A short and boring story…A brief history of Dirty Cricket

The Past

Often times people ask me where I got the name Dirty Cricket. And I respond, “it’s a short and boring story”. At least that’s how it started.

Way back in the mid-nineties my long time friend Andrew Johner and I had been making short stop motion animation movies; one day we were making a particularly epic film that required credits! This involved recording a Power Point display with the camcorder propped up on a pile of books. In all those early years (5?) we never once managed to get a tripod or a working battery for Andrew’s parents High8 camera, thus tethering us to the longest extension cords we could find and within range of a table or chair to set the camera on. Anyhow in typing the credits I went to write down the name of our production company and I turned to Andrew and said, “We need a production company name” and Andrew touched by a muse, or perhaps recalling some collection of word he had heard said, “How about Dirty Cricket?” I nodded my head and said, “Okay.” And that is the origin of Dirty Cricket.

The name anyway

As time went on I moved away from Decatur, IL and went to Columbia College Chicago to study filmmaking. Every effort that I did there was a Dirty Cricket film in whatever incarnation it turned out to be. Many of those are here on this site and there are still more that will be put on here.

The biggest advancement in Dirty Cricket however came in 2004 when my freshmen year roommate Jamison Acker and I decided we wanted to make a feature film. I wrote the script with a few close friends and we amassed a group of people that where willing to help us make it happen. Under the newly established Dirty Cricket Films LLC we planned a fundraiser, “Cricket Fest” and mailed out over 500 letters and request for donations. The party happened and we raised over $5000 in profit. It was a startling success.

However, after the momentum of the party things began to dwindle. People who had more pressing things dropped out of the effort and as script problems delayed everyone the idea of a small group of sophomore college students producing a massive post-apocalyptic feature length film became truly daunting until finally I was the last one left. And eventually I too saw the folly of such a rush and gave it up.

The lessons learned however, made the whole thing worth it. And in a certain way that was my goal in stimulating this event. I knew that if anything where to be done it had to be forced and I, as I often do, chose the hardest path. My father didn’t tell me many things when I was growing up but the one thing he did say was “Aim high” illustrating the idea that if you aim high and if you miss your mark you will still fall higher then if you had aimed low. So with this in mind I advanced the unimaginable idea of producing what would otherwise be a multimillion-dollar film. I convinced myself it could be done and I’m pretty sure I convinced several other people it could be done as well. And there was a lot of let down when we fell.

The following spring however we produced The Oldest Bottle with the funds raised from Cricket Fest and that was also a success both in production and post-production (all though it took well over a year to finish). And it wasn’t until recently that Jamison and I decided not to renew our LCC and Dirty Cricket as an official corporation vanished.

The Present

What Dirty Cricket eventually became was what Andrew, Jamison and I where already doing. We were creating and experimenting with art. And that is still what drives Dirty Cricket to this day. Andrew, or Jeronimo as he later went by, and I did produce a few more projects up until very recently, the last of which being Stanley’s Day and if the opportunity arises to work together again I would gladly take it. Jamison and I are still partners and we have big plans for the future of Dirty Cricket.

The Future

This website is the first step in what I see as the future of Dirty Cricket. With the ever-increasing power of Internet media I foresee a day when the web is the primary source of film and entertainment. I want to put the tools that are emerging and already is good use in the hands of Dirty Cricket.