In 1979, Hollywood Reporter correspondent, script supervisor (MESSIAH OF EVIL, IT’S ALIVE!), screenwriter, and aspiring filmmaker John Dorr used a Betamax VCR and a black-and-white bank security camera borrowed from his friend Leonard Lumpkin’s job to make his first feature for the low, low cost of just two blank tapes. Originally written as a play – and shot entirely in sequence because Dorr didn’t yet know that video could be edited – SUDZALL DOES IT ALL! was one of, if not the first, feature-length narrative movies to be shot and exhibited using consumer video technology. Its March 28, 1980 public premiere screening at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art – followed by a series of DIY screenings at the West Hollywood Community Center in 1982 – led directly to the founding of EZTV in 1983.

Ken Camp AS THE WORLD BURNS: EPISODE 2 (1982, 14 min, SD-video-to-DCP)
“It’s the Reagan era… and all of the husbands in the neighborhood are mysteriously beginning to turn gay.” –Ken Camp

John Dorr
SUDZALL DOES IT ALL!
1979, 74 min, SD-video-to-DCP
“Cordelia Coventry (Irene Roseen) is an actress whose appearance in a series of laundry detergent commercials brings her fame and fortune as ‘America’s favorite housewife.’ Can her cynical but idealist director (George LaFleur) truly transcend the banalities of American popular culture? And what part does the Hillside Homo Hacker (Leonard Lumpkin) play in making Cordelia aware of the strange contusions that mediate between art and reality?” –Original press synopsis