ART
And how did you do that? sit there and hold it for a long time. a frame every second, so I had to do
I arranged four bricks on the floor and So, the cabbage film, black and white, it by hand. It was probably one of the



Fluxion
put a window-sized pane of glass on top 1976—my bicentennial film. After that most Zen experiences I’ve ever had,
of them. On the glass I put cutouts from I did a film called They Came from just counting to six each time: one, two,
postcards of Boston and arranged them Beyond Velveeta, which was the story three, four, five, six, frame. For hours. Of

issue
to look like a skyline. I shot directly down of a junk-food invasion of Earth from course, the more I drank the slower the
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on the glass, actually at a small angle outer space. The invaders look like us, frames got, so at the end of the film the
so I wouldn’t see myself reflected, and but when their actual form is revealed clouds were really streaking, zooming by.
moved the sauerkraut with my hand un- they’re tiny pigs that don’t have any The problem with Velveeta is I was
derneath the glass behind the buildings, legs, they just kind of slide along the breaking up with a boyfriend at the time
so it looks like the sauerkraut is coming up ground on their stomachs, which is one who was an integral part of the film. So
over these cutouts of the Hancock Tower, of the animated things I was working it never really got finished. It’s like a rug
the Back Bay, the statue of Paul Revere. on. I was experimenting with animating, that’s half done, and the rug is all strings
It was basically a glass matte foreground not in a controlled environment, but in that go nowhere. There’s the pattern for
with the sauerkraut underneath it, moving real-life settings, wooded paths, or on a a while, and then the loom broke down.
in stop animation. In closeup it looks like rooftop with the city in the background.
the buildings are there with the sky be- The backgrounds become incredibly After that I wanted to do a film with
hind, and all of a sudden this huge mound hallucinogenic because, if you’re animat- more of a story. I met a woman in a noto-
of sauerkraut just zooms up behind it, ing a little pig going along a path in the rious bar called Sporters on Cambridge
towering, towering. woods with stop-motion, the pig moves Street in Boston. Her name is Tontileo
The effect was good. It was cheesy, but smoothly through the picture, but if Lipschitz. I first saw her pushing this guy
it works if you don’t show it that long. there’s any breeze at all, all the leaves up against a wall in the bar and holding
Like, in Jurassic Park the dinosaurs are around him are rapidly vibrating like a him by his neck, like she was shaking him
stomping around for fucking ever. But mescaline trip. down. She had him off the ground. I was
when you look at low-budget films, what across the bar with a friend, and I said,
they do is, before the special effects I loved animation. I used to sit with my “Who is that?” She weighed, I guess, a
can be really seen—before the audience camera on a hilltop in Vermont, with a good 250 pounds. She was six feet tall.
goes, “Oh, I get it”—they cut out. These sixpack of beer and a little one-frame She had an amazing red pie-plate hairdo
were like, one-second shots. Let me tell plunger in my hand, and animate clouds, that saucered around her head like the
you, sauerkraut is very hot, very acidic. It speed them up, for three or four hours. rings of Saturn. And she’s gorgeous. She
burns your hand, your skin. You just can’t I didn’t have a timer that would take has the most incredible, beautiful face.
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