Fun's Over
Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn, Horn in person - 2006, 5:30, 16mm (video), Brooklyn & SF
A low-fi, sci-fi after-school special set in a New York City that has been reduced to a beach, where feral terriers run wild and hot dogs grow on trees.
Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn are alternative filmmakers in the tradition of Warhol, Burnett, Fischli & Weiss. Kalman is based in Brooklyn, Horn in San Francisco.
Interview
ATA: Fun's Over strikes me as a sort of love note to teen media. How did you go about structuring this campy collegiate romp?
L &W: We were watching a lot of really great teen TV back in 2005 when we made Fun's Over: The O.C., Laguna Beach, Gilmore Girls, Degrassi: TNG, South of Nowhere. That was when we first saw the original Degrassi Junior High, which has been especially important to our work.
Teenagers on TV are really great. They're absolutely invested in the adult world while also not belonging to it. They stand just far enough outside to have a critical perspective.ATA: I'm curious if you've seen Tommy Wiseau's The Room, and your thoughts on the potential of "bad" filmmaking.
L & W: I (Lev) haven't seen it and Whitney hasn't seen the whole thing. I don't feel we're especially into "bad" filmmaking, into just like upending "quality" filmmaking. I mean yeah, Warhol and Paul Morrissey are real important to us and I guess people consider them bad. Same for teen TV, and some of the comedy vibes going around now that are like anti-clever. We like obvious, disjunctive, awkward, sprawling, jokey, unresolved, mannered, flat-footed, superficial, weird, offensive, didactic, stagey films. But that can be really good, y'know?
Interview by Liz Wing of ATA