Tom Palazzolo
2021
Jerry's
Tom Palazzolo
JERRY'S DELI is a testament to a bygone era when shrieking lunatics could run successful (even popular) businesses. Shot on film-stock leftover from television cameramen, Tom Palazzolo's portrait of Jerry Meyer offsets sequences of the tyrannical deli owner (seen berating his employees and physically dragging customers to the counter) with personal interviews in which a soft-spoken Meyer calmly describes his decorated military service in World War II, his early stand on civil rights and this one time when he stabbed an employee in the arm. - Tom Fritsche
Jerry's
Caligari's Cure
Tom Palazzolo
Carmela Rago, Dave West
“(T)he difficulty with which an adult represents his own childhood--let alone another's--is the running gag of Tom Palazzolo's Caligari's Cure. In Palazzolo's cosmos, the kids are even played by grownups; he's recast incidents from his Catholic midwestern working-class boyhood with personnel recruited from the Chicago Art Institute.... The brazen, comic-book mise-en-scène resembles that of Red Grooms or the Kuchars; the tacky, off-kilter sets--houses as ostentatiously ramshackled as Frank Stella's recent sculpture, wallpaper like Lucas Samaras's quilt-shard collages, decrepit furniture painted pale pink or dusty green--are a kind of arty-idiot Toonerville Trolley Americana.” –J. Hoberman (Village Voice)
Caligari's Cure
Love It, Leave It
Tom Palazzolo
A 14-minute almanac of Midwestern America and its funky Americana at the end of the Love Generation, Love It / Leave It begins with proudly naked people parading about for all the world to ogle at the annual Naked City beauty pageant in Roselawn, Indiana, before returning to Chicago, where families literally draped in American flags are found wilting under the heat of the sun along a downtown parade route.
Love It, Leave It
I Married a Munchkin
Tom Palazzolo
Carla Beesbor, Amy Garvey
Chesterton, Indiana's annual WIZARD OF OZ parade (as well as their many Oz-themed festivities) provides the backdrop for I MARRIED A MUNCHKIN, Tom Palazzolo's study of the life and career of Mary Ellen St. Aubin. Self-described as "normal, but little," Mary Ellen details her early start in show business as a performer in an all-dwarf vaudeville act, her brief appearance in 1946's THREE WISE FOOLS, her 1948 marriage to former Munchkin Parnell St. Aubin and their subsequent retirement from entertainment to run a bar (called the Midget Club) in the South Side of Chicago. Two other former Munchkins (Margaret Pellegrini and Clarence Swensen) briefly appear among the day's revelry. Also included is a postscript (shot some time after the initial film) featuring Mary Ellen briefly describing the original size of her role in THREE WISE FOOLS, which originally featured a line and an ill-fated "flying" effect. - Tom Fritsche
I Married a Munchkin
Bride Unveiled
Tom Palazzolo
Palazzolo's cameras are there as Mayor Richard Daley reveals the Picasso gifted to the city from the famed artist. Nicknamed "the Bride" and bad mouthed almost universally upon its unveiling, we get some of that social commentary here, as well as lots of souvenirs.
Bride Unveiled
Your Astronauts
Tom Palazzolo
On August 13, 1969 thousands of Chicagolandians flocked to downtown Chicago to get a glimpse of the first humans on the Moon (Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, Jr.). Chicago Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo captures the Chicago Apollo 11 Parade with wit and charm, highlighting the hoards of suburbanites who made the journey into the city.
Your Astronauts
Sneakin' and Peekin'
Tom Palazzolo
We traveled to Indiana back roads to see and shoot the annual Miss Nude Universe Contest held at a “notorious” nudist camp. They wanted $15 a head at the gate so we parked down the road and crawled through the brush. Once in, we encountered truckers and hundreds of Sunday photographers straining for a shot at the contestants. Afterward we joined the quest for stray women willing to pose. After a quick success we headed home with our catch in the can.
Sneakin' and Peekin'
Marquette Park (Part I)
Tom Palazzolo, Mark Rance
A film by Tom Palazzolo and Mark Rance documenting neo-Nazi activity in the Marquette Park neighborhood of Chicago on August 21, 1976. The day marked one of many conflicts between black civil rights marchers and white supremacist neighborhood groups who were mobilizing to prevent black residents from moving into the neighborhood.
Marquette Park (Part I)
Campaign
Tom Palazzolo
Chicago was the host for the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the surrounding hype and horror that resulted. Mayor Daley called out the cops on the various protestors and hippies attempting to influence the proceedings, and resulting riot remains a stain on the city's reputation. Palazzolo combines footage of the various youth leaders as well as press comments from candidate Hubert Humphrey and Daley to illustrate the divide between the factions.
Campaign
