George used to come into the SFAI café in the late ’80s—he would order a hot dog and while he was eating it in line he would say, “Gimme a bunch more of the hotdogs and some ketchup, we’re shooting severed penises today.”
George Kuchar taught filmmaking at SFAI for forty years, from 1971 until 2011, the year he died. The classes were always held in Studio 8. The budget was always next to nothing. Students who didn’t show up to class were written out of the script, and students who weren’t enrolled but happened to wander through were handed parts and costumes—or they just got naked. There was always plenty of nudity involved. George shot on film, then VHS, then DVD. Whatever was cheap, whatever was handy. At the end of the semester, he would bring a copy of the finished film up to the library. Here are some of those VHS tapes, labeled in his distinctive handwriting.
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Entering the prop closet (the source of all masks/ wigs/ helmets/ prosthetics/bath toys-turned-cityscapes, the thing that transformed that large empty studio into an opium den or a brothel or an alien planet) felt a little like visiting a tornado-ravaged thrift store while high. No shoe was part of a matching pair, but maybe that was workable, or actually maybe that was even better?
There’s a glimpse of the prop closet in action in Jennifer Kroot’s amazing film about George and his twin brother Mike, It Came from Kuchar (2009). Around six minutes in, George is looking for a pair of gloves: “So we’ve got one glove . . . maybe we’ll use one hand only.” He turns to the camera: “Eventually this will get cleaned up—it’s hopeless in there.”
Who knows where all that stuff came from or where it ended up. Wigs would come and wigs would go. The alien, at least, always stuck around. And so did the rest of the stuff you see here, for whatever reason.
BA/AP
—Mary Rowe
George Kuchar taught filmmaking at SFAI for forty years, from 1971 until 2011, the year he died. The classes were always held in Studio 8. The budget was always next to nothing. Students who didn’t show up to class were written out of the script, and students who weren’t enrolled but happened to wander through were handed parts and costumes—or they just got naked. There was always plenty of nudity involved. George shot on film, then VHS, then DVD. Whatever was cheap, whatever was handy. At the end of the semester, he would bring a copy of the finished film up to the library. Here are some of those VHS tapes, labeled in his distinctive handwriting.
Entering the prop closet (the source of all masks/ wigs/ helmets/ prosthetics/bath toys-turned-cityscapes, the thing that transformed that large empty studio into an opium den or a brothel or an alien planet) felt a little like visiting a tornado-ravaged thrift store while high. No shoe was part of a matching pair, but maybe that was workable, or actually maybe that was even better?
There’s a glimpse of the prop closet in action in Jennifer Kroot’s amazing film about George and his twin brother Mike, It Came from Kuchar (2009). Around six minutes in, George is looking for a pair of gloves: “So we’ve got one glove . . . maybe we’ll use one hand only.” He turns to the camera: “Eventually this will get cleaned up—it’s hopeless in there.”
Who knows where all that stuff came from or where it ended up. Wigs would come and wigs would go. The alien, at least, always stuck around. And so did the rest of the stuff you see here, for whatever reason.
BA/AP
Photographs by Alex Peterson
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