Virtual Memories Show 396: Keith Knight
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“There have been plenty of woke moments throughout my life, but the police incident in San Francisco made me double and triple down the work I did about it.”
To celebrate the launch of WOKE, his fantastic new comedy series on Hulu, Keith Knight rejoins the show! A lot has gone on since our 2015 conversation, so we get into how the country has changed, how his slideshows about police brutality and racial illiteracy are more in demand than ever (pandemic notwithstanding), and the reasons behind the surge in approval for BLM. We talk about how WOKE came together, the choice of Lamorne Morris to play Keef, why he wanted to be involved in producing WOKE, rather than selling the idea & walking off, what it was like to work in a collaborative environment after years as a solo artist, how different TV writing is than comics, the fun in casting the voices of the objects that come to life in the show, and how closely the lead character’s woke experience parallels his own. We also discuss his drive to keep making comics, the good fortune of finishing shooting the series right before the pandemic shut everything down, and why he sure wishes he & his family could have gotten out of NC for a few weeks this summer for their annual Schwarzwald trip to see the in-laws. Give it a listen! And go watch WOKE on Hulu!
“We figured out a fine line of talking about serious issues but using humor and magical realism.”
“TV is a big learning curve, but it’s not rocket science. I had to remind myself when I got too stressed, ‘We’re just making television.'”
“As horrible this pandemic is, it’s revealed how untenable capitalism-over-everything society is. If you don’t ensure that everybody is doing okay, then that’s when you have problems.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Keith Knight is an award-winning cartoonist whose “Knight Life Chronicles,” and “(th)ink” strips ran for more than a decade in such newspapers as the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Herald. His funny yet hard-hitting cartoons fuel a comic strip slideshow he tours on America’s racial illiteracy called Red, White, Black and Blue. Combining cartoons, storytelling, historical facts, and humor, the slideshow scored him a Belle Foundation grant and a NAACP History Maker award. Knight is also the illustrator of the critically acclaimed tween book, Jake the Fake Keeps It Real. He will beat you at pinball.
Follow Keith on Twitter and Instagram, and show him some support on Patreon
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
