Syd Straw

John Flansburgh & John Linnell met in the 1970s as junior high students in Lincoln, Massachusetts. A decade later, their band—They Might Be Giants—would stand at the forefront of a burgeoning East Village NYC performance art scene as well as the college music revolution of the late 1980s. Filmed in 2001, ‘Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)’ is the acclaimed true story, tracing their independent and sometimes hilarious path through two decades in the pop music wilderness. From their legendary Dial-a-Song answering machine, to their Grammy Award-winning theme song for ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, fans and friends gather to tell the oral history of Brooklyn's finest alternative rock band.

A documentary film tracing the collaboration between One Ring Zero, the Brooklyn house-band for McSweeney's Publishing, and an ensemble cast of award-winning authors, each of whom contributed original lyrics. Author Myla Goldberg torments guest singer Syd Straw with tongue twisting, five star vocabulary words. Paul Auster riffs on the ills of Cincinatti and the Iraq war. The film's title, in fact, comes from the inspired dialogue of a talking cockroach.