Stringham Aughlopp’s The Sweet Bird of Adolescence may be the most misunderstood masterpiece of the contemporary canon. Like any of today’s auteurs, Aughlopp’s intended audience was academia and cinema enthusiasts. Instead, Rugrat Studios released The Sweet Bird of Adolescence as “a kinky comedy chick-flick set in the 1970’s.” Instead of being distributed to urban art theaters and cinematheques in college towns, The Sweet Bird of Adolescence was marketed to suburban multiplexes. (The heart-breaking lawsuit between Aughlopp and his childhood friend, Earl Garland Dohr, the owner and sole employee of Rugrat Studios, became the subject of Inogluti Impasta’s 2016 opera, Uccelli dolci.)
In a 2008 essay in Artisan Cinema, Aughlopp described The Sweet Bird of Adolescence as “an absurdist’s meditation on contemporary society, with fashion as its palette.”
Our working title was The Red Boots, but Earl [Garland Dohr] said that sounded too much like The Red Shoes. The Sweet Bird of Adolescence is a tragi-comedy. I hoped that watching absurdly dressed people behave absurdly, yet remain cheerful in the face of their embarrassment, would resonate with my audience’s comprehension of its own predicament.
The tragic results of the poor marketing decisions of the studio can be summed up in Teedee Upshock’s review in The New York Times, in which she referred to my film as “a sexy and uplifting gallop down memory lane.”
The director was not able to remain cheerful in the face of the embarrassment of having a commercial success. Stringham Aughlopp now lives as a near-recluse, in the San Bernardino foothills. With the millions he has received from The Sweet Bird of Adolescence, Aughlopp supports the burgeoning COOCOO movement (Organization of Only Children), which promotes the rights and entitlements of a large, challenged, minority whose civil rights only recently been recognized.
In a 2008 essay in Artisan Cinema, Aughlopp described The Sweet Bird of Adolescence as “an absurdist’s meditation on contemporary society, with fashion as its palette.”
Our working title was The Red Boots, but Earl [Garland Dohr] said that sounded too much like The Red Shoes. The Sweet Bird of Adolescence is a tragi-comedy. I hoped that watching absurdly dressed people behave absurdly, yet remain cheerful in the face of their embarrassment, would resonate with my audience’s comprehension of its own predicament.
The tragic results of the poor marketing decisions of the studio can be summed up in Teedee Upshock’s review in The New York Times, in which she referred to my film as “a sexy and uplifting gallop down memory lane.”
The director was not able to remain cheerful in the face of the embarrassment of having a commercial success. Stringham Aughlopp now lives as a near-recluse, in the San Bernardino foothills. With the millions he has received from The Sweet Bird of Adolescence, Aughlopp supports the burgeoning COOCOO movement (Organization of Only Children), which promotes the rights and entitlements of a large, challenged, minority whose civil rights only recently been recognized.