.
Find out more about the Honky Tonk Twisters, the band that provided the awesome honky-tonk music for the film or purchase their newest release:
High Octwang
.
A special thanks to Sarah Solie
the amazing artist who created the poster for
Tractor For Sale (check it out on the Home Page)
To contact her:
phone: (920) 969-9812
email: ssolie@athenet.net
.
Another special thanks to Dr. Joseph Boxerman, who we
met at the David Lynch seminar in Iowa this year. Dr.
Boxerman wrote an amazing review of "Tractor For Sale".
Here are excerpts from his review:
Tractor for Sale: A Classic Work of Twenty-First Century American Folk Art
When I took home the dvd of "Tractor" I thought I'd sit down
for a few minutes and watch it - all 22 minutes of it. Didn't happen. After watching it once, I watched it again and then again. If supper hadn't been ready I probably would have continued re-playing it. It just got better each time.
A true work of art has the quality of timelessness - it improves with age and whenever you allow your attention to be engaged by it, the result is uplifting. This is true of a fine painting, a musical composition....or a movie. This is what elevates "Tractor for Sale" above "just a nice short".
Produced and directed with precision, attention to detail, and LOVE, what one feels at the end of the screening(s) is an intimacy with every aspect of its production - with the drama itself, with the characters, with the actors who bring those characters to life, and even with the extras. One feels this intimacy with the setting (in this case a rural farm and small town setting) and mostly with the two powerful names behind the scenes, the extraordinary husband-wife team of Troy and Frances Perkins, who had the guts, the motivation, the drive and the competency to bring off this little gem...
...For film students, this film is a classic work to learn from - tight, precision cuts that leave the audience yearning for more (which is why the film works so well on many repeated viewings). Classic, "by-the-book" shots, which, rather than being boring actually infuse the film with the kind of humor that only "insiders" (filmmakers and aspiring filmmakers) can fully appreciate.
The Odyssey of Farmer Mitchell takes one past a variety of characters. An "Odyssey" because the first and last character we see, in addition to "Odysseus" (Mitchell) is his Penelope, his wife of 35 years - to the day (the day being their 35th anniversary). The gentle, careful crafting of each of these characters makes the viewer eager and alert as the story progresses and each new face is presented and, with just a few simple, skillful strokes, takes on a life. Just a simple example....the hapless "bad guys" stumble out of their farmhouse....one of them pauses to light his cigarette. A simple gesture, but it catches the essence of the scene in a totally meaningful, yet gently unobtrusive way.
There are many more similar moments in the film. I would love to enumerate all of the wonderful, deeply human, almost always humorous, always insightful ways that the filmmakers used to enliven the film. They are at first glance unobstrusive, but on repeated viewings, these little gems, generously sprinkled within the script, hugely illuminate the narrative. They ultimately contribute to the notion that what we are viewing really is a 21st Century work of art.