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Izzy the Clown gets chunky for movie
Randall King
Winnipeg Free Press
Friday, June 20, 2003
All the sticky white patches on Izzy the clown's lily-white belly suggest the poor thing has been the victim of some kind of sinister, co-ordinated mosquito attack.
But no, they're supposed to be weight-loss patches. Izzy's true nemesis is a "Super-Chunk," nine kilograms worth of lily-white spare tire. Izzy needs to fit into her wedding dress, and she plans to eliminate the Super-Chunk by any means necessary.
That is the premise of Izzy and the Superchunk, a half-hour foray into the motion picture medium by Izzy - aka Shannan Calcutt, the wonderfully shameless clown who has been wowing Fringe Festival audiences for the past five years in her trilogy Burnt Tongue, It's Me, Only Better and Out of My Skin.
The patches, she says, are actually Band-Aids, although real weight-loss patches were available at Calcutt's local health food store.
"But I couldn't have that many on at once," she says prior to filming a scene at the Assiniboine Athletic Club, a gym on the fourth floor of Fort Garry Place. "It would make you very ill."
But Izzy, of course, doesn't consider that, and puts multiple patches on her tummy, where she thinks they'll do the most good. Calcutt admits she is satirizing the multi-billion dollar weight-loss industry, among other things.
"She reads she can have snacks so she brings her doughnuts, and the first thing she asks her trainer when she gets in is where can she put her donuts." Calcutt says.
"She takes all of the shakes and all of the pills and everything she thinks will work that she's read about in the magazines, so she's trying them all," she says. "And then she joins the gym and believes that she'll take all this stuff, go to the gym and go home that same evening and she'll be thin."
"Of course, it's an exaggeration," she says. "But it does say on these things: '24-hour guarantee.'"
Calcutt hasn't written a new live show since Out of My Skin, but she is looking at taking her clown character in a new direction.
"A lot of people have been seeing Izzy in theatres and the comedy festivals and have suggested that Izzy should do a film, or Izzy should do a talk show," says Calcutt, 27.
In Out of My Skin, Izzy appeared topless, using that to duly mortify some of the people she brought on stage with her. Those scenes represented 20 per cent of what was otherwise a scripted performance.
With this film, Izzy will be entirely improvising using friends or acquaintances or, in one scene, a local bodybuilder with no acting experience. She hopes to do more films in different scenarios as a series, al la Mr. Bean, only entirely improvised.
"My favorite part of clown is working with the audience," she says. "So she'd be playing with people rather than actors."
The finished film, financed on the collective credit cards of Calcutt, director Pamela Anthony and producer David Cheoros, will premiere at the Edmonton Comedy Arts Festival next March.
By that time, Calcutt may have lost the weight she gained for this project, in the same way Hollywood actress Renee Zellweger gained her pounds for Bridget Jones' Diary and its upcoming sequel.
"And she looks normal in Bridget Jones," Calcutt says. "If I was to look like Renee Zellweger, I'd have to stop eating for a year."
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