Ivan Stang[1] (born Douglass St. Clair Smith; August 21, 1953) is an American writer, filmmaker and broadcaster, best known as the author and publisher of the first screed of the Church of the SubGenius. He is credited with founding the Church with friend Philo Drummond in 1979, though Stang himself denied this and claimed the organization was founded in 1953 by J. R. "Bob" Dobbs.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, he attended the St. Mark's School of Texas. Since the publication of the first SubGenius pamphlet in 1980, Stang has embarked on a worldwide crusade (spanning at least three continents) to promote the Church. In May 2006 he finished writing, editing and designing a new SubGenius book for Thunder's Mouth Press, The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon. He has appeared on several national radio and television shows, including The Jon Stewart Show on MTV. Stang is an instructor on the faculty of the Maybe Logic Academy.[2] Both he and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs appear as characters in John Shirley's science fiction novel Kamus of Kadizar: The Black Hole of Carcosa.
Stang also founded the business entity of the Church, the SubGenius Foundation. The SubGenius Foundation was located in Dallas, Texas, for most of its existence, though Stang relocated to Cleveland Heights, Ohio in 1999. The SubGenius Foundation was based there from 1999 to 2017, and the syndicated show The Hour of Slack is produced partially at WCSBatCleveland State University. His "Rants" are a regular feature at the Starwood Festival[3] and WinterStar Symposium,[4] both produced by the Association for Consciousness Exploration (ACE). The Church has collaborated with ACE on a number of projects, including CDs, DVDs and the Rant 'n Rave events in Cleveland, Ohio. He was awarded Best Crack-Pot Preacher by the Cleveland Scene in 2000.[5] Stang continues to promote the Church, and he is a prominent member of Cleveland's underground pop culture scene. In 2017 the Foundation and Stang moved to Glen Rose, Texas.[6]
Stang is a "filmmaker" and an "editor". In addition to creating several stop-motion short films with such titles as Reproduction Cycle Among Unicellular Life Forms Under the Rocks of Mars and Let's Visit the World of the Future, he also edited the 1989 feature-length VHS video spoof-documentary Arise! for the Church of the SubGenius, as well as providing narration and commentary for the 1999 documentary Grass. Commercial jobs have included a 60-second "Art Break" animated short for MTV, animation in a Devo music video, as well as writing and editing the feature-length documentaries China Run and The Cu-Chi Tunnels.
Gill, Michael (2005). "Circle of Ash"Archived November 16, 2011, at the Wayback MachineCleveland Free Times (July 7, 2005) Feature article includes Ivan Stang discussing Starwood
