Tag Archives: Vince Vieluf

Canonically Weird (The List)

73. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE (2009)

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“It was smart and weird and different and exciting.  I was just curious to see how it would turn out.”–Actress Tania Raymonde on The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle script

DIRECTED BY: David Russo

FEATURING: Marshall Allman, Vince Vieluf, , Tania Raymonde, Tygh Runyan

PLOT: Dory has a good job as a data manager, but he throws it all away when he stomps a co-worker’s cellphone in a fit of sanctimonious anger.  Jobless and desperate, he takes up with a band of janitors led by Weird William, a transvestite Gulf War vet.  When the cleaning crew pilfer experimental cookies from the garbage can of a marketing research firm, they discover that the addictive treats have odd side effects: not only do they cause hallucinations, they also make men who eat them pregnant.

Still from The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009)

BACKGROUND:

  • Writer/director David Russo worked himself through college as a janitor.  He was deeply affected by an incident where he found an undisposed of miscarriage in a toilet bowl, and that sight became the genesis of The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle.
  • Dizzle is only cinematographer Neil Holcomb’s second feature film as Director of Photography, but since childhood he has worked on over fifty major movies and television shows as a gaffer, best boy, or grip.  At age twelve he got his second job in movies, working in the electrical department on David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet (1986) .
  • The film was distributed by Tribeca Film, in association with American Express.  It’s strange to see corporate sponsorship for an underground, anti-corporate movie, and it will be interesting to see if the trend continues.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: A smear of fluorescent blue in a porcelain-white toilet bowl.  Other images are more arresting, but this is the one that recurs over and over: in hallucinations, hanging on the wall of a snooty art gallery, and as a “grade A blowout” discovered in a commode by the janitors on their appointed rounds.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: It may be a comedy about male pregnancy, but this is no obvious Hollywood yuk-fest like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Junior. There’s a minimum of morning sickness jokes, and a maximum psychedelic cookie freak-outs. About society’s outsiders and their skewed experiences in a society that’s more insane than they are, Dizzle is made in the underground spirit of Alex Cox’s Repo Man, but with contemporary digital visual gags reminiscent of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is a movie that contains a cross-dressing, pot-smoking, ex-military entrepreneur named “Weird William”—and he’s barely a footnote in the catalog of the movie’s oddities.


Original trailer for The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

COMMENTS: For about ninety minutes, Little Dizzle races along with an insane, kitchen sink Continue reading 73. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE (2009) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: ORDER OF CHAOS (2010)

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DIRECTED BY:  Vince Vieluf

FEATURING:  Rhys Coiro, Milo Ventimiglia, Samantha Mathis, Mimi Rogers, Susan Ward, Chip Joslin

PLOT: An honest attorney finishes last by following the rules until a sinister neighbor hires

onto the firm and throws his life into a state of turmoil.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Order Of Chaos takes the old, my new friend turned out to be an obsessive psycho stalker plot from movies like Bad Influence (1990) and sends it in an entirely different direction.  It is a slick, offbeat thriller, but it was not made to be weird.

COMMENTS:  Strong performances, stylish editing and an unexpected storyline distinguish this offbeat chic thriller from filmmaker Vince Vieluf.  An upstanding trooper of a guy, John (Coiro) is a natural subordinate.  An avowed approval seeker, John devotes himself to pleasing two dominating women: his belittling fiancée Jennifer (Mathis) and castrating boss Miss Craig (Rogers).  John leads a life of quiet desperation by the numbers.  Adhering to a rigid, tedious schedule with compulsive military precision, John’s day begins with a morning workout.

Running on his treadmill (a symbol of his corporate ladder climbing) John blue-tooths a minute by minute, blow by blow progress report of his activities and plans to his boss hours before work even starts.  The conversation includes numerous acknowledgments of “yes ma’am, yes ma’am,” as John absorbs lengthy instructions and mandates.

But his efforts to please the demanding, flippantly brusque Miss Craig are paying off!  He is her “Man Friday” (read that as “piss-boy”—her personal honey bucket toter).  Craig treats John like a plebe in a fraternity, yet the ever dutiful John asks “how high?” whenever he’s instructed to “jump!”  If John keeps following at her heels like a good dog, he just might have a shot at partner at some indeterminate point in the distant future.

Evenings, John promptly trots home to Jennifer to walk the dog and take out the trash.  Jennifer is the prize in the relationship, and John had better not forget it.  Indeed, he is Continue reading CAPSULE: ORDER OF CHAOS (2010) →