Earlier today, I attempted to review Tony Rizzo's documentary film Seduction Of The Wonder Dick and ultimately found the task impossible. I got in touch with the man himself to talk about the film, its inspirations, and any hidden meanings it may have. If you've not seen the flick yet, please do so! Mr. Rizzo was very liberal with spoilers during our conversation, so...look out for those.
Mike: Tony! Glad to talk to you, sir.
Tony: Real pleasure to be here.
Mike: So let's get into it. Seduction Of The Wonder Dick.
Tony: What about it?
Mike: (Laughs) Everything, I want to talk all things Seduction Of The Wonder Dick.
Tony: Alright.
Mike: Let's start with the title.
Tony: Well, it's a parody of Seduction Of The Innocent, the book about how injury to eye panels in horror comic books were going to destroy our children's minds and how Batman is going to turn them all gay. I kind of wanted to take the opposite side of that. Plus, dick means several things, penis, Richard, detective. And those all play into the movie, I think.
Mike: The movie, at least the first half, uses a lot of clips from various high profile sources. Were you, or are you still, worried about going to court?
Tony: I actually think that would be kinda fun. There's a message in front of every print of the movie that makes it pretty clear that all the clips are fair use. And even if you think that's bullshit, I think it's really obvious if you watch the whole movie that it's its own thing but that it wouldn't work without the exact clips placed exactly where they are, so to change it would make it an entirely different movie, even if you moved one frame slightly to the left or something.
Mike: Agreed. So, a lot of real people, other film directors and comic book creators in particular sort of appear as characters in the film. I don't want to give too much away...
Tony: You can give away whatever. I'm pretty sure if people are reading this interview, they've either seen the movie or don't care too much about spoilers.
Mike: Well, you can do what you want, but I'm going to be as careful as I can. Do you think it's fair to say that certain filmmakers, at least in your film, are cast as villains?
Tony: Are you talking about Snyder?
Mike: Well...there's that clip...
Tony: (laughs) Yeah, that clip where he's talking about the goal of villainst. It was just too perfect. I found...it's from a DVD that's this documentary about DC villains. I found it in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart. I just couldn't not use him saying that, it was impossible. As far as whether he's the villain of the movie...I tried to leave that up to the viewer. Albert Fish is in the movie, too. And he ate children. So I think who you see as the villain of this movie says more about you than anything else, really.
Mike: There's some fictional characters in there too. Some from various other media, some you made up.
Tony: Right.
Mike: Is Professor Douche Monkey also a comment on Zack Snyder?
Tony: Professor Douche Monkey is just a parody of various douche monkeys I have known over the years. Some of his lines are direct Snyder quotes just because it's funny, but mostly it's things non public figures have said to me over the years.
Mike: Getting back a little bit to the use of clips.
Tony: Yeah. I know it's kind of trendy to make documentaries about movies, Los Angeles Plays Itself and Room 237. I saw a lot of similar movies in college that would never get a release because for various reasons it's much harder to argue fair use. But really...I wanted to go further than all of those, to really use the clips as characters.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Seduction Of The Wonder Dick is, indeed, oddly seductive
There has been a trend of late within documentary films to heavily feature clips, often to make a point about the feature films discussed and, indeed, cinema in general. Documentary films such as Room 237, Los Angeles Plays Itself and This Film Is Not Yet Rated use clips to dissect various elements of movies that the casual viewer may accept at face value.
Tony Rizzo's Seduction Of The Wonder Dick takes this use of re-contextualization to its extreme and, perhaps, to its natural conclusion. Consisting of Mr. Rizzo's home movies cut together with a dizzying variety of clips from Hollywood films (most of them based upon comic books with a particular focus on the character Batman), Seduction seems at first to be a fairly standard piece of feature length film criticism. In its first few minutes, it features a clip of Halloween III, in which a child is killed by the program he is watching, upon which Mr. Rizzo places audio of filmmaker Joel Schumacher apologizing for his much despised film Batman & Robin, symbolizing both the temporary killing of the Batman franchise and the death, perhaps, of many viewers' love of the character. Several comedic and dramatic juxtapositions of a variety of video and audio clips follow.
As the film goes on, though, it becomes clear that there is more going on here, that this is quite a personal story. It is difficult to describe this film without entirely spoiling it, but it soon goes beyond the world of documentary and into the world of psychological thriller. This film is often quite funny and always quite unusual. The audience with whom I viewed it seemed quite divided on whether it was a mere stunt or an actual great work. I highly recommend one and all judge for themselves.
****
Tony Rizzo's Seduction Of The Wonder Dick takes this use of re-contextualization to its extreme and, perhaps, to its natural conclusion. Consisting of Mr. Rizzo's home movies cut together with a dizzying variety of clips from Hollywood films (most of them based upon comic books with a particular focus on the character Batman), Seduction seems at first to be a fairly standard piece of feature length film criticism. In its first few minutes, it features a clip of Halloween III, in which a child is killed by the program he is watching, upon which Mr. Rizzo places audio of filmmaker Joel Schumacher apologizing for his much despised film Batman & Robin, symbolizing both the temporary killing of the Batman franchise and the death, perhaps, of many viewers' love of the character. Several comedic and dramatic juxtapositions of a variety of video and audio clips follow.
As the film goes on, though, it becomes clear that there is more going on here, that this is quite a personal story. It is difficult to describe this film without entirely spoiling it, but it soon goes beyond the world of documentary and into the world of psychological thriller. This film is often quite funny and always quite unusual. The audience with whom I viewed it seemed quite divided on whether it was a mere stunt or an actual great work. I highly recommend one and all judge for themselves.
****
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