“Everything is visible from the window of the Night Owl, in the northeast, near the terminus, the view extends in an endless series of empty lots, gone to seed with bargain-bin car dealerships and abandoned flavoring factories. The river seeps through the nude, rotting buildings (p94).”

All things failing, destroyed, or set for destruction fall into the editorial scope of Criminal Class Press. The above story, as printed in Criminal Class Review Vol. 3 No. 1 exemplifies this mission by creating a character of the midnight landscape. But you’ll notice that despite the hurried, unfiltered implications of a bar brawl, gutter soaked story, the passage above is skillfully crafted and hauntingly alluring. Kevin Whiteley, editor of the review, wants it this way. He wants a “gritty story with a sharp edge that he can ‘see’.” Even among the drunk and downtrodden, there’s room for precision.

This evident passion and determination to do things right, honestly, surprised me. The name Criminal Class Press, coupled with an invite for stories “so unbelievably crass and vindictive that no one else could bear to publish them” implies a certain level of immaturity. I base this on my history with dick-wagging stories, often set in bars, among criminals, where “intense” means shock-value and craft takes a backseat to the superficial and grotesque. But CCP is different. They are serious about creating a respected genre of the “scumbag’s voice.”

First, I received not just a review issue of their journal, but an entire press-kit. This is not to say that all publishers should send us full press-kits, but with my preconceived notions (above) already coloring my perception, the very professional, very informative collection of CCP materials demanded I approach with fair optimism. I opened the package with a smile.

Second, Whiteley’s interview at What to Wear During an Orange Alert (included in the press kit) presents a man truly living his material. He doesn’t simply produce the CCR image, he is a product of the CCR image. This is important when cultivating a reputation for “scumbag” literature. Traditionally, writing down-and-out fiction is a bit of a pissing contest, a proving ground for authors to out been-there-done-that each other. There is almost an understood biographical aspect to these dirty tales, even though, as readers, we know that Scott Palmer probably didn’t initiate a high speed cop chase in October 2000 (“Jail”), that M. L. Harrold probably wasn’t told to swallow semen because it was a “present” (“All Good Girls Get Presents”), or that Brian Murphy probably was never naked and handcuffed to a metal bench in the Custom’s holding area at Houston International Airport (“Fred the Fed”). But the intimacy and confidence of the language, paired with the unflinching presentation of taboo subjects invites such a blurred line between author and stories. And including pieces by Stephen Elliott and Jim Goad, both noted memoirists, doesn’t discourage that melding of personalities.

Third, CCR lets the content speak for their claims, opting for a fairly traditional layout and design. The Review doesn’t attempt to mask poor content with radical visuals. And likewise, it doesn’t package faulty material with slick presentation. In fact, aside from the courier typeface and the six interior illustrations, CCR is deceptively straightforward.

As a bonus, CCR seems open to new writers. Previously unpublished writers account for two of the nineteen contributions, one of which easily ranks among the top five pieces of the issue. Rik Villanueva’s “The Ties that Bind,” while perhaps too derivative of early Chuck Palahniuk work, still stands as a brilliant example of what Criminal Class Press is all about. When this guy publishes a novel, I’ll be one of the first in line to buy.

The respect Criminal Class Press has for the scumbag form is refreshing. Check out an issue or two. Buy a t-shirt.  Submit your own “emotionally impaired, hard hearted, and vengeful-minded.”

From the Criminal Class Press site:

It is foreseen that CCP will be stereo-typed as a “pirate’s” publication or a “home for slackers’stories”. Ney, for this journal does not promote stupidity or facilitate forms of the feeble-minded. The stories solicited and submitted will possess class, wit, and swarth. It depicts the dramatic, downtrodden, and delusional details of the Criminal Class Elite. The quality of stories offered are the experiences of individuals that become unforgettable songs of the scene.

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Press homepage: Criminal Class Press

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Direct from the press

“The day I went insane wasn’t any different than any other day. First, I had to decide who to love and who to lock out.”

So begins, EGG, a thirteen minute free fall bound only by the disjointed, non-linear traditions of bizarro storytelling. Lane, the unreliable narrator/protagonist threads together the film with a mix of flashbacks and flash-forwards upon a seizing foundation in order to understand the nature of generational influence. Who deserves to raise a boy, himself or his father?

The film pivots around a physical egg, given to a young Lane shortly after running away from home. The egg represents a means of control over the momentum of his life. Think of a grade school egg care project in which students must not only prove their ability to care for something, but must understand how difficult that level of responsibility can be. For Lane, the moment he accepts the egg is the moment his life begins to spiral into confusion and apparent incoherence. Puberty, in a sense. The insanity noted in this review’s opening line may very well be a version of adulthood, and that’s the crux of EGG; an attempt to visually capture the moment of transition from childhood to adulthood.

It takes effort for the uninitiated to adopt the logic of bizarro, which by definition means the abandonment of conventional logic. Any fan of early David Lynch and the weirder Hitchcock movies will immediately connect with the strained film making rationale used to translate Jeremy C. Shipp’s screenplay. And any fan of Jeremy C. Shipp will know that no other mode would suffice.

IN THE WORDS of Jayson Densman, director:

A BIT OF HISTORY: The best part of prospecting story material for the visual medium is when something takes you by surprise. That’s what happened with Jeremy C. Shipp’s ‘EGG’. I had become friends with Jeremy on MySpace and bought his first novel, Vacation. The book was something I hadn’t experienced in a while. It was weird, freshly inventive and definitely a break from the standard and predictable formulas the world throws at us on a consistent basis. What appealed to me was the chaos and realizing that structure wasn’t all that important. The book is like a journal of loosely-related, uneasy dreams, stitched together and fashioned to give Freud himself a case of the willies. All paths led to strange new territories of philosophy and observation. Being a fan of filmmakers like Cronenberg, Lynch, early DePalma and Hitchcock, I began to seriously entertain the idea of making a short from one of the chapters of Vacation. Instead, I asked Jeremy if he had any scripts lying around he wasn’t using. He said no….but he’d be happy to write one! I informed him I had some locations we could use (a creepy, abandoned feed mill and a mansion built in the early 1900’s) and maybe something ten to twelve pages would be feasible for a no-budget project. Shortly thereafter, a script called EGG was in my email. I read and I smiled. All of the elements of Vacation’s style were there in brilliant color and the atmosphere was delicious and unnerving.

THE MELTING POT: Well-written scripts should tell a filmmaker how to build a movie and, at best, should be a blueprint with plenty of room for actor transposition and exploration. EGG, from page one, was so rich in texture and atmospheric coloring that it became clear to me I’d need to follow this thing as closely as possible. The omission of anything in this script would be removing a piece of the puzzle. My style of shooting and editing comes from a part of me that sees the world like a child might see it. Some things that are truly frightening to most adults—like mature issues and secret motivations—are hidden from most children. Until they are exposed. Certain tensions can be created on set and in editing by not necessarily looking closer at the words, but by physically giving them a chance to breathe a bit. Jeremy left room for us to develop the characters and at the same time provide structure in chaos. The very idea that Egg has the possibility of meaning different things to different people makes the story a bit more universal in depth. I truly hate a movie that feels the need to explain itself in the narrative as it moves along, like audiences are not smart enough to figure it out. Jeremy’s style is a wrangling of madness that doesn’t feel the need to explain itself or its existence. It simply is.

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Director: Jayson Densman
Writer: Jeremy C. Shipp

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From Raw Dog Screaming Press (distributor)