Title: The carnal bipeds
Authors: George, Kuchar, 1942-2011,; George Kuchar Collection (Harvard Film Archive)
Year: 1973
Subjects: Melodrama, American.; Man-woman relationships Drama; Sex United States Drama.; Motion pictures Production and direction; Men Sexual behavior; Motion picture actors and actresses.; Women Sexual behavior.; San Francisco (Calif.) Drama.
Abstract: George Andrew Kuchar was born in Manhattan on August 31, 1942 (an hour after his brother), and grew up in the Bronx. His father, also George, was a truck driver whose taste for pornographic films triggered an initial interest in what the younger George called “the sordidness of adults” and the power of film to “suddenly make it so alive.” Their mother, Stella, bought the brothers their camera. After graduating from the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) in Manhattan, Mr. Kuchar worked briefly drawing weather maps for the New York television meteorologist Dr. Frank Field; then tried drawing comics. He settled on being a full-time filmmaker after The Village Voice and The New York Herald Tribune wrote glowing articles about some of his early work. (A reviewer in Newsweek called the brothers “the holy innocents of the underground.”) In 1971 he was invited to teach filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he remained on the faculty until his illness forced him to stop work this year. Teaching provided him with not only a steady income but also hundreds of amateur actors his students willing to be cast in some of his later movies, including “Carnal Bipeds” (1973), “I Married a Heathen” (1974) and “I, an Actress” (1977). Mr. Kuchar, whose speaking voice never left the Bronx, was always prosaic in describing his work. In the many documentaries and print interviews that quote him, he almost never uses the term avant-garde. He is more likely to brag about how little money he spent making a film, or to compare the costs of using film and videotape, than to articulate his theory of film. “Normally, I don’t have much of a personal life,” he said in one taped interview, answering a question about why he made movies. “Making a movie is very personal. You get to interact with people. It’s like a party." from George Kuchar's New York Times obituary, September 8th, 2011