The New Boredom

Don Hertzfeldt is this wonderful filmmaker that has carved himself out a little niche in this world making stick figure centered animations that started off silly and have since moved on to taking bigger issues such as human evolution, the grand meaning of existence, the imminence of death, relationships, and the hope of the human heart. Pretty big topics to wrap up in characters often made up of under 20 pencil strokes.

Anyways, The Meaning of Life was this epic film that suggests we are all the same, just going through the motions in this universe, making the same stupid noises over and over, occasionally stopping to look up at the sky and wonder if anyone else is doing the same thing. I saw it in maybe early 2007 and my friend and I just left the theater and didn’t say a word for the entire trip home. Not in an awkward way. We were just put into this place where we were on the same page and we didn’t need to spoil it by saying so. It was really nice.

Then Everything Will Be Okay came out and kicked off the Bill trilogy (or as I am surely unoriginally calling it: the “Bill-ogy”) with a bang. Bill goes through this near death experience and after being sick for who knows how long on his death bed, he suddenly gets better and has to go back to work on Tuesday. The last shot was so damn powerful in its simplicity that I swore to myself that I would do my best to never take a moment like that for granted again. I’m surely failing in that promise to myself but I’m trying to keep it up as best as I can.

Now I Am So Proud Of You is out and it has lifted such a ridiculous weight off my shoulders that I feel like I owe Mr. Hertzfeldt a hand written thank you letter. I explained the movie to a friend of mine recently and she replied with, “That sounds nice. It’s like it takes all the pressure off of living.” Yup. It sure does. It’s the most uplifting existential representation of life that I have ever seen and it made me question an awful lot of what I thought was important in life. A good shuffling of priorities can do your mental well-being some good.

Here are some recent interviews with Don about his work. If you’re a dork like me, please read them.

A couple via the Detroit of the internet, myspace.

And one from AFI fest.

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Last one of these that I have on my computer.

I love the colors.

Written by photokevo

November 5, 2009 at 12:01 am

Posted in Nerd Out With Me

Tagged with don hertzfeldt, everything will be okay, i am so proud of you, the meaning of life

Awowies.

Biting my style, in a big country?

with 2 comments

Call the police. The seizure head shaking mofo at 35 seconds into this video stole at least one of my dance moves. I know, he did it two years before I was alive and all but maybe that just means we are going to have to call a TimeCop.

After all this dance floor thievery gets settled maybe we can go back to just enjoying the clubs for what they are really all about, McNuggetinis.

And since I am just posing random junk anyway thanks to my brain being burnt from another 11 hour work day, here’s an interesting thing bashing the hell out of Ayn Rand. If you don’t know who that is, maybe just don’t bother clicking the link.

Maybe something real tomorrow.

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I swear, you ladies are hogging all the good plaid. All of it. You have any idea how hard it is to find a good dude-plaid shirt? Next to impossible. That’s how hard.