Press Release: Bye-Bye Bin Laden!
OUTRAGEOUS INDEPENDENT ANIMATED FEATURE
“BYE-BYE BIN LADEN!” GETS DVD, NETFLIX RELEASE
The feature-length animated musical “Bye-Bye Bin Laden,” a satire about war, TV and religious fanaticism in the US and the Middle East, will release on DVD Sept. 22.
Named “Best Feature” at the South Beach International Animation Film Festival, “Bye-Bye Bin Laden!” is the first feature-length animated film ever to be made at any university on planet Earth (a planet hilariously destroyed at the beginning of the movie).
“‘South Park’ meets ‘The Daily Show,’” is how writer-director Scott Sublett, a professor at San Jose State University, described it. “A comedy with very serious things to say.”
“Biting satire aimed at an adult audience is a tough sell. I always remember George S. Kaufman’s definition of satire as ‘what closes Saturday night.’ Getting distribution for any independent feature is difficult these days, especially with the shrinkage of the DVD market, so we were thrilled that Cinequest Distribution took a chance and picked us up. They have confidence in us.”
“Bye-Bye Bin Laden!” took years to make, and is based on the underground stage musical of he same name and one of the top five premieres of 2004 by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The film was created at San Jose State University in San Jose, CA, by a student crew led by faculty professionals.
“It’s pretty exciting to have a film we made as students in a class become available on Netflix,” said animation student Jennifer Corker, the undergraduate co-producer of the film (now graduated and working as an elementary school teacher). “We learned things you could never learn except by doing a feature because it enabled us to see how all the pieces of animation fit together – voice-over acting, character design, backgrounds – everything. It’s enormously complex and I think the best way to understand it is by doing it. It was an incredible educational experience. It’s the little cartoon that could.”
The film’s world premiere at Miami’s South Beach International Animation Film Festival was warmly received by a packed house, and positively reviewed by critic Sean Piccoli on the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel website. “Pop-culture references, one-liners and satirical, tuneful barbs,” Piccoli wrote. “Reframes the post-9/11 clash of Middle East and West as TV farce. One of the showstoppers is Mullah Omar singing I Hate TV.”
The cast of characters includes Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and George Bush. The film is narrated by the ghost of Mark Bingham, gay hero of Flight 93 (which crashed on Sept. 11 outside Shanksville, PA), for the edification of the post-apocalyptic roach-boy, Josh, who’s been assigned to do a term paper on the end of the human race. Bingham shows him a televised history of recent US-Middle East relations, including “Ask the Taliban – The Game Show Where the Taliban Provides the Answers” and “The George and Jenna Comedy Hour,” with its chorus line of dancing crucifixes wielding baseball bats.
“People at the University thought we were nuts to try to make an animated feature because animation is so insanely time-consuming and our resources were scant – but we had to try,” Sublett said. “Using the Adobe Flash program was great, but still, there’s so much to do in an animated film that there were times we wondered if we’d ever really finish. I had an incredible animation and art director in Dave Perry, who’s also a great educator, and he held it together.”
“Never before has any university animation program managed to finish a feature,” said Perry, who lectures at various Silicon Valley schools, including SJSU. “We’re very proud of that.”
Independent animated features are extremely rare, and ones aimed at grown-ups are almost non-existent.
Released Sept 22nd
Writer/Director: Scott Sublett
View: Bye-Bye Bin Laden! Trailer
Official website: Bye-Bye Bin Laden!
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