Introduction
The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Dex Diabolo for Beware! The Zine, with the actor and activist, Gary Slater, a Cretaceous theropod from North Africa. The original recording was seized by police in connection to a serious incident which occurred immediately after the interview. The full transcript was eventually released following a Freedom Of Information request.
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| Our interviewee, Gary Slater, pictured outside his Surrey home in 1972. |
The Interview
B!: It’s a grey autumn day, and the headache-inducing odour of industrial-strength nail-polish-remover lingers in the air. An accident on the nearby M6 just outside Corley in the West Midlands has spilled 5,500 gallons of acetone, and the stiff south-westerly breeze is bringing it right to us. There’s no ventilation in this vast warehouse—chosen especially to accommodate my enormous guest—and my only option is to attempt to overpower the smell with a full-frontal assault of the combined forces of Yankee candles and Febreze.
Today’s interview is the culmination of several years’ negotiations – a seemingly never-ending back-and-forth between my producer and me, and my guest’s agent, a commercial palaeontologist operating out of Morocco. My guest can be best described as a cocktail of contradictions; his yearning for a quiet life, away from the scrutiny of the palaeontology community and an army of Jurassic Park III fans, entirely undone by his pathological need for attention. He is both aggressively engaging and worryingly flighty, and my biggest concern is that the bouts of nausea that I’m experiencing will force me to cut this short – which will almost certainly dash any chances of redo.
B!: It’s November 7th, this is Beware! The Zine, and my name is Dex Diabolo—stress is on the third syllable. Today, my lucky listeners, Beware! is offering the most-unlikely of things: an interview with the late-Cretaceous dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegipticus… aegipt-ee-acus?
Gary: Don’t look at me, luvvy. You lot came up with that.
B!: What would you prefer?
Gary: Stick with Gary. It’ll hurt less.
B!: It’s not our intention to —
Gary: [cutting Dex off] It’ll hurt YOU less. [Over-pronouncing] Gaah-reee.
B!: Gary Slater.
Gary: At least until Equity or Spotlight reject it. *laughs*
B!: So you’re looking for acting work?
Gary: “Looking”? Oh, for god’s sake, what’s Adil NOT been telling you? I keep threatening to find another agent. It’s not as if they’re in short supply!
B!: Adil doesn’t represent actors, does he? I thought he was just pushing your book.
Interview is paused in order to get it back on track.
B!: It’s November 7th, this is Beware! The Zine, and my name is Dex Diabolo—stress is on the third syllable. Today, lucky listeners, Beware! is offering the most-unusual of things: an interview with the late-Cretaceous dinosaur, Gary Slater. Gary, good morning!
Gary: Good morning.
B!: Gary, so our listeners can picture this, you are a Spinosaurus from Morocco.
Gary: Morocco’s your word, love, not mine.
B!: What do you call it?
Gary: I don’t.
B!: But you’re from there, no?
Gary: It wasn’t called Morocco for a lot longer than it was.
B!: But I get the impression that you like to keep up-to-date with, er, fashions.
Gary: Well, perhaps I’m looking beyond ‘More–rock–ooooh’, darling?
Interview is paused in order to get it back on track.
B!: So, you’re from what we’ve come to know as Morocco, but your story is far more fascinating than your geological and geographical origins. Unlike most of your kin, you’ve been able to observe, firsthand, the evolution of human attempts to reconstruct you from your fossilised remains, and it’s that which brings us together today.
Gary: Listen, I must take issue with “kin”. I’m desperate to know to whom or to what you may be referring.
B!: In this instance—and you’ll need to go easy on me, as I’m only as good as what our researchers have given me—I mean other meat-eating dinosaurs.
Gary: Theropods?
B!: Maybe.
Gary: Dinosaurs? Terrible ‘lizards’? Fucking tail-draggers? Good grief, love. I mean, if I referred to your ‘kin’ the way you refer to mine, I could just as easily be talking of a chimpanzee slurping up the brains of a colobus monkey, or, or some mongrel dog licking sick off the pavement.
B!: [Audible intake of breath] Erm, well, okay…? I have a couple of examples in Sheila’s notes… We’ll see how we get on with those. Not sure if this is slang… Something called ‘Irritator’...?
Gary: Ha! That boorish oaf! All the finesse of a bag of dogshit in a hedge. And no, it’s not slang. Your lot named him, and named him accurately.
B!: Irritator is the genus name? I feel as though you’re implying it’s an individual, rather than many individuals.
Gary: Well, of course. There’s one particular thorn in my side who shows up, sniffing around whenever Dorling Kindersley threatens another Who’s Who. He’s been trying to sidle up to the heavy hitters since the late ‘90s. Leslie Finch, he’s called.
B!: Leslie Finch?
Gary: But don’t bother to remember that.
B!: Do I detect a hint of territoriality?
Gary: Certainly not! Leslie’s just another Eric Roberts – but without the numbers. He would take absolutely any job, but nobody wants him.
B!: But a quick Google search would suggest —
Gary: And who could blame them? He hasn’t the impact… the grandeur. You wouldn’t employ a weak voice for a soliloquy. Well, you shouldn’t.
B!: Just to dial it back a bit, Spinosaurus portrayals have perhaps evolved more than any other dinosaur in such a short —
Gary: Evolution after too many Hanky Pankies.
B!: — short amount of time. After what?!
Gary: It’s a cocktail.
B!: Oooh… -kay. Well, maybe a retrospective on Spinosaurus portrayals may look a little haphazard to some – especially when taken together, but the point is that palaeontological reconstructions are only as good as the evidence available, and the artist working with it.
Gary: Straight from your script, perchance?
B!: Well…
Gary: And who better to examine those tiring and tedious examples than moi [over-pronounced]?
B!: Exactly. And, before we continue, we should mention that you would only agree to this interview on the understanding that we would not describe any of your specific physical attributes – particularly those which might clarify any outstanding questions about your appearance.
Gary: Absolutely. Imperative.
B!: Why is that?
Gary: In simple terms, I’m far more bankable if there’s some unknown element, and casting agencies just love mystery —
B!: But surely these are all clear to see in your headshot, or described in your resume?
Gary: Darling, it’s a ten-by-eight-inch tintype. And I’m fifty-one feet long!
B!: ‘Tintype'?
Gary: Daguerreotype.
B!: A what?
Gary: A photograph! Whatever you call them these days.
B!: Are you not concerned that without reasonable evidence of your being here today, some of our listeners may question whether we are even interviewing you —
Gary: Look —
B!: — an actual Spinosaurus.
Gary: Why? Why would they doubt that?
B!: Because you’re a dinosaur!
Gary: Happens all the time. Remember the time Attenborough interviewed Kuparr Harris? Hilarious. Kuparr sang like a canary. Pathetic.
B!: [Slightly exasperated] Who is Kuparr Harris?
Interview is paused in order to conduct a quick online search.
B!: Right, so Kuparr Harris is a lyre bird.
Gary: What else?
B!: For the benefit of our listeners, lyre birds are Australian birds which are… famous for their ability to mimic other birds and machinery sounds. Gary, he’s not a useful example because he’s not extinct.
Gary: He should be. That little performance lets the whole side down… Running around, crawling up Attenborough’s arse. Servile try-hard.
B!: But it’s not an interview. Attenborough didn’t ask him anything. Anyway, anyway, whatever… We’re getting off track again. [Papers rustle.] Spinosaurus’s remains were discovered in 1912 by Ernst Stromer, and were lost during Allied bombing in the Second World War. This, and a dearth of new material, led to a rather conservative approach to reconstructing your… your species’s…? …appearance.
Gary: Quite so. It was a horrid time. Bad for business.
B!: How so?
Gary: No one would hire me.
B!: Because you were relatively unknown?
Gary: Because I didn’t look like the artists’ reconstructions! Can you imagine having your career stalled by someone like Neave Parker.
B!: Were you not in a unique position to, I don’t know, inform those artists?
Gary: Not so easy. I don’t suppose you’re aware of the power wielded by palaeontologists [mispronounced as pally-ohn-tolly-jists] at the time? Strong-arming the artists of the early 20th century… Bending them to their will.
B!: [Under breath] This isn’t an audition.
Gary: What?
B!: [Clearing throat] So many of the reconstructions of the time would show you—ugh, I mean Spinosaurus—as a generic-looking, two-legged meat-eater with a sail stuck onto its back. Talk a little about how this affected the following years of your career.
Gary: These b-o-r-i-n-g reconstructions were very much influenced by a… desire to emulate the then-in-vogue Lance Schoedsack. Three-fingered freak!
B!: And Schoedsack is…?
Gary: Lance played the Tyrannosaurus in 1933’s King Kong. He’d already acquired some fame when he posed for Charles Knight, and then he thought he’d hit the big time when he got himself hired as Ernest Schoedsack’s gardener.
B!: Gardener? Actual gardener?
Gary: There are—how shall I put it?—rumours, relating to why Lance took Schoedsack’s name. You probably don’t have the time, nor the leee-gal team, for us to go into that. I know I don’t.
B!: But gardener?
Gary: Move on, ducky! There are far-more salacious tidbits on offer than Lance pruning Ernest’s bush… bushes.
B!: Anyway, you think Lance was responsible for media portrayals of Spinosaurus?
Gary: Ha! No! Lance is too much of a flake to be responsible for anything. Knight’s portrait… RKO’s masterpiece… They are the true artisans.
B!: But Lance must have had something about him to… become a posterboy. And one that influenced what audiences wanted to see in all dinosaurs.
Gary: I can see what you're trying to do, darling: trap me into uttering niceties about that moron. Well, it won’t work!
B!: Right, right, moving on. So audiences were enthralled by Tyrannosaurus, or perhaps simply spoiled by a glut of generic reconstructions, and there was some very-real reluctance to entertain serious reconstructions of you. Erm, of Spinosaurus.
Gary: [Intake of breath, signifying a pause for thought]
B!: Let’s put it a different way: were audiences too ignorant of general dinosaur biology to be able to entertain the idea of a different look… a look demonstrated by…
Gary: Hmmm?
B!: Spinosauruses.
Gary: That’s not bad. Yes, I think ignorance is at play. I do, of course, prefer a high-brow gallery. The riff-raff… the hoi-polloi… They can be a real set of shackles for a performer.
B!: And what about Spinosaurus as the monster in creature features? How has that changed over time?
Gary: Well, it pains me to have to tell you this, but it’s only relatively recently that any fucking director’s bothered to cast me.
B!: There are plenty of documentary appearances.
Gary: “Listen to the kids, luv!” I used to yell at ‘em. But the execs thought they knew best. God, I love Joe Johnston.
B!: But now you’ve been pegged as a fish-eater, do you think that will harm your chances at future antagonist roles?
Gary: Wait, what? I eat what I damn-well please!
B!: Spinosaurus inhabited coasts and delta areas, yes? Taking fish from the shore, and wading into the shallows to snag animals from the mud. Quite a contrast when compared with the ‘generic meat-eater with a sail’ look from previous decades.
Gary: Listen, darling. Pick up a National Geographic. There’s a new me in every issue. One month I’m a ‘hell heron’. The next, I’m a ‘satan stork’.
B!: They sound similar to each other.
Gary: One so-called expert called me ‘Dante’s dunlin’. That’s not bad.
[Brief pause for change of subject]
B!: When we first conceived of this interview, there was some concern that the crew and I might be considered food, and that it would be prohibitively expensive to adequately address all the necessary safeguards. Later, we were assured of your piscivore nature. I’ve got to say, I don’t feel all that much safer. You are massive! I thought this warehouse was big before you arrived. You’ve made it look less impressive.
Gary: My presence makes a lot of things look less impressive.
B!: Indeed. Your regular diet… How much fish might we expect to see you consume?
Gary: Have you seen the paltry morsels that pass for fish in this period? There isn’t enough, that’s for certain.
B!: How do you get around —
Gary: And you’re falling into that trap again… Insisting that I’m all about fish, or some such nonsense. However, it will no doubt calm you to learn that I’m not in the habit of snacking on apes.
B!: That’s, er, that’s good to hear. Is there some process by which you and your… dinosaurian colleagues arrange food that is more to your tastes? For example, Lance won’t be getting by on sacks of Winalot Prime.
Gary: Sorry, love. That’s privileged info.
B!: You mean it’s in your book.
Gary: Might be.
B!: Which brings us neatly—if somewhat conveniently—to your biography: ‘Setting Sail: A Life In One’s Own Shadow’. That’s a great title.
Gary: Thank you.
B!: You’re welcome. [Papers rustle] According to your agent, this book started off as an essay in which you react to the Tyrannosaurus-Spinosaurus battle in ‘Jurassic Park III’, though you devote very little time to it at all in the final version of the book. Why is that?
Gary: Honestly, when you’ve been asked “Who would win between…?” as many times as I have, it’s impossible to give a fuck.
B!: But who would win in a fight between you and Lance? Or between an average Spinosaurus and an average Tyrannosaurus?
Gary: It would never happen. It’s not even worth entertaining that hypothetical.
B!: Last year, a volunteer in the records office at the American Museum of Natural History tweeted a photo of a signed truce between the Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus communities. First of all, was that for real?
Gary: I haven’t seen it, and I’m not on the CCDO.
B!: CCDO?
Gary: Council for Chronistically-Displaced Organisms. Quite a mouthful, but the best of a bad buffet, if you know what I mean.
B!: What’s their interest in the truce?
Gary: IF there were a truce between two groups, as you, or this intern, are alleging, there’s only one body with the legal authority to —
B!: Are there a lot of those… displaced organisms? Our researchers thought that there was just you, and you’ve already mentioned at least two more in this interview.
Gary: That’s privileged info, and no, ducky, it’s not in the book.
B!: Can you confirm the truce?
Gary: Don’t know; haven’t seen it!
B!: So if you were invited to fight Lance…?
Gary: Firstly, I [emphasised] wouldn’t waste my time on that flaccid pintle. Just a sec’ – what was your ‘second of all’? Your ‘first of all’ was fishing for a nibble on that truce lead.
B!: Erm… [Papers rustle] I think it was a follow-up… Y’ know, if you confirmed the tweet.
Gary: Hmmm…
B!: What was your ‘secondly’?
Gary: About?
B!: You wouldn’t waste your time fighting Lance, and then…
Gary: Ah, yes! It’s very, very hard to persuade Lance and his ‘friends’ to fight. It’s not their deal – regardless of what you might see in the movies. If Lance can’t walk up to food and literally fall onto it with his mouth open, he’s not interested. Y’ know, that prick gets far too much credit.
B!: So Tyrannosaurus was a scavenger?
Gary: No, no. Just a terminally-lazy bastard.
B!: Now, Jurassic Park III was famously —
Gary: How long are we going to spend on that movie?
B!: I was just going to say that you weren’t actually in that movie. And Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III isn’t credited. Is that anyone you know?
Gary: Not a damn clue. And I’m fairly certain it’s not a Spinosaurus. Just one of those arse-kissing bootlickers, wearing a prosthetic.
B!: Leslie Finch?
Gary: I told you to forget that name. But yes, could be. Make a note of that.
B!: Despite your criticism of the film, you maintain an admiration of Joe Johnston.
Gary: Well, of course! He relegated Tyrannosaurus to its natural rank of B-movie monster fodder, and also designed the Iron Giant’s iconic look in Brad Bird’s 1999 classic. What’s not to like?
B!: Wasn't expecting that second point, but okay. Makes sense.
Gary: It also makes sense to blow smoke up the arse of anyone who might give you screen time.
B!: The majority of the rest of your book deals with portrayals of Spinosaurus in literature, theme parks and documentaries. What do you hope your book will achieve?
Gary: Name recognition. Royalties.
B!: Do you think that this will have a positive effect on how palaeoartists reconstruct you?
Gary: I doubt it. Nu metal is due a resurgence, and then dinosaurs will get the Todd Marshall treatment all over again. Doesn’t matter what I say in the book. Petty human fashions come into play more than you’re prepared to admit.
B!: But why don’t you just go public —
Gary: Look, you saw that book by the sex lake chap? Do you really think he did that for any other reason than Harper Collins threw some cash at him? Arseholes are richer than idiots, by and large. And none of that bullshit found its way into serious art.
B!: But there’s plenty of recent art showing you going for a swim.
Gary: But not because of that fopdoodle! And listen, he shouldn’t be taking credit for that. Not one of those artists was inspired by wading through 500 pages of that too-big-to-walk excrement. Too long to bother with, more like.
B!: Did you read it?
Gary: As much as I could, bearing in mind I can only get halfway into my local Waterstones. And then I get asked to leave because I make the other customers uncomfortable.
B!: Just how ‘in the community’ are you? I thought you were concerned about revealing yourself?
Gary: I wear a convincing disguise.
B!: I don’t imagine that there’s any point in asking to see that?
Gary: You’re catching on. Anyway, I’m not risking any money finding its way back to the author. I might wait until it hits the shelves in Oxfam. Or The Works.
B!: When might we see your own book in the stores?
Gary: We’re eyeing a late spring release, in all good bookshops, and on all that digital stuff.
B!: Gary Slater, on behalf of Beware! The Zine and Beware! The Radio, thank you very much!
Gary: Thank you.
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B! would like to thank Sean Hennessy, James Pascoe and Dr Mark Witton , for their technical support and feedback.
