Devon
Sawa (Final Destination), and model-turned-actress James
King; and then there's his first photo book Kustom (Greybull
Press, $65). A lively, lurid look at people who "make
things bigger, brighter, louder and faster than the manufacturer's
specification "Kustom is occasionally klassy with a
k, but always kool.
Having accomplished so much at the ripe old age of 36, it's
no surprise that Mr. Nicks knew he wanted to be a photographer
when he was just 14. The son of an advertising man, the
St. Louis native hung out in photo studios - like other
people went to Disneyland. "You get to play with all
that great stuff. It helped that my dad knew so much about
advertising because I had a good grasp on what a photographer
did. I started working in his office and by the time I was
22 I was taking pictures professionally"
Along the way he won an award from the University of Missouri
with a scholarship attached, and ultimately studied photography
at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Even as a working photographer, Mr. Nicks relished ,being
a kid from Saint Louis getting a backstage pass, into Los
Angeles life.
A lot of the sights along the way inspired what eventually
became Kustom. Many of the photos are out-takes from photo
shoots Mr. Nicks worked on with fashion editor/muse Lisa
Eisner, who started Greybull Press with partner Roman Alonso.
"We did a lot of campaigns together," recalls
Mr. Nicks. "She would handle the clothes and we would
work on the concept together. Some of the photographs that
ended up in the book were from some of the shoots we worked
on, and we thought they were the best part of the shoot,
but they had little to do with the clothes."
"The whole thing was like making documentaries for
us and we thought people would love the fact we got to explore
these cool places. But (the companies) were like, 'What
about the hair and makeup?'"
That is, aside from Gianni Versace who was excited enough
about some shots of customized cars he put them in a Versus
catalog. Everything else Mr. Nicks stored away for a rainy
day, thinking of the book he would eventually put together.
"There definitely was a big box that had kustom with
a k written on it," he says. The final inspiration for Kustom
was a little hot rod model made from a Cheerio box by legendary
car customizer George Barris. "When I found that it
was like finding a lost Picasso," says Mr. Nicks. "I
thought, 'God this is brilliant!'"
He drew a connection between customized cars, a custom elevator
owned by socialite Kitty Carlisle Hart, and the gravity-defying
(and customized) forms of porn stars. Pink-dyed poodles
and Santa hat-wearing statues, souped-up Camaros, and toilet
tissue cozies: if you could recreate it in your own fashion,
Mr. Nicks took a picture of it.
"The best job in the world is to be a still photographer.
You get access to people's homes and if you wanted to go
there, the invitation is priceless"
Being a successful photographer may be the best job in the
world, but that didn’t stop Mr. Nicks from adding on a couple
of extra-curricular careers. On the heels of last year's
Hell House (based on a fundamentalist Christian spook house
in Colorado Mr. Nicks says was "too good to be true"),
he's just finished the first successful test screenings
for what was originally to be called The Best and the Brightest.
The story of three roommates that are cheating their way
through college, the film (currently titled The Hook Up)
revolves around Jason Schwartzman's character, who blackmails
his fellow students so he can get a date with bombshell
James King.
"He's going to take them down unless they help him.
He's like a 50-year-old accountant in a teenager's body
- he's got a shrine to James in his room, it's that unraveled"
"I was very interested in doing a narrative film and
I liked the idea that this is a genre movie because it's
a college movie, but it's definitely about the assembled
cast. I read a lot of scripts and when I read this it made
me laugh, which is such a great sign. You can intuit so
many things, but if you laugh you're onto something."
With the movie, Mr. Nicks makes the unlikely transition
from still photographer to movie director. 
"I don't know too many people who have made this kind
of film. (Photographers) Bruce Weber and Arthur Elgort have
made documentaries, but from this generation I don't know
any guys who have (made movies). All my fashion shoots were
like movies - we made up dialogue and would tell models,
'The baby carriage is running down the hill, try to catch
it!' When Lisa and I worked together we always did that.
I was doing a lot of this work before I was filming it."
Having finally finished the movie, Mr. Nicks is squeezing
in still photography jobs and taping TV commercials on the
weekends while pondering his next book project "Sleeping,"
he says, "is the greatest luxury. But what fires me
up the most right now is to do some project that's not reliant
on making 60 people excited about doing one thing - it's
such a task to get an entire crew fired up to go with you.
That's why I'm so glad I went through the process (of doing
the movie)"
It's not hard to imagine Dewey Nicks convincing everyone
from the actors to the catering crew to get as excited as
he is about his vision. The only difficult thing is to guess
what he might get up to next.
"How about an amusement park?" he wonders. "It
would be fun to work in three dimensions."
