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“Happy & Gay” is a gay/lesbian revisionist history animation film that explicitly references the early 1930’s Hollywood animation studio cartoon film. Stylistically, it’s much like the early “Betty Boop” or “Flip the Frog” cartoons with the “rubber hose” arms and legs, dancing and musical numbers, and surrealistically transforming shapes and characters.
Conceptually, “revisionist history” relates to the project’s goal to (re)create a positive (while still entertaining) historical placement and recognition of gays and lesbians as characters within the form of the 1930’s animated Hollywood cartoon form, something that was far from possible at the time. “Happy & Gay” is being made as a “revisionist history” document that should have existed, but could not at the time it references.
The story follows two couples, one lesbian and one gay, who go out together for a night on the town. They find bigotry and violence, then relief and happiness in the secret nightclub, and joy and love through a musical number; there is then a police raid, an angry Church with a singing Jesus, a fey Satan down below, and a transvestite revenging God.
The film’s intent is to respond to how racism, bigotry and representation was an issue in rendering the “Other,” such as Gays, Jews, Blacks, and immigrants to the US. The film places symbolic representations of these kinds of characters, first to act as a foil for the commentary on the “pansy” representation of Gays, and secondly to place this film in a fully historical, authentic context. It is sad to say that even today, the re-issuance of previously censored racist animation has no affect at all on the fact that gays were rendered in a similar light but have not been considered as being in the same affected category.
The film’s inspiration is motivated by my own personal relationship to these topics, and has thus received “everything I have” in order to realize it. Once completed, the distribution and use of this film will be focused on international film festivals, special topic screenings and educational discussions, and later dvd distribution. I will also be working to have this film considered by critical theorists working in similar themes, as I hope that the historical content and relationship is worth critiquing and comparing.
I’ve attempted to develop this project for as wide an audience as possible, not just the LGBT audience, in order for it to make progress in circles that might usually shut this topic out of discussion. The motivating force is the political bent of this film, and my desire is to find a way in to the imagination and thought process of those unfamiliar with gay and lesbian historical issues. The genre of “cartoon musical” is easily accessible, and humor is invaluable as a method to address serious topics in a non-threatening way.
Production Notes
I am primarily a 1-person force in the production timeline, but I have many people along the way who are assisting me. Bill Robinson , a very talented animation artist, is my "background painter." He has been invaluable over the course of the YEARS involved.
This film is being done almost entirely through digital methods, even though it's imitating a very old style of traditional methods. The choice is for speed, cost and practicality. My tests have shown me that I can aproximate the original "look" very well using digital means. My tools involve a Wacom tablet, Flash, After Effects, Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.
Funding Support
Happy & Gay has been fortunate to receive financial funding and sponsorship along the way. The LEF Foundation, through the Motion Arts Fund was a major supporter. Harvard Film Center provided a Fellowship for a year of production. The Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, a provider of rts grants specifically for gay/lesbian focused projects also provided meaningful support. The Rhode Island School of Design Faculty Development Grant was generous evern though I was only a part-time faculty member.The project also has received generous help from none other than my parents, whose support means most of all.
Happy & Gay: music & vocals
Music composition and scoring is being provided by the brilliant and very talented Brian Carpenter, band leader for Beat Circus and Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra (MySpace link,), which is a fantastically talented group out of New York and Boston. Brian is creating the "authentic" 1930's cartoon jazz composition and performance. His personal interest in the early era of jazz brought a pre-established talent in this genre of composition. Brian's second band Beat Circus , has been very successful in making a presence in the music scene.
The Beat Circus is a completely unique entity, an eclectic group of musicians who have collaborated with circus perfomers, comedians, acrobats, and burlesque dancers. They create a music which is a fiction of the past, a crazy burlesque circus at the intersection of American Vaudeville and Weimer-era Germany...funeral dirges, circus waltzes, tangos, and experimental music all jump-started, braked, and accelerated by their ringleader.
Musicians
Brian Carpenter, trumpet, composer and arranger, band leader
Briggan Krauss, alto, baritone saxophones
Jim Hobbs, alto saxophone
Matt Darriau, Bb clarinet
Josh Roseman, trombone
Brandon Seabrook, banjo
Harumi Rhodes, violin
Katt Hernandez, violin
Erica Schattle, basson
Ron Caswell, tuba
Matt McLaren, drums
Karen Langlie, foley sounds
Vocals
Leah Callahan has the voice and theatrical presence that cries out to be noticed and adored. What one reviewer wrote about her recent CD release Even Sleepers....
Callahan's coy arrangements cajole, rather than insist, and the songs are underpinned not by gimmicks, but by sophisticated settings. Her melodies are compelling, her singing captivating.
Brian King is a monster-sized creative talent in the two-person band, What Time Is It, Mr. Fox? His voice? "haunting...chameleon-like voice." (METRONOME) They've released the CD Songs for the Tin Man, and are soon releasing their next.
"In Grace, Lorelei Pepi weaves a dark, dense tapestry of elemental images which serve to bathe and enfold her photographed female forms caught in quiet moments of revery, ecstasy and death. Clearly belonging in the incantory realm of Maya Deren, yet owing much to the layering techniques of Pat O'Neill, Grace draws one into a kind of mute collusion..." George Griffin, animation filmmaker
Awards include the Grand Prize, Ottawa Student Animation Festival; 2nd Prize Experimental Animation at Animation World Celebration (Los Angeles), SXSW, and Big Muddy. See "about" page for more information on awards and screenings.
Grace explores flesh and soul, spirituality and sensuality, the search for solace, understanding, redemption and union which is only found through the process of death and rebirth. An incandescent body reclaims itself through the power of transformation of soul.
Grace is an experimental animation constructed in four parts, utilizing multi-media techniques such as stop-motion, pixillation, optical compositing, projections, and re-photgraphy and frame by frame manipulation of materials. The entire film was created in camera without the use of computer assistance (old school!) Materials included items such as plaster, mink oil, christmas lights, felt, liquid latex, magnifying lenses, flashlights, alginate, plywood, ace bandages, hair, dirt, foam, wire and more...
This film for me represents so many things, but most importantly it was a resolution of my own Self to commit to the use of my Art to pursue Language. I had never realized a voice for myself that spoke as distinctly as this film did, as Animation does. This film represents the depth of who I am and have been. It gave me a vision of who I can be based on this history.
It expresses a rather difficult period in my life. Because of it's highly experimental nature it is not a film to be intellectually analyzed, but instead to be felt viscerally. My approach to it required an intuitive reflex to take place, an unconscious flow. I allowed dreams, images, flashes, to take part in telling me what to do. Even with that process in place, I only realized that it was an auto-biography as I was finishing it. I think that is one of the most revealing ways of creating, one of the most rewarding but also very emotionally charged.
"Grace" (segment) from Fuela Fire on Vimeo.
specs: digital, 1 min, B&W, sound
This is pixillation of people dressed in skeleton costumes set to a mix of Tiny Parham's Orchestra playing "Washboard Wiggle." The bones are plain old masking tape on top of black clothing. My Harvard students are the dancing skeletons.
specs: digital, .5 min,color, sound
Carmen Miranda's song "Tico Tico" inspired this short stop-motion puppet animation. I ask: Why not a fruit-bedecked dancing worm? This was turned into an opener for a student screening, hence the text at the end.
"Tico Tico" stop-mo animation short from Fuela Fire on Vimeo.
specs: digital, color, sound
This project began and ended as an experiment in tranlating the nuances and beauty of shadow puppetry to animation, but by way of digital tools and processes. This was a project that received lots of involvement in "process," but stopped short of resolution. The reason was frustration with the limitations of digital tools. The process couldn't sufficiently involve improvisation and spontanaeity.
specs: 16mm, 10 min, color, sound
I took part in a group animation project on the theme of "Love." I teamed up with Maria Vasilkovsky to do a pixillation animation. We fabricated the body costumes of a 3-armed Greek Hero that falls in love with a 3-breasted Greek Heroine. A great inspiration was the over-the-top theaterical pixillation films by artist Red Grooms.
specs: digital, 1.5 min, color, sound, various media (tent, monitor, fabrics, sculpture)
This was an installation that involved the Viewer stepping into a tent and activating the fortune-telling message of the sadistic "Mme Senophile." Their personal fortune is found on a slip of paper tucked inside the fur and satin vulvic sculpture in front of them.
I produced the art direction and layout for the drawn animation sequence that appears in this Academy Award nominated short. Visit the site here.
specs: online web series, Flash; Swell Productions, Los Angeles
I was a character designer, animator and gag writer for an online series that spotlighted stand-up comics. I would re-interpret the comic's performance routine in animation as well as provide interactive heckling opportunities for the online viewer/user. These images are some samples of comics and hecklers in the audience.
This commercial came out pretty bad, but there were a few good things that happened in it.
I was a puppet animator for a bit on a few shorts directed and conceived by Corky Quakenbush, an insane man that was full of energy and ideas. The shorts were all parodies on popular media done with (somewhat) crappy puppets and sets and super-fast schedules. This still is from "Dennis the Menace II Society," where Dennis sprays silly-string all over Mr. Wilson while in his crack lab, setting him on fire.
I was a puppet, sets and props fabricator for this stop-motion animation studio for a short time. My own business took off during this period, causing me to dedicate my efforts there.
This project is an art studio practice that is devoted to challenging the concept of cinema's linearly and temporally based duration, the current basis of cinematic experience and presentation. The larger question is "What would happen if experimental animation / narrative cinema could be created as a spatially simultaneous experience, inclusive of contextual relationships, space and duration, as fine art is experienced?"
I co-owned/began this business with Kristen Hudgik. We designed and produced a very successful line of gargoyles and colonial cemetary-inspired sculpture. Our clientel were internationally based, and employed a handful of artists and strange people. Our line was eventually sold off to a competitor, who continues to produce it.