Play-dough republic
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The animated monkey business of Gorilla Cartoons
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
There's been a lot said of the liberties digital technology has opened up for independent, low-budget live-action filmmakers. Note the whole Blair Witch phenomenon. But the real breakthrough has been for an even more churlish and repellent bunch--animators. Digital video and the Internet have unlocked the shackles of hand-painted cells, film stock costs and the difficulty of finding screen time, be it in cinemas or on TV, to present their short, idiosyncratic and often offensive little creations.
Leading the slapstick insurrection in Montreal are the babyfaced Jesse Brown and his big-haired sidekick Josh Dolgin, the core of Gorilla Cartoon Collective, based out of a loft in the stately yet crumbling Southam Building on Bleury. "We've got a light-well on one side that's filled with hundreds of pigeons," says Brown, "and an alley on the other that attracts all kinds of action. I've seen two couples fucking, three fistfights and, I swear to God, a guy in a kilt playing bagpipes--I took pictures if you doubt me."
All of which can only serve to inspire them. The last few years have seen the pair gradually master the various styles of animation (trad line drawings, pixelation, paper cut-outs, stop-motion claymation). Some of their efforts have seen the light of day--the I Fuck the World short was a hit at Just for Laughs' Eat My Shorts and the Planet Smashers video "Super Orgy Porno Party" was a hit, uh, somewhere. I'm sure it was.
Oddly, pathetically even, Gorilla's proudest moments to date are their failed projects. "For example," muses Brown, "I contacted all the other Jesse Browns I could track down in the world and tried to convince them each to change their name to something else. There was a Maui surfer, a former member of Clinton's cabinet, a financial advisor, a 13-year-old girl--none of them went for it, but they were all very polite. I also tried to convince Bell to let me work off my phone bill by giving massages to their operators. That didn't work either."
Oh well, back to the drawing board. Or rather the kitchen table where they fabricate the flexible little play-dough voodoo dolls that populate their current project--at your expense, taxpayer!
"The government pays us to play with dolls. We got a big fat grant to make a 20-minute cartoon called 500-Pound Planet. It's a claymation hip hop buddy film fantasy soap opera set in Montreal, starring me, Josh, my four-year-old cousin Eli, and maybe Fyvush Finkel, the legendary Yiddish actor.
"500-Pound Planet is the bomb we'll drop in '01. Besides that, we'll be representing with weekly updates to the Web site, Gorillacartoons.com, and free online MP3s of Josh's beats (he produces as The So-Called). Oh, and we're also writing fortunes for Wing's Fortune Cookies, so you can check that out soon at your favourite Chinese restaurant."
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