Looney ’toon

>> Benoit Boucher scores
with his inspired short Flat ’n’ Fluffy

Watching the crude, lewd, gory and unapologetically silly animated short Flat ’n’ Fluffy (which opens for The Daddy of Rock ’n’ Roll at the Parc), it’s difficult to believe that the entire thing is based on a true story.

But local filmmaker Benoit Boucher insists it’s true. And the story goes something like this: “A friend of mine was cleaning his gun and shot a neighbour’s dog by mistake,” says Boucher. “In a panic, he put the dog on the street and tried to mow it over in his car to make it look like a traffic fatality. Some old lady saw it and called the cops.”
Which is, in a nutshell, a good deal of the story of Flat ’n’ Fluffy, an entirely unsentimental, and rather crass, animated film that will leave you either in stitches or simply aghast. “Yeah, some have been horrified when they see it,” concedes Boucher, “I just reassure them that I used a stunt double for the dog.”

True, this short has tended to divide during its current tour on the fest circuit. Juries, reports Boucher, have had some kind of allergy to the film. (“They tend to loathe it.”) But the great unwashed masses lap it up; so far, it’s received audience awards at both the Stockholm International Film Fest and at last year’s Fantasia Fest here in Montreal.
Boucher, who began the project while an animation major at Concordia University (he graduated in ’96), says the filmmaking process was slowed by his own mental breakdown. “I have Tourrette’s Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I thought I was going completely insane. I checked myself into a clinic for a month and now I’ve come to terms with indulging my completely ridiculous habits.” The arduous filmmaking chore, however, had nothing to do with the breakdown-in fact, it probably saved him, insists Boucher.

Now, Boucher is taking some of the endearingly wacko characters from the film and writing them into his next animated short, tentatively titled A Fistful of Science. The plot involves a time machine that looks just like a diaper; the portal in time is opened when the machine is peed on.
“I’ve been obsessed with movies since I was a kid,” says Boucher, who cites both Spaghetti Westerns and Blaxploitation films as particular faves. “I always loved to draw. Animation allows you to make ridiculous things possible.” :
-Matthew Hays