Self
While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews has made over 30 experimental features. Set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California), they are populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs. Director Adam Rifkin creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists.
"In this vignette oriented piece, a group of people discuss their own often unique perspective on life. Unlike other titles in his canon, Esoterica is completely apropos. Each sequence suggests the inner psychological struggles of seemingly normal people, the whole “private conversation in their head” thing given new and startling voice over reality. They are talking to themselves - and responding. All the standard players are here - icons from the past (Vietnam Ron, Walt Dongo) as well as new faces (Nolan Ballin, Sara Flanders) fresh and buoyant with the boy genius’s love of language. Together, their paint a stunning portrait of human frailty and mental mania." (review excerpt by Bill Gibron)
"Baby Swiss is obsessed with a strange science fiction film. She fantasies about living in its futuristic ideals, and keeps a separate DVD copy in a strongbox under the house just to be on the safe side. Naturally, this drives her unattended husband to the local whorehouse, known as The Village of the Moon. There, he meets up with other unhappy men and drowns his sorrows in high priced call girls. In the meantime, Baby Swiss discovers a kind of platonic love with a like minded neighbor. He is so desperate to be part of her life that he will wait outside her window. Their relationship will turn on whether she cleans the glass, or closes the blinds. And all the while, a homeless Greek chorus champions the freedom of living on the streets, unencumbered by the mindless machinations of being part of this so-called “proper society”" (review excerpt by Bill Gibron)
The country is at war over a natural resource. The strange cosmic force known as "Schoof" is slowly making the human race insane. The news has ceased to make sense. "Schoof" has affected each member of Tracy's family, leaving her unaffected. That's what she thinks as a scientist, a test subject and a group choral will be the galaxy's only hope.
“Toggle Switch is a little person living in a world of her own design. Deadly with pets, and equally unhinged with her family, she spends her days watching exercise videos and her nights in pursuit of bizarre extracurricular activities. Along the way, we meet a bearded 12 year old, a closet junkie, and the skinniest fitness guru in the entire self-help universe, all getting by on chutzpah, camaraderie, and a healthy dose of vagina-based show tunes…Orzo is by far the funniest thing Giuseppe Andrews has ever done. It’s a comedy plain and simple, a character-based humoresque that proves Andrews’ mantle as both a writer and a wit.” (review excerpt by Bill Gibron)
When a lucky cow wins an all expense paid weekend at a local hotel, it can’t believe its good fortune. It gets to relax, unwind, and avoid a trip to the slaughterhouse - at least for a few days. Of course, it couldn’t imagine the menagerie of madmen it would run into. Down the hall is a pair of drug addled dimwits who are desperate for something to eat. The cow becomes their main focus. Meanwhile, two different spree killers are wrecking havoc. One murders at the command of some erroneous bath linen. The other listens to a voice inside his shoe, the instructions resulting in even more dead bodies. All the while, our contented animal tries to accommodate everyone’s needs, which typically revolve around a room service meal of meat and potatoes.
When we first meet the characters from Golden Embers, they are people in transition. One is a bride to be, hoping her ex-addict brother can stay sober long enough to walk her down the aisle. The sibling is a sexually obsessed dope fiend, desperate for any kind of psychosexual release - and lots of wacky white powder. Locked up in a hotel room, freebasing his sordid memories and many erotic needs, he slowly comes unglued. Soon, we are witnessing rampant mood swings, murderous hallucinations, and the world's most misguided nuptials, complete with dancing.
A young man who likes to Rollerblade must face the fact that the documentary about ants his father is making might is driving his father insane.
From Critically-Acclaimed Underground Filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews (Trailer Town, Touch Me in the Morning) comes Period Piece, his most ambitious film experiment yet! Featuring talking tater tots, fornicating teddy bears, a smoking dead pig and the most disturbing visage of God ever put on screen, Period Piece threads together multiple plotlines following a unique assortment of tragicomic characters living along the Ventura Highway. There’s the retired police officer (Walt Dongo), broken and homeless after the untimely death of his son during a birthday camping trip. The elderly homebound father (Tyree), hopelessly doomed to pantomime the sexual conquests of his glory days with an imaginary prostitute named Serenity. The French Midget writing his epic screenplay about a half-man/half-stuffed animal chauffeur. This truly independent masterpiece takes Andrews one-of-a-kind aesthetic to a new level of surreal hilarity, creating a portrait of love and death you’ll never forget.
Tired of living under a bridge like a troll, middle-aged homeless man Ronzoni decides to reconnect with his roots. Buying a bowling ball as a Christmas gift, he heads out to visit his retired father and distant sister Agatha who live in a local trailer park. Unfortunately, they both think he’s a wholly worthless bum. When a large box lands on his chest, Ronzoni is stuck behind his dad’s double wide and no matter how hard they try, they just can’t seem to get the empty cardboard container off his body. Wanting to escape his incessantly whining, the pair head off to a hotel. There, Agatha meets Nicholas, an in-room escort who opens her eyes to the joy of music and the fun of making anti-porno.
Doily lives with his psychic wife Haley Comet. She does readings, and has sex with clients on the side. He spends his days dishing with his friends Terrace and Sabado. At the beginning of one memorable summer, Doily is chased by a bee. The insect eventually hunts down and kills his buddy Terrace, who is then brought back to life by a mysterious alien object. Next, a client of Haley finds his hair cut and shampooed - and he didn’t do it. Then a dinner party at friend Colby Jack’s turns weird when the host is transformed into a giant pot pie. In between, our hero is attacked by a monster and a household slipper, and rediscovers his love for crystal meth. But when buddy Terrace turns up again, this time as a talking VCR, Doily starts getting scared. While Haley considers all these events mere “freak occurrences”, her lover man is convinced they are signs that someone is trying to kill him.
An artist named Poo paints chicken pot pies with the excrement of homeless people. With the help of an adult filmmaker in his drug rehab course, he hopes to earn a fortune by impregnating his wife and making a "pregnant porn" film.
Slob
Material from this film (as well as other sequences previously shot but never used in other films) were eventually edited into what became Period Piece in 2006.
On his 62nd birthday, confirmed lazybones Herbopolus grabs his nest egg and buys himself a new trailer, a fine 5th Wheel. Now all he has to do is sit back and wait for the Social Security checks to start rolling in. In the meantime, his insane brother Bananas Foster escapes from the Catalina Mental Institution and, looking for a place to hole up, gets Herbopolus to let him stay in his swanky new digs. So does their dad, a sex change octogenarian who's lesbian lover has kicked him out of the house. When the government fails to come through, they resort to collecting and recycling aluminum cans to make ends meet.
Plop - named after the sound he made upon his birth - is a notorious infant caregiver wanted by the police. Apparently, unwitting parents (including a particularly proud gay couple) have hired the semi-retarded redneck nanny under the pretense that he takes good care of his toddler charges. Instead, Plop beats and humiliates the children, taking out his own sad mental issues out on them. Thanks to an ex-girlfriend. However, the cops are hot on his trail. It won’t be long before the long arm of the law, or a mangled baby with a can of soup, ends Plop’s cruel crime spree once and for all.
Trailer Town is a unique motion picture experience, truly unlike anything you've seen before. A sexual interpretation of inner violence, about out-of-work comedians living in a trailer park run by a soap opera star. The old comedians cannot work anymore due to their addictions, and come up with the filthiest, most offensive routines they can devise, to strike out at mainstream society, their only audience being themselves. When Bill recieves an eviction notice for having too many wild parties, he takes to the roof of his trailer with a rifle, and declares he is a victim of an 'aluminum holocaust.'
Wiggly Harris is a volunteer worker at a senior citizen's home. Due to his obsession with stealing wigs, Wiggly has a warrant out for his arrest. Freaked out that his unemployment benefits have almost run out and bombarded with relationship issues(his stripper girlfriend demands that Wiggly lose his virginity to her and start meeting her sexual needs in one of the most memorable sex scenes ever filmed) Wiggly is quickly losing his grip. Further frustrated by his oddball parents (the father, a religious fanatic who feels the end of the world is coming soon, and the mother, who collects photos of food) Wiggly comes to a horrific end.
“Two wannabe ‘gangsta’ white boys share a trailer – and a case of squirrel-influenced stomach flu. An old man channels the spirit of a horse known as Mr. Ted and writes a hate-filled tome in the steed’s name. Two meth dealers discover a rat in their lab and one adopts it as his very own pet. A young man must face the fact that his mother is a whore and his father is her pimp. A middle aged man must face the fact that his mother is dying of emphysema and losing her marbles. And what do they all have in common, aside from an addictive need to drink the latest alcohol-laced specialty beverage, Pussy Juice? Why, it’s the unending craving for sex and/or sexual fulfillment – and sometimes, not in the way “normal” people view such biological and physiological desires.” (review excerpt by Bill Gibron)
Black Jesus just can’t take it any more. He hates his dying wife and his transsexual son - but not for the reasons you think. She won’t let him obsessively cut coupons, and he/she fetishizes guns to the point of distraction. His other daughter is a dope fiend, and his recently deceased father was an out and out pervert. And don’t even bring up autistic child prodigy Hobie. Desperate to play the violin, the partially blind boy spends his days roaming around the city, instrument in hand and toilet paper tube up to his bad eye. When the youthful talent meets European Ernie, it seems like everything will be all right. He coaches the child, and even suggests someone who might be able to teach him a thing or two. In the meantime, Mom and the sexually confused Shamu build a bomb. With Black Jesus out of the house, they intend to avenge the cultural attacks on religion once and for all.
60 year old widow and cystic fibrosis sufferer Daisy (Gayle Wells) hooks up with crack addicted lonely ex-cop Rick (Walt Dongo) in a trailer park romance.
Guiseppe Andrews stars as Coney Island, a young man who is dealing with a lot of the issues facing today's youth: divorce, unemployment, sexual inadequacy and a gigolo father who has just been released from prison! Ever the optimist, Coney Island spends his days singing songs of hope to senior citizens and riding miniature broncos at his favorite playground. Pushed by his unfulfilled girlfriend to grow up, Coney Island turns to Daddy Bill (Bill Nowlin) for advice in the ways of love, embarking on a grotesque and wildly hilarious journey of self discovery.
