William Wegman

Directing

William Wegman

Known for

Directing

Credits

33 titles

Known for

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson poster
7.6

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night. For its first ten years, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City with occasional trips to Burbank, California; in May 1972, the show moved permanently to Burbank, California. In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked #12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962

Saturday Night Live poster
6.9

A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

Saturday Night Live

1975

The Rosie O'Donnell Show poster
4.1

The Rosie O'Donnell Show was an American daytime television talk show hosted and produced by actress and comedian Rosie O'Donnell. It aired for six seasons from 1996 to 2002. Topics often discussed on the show include Broadway, children, extended families and charitable works, people and organizations. The show was based out of Studio 8G at NBC's Rockefeller Center studios in New York City, NY, USA and was produced and syndicated by KidRo Productions, Telepictures Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

The Rosie O'Donnell Show

1996

Alive from Off Center poster
8.0

An avant-garde omnibus that features works by off-the-wall artists in many different disciplines.

Alive from Off Center

1985

Joe's Apartment poster
5.8

A nice guy has just moved to New York and discovers that he must share his run-down apartment with a couple thousand singing, dancing cockroaches.

Joe's Apartment

1996

Blue Monday poster
NR

Animated short

Blue Monday

1988

Film credits

2000s · 2 titles

1970s · 3 titles

Series credits

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson poster
7.6

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night. For its first ten years, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City with occasional trips to Burbank, California; in May 1972, the show moved permanently to Burbank, California. In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked #12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962

Saturday Night Live poster
6.9

A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

Saturday Night Live

1975

Saturday Night Live poster
6.9

A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

Saturday Night Live

1975

The Rosie O'Donnell Show poster
4.1

The Rosie O'Donnell Show was an American daytime television talk show hosted and produced by actress and comedian Rosie O'Donnell. It aired for six seasons from 1996 to 2002. Topics often discussed on the show include Broadway, children, extended families and charitable works, people and organizations. The show was based out of Studio 8G at NBC's Rockefeller Center studios in New York City, NY, USA and was produced and syndicated by KidRo Productions, Telepictures Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

The Rosie O'Donnell Show

1996

Alive from Off Center poster
8.0

An avant-garde omnibus that features works by off-the-wall artists in many different disciplines.

Alive from Off Center

1985

Behind the camera

Blue Monday poster
NR

Animated short

Blue Monday

1988

No artwork available
NR

"In the piece we see the two dogs staring at the camera in a dark room. Their eyes are intently following something off camera. Sometimes their head movement is pull into the action as they crane to follow the whatever it is in various left right and up down directions. At one point the action seems to stop and the dogs begin to blink in syncopation. At this point Hooka settles down into a lying position but Man Ray remains riveted. Towards the end piece the dogs crane to look behind them and at one miraculous moment their motions counter each other. At the end we see the object of their attention…in my hand, a tennis ball."

Dog Duet

1975

Alphabet Soup poster
8.0

William Wegman and his dogs - Fay Ray, Batty, Chundo, and Crooky - teach children the alphabet.

Alphabet Soup

1995

William Wegman's Mother Goose poster
NR

Mother Goose tries to teach her son, Simon Goose, how to rhyme using some of her famous nursery rhymes.

William Wegman's Mother Goose

1997

Spit Sandwich poster
NR

A series of short, single-take anecdotes that introduce his idiosyncratic approach to video and humor, these technically raw-edged vignettes use understated means to create conceptual sight gags and absurdist one-liners. Wegman's deadpan spoken delivery of his monologues, and his ingenious use of everyday objects, subvert the viewer's expectations and transform the ordinary into the surreal.

Spit Sandwich

1970

Fay's 12 Days of Christmas poster
6.5

Willam Wegman brings together his famous family of weimaraners to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas in a witty and delightful festival of decorating, crafts, cooking, gift wrapping, fruitcake, and more. Watch as Batty, Crooky, Chundo and Fay celebrate the season as only they can.

Fay's 12 Days of Christmas

1995

William Wegman: Video Work 1970-1999 poster
NR

From 1970-1977 William Wegman created some of the most innovative and important works in the history of video. These early pioneering tapes were created using minimal technology and a few studio props, including Wegman’s canine companion, Man Ray. Consisting of 130 works, some no longer than a television commercial, blurred the boundaries between high and low art as well as art and commerce, and have become a major chapter in the histories of contemporary art and film. This exhaustive compilation has been assembled by the artist with restored material and it contains all nine original reels as well as two later reels. Classics such as Pocketbook Man, Milk/Floor, Stomach Song, Cape On, Stick and Tooth, Spelling Lesson, Dog Duet, Man Ray, Do You Want to? Are included.

William Wegman: Video Work 1970-1999

2006

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Spelling Lesson

1974

No artwork available
NR

Single-channel digital video, transferred from Sony CV 1/2-inch video tape, black-and-white, sound

Stomach Song

1971

No artwork available
NR

In Reel 1, Wegman creates deadpan one-liners and ironic sight gags from materials that include his own body, everyday objects such as balls and dolls, and his dog Man Ray. The humor derives from the wild incongruity of expected and actual behavior or events. Inanimate objects are personified; extended actions lead to absurd anticlimaxes. In Stomach Song, Wegman sits in a chair, his bare torso facing the camera. As he gruffly hums a song, his torso becomes a face, with nipples as eyes, navel as mouth. Raising his arms, the "facial" features change gender and he hums in falsetto. Other segments find him blowing a feather from his nose and creating pendulous female "breasts" by folding his elbows to his body. The ever-obliging Man Ray drags a microphone in his mouth, laps up milk that Wegman has drooled onto the floor, and, in an oddly poetic exercise, runs through a darkened room with a flashlight in his mouth.

Reel 1

1971

New & Used Car Salesman poster
NR

William Wegman's lewd stroking of his dog apes television's crass marketing strategies.

New & Used Car Salesman

1973

No artwork available
7.0

Absurd stories mix with wordplay in the early video works of William Wegman. Product demonstrations, application of household appliance on videotape, stomach hummings. Copyright reminiscing. Man Ray chews the microphone... A selection from the hours of short performances Wegman recorded in his studio from 1970-1978. Selected Video Works includes Two Dogs And Ball (silent), Used Car Salesman, Dog Biscuit In Glass Jar.

Selected Video Works

1999

No artwork available
NR

Pursuit of a dog biscuit inside a glass bottle creates the type of narrative suspense that draws us into the action on the screen.

Treat Bottle

1972

No artwork available
NR

A little girl blows a very big bubble and the bubble bursts.

The Bubble Gum Film

1969

The World of Photography poster
NR

Artists Michael Smith and William Wegman — both of whom use conceptual humor as an art-making strategy — collaborated on this satirical commentary on photography, the process of image-making, and the interchange of "high" art and "low" culture. The tape is structured as an instructional guide that advances the "slice of life" method, imparting not only technique, but attitude and approach to the subject of photography. Wegman plays the world-weary artiste, a professional photographer who takes the innocent and earnest Mike under his tutelage. The business of art, the "reality" of the photographic image, and its pervasive role in contemporary culture are among the issues that receive irreverent treatment in this comedic collaboration.

The World of Photography

1986

How to Draw poster
NR

In this short parody, Wegman plays an earnest drawing professor — a character that recalls television's Mr. Rogers — who demonstrates to Mark Magill's eager student how all drawing is based on "natural shapes" and how one can "learn by doing." Employing the stylistic conventions of a low-budget television "how-to" show, Wegman and Magill parody the notion of artistic instruction.

How to Draw

1983

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Randy's Sick

1971

The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold poster
10.0

A bottle of nerve manna, a disappearing golf ball and some rocks . . . it all adds up to the Hardly Boys' toughest case yet. The Hardly Boys have returned to Rangeley Lake for another relaxing summer at the Hardly Inn. Fishing, boating, tennis and their friend Chip Mason await them, but the boys soon find themselves enmeshed in a perplexing mystery that puts to the test their sleuthing skills and secret dog powers. What are the Nurse and the Caretaker up to?! And what happened to Gladiola Mason? She invited hem to lunch and now she's disappeared!

The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold

1995

The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold poster
10.0

A bottle of nerve manna, a disappearing golf ball and some rocks . . . it all adds up to the Hardly Boys' toughest case yet. The Hardly Boys have returned to Rangeley Lake for another relaxing summer at the Hardly Inn. Fishing, boating, tennis and their friend Chip Mason await them, but the boys soon find themselves enmeshed in a perplexing mystery that puts to the test their sleuthing skills and secret dog powers. What are the Nurse and the Caretaker up to?! And what happened to Gladiola Mason? She invited hem to lunch and now she's disappeared!

The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold

1995