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Danny Plotnick roared into the underground film world in the 1980s. Fueled by his love of punk and alternative culture and infected with d.i.y. spirit, he started making films that captured a similarly snarly attitude. His films were pegged as bawdy, bad-mouthed and beautiful, straddling the line between high-brow and low-brow art. It’s no surprise that his work has screened from the MOMA in NYC to mortuaries in Baltimore to the Independent Film Channel. With little opportunity to screen this type of work in the 80s, Plotnick took to the road, projector and films in trunk, screening in bars, warehouses and cafes. Plotnick trail blazed a path for the underground film world that exploded in the early 90s, a scene that would ultimately champion his work.
Working in the pre-digital age, Plotnick was a fierce advocate for super 8 filmmaking. He took this 1960s home movie medium with limited capabilities and made work that stands tall regardless of format. The special features on this dvd are an important document for students of film, providing a rare glimpse into the world of sound super 8 filmmaking.
The films on this disc include Swingers’ Serenade, a titillating tale of suburban sexual malaise; I, Socky, a rogue sock monkey hits the town on a big day out; Steel Belted Romeos, a turbo-charged tale of California road rage; Skate Witches, a glimpse into the world of a 1980s female skateboard gang; Flip About Flip, a tribute to comic genius Flip Wilson.
Further Information:
• Bonus films & trailers
• Director, cast and crew commentary for all films
• Over 60 behind the scenes photos, flyers & posters
• Complete technical specs for all films including fetishistic photos & illustrations of equipment
• 8 page booklet of insights and anecdotes
• Complete filmography
| Catalog Number: MC-737 |
Type: Shorts Compilation |
Genre: Comedy / Satire |
| Copyright: 2008 |
Length: 100 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: |
UPC/EAN: 880198073792 |
| Label: Blackchair Collection |
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This is a Microcinema Exclusive title.
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-737 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Program MC-737 may be licensed for Exhibition.
Films In Compilation
Tour Tips: Lesson #14
Beware The Day Off In New Orleans
directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Animation,
2001,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:02:00
People always told me my films had a burlesque quality and progressed like unhinged animations. I was always curious about animation, but never had the patience to animate things in film. Then After Effects came along and animation seemed doable for someone hyper like me. Starring Gil Ray and the Loud Family.
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I, Socky directed by
Alison
Levy
USA,
Comedy / Satire,
1998,
00:07:00
This film was made in a day with my wife Alison Levy. Bored and tired, we sat around our breakfast at a local diner trying to figure out what do for the day. I think she suggested we make a film. We snapped into action, scripted and storyboarded the film while we drove around town collecting my film gear which was housed in various locations. It took us about 6 hours to shoot. I edited the film in one weekend. The sound was culled from records (33, 45, and 78 rpm), cds, cassettes, and industrial films. Ray Wilcox helped me mix the sound live to the super 8 film via a sampler (exciting new technology in 1999). An awesome way to spend a couple of afternoons.
Directed by Danny Plotnick & Alison Faith Levy. Sound Mix by Ray Wilcox.
Awards: Grand Prize Brainwash Movie Festival. Honorable Mention U.S. Super 8 Festival.
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Swingers’ Serenade directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Comedy / Satire,
1999,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:24:00
This movie was a blast to make. Finding the perfect apartment to create the period, shooting with 60’s-era technology to help create the look were all part of the equation. But the way the score came together was particularly special. First off, the band consisted of the two leads in the film (Alison and Miles) and was very much in keeping with how I make films. Any number of people going above and beyond and serving in a variety of capacities. I would cut the film on flatbed, videotape the flatbed screen, and bring a tv and vcr into the band’s practice space. They would then reherse and write to this transfer and record the sessions on a boombox. I’d then transfer the audio cassette to mag, sync it up to the film, edit some more, videotape the flatbed and start the process over again. We ultimately recorded the score in a fancy studio where the band played live to a locked picture. Outside of a few coronet bleats, there is very little overdubbing in the soundtrack. Starring: Alison Faith Levy, Miles Montalbano, Jay Hinman, Chris Enright.
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Death Sled II: Steel Belted Romeos directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Comedy / Satire,
1990,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:10:00
The shooting of this film was a nightmare. We had no permits to be shooting on the streets of San Francisco, yet I chose to set up shop at a traffic light for two days. To make matters worse, we were under the flightpath for the SF International Airport, making sound recording challenging. The shooting moved in fits and starts at best. The fact that we weren’t shut down by the cops still amazes me. The cops actually visited us twice on the set. Once because they got a call that someone was being beat up at a traffic light. Guess those do-gooders didn’t see the film crew standing around the car.
Starring: Gary Ahuna, Chris Enright, Alison Faith Levy, Betsy Rose & Ray Wilcox. Music by the Ramon Wilcrag Disko Arkestra.
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Dumbass From Dundas directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Art / Artist,
1988,
00:07:00
Written on the 22 Fillmore bus in approximately 20 inspired minutes. We drove 4 hours to a small town outside of Carson City, Nevada to shoot this one. The camera broke down after the opening shots necessitating us to return to SF with 95% of the film not shot. On the return shoot, one of the starlets hung out in the van with the radio and air conditioned cranked, ultimately draining the battery, necessitating a bizarre call and servicing from AAA. This film really resonated in the alt. film scene in the late 80’s. Very few artsy fartsy film folk were shooting narrative, especially of the angst-filled variety. There was a hunger for this stuff. This predates, but anticipates the underground film movement that would blossom in the early 90’s.
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Flip About Flip directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Art / Artist,
1990,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:04:00
Back before mini dv, making films was a long, arduous, expensive proposition. In reaction to that, I liked making very short films in between longer projects. The idea was that to keep the chops honed, make smaller projects that could be shot in an afternoon on only one or two reels of films, thus keeping the costs down. This compilation contains a number of these efforts including Flip, Skate Witches, Sugarbutts, and I, Socky. This film was shot in an afternoon with the assistance of Chris Enright handling all the interviews and Alison Levy. All told, we shot 3 rolls of film. I think the total cost for the film was , a shockingly low budget for the time. Film Crew: Chris Enright, Alison Faith Levy.
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Skate Witches directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Political / Social,
1986,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:02:00
This film was inspired by the women in the Misfits shirt. She rarely skateboarded because she felt she would constantly be hassled by the male skateboard contingent in town. So we jokingly talked about starting a gang of female skateboarders and the film was born. Shot in an afternoon on glorious Kodachrome. The sound was recorded through my Chinon projector. When you engaged the record button, there was an ungodly crackling that recorded onto the film. I figured out how to circumvent that problem on subsequent films. I should have cleaned it up on the dvd, but that wouldn’t have been authentic. You can also see an ugly pulsing at the head of each shot which was the result of the lag time in the auto exposure setting a proper exposure. I eventually figured out how to circumvent that problem as well. Starring Jenny Parker, Karen Kibler, Dana Mendellsohn, Jon Solomon, Billy Rivkin.
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Pipsqueak Pfollies directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Drama,
1994,
00:24:00
I came up with the idea for this film in 1988 while being terrorized by a couple of 7 year olds in a Laundromat. They started messing with my laundry and sized me up as someone who wouldn’t beat the crap out of them. It took me so long to actually make the film because the idea of working with a cast of youngsters was simply unfathomable…until I got a job working at a daycare center. All of a sudden I had kids unwittingly auditioning for me on a daily basis. Of course I had to work there for several years before I got the guts to ask the parents to entrust their children to me, especially given the foul-mouthed films I had been making to that point. Seeing the kids’ faces as I turned them loose on the boxes of ice cream at the end of part I still stands as a highlight of my life. They were simply going out of their minds.
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Sugarbutts directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Art / Artist,
1987,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:03:00
This is what’s referred to as a one-reeler. We shot one roll of film, all the edits were done in camera. The sound was recorded via a 2 track film recording function on my projector.
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Pillow Talk directed by
Danny
Plotnick
USA,
Art / Artist,
1991,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:18:00
This was a collaboration with Los Angeles-based filmmaker Laura Rosow. We wanted the film to have an institutional, claustrophobic vibe. The Ektachrome stock of the late 80’s fit the bill. Many super 8 films of the 80s are brought down by the overuse of this very ugly film stock. But the stock’s putrid vibe with its lodge-browns and insane asylum-green color palette was the perfect stock for us. I personally love this film, but it pushes a lot of folks over the edge. Strangely, or perhaps not, this was the film selected to screen as part of the Museum of Modern Arts’ Big As Life super 8 retrospective. A Film by: Laura Rosow & Danny Plotnick. Starring: Laura Rosow, Chris Enright, Alison Faith Levy, Ray Wilcox, Claudia Gastaud, Yoli Acevas.
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2008-03-12 Metro Times - Detroit's Weekly Alternative
By Jason Ferguson
In a world of underground cinema defined by the polarity of auteurs vs. retards, it's great to be reminded that there are some filmmakers who manage to be both. San Francico's Danny Plotnick has been mining this middle ground for more than 20 years, applying a punk, DIY aesthetic and an askance sense of humor to his body of work. Well schooled in film formalities, and able to produce exceptional work on Super 8, as well as 16mm and DV, Plotnick has nonetheless made it his life's mission to create out-of-the-ordinary films rich with humor and bizarre perspective. This 100-minute collection of 20 of Plotnick's most notable works has everything from scene-ravaging female skateboarders (and their pet rodents) to dangerous little kids to, yes, sock puppets. The highlight, though, is Plotnick's 1999 tour de force, Swinger's Serenade, which finds him taking a script pulled from the pages of a '60s filmmaking magazine and turning it into an appropriately lurid black-and-white commentary on (barely) repressed sexuality. Throughout Serenade and the rest of the DVD, Plotnick never abandons his devotion to technical experimentation, and makes it abundantly clear that he's well-trained in the rules he's breaking.
| 2008-03-04 SF360
By Michael Fox
My high school physics teacher was a slight, nondescript fellow who hyperactively sparked to life in the classroom. His mantra was “Physics is fun!” and he gave one of the more clever lads an unexpected bonus point for devilishly scribbling it on an exam in place of an elusive correct answer. The reward wasn’t for sucking up, mind you, but for understanding that enthusiasm was more important than the dogged mastery of information. That this long-forgotten anecdote (and life lesson) came rushing back to me after spending some time with “Warts & All: The Films of Danny Plotnick” is neither accidental nor inappropriate. The 10 short comic narratives made between 1986 and 2001 assembled on this wonderful DVD are exemplars of an unpolished, unpretentious school of moviemaking that aims at every moment to be audience-friendly. It’s an attitude embraced today by thousands of adolescents screwing around with camcorders, and by one Seth Rogen. None of them has ever heard of the popular San Francisco filmmaker, I’d wager, but they all inherited his credo: Filmmaking is fun!
“Back then,” Plotnick confides on the candid commentary track to his endearing two-minute piece, “Skate Witches” (1986), “I didn’t know what I was doing.” He started out in Ann Arbor working in Super 8mm, an inexpensive but hellishly unforgiving format to which he remained committed until his 1999 16mm masterpiece “Swingers’ Serenade.” Plotnick taught himself to solve and circumvent Super 8’s limitations, but even as he got expert at his craft he never minded the seams showing onscreen. There are countless imperfections, fuckups and scars strewn throughout his movies, which some view as flaws but most people accept as intrinsic to a DIY aesthetic. Now that we’re irreversibly immersed in the digital age, the rough spots are perhaps best appreciated as artifacts of a mechanical, tactile medium.
As for the plotlines, Plotnick’s biggest crowd-pleasers, “Dumbass from Dundas” (1988, 7 min.) and “Death Sled II: Steel Belted Romeos” (1990, 10 min.), featured loudmouth, over-the-top characters behaving badly. Ray Wilcox, a beefy presence in both films, received his comeuppance (so to speak) in “Pipsqueak Pfollies” (1994, 24 min.) the epic tale of a longhaired loser getting mugged by a bunch of rug rats in a laundromat at 22nd and Guerrero. Consequently, Plotnick’s films fell into no-man’s land, exhibition-wise; they were the polar opposite of the poetic experimental shorts that defined the alternative film scene but they in no way resembled the sentimental, Oscarbait calling-card films produced by on-the-make grads of USC’s film school.
So Plotnick went on the road with his Super 8 projector, in the U.S. and abroad, and screened in cafes and clubs and raw spaces. After Chicago and New York spawned underground film festivals, he wasn’t the trailblazer so much as a popular returning guest. Come to think of it, the only drawback to the lovingly produced “Warts & All” DVD (distributed by Microcinema International — orders@microcinema.com) is that these films were made to be shown to a crowd of boisterous, slightly inebriated or stoned people in a funky room. Try as you might, you and your best friend won’t be able to achieve the desired effect on your couch, although the casually hilarious commentary tracks by Plotnick, actress and composer Alison Faith Levy (also Plotnick’s wife) and Wilcox are probably best savored in a small group.
So the recommendation from this corner is to throw a party and invite a dozen or 20 close pals. Tell ‘em upfront that instead of pickup possibilities and political banter, it’ will be a night for serious drinking and movie merriment. Start out with “I, Socky” (1998, 7 min.), which follows a sock monkey enjoying a night on the town (with scenes on the 38 Geary and at Edinburgh Castle), then provide a dose or two of Ray Wilcox. Keep the drinks coming, then cap the evening with the black-and-white classic “Swingers’ Serenade.”
Plotnick, whose recent work includes the ongoing Nest of Vipers podcast and a bunch of music videos with Chuck Prophet, took his inspiration from the myriad how-to magazines that accompanied the mass acceptance of home-movie cameras in the ’50s and ’60s. In “Swingers’ Serenade,” he shot a sample script from one such mag to deliciously twisted effect. After hubby Jay Hinman heads off to work, housewife Levy receives traveling salesman Miles Montalbano (director of last year’s “Revolution Summer” which, perhaps coincidentally, featured a cameo by Chuck Prophet) with open, um, arms. Chris Enright as “The Professor” archly introduces the film-within-a-film, pointing us to every morsel of demented suburban irony. As for your party, a bonus point will be awarded to the host who has a camera on hand. Danny Plotnick’s films reminds us not only that filmmaking is fun, but fun is contagious.
| 2008-03-04 www.curledupdvd.com
By Eric Renshaw
It's amazing what a guy with a punk attitude and a Super-8 camera can do. The short films of Danny Plotnick are fun, irreverent, and foul. Some are amusing but forgettable like Skate Witches; others stick with you and make you smile later in the day, like "Swingers' Serenade," which suggests that 1950's film magazines encouraged marital infidelities. Excellent on a number of levels, the least of which is murder mystery.
Plotnick's "Death Sled II: Steel Belted Romeos" takes a traffic misunderstanding and blows it up to epic proportions. It leaves me wondering what would have happened if the nice driver had hit the lead-footed Guido's car (a line that is repeated in about 50 interesting ways!).
"Pipsqueak Pfollies" illustrates the path of a milquetoast prone to being taken (yea, even beaten) by children. His path is shown with different choices after a series of interviews with children who have a beef with adults.
I can see that Plotnick's work has paved the way for other filmmakers like Tom Stern and Alex Winter. Great stuff and it leaves me wanting more.
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From Tugboats to Polar Bears
MC-311, 2004
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Portland filmmaker and Peripheral Produce ring-leader Matt McCormick makes films that combine found and original sounds and images to fashion abstract and witty observations of contemporary culture. In his recent documentary Towlines, which features... more >
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Myopic Visions
MC-595, 2006
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Hitmen, Clowns, Leprechauns, Living Suits, Killer Doughnuts and Angry Street Cleaners can all be seen in Filmmaker Chris Mancini's MYOPIC VISIONS. With a unique vision of Science Fiction and Comedy, this compilation presents all of Chris' award... more >
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| Date |
Venue/Organization |
City |
Country |
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2008-03-29 |
Red Hill Books
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San Francisco, California |
USA |
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