Kevin from the Other Dimension: My next project was one that I've always wanted to do, long before I became a director... a local jazz group called The Copa Kings, led by Billy Murphy. I've always wanted to capture their act, I just needed to get a proper amount of experience under my belt before I approached them. Given that the Copa Kings use Burlesque during their shows, it helped that I shot that She Liked It Spooky documentary. And all of my experience on Zombie Life TV learning to follow the conversation taught me how to follow the music. I decided to do this event after seeing their listing pop up online and I had less than 24 hours to get permission to do it. After getting permission from the band, I immediately contacted Alamo Drafthouse and The Highball, both of which never responded, and then I immediately went to work on the animated opening credits. I had been practicing animation on a side project fan adaptation of Kosuke Fujishima's Toppu GP so that sort of helped.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: I arrived at the theater, and thankfully I was able to get permission from The Highball because my old boss Adan De La Torre was working that night, and I was able to show him The Copa Kings facebook messages on my iphone. As I stated earlier, I tried to get Tom Timbrooks to show up as a spectator, but it was too short notice, he felt he had something more entertaining to do. It worked out for the best not to try to shoehorn this into a Zombie Life TV movie as Jazz had nothing to do with our kind of subject matter. Billy Murphy is a perfectly entertaining host on his own, constantly telling jokes in-between the songs, and jumping off the stage, dancing around the audience. Meanwhile Delia Dread did some burlesque, while Siobhan Cook did tap dancing. I was lucky to get a short interview with Billy during the intermission, and learned that it was best to restrict the interviews to just five simple questions.
Kevin from the Other Dimension: I like how there's this classy jazz film sitting in the middle of my psychotronic filmography, just sort of sticking out, and you're left wondering how it got there. It's kind of like how Stuart Gordon was known as a horror director, but his favorite film was Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. Amazingly, Josh Becker thought this was a good movie. His response was "Did you make this just for me?" "No, I made it for me" "No, you only think you made it for you, in reality, you made it for jazz fans everywhere." Billy Murphy sings a good Pennies from Heaven. The Copa Kings do gigs all around Austin, not just the Highball, so check them out.