Who does not know the characters of Manfred Deix (1949-2016), such as the schoolboy picking his nose, the busty mayor or the drunk policeman with a big red nose. The animated film “Rotzbub – Der Deix Film” features the typical characters that Manfred Deix, who lived in Klosterneuburg (Tulln district), depicted in his drawings.
A mixture of malicious and lovable
The characters are a mix of evil and kind people. “Manfred always held up a mirror to us, showing how horrible we are sometimes. But he made us not stand in a corner and cry, but laugh at ourselves,” said film producer Josef Aichholzer on Thursday evening at the film presentation.
The animated film (directed by Marcus H. Rosenmüller and Santiago Lopez Joer) tells the story of young Manfred Deix, who would rather draw naked women than go to school and who can no longer stand the talk of the villagers in his parents’ inn. “Manfred was even worse than the snotty boy in the film. At the age of 14 he stole the money from the tavern cash register and drove straight to the prostitutes on the Wiener Gurtel because he wanted to research it,” said Deix’s widow Marietta.
“To have an opinion, that’s Deix”
Manfred Deix was born in Böheimkirchen (district of St. Pölten) in 1949. When he died in 2016, the film was not finished. “We had already finished a few sequences and showed them to him at the time. We sat at the kitchen table and twisted ourselves,” said Josef Aichholzer in the cinema in the Kesselhaus in Krems. “The snotty boys are missing these days. Because they stand for rebellion,” said the actor Erwin Steinhauer.
For Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP), Manfred Deix is a legend. “It’s good to have a lot of snotty boys who are full of shame and lots of talent like Manfred Deix,” she said. “Today, many people only think regarding being correct and not doing anything wrong. I would like to see more Deix characters once more,” said former governor Erwin Proell at the film premiere.
About the film
“The warm-hearted, funny, anarchistic and wickedly Austrian character portrait of someone who rebels” (“Blickpunkt:Film”)
Not only actors like Erwin Steinhauer lent their voices to the characters in the film, but the list is long with names like Roland Düringer, Adele Neuhauser or Armin Assinger. The voice for the film character Manfred Deix comes from Markus Freistätter. “This impertinence of having an opinion is Deix. In the studio during the recordings it was extremely funny for us. It was great.” The theatrical release is next Thursday.
Manfred Deix’s works found a home above all in the Caricature Museum in Krems. Its director Gottfried Gusenbauer was enthusiastic regarding the film, you can tell from everyone who contributed to the making of the film “that all these people are real Deix fans”, he said.
