Felt Up!
Edmonton, 2011
2:51, 2:52, 1:35
Dir: Simon Glassman
SD Video
Live Action/Puppetry
Comedy
There are a lot of things you can do with a puppet that no self-respecting human performer would ever agree to. There’s also more a puppet can get away with because, hey, it’s just a puppet. Simon Glassman submitted as a single piece five segments from an ongoing series of web shorts entitled Felt Up!. Two of them, hilarious as they were, were just too raunchy to be part of the collection. Happily, he agreed to let us spread the other three throughout this year’s program. The idea behind Felt Up! is simple: take audio recordings of people recounting anecdotes too juicy not to tell (except perhaps that they constitute an embarrassment to the storyteller) and employ puppets to reenact the events on video using the source material as both script and soundtrack. Glassman and his team employ a large roster of puppets, donated by performance artist Randall Fraser and Edmonton’s Rapid Fire Theatre, to great and often hilariously incongruous effect to portray the people and events in Felt Up!. Aside from helping to re-popularize puppetry for North American adults – even if part of the series’ perverse appeal comes from watching what we generally regard as children’s toys in the context of very grown-up situations – Glassman’s approach allows ribald chestnuts to reach a wider audience while permitting kissers who wouldn’t otherwise tell to remain anonymous. Whether or not Parker, Connor or Torrie’s names have been changed to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent), their tales of bathtub gluttony, bad Samaritans and menstrual mishaps, as performed by puppets, are alternated with the next two works on the program.
SIMON GLASSMAN
Simon Glassman is an Edmonton filmmaker who also works at the Vistek Audio Visual supply store. He created the web series Felt Up! while going to school, shooting it with classmates and friends. Currently he spends most of his energy outside of work seeking out and recording new, interesting stories from locals and looking for the right camera lens to articulate the perspective of puppets.
