Vileness Fats - History

History

The Residents had just moved into a studio at 20 Sycamore Street, San Francisco, which featured a completely open ground floor, perfect, it seemed, for a sound stage. The group felt that a film would be the perfect medium for the ideas they had been coming up with, and jumped at the idea. The studio was roomy, but not quite big enough to produce a film. In order to be able to fit sets into the ground floor space, the group made most of the characters in the film midgets (not real midgets - the costumes were designed so that full-height people could crouch down in them and waddle around).

The sets were very elaborate, in a sort of German Expressionist style reminiscent of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. They were made of cardboard and the space limitations meant that each set had to be completely dismantled before the next one could be built. This affected the filming schedule and sometimes even the developing plot. The Residents hired people as they found a need, grabbing Graeme Whifler to do lighting and some directing, and J. Raoul Brody to act.

Without a film company in control of the project, The Residents were free to exercise their artistic expression, something they felt was very important. They financed it all themselves (one of them selling his sports car for $1200) and could only work on it during evenings and weekends due to the jobs they were holding down in order to pay for it all. They used 1/2" black and white video tape in the filming, for a variety of reasons. They felt that video was the coming medium, and wanted to be on the leading edge of the technology. Also, with video tape they could see the results of their work immediately after filming, which was useful as it let them get right on with re-shooting when necessary. And most importantly, they didn't have to pay for developing.

Unfortunately, the lack of direction on the project meant that it dragged on for many years. By 1976 the band had fourteen hours of film and were not even two-thirds of the way through what they had of the incomplete script. To make things worse, 1/2" black and white video tape had become obsolete due to the introduction of the Beta and VHS colour formats, so the footage looked dated even though it was brand new. There was no way that the video could be transferred to film and re-shooting the footage was out of the question. The space limitations were becoming too restrictive, as well - it took a full year to build the set for and film the nightclub scene. Finally, shortly after the band released The Third Reich 'N' Roll, they abandoned the project. Not ones to let even failed projects go to waste, they proceeded to tease the outside world with stills from the film, incorporating the mysterious film that never was into their mythology.

Vileness Fats dominated The Residents' lives for the four years that it was in production. Even when they were taking breaks from the film and working on other projects, Fats would creep in. The "Arf & Omega, featuring The Singing Lawnchairs" track from Santa Dog is taken directly from the film's soundtrack; Margaret Smik joined The Residents as Peggy Honeydew for the "Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! Can't You See That It's True; What the Beatles Did to Me, 'I Love Lucy' Did to You" performance in 1976; and the famous The Third Reich 'N' Roll promotional video was filmed, for the most part, on the Vileness Fats sets using Vileness Fats props.