Hot Toddies

Todd Graham is a subversive genius.

A decade before YouTube, I can remember seeing an ad for this clever Canadian filmmaker's Apocalypse Pooh - arguably the first ever video mash-up (as well as the first Anime Music Video) - in the back pages of a Dan Clowes' Eightball comic and ordering it, along with Blue Peanuts and God Save the Archies. It may seem rather passe in these mashed-up digital editing software times, but in its day it was the shit! I can remember trading tapes of this to Chris X at Reptilian Records and others like it was solid gold. Today it's one of the most heavily duped and traded bootlegs of all time; amazingly, it's even earned a listing in imdb's database! It's also listed on Subterranean Cinema's "Apocalypse Now" page, where it sits alongside other spoofs like Porklips Now (1980) and the porno parody Apocalypse Climax. (And speaking of spoofs, see also Apocalypse Now Recut: Fart of Darkness on YouTube.) Todd's clips also found their way into various episodes of Baltimore's public access TV show Atomic TV.

APOCALYPSE POOH (6:40)

You'll never listen to The Doors' "The End" again without thinking of Winnie the Pooh. This brilliant mash-up of Coppola's Apocalypse Now and Disney's Winnie the Pooh & The Blustery Day supposedly dates from 1987 and features Pooh as Martin Sheen's Willard, Piglet as Dennis Hopper's manic photo journalist and Eeyore as Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz. This clip also aired on the "Appropriated Image Is Everything" episode of Atomic TV in 1997.

BLUE PEANUTS (1:08)

Snoopy's PBR-fueled, profanity-laced bark is worse than his bite in this unholy union of Charles Schulze and David Lynch. Also aired on the "Jim Rose Sideshow Circus" episode of Atomic TV.

GOD SAVE THE ARCHIES (3:24)

I can remember seeing then-Baltimore Sun pop music critic J. D. Considine present a special screening of The Great Rock and Roll Swindle (or was it The Filth and the Fury?) at the Charles Theatre that was preceded by this short. (I suspect Skizz Cyzyk was responsible for supplying it, as he had shown it at one of his Mansion Theatre film screenings as early as 1994 and later at the first MicroCineFest in 1997, along with other Todd Graham films). It also was included on the "Appropriated Image Is Everything" episode of Atomic TV circa 1997.

Related Links:
"The Bootleg Files: Apocalypse Pooh" (Film Threat review)
Apocalypse Pooh (www.imdb.com)