Lights, camera … puppets? This winter, the Stark Producing Program cooked up something special with felt, feathers and fluids. “Dirty Fuzz SCPD: The Thong Blue Line” is a film created as one of the Stark Specials — the three films funded each year by USC as part of the graduate producing program.

Fabricated in the pink balls of yarn inside the heads of director Daniel Chimes, writer Nick Grant and their team, “Dirty Fuzz” follows a naive rookie cop named Lurleen who becomes disillusioned with the system after accidentally shooting her corrupt partner and ending up in a strip club in the “slimy underbelly” of Shit City. The film is a fun parody of the ’70s police pulp with a fun Jim Henson-like twist.

A 2025 graduate of the MFA producing program, Daniel Chimes was chosen as a student to direct one of the three films. With the help of some of his collaborators, he pitched the idea, inspired by police dramas and political satires.

“I had gone to see a Cuban-Soviet propaganda film called ‘Soy Cuba’ with a couple friends and … through the way that the film was overexaggerating itself, we were just sort of like, ‘Oh my God, we should make a puppet movie,’” Chimes said.

Grant was an MFA student in the Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television. Grant had previously written and directed his own marionette puppet film entitled “Gutboy: A Badtime Story” (2017).

In their collaboration, Chimes and Grant drew on their love for ’70s police dramas such as “The French Connection” (1971) and “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009). Chimes wanted to make a film that could exist beyond the stereotypes of puppet films being strictly for children or being parodies of children’s content.

“Dirty Fuzz” takes a look into the corruption of America’s police system while simultaneously stripping away the mundane. The film strings up the flair with strippers and suspiciously scrumptious hot dogs.

“There’s just all these questions that are suddenly coming up about the rights, the responsibilities of our relationship to policing authority,” Chimes said. “While still holding on to that film history that we have, I think it was important to investigate, ‘How do we invert that?,’ but do it in a way that’s fun and loud and exciting — and I think puppets do that really well.”

“Dirty Fuzz” takes a satirical exploration of marginalized identities in a way that is frivolous, with a hint of danger. 

“It’s also been bringing back autonomy to people that have been put in places where they have not, historically or even presently, been able to have that type of power and show that in a different way on screen,” said Shagun Kanwar, a 2025 graduate of the MFA producing program and one of the producers of the film.

The over-the-top setting of the script is perfectly implemented with the build of the puppets and the production design. The genius behind the designs and crafting of all the puppets that appear in “Dirty Fuzz” is Chicago-based Jackie Smook, who also provided the voice for Lurleen.

The crew built miniatures and complex sets to fix the aesthetic of the gritty underworld. The drama was able to shine through with the pink and blue color palette and dramatic lighting, giving the film a unique visual identity. The whole team worked tirelessly to ensure that the sets were made in time for production.

“The sets themselves have to be built four feet in the air so that people can operate [the puppets],” said Justin Nguyen, a 2025 graduate of the MFA producing program and a producer of the film.

Chimes ensured that the process was fun for everybody, even if it got a little mustardy. In one scene, the character of Trudy, Lurleen’s love interest, squirts a bottle of mustard between her thighs. She shoots geysers of mustard into the audience and all over the strip club. This shot proved to be the messiest, and the crew took ample precautions to ensure that it was as clean as possible. What they didn’t account for was the camera operators standing directly in the line of fire.

“The whole thing just exploded, and it just hit Arthur, one of our camera operators, just right in the face,” Chimes said. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is our job.’”

Despite the chaotic nature of the film, the cast and crew relished their time on set. They were able to build comfort and camaraderie with each other through the numerous rehearsals and set days.

“We were shooting B-roll footage of the strip club … and one of our puppeteers really got into it,” said Nguyen. “All of us were like, ’This is X-rated, guys.’ … And he just looks at us. He’s like, ‘What just happened to me?’”

A positive outcome that the creators of “Dirty Fuzz” did not anticipate was the outpouring of support from the puppeteering community. In recent years, puppet films have been taking off at USC, and people involved in the creation of these films have been finding each other and fostering a space where they can appreciate each other’s work and help each other out.

The creators of “Dirty Fuzz” are taking the short on the film festival circuit, with hopes to gain more exposure and further grow their audience.

“One thing that I really love about puppet films is that you can give the film a really distinct visual identity,” Grant said. “And I think that particularly when you’re talking about student films or really small budget films, then the lid of what you can do is kind of blown off by using puppets.”