I never dreamed I would ever have a book like My Friend Dahmer either. I never imagined then that I would one day have a film based on my work, as I was sitting in the auditorium with a date watching Eraserhead for the first time. Christ, I'm such a warhorse I've outlived entire buildings at my alma mater!). The OLD Ohio Union, not the current one (Jesus H.
#MY FRIEND DAHMER MOVIE SHOWINGS SERIES#
The Wexner hadn't been built yet when I was a student here at Ohio State in the early Eighties, but we had a similar film series in the Ohio Union, one I regularly frequented.
I'm happy to report he didn't F it up, as you'll all see at this screening at the Wex. In fact, the inscription I wrote on his copy of MFD, when we had our first lengthy face-to-face meeting, was simply “Don't F it up!” Marc tells me he will always treasure that copy. As I told Marc then, half in jest, hey, the pressure is on YOU to live up to the book! If you blow it, people will just say, oh well, the book is a lot better.
It could have been a disaster of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen proportions, but I was comfortable with Mark and believed him when he promised to stay true to the book, which had just been released, was getting great reviews and was my breakthrough work, as I always knew it would be, if I could only convince a publisher to put it out. And it was a gamble, passing off an intensely personal work to be re-imagined by a filmmaker. We had some long conversations, and I decided to take the gamble. Here was a guy who made quiet, smart films. So I wasn't all that optimistic when Marc called me out of the blue, but I dutifully checked out his two earlier films and really liked what I saw. I had a comics colleague tell me once that films NEVER get made and the best a comics creator can hope for is a book just keeps getting optioned over and over again, along with repeated option checks. The three earlier inquiries were serious ones, but didn't work out, as is normally the case. Hey, it's a great story, even in its awful early state. There was enough of the story that circulated to pique the interest of the film industry. My Friend Dahmer was a comics project that took me 20 years to finish, and it came out in pieces, with several published fragments along the way. Marc Meyers was the FOURTH to approach me. It wasn't a surprise that a filmmaker was interested in the story, because filmmakers have always been interested.
Having my book My Friend Dahmer made into a feature film? Yeah, that's near the top of that list. ( My Friend Dahmer, image courtesy of FilmRise) My comics career has been a 35-year-long series of surprises. The book's a must-read, and as Derf explains below, both the finished novel and the film made from it were a long time coming.
#MY FRIEND DAHMER MOVIE SHOWINGS SERIAL#
Currently collecting positive early reviews on the festival circuit, My Friend Dahmer takes an entirely unique and thoughtful approach to the story of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, driven by Derf's memories of being his classmate at Revere High School in the Akron/Cleveland area in the late '70s. As part of the Wex's ongoing partnership with Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, we're proud to present a sold-out screening on September 29 of My Friend Dahmer, filmmaker Marc Meyers' adaptation of the award-winning graphic novel by Ohio State alum John "Derf" Backderf.