Corbett vs. Dempsey

works by Tom Palazzolo

Tom Palazzolo has been so intent on creating a style and feeling capturing the craziness and eccentricity characteristic of Chicago, that he has on occasion used the pseudonym "Tom Chicago" in the credits for his films/ Palazzolo was born in St. Louis in 1937. After studying at the John and Mable Ringling School of Art in Sarasota. Florida (1958-60). He attended the School of the Art Institute where he studied photography and painting and exhibited with the Hairy Who. Palazzolo received his MFA from SAIC in 1965, and began to make films that same year. He was involved with some of the small collectives presenting experimental film at this time in Chicago, such as the Floating Cinematheque (with fellow underground filmmaker John Heinz) and the Center Cinema Co-op. During the late 1960s, Palazzolo became well known in what was then called "underground" film; in 1969 he traveled in the Middle East with a program of American experimental films under the auspices of the United States Information Agency, and in 1970 he received a grant form the American Film Institute.

Palazzolo's films of the late 1960s are alternately political and comedic. Campaign (1968), for example, is a highly personal use of footage taken of the 1968 Democratic Convention and the riots that resulted, while Venus and Adonis (1965/66) humorously recreates the Greek myth on Chicago's North Avenue Beach. His film Love It/Leave It (1970) was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art's New American Filmmakers series in 1973. In the early 1970s, Palazzolo began to experiment with forms of cinema-verite documentary, and for the next ten years his films focused on the rituals surrounding marriage: prom night, showers, bachelor parties, weddings, receptions, and anniversaries.

During the 1980s Palazzolo shifted his style and focus once again, using local performance artists as actors in the bizarre and semi-autobiographical narrative films, Caligari's Cure (1982), featured in 1983 as part of the Whitney Museum's New American Filmmakers series - and Added Lessons (1990). Recent films have marked a return of sorts to his work of the late 1960s - bringing quirky personal views to documentary filmmaking. I Married a Munchkin (1994), about Mary Ellen St. Aubin who ran a midget bar on Chicago's South Side, takes its place besides his unusual films form the 1960s and 1970s of a tattooed lady, a wet T-shirt contest, and other offbeat people and events.

Palazzolo is represented in the film collection of MOMA. In addition to filmmaking, Palazzolo has continued to work in photography and painting. He has taught film at SAIC and is an associate professor in the Department of Human and Public Services at Richard J. Daley College where he teaches art history and photography. Palazzolo currently lives and works in Oak Park, Illinois.

Biography by Dominic Molon, from Art in Chicago 1945 - 1995