Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Uncategorized Monster Road reveals animator's feats of clay
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:45 PM
The documentary Monster Road reveals how animator Bruce Bickford creates his own little worlds. A cult figure for his collaborations with Frank Zappa, Bickford crafts his largely unseen, clay-based animated films from his basement studio near Seattle. His figures prove ceaselessly malleable: One sequence shows a human face morph into a werewolf, then a demon, then an ocean, and more.
Director Brett Ingram remains rigidly within the confines of Bickford’s regular routine, seldom straying from his workspace or the cramped kitchen of his father, George, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Best Documentary winner of the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival, Monster Road focuses almost exclusively on the relationship between the two men and the origins of Bickford’s aesthetic. The 60-ish artist recounts his childhood living with his then distant, brooding father, two aggressive older brothers and bullying classmates. Cold War memories of an unfinished fallout shelter on nearby Monster Road also clearly fired his imagination.
Bickford describes his early fascination with “little guys” like Peter Pan who triumph over physically menacing villains. Such images recur throughout the snippets of his work shown in Monster Road.
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