22nd Calgary Underground Film Festival

April 17-27, 2025

12th CUFF.Docs Documentary Film Festival

November 20-24, 2024

Nuts!

United States, 2016: 79 minutes: Canadian Premiere
Archives 2016
None
In Cinema Globe Cinema
Wed, Apr 13 9:45 PM Buy
Sat, Apr 16 1:45 PM Buy

description

NUTS! is the mostly-true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a Kansas doctor who in 1917 discovers that he can cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men. From there, the story only gets weirder.
 
Using hand-drawn animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage, and a seriously unreliable narrator, NUTS! traces Brinkley’s rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth and influence. Along the way, he transplants thousands of goat testicles, amasses an enormous fortune, is (sort of) elected Governor of Kansas, builds the world’s most powerful radio station and generally annoys the heck out of the establishment. 
 
A provocation to the status-quo of documentary storytelling, NUTS! uses an outlandish story as an opportunity to question how “truths” can be invented by crafty storytellers.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sundance Film Festival 2016
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016
Cleveland International Film Festival 2016

DIRECTOR'S BIO
Penny Lane was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2012. Her debut feature-length documentary, OUR NIXON, screened at Rotterdam, SXSW, and won the Ken Burns Award for “Best of the Festival” at Ann Arbor. Her second feature-length documentary, NUTS!, world-premiered in competition at Sundance 2016.

 

press for Nuts!

"A ridiculously enjoyable ode to old, weird America."
- The Guardian
"Like a great true crime story, it is impossible to look away from."
- The Verge

details

Documentary / Biography

18+ Licensed Screening
79 minutes

credits

Director
Penny Lane

Screenwriter
Thom Stylinski

Producers
James Belfer
Penny Lane
Caitlin Mae Burke

Narrator
Gene Tognaccio

Website
www.nutsthefilm.com/#nuts

Facebook
facebook.com/NutsTheFilm/

Twitter
@nutsthefilm

community

awards

Winner U.S Documentary Special Jury Award For Editing, Sundance Film Festival 2016