The Dark Gritty Novel By A Rock Icon Begging To Become A Movie

South of the Pumphouse, like many Primus songs, places its focus on the dark side of blue-collar drudgery, drug addiction, and the unexpected horrors that are found just beneath the surface of everyday modern life. While most of the novella is set on a small boat in the San Pablo Bay area, the conversations between its three principal characters (Ed, Earl, and Donny) cause an irreversible ripple in their relationship as the story progresses.

To understand the source of tension in South of the Pumphouse, we need to talk about Ed, Earl, and Donny, and who they are to each other. Ed and Earl are estranged brothers who drifted apart when Ed moved to Berkeley to get away from the small town of El Sobrante because of its unwillingness to keep up with the times. Earl never left his hometown and developed a nasty methamphetamine habit that’s slowly taking over his life.

Donny is the childhood friend of Ed and Earl, and he’s a grotesque human being who’s very much a slave to his impulses. Donny is also the worst kind of conservative you’ve ever met, so his personality immediately clashes with Ed’s when Ed returns to El Sobrante to go on a fishing trip with Earl to honor their father, who recently passed away. While Earl is more in tune with Donny because they both bond over local happenings in their small blue-collar town, Donny actively antagonizes Ed in South of the Pumphouse because of the more liberal lifestyle he adopted after moving to Berkeley. 

Aside from the stark political contrast between its principal characters that South of the Pumphouse establishes at its outset, there are unresolved personal issues that become apparent when Earl invites Donny to join him and his brother on their fishing trip. Armed with their fishing poles and a healthy supply of beer and recreational drugs, the trio embarks on their voyage to catch some sturgeon like they did in the old days. As Donny gets increasingly inebriated, he talks without a filter and opens a number of old wounds that Ed and Earl would rather not have revisited while trying to repair their fractured relationship. 

To make matters worse, Earl has reason to believe that his wife is having an affair with Donnie, who has been getting more aggressive with his insults toward him and his brother throughout the day. With the drugs beginning to take hold, tensions running high, and the frustration of not catching anything worth keeping putting everybody on edge, South of the Pumphouse takes a sinister turn as the day turns to dusk and mental states continue to deteriorate. 

South of the Pumphouse is a tense read with a twist ending that will make the hairs on the back of your neck jump straight up like a live fish thrown into a frying pan. Not unlike the Primus song “Those Damn Blue-Collar Tweekers,” the narrative is a darkly hilarious but harrowing look at how quickly life can change when the wrong things are said in a questionable setting. While Ed and Earl have an unbreakable bond that only brothers can have, their loyalties are tested when Donny relentlessly influences Earl to be the absolute worst version of himself. 

I know Les Claypool is a busy man with his thriving wine cellar, 20 (or more, I lost count) bands, and family life, but I’m holding out hope that one day a studio like A24 will secure the rights to South of the Pumphouse, get him back in the director’s chair to helm the project, and into the studio to compose the film score. If an album like Pork Soda can reach number seven on the billboard charts, then why aren’t we giving Les Claypool a limitless production budget at this point?