What the critics are
saying...
"In 'Rick and Steve the Happiest Gay
Couple in All the World,' filmmaker Q. Allan Brocka has taken [plastic brick] people and
animated them in a PC tale focusing on a male gay couple that must deal with the prospect
of becoming parents when a lesbian couple ask one of them to father a child. While the use
of [plastic brick people] evokes Todd Haynes use of Barbie dolls in the outlawed
'Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story', the innocence and bright colors of the [plastic
toy] people contrasts so severely with the subject matter that it results in some hilarious
situations. Three words say it all: masturbating [plastic brick]
penis." - Tim LaTorre, Indiewire
[link]
"A biting and
hilarious animated comedy about contemporary coupling." - Sundance Film Festival [link]
"a pornographically
baroque excursion through fragmented scenes where indulgence and excess
govern everyday family relations." - Sarah Schmidt, The
Globe and Mail
"Yes, Virginia, Rick & Steve the
Happiest Gay Couple in All the World is as hilarious as the bent-double
promo still suggests. The eight-minute film by Q. Allan Brocka has the clockwork
plotting of a TV sitcom- except the actor are [plastic toy] figurines, the film's
been shot in homo-erratic stop-motion, and the episode
climaxes with a paif or kid's toys beating off into a gian wine glass. Just imagine
what Brocka could do with a set of G.I. Joes." - David Leach, Monday Magazine
"In the best
short of the program, [plastic bricks] help tell the story of Rick & Steve
the Happiest Gay Couple in All the World and their hilarious
activities when they invite a lesbian couple over for dinner." - Kimberly Yutani, Southern Voice
"Allan Brocka's Rick & Steve the
Happiest Gay Couple in All the World take(s) fast, funny jabs at
the absurdist complications that ensue when homosexuals try to
bend social convention their way." - Chuck Wilson, LA
Weekly
"... A hilarious, hugely
inventive stop-motion animation film made entirely with [plastic bricks]
that has to be seen to be believed." - Todd Lothery, The
News & Observer
"As in many collections, the strongest
films are saved for last: Q. Allan Brocka's "Rick & Steve the Happiest
Gay Couple in All the World" is a stop-motion animation film made entirely with
[plastic bricks]. With its day-glo Saturday morning cartoon colors and bizarre
technique, the film manages to find some off-beat, raunchy humor in
a dinner party Rick and Steve (not exactly the happiest couple in the world) hold for two
lesbian friends." - Felicia Feaster, Creative
Loafing
"very funny"
- Andy Klein, Rober Wilonsky, LA New Times
"the screening will open with a marvelous
short featuring [plastic toy] figurines called Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay
Couple in All the World." - Barbara Lester, Sun
Sentinel
"Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay
Couple in All the World" is the hottest short film of 2000 -
Ray Murray, author of "Images in the Dark:
An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video"
"An adventurous
fictional short project, Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in All the
World (is) a stop-action boy-toy story." - Ronald Mangravite, Miami New Times
"A sweet [plastic
brick] land animation about Rick the Insatiable Bottom and Steve the Versatile Top in
which they throw a dinner party for some friends. This is part one so we should expect
more in the future, hopefully." - Nicky Jenkins, Festivale
Online Magazine
"A damn good short
film!" "FILM THREAT has already become a donor and you should
too!" - Chris Gore, Film Threat [link]
"Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay
Couple in All the World ... plays with lesbian and gay stereotypes in a way that either
cracks people up or just pisses them off. It won an audience award at
Outfest, and deservedly so. It is the very short story of two dykes who visit two queens
and ask one to jerk off so the girly dyke can have a baby. The dykes don't really like the
poofs and the guys don't really like the girls. There's a mid-'70s Sonny
and Cher quality of verbal sparring throughout.. very American and crass
enough to get hearty laughs out of the audience ... an excellent amalgam of rhetoric we
have been fed over the past decade regarding gay family!" - David Paul Jobling, Q Stage Digest (Sydney)
"Pick of the Week!...Rick
and Steve, The Happiest Gay Couple in the World: Cum and Quiche Etiquette quandaries and
jolly jack-off japes with the [plastic toy] gay-and-lesbian set this week. Rick
and Steve's dinner party takes an unexpected turn when Dana and her partner ask for sperm
instead of coffee, with hilarious consequences, as they used to say in
the Radio Times. [KS] - The Guardian Unlimited
"The highlight was a
hilarious short, made with animated [plastic bricks], entitled Rick & Steve the
Happiest Gay Couple in All the World." - Ellen Cliggott, Back Bay Beat
"More entertaining [than
the feature film] was the short Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple In The World,
in which a bitchy gay dinner party is played out with [plastic brick] figures."
- Garry Maddox, Sydney Morning Herald
 |
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What the film
festivals are saying...
"An animated film that delights audiences
with its inventive use in probing the lives of gay and lesbian couples,
their likes and dislikes, their similarities and dis-similarities in the modern world with
insight, wit and humor."
-Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"...Q. Allan Brocka's film is hilarious.
Presented in the form of a sitcom, this film addresses some important issues-gay
community bickering, AIDS and the struggle to achieve a self-image of 'normalcy' -in the
most irreverent manner imaginable."
-Melbourne International Film Festival
"A rather warped version of 'Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner' that is sure to amuse as this animation makes a novel use
some children's toys. This short comedy film has been a hit on the Festival circuit this
year!"
-Rhode Island International Film Festival
"Uh oh, the lesbians are coming to visit and
that can only mean that more than dinner will be served at Rick and Steve’s house in
this riotous, animated short direct from the Sundance Film
Festival."
-Toronto Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"One of the funniest films in the
whole festival...Hilariously rendered in what might be described as '[plastic
brick]-mation...' "
-Florida Film Festival
"A hilarious romper stomper
about gays, lesbians, impregnation and dinner."
-CinemaFest Los Angeles
"Enter an alternate sort of [plastic brick]
land serves as the construct and literal construction of the gay and lesbian characters in
this edgy, animated short. Themes rocket non-stop from
AIDS to artificial insemination to fashion commentary as tensions between the gay and
lesbian communities are hilariously explored."
-Wine Country Film Festival
Q. Allan Brocka’s
"Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in All the World" (8 min.) is a [plastic brick] block character counter-point to the
cliché "happy-couple" scenario. Winner of the audience award at Outfest, the
short follows the naughty adventures of America's newest additions to the sit-com cast,
gays and lesbians, in Brocka's response to what he feels are the "watered-down"
portrayals of these characters. "
-American Cinematheque
"Little [plastic brick]-toy gay men and
lesbians populate the world of this uproarious stop-animation comic short
that screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival."
-Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"A wickedly funny animated
comedy about love and lust in [plastic brick] land."
-Boston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"We begin with domestic bliss -
sweethearts Rick and Steve - The Happiest Gay Couple In All The World are [plastic brick]
men living in a [plastic brick] world, and only a baby could make their life more
perfect."
-New Zealand Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"Brocka has painstakingly animated the adventures of
Rick the Insatiable Bottom and Steve the Versatile Top in herky jerky stop motion -- using
[plastic bricks] for Christ's sake (4,821 pieces to be exact). This
episode... involves Rick and Steve, a dinner party, two lesbians with ticking biological
clocks, various propositions and fallout, a jaded guy named Chuck, and the omniscient
Pussy. With lots of boy-block on boy- block action and worth the
price of admission just for the sheer absurdity of watching smiling little plastic people
drinking booze out of glasses as big as their heads."
-Antimatter Underground Film Festival
"The first All-[plastic brick] gay and
lesbian sitcom ever made...sees stop-motion animation reach a new level of, um, realism.
Featuring more than randy dialogue, real sex (real [plastic brick] sex, that is) and an
excess of wit, this little 8-minute mini-masterpiece has been screened at
over twenty major festivals, and no wonder. Furious, funny and utterly frank!"
-Atlantic Film Festival
"It's the [plastic brick] boys of West
Hollywood!"
-Outfest the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film
Festival
"Enter an animated, [plastic brick] -land
world for a hilarious and biting look at two gay couples experiencing the
ups and downs of contemporary coupling."
-Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
"Domestic bliss, delicious cooking,
artificial insemination and gay bitchiness. Stop motion animation,
exclusively made with Playmobils (sic), directly from the Sundance selection."
-Athens International Film Festival
"Rick (l'Insaziabile Passivo) e Steve
(l'Attivo Versatile) sono la coppia gay più felice al mondo. Cosa c'è di meglio che un
bebè per coronare la loro felicità? Ma tutto precipita quando Dana e Kirsten, le amiche
lesbiche, preferiscono il seme di Rick a quello di Steve."
-Milano Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (no
clue what it means, but it looks cool)
"A biting and hilarious
animated comedy about contemporary coupling."
-Sundance Film Festival
The following articles appeared in the Advocate
Hey! [plastic brick]
to Sundance
From an animated gay short to a host of features, this month’s film festival
will preview lesbian and gay cinema 2000
Rick and Steve are packing their bags and heading to the Sundance Film Festival. The
heroes of Q. Allan Brocka’s eight-minute animated film, Rick and Steve, the
Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, may be [plastic brick] toys, but ever since they
made their debut last summer, they’ve demonstrated real star potential-winning an
audience award at Outfest, the Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival.
"I’d just moved to L.A. and
didn’t have any actor friends," explains Brocka, a student at the California
Institute for the Arts, "so I just created my own actors." When he learned
they’d won him a coveted slot at Sundance, he recalls, "I was really excited,
but it’s busted me. I had just a week to raise $2,000 to transfer the video to film.
I’ve really been begging."
Rick and Steve won’t be the only gays
making the trek to Sundance’s Park City, Utah, home for the January 20-30 event. Long
a barometer of the state of lesbian and gay film, the festival this year promises a
further evolution as many queer filmmakers tackle straight stories...(more) - Gregg
Kilday, The Advocate Magazine (2/1/00)
[link]
Rick &
Steve go on the road
Q. Allan Brocka’s gay short
film Rick & Steve, the Happiest Gay Couple in All the World- featured in The
Advocate’s preview of the Sundance Film Festival in January- has now taken to the
road for film festival appearances across the globe. "The post-Sundance response has
been amazing," says Brocka in the wake of winning the Best Animated Film trophy at
the Boston Underground Film Festival on February 27 ("The trophy has a vibrating
rabbit on it," he notes). The eight-minute film- which uses [plastic brick] toys to tell the story of Rick and Steve
and their gay and lesbian friends- will screen at the London Lesbian & Gay Film
Festival on April 8 and is scheduled to open the Miami Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on
April 11 along with the feature film Punks, another Sundance 2000 alumnus. Future
appearances will include the Boston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (May 7), the Turin
International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival.
Brocka himself will appear April 20 for a 7:30 p.m. screening at Los Angeles's American
Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre. "I'll be there for Q&A," Brocka says .
"Come ask easy questions." - The Advocate.com
(2/29/00) [link]
Spike & Mike
Pick Up Rick & Steve
The happiest gay couple in all the world—the award-winning animated [plastic brick] characters Rick and Steve—are
joining the happiest animation couple for a national tour beginning as soon as this
summer. In a recent deal with the famous Spike & Mike Festival of Animation,
writer-director Q. Allan Brocka granted the company nonexclusive theatrical and home video
distribution rights to his hilarious eight-minute film Rick & Steve, the Happiest
Gay Couple in All the World... (more) The
Advocate.com (4/1/00) [link]
Filmmaker launches
unique fund-raising drive
Producer-director Q. Allan Brocka, whose short film Rick & Steve: The
Happiest Gay Couple in All the World won the Audience Award at Outfest 1999, has a
dilemma: His popular short has been booked into 13 film festivals during the first two
weeks in June alone, and he currently owns only three prints. To solve his problem, he is
soliciting $75 donations from anyone who wishes to “sponsor” a new print of the
film. Sponsors will be notified of which festivals play their print, and after the
festival run is over, sponsors get to either keep their print or donate it to the
organization of their choice. For more information, call (323) 634-9304 or visit
members.tripod.com/poshpictures.The Advocate.com
(5/24/00) [link]
