Life Is Like Lint
16mm film, 80 minutes, 1999 (additional images 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
This film began as a traditional dramatic feature film with an emphasis on improvisation. Over the seven years I took to make it, much of the drama was left out in favour of fragmented moments of diary-style life observation. I used up dozens of rolls of different film stocks, cross processing all the reversal as negative and cutting everything together in a giant collage. The final version of the script is highly influenced by post-modernism as the characters fall in and out of character. The film has many mistakes but there are no accidents, I structured it to look extremely flawed but am very proud of the discrete structure I was able to build with this footage. It features me and my real partner Margaret Bessai in the rolls of two individuals a bit like ourselves but with many differences. The film is seen as creepy to our friends who recognize enough truth to start to believe that it is all true. I enjoyed hiding bits of truth inside the fiction, or vice versa. The film features cameos from Brett Bell, James Whittingham, Jean Oser, Jeff Nachtigall, Richard Kerr, and the Screaming Banana. It also features puppets designed by Margaret Bessai. This film may also be screened in fragments. Suggested excerpts are the opening animation, the coffee maker scene, the cereal box animation (by Margaret Bessai), and the hound dog puppet show that closes the film.
Screenplay for Life is Like Lint.
Promotional postcard designed by Margaret Bessai
2018 follow up film: Overview