‘The Fandom’ chronicles history of Furries
Fourth of July weekend in Downtown Pittsburgh had a chance to be particularly lit in 2020 — and not just from the fireworks at the Point.
Besides the usual festivities, July 2-5 is when the David L. Lawrence Convention Center would have hosted Anthrocon, the annual furry convention that has called Pittsburgh home since 2006.
Downtown and the Strip District would have been a hotbed of folks in fursuits all weekend, but Anthrocon 2020 was cancelled in late April due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The convention had been growing in attendance over its 14 years in Pittsburgh, and in 2019 alone it tallied 9,358 attendees and raised $45,852 for local nonprofit PEARL Parrot Rescue. Those convention-goers also provide Pittsburgh businesses with a $7.9 million yearly economic boost.
That last figure comes courtesy of “The Fandom,” a new documentary about the history of furry culture dating back to its roots in 1970s anime and sci-fi conventions and going all the way through its modern-day fandom that manifests itself in giant events like DenFur in
Denver and Anthrocon in Pittsburgh. Those lamenting Anthrocon’s cancellation will be able to check out “The Fandom” July 3 on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Blu-Ray and digital download.
“We’ve seen a lot more positive media around the furries and fandom recently,” the documentary’s director and cinematographer Ash Kreis told the Post-Gazette. “I want to put to bed a lot of the misconceptions people have about the fandom. I want to address those questions and be real with them, but also really show the community as it is.”
This is at least the third documentary about the furry fandom in the last five years, following “Fursonas” in 2016 and the short film “Furries” in 2015. “Furries” was actually the Wright State University senior thesis project of director Eric Risher, who also has an editing credit on the Oscar-winning
documentary “American Factory” and served as co-director and editor on “The Fandom.”
Mr. Risher — whose fursona is an eagle named Ash, a complete coincidence alongside Ms. Kreis and her fursona, Ash Coyote — has been a furry since 2007 and was excited to work on “The Fandom” because of its potential educational benefits.
“When they said they wanted to do something about the history, I thought there was a great opportunity there because I think that’s an untapped idea within the community,” he said.
The documentary explores how those sci-fi and anime fans more interested in the anthropomorphic animals in their favorite shows and movies than the human characters split off into their own community in the 1970s and ‘80s. It charts the evolution of furry conventions on the East and West Coasts and follows the journey of Rod O’Riley and Mark Merlino, longtime partners and furries who are considered the founders of the fandom.
“The biggest thing I want to show is that all it takes is a few people that want to come together to make something that’s really uplifting and fun for everyone,” said Phil Kreis, the film’s producer, Ms. Kreis’ spouse and Chip Fox in his fursona. “It just started with two people, and sometimes it just takes two people with the initiative and will to make something to share.”
“The Fandom” was entirely crowdfunded via a Kickstarter campaign and the cast and crew are all members of the LGBT community, Mr. Kreis said. That’s appropriate given that, as the documentary points out, about 80% of the furry fandom is LGBT with about 12% identifying as transgender. (Ms. Kreis is a transgender woman.)
As “The Fandom” addresses, the evolution of the furry community dovetailed with that of LGBT Americans, including the ‘80s AIDS crisis and the oftentimes offensive portrayal of both groups in the media as sexual deviants.
“The elephant in the room is always the sexuality and expression of it,” Ms. Kreis said. “... In the film itself, we tackle that subject, specifically all the media reporting on it and how they aggressively targeted this one idea and made this our identity. We as furries have had to push back against that stigma but acknowledge the realities.”
When “The Fandom” reaches the new millennium, it continues to cover the ways happenings in the furry sphere mirror current events. There’s a section toward the end chronicling the rise of an alt-right faction within the furry fandom that features a jaw-dropping photo of a group of furries raising their hands in unison for what appears to be a Nazi-inspired “heil” salute.
“When we put up those barriers, we start creating situations that threaten our abilities to be ourselves and be together,” Mr. Risher said. “I don’t think politics are a huge component to our particular film, but politics are life and if we get people thinking, that’s important.”
On a lighter note, “The Fandom” also contains plenty of Anthrocon footage from its 1997 launch in Albany, N.Y., through its brief dalliances with Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia before finding its current residency in Pittsburgh. Most of the “like 100 hours of archival footage” from Anthrocon and other conventions through the years came from Joe Strike, the author of “Furry Nation” who meticulously documented multiple decades worth of furry events, Ms. Kreis said.
Everyone involved in the documentary seemed in awe of Pittsburgh’s connection to Anthrocon, which according to them is unlike any relationship between a city and a furry convention they’ve ever seen.
“[O]f all the conventions I’ve ever been to, Anthrocon in Pittsburgh is the single most involved in the community at large in the city,” Ms. Kreis said.
Jared Clark — the film’s co-composer and a native of Conneautville, Pennsylvania, who also goes by Pepper Coyote — has always considered Anthrocon to be his “hometown con.” He and cocomposer Iain Armour (also known as Fox Amoore) have played a few live shows at Anthrocon over the years, even debuting their collaboration album there in 2016.
Mr. Clark has always appreciated how the furry fandom “doesn’t have a corporate sponsor or a canon” and is entirely made up of folks who created their own identities, fursuits and all, from scratch. “The Fandom” reflects that creative spirit, though Mr. Clark says you wouldn’t be able to guess how DIY the documentarymaking process really was based on the final product.
“It’s exciting seeing something that comes from within our community that if you had shown me this with no context, it doesn’t look as amateur as it is,” he said. “It’s a community-made independent film . ... But the production quality of it is pretty topnotch. If you were just scrolling through Netflix, you wouldn’t bat an eyelash at it.”
“The Fandom” may not be quite the same as actually attending Anthrocon, but it’s definitely the next best thing, and its release date on Anthrocon’s intended weekend was 100% by design.
“In a world where we can’t have conventions and come together, we wanted to have a way to memorialize that,” Mr. Risher said. “Hopefully we can get back to that before too long because we all miss our friends.”