by Tanya Lobato, Jayden Leggett and “Aussie Dave” Lobato, reporters

Corin Nemec, best known for his role as Jonas Quinn in Stargate SG-1, is apparently a very busy person indeed. A day before the Oz Comic-Con kicked off in Melbourne, the Aussie ComicsOnline team got to interview Corin and find out just how busy he is.

ComicsOnline: What are you working on at the moment?

Corin Nemec: Unemployment! Actually I’m always consistently working on one thing or the other, but right now I have a production company with a couple of partners called “Everyday Tomorrow Pictures”. We have a whole slate of projects of different stages of development. Do you know who Paul Mooney is? He’s a famous African-American stand-up comedian, and we have an animated series that’s wrapped around him as the President, it’s a political satire. We’re at the final stages of getting that package together and actually animating some of it so that we can take it out and shop it to the networks. We’re working on another series with David Faustino and myself, with me and him as puppets, that’s a half-hour comedy as well. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the comedy series that me and him created and did together called Star-ving with Sony for their Crackle.com web division? You’ll love it if you like sick, twisted humor. So we created that show as well and this is another thing that we’re doing. And then I have some feature stuff that I’ve been working on, I have a couple of films coming out. I have a comedy/sci-fi feature called Fan Sharks, it’s pretty damn funny, I was actually happy with the way that turned out. I’m a producer on it as well, so it’s always a big concern for what the bottom line is going to be at the end of the day, but it turned out very funny so I was happy with that because we were on an extremely limited budget and time schedule. And I have a few other films coming out later in the year, one called Nuclear Family and another called Dragon Wasps, and another film called Besties and maybe one other one I’m forgetting about. But it hasn’t been too bad, it’s been a good career so far. I kind of play it in the shadows, but it’s been a good career.

So it’s fair to say that you are incredibly busy at the moment?

Well I keep myself busy, you know? Because idle hands are the devil’s pleasure! So being an artist, besides write, produce and act I’m doing graffiti art, I’ve been into the graffiti art scene since ’85, ’86 so I’m very deeply into that. We have some shows that we’re developing centered around graffiti art as well. And I love photography. I’m just an artistic junkie, you could say!

Well there are definitely many places where you can enjoy graffiti in Melbourne.

Oh yeah, I’m actually doing a graffiti workshop here! I did another one here last year, it turned out really well and people really enjoyed it, everybody got to take home a piece, we all worked on canvases and I gave them some pointers with how to utilize the different kinds of nozzles and techniques and things like that. It turned out great and we’ve sold this one out, so I’m really excited. And I’ve painted here in Australia. I’ve painted in Sydney, and painted in Perth a couple of times on walls. Legally!

Have you had the chance yet to hang out with some of the other Oz Comic-Con guests who have also arrived?

Not so much, granted most of the people that are at these conventions I only see at other conventions, so it is kind of funny that way. It’s sort of like these weird reunions where you get to see people that you haven’t seen in five months or whatever.

With regards to Stargate SG1, what did you enjoy the most while you were filming it?

I think what I enjoyed most about it was the storylines, and the sets. We had some pre-production design done on some of the episodes from season six and we did some really big episodes in terms of the scope and the set builds. My dad’s a production designer, so I’ve always paid a lot of attention to production design when I’m on set. Working on that show, we did this one episode about being in the Antarctic and they actually brought in these huge, gigantic air conditioners, and they had like six of them. These things are meant for meat lockers, you know? They got their whole entire set down to 38 degrees, so that way they could see our breath and everything without having to do it in CGI. So going to those lengths to make something believable, that’s a dream come true. I love it.

Are you a sci-fi fan yourself?

Yeah for sure. I’ve definitely been a fan of sci-fi, at least since the first Star Wars came out. When I was a little kid I don’t remember being the biggest fan of Star Trek, I remember being a bigger fan of MASH! But when the feature came out I think I was like six years old, and that just blew my mind. That film came out at the same time as Logan’s Run, and they were filmed at the same time, but Logan’s Run was using the previous technological advances in special effects where as Star Wars was using the most cutting-edge, advanced special effects that had basically never even been tried before. It was really interesting to watch those two movies together and realise they were made at the same time.

What sort of inspirations do you draw into your graffiti art?

Well with graffiti art really it comes out of the whole hip-hop kind of world, and it’s about lettering and characters and themes. I think what I enjoy most about graffiti art is the scale that it’s done on, because when you’re doing graffiti art you can get walls that are twenty or thirty feet high and sixty feet long and you can just go off on a scale that you just can’t accomplish in any other medium. Needless to say, for me it’s that interaction between the streets and the artist, and being out there in the streets doing it, not in a studio someplace or in a loft someplace disconnected from the world. It’s about being connected.

Finally, because Tanya is a very unique individual, she has been asking people what they believe happens to that one odd sock that always seems to go missing. What is your answer to this question?

Oh my god I just had this happen when I was packing to come here! I have an odd sock right now as we speak back in Los Angeles, sitting on my chair in my bedroom crying over it’s lost brother. I have no idea! That would be a good horror film, “The Sock Monster”. It’s a collection of all of the missing socks from around the world, they’ve all come together and they’ve formed this gigantic stinky sock monster. Oh man kids would just be terrified of their own socks!

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