Off'
HE WALL'
Futzie Nutzle:
A Stickman for Our
Times
BY Bil l BRAUNSTEIN
Futzie Nutzle is not the latest flavor of
the week at Baskin-Robbins Futzie
Nutzle is not the lint you find in your
navel at the end of the day Futzie
Nutzle is not an esoteric hardware
part With a name like that," he says,
when people meet me, they are disap
pointed They expect some sort of
clown that lumps out of a box ”
What people do meet is a cartoonist
whose best known work appeared on
the Letters page of Rollm# Stone from
1975 to early 1981 But Nutzle's car
toons, which can be likened to drug
addled ideas developed at 35-1/3 rpms
and drawn at 78 rpms, have been ail
over The publications that have car
ried his work range from the high and
mighty ( Esquire, Quest, Neu West,
Road and Track. Out and the Village
Voice) to the low and shaky (the Eree
Sfxtqbettt l turner, West Bay l sadist and
the Weekly Breeder).
"You're probably wondering," says
Nutzle, standing by the door of his
grey-blue woodframe house, "why I
lead an isolated life out here in
nowhere's land" a tiny town in the
Monterey Bay area of Northern Cali
fornia A very tiny town Cattle in the
fields nearby out-number people The
main street consists of a post office,
fire house and grocery store
It's a good question, considering
that Nutzle's deliriously gonzo
sketches are concerned with space-age
man facing contemporary problems
His first book of cartoons, released last
September, is even called Modern
Loafer Yet the look from Nutzle's
porch is early American barren
"This will explain " Nutzle gets into
his silver 1957 Chevy, fires it up and
drives a few minutes before stopping
He is surrounded by hills which seem
to tumble over one another in an end
less cascade of purple hues Wood and
wire fences run just outside the car,
separating pastures from the din road
A cow munches some grass "This is
beautiful—and it's just a mile from my
home As an artist, if you can t be in
spired by this, forget it."
Nutzle's inspirations have appeared
outside the pages of newspapers and
magazines, on display in such prestigi
ous places as the Museum of Modern
An and the Whitney in New York His
second book, American Nutcase, will
he out sometime next fall, and he is
currently negotiating a contract with a
Los Angeles animation studio, finaliz
>ng plans to make a feature-length
animated film
Here, most certainly, is a man on the
move, yet everything about him is
shaded in mystery, either by design or
out of an inert strangeness Nutzle, for
example, will refuse to be interviewed
if the town in which he lives is men
tioned. He also refuses to be photo
graphed Even Nutzle's agent is in on
the game: he legally changed his name
to Freeman Zygote a few years back,
cryptically citing reasons having to do
with freedom and unfertilized eggs
Then, of course, there is Nutzle's
name He is introduced in a wide vari
ety of ways; some call him Futz, or
Futzie Nutzle, or Nutty, but most
•fiends call him just Nutzle. There's no
great story or moment of truth that
lead to the name change, Nutzle ad .
The Futz and hts alter ego stick figure
(above), a Nutzle closeup (far right),
and three samples from bis latest hook,
Modem Loafer (elsewhere)
nuts. li came from a character he was
drawing for a late Sixties underground
newspaper called the Balloon His
other artist friends had pen names, so
he took one, too.
"At first 1 was uncomfortable with
the name,” he says. "It's really silly and
my an isn't always that silly But in an
other way , it's pan of the plan It gets
me further than my real name would,
and ns become son of a trademark
Then there's the question of how
much of my real personality do I want
to expose I'm not really sure, but
Nutzle takes the pressure off.”
After a morning cup of coffee strong
enough to launch a rocket (''Why
drink four or five cups to get going,"
he says, "when you can drink only
one?") Nutzle leads a visitor to the
bam in back of his house that serves as
his studio. "It's perfect back here,” he
says. "1 have nobody banging on my
door In fact, sometimes 1 wish the
phone would ring just to make some
thing happen "
A quick glance around reveals the
helter-skelter atmosphere of a child
hood that wouldn't let go. The walls
are covered with posters and paint
ings Stereo speakers hang from the
loft, usually blaring out the jazz of
Charlie Parker or John Coltrane while
Nutzle works. An HO-scale train set
complete with miniature tracks,
bushes and houses, sits in one comer.
On a nearby shelf is a lineup of about
15 Hawaiian hula-girl dolls, with nod
ding spring heads. "Great for monitor
ing earthquakes," Nutzle says. A glass
case by the trains contains an extensive
array of Hopalong Cassidy collectibles.
And overhead, a pair of gymnast rings
dangle from the ceiling.
Somewhere in this conglomeration
is an artist's table where Nutzle works.
But the room also serves as a study,
where Nutzle has collected literally
hundreds of books on cartoonists he
admires Shelves lined with names like
Otto Soglow (creator of “The Little
King"), George Herriman (“Krazy
Rat"), Charles Addams and Rube
Goldberg
In rapid succession he takes out old
New Yorkers from the war years, an
issue of American Artist dated 1948
with a Saul Steinberg drawing on the
cover and even some old EC horror
comics. The book collection is the re
sult of doggedly attending swap meets
and scouring antique shops and garage
sales.
As he turns the pages of a book, the
cartoonist becomes animated himself,
obviously enjoying the works of the
past masters. "These books on car
toons say just about everything,"
Nutzle says. “They poke fun at the rich,
at people who are successful, at the
middle class and at the poor.”'
He opens a cabinet in the room’s
center and takes out a huge box con
taining the drawings that will compose
his next book. Like a father holding a
baby, he carefully displays a few of his
latest sketches. The influence of the
older styles Nutzle studies is obvious,
like tracing one’s lineage on a family
tree, similar yet different. "I think the
older times, like the Fifties, were more
interesting than the present. For that
reason all my cartoons have funky old
buildings and huge cars, plus modern
things. I see a real contrast between
the old and new."
Describing Nutzle’s drawings is no
easy task. Their humor often relies on
puns, double and triple entendres.
He'll sketch “news anchormen” as just
that — people with anchors for heads.
A “sandwich" is drawn as two pieces of
bread with sand overflowing out the
sides. An illustration of “body build
ing" will be a structure shaped like a
body. On a good day, Nutzle will con
coct up to a dozen sketches, using his
right hand, then sign his name using
his left, to give it a child-like quality.
Oftentimes there is no joke, per se,
his purpose being to simply create an
image that stays with the reader for no
other reason than being interesting to
look at. Spare and to the point, his
sketches look like the absent-minded
doodling one might do while talking
on the phone. Nutzle himself ac
knowledges his shortcomings as an ar
tist. “It’s not what you’d call a real slick
approach,” he admits.
“The style is derived from my being
unable to sit at a table for hours and
hours. I hate that. I usually find that
the successful drawings are just about
finished before I even realize that 1 sat
down to draw them. Something will be
twirling in my brain and when it finally
starts to jell, I’ll sketch it. If the sketch
is legible and has something going for
it, I consider it a success.”
The closest Nutzle comes to using a
character is his version of Everyman, a
figure who wears a blank expression
and has three hairs coming out of his
head. That person, he says, is his fan
tasy counterpart. “Who else could it be
but me?” he asks. “But I don’t want to
get caught in the trap bf having a par
ticular character. It keeps changing. I
don't want to draw a Snoopy five mil
lion times in my life.”
If Nutzle’s Everyman is a befuddled
figure often confronted by strange cir
cumstance, perhaps it is because his
own life has been a jumble of mixed
experiences and extensive travel.
Nutzle was born Bruce Kleinsmith in
1942 in Cleveland, Ohio. His father was
killed during World War II’s Battle of
the Bulge, and his mother remarried,
giving him a step-brother and -sister.
He held different jobs as he grew,
working in a foundry, driving a truck,
cutting weeds along highways, landing
his first painting job at 17. “Painting a.
bridge silver was my first master
piece,” he says. Nutzle's first published
drawings, caricatures of teachers and
friends, appeared in his high school
paper
When he entered Ohio State Univer
sity he was still uncertain about what
career he wanted to pursue. That
changed when he saw the first real
painting he’d ever seen hanging in a
university gallery. “Watching the can
vas, the weight of the painting, and
watching it vibrate when I pushed it —
that did it. 1 was completely intrigued.
It was there I decided that I wanted to
be an artist.”
After dropping out of Ohio State, he
attended two other art schools, the
Cooper School of Art and the Cleve
land Art Institute, before deciding he
wasn't the school, type. He dropped
out of college for good and moved to
Fort Lauderdale. Returning to Ohio
for a brief fling as a commercial
artist, Nutzle next realized that he
wasn’t cut out to lead a normal 9 to 5
existence. His next stop was Lake
Tahoe, where he worked for a hotel
removing money from slot machines.
After brief stays in San Francisco and
Santa Cruz, Nutzle settled in the Mon
terey Valley area in 1975 with his wife
of six years, Laura, and their young
son, Adrian.
Which brings us back to this tinker
toy of a town, so simple and uneffac
ing, it looks like a cartoon that Nutzle
might have sketched. "Yes, I like it
here," says Nutzle as he leads a visitor
to his car. “It’s unaffected. There isn’t a
cute little coffee shop where hip
people go to hobnob with their
friends. The birds don’t have Tupper
ware parties in the garden. It’s the lack
of distractions that give me my inspira
tion."
Just the spot for a cartoonist to
spend the rest of his days, right? “No,"
says Nutzle, with part of that inert
strangeness resurfacing. “I’ll only stay
here about five more years." A myste
rious grin crosses his face. “After that
I’ll move even further away from civ
ilization."