All photos courtesy of Mike Pinkney and Michael Reich
As of this month, the last manufacturer producing VCRs will halt production on the players: The age of "be kind, rewind" is officially dead. While many of us have long abandoned the old format, there remains an active community of video artists who still use VHS for its portability and nostalgic imperfections. Among them is Michael Reich, a videographer who has long relied on the format for making music videos and for his project Videothing, which documents LA's underground punk scene. Along with his friend and frequent collaborator Mike Pinkney, the pair immortalized their love for the medium in their first film, She's Allergic to Cats.
With a background in music videos that includes iconic clips for Yuck ("Get Away," "Shook Down," "Rubber"), My Chemical Romance ("Planetary (GO!)") and the Shins ("Turn Me On"), low-fi VHS has always been a part of their aesthetic. Reich has also worked as a stand-in robot for Daft Punk, most notably in Electroma, their 2006 film—the gig helped fund his first feature. Combining an encyclopedic knowledge of film history and a shared passion for public access television, Reich and Pinkney have an almost symbiotic relationship.
Their first film, which promises to be an instant cult classic, is a partially autobiographical movie about an aspiring video artist who works as a Hollywood dog groomer. He falls in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman played by Sonja Kinski, and his perception of reality begins to devolve.
A film that blends together high-end footage from a digital camera with the low-fi aesthetics of VHS, the film feels authentically bizarre. It's raining bananas in one scene, while in another the protagonist Michael suffers at the hands of his boss, played by YouTube star Flula Borg, who discourages him from living his dream of making an all cat adaptation of Carrie (1976).
VICE talked to the two Michaels during the world premiere of their film at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
VICE: Did you actually fund most of the movie from the Daft Punk gig?
Michael Reich: I mean, the initial seed money that started it. I've been doubling as a Daft Punk robot. I did Electroma, and I double for them in a variety of different facets. So the money I got from that, I just put into a fund that I wanted to do something cool with someday and that was this movie eventually. I think they'll dig this movie.
Do you like being the Daft Punk body double?
Yeah. Working on Electroma the movie was a really cool experience. That was super inspiring because they were essentially just friends making a movie together. That was the first real indie movie set that I was on. They weren't doing it for commercial reasons, they were doing it because they like weird cult, midnight movies. That totally trickled down into the inspiration for this, where I just want to make a weird midnight movie because I love cult midnight movies. I like commercial movies, but I love midnight movies.
You've always worked together, but how did you come together to make this film?
Mike Pinkney: We co-direct music videos and short films, and he wanted to make this feature that is very personal for him and he approached me in an In-N-Out burger in like 2010: "Hey, I think you should act in this." I'm like, very uncomfortable with that idea because I've always collaborated with him behind the camera. But he's like, "I'll pay you to do acting classes." and . I made like 400 videos.
Are you going to continue to make movies?
Pinkney: We're actually working on a script right now, a Bar Mitzvah horror story.
Reich: It's set in 1994. It's called Bar Mitzvah 94.
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