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.
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