Video

Eat My Shorts: The Early Short Films of Bruce LaBruce and Candyland Productions

Bruce LaBruce and Candyland Productions

1995, 68:10 minutes, Colour, English

TAPECODE 008.05

Eat My Shorts – The Early Short Films of Bruce LaBruce and Candyland Productions

Boy/Girl 13:40, by Bruce LaBruce
In LaBruce’s first short experimental super 8 film, a loose narrative is constructed out of a variety of film clips, some shot on location by the filmmaker, some found footage, and some shot off the television screen. A woman with long red hair (G.B. Jones) sits on a window sill and looks down with her binoculars at the street below. Meanwhile, Mary Tyler Moore escapes from an aggressive man and runs to the park. She looks up to see the woman with long red hair looking down at her with her binoculars. (This is all set to the Monkee’s song “Mary, Mary.”) In subsequent scenes, the woman with long red hair looks through her binoculars at a drunken skinhead (Dave-Id) and a queer punk (Bruce LaBruce) making out under a bridge, children playing on the street, and a strange man (Andrew Patterson) talking to a woman in a Laundromat. The film ends when the building the woman with long red hair lives in is boarded up, designated for demolition.
Boy/Girl is a documentation of a period of time when filmmaker LaBruce lived in a crummy, squat-like building at Queen and Parliament Streets in Toronto with the all-girl punk band, Fifth Column.

Sexbombs 11:13, by Candyland Productions
Sexbombs is a short experimental super 8 film by Candyland Productions. It is comprised of three vignettes intercut with each other and accompanied by a variety of punk music (especially Flipper’s song “Sex Bomb”) and movie soundtrack music. In the first vignette, punk rocker Sue Smith prepares her Mohawk, make-up, and attire for a night out. In the second vignette, Bruce LaBruce and Joe the Ho perform a crazy, violent dance in slow-motion beside a Christmas tree in July. In the third vignette, punk rock skater Steve Milo of the band Sudden Impact makes love to his skateboard.

I Know What It’s Like To Be Dead 15:30, by Bruce LaBruce
In this experimental short super 8 film from 1998, Bruce LaBruce appears as himself in an expressionistic montage of images, combining footage of himself with footage shot off the television, found footage of a cat operation, etc. The film explores the subject’s fear of illness, AIDS, and death that most men experienced through the eighties and nineties. In this experimental narrative, after LaBruce becomes ill and dies on the operating table, he has a life-after-death experience, including visions of zombie-children, Lucille Ball, and the infamous kiss between Linda Evans and AIDS victim Rock Hudson on Dynasty. Emerging from his dream, LaBruce is reborn, dancing in a celebration of life along with some liberated cows before enacting his final striptease.

Bruce and Pepper Wayne Gacy’s Home Movies 11:20, by Bruce LaBruce and Candyland Productions
This experimental super 8 film is composed of four vignettes of various people doing random things. In the first segment, a skinhead (Joe the Ho) and a punk (Bruce LaBruce) shave each other’s heads and drink beer. A woman with long red hair (G.B. Jones) arrives and gets into a fight with one of them. The second segment presents the same action taken from the point of view of the woman with long red hair. In the third segment, punk rock music star Dave Diktor of the band Millions of Dead Cops (MDC) performs cunnilingus on a groupie while Bruce LaBruce holds a light. A pug named Spike gets involved in the action. In the last sequence, a cute green-haired boy (Dave-Id) makes and eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then eats dog food out of a bowl.

Slam! 6:60, by Bruce LaBruce
This short super 8 experimental film is composed of three elements: footage taken by LaBruce in a mosh pit at a Toronto hardcore punk show featuring the bands Scream, The Mr. T. Experience, and MDC; found footage of porn star Al Parker having penetrative anal sex; and a soundtrack by The Carpenters.

Interview with a Zombie 10:16, by Candyland Productions
In this short super 8 experimental film, two zombies (Bruce LaBruce and Michael Brynntrup) try to eat each other while a female zombie (Kate Ashley) looks on. Eventually, the blood and flesh lust of the two zombies turns into gay desire as they fall in love and make-out, which sexually stimulates the female zombie spectator.

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