(bright music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back to "TVFilm."

Believe it or not, we're halfway through this season.

Time moves so quickly when you're showcasing the outstanding talents of Upstate New York media makers.

We've got another great pairing for you this evening.

One, an absurd comedy full of heart; the other, a thoughtfully constructed, multidisciplinary experimental piece.

And there's more similarities between these two films than you might think.

Let's kick things off with "Chicken House."

This was written and directed by Jacob French, and is an unexpectedly touching wild ride of horror comedy.

With the film, French made a creative playground for himself and his collaborators, including elements of stop motion, a sequence shot in 16 millimeter film, and so many chickens.

Let's enjoy.

(steady music) (tense music) - God.

Balls.

- Hello!

Welcome to the neighborhood.

I'm Charlotte.

I'm with the County Historical Society.

I wanted to talk to you about your new house.

Okay.

I'll come back tomorrow then.

Have a nice day.

(tense music) - All right, what the hell is going... (people squawking) - [Dispatcher] 911, what's your emergency?

- Yes, hello.

My name is Frank Brickett.

I live at 138 Clark Street.

My yard is full of strangers and I'm feeling very threatened.

- [Dispatcher] Are these people doing anything that puts you in immediate danger, sir?

- Yes.

Yes, they're all dressed as chickens.

- [Dispatcher] Uh-huh.

Right, sir, is this a prank call?

- No.

What, no, no!

They're dropping eggs everywhere.

- [Dispatcher] Right, eggs.

Sir, best of luck to you.

I have people actually dying in emergencies.

Please get off my phone.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait.

(people squawking) Hey kid, you know about this town?

- Yeah.

- Do you know about these chicken people?

- Wow, it's really coming down out there.

Are you almost done with the chicken?

(tense music) (chicken squawking) - La pullay is alive, Ella.

- My new house was the filming location for some shitty movie about evil chickens?

- It has a very dedicated fan base.

- Eat lead, you cuck!

Oh!

Oh bawk, bawk, bitch!

Birds of a feather- - Turn it off.

- [Charlotte] Kind of fun, right?

- No.

- Have you ever met a real chicken?

- You can say that.

- Did you know that chickens can see more colors than us?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, did you know, they are the closest living relative to the T-Rex?

- They're vegetarians too.

- No, that is a myth, actually.

- No way.

Are you a farm guy?

- Put that down.

Get out.

Get out!

- Oh, I'm sorry.

(steady music) (people squawking) (people squawking) (upbeat quirky music) (people squawking) (upbeat quirky music) - You?

- [Charlotte] Careful!

I crocheted that myself.

- Do you even work for the historical society?

- No.

But lighten up, Frank.

Ever heard of having a little fun?

- You dress up with incels for fun?

- They are not incels!

Most of them.

Well, you know what they say.

If you mess with the chicken, you're gonna get the pecker.

Yeah, that's not, I'm going to try that again.

- Oh, I'm gonna get the pecker.

- We can forget.

- You're gonna peck me, huh?

Not in my house.

- Frank, calm down.

- All right, dick brains.

I am done with this shit!

Get your god damn chicken orgies off for my lawn.

- We're just trying to have fun, man.

- And we don't use your lawn for the orgies.

- Chickens, the full moon is upon us!

(people howling) - That is not a full moon.

That is a waxing god damn crescent!

Why are you howling?

Are you stupid?

Are you stupid?

Oh, that's it.

That is it!

Leave me alone!

Get out!

Go back to your pens and shit and piss you god damn piss stepping, ow!

Ow!

God damn it!

- Frank!

- Oh shit.

Shit!

Shit, shit, shit, shit!

Stay with me, kid.

Stay with me.

Stay with me.

I'm right here.

Stay with me.

Shut the fuck up, chickens!

- Can you hear me?

It's gonna be okay.

Your dad's right here.

(somber music) - You hit me in the head with a bat.

- Charlotte, I am so sorry.

It was an accident.

- What's your deal?

Why are you still here?

- Well, no one else showed up.

- But you?

- Well, it was my fault, so.

- And that weird thing with the toy tractor.

- Yeah, I know.

Sorry.

- Well, you clearly care about things.

- My daughter loves chickens.

- She's a chicken person too?

- No, no.

Not like you.

We had a farm and she would name all the chickens and everything.

- That's cute.

- One time this one chicken died and the other chickens ate its head.

Yeah, she was a little scarred by that.

- Yeah, I bet.

- Yeah.

She passed away.

Cancer.

It was my job to take care of her.

And now... - Frank, I'm so sorry.

I lost my grandma last year, so... - Everyone loses their grandma.

- Yeah.

No, of course.

Well, now I feel bad.

- No, no, no.

It's just, when you lose a kid, how do you, I don't know.

- [Charlotte] Hey, hear me out.

Maybe we can help each other.

- Oh, Sam.

See how they chomp?

- If you can't beat them, feed them.

(laughs) - This is so weird.

- Is it helping you process, though?

- Nope.

- Yeah?

- Nope.

- Okay.

- Not in the slightest.

- Well, maybe we can try again.

- [Frank] Nope.

- Okay.

Yeah, guys, let's not, we can be done now.

- Yeah, I hated this.

You people aren't going away, are you?

- No.

But hey, think of it as like having company.

Are you going away?

- I don't think so.

(people squawking) (bittersweet music) (bittersweet music) - My name is Jacob French and I'm the writer/director of "Chicken House."

So Chicken House follows Frank, who is a reclusive man that moves to the suburbs to try and start a new life and begins receiving nightly visits from strangers dressed in homemade chicken costumes.

And he has to confront both the chicken people and his own trauma.

"Chicken House" kind of came about weirdly as a result of an anecdote about the making of "Breaking Bad."

There's a scene where Walter White throws a pizza on the roof of the house and as the show started to kind of gain traction, fans of the show started showing up to this house and throwing pizzas on the roof.

I kind of though about what would happen if a famous house like that was sold to somebody and they didn't know that it was famous and then kind of like, who is the worst person that that could happen to?

- Is it helping you process, though?

- Nope.

- Yeah?

- Nope.

- Oh.

- Not in the slightest.

- I really like using comedy as a tool to explore tougher subjects.

A moment for me that I felt that it really kind of clicked as a writer was the realization that the chickens could kind of be a stand-in for this grief that Frank is experiencing and kind of getting across this idea that grief doesn't go away.

It's just kind of something that takes new weird forms and you just have to continue to learn how to live with it.

I think my favorite sequence in the film in terms of just the process of shooting it was the 911 call when Frank is walking through the house and he's closing all the windows and the chickens are popping up on all the windows.

We had our steady cam operator and then we had somebody spotting our steady cam operator, because it was a tight space.

We wanted to make sure that he wasn't tripping.

Then we had somebody pulling focus off of a monitor.

Nash, our director of photography and myself were also at the monitor with walkie-talkies and we were both queuing different things that were happening throughout the scene, because we had all the chicken people outside so we had them, we had to queue when they were going to be popping up.

We had a lighting gag that we had a grip queuing off of an iPad for when Frank pulls the curtain, having the lights in the room turn a red tint.

And then we had somebody to be queued to like, throw the egg against the window.

So it was just so many moving pieces that just, you know, it was truly every single person on set was making that shot happen.

Every single person who worked on this film was just such a blast to work with.

And I've been lucky to work with most of them since then, and I hope to continue doing so.

(relaxed music) - Up next is, "Where Are You Going," in which filmmaker, Fred Levine, creatively blends archival footage and original music to accompany a poem he wrote shortly before his son left home for college.

Fred's wife, Penelope Hyde Levine, recites the poem.

Let's take a look.

(steady guitar music) (steady guitar music continues) (eerie music) - [Penelope] It is too late for leaving in the morning, in the fall, and I am waking now.

Is it too late?

I thought that you were leaving me again this morning, in the fall, when you are gone as early as you plan to get an early start.

No, we can help you.

I can help.

Just tell me what to do.

As I am waking, I can see the outline where you used to be because I trained myself to live for you.

So when I ask, where are you going, I don't want to know, but rather, I don't know how not to ask.

(eerie music) (eerie music continues) - My name is Fred Levine, and my film is called "Where Are You Going?"

The film is based on a poem that I wrote six years ago as my son was preparing to go off to college.

I realized, I had this role that I was playing for 18 years to nurture my son.

And all of my efforts and my will and my focus was on doing that.

And I realized, I have to back off from that role, which was so deeply embedded in me that it was very disorienting.

And so the poem attempts to process that experience.

I wrote the music after I wrote the poem.

In addition to that, I gathered some archival footage from archive.org and put them all together and came up with something that I think works pretty well.

My wife Penny is a very talented poet and she gives poetry readings.

She works really hard on getting the poems to sound the way I hear them, and sometimes better than I hear them.

- [Penelope] Is it too late?

I thought that you were leaving me again this morning in the fall.

- [Fred] So the music, I went to the keyboard after basically the same night I finished the poem.

And those three notes, that was it.

And then I played around with the guitar, doing that.

I really like the sound and I like the resonance.

And then the synthesizer comes in and then some keyboard and then at the end, you have those three notes, but they're in the envelope and they resonate even more to me in a really interesting way.

What I do not want someone to feel that they have to do is to view it only through the lens of my experience.

It's really important for people to immerse themselves in the poem and the film and the music and have it enter into them.

And that's going to be a personal experience for everybody.

It's going to be different for every person.

- We hope you enjoyed tonight's episode.

If you want to learn more about this season's films and filmmakers, visit wmht.org/tvfilm, and don't forget to connect with WMHT on social media and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Thanks for tuning in.

I'm Jermaine Wells, and I'll see you next week.

(relaxed music) - [Narrator] "TVFilm" is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.