Duck Stab! is an unproduced film concept by Graeme Whifler and The Residents, conceived and partly shot around 1978 and 1979, to promote the release of The Residents' 1978 EP Duck Stab! and album Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen.
Initially conceived as a series of short promotional videos for selected tracks from the EP and album, the Duck Stab! film project was eventually developed by Whifler into a treatment for a full length feature film. The videos (and later, the film) would have starred Bridgit Terris (a disabled man who had just been released from a local institution) as the protagonist Skinny, as well as multiple other characters.
The project was abandoned with only a small amount of footage having been shot, after The Cryptic Corporation decided they were not overly interested in the idea due (in part) to its likely expense, and the film's intended star Terris left San Francisco, apparently once and for all, after only having completed shooting a couple of the planned sequences.
A small amount of footage shot for the film is seen at the end of the 1980 music video "Hello Skinny"; more is seen in the special features on the DVD and Blu-ray editions of the 2015 documentary film Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents, where it is edited into a music video for the song "Melon Collie Lassie" (from the 1979 EP Babyfingers).
History[]
Bridgit Terris, photograph by Graeme Whifler
In 1978, after The Residents had released their EP Duck Stab! and album Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen, The Cryptic Corporation asked their friend and occasional collaborator, photographer and filmmaker Graeme Whifler, to produce a number of short films based on the songs from the album.
Whifler and The Residents began conceiving the short films, and Whifler began shooting footage for the project with Bridgit Terris, a disabled man known to Whifler,[1][2] who had recently been released from a San Francisco mental institution and who is said to have believed that he was the French model and actress Brigitte Bardot.
Whifler expanded his concept for the Duck Stab! short films into a proposal for a full-length feature film, working with The Residents for at least a short time with this in mind;[1] however The Cryptic Corporation were not particularly interested in the idea, feeling that it would cost a lot of money, and that they had no way of marketing a feature film, as opposed to a series of music videos, which they had begun to feel was the coming medium.[2]
To make matters more complicated, Terris had left San Francisco part-way through filming to live with his mother, leaving only a small amount of completed footage (as well as a number of photographs taken by Whifler of Terris at the bus station preparing to leave the city) to work with.[1]
The Duck Stab! film project was ultimately abandoned; however a small amount of the footage, alongside a number of still photo-montage images featuring Whifler's photographs of Terris, were edited by Whifler and the group into a music video for the song "Hello Skinny",[1] which premiered in April 1980.
Decades later, filmmaker Don Hardy came across the unused Duck Stab! footage when assembling the 2015 documentary film Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents,[2] editing some of it into a music video for the group's song "Melon Collie Lassie" from the 1979 EP Babyfingers. This video was released as a bonus feature on the DVD and Blu-ray releases of the documentary.
Pages from a hand-written rough outline for a version of the Duck Stab! film were released to the public in 2022 in the Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen Notebook included with the deluxe edition of the Melodic Virtue coffee table book A Sight For Sore Eyes, Vol. 1.
Outline[]
Bridgit Terris in a sequence from the abandoned Duck Stab! film
The following is derived from pages from a rough outline for an unspecified version of the film, as included in the 2022 book Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen Notebook. As only five songs from the album are outlined in the pages included in the book, it can be assumed that this either is not a complete outline of the planned film, or is an early draft which pre-dates Graeme Whifler's expansion of the concept into a full-length feature film.
The first publicly known scene outlined for the Duck Stab! film is a sequence set to the song "Sinister Exaggerator". It opens with a camera panning down a corridor filled with dead bodies, until it enters the bedroom of "Skinny" (Bridgit Terris), who is asleep and dreaming. Skinny's dream begins with the song's vocal; this sequence either would have featured pixelated footage of The Residents singing the song on a Douglas DC-8 aircraft, and/or a shot of chattering wind-up teeth and toy eyeballs "singing" the song in place of the group. The song's lyrics appear on the screen with a bouncing ball for the audience to sing along.[3]
The dream ends, and Skinny awakes to find an invitation to a birthday party. He gets a present, and goes to the party; he arrives outside just in time to hear "Happy Birthday" being sung by the revelers. As the song "Birthday Boy" begins, Skinny enters the party and (now dressed in a "fat suit") becomes the titular "Birthday Boy", and the focus of the attention of the people gathered at the party. Between the song's two verses, the Birthday Boy opens the present which had been brought to the party by Skinny, and "something happens" (possibly the appearance of a "people-eating machine"). The remaining guests leave hastily, leaving the Birthday Boy singing happily to himself.[3]
The next known sequence intended for the film is the song "Semolina", which opens with someone walking on a beach, searching and calling for the titular Semolina, who is seen only by the camera, always lurking and creeping behind the singer. The camera follows Semolina as she scurries down the beach, and continues to follow her to her home.[3]
Upon entering her home, Semolina becomes the "Lizard Lady", in a "cubist lizard mask" and "painted leotard", with "stylized hands and feet". Skinny is present, and sings the song's lyrics as the Lizard Lady acts them out. Halfway through, we enter the Lizard Lady's "lizard fantasy", in which we see Skinny "turn into" the Lizard Lady as she starts to sing. The two dance/act out the Lady's fantasy.[3]
Another segment planned for the film would have seen Skinny "(going) to Constantinople",[3] though no further detail about this sequence has been revealed.
Cast[]
- Bridgit Terris as Skinny/Birthday Boy/Lizard Lady
- The Residents as themselves
Songs planned for inclusion[]
- "Sinister Exaggerator"[3] (partly shot)
- "Birthday Boy"[3] (partly shot)
- "Semolina"[3]
- "Lizard Lady"[3]
- "Constantinople"[3]
See also[]
- Duck Stab!
- Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen
- "Hello Skinny" music video
- Graeme Whifler
- Bridgit Terris
- "Birthday Boy"
- "Constantinople"
- "Hello Skinny"
- "Melon Collie Lassie"
- Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen Notebook
- List of unfinished projects
External links and references[]
- "Hello Skinny" at RZWeb (archived via archive.org)
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 ""The idea of even bringing Bridgit in, ultimately that came from a film idea that The Residents were working on... with Graeme at that time, and the project was eventually abandoned. And so ultimately he took some of the footage from that abandoned project and then shot new stuff with Bridgit and made Hello Skinny out of it. But I think there are photos of Skinny - Bridgit sitting at... they used to have these TV desks at bus stations, and you could sit down in a chair and it would have a TV in front of you, and you could put change in it, and you could watch TV for fifteen minutes... while you were waiting for the bus. And so there are photos like that in there... And the thing was, Bridgit was waiting for the bus to go home to live with his mother. He had been living in San Francisco, I think he ultimately just kind of considered his life was a failure, he couldn't make it, he couldn't fit in, and so he was going home to live with his mother. And so Graeme went to the bus station with him and shot all these pictures before he got on the bus and disappeared." - Homer Flynn on Cacophony Podcast - Obscure Music for Obscure People, Episode 1 - "Homer Flynn on The Residents and Duck Stab!", January 13th 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Cryptic Corporation wanted Graeme Whifler to shoot several videos based on Duck Stab! songs. And so he started working on it, and then ultimately Graeme kind of expanded that idea into becoming a feature film. And then ultimately, that wasn't really what Cryptic was interested in. You know, it was going to cost a lot of money, and we really felt like what would work for us in terms of the market at that time was really music video... that was the coming thing. We just felt like we had no way to market a feature length film, it just seemed like a project that wasn't going to work for us. So ultimately, once again, a certain amount of stuff did get shot for it, and then ultimately that became Hello Skinny... but there was more stuff shot. And the film, the Theory of Obscurity documentary film, Don Hardy was the filmmaker. I worked very closely with Don. I like Don, he's an interesting guy. And Don gathered up all this film and video material that The Residents had shot, and Don found that. He's the one that went in and edited some of that existing footage into the Melon Collie Lassie music video." - Homer Flynn on Cacophony Podcast - Obscure Music for Obscure People, Episode 1 - "Homer Flynn on The Residents and Duck Stab!", January 13th 2022
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 The Residents (ed. Aaron Tanner), Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen Notebook, Melodic Virtue, 2022
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Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen (1978) Side A: Duck Stab! |