Phil Spector, Mick Jagger, Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, and others have their insane moments both on and off stage, but none hold a candle to Bobby Bird. He is a man out of time, out of this world, and out of his mind. He is a tattooed, drug-addled, songwriter who was raised by a single mother and her rotating cast of men. He is a menace. A lover. A genius. A failure. Bobby Bird is “the Devil In Denim.” Bobby Bird idolizes himself more than everyone and everything, except for his pet monkey, Chonto. However, there is one catch to Bird… he’s fake—a character from the mind of writer/animator/director Carson Mell. Chonto is the animated tale of Bobby’s greatest failings and also, possibly, his greatest accomplishments. It’s also my personal favorite film from Carson.
Back in 2007, Carson sat in his Los Angeles apartment putting together the pieces of what might be the greatest rock ‘n’ roll cliché. Over the years, his Bobby Bird character developed the way any icon might—through critically acclaimed, multi-platform releases. First, was the Sundance selected short film The Devil In Denim, a slow-boiled, talky-doc about Bird’s tattoos and the stories behind them. The short set up Bobby’s darkly cynical and slang-spinning speaking style, which came to define the character and humor in the more narrative 2008 Sundance short film Chonto. After a quick recap of Bobby’s failed sexual singles, he got to the line that lit up his career again, “You can’t untell a tale, you can’t outslow a snail.” Like that we’re thrust into an absurd, rambling, and drug-fueled recollection of Bobby Bird’s craziest music tour when he adopts a transvestite monkey from some remote zoo/religious theme park in South America, proceeds to raise him as his own child, and fucks a whole bunch of shit up in his wake.
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The film expands Bird’s universe as an exaggerated amalgamation of every rock icon of the last 50 years, yet brings the heartache and humor home through a remarkably touching tale of love and friendship shared between Bobby and Chonto. Carson’s careful reading of Bobby and the sloppy and slow-moving imagery give the story a weight that probably wouldn’t translate in a live-action version. More than an animated movie, Chonto is an illustrated story, and with unique dialogue coming out of interesting characters you don’t need expensive, snazzy effects. In fact, the homegrown aspects of the film, from the simple illustrations to the superimposed human mouths to all of the characters sounding the same, enhance the idea that this is one man’s story. In a way, it makes the fake film strangely more autobiographical since only one man does it all.
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After Chonto, Carson wrote Saguaro, a novel about the life and times of Bobby Bird. All of these pieces stand alone, having rightly garnered their own attention for artistic merits, but when digested as a whole they have the power to cement Bird’s place among the great fictional characters in your mind. Like the meals of the day, each one is amazing, but taken as a whole they can be mighty satisfying. In the words of Chonto’s Zookeeper Enrique, “This is the best food I’ve ever had. This is the best food of our time.”
Carson Mell was born in Arizona in 1980, the son of a landscape painter and a nurse. He moved to Los Angeles in 2002 to write and work in film and television. Since then, three of his short films have been Official Selections of the Sundance Film Festival and many other film festivals including the San Francisco International Film Festival, Toronto’s Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, and Brooklyn’s Rooftop Films. His short fiction has been published in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and Electric Literature. His two novels, Saguaro and The Blue Bourbon Orchestra, are available through this website.
Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who’s seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.
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