When Gordon Bressack wrote a play called Fuggedaboudit!, he likely didn’t expect it to come to life in this way.
Bressack died in 2019 after a long health battle, and is remembrered for sharing three Emmys with his colleagues on the 1990s animated staples Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.
Now, seven years after his death, Bressack’s son, filmmaker James Cullen Bressack is dusting off Fuggedaboudit! to turn it into a feature film, with a twist. The roles will be played by puppets. Human actors played the roles in the 2009 stage production at the Hudson Backstage Theater in Los Angeles.
Per the logline, “After a car accident wipes his memory clean, a serially romantic New York model is confronted by an ex-fiancée, an ex-girlfriend, a mobster and a circle of brutally honest friends, all competing to rewrite his past before he figures out who he really was.”
The film is currently casting up.
“My father always dreamed of making live-action films, so there was something incredibly poetic about bringing one of his stories to life through puppets. Puppetry exists somewhere between live action and animation, and it felt like the perfect medium to tell this story,” James Cullen Bressack said in a statement.
The younger Bressack recently wrapped production on a horror movie shot entirely on VHS, and has an ecclectic filmography that also includes action movies starring actors such has Jean Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis.
“The puppets aren’t the joke. They’re the device that tells the story,” he continued in his statement. “They’re the conduit for my father’s comedy, allowing us to embrace the heightened absurdity and heart that made his writing so special. When I reread Fuggedaboudit!, I realized the most honest way to adapt it wasn’t to imitate reality. It was to create a world where audiences could simply accept the characters for who they are and let the comedy shine.”
Bent Wrist Productions, Jackie Smook Company, and Sandaled Kid Productions are behidn the project. James Cullen Bressack produces with Jackie Smook and Dani Abraham. BJ Hendricks and James Rundquist executive produce.
Gordon Bressack grew up on the east coast and in his later years enjoyed writing plays, several of which were staged in Los Angeles. Before his death, he teamed with his son on the 2017 animated feature CarGo, while the younger Bressack has already adapted one of his father’s works, the 2023 meta horror movie Murder, Anyone?
English (US) ·