The Pizz Featured in Video for Crowdfunding Campaign on Kustom Kulture Film


A few weeks back I profiled in our venerable Trendzilla column about the untimely passing of OC and Long Beach-based lowbrow lord The Pizz. In case you didn't read it (but I know you did… right?), The Pizz was a leader in the contemporary lowbrow and kitsch art movement, having worked under Rat Fink bizarro Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and R. Crumb colleague and Juxtapoz magazine founder Robert Williams. His paintings have become a template for how to thoughtfully combine influences from pulp art, monsters, beatniks, '50s jungle exotica and film noir through a punk rock filter. His sad demise was a big shock to the art world.

But what I didn't get to mention in that November Trendzilla article was The Pizz's contribution to a documentary on Kustom Kulture called Flake and Flames. In it, filmmakers Jesper Bram and Dirk Behlau trek across the globe (hopefully in a souped-up speedster that Big Daddy himself would've loved) to talk to leading artists in the Kustom Kulture movement such as Dirty Donny, Frank Kozik, Cole Foster, Coop, Dan Collins, and more. The Pizz himself is included, being interviewed among the various motorcycle, hot rod enthusiasts, pin ups, painters, designers, and tattoo artists who live voraciously under that umbrella. The film has been screened numerous times and gained some worthy praise, even making it to the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2014. 

Filmmaker Bram reached out to the Weekly with news of a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to bring the Flake and Flames Overdrive film to fruition. Flake and Flames Overdrive is a bigger, meatier Flake and Flames film with extra footage and interviews that needs to be edited, sound mastered and color graded for maximum quality. The sweet perks for donations include stickers, patches, figurines, shirts, and DVD box sets of the film.

Bram says he met the Pizz in 2011 when working on the Flake & Flames film, and had stayed in contact, as the Pizz became somewhat of a mentor figure for him. Via email, he offered this to say about the filming of The Pizz's interview:

“There's a reason why his friends would call him “The General”. [M]y good friend Rob Kruse, bass player of Dynotones, and also from Long Beach, had warned us before we went to film with The Pizz that he could come off as being a little bossy. He was nice and polite throughout the complete filming session, but he more or less directed the whole interview himself. It worked out great and there was no reason to interrupt him; we just held on for the ride and hoped we got it all on tape. Which we did, and that is what we are about to release. Probably the only interview ever filmed in his home, and surely the last. 

The filmmakers have also allowed the Weekly to showcase unreleased extended scenes with The Pizz at work as a kind of trailer for the campaign as well. The Vimeo vid is below, and presents just a sliver of the remaining archived interview footage the filmmakers have in their possession meant to be combined in the final product. There's still a good ten days left to contribute, so do so in the name of Kustom Kulture historians everywhere, or if anything, just do it for the Pizz.

The Pizz interview sneak peak from Flake & Flames Overdrive from Flake & Flames Film on Vimeo.

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