In the advent of the Internet, a guy named Ulrich Haarbürste wrote a series of fan-fic stories devoted to wrapping Roy Orbison in “clingfilm,” and a guy named Michael Kelly created a bare-bones geocities-esque site for it. If you haven’t read his first story, you should. The novel he wrote on the topic, Ulrich Haarbürste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm, actually has five stars on goodreads.com, and I was so impressed by the caliber of his crazy stories about his musical hero that I decided to contact him and get some tips on how to write about my own musical hero, Doug Martsch of Built to Spill. Only, instead of wrapping Doug Martsch in clingfilm, my fan fiction is about Doug Martsch running for local office. Story below the interview.
VICE: Where did this whole Roy Orbison wrapped in clingfilm begin? A geocities site? I love geocities (RIP).
Ulrich Haarbürste: I do not know this geocities. In Dusseldorf I made a photocopied magazine of my stories in a job where I was allowed to use a photocopier. It was a miscellany—stories, philosophical essays on the same topic, my illustrations of what I think Roy Orbison would look like wrapped in clingfilm, crosswords on an Orbison-in-clingfilm theme and little snippets of information on the history of clingfilm and surprising facts connected with it. I would attempt to sell them to co-workers or even give them away free on public transport but the circulation was still in the low single figures when you factor in returns. People would often come running long distances after me to give them back. However one fell into Mr. Kelly's hands, and he offered me a wider audience on the internet.Read the rest over at VICE.
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Ulrich Haarbürste: I do not know this geocities. In Dusseldorf I made a photocopied magazine of my stories in a job where I was allowed to use a photocopier. It was a miscellany—stories, philosophical essays on the same topic, my illustrations of what I think Roy Orbison would look like wrapped in clingfilm, crosswords on an Orbison-in-clingfilm theme and little snippets of information on the history of clingfilm and surprising facts connected with it. I would attempt to sell them to co-workers or even give them away free on public transport but the circulation was still in the low single figures when you factor in returns. People would often come running long distances after me to give them back. However one fell into Mr. Kelly's hands, and he offered me a wider audience on the internet.Read the rest over at VICE.