In his 1987 film Summer of No Return, George had to make the beautiful lead actress disappear, as he remembers, “because she didn’t trust me — she thought I made dirty movies. She thought I was trying to get too much flesh from her. So we had her character burned in a fire and put in a hospital, and that advanced the plot because now we knew that her beautiful young suitor was to struggle to become a plastic surgeon and fix up her from now on bandage-draped face. He had to get money so he delved into the underworld, became a hustler and a drug addict and then had to clean up his act — all to get money so he could train as a plastic surgeon to rebuild her face. So, thanks to her, the plot advanced considerably.” —brightlightsfilm.com
George Kuchar (born August 31, 1942, New York City) is an American film director, known for his “low-fi” aesthetic, playful use of no-talent actors, plotless plots, and themeless themes. Trained as a commercial artist in a vocational high school, the School of Industrial Art, he drew weather maps for a local news show. During this period, he and his twin brother Mike Kuchar were making 8mm movies which were showcased in the then-burgeoning underground film scene alongside films by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage.
After being laid off from a commercial art job in New York City, Kuchar was offered a teaching job in the film department of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he has taught since 1971. It was in San Francisco that he became involved with underground comics via his neighbors Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith. They both wound up in his movies and George wound up in their publications.
Planet Kuchar, a biopic of the life of George Kuchar… read more