2024 Year in Review
No rest for Fantasy A and the Dr. Clean Productions team in 2024! 🚀 This year was busier, more far-reaching, and wild than 2023. 🌍✈️ More travel, more fans, more incredible personalities met! 👋
In the span of one year Fantasy A Gets a Mattress and the Dr. Clean Productions team made their way to:
New York City
London, England, United Kingdom
Dallas, Texas
Austin, Texas
Baltimore, Maryland
Spokane, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Lansing, Michigan
Bridgton, Maine
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Portland, Oregon
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Fantasy A and co-star Logic Amen made the trip across the Atlantic to screen Fantasy A Gets a Mattress for a sold-out show in the UK! 🇬🇧🍿 Fantasy A ate a frightening-looking box of fish and chips 🐟🍟 that he declared was the best he'd ever had! 😋
The team was sponsored by Wise 💼 to run an acting workshop 🎭 at the Washington Community Summit disability convention. Fantasy A and the Dr. Clean team taught a medley of acting techniques, exercises, games, and tricks 🎬🤹♂️ to an outstanding group of people eager to learn something new. They attacked each activity with serious creativity and veracity! 🧠✨
After several screenings in Michigan, Maine, Oregon, Washington, and South Dakota, the Fantasy A team made a huge leap with an entirely sold-out week-long screening run at Spectacle Theater 🎥🏙️ in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The team headed to the city early to slather NYC in wheatpaste posters 🖼️ and it paid off.
One of Fantasy A Gets a Mattress' chief inspirations, Charlie Ahearn—the director of the first hip hop movie, Wild Style—came to our New York City premiere, already wearing a Fantasy A pin! He loved the movie's sound design and eye-popping color. 🌈🎶
Also in attendance for our final NYC screening was indie cult sensation Betsey Brown, standing in a line in the pouring rain. 🌧️☔ This screening was so packed we had to seat one eager attendee in the projectionist's booth! 🎞️
Best of all, our cast member, rapper DoNormaal 🎤, was in attendance for every single screening! It was a great reunion. 🥰 NYC was incredible! 🌟
Whilst making several more stops across the country, the Dr. Clean team simultaneously began work on a proof-of-concept video 🎥 for their second feature film, CRYSTAL BALL!, filming in spring. 🌸🌞 The five-minute short gives viewers a look at what their next surrealist vision will look like: an off-the-wall, surrealist extravaganza, taking the style of Fantasy A Gets a Mattress even further! 🔮🤯
In June, Fantasy A and team headed to Dallas for the Oak Cliff Film Festival, where Fantasy A Gets a Mattress was received with wild fanfare. 🎉 Texas has incredible audiences! Additionally, it was a thrill to meet the one-of-a-kind Swamp Dogg 🎤🎸, who performed a live set scheduled to last one hour but expanded to two and a half hours of nonstop fun. 🎶🎵
The team also met America's most underrated actor Joshua Burge 🎭 and his frequent collaborator, director Joel Potrykus 🎬, whom the team sat on a panel with! 🗣️
Fantasy A Gets a Mattress got another welcome boost with an endorsement from cult legend Alex Cox 🎥, director of Repo Man 🚗⚡, another key inspiration.
A return trip to Texas brought the team to the Hyperreal Film Club in Austin 🎬, where they screened the film in a space converted from an old strip club. 💃 What an incredible venue and honor to be the newly-opened arthouse cinema’s first non-repertory screening. 👏
During the summer in Seattle, the film played four consecutive sold-out screenings at the Grand Illusion Cinema 🎟️🍿, with stand-by lines wrapping around the block that exceeded the capacity of the entire cinema! 🎉 On one night, a hundred people couldn’t get in. 😲 One determined attendee stood in line twice to no avail before getting into the last screening of the run—one of our most electric and exciting shows ever! ⚡
Right on the tail of our Seattle screening run, Fantasy A and team headed to Baltimore for the New/Next Film Festival 🦀, sitting next to John Waters 🎬 for the opening night film.
Back in Seattle, screenings at Cornish School of Arts 🎨 and Seattle University 🎓 saw an incredible group of students go insane for the unique vision before them, with many volunteering their services for our next feature, CRYSTAL BALL! 🙌✨
The year culminated with a special show at The Hideout 🍸🎤 to celebrate our 2024 achievements and to fundraise for CRYSTAL BALL! Fantasy A performed alongside electro-synthwave artist Profit Prison 🎹—two great tastes that taste great together! 🍬 The fundraiser brought us closer to funding CRYSTAL BALL!, but there is still more to do! 🚧
Casting and pre-production are both already well underway. 🎭 Rapper DoNormaal has jumped on board to play the titular character, Krystal Ball; Fantasy A is confirmed as Ernie, the building super 🛠️; and Khamiyra James will be playing Krystal’s sister, Fabiola. 👩👩👧
If you want to help CRYSTAL BALL! get made, please contribute to our crowdfunding campaign. 💵🤝 Any amount helps get this new feature film rolling! 🎬✨
2024 was just a taste of what is to come for Fantasy A Gets a Mattress, which continues gaining steam 🚂, and for CRYSTAL BALL!, set to film in spring and summer 2025. 🌼☀️ Three screenings of Fantasy A Gets a Mattress are already planned for early 2025:
📍 Daydream Cinema in Newcastle, England on Feb. 25th
📍 We Luv Video in Austin, Texas on Jan. 31st
📍 And a special screening/live performance at SIFF Cinema: Uptown on February 21st, with all proceeds going towards the budget of CRYSTAL BALL! 💰🎥