The Beaver Trilogy | |
---|---|
Directed by | Trent Harris |
Written by | Trent Harris |
Starring | Richard LaVon Griffiths Sean Penn Crispin Glover Elizabeth Daily |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Beaver Trilogy (2001) is a documentary film directed by Trent Harris, featuring Richard LaVon Griffiths (also known as "The Beaver Kid" and "Groovin' Gary"), Sean Penn, Crispin Glover and co-starring Courtney Gains and Elizabeth Daily.
The Beaver Trilogy combines three separate vignettes that were filmed at different times, in 1979, 1981, and 1984. The first, titled The Beaver Kid, is a short documentary about the exploits of "Groovin' Gary", a performer that filmmaker Harris happened upon while filming for a Salt Lake City, Utah news station. Harris was in the parking lot of his workplace, testing out a color video video camera that the station had just acquired, when he stumbled upon Gary taking photographs of their news helicopter. Gary immediately launched into a number of celebrity impressions, including John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone.
Several weeks after they first met, Harris traveled to the small town of Beaver, Utah and filmed Gary, an Olivia Newton-John obsessive, as he staged a talent show that featured Gary dressed in full drag singing the Newton-John song "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting". Gary refers to his onstage alter-ego as "Olivia Newton-Dawn".
The second installment, titled The Beaver Kid 2 features Sean Penn as "Groovin' Larry" Huff in a dramatic interpretation of the original documentary. It incorporated some scenes from the original documentary. The Beaver Kid 2 was shot on a budget of $100.
The trilogy is completed with The Orkly Kid, in which Crispin Glover reprises Penn's role, this time referring to his onstage persona as "Olivia Neutron Bomb". The Orkly Kid was shot in color film, is considerably longer in length and more professional-looking than the first two acts, and also features a number of new supporting characters and plot twists.
The filmmaker, Trent Harris, sells The Beaver Trilogy on DVD from his web store. [1] As of 2007, the Salt Lake Film Society has a copy for rent which is available at the Tower Theatre. In August 2016 a documentary about it, titled Beaver Trilogy Part IV, was made available to stream on Netflix. [2]
In an interview with Robert K. Elder for his book The Best Film You've Never Seen , director Phil Lord highlights the merits of the trilogy: "To me, it felt like it was a film school education in 83 minutes. It’s a great treatise in story-telling and the different ways you can tell a story just with subtle changes." [3]
The film was also featured in the episode "Reruns" of the public radio show This American Life , which first aired December 6, 2002.
In 2015 a documentary about the film, called Beaver Trilogy Part IV, was released. It examined the relationship between the original film's star Richard Griffiths and its director Trent Harris. It is narrated by Bill Hader.
Richard LaVon Griffiths, the original Groovin' Gary, died of a heart attack in Salt Lake City on February 2, 2009, at age 50.
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Bob Gale; both wrote the story. It is the sequel to the 1985 film Back to the Future and the second installment in the Back to the Future franchise. The film stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Thomas F. Wilson with Elisabeth Shue, and Jeffrey Weissman in supporting roles. It follows Marty McFly (Fox) and his friend Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd) as they travel from 1985 to 2015 to prevent Marty's son from sabotaging the McFly family's future. When their arch-nemesis Biff Tannen (Wilson) steals Doc's DeLorean time machine and uses it to alter history for his benefit, the duo must return to 1955 to restore the timeline.
Crispin Hellion Glover is an American actor, filmmaker and artist. He is known for portraying eccentric character roles on screen. His breakout role was as George McFly in Back to the Future (1985), which he followed by playing Layne, one of the leading roles in River's Edge (1986). Through the 1990s, Glover garnered attention for portraying smaller but notable roles, including Cousin Del in Wild at Heart (1990), Andy Warhol in The Doors (1991), Bobby McBurney in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and the Train Fireman in Dead Man (1995).
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a 1975–76 concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with numerous musicians and collaborators. The purpose of the tour was to allow Dylan, who was a major recording artist and concert performer, to play in smaller auditoriums in less populated cities where he could be more intimate with his audiences.
Incident at Loch Ness is a 2004 mockumentary starring, produced by and written by Werner Herzog and Zak Penn, while also serving as the latter's directorial debut. The small cast film follows Herzog and his crew while working on the production of a movie project on the Loch Ness Monster titled Enigma of Loch Ness. Incident at Loch Ness won the New American Cinema Award at the 2004 Seattle International Film Festival.
Andrew Jarecki is an American filmmaker, musician, and entrepreneur. He is best known for the Emmy-winning documentary series The Jinx. He is also known for the documentary film Capturing the Friedmans, which won eighteen international prizes including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He also co-founded Moviefone and created the KnowMe iOS platform.
Trent Harris is an American independent filmmaker based in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2013, Indiewire proclaimed Harris "The Best Underground Filmmaker You Don’t Know — But Should."
Joseph Berlinger is an American documentary filmmaker and producer. Particularly focused on true crime documentaries, Berlinger's films and docu-series draw attention to social justice issues in the US and abroad in such films as Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Crude, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger and Intent To Destroy: Death, Denial and Depiction.
Rubin & Ed is a 1991 independent buddy comedy film written and directed by Trent Harris. It stars Crispin Glover and Howard Hesseman as an unlikely pairing on a road trip through the Utah desert.
What Is It? is a 2005 American surrealist film written, edited, co-produced and directed by Crispin Glover and starring Glover, Steven C. Stewart and the voice of Fairuza Balk.
It is Fine! Everything Is Fine. is a 2007 American independent drama film directed by David Brothers and Crispin Glover. It was written by and stars Steven C. Stewart. It also stars Margit Carstensen.
Bryan Young is an American blogger, author and filmmaker.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
The People vs. George Lucas is a 2010 documentary comedy film directed by Swiss director Alexandre O. Philippe. It explores the issues of filmmaking and fanaticism pertaining to the Star Wars franchise and its creator, George Lucas. The film combines filmmaker and celebrity interviews with fan films, mainly taken from the 2010 online video Star Wars Uncut, which were submitted via the film's site.
Shovels & Rope are an American folk duo from Charleston, South Carolina composed of husband and wife Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst. Combining threads from their individual solo careers, Shovels & Rope blends traditional folk, rock and roll and country rock.
Jared Ian Goldman is an American film and television producer. He is known for his work on the Justin Timberlake starrer Palmer, Antonio Campos' adaptation of The Devil All the Time starring Tom Holland, the film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's masterpiece, We Have Always Lived in the Castle starring Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario, Sebastian Stan and Crispin Glover, Craig Johnson's Alex Strangelove, the Sundance hit Ingrid Goes West, the Sundance hit The Skeleton Twins, and the Academy Award-nominated Loving. He also produced the second season of The Punisher for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Other projects include Craig Johnson's adaptation of Daniel Clowes Wilson, Kill Your Darlings starring Daniel Radcliffe, Solitary Man starring Michael Douglas, Rob Reiner's And So It Goes starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, The Wackness, and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning documentary Manda Bala .
The Haunting of Hill House is an American supernatural horror drama television miniseries created and directed by Mike Flanagan, produced by Amblin Television and Paramount Television, for Netflix, and serves as the first entry in The Haunting anthology series. It is loosely based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. The plot alternates between two timelines, following five adult siblings whose paranormal experiences at Hill House continue to haunt them in the present day, and flashbacks depicting events leading up to the eventful night in 1992 when the family fled from the mansion. The ensemble cast features Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Kate Siegel, and Victoria Pedretti as the siblings in adulthood, with Carla Gugino and Henry Thomas as parents Olivia and Hugh Crain, and Timothy Hutton appearing as an older version of Hugh.
Wizards: Tales of Arcadia is an American animated fantasy television limited series created by Guillermo del Toro, and produced by DreamWorks Animation Television and Double Dare You Productions. The award-winning series is the third and final installment of the Tales of Arcadia trilogy, following Trollhunters (2016–2018) and 3Below (2018–2019), and was released on August 7, 2020, on Netflix.
Fear Street Part One: 1994 is a 2021 American supernatural slasher film directed by Leigh Janiak. The first installment in the Fear Street trilogy, the film was written by Phil Graziadei and Janiak from a story by Kyle Killen, Graziadei, and Janiak, based on the book series of the same name by R. L. Stine. The film follows a teen and her friends after a series of brutal slayings, as they take on an evil force that's plagued their notorious town for centuries. It stars Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Julia Rehwald, Fred Hechinger, Ashley Zukerman, Darrell Britt-Gibson, and Maya Hawke.
Miss Americana is a 2020 American documentary film that follows the singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and her life over the course of several years of her career. It was directed by Lana Wilson, produced by Tremolo Productions, and released to Netflix and select theaters on January 31, 2020. The film is titled after "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince", a 2019 song by Swift.