Clint Catalyst was raised on a dusty gravel road deep in the dirty bowels of Jonesboro, Arkansas. He made a name for himself as a spoken word performer, club personality and "alternative/fetish model" in the San Francisco underground in the '90s, due to his big mouth and boisterous personality. His images have appeared in magazines, on postcards, in books and on book covers, but that matters little now that he's an old geezer in Los Angeles. These days Mr. Catalyst leads a considerably more manageable life, juggling his current stint as a contributing editor at Swindle Quarterly while clacking away at the handful of creative projects he cultivates during those rare and precious moments he has time.
After years of working in and writing about the fashion industry, Catalyst has also begun to explore the roles of art direction/styling on photo shoots, as it's "just another way to create characters." As a stylist, his most recent published work appeared in Paris Vogue, where he collaborated with photographer Albert Sanchez, art director Pedro Zalba, hairstylist Tony Chavez, and make-up artist Cherie Combs to actualize a glamorous new look for Beth Ditto, lead singer of The Gossip:
And insofar as characters go, in 2006-7, he was filmed in three different roles: that of Bell Wartock, a maniacal author in Hilary Goldberg's short film In The Spotlight (starring opposite Guinevere Turner and Michelle Tea); of an Oompa-Loompa impersonator in the Entwin Productions short Color Me Olsen (directed by the brilliant Darren Stein of Jawbreaker fame); as well as Jared Silver, a charlatan fashion designer in Lisa Hammer's full-length feature POX.
In Fall 2008, Clint will go "into production," playing the character "Sid" in Matthew Mishory's
full-length feature Portland.
For official details, please peruse:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0145902/In The Spotlight and Color Me Olsen are currently winding their way "through the film festival rounds," with trailers/clips and teasers availble to view on YouTube, MySpace, and Buzznet.com, among other outlets.
POX is scheduled for a fall 2008 release.
Still, more than anything, Catalyst yearns to see his characters "come to life" on both the small and large screens. He's had two scripted TV pilot development deals to date, but intends to keep banging that proverbial curb for the proper screen credits-- i.e., his name, as a writer...not some janky-ass title assigned to avert WGA minimums.
Then again, as with anything: there are exceptions he's not beyond pursuing!
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THE STODGY STUFF:
Catalyst's academic creds include a Bachelor of Arts With Honors Distinction in English from Hendrix College, and a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of San Francisco. He's won contests and received various awards for his literary stylings, including the prestigious "Congress/Bundestag" scholarship and the "Isaac Andrew Campbell Memorial Prize for Poetry," but he'd rather gab about his published works than any of that other b.s.: the book Cottonmouth Kisses, which spent over two years in the Amazon.com Top 10 Bestseller List for Gay and Lesbian Fiction--peaking in the #1 position--and the anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache, which he co-edited with the fabulously talented Michelle Tea. In 2004, PTCH made it to the #10 position in the Los Angeles Times Nonfiction Bestseller List; in 2005, PTCH was nominated as a finalist for the 17th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. Since then, he's had various scribblings published in other anthologies, newspapers and magazines, most of which can be found in the bibliography section of this site (assuming, that is, that he's bothered to update it).
