Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.
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Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
Monday, May 25 at 7:00 PM – Music Box Theatre – 3733 N Southport Ave
Tickets: $11 at the door or purchase in advance
BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO AMERICA
Directed by Mike Judge • 1996
Spawned from the wilds of underground animation, teenaged delinquents Beavis and Butt-Head first appeared in 1992 in a pair of 16mm shorts made by Mike Judge for a few hundred dollars with a simple Bolex camera. Over the following five years, the pair would become cultural phenoms, anchoring MTV’s flagship series, inspiring public outcry over a number of dubiously connected acts of childhood violence, and eventually going Hollywood, starring in their own blockbuster 35mm theatrical feature, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. Their lives to date spent in cathode ray-illuminated squalor, making fun of brainy college rock and flaccid fantasy metal videos, Beavis and Butt-Head awake one afternoon to horror beyond any comprehension: their television set has been stolen. Thus begins an odyssey that will find the boys criss-crossing the United States of America, experiencing the greatest natural and cultural wonders this nation has to offer, embroiling themselves in shady criminal plots, and coming into contact with the upper echelons of political power, all of which they respond to with transcendently puerile dick and poop jokes. Bow down to the almighty bunghole! Prior to the feature, we will be screening a rare 16mm print of Wes Archer’s obstreperous animated short Jac Mac & Rad Boy Go!, a key influence on Mike Judge’s early filmmaking career. (CW)
81 min • MTV Films • 35mm from the Chicago Film Society collection, permission Paramount
★ 30th Anniversary! ★Preceded by: “Jac Mac & Rad Boy Go!” (Wes Archer, 1985) – 4 min – 16mm from Wes Archer

NEXT UP: FLY AWAY HOME on Sunday, May 31 at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Upcoming screenings:
View all upcoming screenings & venue info →
Sat 5/16 at 11:30 AM @ Music Box
Salomé • Advance Tickets
Mon 5/25 at 7 PM @ Music Box
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America • Advance Tickets
Saturday 5/30
Erica Sheu (徐璐) : Material Language • RSVP
Sun 5/31 at 6 PM @ Film Center
Fly Away Home • Advance Tickets

The Chicago Film Society works to promote the exhibition of analog film prints, to preserve the equipment and skills used to create and exhibit them, and to encourage an approach to film history that positions cinema as part of the broader history of technology and society.
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