"Kooks, Eccentrics and Oddballs" at Oddball Films February 19, 2010

Event: “Kooks, Eccentrics and Oddballs”. Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present the inaugural evening of a new series of 16mm film programs focused on people with strange occupations, habits or ideas. Many were innovators, some were geniuses, more than a few are completely insane! This month’s highlights include: Castle Man, about a man who obsessively built a castle by himself- stone by stone; Emperor Norton, a representation of San Francisco’s favorite oddball; The Man Who Made Millions Think, bizarre beauty and hair product pitcher who channels snake-oil salesman of yore; Bates Car, about a lovable one-legged inventor who makes cars run on manure and self-propelled bicycles; A Boy Creates, filmed partly at Playland At The Beach and the Emeryville Mud Flats, a boy makes one-of-a-kind sculpture; Plus! More oddballs in Stranger Than Fiction, including a trailer made from a hollowed out redwood and newsreel footage of famous hermit/hoarder brothers Homer and Langley Collyer’s jam-packed Manhattan apartment (where they were both found dead- one crushed by a wall of junk).
Date: Friday, February 19, 2009 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco 94110
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Eccentrics_PR.pdf

"Kooks, Eccentrics and Oddballs”
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, February 19, Guest Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of short films focused on those lovable kooks, eccentrics and oddballs that make the world a bit more interesting. Some may be geniuses, others are just a bit off- but they all are fascinating subjects. Tonight’s program will be the first of an occasional series. Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Castle Man (Dir. Mary Uible Nebergall, Color, 1979)
Focused on 89 year-old eccentric Harry Andrews, his spirit and values while depicting his life-long work of creating a castle along the Ohio River. Andrews only really began working once he had retired. A notary public and lifelong bachelor, Andrews was also a medieval enthusiast. At age 55, he began constructing a 1/5 scale replica of a Medieval Castle in Loveland, Ohio.

Harry built the entire castle himself, using 2,600 sacks of cement, 32,000 quart milk cartons for forming concrete bricks, 54,000 five-gallon buckets of dirt, and 56,000 pail-fulls of stone. He also built a secret room into the castle that wasn't discovered until it collapsed years after his death.

In a freak accident, Harry Andrews set himself ablaze while cooking in the castle and died two weeks later. Today, the castle is still run by the "Knights of the Golden Trail," the youth organization established by Andrews. Unsurprisingly, it is said to be haunted.

Emperor Norton (B+W 1953)
A reenactment of the life of one of San Francisco’s most amazing characters Emperor Norton. The self-proclaimed His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States” and "Protector of Mexico."
Although he had no political power, and his influence extended only so far as he was humored by those around him, he was treated deferentially in San Francisco, and currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

Though he was considered insane, or at least highly eccentric, the citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence and his proclamations, most famously, his "order" that the United States Congress be dissolved by force (which Congress and the U.S. Army ignored) and his numerous decrees calling for a bridge and a tunnel to be built across San Francisco Bay. On January 8, 1880, Norton collapsed at a street corner, and died before he could be given medical treatment. The following day, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage to Norton/Norton's legacy has been immortalized in the literature of writers Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, who based characters on him.

Bate’s Car: Sweet As A Nut (Color, 1974)
A portrait of a loveable eccentric, this short film presents Mr. Bate, an inventor living in rural southwest England who discovers a substitute for gasoline in barnyard manure. Even though he fits the classic mould of single-minded know-how and practical dreamer, his discovery is tried and tested. He demonstrates how his homemade digester does turn manure into potent methane gas that powers his auto. And for good measure, he demonstrates his latest sustainable invention – a bicycle powered by the bumps on the road.

The Man Who Made Millions Think (B+W, c. 1950)
Bizarre promotional film from the early 1950’s is a portrait of a megalomaniac hair product pitcher that eerily bridges the snake-oil evangelizers of the 19th century and the shamwow crap infomercials of today.

A Boy Creates (Dir. Bert Van Bork, Color, 1971)
Sweet kids film made by the masterful, prolific educational filmmaker Bert Van Bork of a boy who admires the clowns and other figures (including Laughing Sal) at SF’s Playland at the Beach (closed and leveled in 1972), then collects junk and builds figures along the Emeryville mudflats (still visible as you drive along Highway 80).

PLUS- Stranger Than Fiction and other mini-portraits of a couple who made an RV out of a single redwood log, an all-midget newspaper, oddball artists and mind-blowing newsreel footage of the apartment where the most famous hoarders of all time “lived” and died: the Collyer brothers of Manhattan.

Curator Biography:
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

Upcoming Programs
Fri Feb 19- “Kooks, Eccentrics and Oddballs”
Sat Feb 20th- “Strange Sinema”
Fri Feb 26- “As Seen On TV 3”
Sat Feb 27th- Portland Curator Dennis Nyback’s “Terrorism Light and Dark” and “I Know Why You’re Afraid”

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Official Website: http://www.flarerecord.com/?p=517