01.17.08
Sita Sings The Blues
A friend of mine from high school, cartoonist Nina Paley, has finished an animated feature film called Sita Sings The Blues. It’s a retelling of a classic Indian myth called the Ramayana, but with a few Western twists.
For those of you who have never met me, I am not exactly voluptuous. Most of my life, “string bean” was accurate. Now I’m kind of a string bean with a pot belly. Sita, on the other hand, is one voluptuous babe, see image at right.
Sita has been accepted by a Berlin film festival, which is good news. However, the Berlinale only accepts films that are on celluloid, and it costs a pile of money to make such a physical artifact. So Nina is soliciting donations/loans in order to make a print.
(Why does the Berlinale require celluloid when DVDs are higher quality? My guess is either that theatres don’t have the equipment to display DVDs or that they use the financial barrier to weed out the entrants who aren’t really serious.)
Nina is in my tribe, so I’m lending her some money. As a perk to people who loan her money, she’s giving them each a credit in the film — you know, the names that scroll by at the end. She said she would let me have whatever credit I wanted. (I presume there are some limits in taste, decency, and common sense. For example, it would be really insensitive of me if I asked for the credit of “Mohammed”, and stupid of her if she complied.)
“Snake wrangler” was one credit idea she came up with. Jim and I had fun thinking up possible credits: “Best Boy”, “Head Gripper”, “Pixel Casting Director”, “Fire Control Technician”, “Assistant to Sita’s Assistant”, and so on.
The credit that we finally came up with? “Sita Body Double”.
