Hal McGee: Like when you're a kid you look up at the sky and look at the clouds floating across the sky and go, Oh, that cloud looks like a horse’s head, or that's a dog. Well, that horse’s head and that dog’s head aren't really there.
“Dame” Darcy Stanger: That's why I have my own world, my own career, my own haunted house hotel, blah, blah.
McGee: Yeah. You take something, create it, and put a frame around it, and say this is mine and there it is.
Stanger: [laughs] I flip a coin to make a lot of important decisions.
McGee: We made about $500 that night.
•••
Stanger: I was in my apartment in Manhattan, on Ludlow Street in Chinatown, and I was looking up the street toward the skyline.
McGee: There's a lot of apartments here for students that go to the University of Florida.
Stanger: I know. I was like, "Okay, it's got antebellum architecture, yet it's got tropical plants and palm trees. Is this Trinidad?"
McGee: I’m not sure. I'm not altogether sure. There are some differences. Then I did another performance later that year in Memphis, and some people came up to me afterwards and said they've never seen anything like that before... with this kind of awestruck look on their face.
Stanger: There's something really liberating in that.
•••
McGee: I think it's all part of moving forward.
Stanger: Yes, but only because I started doing bigger graphic novels on major publishing companies, and getting bigger advances.
McGee: Now with all the pops and clicks and the machine turning on and off, that becomes part of the work.
Stanger: That happens a lot and I got it. As long as we're off the grid, we'll be fine.
McGee: And just writing to people.