"Who the hell is Reid Fleming?" asks actor Gordon Tipple in the short film I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!!, the childhood friend of Canadian cartoonist David Boswell. Tipple's rhetorical soundbyte is a recall — his reaction to Boswell's now-indelible creation, and both are the focus of the aforementioned doc, all about the comics creator and his '80s iconic, the story of a "one-note character" that became an underground sensation in the black-and-white comics trend in the 1980s.
A brief breakdown of the film: known for his bottle rocket anger and spewed catchphrases ("75 cents or I'll piss on your flowers!" and the titular "I thought I told you to shut up!!" — which all the film's interviewees consecutively recite in utter glee), Reid Fleming became Boswell's indie flagship character — his most recognizable, if not his only recognizable one, by far — and Warner Bros. ended up taking notice. Boswell penned a screenplay for the film studio, but more than 30 years later, it remains in a state of development purgatory.
Helmed by director and writer Charlie Tyrell and narrated by Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs), I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!! uses interviews with Boswell, cartoonists and animators like Matt Groenig (The Simpsons) and Hollywood movers and shakers like producer Ed Asner (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Up), writer Richard Beattie (Cold Comfort) and actor/comedian Kevin Pollack (Comedy Bang! Bang!, Impress Me) to tell the story of the big studio flick featuring Reid Fleming that never was. The short implements gorgeous, visually-articulate stop-motion animation to frame the story of Boswell and his strip and to evoke the movement of reading a comic strip itself to an impressionable effect.
Check out Tyrell's short ode to Boswell and the World's Toughest Milkman in the video below.
Via: Comics Beat
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