Dave Chappelle asked for a Bell’s Beer during a comedy set in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Taking a sip, he casually called out, “The Two-Hearted Ale? Why the hell did you put a fish on the label? ” This is the story of that iconic trout label adorning the most popular it IPA beer in America, and its eccentric artist, Ladislav Hanka.
Selected to the Indy Film Festival, directors Rory McHarg & Bret Miller create possibly one of the most niche short subject documentaries of the year, discussing how a small brewery became a big beer company and how a lot of their success hinged on the perfect label for their beer. There isn’t a lot of focus on the dynamics of running a company, or the group of friends starting the company.
Instead the pair of directors use the recurring topic of the beer label as conversation, garnering extensive conversations with artist Ladislav Hanka who spends a majority of the time taking us through the process of making the label, and his reasons for wanting include a portrait of writer John Voelker–pen name Robert Traver–(who wrote “Anatomy of a Murder”) on the bottle. He also discusses painful issues like the litigation that followed after his estate was, at the time, was attempting to rehabilitate his image.
He, of course, had a penchant for drinking. Nevertheless, despite being a very niche, it gets points for originality and I had a fine time.