Daddy Your Hit A Dog

DADDY YOU HIT A DOG

– Color, 4 minutes, 16mm, Sound – 1975

- Click image to see a crude VHS transfer of the film

While I was working with the local filmmaker on one of his films that required us to take long driving trips from Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, I started to notice how much road kill there was on our roads and highways. Since we had our cameras with us, we started to stop every time we found some road kill and take ‘Arty’ shots of it. After 3 of these trips up and down the West Coast on Highway 1 and 101 (and sometimes on Interstate 5), I had collected a large selection of images. Everything from cats, dogs, Possums, Owls, Skunks to other animal matter that had been hit so many times that I’m not sure what it originally was.

During these long driving trips, I would think about ways to use this footage. I was disturbed by how many animals I was seeing and I imagined families on vacation, dad at the wheel and the kids in the back seat, when all of a sudden a dog runs out in front of the car and there is no time for the father to stop the car. I imagined the kids screaming, stating the obvious, ‘DADDY, YOU HIT A DOG!!!!’ Hence, the title.

I struggled with this film for a year, trying to come up with a concept that fit the subject mater. I originally hired a woman who sang opera and I got her to go into a recording studio and listen to “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” by Loudon Wainwright III. When I tried to cut the film to this music, it gave a religious feel to the film and even though you could catch the tune and recognize it (if you were a fan of this song…) it was not what I was looking for so I tossed that out.

My roommate, Roger Junk (Sculptor, who also stared in RIVERSIDE and other early Super 8mm works of mine) asked to see a rough cut of the film that I was laboring over so I took him down to the studio I shared with Karl Krogstad. Karl was working on his film GAZEBO BY THE SEA at the editing bench (this was pre-FLAT BEDS!) and he was listening to one of his Jazz LP’s (LP’s are Long Playing vinyl Records…. For those that grew up with CD’s). As Roger and I watched the film in the back of the studio, the song “Harbor Freeway 5pm” by Jack Wilson was playing. THE MUSIC WAS PERFECT!!!! The liner notes say that he wrote this song while stuck in traffic.

This film of road kill is one of the most difficult short films to sit through. One year, it played before a Midnight Puck Rock movie which was playing to a rough crowd of 800 people. Half way though this film, half of the audience was getting up and running for the exits. This film is only 4 minutes long!

I submitted this film to the King County Library in Washington State for consideration to represent local filmmakers. After not hearing from the curator for several weeks, I called to see if he had seen the film yet. He told me that he tried to watch it twice but he could not sit through the entire film. He said that for days after he would be haunted by the film and decided to give it one more chance. This time he forced himself to sit all the way though the film. After viewing it in its entirety, he had decided that it needed to be in the collection. Although the subject mater disturbed him, “…the film was a great piece of work, and not until you see the whole thing, can you appreciate the entire piece.”

I made only 5 prints of this film. The one at the King County Library was stolen from the collection. Two prints mysteriously disappeared from film festivals and I lost track of what happened to one of the other prints. I have one print left and of course, the original A B rolls.

Daddy You Hit A Dog, was one of 5 chosen to represent the USA in the Huy Belgium Film Festival. It was also shown at the Portland Film Festival. It was rejected from all other film festivals across the nation.

“On a strictly serious note, “Daddy You Hit a Dog” (1975), photographed by Krogstad and directed by Alan Blangy, one of his frequent collaborators, is a finally unbearable series of shots of animals killed on our highways.” – Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas