Remember how giddy you got the first time you heard Girl Talk, the mash-up artist who simultaneously samples dozens of disparate artists to make a big stew of sound that you can dance to? The film “Girl Walk:?All Day” is the visual equivalent. And it produces the same euphoria.
In the film, performers who have mastered several dance forms leap, tap, groove and robot dance all over Manhattan to Girl Talk’s 2010 masterpiece, “All Day.” It is a music video that clocks in at more than an hour. It is a musical. It is art that was inspired by art that was inspired by other art. It is a lot of things.
Anne Marsen plays the main character. She wears a dorkily iconic windbreaker and dances up to commuters in a joyfully confrontational way.
Director Jacob Krupnick says when he began filming Marsen, he wasn’t sure how the unintentional extras would act.
“About 99 percent of the reaction we elicited was disinterest, which was not totally expected but we used it to effect,” he says. “As we started filming more and more days, we realized we weren’t really going to get almost any reaction. Then we started to alter the story a bit to accommodate that.”
That’s right, he said “story.” Although the Girl Talk album wasn’t initially conceived as a concept album, “Girl Walk” uses it to tell a tale of a frustrated ballerina who breaks out of her routine and eventually falls in love, all against the backdrop of everybody else going about their routines.
“There were very few issues with security guards, but very little intervention on the whole,” says Krupnick. “At Yankee Stadium, Anne was snatched and booted after jumping up on the railing. … When she was escorted out — which we have on film — the officer says, ‘You can’t do that.’ And she says, ‘Why not?’ And he says, ‘You’re scaring people’ — which is sort of the perfect answer.”
‘Jump on Stage’
“Girl Walk” is very much of its time. Not only does it use Gregg Gillis’ hyper audio pastiche as its soundtrack and apply a dash of flash mob mentality to the process, but the film was entirely funded via the Kickstarter.com website.
There is at least one thing that’s timeless about tonight’s event, though. All in attendance are encouraged to dance!
“From the beginning we knew we wanted to use the energy that would be building during the film to boomerang people’s excitement to hopefully get them moving in wonderfully unselfconscious ways,” says Krupnick.
Krupnick and producer Youngna Park will be on-hand afterwards for a Q&A.
Also note that RSVPs are required for tonight’s event, but that does not guarantee entry. Admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
