Tender Threads 2
I made this short film for the My Rode Reel short film contest, my first in nearly a decade. It’s a bit quiet (I have no idea what I’m doing with sound), so turn it up until you can hear Jenny’s synthy score a bit.
Here’s the behind the scenes video, which I’m happier with than the film itself.
Sometime in the spring, Jenny’s brother asked to borrow one of our old puppets to show his daughter. She’d recently taken in interest in that Sesame Street design, and thought she’d enjoy seeing something like it in real life.
Digging through our old tubs of puppets and puppet supplies brought back a profound sense of nostalgia. I really was only into puppet making for a couple of years, intermittently, from 2012 to 2014. But I had really made some progress. In particular, Brutus, the very last puppet I’d made before entering my child-rearing retirement, was prrrretty good. Ultimately, I loaned by brother-in-law Brutus, and Mr. Blueberry, I think the very first puppet I’d ever made.
I tried to let go of the fear of the puppets ultimately getting destroyed –acceptance of possible loss as a fundamental component of a healthy interpersonal loaning process; and its not like I’d been using the damn things anyway– but what I couldn’t let go of was the feeling that I’d quit something just as I was starting to get good at it.
So I bought some glue. Obviously.
Okay, not obviously. The best way to glue puppet (or cosplay) foam is with a contact cement that dries flexible, the kind favoured by leatherworkers. I had known this, years ago, but the fumes of contact cement are pretty intense, and I was living in apartments in those years, and didn’t have access to a more well ventilated workspace. So every foam skull we made for puppets in those days, we hand-stitched the foam segments together, a process that was long and tedious, and risked the integrity of the foam with every stitch.
As part of my getting old and having kids process, I’d moved into a house in the suburbs. I finally have a house with a garage that I can fill up with sawdust and glue fumes. With a little glue, my life would finally be complete.
Barge is kind of industry standard, but a bit of a pain in the ass to source in Canada. Ultimately, though, if you can find any place that supplies leatherists, they should have a contact cement to fit the bill. The place for me was Lonsdale Leather in Vancouver (5 stars, 10x recommend).
I did a few test glue-ups with scraps, felt confident that I could use it properly. Bought a bigass fan (those toluene fumes are no joke). And then waited a while. Did various household projects.
Mid-summer, Rode announced the My Rode Reel 2020 short film contest. I have been a cowardly follower of this contest for many years, never quite producing a goddamn thing. The very first year the contest was around, I’d shot and mostly edited (maybe I’ll finish it this year) a short, also involving puppets (and starring my heretofore greatest creation, Brutus), but couldn’t quite get it into a shape I was happy with before the deadline passed.
Every year, the contest would come around, and I’d write a script or two, talk with my friends about it, and then not do it. Life with kids is busy. It’s easy to be tired and focus on working and cleaning and sleeping.
This summer, though, was different. The annual reminder of that never-quite-getting-off-the-ground regret, and the specific, long dormant desire to make puppets, somehow coalesced into a newfound motivation.
Steven and I met for social distanced beers and a the covid-times outdoor patio of a downtown bar. We drank and brainstormed a completely bonkers, but vastly too long and technically complex, adult-themed puppet short film, a kind of homage to mid-career Cronenberg (think The Fly meets Dead Ringers), by way of The Muppets. Steven suggested Tender Threads 2, in honour of our film from eight years ago (holy shit) that so memorably contributed to the death of our beloved annual 48-Hour short film contest. Personally, I was fond of Tender Is The Flesh. After roughing out a plot and list of puppets and plot points and props, we went our separate ways.
I wrote part of a script and immediately realized that it was way, way too long for a contest with a 3 minute time limit. Jenny and I watched some videos on puppet building, to refresh our memories, and it immediately became clear to me that I could not guarantee being able to produce more than one puppet of the quality level I was aiming for, if I wanted to actually submit on time this year.
So I rewrote the script again, simplifying it, reducing the puppet cast to one. More or less abandoning the entire original plot, but keeping a portion of its demented, body-horror heart.
In late August, I started working on the puppet, Dr. Von Fleischman.
I spent a bit of time thinking about the shoot, trying to collect props, but most of my free hours for the month of September were spent on the gluing, and the sewing, and the measuring, and the sewing of Dr. Von Fleischman.
Maybe this has something to do with patience that naturally comes with old age, or years of parenting. Or maybe it’s just having gotten to the point where I know better what is required to produce good work, and thus, have a greater deal of motivation to do the required work. Regardless, I spent considerably more time on this puppet than any I had previously built, back when I had much more time available.
And the month went by in a blink of an eye, more or less.
So the last week of September was a scramble, finishing up the puppet, and then quickly transitioning into collecting and building props and planning the shoot.
[more to follow]