Burt So Good

A Christmas Story in June

Back in the late 90s I worked at a bookstore. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Chip! You hate books without pictures! Say it ain’t so!” Well, rest assured, dear reader, I worked in the magazine section, which mostly consisted of drying out slush-soaked copies of Model Train Aficionado and British Tits For The Lads that the patrons flipped through and dumped on the ground.

But, during the month of December, I would also be put on cash to aid in the holiday rush since, weirdly, magazines weren’t considered “good gifts.” Now, I quite liked working the checkout. It meant that people found what they were looking for and were almost done with shopping, so they were generally in decent moods. And, because our shop was in a high-end neighborhood, we’d sometimes get celebrities, which was always a bit of fun during a drab shift. I once sold books on learning English to Chow-Yun fat and his manager! That was the height of cool encounters until one cold December night I spotted him in line: Burt Reynolds.

A week earlier I was in the break room and someone who worked in the audio books department was showing off the most recent ludicrous arrival to the store: A version of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick as read by Burt Reynolds. So, to see the man himself in line felt like fate.

Now, this was a single-line system, with eight of us taking customers one by one. I looked at my fellow register-jockeys and we all knew that we were in a race, to time our customer interactions such that we’d force Mr. Reynolds to our tills. Once he was next in line to be served we all rudely raced through our current customers (“Okaythankshappyholidaysbye”) to secure our one-on-one with The Bandit himself. Nobody could dismiss customers like me, so I won and ended up face to face with Mr. Burt Reynolds.

He was, astonishingly enough, purchasing a stack of audio books, which he admitted were all last minute gifts for friends and family. I chuckled and said that it was wild that he was here buying those because the staff and I had just noticed his audio book of Moby Dick.

As the words left my mouth I wondered if this was the wrong thing to bring up. Was he embarrassed by it? Was it a sore point? Burt eyed me up and down for what felt like an eternity. Then he finally chuckled and said, “Heh. Yeah, I remember that one. I was drunk on Irish Whiskey for a week.”

“Happy holidays, kid.” He gathered up his audio books, gave me one final look … and then winked and gave me a one-handed finger gun.

I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve who just encountered Santa Claus in his living room. A classic Burt Reynolds wink and finger gun and he was gone into the snowy Toronto night. And I was forever changed.

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I was recently just reminded of this story by Mr. Matt Fraction, who went so far as to purchase the audio book in question. It’s a truly bonkers production with some wild Reynoldsian choices. There’s a clip on Amazon, but below, for your Tuesday amusement, is the opening of Moby Dick (abridged) by Mr. Burt Reynolds:

Also, fun fact! I put Burt Reynolds winking and finger-gunning on a background gag in an issue of Sex Criminals to commemorate my encounter with him. Here’s the drawing I did, properly unveiled in my “Chip’s Bits” section in Big Hard Sex Criminals Vol. 2:

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With the recent issue of Daredevil, a reader reminded me of this 2019 interview I did with Marvel about the title, where I was very vague about a character’s return. And now, in the year 2023, you can finally understand why I was vague! So, spoilers, obviously, in this classic bit of #content:

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For a more recent interview, you can check out me being grilled by fellow comicker Matthew Rosenberg on his aggressively titled podcast Ideas Don’t Bleed. We talk a bunch about Public Domain as I try to ignore his assistants, The Supple Boiz, who have been spreading around comics like an STI without the fun.

It was a nice talk! Matthew is a good guy and may be the comic creator who is most into comics themselves. Sad but true!

IDEAS DON'T BLEED episode thirty-nine | Chip Zdarsky, part one

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Bye!
(wink)
(finger gun)
-Chip