How to Draw a Bunny

2002 American film
  • Steve Apicella
  • Frances Beatty
  • Rocky Collins
  • Kevin Foxe
  • Lianne Halfon
  • John Malkovich
  • Andrew L. Moore
  • Russell Smith
Starring
  • Joseph Ialacci
  • Richard Feigen
Cinematography
  • Frank G. DeMarco
  • Andrew L. Moore
Edited byJohn W. WalterMusic byMax Roach
Production
companies
  • Palm Pictures
  • Mr. Mudd Productions
Distributed byArtisan Entertainment
Release date
  • 2002 (2002)
Running time
90 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBox office$4,148[1]

How to Draw a Bunny: A Ray Johnson Portrait, is a 2002 American documentary film about the Detroit-born pop, collage and performance artist Ray Johnson.[2]

Summary

Filmmakers John Walter and Andrew L. Moore delve into the mysterious life and death of Johnson, an artist whose “world was made up of amazing coincidences, serendipities and karmic gags,” according to Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times.[3] After Johnson's suicide, Moore and Walter conducted interviews with artists including Christo, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Judith Malina, and James Rosenquist. In addition, they gathered photographs, works of art, and home movies, which were edited into a fast-paced narrative exploring the artist's life.[4][5][6]

Reception

The filmmakers “couldn’t have chosen a more elusive subject for a movie; their success in evoking Johnson, and in documenting his world, is a triumph of sympathy over psychology, memory over historicism,” wrote Stuart Klawans for The Nation.[7]

It has a score of 78 on Metacritic.[8]

Accolades

The film premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize.[9] The film also won the Grand Prix du Public 2002 at the Rencontres Internationales de Cinema in Paris and was nominated for a 2003 Independent Spirit Award and listed in New York Magazine’s “Top Ten of 2004.”[10]

References

  1. ^ The Numbers.com
  2. ^ 15 Documentaries That Inside an Artist's Head - The New York Times
  3. ^ Kimmelman, Michael (October 6, 2002). "A Collage in Which Life=Death=Art". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
  4. ^ "How to Draw a Bunny". Variety. 2002-02-09. Archived from the original on 2021-06-06.
  5. ^ Chicago Reader
  6. ^ The Storytellers’ Stories: The Best Documentaries About Artists|Artland Magazine
  7. ^ Klawans, Stuart (October 28, 2002). "License to Kill". The Nation. The Nation. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
  8. ^ Metacritic
  9. ^ FilmAffinity
  10. ^ "How to Draw a Bunny". The Estate of Ray Johnson. Retrieved 31 August 2015.

External links

  • How to Draw a Bunny at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  • How to Draw a Bunny at Rotten Tomatoes
  • New York Times film review
  • The entire film officially posted by BASEBALZAC on Vimeo