Greaser’s Palace
Animating Funny Pages
August 19 - 25, 2022
Robert Downey, Sr.’s seminal acid Western-cum-religious allegory transposes the life of Jesus to the American frontier to delirious effect. Screening with Friz Freleng’s Rabbit Every Monday.
Robert Downey, Sr.’s seminal acid Western-cum-religious allegory transposes the life of Jesus to the American frontier to delirious effect. The film begins with an amnesiac named Jesse (Allan Arbus) paragliding into a frontier town that’s firmly under the control of a miserly, constipated saloon owner (the titular Greaser, played by Albert Henderson) who keeps both his mother and his favorite mariachi band locked up in cages. Things only get more deranged when Jesse begins performing apparent miracles, with Downey amplifying and delighting in the theologico-psychedelic proceedings, taking his distinctive brand of absurdism to cosmic new heights.
“‘Is this gonna make any money?’, Downey was asked by an investor. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Downey. The man laughed and wrote the check.” –Owen Kline
Preceded by:
Rabbit Every Monday
Friz Freleng, 1951, USA, 35mm, 8m
While hunting in the woods, Yosemite Sam traps Bugs Bunny and tries to cook him, until he sees that Bugs is having a party and wants to join in the fun. Friz Freleng stages some of his most brilliant gags and ends on a delightfully absurdist note in this 1955 classic (the last short to feature Sam’s mouth below his mustache).
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