It Came from Kuchar is the definitive, feature documentary about the legendary, underground filmmaking twins, the Kuchar brothers. George and Mike Kuchar have inspired two generations of filmmakers, actors, musicians, and artists with their zany, "no budget" films and with their uniquely enchanting spirits.
09-22-2009
1h 26m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Jennifer M. Kroot
Production:
Tigerlily Pictures
Key Crew
Editor:
Tom Bullock
Producer:
Jennifer M. Kroot
Sound Re-Recording Mixer:
Lora Hirschberg
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
George Kuchar
George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) and his twin brother Mike began making films as teenagers in the 1950s, with 8mm film being their weapon of choice. After shocking their local amateur filmmaking club with their over-the-top stories of lust and angst, they became stars of the NYC underground scene in the 1960s, befriending the likes of Jonas Mekas and Jack Smith. Always working with the constraints of minuscule budgets and nonprofessional actors, the Kuchar’s inspiration comes from classic Hollywood melodrama. Their cheaply made pictures, rather than being held back by lack of funds, blossomed in the shackles of poverty; the garish colors of the cheap makeup and sets were perfectly complemented by the bold color range afforded by Kodachrome reversal stock. The wild (and sometimes the inverse of wild) acting, use of stock music, lack of synch sound, hyperbolic narration, and primitive special effects all combined to make tiny gems unlike anything seen before or since. The Kuchars are cited as major influences by such filmmakers as John Waters, Todd Solondz, and David Lynch.
Mike Kuchar, cinematographer, painter and writer and brother of George Kuchar, was born in New York City. He began making 8mm movies in the 1950's, switching over to 16mm film production in 1960, and continues now, producing short motion pictures in the video and digital formats. Mike and George Kuchar were the co-recipients of the "Vanguard Director Award" at the 11th CineVegas Film Festival, 2009, and the 2009 "Frameline Award" at the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.
"Film purists," says Mike, "tend to snub the digital medium — but as far as I'm concerned, if it allows the image to move and make noise, I'll gladly use it... and the format fits perfectly into my budgets too!"
Mike Kuchar is a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow for his work in film and video.
B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Community Studies and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC Berkeley. She is credited with coining the term New Queer Cinema.
Rich began her career in film exhibition after graduating from college as co-founder of the Woods Hole Film Society. She then became associate director of the Film Center at the Art Institute of Chicago. After working as film critic for the Chicago Reader, she moved to New York City to become the director of the film program for the New York State Council on the Arts for a decade.
A working cultural theorist and critic since the mid-1970s, Rich has been closely identified with a number of important film movements, such as independent film in the U.S. and Europe, Latin American cinema and, more notably, as one of the most important voices in feminist film criticism.
Her presence at film festivals (such as Sundance, where she was an early member of the selection committee), her film reviews in major national publications, and her commentaries on the public broadcasting programs The World and Independent View, have secured her place as a central figure in the history of what she terms "cinefeminism."
B. Ruby Rich appears in the 2009 documentary film For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism where she discusses the appeal of the film, Amélie, and expresses her desire for a new kind of criticism to emerge from young critics which goes beyond "the auteur theory."
Rich has been a regular contributor to the Village Voice, as well as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound. She has also contributed to The Guardian, the Nation, ELLE, Mirabella, The Advocate and Out. She was the founding editor of film/video reviews for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
The cover of her classic 1998 book, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement, reads, "If there was a moment during the sixties, seventies, or eighties that changed the history of the women's film movement, B. Ruby Rich was there. Part journalistic chronicle, part memoir, and 100 percent pure cultural historical odyssey, Chick Flicks – with its definitive, the way-it-was collective essays – captures the birth and growth of feminist film as no other book has done."
Rich's observations cover such things as travel, sex, and voodoo, as well as the anti-pornography movement, the films of Yvonne Rainer, a Julie Christie visit to Washington, and the historically evocative film Maedchen in Uniform.
She introduces each of her essays with an autobiographical prologue that describes the intellectual, political, and personal moments from which the work arose, in the hope that a new generation of feminist film culture might be revitalized by reclaiming its own history.
Rich is the recipient of the 2006 Honorary Life Membership Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies; and she is the recipient of the 2007 Brudner Prize at Yale University.
B. Ruby Rich lives in San Francisco.
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). Waters wrote and directed the comedy film Hairspray (1988), which was later adapted into a hit Broadway musical and a 2007 musical film. Other films he has written and directed include Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), Cry-Baby (1990), Serial Mom (1994), Pecker (1998), and Cecil B. Demented (2000). His films contain elements of post-modern comedy and surrealism.
As an actor, Waters has appeared in Sweet and Lowdown (1999), 'Til Death Do Us Part (2007), Mangus! (2011), Excision (2012), Suburban Gothic (2014), and has appeared in the Child's Play franchise with Seed of Chucky (2004) and third season of the television series Chucky (2024). He hosted and produced the television series John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You (2006). Throughout his career, Waters has often collaborated with actor and drag queen Divine and his regular cast of the Dreamlanders. More recently, he performs in his touring one-man show This Filthy World.
Waters also works as a visual artist and across different media, such as installations, photography, and sculpture. The audiobooks he narrated for his books Carsick and Mr. Know-It-All were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2015 and 2020, respectively. In 2018, Waters was named an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.
Description above from the Wikipedia article John Waters, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Guy Maddin CM OM is a Canadian screenwriter, director, author, cinematographer and film editor of both features and short films, as well as an installation artist, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His most distinctive quality is his penchant for recreating the look and style of silent or early sound era films which has solidified his popularity and acclaim in alternative film circles. Since completing his first film in 1985, Maddin has become one of Canada's most well-known and celebrated film-makers. Maddin has directed eleven feature films and numerous short films, in addition to publishing three books and creating a host of installation art projects. A number of Maddin's recent films began as or developed from installation art projects, and his books also relate to his film work. Maddin has been the subject of much critical praise and academic attention, including two books of interviews with Maddin and two book-length academic studies of his work. Maddin was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honour, in 2012.
Atom Egoyan, OC is a critically acclaimed Armenian-Canadian independent film maker. His work often explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy or other power structures. Egoyan's films often follow non-linear plot-structures, in which events are placed out of sequence in order to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information.
In 2008 he received the Dan David Prize for "Creative Rendering of the Past".
Noel Lawrence is an American editor, writer, curator, producer and filmmaker. He has founded and guided film ventures in home video, new media, and festival environments like the "Other Cinema".
Buck Henry (born Henry Zuckerman; December 9, 1930 – January 8, 2020) was an American actor, screenwriter, and director. Henry's contributions to film included, his work as a co-director on Heaven Can Wait (1978) alongside Warren Beatty, and his work as a co-writer for Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967) and Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? (1972). His long career began on television with work on shows with Steve Allen in The New Steve Allen Show (1961). He went on to co-create Get Smart (1965-1970) with Mel Brooks, and hosted Saturday Night Live 10 times from 1976 to 1980. He later guest starred in such popular shows as Murphy Brown, Hot in Cleveland, Will & Grace, and 30 Rock.
He was twice nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Graduate (1967) and for Best Director for Heaven Can Wait (1978) alongside Warren Beatty.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Buck Henry, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wayne Wang (born January 12, 1949) is a Chinese American film director.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Wayne Wang, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Gerard Malanga is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator, and archivist, best known for his collaborations with Andy Warhol. Malanga worked closely with Warhol from 1963 to 1970, during which time he was involved in all phases of Warhol’s creative output in silkscreen painting and filmmaking.
Andrew Lampert is primarily active in film, video, and performance. He pursues the alchemy between artist, art, and audience in a public space, especially that of cinema.
Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in the farming village of Semeniškiai, Lithuania. In 1944, he and his brother Adolfas were taken by the Nazis to a forced labor camp in Elmshorn, Germany. After the War he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz. At the end of 1949 the UN Refugee Organization brought both brothers to New York City, where they settled down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Two months after his arrival in New York he borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. He soon got deeply involved in the American Avant-Garde film movement. In 1954, together with his brother, he started Film Culture magazine, which soon became the most important film publication in the US. In 1958 he began his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice. In 1962 he founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative, and in 1964 the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world's largest and most important repositories of avant-garde cinema, and a screening venue.
During all this time he continued writing poetry and making films. To this date he has published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over a dozen languages. His Lithuanian poetry is now part of Lithuanian classic literature and his films can be found in leading museums around the world. He is largely credited for developing the diaristic forms of cinema. Mekas has also been active as an academic, teaching at the New School for Social Research, the International Center for Photography, Cooper Union, New York University, and MIT.
Mekas' film The Brig was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. Other films include Walden (1969), Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Lost Lost Lost (1975), Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990), Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992), As I was Moving Ahead I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000), Letter from Greenpoint (2005), Sleepless Nights Stories (2011) and Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man. In 2007, he completed a series of 365 short films released on the internet -- one film every day -- and since then has continued to share new work on his website.
Since 2000, Mekas has expanded his work into the area of film installations, exhibiting at the Serpentine Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), PS1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA, Documenta of Kassel, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Venice Biennale.
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California. After five years in the White House that saw the conclusion to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, he became the only president to resign from the office, following the Watergate scandal.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Nixon, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was a successful magazine and ad illustrator who became a leading artist of the 1960s Pop art movements. He ventured into a wide variety of art forms, including performance art, filmmaking, video installations and writing, and controversially blurred the lines between fine art and mainstream aesthetics. Warhol died on February 22, 1987, in New York City.
Curt McDowell worked in San Francisco from the late 1960s until his death in 1987 – a period that witnessed the Summer of Love, gay liberation, and the onset of HIV/AIDS, to which he succumbed at the age of forty-two. The author of numerous films that recast the American dream of plenty in pansexual terms, McDowell, like so many artists of his generation, indulged in the era’s carnal abundance, and his appetites and experiences are reflected in his work, which alternates between the revealing and the puerile.
Jeffrey Schwarz is an Emmy Award-winning producer, director and editor based in Los Angeles. His latest feature documentary is “Commitment to Life,” which chronicles the city of Los Angeles’ response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. It premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and is currently streaming on NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Previous work includes “Boulevard! A Hollywood Story,” “The Fabulous Allan Carr,” “Tab Hunter Confidential,” “I Am Divine,” “Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon,” “Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story,” and the Emmy Award-winning HBO Documentary Films’ “Vito.”
