North Carlina-based indie filmmakers Brett Ingram (director, co-producer, co-editor) and Jim Haverkamp (co-producer, co-editor) are profiling underground clay and line animator Bruce Bickford in a new documentary titled MONSTER ROAD. Bickford is best known for the dark and magical animations he did for musician Frank Zappa in the 1970s, and has been doing independent work since then, almost all of which has never been released.
Tracing the origins of his unique sensibility, the film journeys back to Bickford's childhood in a competitive household during the paranoia of the Cold War, and examines his relationship with his father, George, a retired Boeing engineer who is facing the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. Entirely self-taught, the 56-year-old Bickford works alone in a makeshift basement studio in his house near Seattle. He often animates for 10 hours a day, seven days a week, producing films that he may never even edit or screen for an audience. MONSTER ROAD explores the combination of family and aesthetic influences that propel him to work, and that continue to fuel his cinematic visions and nightmares.
MONSTER ROAD is produced by Bright Eye Pictures (www.brighteyepictures.com) of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
