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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2011 |
21st Century Silents |
| Film Title |
A HOLE IN THE BUCKET |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
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| Country |
USA |
| Release Date |
2010 |
| Production Co. |
Songshine Entertainment |
| Director |
Rex Harsin |
| Format |
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Speed (fps) |
| DVD |
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24 |
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| Footage |
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Time |
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12'30" |
| Archive Source |
Songshine Entertainment, Los Angeles |
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| Print Notes |
Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles |
| Cast |
| Rex Harsin (Purdie), Jake Reeves (C.W. Hardhat), Josh Plunkett (cieco/Blind Man), Mark Marnathan (capo/Boss), Christine Petersen (ragazza/Girl), Brad Aydelot (agente/officer Madalot), Jaren Swann (Iza Bouzehound) |
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| Other Credits |
| prod., f./ph., mont./ed: Rex Harsin; prod. esec./exec. prod: Vaz Vanelli; scen: Rex Harsin, Jake Reeves |
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| Program Notes |
Rex Harsin is unique in his determination to revive the tradition of the character series comedy. He was born (like Elvis Presley) in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1984, and played guitar in jazz, blues, and rock bands. In 2004 he moved to Los Angeles, discovered Buster Keaton, and enrolled in film school. In his first film, Purdie’s Day in the Sunlight, he created and played the character who has figured in nine films in the continuing series “Haphazard Happenings with Purdie and His Friends”. Purdie is solemn, watchful, and guileless. He only wants to get on with a job, earn a penny, and maybe impress a nice girl. But he does not reckon on a world of recalcitrant inanimate objects and eternally exasperated and interfering humans. Purdie has learned from Keaton to seem to suppress rather than express his feelings, and from Keaton come those momentary, expressionless stillnesses, which indicate Deep Thought.
A Hole in the Bucket was the third of the nine Purdie films, and is chosen as the purest expression of the character and the most traditionalist slapstick: the absurd and obstreperous characters who invade Purdie’s well-intentioned existence, provoking hat-smashing, fisticuffs, and chases into the horizon, are 21st-century heirs of Keystone, though ironically commentated by the cod-dictionary intertitles. Since this film, however, Purdie has broadened his comic range: in Harsin’s newest film, Purdie and Pepper (2011), he is the touching, troubled hero of a 40-minute romantic comedy.
DAVID ROBINSON
Rex Harsin writes: “It is my honour and privilege to have A Hole in the Bucket screened at the 30th Pordenone Silent Film Festival. From the time I saw Buster Keaton’s The General just as I was entering film school, I have dedicated myself to the creation of what I have called ‘21st Century Silent Films.’ I do not believe that the art of silent film is dead nor that it should be forgotten, but instead, that the style and art itself should be continually revisited by modern filmmakers. My goal is to produce modern silent films that are a tribute to the filmmakers of the silent era in style but entertaining and relative to a modern audience in content. I hope the Pordenone guests will enjoy my film.”
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