Gustav Braustache and the Auto-Debilitator
Running Time: 18 minutes
Completion Date: June 2007
Holed up in his cramped studio apartment and surviving on a diet of cocktail weenies and Ritz beer, legendary inventor Gustav Braustache has churned out a steady stream of devices ranging from the popular Wide-Coverage Beer and Beverage Dispenser to the little-understood-yet-still-quite-popular Position-Despecifier (for park and zoo use).
Not one for managing the mundane details of daily life, however, Braustache has neglected to pay rent for thirty-four years. Just long enough, it seems, to have caught the attention of lethargic apartment manager Barry Lavon Bugov.
When their worlds collide, the two men are launched on a surreal and comedic journey. In the end, a valuable lesson is learned about intellectual property rights, Auto-Debilitators, and nipping Salamander infestations in the bud.
Welcome to the surreal and unpredictable world of Gustav Braustache and his bizarre devices, from the revolutionary Beer Powderizer to the helpful, easily confused, and occasionally short-tempered Home Econominator.
Production Notes: "Salamander and Steak Animation"
"There are several places in the film where we used stop-motion animation to achieve an effect that would have been otherwise impossible. We wound up using very low-tech techniques. The animated salamanders that appear in a few places in the film were done with toy-store rubber salamanders.
"To make them stay in place we'd paint an entire surface with rubber cement and let it dry clear, then stick the salamanders to it. It actually worked surprisingly well.
"Animating a steak being vacuumed up a hose was also pretty low-tech, though we doubt anyone would want to try to do this themselves. Tony was in a closet with the raw steak, a pair of tin snips, and a hacksaw (for the bone) for about three hours animating. Between shots he'd sop up the juice with a towel, then duck behind the wall with his little bread sack full of meat bits. Filmmaking at its finest!"
Trailer
