Excerpt from “Hollywood Inferno (Episode 1)”

Hollywood Inferno (Episode 1)

Two-channel installation, 2001-2003, 40 mins.

Click here to watch the full work.

Shown as an installation at Participant Inc, NYC. Screened at The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and at Pacific Film Archives at the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley.

“Laura Parnes's solo show has just one work, a film about 40 minutes long titled Hollywood Inferno (Episode One). But it's plenty, and it adds a welcome note of dissonance to a fluffy stretch in New York art...Ms. Parnes, who has a smart, notably unconservative critical eye, is now at work on her first feature film. I look forward to it.”

–Holland Cotter, New York Times

Like an update of George Romero's now classic 1978 barometer of cultural depression Dawn of the Dead, Hollywood Inferno (Episode One) takes the viewer through the alienating world of a teenager named Sandy, a modern-day Dante, who descends into consumerist Hell on the escalator at the Mall.

Still from “Hollywood Inferno (Episode 1)”

CREDITS
Cast
(in order of appearance)
Sandy...Alissa Bennett
Marie...Nina Marie Gardner
Kurt...Kel O’Neil
Virgil...Guy Richards Smit
Bradley...Malachi Velez
Boy 1...Norikatsu Suhara
Jennifer ... Nancy Hagen
Furby... Guy Richards Smit
Injured Model...Nancy Hagen
Photographer...Laura Parnes
Director...Kel O’Neil, Alissa Bennett, Kel O’Neil, Guy Richards Smit, Nina Marie Gardner

Crew
Written and Directed by Laura Parnes
Editor...Enat Sidi
Sound Mix...Scott Minor
3D Animation Special Effects...Christian Perez
Lighting Consultant...Mark Walker
Camera...Laura Parnes
Assistant Director...Jenny Martin
Additional Lighting...Kel O’Neil
Wardrobe...Jackie Breyer
Stylist...Kara Hammond
Set Design...Eric Heist
Production Assistants
Claudia Joskowitz, Adnan Lotia, Dennis Sears, Michael Waugh

SPECIAL THANKS TO
Jackie Breyer and Genesis P-Orridge, Willem Dafoe, Janet Heist, Ruth Kahn, Momenta Art, Ruth and Milton Parnes, Tamerelli Video, Lynn Vance

MUSIC
“I Stole My Mother’s Hummel Collection for Drugs,” written and performed by Guy Richards Smit and John Stanier, 2001.

Sound Samples from:
Busta Rhymes
Clockwork Orange
DJ Walley
Future Sounds of London
Scott Minor
Pan Sonic
Genesis P-Orridge
Swans

Dialogue Samples from:
American Beauty
Clockwork Orange
Dante’s Inferno
Dave Hickey
Flash Art
Last Temptation of Christ
Last Tango in Paris
George Lucas speaking with Bill Moyers
Various art dealers, artists and critics and anything to do with Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken

Clothing provided by Up & Co., New York, New York

Shot on Location at Opus 40, an environmental sculpture by Harvey Fite

Edited at the Outpost, in Brookyn, New York

A Plastic Cathedral/Laura Parnes Production