From an early age, Portland native Matt Groening was a cinephile,
inspired by his father Homer, a filmmaker and cartoonist. After graduating
from Evergreen State College in 1977, Matt headed for Los Angeles, were
he began to vent his angst to friends with cartoons starring a bug-eyed
rabbit named Binky. These missives became the comic strip LIFE IN HELL,
which debuted in the LOS ANGELES READER in 1980. A decade later, Groening
changed television history forever when he brought animation back to prime
time with his immortal nuclear family, bearing the names of Matt's own
family -Marge, Homer, Lisa, and Maggie-THE SIMPSONS, which has gone on
to become the longest running prime-time animated show in television history.
I grew up immersed in film festivals. My father, Homer, was a Portland
filmmaker, and I got dragged to various scary auditoriums from the time
I was eight, freaking out at all sorts of things that kids weren't allowed
to see in the early 60's. I saw hours of strange movies at the 1962 Seattle
World's Fair. I spent Friday nights in high school going to underground
movies at Portland State. And I studied film for a lost year at Evergreen
in the mid 70's. I even worked on a few shorts over the years, which didn't
make the cut at the Northwest Film & Video Festival.
So all my life I've gone to film festivals, and all my life I've staggered out of hot, stuffy screenings with a splitting headache and a sore ass. Invariably, there'd be some film on the program which was so bad, so incompetent, so offensive, so utterly lacking in any possible merit, that I was just left sputtering, WHAT THE HELL WERE THE JUDGES THINKING?
And now, finally, vengeance is mine: I'm a film festival judge. And if you're reading this with a splitting headache and a sore ass, and are wondering what the hell I was thinking, here are a few thoughts:
The quality of the films I viewed this year was extremely high. I consider myself pretty jaded, but I found dozens of films that were exciting, personal, and honest. The films I dug most: BUNNYHEADS, DA DA DOG, BINGO!, STEAMING WEENIES, and INTERIOR LATEX, varied widely in technique, but were either explosively amusing or deeply felt and all communicated an authentic personal exuberance for the medium. Sure, there were some flawed works within the gems, but the artistry and ambition of this year's bunch was impressive and inspiring. Filmmaking in the Northwest continues to be full of surprises.
So happy viewing! May your headaches be only mildly splitting, and your asses hardly sore at all!
Matt Groening