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Lash!

Once king of the B-movie cowboys, Lash LaRue sank into obscurity; and his final, never-completed film was thought to be lost forever...Years later, the filmmakers look back on their time with the drunk, violent, whip-cracking disaster they called LASH.

  • Joe Van Auken
    Director
    Revelator, Safelight
  • Dan Mandel
    Key Cast
    "Harrold Mendelbaum"
    Dead Wrong, Dan Vs.
  • Nicholas Thurkettle
    Key Cast
    "Lash LaRue"
    Cloudy With a Chance of Sunshine, Revelator, R&R, Prefigured
  • Andrew Michael
    Key Cast
    "Trevor Harbaugh"
  • Jean Rosolino
    Key Cast
    "Gretta Thorley-LaRue"
    Jimmy Traynor's Alien Parasite
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    8 minutes 15 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.78:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Joe Van Auken

Joe Van Auken was a professional cinematographer and colorist in Los Angeles and Chicago for 12 years, before moving to the East coast in 2018. He currently directs small, personal shorts, and remains dedicated to shooting on film so long as they make it. He does not believe Lash LaRue actually knew how to use a whip.

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Director Statement

I love Lash LaRue.

Lash represents the kind of hard-scrabble, make-it-happen, crazier-than-fiction Hollywood story that people working today can only dream of in envy. He was the quintessential 'working actor,' the kind of guy you'd see daily at Cowboy Gulch outside Sunset Gower Studios; he simply couldn't have existed in any other time, in any other place. And that's what's at the heart of our film, LASH! By the end of his career, Lash was a runner whom the race outran, he was a man out of time that didn't fit with the shoestring industry slowly rising to prominence, and didn't recognize it when it came knocking. Gone were the days of Zucker and Selznick, and in their place were barrel-scrapers like Phil Smoot, who saw fit to squeeze what blood was left from Lash's stones and shoehorn him into a pair of abysmal genre flicks before his untimely passing. What resulted, and what we wanted to celebrate with LASH!, was a portrait and a time capsule; a man of another era who hadn't yet realized time moved faster than his whip.