Conversations with Mary Sette

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Sette.

Hi Mary, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a comedy writer/director, cartoonist, artist, and independent filmmaker living in Los Angeles. I received my Master’s in Fine Arts from USC’s John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television and my Bachelor’s Degree from George Washington University, where I studied English and Creative Writing. I’m originally from a small farm town in New Jersey with too many Republicans and too few Chipotle.

I am currently writing and illustrating my first graphic novel, HORRIBLE CORPSES, working as a script consultant, freelancing as an illustrator, and developing some gender-bending cartoons with my bodacious collaborator, Anna Cangellaris.

Anna and I are currently taking out our animated pilot, HOT TODDY, which premiered at 2022 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, Outfest LA LGBTQ Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival (and many more to come!) A little bit about the project, HOT TODDY is a dark animated comedy and murder mystery about two ex-BFFs and the buckets of blood between them, only some of which from their periods! It’s a teen queer love story gone wrong and a wacky murder mystery inspired by all my failed friendships that ended in (emotional!) bloodshed. The film stars comedians: Anna Seregina, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Katrina Davis. Features songs by the LA band, Slutever.

I love this film beyond words. If you have big thighs and hate men, I highly recommend it! (Sorry, Dad!)

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My work centers on weird-ass gender-fluid protagonists hungry for blood, cheese, and anti-depressants. Think if Daria took mushrooms, Jane Campion made a sitcom, or Wes Anderson cared about women. I combine horror, camp, and animation to create ridiculous comedies for the loud fat slutty stupid weirdos of the world. But it took me a long time, therapy, and shotgunning sandwiches to get here.

First, I found my true love in the horror genre, even though it terrifies me. Murder mysteries. True crime. Fictional crime. Anything with blood, body horror, women, and queerness is a dream for me. From an early age, I would be so morbidly fascinated and terrified that I would watch horror movies obsessively and then quickly and spontaneously vomit. It got to the point where my parents would ban me from watching anything remotely scary for fear of running out of clean towels.

My love for horror led me to the wonderful world of camp. As a child, my favorite movie was that iconically bad but oh-so-good movie, Batman and Robin starring George Clooney and his nipples. I actually rented the movie so many times that the dude at Blockbuster told me I could keep the VHS. Yes, there are definitely better campy flicks I could reference as inspirations here: Heathers, Clue, Twin Peaks, and anything by John Waters. But George Clooney’s nipples truly changed my life. It revealed to me at a young age that I was indeed queer! (Sorry, Mom! More man nipples for you!)

And then, finally, I found a real outlet in comics, cartooning, illustration, and animation. I started drawing before I started writing, even before I started talking. I grew up in a turbulent household and also had a horribly embarrassing speech impediment, so I quite literally didn’t have the words to tell anyone what was happening at home. But I could draw them. I’d draw portraits of young women stranded at sea, squids where their mouths should be. And I’m sure there were some doodles of dicks too. (Look, I wasn’t PICASSO!)

All of these discoveries shaped who I am, what kind of life I want to live, and the art I want to share with the world, which is — loud, fat, slutty, and stupid. (Sorry, America!)

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m currently writing and illustrating my first graphic novel, Horrible Corpses, based on my hilarious teenage years as a suicidal wannabe goth. Set in the eccentric world of The Great Beyond, a bumbling homicide detective teams up with a death-obsessed teenager to solve the first murder ever committed in purgatory. Because even in the afterlife, people still want to kill people!

But at the heart of the story, you have Jessie Krueger, an absurd suicidal teenager who is so bitter and emo that even in limbo, she tries to kill herself every day to no avail. It’s impossible to die in The Great Beyond, that is until they start finding lots of dead bodies! Jessie is on a journey to figure out why her life (or rather her undead life) is still worth living, told through as much comedy as emotional resonance. As a teenager, I was an intense, awkward weirdo — at the very least, a wannabe goth. But, of course, it’s hard to be goth when you’re an overweight nerd living on a farm in New Jersey. Only Elvira can really pull off that dress.

And your Italian grandmother thinks you look like an anemic Snooki. I was suicidal through my adolescence, and the thing that helped me the most was finding humor in the absurdity of life AND death. I used to light every Yankee candle I could find in my room, blast Placebo on my boombox, and write my suicide note like it was War and Peace!

In reality, it was just some genuinely awful poetry, and my parents just thought I was getting into witchcraft.

Horrible Corpses is silly and sad, and I needed stories like this when I was younger. And I think a lot of other people do too.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
For sad writers, Self-Help by Lorrie Moore and Ask Polly by Heather Havrilesky. For introverts who love being alone but also get lonely, Sorry, I’m Late. I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica Pan. And for greek mythology themed erotica (very important in today’s cold dark world!), A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair (I hope that is her real name!!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maryasette.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masette/
• Youtube: https://vimeo.com/569150868