2016 Red Rock Film Festival

Nuts!
(USA) In English
(2016) 79 min. (16:9)

DIR Penny Lane, PRO James Belfer, Caitlin Mae Burke, Penny Lane, Daniel Shepard, SCR Thom Stylinski, DP Hallie Kohler, Penny Lane, Joseph Victorine, Mark Walley, Angela Walley, EDIT Penny Lane, Thom Stylinski, MUS Brian McOmber, CAST Pope Brock, Gene Fowler, James Reardon, Megan Seaholm, Narrated by Gene Tognacci

Inventive and wildly fun, NUTS! recounts the mostly-true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a Kansas doctor who in 1917 discovered that he could cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men. From there, the story only gets more bizarre.
Mixing hand-drawn animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage, and a highly unreliable narrator, NUTS! traces Brinkley’s rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth, and influence. Along the way, he transplants thousands of goat testicles, amasses an enormous fortune, is (sort of) elected Governor of Kansas, invents junk mail and the infomercial, builds the world’s most powerful radio station, and generally annoys the heck out of the establishment.

Filmmaker Penny Lane (OUR NIXON) has skillfully borrowed a page from her subject – charming viewers into believing the unbelievable, building their trust and excitement, until the final chapter bares the painful truth and reveals the doctor for what he truly was. NUTS! reminds us that our love of (and need for) compelling narratives is exactly what makes us so endlessly susceptible to being conned.