OUR HERO! Cecil, a depressed clown who has been finding mysterious postcards all over the city. This determined young man will stop at nothing to find out where they're coming from!

OR IS IT? Rose, a knife wielding revolutionary with a missing sister. Something big's about to go down. Rose wants out, and fast!

HOW ABOUT? Duke and Annie, a would-be couple-on-the-run with some serious relationship trouble and a yen for safe haven.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S ALSO Zuzu, an odd young lady who may or may not be in touch with certain supernatural forces.

OBSERVE! Monkeydance tells the story of how these disparate travelers find themselves on the same ne'er beaten path, one that leads to mysteriously abandoned houses and enchanted forests, straight into the heart of Postcard County.

Soon they'll all be doin' the Monkeydance. It's a metaphysical mambo for all time!

Monkeydance was made in full collaboration by Geoffrey Siskind and Seth W. Owen. Surprisingly, they are not brothers. Speculation has it these young illusionists have been in cahoots since high school, where some claim they dabbled in the 'black arts' and possibly even illegal drug use.

The legend has it that the idea for Monkeydance came to them one hot, crazy summer, the summer of '94. Owen and Siskind claim to have been working as professional stunt men, plying their wares in commercials for Diet Coke and Mentos. The disillusion, so it follows, was becoming unbearable. "Let 'em all go to heck!" pronounced our daring duo, one drunken summer's eve, "Let's quit the stunt man racket and make our own gosh-darned motion picture!"

It was at this point that they supposedly 'disappeared' into Owen's basement for several weeks, emerging only to horde more sodapops and wander barefoot in the backyard, muttering "Zuzu" under their breath. No one knows exactly what happened down in that basement, but they emerged into the light of day clutching in their hands a script for a film to be called Monkeydance.

Siskind & Owen dove headfirst into preproduction, assembling a diverse cast and ragtag crew for a shoot in one month's time. For the crucial part of Zuzu, Seth brought in an old film school pal, Georgia peach Amy Tillman. For money, they begged, borrowed, and stole, rounding up the seven grand they needed to start production.

Principal photography of Monkeydance was completed in a two-week stretch in the August of that same year. The city footage was shot in the west end of Toronto, with additional exteriors done in Montreal. The bulk of the film was shot in the Caledon region of Northern Ontario, the primary set being the country home of Mr. Siskind's father and step-mother. The out-of-the-way locale perfectly suited the film's schedule and budget. "What Geoff and Seth did," says an unnamed source close to the project, "was basically kidnap the cast and crew so they could shoot the darn thing."

The country shoot quickly blurred the line between on-camera and off. "The line between character and actor became a little fuzzy," says another source, "and they all went a little bit loony." Siskind & Owen, especially, by this point had gone quite mad. Their cinematographer had to leave due to scheduling problems early in the shoot, so they were basically performing every possible production task themselves. The number of persons crewing on the picture was never more than five or six, with the usual number hovering at an uncomfortable three.

It was hot. It was madness. This was guerilla filmmaking, no doubt, fueled by improvisation and no-budget problem-solving. The house was trashed. Cars were crashed. Cameras exploded. Nonetheless, everybody made it out of the woods in one piece. Or did they?

Monkeydance was far from out of the woods. Owen & Siskind, always intrepid, but, by their own account, "a little slow on the draw", soon realized they had shot a synch-sound film entirely out-of-synch. This is what we in the film biz call “a big oops.' How exactly this came to pass is a question debated to this very day...
After consulting a score of dumbfounded technicians, Montreal's MainFilm finally came to the rescue with some digital assistance. That problem solved, the production met with various other pitfalls - both technical and financial. The most embarrassing ordeal would probably have to be day the negative cutter phoned Mr. Siskind to tell him that there was 'some sort of stain on the negative' and it looks like 'grape juice' - a sad souvenir from one of the many apartment refrigerators it had toured over the four years of post-production.

Post-production was finally completed, grape juice and all, in the August of 1999.

Sadly, these varied and doubtful accounts of the film's production are all we have. Is there, perhaps, some proof offered in the film itself? Some claim that this rambling, lo-fi odyssey that disregards all well-respected rules of filmmaking and storytelling is a movie made by inspired amateurs. Its rough-edges don't ask to be over-looked, they say, they're the fingerprints of the film's process. To these Monkeydance enthusiasts, whose numbers grow with each passing day, the journey taken by their beloved Duke, Annie, Rose, and Cecil is the same journey taken by the film itself: down an unmarked path strewn with gravel, twisting in and out of the woods, and more than a little drunk.

They're known the world over as the bonafide bad boys of independent film! Devilishly handsome men with a movie camera! Collaborators since their teenybopper years in the grunge era, these two firecrackers are turning the film world on its ear! Masterful illusionists or sleight-of-hand scoundrels? Only time will tell!

Meet Seth W. Owen. This dashing 26 year old author, filmmaker and playboy lives the good life in red hot Montreal. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but is for all intents and purposes a Canadian. For the Record: After a plumpy, uncoordinated childhood best spent in the darkened confines of Toronto movie theatres, Seth W. began to slowly nurture his megalomania with stints as a child actor on Canadian television and an intensive regimen of advanced posturing. Seth spent a couple years in film school at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. After making several short films about a man with a box on his head he threw in the towel (literally) and returned to Canada, setting up stakes in Montreal. There he completed a BA in Anthropology at Concordia University and co-founded the film collective Automatic Vaudeville, which produces shorts, hosts screenings and publishes a film journal. Seth W. is also a co-editor of Charade Magazine (with Geoffrey Siskind) and the author of the Johnny Idaho detective series. He is currently hard at work on a number of teen-themed entertainments.

Meet Geoffrey Siskind. Thoughful, sexy, and urbane, Geoffrey was born in the middle of a sweltering Toronto summer right smack dab in the middle of a Tom Jones concert (no joke). As a wee lad Geoffrey entered into his first movie theatre to catch a matinee of the animated film Pete's Dragon. “Oh how Pete loved that dragon,” Geoffrey later recalled, his glasses fogging up with the mist of a single tear. It was this experience that gave him not only a love of film, but taught him just how difficult it could be to attempt to have any sort of meaningful friendship with a dragon, a lesson that young Pete had the hardships of experiencing first hand. Throughout his teen years he toiled as a permanent extra on the long running Canadian soap opera Degrassi Junior High, where he got his first glimpse of how film 'happens' He continued to nurture this passion by studying Film and Communications at Montreal's Concordia University, where he made university history with his short film Piedophilia, the first pornographic film about a man's love for a pair of shoes that the institution had ever seen. Geoffrey is currently dabbling in the world of absurdist public radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as working on a number 'new Media' projects (under the misguided notion that newer always equals better).

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Greg Legros (Cecil) has spent the last 11 years living and acting in Canada. Monkeydance marked his feature film debut. Greg was trained at Humber Theatre School, one of Canada's top theatre schools, located just outside of Toronto. Greg is the stepson of 'Arnold' from Canada's best selling acapella easy listening guy group The Nylons. Selected credits from Greg's recent theatre experience at Humber include Judas in Godspell, The title role in MacBeth and “a confused yet seductive homosexual in Pipe Dreams at Toronto's Buddies and Badtimes Theatre. He is currently a member of the comedy troupe In The Can and pays his rent through his work as a sales clerk at Blockbuster video.

U.K's Marcus Hamer (Duke) studied drama at the University of Bristol and one year of post graduate study at the Drama Studio in London, England. He was featured recently in Britian's popular police drama The Bill and at the Edinburgh Drama festival playing Salvatore Dali in The Great Masterbator. Among his many theatre credits, Marcus has performed at a reading at the Royal Court Theatre in London and in a Musical showcase called Moses, where he played an oppressed Hebrew slave.

Born in Toronto, Rosalyn Shelley (Annie) has been drifting in and out of acting for the better part of decade. She holds university degrees in English, theatre, psychology and film. Her film acting credits include the independent feature Born To Lose and the short film Private War. She is currently a practicing psychometrist at a Toronto Hospital.

Amy Tillman (Zuzu) is a starving artist living in the town of her birth, Atlanta Georgia. She graduated from film school at NYU, where she holds the distinction of being the youngest person to ever graduate from the program. She's currently slinging hash at the icon of all southern diners, The Waffle House, located at every exit on the interstate across the southeast USA. She's working hard for the money and trying to keep hold of the Magic.

Allison White (Rose) made her feature film debut in Monkeydance. Since regaining clarity and depth perception, she has starred in some low budget favorites including a stint as the smooth talking lead in Guilt-Edged Blond; with a swift return to a brunette she became a femme fatale in The Proteus Chronicles and recently a soul-searching party girl in Faith. She is currently in the midst of shooting Femme: Fists of Fury, a stylish Kung-fu meets “Breakfast at Tiffany's', in which she plays the title role..

Jessica Moss, composer extraordinare, has been playing music almost since the day she was born! Originally a classical-trained violinist, Jessica Moss had turned her attention in the last seven years to the noble pursuit of rock and roll. She has toured throughout North America with bands such as The Geraldine Fibbers, Nerdy Girl and Fidget.

The soundtrack was composed during a cold Montreal winter, with only a cheap video transfer of the rough cut of the film as a guide, on a VCR that had no pause button. Jessica played along to the picture, and recorded all of the happenings on an old 4-track tape recorder. Jessica, along with Sofa's Ian Illavsky, Sackville's Gabe Levine and Harris Newman and Bionic's Eric Digras, used a whole variety of instruments in the shaping of the score, from the hypnotic electric guitar / violin duets to the bizarre soundscapes composed from a variety of toys purchased from a local dollar store. The result: a haunting and melodic score that captures the off-centre moods of the Monkeydance universe.

There are also a number of original songs in the film. Zowee! They are brought to us by: Montreal based Sackville, comprising Gabe Levine, Harris Newman, Ian Illavsky, Pat Conan (also from Tinker & Tricky Woo) and Genvieve Heistek (Pest 5000). Fidget, featuring Montreal music veteran Ron Woo (Nerdy Girl), Steve Pourliok and Jackie Gallant (La La La Human Steps). The Hashimoto Show, featuring musician/filmmaker Gordon Hashimoto and his bizarre brand of pop rock. And The Luvulator featuring lead man Randy Ray and his motley crew of musical friends..