Hurston. Selections from the forthcoming box set screen July 20-26 at BAMcinématek in Brooklyn NY and July 27-29 at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles.

[brettwarnock]

VEEPS: A long journey comes to a close.

Join me in a fond farewell of a project that has been near & dear to my heart--and a bit of a ball & chain to--for eight long years. I’m speaking of course about VEEPS: Profiles in Insignificance, the movie that i made with three terrific friends and righteous cast & crew.

In October of 2007 an old friend from college, Mike Lay, called me out of the blue, who, having worked in commercial film work for twenty years asked about the feasibility of making a film adaptation on any of the Top Shelf comic book properties that i’d published. I told him a straight-up adaption would be difficult, at best, for a variety of reasons. It’s just not quite that simple.

After stewing on it for a few days however, i thought perhaps we could do a Christopher Guest-influenced faux documentary, based on the lives of real-life vice presidential historians, authors Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger, who wrote and illustrated the Top Shelf book also called Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance.

Bill and myself worked up a rough story treatment and Mike got on board. I corralled a posse of friends to round out the cast, Mike called in some chits and cobbled together a crew, and we decided to make a movie. Principle production was nine straight days, followed up by five days on location at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Post-production was a much slower process. Years, in fact. But the movie got made. We premiered it at the Portland Film Fest two years ago, and now we have digital distribution through Vimeo.

The opportunity to make this movie has been a dream come true, and i’m ferociously proud of it. Cross one more thing off the bucket list, right? (Never say never, but i don’t imagine a filmmaking career in my future.)

Watch the trailer.

If you didn’t make it to our premier at Portland Film Fest two years ago, now is your chance. (Or, if you saw it then and loved it so much you want to watch it again, that’s cool too!) We’re having one last, pre-election encore screening tomorrow night at the Laurelhurst Theater.

Thursday, November 3rd, 9:00 p.m. Laurelhurst Theater, Portland, OR

And if you can’t make it out to the show, you can still buy/rent the film on the Vimeo weblink.

***************************

Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance is the story of Bill and Wayne — two middle-aged men in search of their American dream, their lives at a disappointing stall. They see a shot at a mid-life redemption and grab it. They follow the Vice Presidents as others follow athletes or rock stars.

For years they’ve plied their curious obsession alone, singing the praises of men who won’t even sing their own. Eager and inspired, they hit the road followed by a film crew eager to chronicle this offbeat but quintessentially American narrative: A story of friendship and the shared dreams and passions of a lifetime, it’s also a story that takes a turn neither Bill and Wayne nor their camera toting biographers could possibly foresee.

[deadpresidents]

REVIEW: "Veeps" by Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger

Veeps: Profiles In Insignificance By Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger Hardcover.  287 pages. Top Shelf Productions.  2008.

After all of these years of reading about Presidents, I’ve finally, finally, finally found a book about the Vice Presidents of the United States.  You’d be surprised how difficult it is to find a book about all of the Vice Presidents.  Not very many have ever been written, and it’s probably because it’s hard to write about guys like Daniel D. Tompkins, William Almon Wheeler, Levi Parsons Morton, and James Schoolcraft Sherman.  Veeps: Profiles In Insignificance (Top Shelf Productions, 2008) is a hilarious, informative look at the Vice Presidents – an unusual group of men who have had a star-crossed history that doesn’t quite match up with that of their Presidential counterparts.  In Veeps, Bill Kelter writes about these unusual leaders and Wayne Shellabarger illustrates the history and shows us what some of these little-known men looked like.  It’s a creative, original, really cool book and I enjoyed reading it.  Our Vice Presidents have included murderers (Aaron Burr), drunks, senile old men, criminals, and so many VPs who have died in office, quit, or assumed the Presidency that the Vice Presidency has been actually been vacant for over THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS of this nation’s history. The most fascinating (and frightening) aspect of Veeps is what a collection of weirdos we’ve elected to the second highest office in the land throughout our history.  Not only that, but most of them have been relegated to the background and have had absolutely no power, no influence, and even no relationship with the President that they served along.  Veeps covers 46 Vice Presidents (the book was published before the election of Joe Biden as Vice President #47) and Kelter and Shellabarger shows us that only about four of them had any serious influence (Garret A. Hobart, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, and Dick Cheney). Now, a scholarly study of the Vice Presidency and Vice Presidents would probably not be everyone’s cup of tea, so don’t worry, Veeps is not that.  It is certainly informative and I definitely learned a lot by reading Veeps, but this is a funny book.  The subject matter is humorous because there’s just something funny about the Vice Presidency, and it helps that we’ve had so many goofy Vice Presidents (Spiro Agnew, anybody?).  Bill Kelter is also a hilarious writer and Wayne Shellabarger adds to the humor of Veeps with his great art.  And don’t neglect to check out the index, which might be the greatest index in the history of books. Veeps is a great read.  I loved it, and couldn’t put it down until it was finished.  It’s also a great-looking book, with fantastic art and a sweet design.  I highly recommend Veeps: Profiles In Insignificance by Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger, which is available now.  You can order the cool-looking book or download it for your Kindle now.  Also, check out Kelter and Shellabarger's companion website, www.veeps.us.