Pony Glass1998

PONY GLASS is the story of comic book character Jimmy Olsen's secret life. In this 15-minute cutout animation Superman's pal embarks on his most adult adventure ever as he navigates the treacherous shoals of early '60s romance trying to resolve a sexual identity crisis of epic proportions. A three-act melodrama – each act has its own song – filmed in my signature collage style that "unmasks" our collective iconic inheritance as Americans while significantly expanding the notion of what a music video can do. "Klahr cruises the elysian backstreets of childhood comic books to make a set of 'musicals' ripened by blue-eyed melos and soul-searching psychodrama. Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen proves to be a pony of a different stripe and a man of steel as he ascends beyond good and evil in this bittersweet bildungsroman." – Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival "In a different vein is Lewis Klahr's PONY GLASS, a high point of Program 2, to be shown at 5 PM tomorrow. The central character of this cartoon collage whose visual focus is in the 1950s, is Jimmy Olsen the cub reporter from 'Superman', who is imagined in scenarios with musical accompaniment dealing with racial and sexual anxiety. The character is liberated from a repressed Milquetoast into a figure posed in various pornographic couplings. The synergy of intense pop music and cartoons makes for a disturbingly heady meditation on transgressive imagery and popular culture." – Stephen Holden, The New York Times "Less fussy and far more transgressive than his previous work, Klahr's collage animation PONY GLASS makes comic-book hero Jimmy Olsen the locus of desperate anxieties about sexuality and race. The film is so charged with fear and desire that a simple iris down to black made the hair stand up on the back of my neck." – Amy Taubin, The Village Voice