HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY Rating: (out of 5 stars) Director: John Walter Producer: Andrew Moore Director of Photography: Andrew Moore Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew

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Review by: Warren Curry
3/11/04

When I finished watching John Walter's documentary about New York artist Ray Johnson entitled How to Draw a Bunny, I couldn't help but think of the Academy Award nominated doc My Architect. The ultimate thesis of both films seems to be that the subjects investigated are impossible people to truly know, and the closest you can come to doing so is by having an appreciation of the work they left behind. In the end, it's difficult to feel any sense of closure when walking away from these movies. How to Draw a Bunny plays a bit like an incomplete film, although it offers fascinating moments.

I had never heard of Ray Johnson before learning about this film. Johnson was a fixture on the New York art scene from the 1950s until his mysterious suicide in January of 1995. He championed the growth of Pop art through his renowned collages and "Mail Art," and later in life moved on to performance art, working in a variety of mediums (notably experimenting with video). Most of his work contained an irreverent edge, and Johnson wasn't afraid to go to extremes to put his artistic imprint on pieces (I wouldn't have felt safe around him with a loaded gun in the vicinity).

Walter cuts together a dizzying array of the documentary standards -- interviews conducted with Johnson's contemporaries (Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close, Billy Name), snippets of the man's work and a host of archival footage. Embellishing the film is a great jazzy score that is heard frequently throughout the film's 90-minute duration.

But this documentary simply runs up against its limitations. Johnson's work is unquestionably intriguing and it's a treat to be exposed to so much of it, but at this point hearing a string of voices endlessly praising the exploits of a misunderstood and/or underground artist has become a cliché. So many of the stories and musings shared by Johnson's friends appear designed purely to build the artist's myth. It starts to go in one ear and out the other after a while.

There is a great, creepy scene near the film's conclusion when the police investigate Johnson's house after finding his body washed ashore on Sag Harbor, Long Island that is easily the standout moment. It definitely lends credence to the notion that the man's suicide was an addition to his body of work. It reminds me of what Paul Schrader said of Japanese author Yukio Mishima -- that the writer viewed suicide as part of the artistic process.

It seems as if director John Walter could've brought a more unique approach to the film and made it an engaging ride from start to finish. How to Draw A Bunny is a thin documentary, but as an introduction to an artist who most know little (at best) about, it certainly has merit.

(A Palm Pictures release. Opens in Los Angeles and New York on March 12, 2004. Expands to more cities at later dates.)