By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle Directed by David Russo

Posted Thursday, June 4th, 2009 - Comments Off on The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle Directed by David Russo
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I finally caught up with The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle at the , and was delighted to find it one of those rare films that heralds an interesting new talent. It’s not often a first-time filmmaker (hell, any filmmaker, for that matter) makes something that’s completely cerebral, original, and artistically exciting; with his debut, writer/director David Russo has made it known that he’s someone to watch.

The film is about Dory (Marshall Allman), a data guy who wigs out on the job one day and gets canned, forcing him to temporarily take a job with a group of night janitors who clean a building that has a science research firm as one of its tenants.

Dory and his new pals eat some test-product cookies that have been chemically engineered to create a sensation of a warm, fresh-baked cookie with every bite, but the cookies have a weird side effect on the men, who find their digestive tracts impregnanted with some type of fluroescent blue life form. Ouch. That’s the weird conceit of the film, but beneath that it’s also about this group of “invisible” people who keep this building clean and who are considered disposable enough to test a product on without their knowledge.

The janitorial crew shines, particularly Vince Vielufas OC, a frustrated poet/philosopher/artist who schools Dory on the philosophy of the janitorial arts, and Tania Raymonde as Ethyl, the dread locked, tattooed and pierced female half of a drug-addict couple on the team who spends much of their work time fucking on conference tables, desks and meeting room floors (think about that next time you sit down for a team meeting at work).

What really makes Little Dizzle stand out, though, is the trippy-but-smart storytelling combined with Russo’s freakishly imaginative animation work. We’re not quite talking Charlie Kaufman brilliant (or at least, the plot’s not quite that labyrinthine), but Russo has some interesting ideas integrated in this film, and for the most part he executes them well. There’s a spiritual and philosophical message in there, too, about our own complicity as consumers for the products we demand and grow addicted to and the consequences of our consumption. But if the heavier stuff isn’t your thing, that’s okay; there are plenty of funny moments, including a particularly amusing birth scene, to keep you entertained.

I immensely enjoyed Little Dizzle; it kept drawing me in and engaging me with its originality and artistry, and I’ll be very interested see what Mr. Russo does in the future (his next project is for The Blue Man Group). This is one of those great-word-of-mouth type films — the trailer doesn’t come close to doing the film justice. Fortunately it’s just crazy and interesting enough to compel a lot of folks who see it to recommend it to their friends, if for no other reason than it has to be seen rather than just described to be appreciated.
-by Kim Voynar

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon