Upon hearing what the members of Gomez Addams
Productions do and what kinds of bizarre and goofy films we produce, one might
be inclined to ask what this is all about. That of course is a
good question, one which I really don't have the best answer for.
For some strange reason, the idea of killer dustbunnies, effected
through the use of lots of cotton balls, seemed perfectly fine
to us. It was one of those things that sounded like a good idea
at the time and it just happened to stick, over the span of a
few years and through several films. In short, while it's a pretty
odd subject for a series of movies, we stuck with it and have
had fun making these wacky, and hopefully (somewhat) entertaining
little films.
Now with that out of the way the second question
one might come up with is why in the world would anybody name
a video production company, even a hobbyist one, after a character
from a zany 60's sitcom? Well stranger things have happened with
company names, and believe it or not, there's actually a pretty
good reason for us choosing Gomez Addams as our mascot, or at
least it seemed like a good one at the time...
Our little production group actually got its name
from a silly little quasi-political incident that happened during
the spring of 1991 at RPI, the college we were attending. Of course
just mentioning that it was an engineering school would probably
be explanation enough for all of this silliness, since math and
science types tend to be a little weird anyway, and watch more
bad sci-fi movies and TV shows than is really healthy, but there's
more to the story than that. Well the part about lots of bad movies
and TV certainly shaped our cinematic projects, but it doesn't
explain the choice of our company name.
Going back to the story, RPI has what's called GM
week every spring, in which elections for student government are
held. The two highest positions in RPI's student government are
the Grand Marshall (GM) and the President of the Union (PU) which
is how GM week got its name. There are also many seats in the
student senate and other equally-useless places on the council,
to which nobody really paid all that much attention to. I'm not
really sure exactly what it is that the GM and PU did, besides
write weekly columns in the RPI student newspaper, The Polytechnic,
which nobody also didn't pay much attention too, except for reading
the comics section, and maybe checking out hockey scores.
Anyway, being typical engineering college students,
most everyone was overworked and apathetic and couldn't care less
about student government, that is except for the people who actually
thought it was really useful and actually wanted to get elected,
but I didn't hang around with those types of people. When GM Week
had started many years ago, it was meant to be a lot of fun, sort
of a week off from classes where everybody had a good time and
relaxed a little. I guess during the 70's it was a real blast
since the legal drinking age in New York was eighteen, and the
beer supposedly flowed freely. However, by the time we'd arrived
to RPI that had all changed.
There were still a lot of fun things to do, like
extra movies at the campus movie theater and all sorts of silly
and entertaining events, but there wasn't any time for it. At
one time maybe GM Week had been a break from class, or at least
a lightening of the course load, but for us it was just another
week of business as usual. Every year there were a bunch of events
we'd wanted to go to but couldn't because of all the workload
we had, so GM Week became a farce for a lot of us.
Then there was the joke of the elections as well.
There were two or three organized parties on campus, all with
stupid and pretentious names like the Aries party and what not,
at least one of them organized by the fraternity system, another
institution I didn't care much for. Most people didn't really
care about the politics, except for the students who really got
into playing politicians. It was also really hard to tell what
the parties stood for, as there was not really any sort of platform
for them. Well I guess there probably was, but since I didn't
care I didn't bother to go to any of the debates they had, and
it all seemed like everyone was saying the same thing anyway.
"Vote for me and I'll make the campus better..." Yeah,
right.
The campus was also littered with various campaign
posters during the week to, with banners hanging from many dorms
and a few other buildings. It was really tiring to see all these
people trying to out-gimmick their opponents, using blindingly-bright
fluorescent-colored paper, Calvin and Hobbes clip art to make
them seem hip, and other lame ideas, etc., ad infinitum.
The amount of silly politicking got to some people
I knew and they decided to protest it, showing how ridiculous
the whole thing was. They put up their own campaign banner for
an ersatz write-in campaign. The dorm we were all living in was
the E-dorms, creatively-named that because it was in the shape
of a giant "E." Yup, pretty odd, but perhaps making
buildings in the shape of letters from the alphabet was vogue
in the 30's when they constructed it. The building was equipped
with circa-1930's steam heating as well, which was another fun
and interesting feature to the dorms, having the rooms at either
frigid or sweltering temps during the winter months... but I digress.
Anyway, since we were living in the E-Dorms, that
gave us a great place to hang our banner from, in the one of the
courtyards between two of the branches of the "E." It
was also near the street where many people walked to classes,
so it got a good deal of exposure. I should point out that while
I say "us" I was not actually involved with the "Gomez
Addams Incident." I found out about it after the fact, when
the banner was already up, but living in the same dorm, I could
at least enjoy the experience vicariously, along with everyone
else.
I can't remember who all was involved in the actual
making of the banner, but the campaign was spear-headed by Bill,
an interesting individual to say the least. Bill was
a senior that year, while I and the rest of the members of the
future Gomez Addams Productions were Juniors. Bill was a little
on the crazy side of things, though in a sort of entertaining
way, and perhaps some of his antics were just an act. I can't
remember much of the odd things he used to do, since this was
seven years ago, but he did have a bit of a psychotic streak to
him, such as yelling at his girlfriend loudly over the phone,
or the like. He did his fair share of petty vandalism around campus
too, as well as taking some of us on the off-road trip from hell
in his Jeep, but overall his craziness was mostly amusing.
Anyway, it was Bill, or "General Woodchuck"
as we called him, a pun on his last name, who was behind the whole
thing. He and a few other people in the dorm who were sick of
the whole political charade had just gotten the idea in their
heads one afternoon in the middle of GM Week. Using an old sheet
and some spray paint they'd made the banner and quickly put it
up. For the image of Gomez, they used the well-known smiley-face
guy with a bullet in his head, the idea borrowed for a semi-popular
novelty T-shirt design. To that they'd added the words "Vote
Gomez Addams - The Fascist Party for GM."
Well of course the powers that be didn't like this
little nose tweak to the system at all, and by that night the
Resident Associate in charge of our dorm and the adjacent one
had met with her bosses and gotten an injunction against the banner
and we had to take it down. The whole thing was really ridiculous,
especially since the dorm was kind of a dump that year (they renovated
it the following year and it got much better, but that's besides
the point). For instance, we'd had a work order to fix a microwave
outstanding for several weeks, and they couldn't be bothered to
do anything about that, but as soon as somebody made waves, they
jumped right on it. It's amazing how fast bureaucracies can work
when they're properly motivated.
Of course the silly little incident made news in
the Polytechnic, for a bunch of the people involved had
to go and argue their case with the residence association, and
soon the whole campus new about it. From what I heard, the meetings
they had with "the Man" at RPI were pretty silly. The
powers that be argued that using the name Gomez Addams, a fairly-well
known TV personality (though this was a year before the movie
came out), in the same context of the Fascist Party could "be
construed as a racial slur." Hehh, talk about ridiculous
and overly-PC nonsense.
Of course the real reason they were upset is because
the banner was making fun of the political proceedings that they
held dear and they didn't want people laughing at them, but they
couldn't say that. They also cited that it was against the rules
to hang banners from dorms, though there were several cases of
other people doing that, so it was pretty lame. In the end the
banner stayed down, but at least we got mentioned a few times
in the paper. General Woodchuck, and one or two other members
from the party, also wrote letters to the Polytechnic expressing
their support for the banners.
Given the media blitz, and by forming a grass-roots
write-in campaign, Gomez Addams actually did pretty well that
year. I think he scored a lot of votes as a write-in, even though
the people from the three organized parties beat him. Still, there
was some satisfaction to it, especially since he managed to beat
out a few actual people who were legitimately trying to run as
write-in candidates. I'm happy to say that my one vote helped
make that difference.
Since then Gomez Addams sort of became the mascot
for the dorm. In fact the next year when the freshmen from the
dorm needed to make a banner for the frosh parade, it was adorned
with Gomez's smiling (and slightly-bloody) visage. He also appeared
once more that winter. General Woodchuck had graduated and gone
away to another school, but he was from the Albany area, so when
he came back for Christmas vacation, a week earlier than we got
out at RPI, he and another couple of students put up a banner
with Gomez wearing a Santa had, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
I think a couple of RAs and the Resident Associate for the two
dorms were a little displeased about it, but since they couldn't
find anything offensive about it, the banner was allowed to stay
up until we left on break. Score one for the revolution!
It wasn't until the following spring, the weekend
of graduation to be precise, when we started making dustbunny
movies again. The first two films were projects for a cinema class
some of my friends took, and I wasn't involved in them, except
for being a random extra who got killed by the bunnies. When we
made Dustbunnies 3, the name of Gomez Addams Productions just
came to us, and it seemed perfect for the ridiculous and non-conventional
stuff we would end up doing. Like many things, it was a joke that
stuck and we now carry the name with pride.
So there ends the little tale of where the name
behind these silly little films came from. On reading this you probably
think I'm a really jaded and apathetic person. Well there is some
truth to that, but not really. Since the whole incident was really
silly and amusing, I wrote this account up with that angle in
mind; it's meant for humor and not much else. Also, even though
I make fun of the school and the dorm, it was a lot of fun. Yeah
I was overworked a lot of the time there with a large course load,
but it was a fun time, in a manic sort of way. I met some really
fun and interesting people there, and when we had time to blow
of some steam, we had a pretty good time, even if we did end up
doing random and wacky things.
If you're interested, please check out the
information on our videos, and if you're one of those people who thought
student government was really serious and important business, than I meant
no disrespect to you. It was just a joke, he's just a creepy and
kooky old TV character, a smiley face with a head wound. We' were
just goofing around with some cotton balls, an old sheet and some
spray paint... I mean come one, lighten up! (- grin -)
Seriously though, it's just something silly that
happened in college and we ended up making some goofy films from
it. I've also done some relatively serious video-art work as well,
so please check out the information on those and the dustbunny
films on my video page. Have fun.