At Home with Roz Chast

I think style is a combination of

how you sort of natural draw in a way,

but also bits and pieces of like shiny things

that you take from other people.

Like I remember being a kid, I was like in 1st grade.

I drew feet like this.

And there was a girl in my class

who learned to draw feet like that.

I think of that a lot.

Somebody does something in a way that you've

never thought of before, and you can learn from that.

So, something like that.

I'm Roz Chast, I'm a cartoonist for the New Yorker.

There's my desk.

There's paper.

There's some junk in folders.

Here's filing cabinets.

We moved up here in 1990.

Just before my daughter was born.

From Park Slope.

I think they look kind of pretty.

This is Jackie.

And this is The Grey.

She plucks.

She even says, Don't pluck.

But she plucks.

She's plucked for years, taking to her to vet.

She just does.

She's a happy camper, but she just

gets very nervous about things.

I know how that feels, I know.

I know, it's okay.

But she's a good talker, she's very verbal.

Hey Elie, what's that?

[Elie] That's water.

That's right.

All right, these are psanky eggs.

Where you draw with the wax the dye is not gonna go,

so you sort of have to think in the negative a little bit,

which comes very easily to me.

It's the traditional pysanky process

with untraditional designs I guess.

I like experimenting with color.

Oh this is based on a can of pie filling.

The cans, this is a collection I've had for a while.

And the rule is, although I have a couple of exceptions,

people have occasionally given

me a can which breaks my rule.

Which is the cans have to be in the grocery store now.

This is really lovely.

All day breakfast, mm-mm.

It really takes guts to like put

canned food in like brown label.

I love the colors and they really do lend themselves

to the eggs a little bit as a design motif.

I was really into origami for a while.

(laughs)

I like crafts, I like crafts a lot.

(phone ringing)

Hello?

I'm coming at noon, and who am I going--

Okay.

Okay, I'll be there around noon.

All right, I'll see you.

Okay, take care, bye.

All right, sometimes it really bothers me

the way interesting things happen,

and then if you don't keep track of them in some way,

if you don't write them down, you forget them.

I think sometimes I'm okay with that,

and sometimes it fills me with this real dread and panic.

One way to keep that feeling from really

becoming overwhelming is to write stuff down.

I mean some things seem really awful at the time,

but then in retrospect they might be funny.

I submit weekly batches.

It's a way for me to keep a little bit of a notebook

of things, so they don't just all disappear.

I had tons and tons and tons of notes.

My parents, you know we were all very complicit

in this kind of denial about what was happening,

because it's such a difficult thing to talk about.

They were really special.

I mean they were really special,

and they drove me absolutely bananas.

But I mean, who doesn't have that with their parents, right?

That's just the sort of, the way it is, I think.

This rug is going to be of my father eating breakfast,

one of his breakfasts that would go on for hours.

And it's my dad, it's my dad.

And I guess it's a way of remembering him, too.

What what, what, back, back to the camera?

Bye!