GRAHAM ROUMIEU Bigfoot
INTERVIEW BY DOUG PERKUL | permalink | posted January 13, 2009

So, you thought you had a personal affinity towards Bigfoot? Wait till you meet author Graham Roumieu.

First of all, your books are hilarious. You’ve written three on Bigfoot—what makes him such a great subject?
Because he is familiar to pretty much everyone –from those who have given him maybe a moment’s thought, to those who obsess over him and collect figurines, to those who might claim to have been impregnated by him—he has touched us all, yet remains a complete mystery. A mystery, at least in part due to having been passed over as a primary character until I brought him in out of the rain, plied him with booze and then put a mic and some pens and paper in front of him.  

Were you cracking yourself up as you wrote these books? Some seriously absurd shit goes on.
I think I was almost gagging with laughter when I drew the spread “The Truth” in Bigfoot: I Not Dead. I’m still trying to find a way to have the Sex Rock mass produced and sold through The Shopping Network. Making it sturdy enough, finding a real-life celebrity spokesperson to do a testimonial and making the product dishwasher safe have been the biggest obstacles to date.

You present Bigfoot as a philosopher of sorts—is there wisdom to be found in between these pages? Can we learn from those that may not even exist?
Bigfoot is a simple creature dealing with complicated life issues that are common to most of us (bad relationships, money woes, addictions to eating from garbage cans). By virtue of his simplicity he is able to distill down and address in elegantly crude ways (violence).
Does this make him one of the great philosophers of our time?  Are you willing to take the chance of having Bigfoot beat you to death in your sleep if you think he isn’t?  
Good. So we are all in agreement then. Bigfoot is the greatest thinker of our time.  

What is next from you? You’ve done Bigfoot, cats and squirrels—could a graphic novel on the Jackalope be in the works?
Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I can’t do my Jackalopes book because everyone is going to think you gave me the idea.  Besides that, I’m working on some other books that’ll hopefully be out soon. 101 Ways To Kill Your Boss was just released in North America, so maybe pick that up, give a copy to your employer and see if you still have a job a couple of minutes after.

Visit www.roumieu.com