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November 2007: Eddy Von Mueller

Introduces Film 3-Iron on Nov. 28 & Gives Lecture on Dec. 5

Eddy Von Mueller, a lecturer in film studies at Emory, is also a filmmaker, critic, cartoonist, and animator. He received his PhD from Emory in 2007 and has been teaching through the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and the Department of Film Studies since 2002.

Dr. Mueller’s popular culture coverage, criticism, and commentary for a variety of regional and national publications were recognized by the Georgia Press Association, the Rocky Mountain Media Association, and the National College Media Association. He has written scholarly articles on the work of Akira Kurosawa, the economics and politics of film preservation, and on the business of American cinema at the close of the first decade of the 20th century. He recently completed his first book, The Acme Aesthetic: the Impact of Animation on Contemporary Cinema.

Dr. Mueller’s work as a cartoonist and animator has appeared in periodical publications and children’s books. He also continues to write, produce, and direct for television and film. His third feature, the award-winning all-puppet noir comedy The Lady from Sockholm, has appeared at over thirty film festivals in six countries.

On Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 at 8 p.m. in White Hall, 205, he will introduce a free film screening of 3-Iron as part of the More Movie Classics  Film Series sponsored by the Department of Film Studies. On Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007 at noon he will give a free lecture as part of the Life of the Mind  lunchtime lecture series (see details in the Research and Publications section below) sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Faculty Council, and in the spring of 2008 he will teach Emory’s first course in fiction film production.

Film Screenings and Productions

Q: Talk a little bit about the film 3-Iron that you will be introducing Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 at 8 p.m. for the More Movie Classics Film Series.
A: Since the end of the Second World War, a series of foreign cinemas have emerged from the margins to become estimable market forces in global entertainment. The latest of these national cinemas to stride out onto the big stage is Korean cinema. It has become the new cinema to watch. Some of the recent Korean films that have been getting attention on the film festival circuit are frequently violent, but many of these films are using screen violence in a way that recontextualizes it and makes it something more than the sensationalism or exploitation we might see in ultra-violent American productions. In 3-Iron violence punctuates a struggle that is really more about personal and class identity. The film is about a home invasion expert who, although seemingly a criminal, breaks into people houses for some surprising reasons. He starts up a relationship with the woman who lives in one of the houses he breaks into. It’s a thriller reminiscent of films likeThe Postman Always Rings Twice,and the Italian film, Ossessione. It’s a setup that we’re familiar with, but it goes someplace that audiences won’t have seen before. Given the fact that we have a really dynamic and thriving Korean American population in Atlanta and a growing population of Korean students at Emory, I think it’s great that we are putting a spotlight on some exciting Korean films.

Q: What are some highlights of your film career? Past projects that were really exciting/different?
A: My last directorial outing was a movie called The Lady from Sockholm. I co-directed it with Evan Lieberman who also got his PhD from the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory. It is the greatest all sock feature filmever made. It’s also the only all sock feature film ever made. (If you make the pond small enough you’re always the big fish.) It’s also a kind of essay in film history. For one thing, it’s a spoof of the prominent movement in American film from the 1940s to 1950s called film noir – movies like Double Indemnity, Raw Deal, and Touch of Evil. When Lynn Lamousin, a former screenwriting student of mine, won an award for this quirky puppet screenplay and decided to produce it, Evan and I were both thrilled to do it because we could pay homage to films we really love. It was also, anachronistically enough, produced as a silent film. We recorded the sound on set but it wasn’t the sound that ultimately went into the film. Voice actors were brought in to post-synchronize the dialogue. So initially the film was produced in the way that silent films were made until the late twenties, and then we had the experience of laying a soundtrack on it. The film played over thirty film festivals has won numerous awards. However, I find it most rewarding to know that audiences are actually seeing our work. It is very difficult to get a film that doesn’t have a big budget or a name cast or a slick marketing campaign in front of audiences, so we’re especially fortunate that the film has had the success that it’s had.

Publications and Research

Q: You recently completed a book entitled, The Acme Aesthetic: the Impact of Animation on Contemporary Cinema . What is it about?
A: My book actually started out as my dissertation and looks at the industrial and perceptual aesthetic ramifications of a film industry that is functioning more and more like the cartoon industry. What have emerged in contemporary filmmaking are films that are actually hybrid media. When you go to see films like Transformers or Lord of the Rings, you are seeing films that are in part produced like a live action film, but actually much of what you see is produced after the fact by computer animators. In this way, the work of making films has become a practice that much more closely resembles the way animation is produced.

Q: What are some current projects/research interests?
A: My current project that will be following my recent book is a similarly interdisciplinary project that looks at the development of the television cartoon industry, the toy industry and the Japanese and Korean media industries. My research reflects my interest in integration by focusing on the relationship of cartoons and animation to other forms of media, especially live action filmmaking. This is also the subject of the Life of the Mind lecture I’m doing at the end of December entitled, The Empty Set: Labor, Technology, and the Transmogrification of the 21 st Century Cinema. [Dec. 5, 2007, noon, Jones Room 311, Woodruff Library] Through these various endeavors I’m also sneakily managing to keep my interest in cartoons alive.

Background, Education, and Influences

Q: You received both your MA and PhD from Emory.  Why did you choose to complete your post-graduate studies at Emory?

A: I came to the masters degree program in film studies at Emory because I was familiar with the book, History of Narrative Film, which was written by David Cook who, until last year, was the ringleader of film studies at Emory [now directed by Matthew Bernstein, March 2007 Artist of the Month]. I kept that book as bedside reading for years and had read it many times over. Originally, I hadn’t even thought about film studies as a post graduate direction. I applied to other graduate programs in comparative literature and paleontology. Almost on a whim I applied to the MA program at Emory. Once I got to Emory, I never left.

Q: How has your time at Emory both as a student and now as a professor influenced your work?
A: What I discovered at Emory, first in the master’s program and even more so in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, was the importance of not limiting an interdisciplinary approach solely to education and scholarship, but integrating scholarship and education with practice as well. With both practical and theoretical experience in film, I realized that most people who go into film production avoid things like film theory and film history like the plague, while people who go into film theory and history likewise avoid rolling up their sleeves and working on a moving image. I now realize that my scholarly activities enrich my creative work immensely at the same time that my creative work positively influences my scholarly activities.

Q: How have both your practical and theoretical experience with film and cartooning influenced how you teach?

A: I’ve taught courses on visual culture where we did units on political cartooning and, as somebody who’s done political cartooning in a professional journalistic setting, I was able to bring a totally different perspective to my classes. The same goes for a class in television advertising; having actually made television commercials I was able to bring a different perspective to the table. What I find most surprising is the degree to which my research, scholarship, and teaching experiences have facilitated the production side of my career as well. I think I’m a much better filmmaker as a result of spending so much time teaching students how to read films and listening to student perspectives on specific media texts that they have encountered. This has left me with a kind of missionary zeal for this idea that students of culture should also think of themselves as makers of culture and vice versa.

Q: How did you initially get into cartooning/animation? How does the background in cartooning/animation inform your work today?
A: When I was a kid I always thought I would be film cartoonist or animator, and for most of my life that’s what I groomed myself for. I worked professionally as a cartoonist and animator for many years; from about 1982 until 1992 I was working in one capacity or another as an illustrator or cartoonist. Cartooning teaches you that the best thing to do with sacred cows is to make hamburgers out of them. That is a perspective that has served me well in dealing with the various travails of post-graduate education. It has also made me a very visual thinker. I’ve even found that my constant doodling is a useful classroom skill. You can break a little ice with students with some lightening sketches on the board. And I still think that most of the cornerstone texts of Western civilization should be done as comic books. Marx’s Das Kapital, for instance.

Teaching at Emory

Q: What courses do you currently teach?
A: In the Film Studies Department I teach courses in film history, television history as well as several genre courses. I have also taught visual culture for the interdisciplinary studies department. Because of my work with non-western cinema I have taught courses in Japanese animation, Chinese language cinemas, and am now teaching for first time a class on Korean cinema.

Q: What is the new course you will be teaching in the spring?
A: Next semester we’re going to offer the first of what will be a sequence of classes designed to give students a skill-set for making narrative media content – story films and live action entertainment content. We’ve had a documentary production course for a long time but this will be the first class devoted to fiction film production. I want to try to create something that will incorporate critical thinking about film and knowledge of media history into film production, since I firmly support the idea of breaking down the barriers between criticism, theory, and practice. I want to show students that, even if theywant to be future Spielbergs or Scorceses, their film studies education isn’t an academic digression, but that it will instead be tremendous asset as they move forward.

Just for Fun

Q: If you could be a sock-puppet character in The Lady From Sockholm, which one would you be and why?
A: If I were able to pick the character I would of course be Terrence M. Cotton [the lead sock-puppet detective of the film] but I’m actually more like his nerdy side–kick Archie Good Foot. I wouldn’t want to mislead people: I’m just a wimpy argyle in the drawer of life.

Edited by Jessica Moore
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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