A year after “Mad City Chickens” played to a sold-out, enthusiastic crowd at the Wisconsin Film Festival, the documentary has found a niche with foodies and, beginning this week, a new life on DVD.
The Mount Horeb filmmakers spent more than two years researching the backyard chicken phenomenon in the United States. The film centers on how Madison has become a hotbed for urban chickens, looking at how the laws changed in Madison to allow coops, and what drives urban dwellers to keep chickens for eggs and grow to love the creatures.
“I was thinking it would be a 10-minute film; Tashai thought maybe half an hour,” Lughai said. “We were just going to shoot this film because we like chickens ourselves, but the problem was it was too damn interesting.”
Forty hours of interviews became a 79-minute film (the couple trimmed four minutes from the big-screen version for the DVD). There is nearly an hour’s worth of extras, including more from Mother Earth Editor Cheryl Long, some tips for keeping backyard chickens and a making-of featurette.
“The featurette tells us how it grew and how somebody told us about somebody else,” Lughai said. “All these connections, and it just kept growing and growing. It could have kept growing, but we had to stop somewhere.”
Lovington and Lughai took great pains to make “Mad City Chickens” as entertaining as it is informative. So there are heart-tugging stories, such as the nearly dead chicken found on the road and rescued by Nutzy Mutz and Crazy Catz owner Liz Perry. And there are entertaining moments, such as a piano-playing chicken named Beanie.
“The original idea was to share that they can be more than food items,” Lovington said. “When we first got our chickens, I was excited about getting eggs. I didn’t realize you can have a relationship with them, and after we had them, it was a revelation. That was the first impetus — to share that with people.”
The film played at two film festivals in Canada after its world premiere at the Wisconsin Film Festival last April. Now, the couple is hearing more interest from food festivals. A showing is scheduled at the Santa Fe farmers’ market, at a food co-op in Moscow, Idaho, and at the Spring Film Festival presented by the Outpost Natural Foods Cooperative in Milwaukee.
“This is really attractive to food people — people in the food movement,” Lughai said. “The ‘Mad City Chickens’ group was really on the cutting edge. When they were getting their chicken laws changed, it wasn’t really a movement. It is a movement now, all over the place. I get e-mails from all over the U.S. and Canada; I’ve gotten e-mails from the UK, France and Italy. They asked us to submit to a slow food festival in Italy.”
This summer, “Mad City Chickens” will play at the Cottonwood Creek Environmental Film Festival in California, its first showing in the state.
“That’s cool because it’s right next to Escondido, where Beanie the piano-playing chicken lives,” Lughai said. “Jay Walker, who is out there, will finally get to see the film.”
Lughai doesn’t know if Beanie will be around to enjoy it, though. The filmmakers haven’t been in touch with Walker lately, and Beanie’s blog hasn’t been updated for almost a year.
The chickens have kept Lovington and Lughai busy, but they have other projects in the works. Both are feature films. One is a period piece set in rural England that they’ll film here. Another is a story inspired by their time raising puppies that will become guide dogs.
But they’ll also be spending time promoting the “Mad City Chicken” DVD. To order a copy, go here. The DVD sells for $21.95.
