Career
PES's first animated film, "Roof Sex", features two life-sized chairs having sex on a New York rooftop. Though only a minute long, the film took 20 shooting days to complete. In 2002, "Roof Sex" won the Best First Film award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. "Roof Sex" was featured at over 100 film festivals worldwide and won numerous awards.
The war short "KaBoom!" (2004) was instrumental in defining the artist's personal style and approach to animating objects. The film features an atomic airstrike on a miniature city using children's toys and festive objects such as gift bows, Christmas ornaments, and clown-head cupcake toppers. A "Making of "KaBoom!" narrated by PES is available on the director's website and gives insight into the logic behind the object use and selection.
In "Game Over" (2006) PES recreated classic arcade death sequences (from the games Centipede, Frogger, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man) with familiar objects including muffins, toy cars, insects, pizza and fried eggs. The film was inspired by an interview with Toru Iwatani, the creator of Pac-Man, who said the original source of inspiration for the Pac-Man character was a pizza with a slice missing.
In July 2008, PES released his short "Western Spaghetti". The film shows PES cooking spaghetti (the hands in the film are PES's) but all the ingredients in the dish are replaced with objects such as tomato pin cushions, rubber bands, Rubik's Cubes, post-it notes, and bubblewrap, and all are brought to life through stop-motion animation. TIME Magazine named "Western Spaghetti" the #2 Internet film of 2008 in its "Top Ten of Everything 2008". The film also won an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Annecy International Animation Festival in June 2009.
In Winter 2008/2009 PES launched his own version of the classic Yule Log (TV program), creating a miniature fireplace loop using pretzel logs and candy corn animated in stop-motion. The film is available as a free screensaver on the director's website.
PES also directs TV commercials, including spots for Kinder Surprise (2011), Washington State Lottery (2010), Scrabble (2008), Sprint (2007), Sneaux Shoes ("Human Skateboard", 2007), Orange Telecom (2006), Bacardi (2005), and Coinstar (2005). The commercial for Sneaux, "Human Skateboard", became an internet phenomenon in 2007, amassing millions of views online. All films are available for viewing on the director's website.
In June 2008 Director Michel Gondry was quoted in Paste Magazine as saying "Clicking on a PES film is to open a safe and suddenly see a million ideas glittering and exploding. The only reason you close the door is to re-open it just after and discover what will pop this time."
In December 2010, PES's short "The Deep" premiered in Episode 1 of Showtime Network's "Short Stories" series (PES's films were the source of inspiration for the series). "The Deep" features various metallic objects including old hand tools, nut crackers, calipers, film lenses, faucet knobs, chains, skeleton keys, a bike horn, a belt of bullets, and a piece of a flute that come to life as mysterious sea creatures. The film is an imaginary nature documentary.
In March 2012, PES released "Fresh Guacamole", a follow-up to his stop-motion short "Western Spaghetti" (2008). The film features familiar objects such as grenades, a baseball, dice, x-mas bulbs, a miniature golf ball, and poker chips that are transformed into a dish of guacamole. "Fresh Guacamole" was one of ten films shortlisted for the Oscar in the category of Best Animated Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards (2013). The film premiered as part of Showtime's "Short Stories" series online and on TV. Showtime's YouTube posting of "Fresh Guacamole" amassed 3.5 million hits in its first 4 days online. Of the initial idea, PES says "I had the core idea of a grenade as an avocado. Even though this type of grenade is referred to as a "Pineapple Grenade" I've always thought they looked more like avocados. I built the film around this idea, filling in the blanks and ingredients around it." As in "Western Spaghetti", the hands in the film are PES's.
On March 12, 2012 Deadline.com reported that PES has been set to direct a feature film based on the Garbage Pail Kids trading card series originally published by Topps in 1985. The film will be based on a story by PES and writer Michael Vukadinovich. Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is set to produce the film through Eisner's Tornante Company.
Read more about this topic: PES (director)
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