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“THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE” writer-director, David Russo
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 19, 5:30 pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City]
While attending Sundance with my two short films, Populi and Pan with Us, I found myself bored with the majority of low-budget independent feature films, particularly their third acts. I didn’t know what specifically caused the redundant patterns in the scripts but I expected more originality from things that carry the qualifier “independent.”
Never having given any thought to making feature films before (or narrative works of any kind for that matter), I came home with a bug up my butt and wrote something that I hoped was unique and could carry 90 minutes. My thought was that perhaps it was possible to pleasantly surprise audiences so addicted to genre by navigating close to those patterns, but carefully veer around them. And I definitely knew I wanted to go against the low-budget independent grain by crafting a movie that took full advantage of the prime audiovisual machinery that Sundance equips their venues with. High-end digital compositry, 35mm film, Dolby 5.1 sound, hand-crafted animation and special effects are all integral tools that I work with as an artist so applying them to a feature seemed necessary and natural.
What I pounded out in the weeks following Sundance 2003 was The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, a fictionalized but psychically autobiographical film about my years as a janitor, and also a meditation on my culture (America), my gender (male), my species (human) and my faith (nobody’s business).
