From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Mark Rabinowitz

The question on the minds of many since the announcement of the short film lineup for the 1998 Sundance Film Festival is, "Who the *hell* is Corky Quakenbush?" Why all of the curoisity? Well, Corky has *five* films screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

One indieWIRE reader who posed the question on the filmmag.com “Road to Park City” discussion area commented, “Now, I don't think I have a problem with the selection process at Sundance but, since there were 1500 shorts submitted and Corky was able to commandeer five of the mere 67 selected, I will assume that either:

a.) Corky is a damn fine filmmaker and deserves that much attention, or b.) the name Corky Quakenbush is really a blanket pseudonym the Sundance folks use to veil the identity of filmmakers who wish to remain annonymous, or, c.) this is a typographical error."

The individual continued, "Who is Corky Quakenbush?” Well, for those who have seen "Raging Rudolph" (which offers a Martin Scorsese-esque, Rankin/Bass’ stop motion animation version of "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer"?), the answer may be clear.

Quakenbush, who had his Sundance debut last year with "Davey And Son Of Goliath" is going to Park City with: "Bwisk"; "Clops" (a parody of the TV show, "Cops", where, among other crimes, cops arrest Santa for drunken sleigh driving; "Furious George"; "Reinfather" (a parody of "The Godfather", with Rudolph as the “Capo di tutti capo”); and "Switch Your Ride". Quakenbush seems a bit overwhelmed by the attention. When indieWIRE reached him by phone last night he sounded pleased that the Sundance selection staff felt good enough about his films to program five of them, and displayed not a hint of conceit, taking an “I guess they like my work” route. When asked why he thought he might “get away” with submitting five films to Sundance in the first place, he said that he was “buoyed by the success of ("Davey And Son Of Goliath")” enough to submit multiple entries.

Quakenbush recently finished a live-action short film for FX-Shorts, as well as several other animated works ("Clops 2" in which Wallace -- of “Wallace and Gromit” fame -- gets arrested for animal abuse). The filmmaker will have 10 of his shorts presented on the Saturday night sketch comedy show, "Mad-TV".