A No-Budget Extravaganza from Rats Ass Productions!
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[Dec. 9, '05] Boob Tube Baby: Our puny Primetime Playa announces several airings on New Screen TV, the indie showcase on WRCF-TV Channel 29, Orlando. While Floridians are hypnotized by the film's subliminal message ("Me wanna go Disney World"), the little guy plants a stink bomb behind the frozen o.j. in Governor Jeb's kitchen. The sabotage is celebrated in the folk ballad (sing it!): "The Day Baby Pepper's Excrement Blew Up a Tallahassee Fridge." [Note: New Screen TV announced a sudden shutdown before it was able to broadcast our film. Must've been the stink bomb.]
[Nov. 16, '05] Officer Chott, moonlighting with the vigilante Minuteman Project for junior college credit, busts Baby Pepper smuggling a dozen Mexican orphans into the TucsonFilm Micro-Cinema and charging them half-price. The diminutive delinquent escapes on the 3:10 to Yuma and emits his Shrill Shriek of Joy®, thereby detonating the arsenal at the Army Proving Ground and nuking the entire state. He pitches his adventure to the Coen brothers under the working title of Razing Arizona.
[Nov. 1, '05] Munchkin at Nuremberg! While the diabolical Officer Chott is hauled before a German tribunal for crimes against babyhood, Pepper takes the high-chair of honor at the nonstop 24 Hours of Nuremberg film festival. Our unsinkable überbaby is cranked on enough Bavarian gingerbread to stay awake for the whole show, but he's stopped at the ticket booth by a UN peacekeeper in a powder-blue panzer. Lesson learned: tiny lederhosen aren't funny anymore. Not to our German friends.
[Oct. 24, '05] Baby Pepper (alias the Frisco Kid) is happy to be back in his his rent-controlled romper room, suiting up for a home-town premiere at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. En route to a Fog City Diaper gala, he's nabbed from his limo child-seat by the Police Malevolent Society and whisked to a Kinderloin flophouse for interrogation. The ever-vengeful Officer Chott employs the tickle technique but the moppet won't squeal, having only just mastered "mama," "pee pee" and "William Morris handles me now."
[Oct. 21, '05] Nap-less in Seattle! Furious that he can't attend his own star vehicle at the R-rated Fucking Fabulous Film Festival, Baby Pepper ducks into a Starbucks and slams a double frappuccino with extra mother's milk foam. He's suddenly seized by a caffeine fit and threatens to off himself, Kurt Cobain-style, with a Supersoaker. Gus Van Sant films the tirade as a DVD extra for his new shot-by-shot remake of John Water's Cry-Baby.
[Sep. 29, '05] It's diapers down under when Trasharama a-Go-Go throws our lovable little shrimp on the barbie! South Australia's "nastiest touring short film fester-val" sends the wannabe wallaby on his walkabout (okay, crawlabout) across three cities. Mel Gibson signs Pepper to star in the prequel, The Pampers of Christ, but Russell Crowe's jealous toddler lobs a nursery monitor at his head. It's a fair dinkum loss, mate, because it bounces straight off his fontanelle.
[Sep. 22, '05] Pepper's rap sheet is growing faster than his tab at Baby Gap. He breezes through the Windy City to wow the scenesters of Chicago's Z Film Festival, but not before crashing the townhouse of Roger Ebert (who may be the world's largest baby). The popular critic pans the performance, then invites the brat to co-host Ebert at The Movies--once his thumbs are big enough.
[Sep. 3, '05] Philadelphia has some of the toughest cops around--just ask anyone who was at the 2000 RNC. But our hero "Liberty Bell" Pepper has a blue belt in blanket, and he joins forces with culture jammers, anarchists and other freedom luvers at the Lost Film Festival. These are the folks who distribute such rad docs as The Corporation and Oscar-nominated The Weather Underground. Pepper spots his nemesis Officer Chott in agent-provocateur drag (turtle suit and dreads), and is promptly thrown in Eastern State Playpen. Fear not: no crib's bars can withstand a teething superbaby.
[Sep. 1, '05] The Bambino's wardrobe bills are killing me: black rubber pants and Armani pacifier on gold bling around his chubby neck. True, the Milano Film Festival is a swank affair, even if Pepper is showing in a sidebar event called the Salon des Refusés. Loosely translated as the Rejects Club--all those films not accepted for the festival's official competition--ours will be screened nonetheless in the 14th-century Sforzesco Castle, where Leonardo once kept a studio. The pepperazzi are already dreaming up tabloid nicknames for our tyke: Baby Pepperoni, Neonato Da Vinci, ad infant-itum... I'll be there to present since the kid non parla Italiano.
[Aug. 26, '05] Little Pepper chokes on Big Apple! Armed to the gums with Malt-o-meal cocktails, BP slips between the legs of Mayor Bloomberg's shock troops for a red-alert debut in New York on 9-11! He's mobbed by every boho, arteest and pediatrician at the downtown Evil City Film Festival, causing him to poop his coney dog onto an old Village Voice. A savvy curator mistakes the mess for a Basquiat and cashes him out. Remember Sinatra's words: "If you can make doodie there, you can make doodie anywhere."
[Aug. 20, '05] Continuing his sweep across the Bible Belt, Hurricane Pepper touches down at the Miami Short Film Festival this fall. Rumors abound that the new Fischer-Price voting machines will throw first prize to a serious film director. Crowds thrill when our intrepid infant roars up on a Ferrari tricycle sporting a pastel jumper and a two-day growth of strained carrots on his chin. Pepper's alligator plushie sidekick, Elvis, emerges after a recount to announce that we won by "that many fingers."
[Aug. 13, '05] Fighting a vicious Karl Rove smear campaign, Baby Pepper proves he's all-American with a red-state stopover. The Tulsa Overground Festival is a pretty darn radical palpitation in the heartland. Pepper paraphrases Okie Tom Joad's immortal words: "Wherever there's a cop spanking a baby, I'll be there."
[Aug. 3, '05] I'm a proud papa! The kid made it through his world premiere in Minnesota without spitting up on his miniature tux. Now he's a regular enfant terrible on the festival circuit! Across the pond, they're rolling out the plaid carpet for the Wee One! That's right, Pepper's going to Scotland! The TromaFling Festival plays alongside the Edinburgh International Film Festival—what the Slamdance Festival is to Sundance, only wilder. The organizers are best known as the producers of the Toxic Avenger films and for trashing the Croisette every year at Cannes.