Jon Moritsugu

Jon Moritsugu (born February 15, 1965) is an American cult-underground filmmaker and musician.

His movies are satiric, protopunk deconstructions of popular genres and formats with scabrous and pointedly garish results.

The New York Times describes them as "funny, anarchic, provocative and exhilarating".

Influenced by the nihilism of Jean-Luc Godard and Guy Debord, Moritsugu's films are often defined by their "lo-fi" aesthetic and were initially shot on 16mm film for a gritty, visceral quality.

He states that he often "pay(s) less attention to narrative flow and storyline and put(s) more emphasis on sight, sound and spectacle" to create a movie that is "like a live punk/hardcore show."

The works themselves are often absurdist comedies that feature actress, co-writer, stylist, and wife, Amy Davis.

Perhaps best known for his cult film Mod Fuck Explosion, Moritsugu's films have been screened at Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam, Venice, USA Film Festival, New York Underground, Chicago Underground, MoMA, Guggenheim, Whitney and numerous other festivals and museums.

Moritsugu started filmmaking in high school in the early 1980s and then attended Brown University, where he studied semiotics and critical theory.

Classmates in his department included director Todd Haynes, producer Christine Vachon and studio head-producer Nina Jacobson.

Moritsugu's senior thesis film, Der Elvis, was called by The Village Voice critic J. Hoberman "one of the top 50 films of the eighties."

The New York Times described it as "a 23-minute jolt of highly controlled chaos."

Upon graduating in 1987, he commenced production on his first feature, My Degeneration, but an industrial accident in which his right arm was pulled into a conveyor belt and nearly severed postponed the project.

After a lengthy hospital stay and rehabilitation, he was able to restart the movie, which he looked at as a form of "physical therapy".

My Degeneration, about an all-girl rock band playing music for the beef industry, starred his future wife Amy Davis.

It played at a number of film festivals including Sundance, where Roger Ebert walked out after 7 minutes.

Rolling Stone named it one of the "25 Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time" and said: "Underground filmmaker/art terrorist Jon Moritsugu reimagines a rise-and-fall showbiz narrative as a scuzzy, 16mm skullfuck opus set in a lo-fi punk world...This movie feels like punk rock: dirty, angry, righteous, handmade, exhilirating."

The movie was self-released theatrically, after which Moritsugu moved to the West Coast in 1990.

Settling in San Francisco, Moritsugu completed Hippy Porn in 1991, a 16 mm black-and-white feature which shot for 10 days.

Redolent of early Jim Jarmusch, it follows several terminally bored students at a pretentious art school, perfectly nailing the pervasive jadedness of wannabe artists.

Top indie label Matador Records was to release the movie's soundtrack, but after numerous and lengthy delays, Moritsugu terminated the deal.

Stated label head Gerard Cosloy, "Jon Moritsugu set the Hippy Porn contract on fire and tore the CD negatives apart with his teeth (we didn't have the guts to tell him the test pressings arrived that day)."

Hippy Porn was released theatrically in America and gained noticeable notoriety.

Picked up for European distribution, the movie was a hit in the Netherlands, Switzerland and France, playing non-stop in Paris for over one year at the Action Christine Cinema.

Moritsugu immediately started pre-production in 1992 for Mod Fuck Explosion, which starred Amy Davis.

This low-budget riff on the teen film loosely revolved around a lonely girl's search for a leather jacket while a turf war between mods and bikers looms.

The movie, produced by Henry S. Rosenthal and co-produced by Andrea Sperling, was shot by Todd Verow in 16mm.

It featured a dream sequence set in garden of meat, which was filmed in Rosenthal's garage with 800 pounds of raw, rotting beef.

After wrapping, and in the middle of post-production in 1993, Moritsugu received word that he had received a grant from ITVS to create a PBS television show.

He says: "I completed (the script) in 42 hours... and it got the green light. So right after shooting Mod Fuck Explosion, I got $360,000 to shoot Terminal USA.

Terminal USA, filmed in Panavision 16mm, was a vicious sitcom parody laying to waste the studious image of the "model minority".

The director himself played twins - a drug-dealing son and a repressed and closeted math nerd - in a radically dysfunctional Asian American family.

The movie was an extreme challenge for Moritsugu, who again worked with producer Andrea Sperling and director of photography Todd Verow.

In addition to complications with insurance, payroll, salaries and a large unionized cast and crew, the production itself was fraught with problems including a major outbreak of scabies on the set.

Executive produced by James Schamus (former CEO of Focus Features), Moritsugu stated: "I sort of blew it. I was young, full of myself, no one could help me. I basically spit in his face".

When Terminal USA was completed, it caused a firestorm of controversy with the conservative right because it had been funded with taxpayer money.

It screened at the Toronto and Rotterdam Film Festivals and was broadcast on television in over 200 cities across America.

After a European promotional tour and American appearances to support Terminal USA, Moritsugu resumed post-production work on Mod Fuck Explosion.

"A defiantly rough-hewn return to barely-aboveground roots despite some overlaps with Terminal USA," it was completed in 1994 and won "Best Feature" Award at the New York Underground Film Festival.

It played the film fest circuit and received tremendous attention, with Moritsugu saying, "Mod Fuck blew-up in Germany, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries—they really responded to the angst, death, and Amy as a hot blonde walking on raw meat."

In 2001 he received the Moving Image award from Creative Capital.