Macaque

Join Tommy Marshall as he guides you through an art gallery museum and ponders on the red butt of the macaque monkey.

CAST:
Max Lazerine as Buck
Anna Howerton as Gina
Cody Hedera as Groucho Marx Glasses Behind
Tommy Marshall as Tommy Marshall

CREW:
Writer & Director – Tommy Marshall
Producers – Bill Chill & Tommy Marshall
Cinematographer – Aaron Hanek
Sound Recordist – Bill Chill
Dolly Grip & 1st AC – Sean Comerford
Set Decorator & PA – Cody Hedera
Editor – Tommy Marshall

Last march, while I was living in Chicago, we got one of those unseasonably warm summery days after a brutal winter. A few friends and I, after wrapping early on a short we were crewing on, decided to make the most of it by grabbing some frozen baja blasts from Taco Bell and wandering around the Lincoln Park Zoo. We walked past the macaque monkey exhibit and I mentioned to them that macaque monkeys butts are red to look like their faces in order to scare off predators, a fact that bewildered both myself and my friends and, as it turns out, is entirely untrue.

Around the same time I was on a bit of a Meryl Streep kick (It’s Complicated is an underrated masterpiece) and tossed on Julie & Julia. That movie ends with Amy Adams approaching a portrait of Julia Childs in the Smithsonian, or something like that, and placing a pound of butter under the picture and then she just walks away. Its friggin baffling. Nobody bats an eye.

For the next few weeks I couldn’t get the red butts of the macaque monkeys or the pound of butter at the end of Julie & Julia out of my head. So I went back to the zoo, got a little stoned and ordered a bud light and went to work. I’m kinda like the Hunter S. Thompson of getting a little stoned, drinking a bud light and writing funny videos.

When it came time to make the thing my best friend from home flew down to shoot it (DP Aaron Hanek) and my new best friends in Chicago helped me put the thing together (producer Bill Chill, AC & dolly grip Sean Comerford and PA/set dec/the person wearing the Groucho Marx glasses on their behinds Cody Hedera). We cast some of the funniest people I’ve ever met (Max Lazerine and Anna Howerton) and made what is now my favorite thing I have ever done.

ps, if you notice that the art hanging on the walls looks like utter dogsh*t that would be because Aaron and I hastily painted it the night before the shoot and neither of us are painters. There is one good painting hanging on the wall that another friend in Chicago, Seraphine Terryberry, painted though. Just look at that one when you watch the movie.