by Roger Stone
Tyrone Evans Clark’s 2020 directorial debut Homeless Sam & Sally – The Movie, gave us a completely different perspective on the homeless community in Los Angeles, and had points of views that typical people like myself would never have understood unless I lived the life of a homeless man or woman. Clark seems to enjoy putting out political statements in his cinematic work with a mix of comedy. Sensitive subjects such as religion and politics sometimes make people cringe, but for Clark, his style is smooth like butter with hypnotic emotions.
This approach is brought again into Clark’s second movie / music video, Gotta Get Some Tissue!, once more giving political messages with a lot of laughter. GGST! is inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of necessities such as tissue paper, soap, paper towels, etc. We get to view through the eyes of the cartoon character The Tissue Man, who is played by Clark, about how the world was going crazy during the pandemic and national quarantine restrictions. Processing our new realities of the year 2020 puts all of us on the edge and being so afraid to go outside. I was honestly scared as hell, but after watching GGST!, it truly brought laughter to my face.
The Tissue Man goes on a fantasy adventure looking for his Tissue friend. He ran out of tissue paper, so he was super motivated to do whatever it took to get some tissue paper so he could handle his business in the bathroom. He ends up dancing with Tissue people and making a few stops along the way while trying to find his toilet paper buddy. There is a scene where he is on the phone in jail with one of the tissue characters that really stood out to me. His enthusiasm of emotion for trying to get the tissue guy out of solitary really took me out because the world around 2020 didn’t know if we were ever going to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. His heart is broken a few times due to him reminiscing about his past friendship with his old tissue friend and imagining the worst possibility of his buddy dying a horrible death. Or him trying to rescue his friend from falling off a cliff. The Tissue Man refuses to quit and continues to fight for his friend and it didn’t matter who came in his way. He was just so determined to fight! Metaphorically, all of us fought very hard during the time of the pandemic and there were moments I personally felt like giving up, but at the end of the day I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. We could have easily just given up hope. Instead, we chose to fight like Clark’s Tissue Man.
Gotta Get Some Tissue! is a comedy out-of-this-world, told primarily from Clark’s viewpoint as a cartoon character named The Tissue Man whose sense of purpose is finding his Tissue friend to give him hope and the ideal of safety. Security is everything for us humans and knowing that we are safe. The outbreak didn’t make any of us feel safe because, at the time, COVID-19 was a novel disease. To educate you a bit, the word novel came from the Latin word novus, which means new. This was such a new thing for us, so yes it was scary as hell for some of us. Clark knows how to take the familiarity of real life issues, but make fun of them in a comical way. A vision of us seeing the bright side of the horrible pandemic that we experienced and we shouldn’t take life so seriously all the time.
All of the animation is so beautiful from start to finish. The music was created by Clark and he directed, produced, and wrote for this animated movie. Onnie The Witch’s cartoon animation (a segment from Keep The Bugs Out Of My Soup!!! movie), along with the TEC Logo’s animation that was shown in the beginning/ending of the movie, was created by one of Walt Disney’s original animators, Rey Morano. Max Matiash animated the entire movie / music video.
Some of the film’s accolades are:
- Winner – 2021 Best Male Actor Award (Music Video / Comedy Film Category)
- Semi-Finalist – 2021 International Music Video Awards (Music Video Category)
- Official Selection – 2021 Montreal International Animation Film Festival – ANIMAZE (Experimental Category)
- Official Selection – 2021 Prague Independent Film Festival (Short Film Category)
- Official Selection – 2022 Girona Film Festival (Blender – Cartoon Film Category)
- Semi-Finalist – 2022 Lonely Wolf International Film Festival London (Music Video / Animation Category)
While watching this animation, I did wish it was longer because I was yearning for more. Will The Tissue Man ever find his Tissue friend? Or will the story end with tragedy? I know one thing for sure, curiosity kills the kitty and, as always, I’m hungry for more. So Mr. Clark should continue to bring his A-game! This might be an overreach, but I expect more political things from Clark, similar to what he did in GGST!.
