Photo courtesy of Grant Duffrin
Grant Duffrin is a member of the Milwaukee comedy troupe 3GI and head coordinator of Shrekfest.
“Shrekfest doesn’t make sense.”
So says Grant Duffrin of Milwaukee comedy troupe 3GI, organizers of the annual event that since 2014 has celebrated its eponymous green cartoon movie ogre.
“My approach, as the Head Coordinator of Shrekfest, is to approach it as someone who doesn’t actually know what Shrek is. Like I’m a grandpa throwing a birthday party for my Shrek-obsessed grandson. I think it’s funniest if the fest is only tangentially related to Shrek, but with more of an emphasis on traditional party things, like face-paint and music." It’s an approach that builds a bond like that of kin, or as Duffrin puts it, “That way Shrekfest feels like a weird family reunion and not like a convention. Does that make sense? Probably not.”
Turning a celebration of Shrek into one of—as the festival’s website confidently declares—"love and life,” does make sense to enough people for it to grow in attendance every year since its inception six years ago. The affable monster and those who would fete him can't, however, overcome COVID-19. So this year’s Shrekfest will be a virtual affair to be held Saturday, Sept. 19 on 3GI’s Twitch channel.
It should be no surprise that someone with such an outlook as Duffrin should see the silver lining of the coronavirus cloud. Or rather, that he would be excited about the lining that others pointed out to him when the change of venue was announced. “I’ve gotten so many messages of excitement from people around the world saying ‘I can finally attend Shrekfest!' so I think that’s the biggest change," Duffrin enthuses. He adds, with a proviso for prior years’ attendees who might have witnessed a certain eating contest for a favorite food of … “(There will be) more eyes on the event. Only thing they’re missing is the excruciating onion stench. I did consider sending out scratch-and-sniff cards though. Maybe next time!”
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Duffrin promises the onion eating contest will transpire online, amidst “an artwork showcase, a roar contest and a costume contest. In between all these events, we’ll be showing a bunch of weird and fantastic music videos and short films that were sent to me.” Capping off the day is a screening of Shrek Retold, a remarkable and literally crowd-sourced (over 200 contributors of live action and animated scenes), word-for-word recreation of Shrek, the 2001 movie that introduced the world to the Mike Meyers-voiced character.
A Big Enough Platform?
As the instigator of such an ambitious undertaking of DIY cinema, Duffrin says of that experience, “Oh man, Shrek Retold was something I’ve wanted to do—and tried and failed to do—ever since the first Shrekfest in 2014. Maybe even before, I can’t remember.
“It was after Shrekfest 2017 where I was like ‘Yeah, I think I have big enough a platform now to pull this off.’ There was 11 months of treating it like my full-time job to get it done. I worked as fast as I could, didn’t want to lose momentum, ya know?” Duffrim recalls. As for any litigious action from Shrek’s releasing studio, Dreamworks? “None! Probably best that way. I’m sure they love it though. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a celebration of their property!”
But why a festival honoring the star of that proper anyway? “I just like how flawed he is as a character. He’s kinda obscene and gross, and that’s a fun concept to build a festival around. Nowhere else would an onion eating contest make so much sense.” And Shrekfest may not have occurred were Duffrin and his fellow 3GIers not snookered by social media. “It’s worth noting that we didn’t create Shrekfest. It was a fake Facebook event that my friends and I totally thought was real. Just the idea of a festival centered around a movie from our childhood was so strange sounding we were immediately hooked. Like a week or two before the event we found out it was fake and were crushed; but like this joke had such a big audience...It just needed to be real!”
The reality of the 2020 Shrekfest starts on Saturday, September 19 at 1:30 p.m. on twitch.tv./the3gi. Anyone wanting to view Shrek Retold outside the festival's context may find it on YouTube or purchase a VHS cassette of it at the3gi.com.
