Impolex [sic]

[Dave Monroe]

Impolex
Alex Ross Perry 2009
Run time: 75 min. | USA

Months after the end of World War II, fresh-faced Tyrone is sent on a
mission by the U.S. Army to locate and retrieve German rockets. This
quest leads him through the woods without a map. But on this journey
he gets advice from fellow travelers, sees visions of a girl he left
behind and, most importantly, kicks back with a talking octopus on a
tree. In spite of or perhaps because of his odd journey, Tyrone
eventually discovers a V-2 rocket, the most advanced long-range rocket
ever created to that point. It is the second-to-last one manufactured;
now Tyrone must find the last. With IMPOLEX, director Alex Ross Perry
creates his own eccentric world with deep emotional arcs and fairytale
outcomes, a story laced with poignant touches and curious characters
to keep you charmed and smiling. In spite of its sometimes fantastical
scenarios, somehow you connect to this world, like all those times you
were searching for history while stumbling over your past. You laugh
with the film but you also sink in to its colorful, fuzzy confines.

http://cinevegas.bside.com/2009/films/impolex_cinevegas2009

The film centers around Tyrone is on an obfuscatingly aimless journey
into nonsensical frustration as he searches for undetonated German V-2
rockets at the close of WWII, guided by a lover he left behind and a
talking octopus.

Tell us briefly about the film’s story and the world you created for it:

IMPOLEX is about a soldier in the United States Army at the end of
World War II looking for undetonated German V-2 rockets. The Germans
were working on this rocket basically from around 1940 and finished it
just in time to lose the war. They still got to use them, most notably
in the bombing blitzes on England and other places, but they had
already lost. And it was a perfect weapon, the world’s first liquid
fuel long range, aim-able rocket. The US launched this initiative
called Operation Paperclip and basically sent soldiers all over Europe
looking for these damn things, and also arresting scientists and
bringing them to America.

I first became aware of this dark corner of military history while
reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and then made a script out
of my own research, which included monographs on the V-2 rockets,
German general’s memoirs, stuff like that. I occasionally added in
vague allusions or homages to some parts of the novel I thought I
remembered, though I never went back through the book to make sure I
wasn’t making them up myself. I was just making fragmentary notes and
bits of dialogue for a while and that structure, if you can call it
that, definitely became the so called structure of the film, not that
it really has one. To me, there is a sense of hopelessness and
confusion about this story, the real one, and I wanted to find an
interpretational way to make a film that was true to that and also
true to the lessons I felt I learned about character and narrative
from reading Pynchon.

How did you find your cast, especially the octopus?

Riley O’Bryan, who plays Tyrone, was somebody I worked with. The first
night that I had my dream about a guy carrying a miniature V-2 through
the woods. I knew I had to make a movie about it, I knew it would be
him. I got to work at 10:00, he showed up and noon and I told him
about this movie I knew we had to make. He said okay.

Kate Sheil, who plays Katje, I knew from school....

http://www.cinevegas.com/blog/?p=1317

United States Army issued warning about the upcoming motion picture
IMPOLEX, which fictionalizes and trivializes the events that occurred
to the Initiative for the Monitoring and Protection of Liquid Energy
Explosives at the end of World War II.

http://www.vimeo.com/4903082

Imipolex G

242; used as insulation for rocket; a new plastic, aromatic
heterocyclic polymer, developed by in 1939. . .by one L. Jamf for IG
Farben" 249; details, 249-50; "the company albatross" 261; "a fat file
on" 283; "what's haunting [Slothrop] now will prove to be the smell of
Imipolex G" 286; "a white knight, molded out of plastic" 436;
"Oneirine Jamf Imipolex A4" 464; skinsuit at The Castle, 487; "This is
Imipolex, the material of the future." 488; Imipolectique, 490;
aromatic polyimide, 576; characteristics of, 699; shroud of, 751; "the
Imipolex shroud. Flotsam from his childhood are rising through his
attention" 754; See also aromatic rings

Contributed by Peter Morris:

The name Imipolex, in addition to being a pun (imitation pole),
obviously stems from a combination of "imido" with a near-reversal of
"explode", possibly in analogy with Igelit (IG Farben's PVC) and
Igamid (IG Farben's nylon resin). IG Farben's polymers often had
alphabetical suffixes (Buna S, Igelit G, Igamid A).

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/alpha/i.html#imipolex