Director's Statement

Ding Dong is a comic take on the age-old theme of “Beauty and the Beast.”  It is an amusing tale about love at first sight, Cupid’s arrow, what the French call “the thunderbolt.”  While Beauty may be harmless and delicate in appearance, there is scarcely anything more overpowering and disarming in human experience.

King Kong was the king of all beasts, even besting the king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Yet for all his mighty prowess, he was rendered helpless by the beautiful Ann Darrow (as played by Fay Wray).  Similarly, Ding Dong considers himself at the top of the male food chain.  Indeed, the film opens with Ding Dong devouring a pastry in symbolic fashion.  On the coffee table in front of him, a stack of yet-to-be-eaten Hostess ding dongs is piled high in a replica of the Empire State Building. Yet, as in King Kong, it is Beauty that is the ultimate devourer.

In this film, I also wanted to experiment with Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage, whereby two dissimilar shots intercut together create a new meaning.  King Kong is a horror film, and the chase in Ding Dong plays out dramatically.  However, by intercutting between King Kong and Ding Dong, the film achieves a third effect -- comedy.

Finally, I wanted to pay homage to two films that have influenced my desire to become a filmmaker.  The first one is obvious – King Kong, a favorite film in my childhood.  The second one is more subtle – Citizen Kane, a favorite film in my adulthood.  The chase in the park is bracketed by two scenes of the entrance gate, with the camera panning across to focus portentously on the word “Run” in “Runyon Canyon Park.”  Visually, I meant for these two sequences to be reminiscent of the forbidding Xanadu gates in the opening and closing shots of Citizen Kane.

Moreover, the gated entrance also suggests the giant wall on Skull Island, which initially separates the realm of Beast from the realm of Man in King Kong, until Beauty forces those two worlds to come together and collide disastrously.  Beauty has a way of doing that!