Thinskin | Strip Me Down What they made instead...

Rejected 06/09/2008

Summary

For Strip Me Down I would like to follow the exotic-dancer angle Mr. Harvey suggested, but with a twist. I would like to make a quasi-tribute to Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat comic by making the strip club patron into a suave, collage-age, hard-partying tom-cat. Overall mood of the video will be weird and funny without being goofy, energetic and sexy, albeit in a very unusual way. :) We will handle the cat character in a naturalistic way similar to Spike Jones’ Dog-boy in Daft Punk’s Da Funk…

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JZQ_vSDXXXI

Technical Treatment

The actor will wear a mask with an articulated mouth and eyes so that he can make facial expressions; his body will be relatively human and be dressed in typical city street wear. As for the image quality, aesthetic we will try and achieve is a grainy 16mm look.

Story

We open the classic Saturday Night Fever shot of our Fritz the Cat character marching down the side walk of some sleazy rundown neighbourhood. The streets are mostly filled with regular humans. Fritz is dressed in a snazzy blazer; he looks determined and ready for action. In his hand is an address with “Cindy, Friday night” scribbled above it. There’s a crude drawing of a pussycat girl alongside. Fritz stuffs the address in his pocket and continues to strut. Something catches his eye. To his left is a large hand painted sign surrounded in light bulbs. It reads “Cheap Booty! $2 Lappers. Gentleman’s Pleasure.” For a moment he hesitates. A cat-girl appears in a thought bubble above his head as he rummages through his pockets; the bubble bursts as exposes a handful of crinkled dollar bills; enough for several dances! Fritz heads into the shadowy run-down entrance of the club. We cut to the interior; it’s a cramped space with enough seating for a ten. The furniture is eclectic. The space has decidedly independent vibe to it. It’s filled with smoke. The stage is low and looks to have been slapped together from old wooden skids. Slightly mismatched red curtains hang everywhere. A couple of regulars are sitting up against the wall looking sullen and drunk; coloured reflections from the mirror ball slip across their faces. A few other gentleman are hunched over their drinks, but Fritz can only make out their silhouettes. Fritz takes a seat upfront in “perverts row”. The lights flash and the show begins. The red curtains rustle. A stripper wearing a feathered bikini slides between the parted curtains on her knees, with her back arched to the point that her head is touching her ankles. She slides to the end of the stage, nearly hitting Fritz in the face; this sends him into a frenzy. As she pops up from her back arch, it’s revealed that she’s wearing a baby blue Zorro-cut mask on with anime-style eyes painted on it; it’s the lone oddity on an otherwise perfect looking woman. Her routine continues. She spins around on her back like a top with her long legs kicking in the air. Like a cat, she slinks in Fritz’s direction. She shakes her bum in his face. Fritz, wipes the sweat from his brow with a hanky, completely beside himself, giggling stupidly; he pours a beer down his throat. The stripper extends her long leg and rests it on Fritz’s left shoulder. She puts her other leg on his opposite shoulder, then lets it slide down his side. She pulls him in closer so that her leg wraps around him completely. We see a close up of Fritz from behind. The stripper’s foot slips into his pocket and comes out again with Fritz’s wallet pinched between her toes. A crumpled piece of also falls from the pocket onto the floor. It’s his girlfriend’s number.

Next, the stripper grabs Fritz by the collar and pulls him forward until he topples off his chair and onto the stage. She begins to ride him like a pony. We cut to the bored faces of the regulars; they’ve seen it all before. The stripper tosses Fritz against the wall and begins to unbutton his shirt and undo his pants. At this point the camera begins to zoom in on one of the men slouching in the shadows. Immediately it’s clear that he’s a dummy built out of news print and masking tape, dressed in thrift-store clothing. We zoom in on a small camera lens poking out from under his low hat. At the back of the club, an open laptop computer displays a live internet stream of the action on stage. Fritz engages in a more and more rediculous routine with the stripper.

As the video closes we then cut to darkened offices and bedrooms around the country with various weirdos watching the streaming video from he club.

Estimated Completion: 5 weeks