Featured trailer · English
Trailer for real orphans
A fractured introduction to Sophie, Doug and the family story that the film keeps remaking.
The film
Love Songs for Scumbags
An anti-biography: a fictional family history about the life that should have been lived—and the life that never will be.
Synopsis
Doug comes to Berlin
- Written & directedPhillip Lee Duncan
- ProducedDaniel Scheimberg & Thorsten Fleisch
- Running time104 minutes
- LanguagesEnglish & German
- Working titleDougs Deutschland
- Completed2011 · Original online edition 2017
- Next releaseNew online edition planned for early 2027
- Age ratingNot yet classified for the new release
Doug Blankenship is a ne’er-do-well folk artist who has lived in America in a pathetic state of self-imposed limbo for twenty years, ever since leaving the Army and a girlfriend behind in Germany. Through a sudden stroke of luck, Doug meets a German film producer willing to bring him—and his spiral notebook full of screenplays—to Berlin.
The film they eventually make together is called Love Songs for Scumbags: the story of a neo-Nazi and his drug-addled wife attempting to regain custody of their child from Social Services. Scenes from this film within the film run concurrently with Doug’s slide into homelessness and mental illness. Meanwhile, Doug’s disturbed, twenty-year-old daughter Sophie, a budding performance artist, comes to Berlin in search of him.
On its surface, the inner film is a petty revenge fantasy: a miserable possible future Doug has plotted for his former lover. It considers the artificial language of love and intimacy, the nature of control, and Doug’s conflicted sexuality and identity. In Germany, Doug begins living as an openly gay man, believing this will be his means of making a true connection with another person.
But just as Doug has created his own “what if?” scenario, the larger film has a surprise in store: the daughter born from that bygone relationship. She may be the connection he has been seeking all along. Will she arrive too late?
Form
A transatlantic collision
Phillip Duncan uses elements of his own biography to create an imagined family history. Soap opera, high opera, melodrama, sitcom, classical German theatre, American mockumentary, musical, performance art, raunchy sex farce, film trailer and New German Cinema are blended and laid over one another to create a new pattern.
From the original site
Making the film
Producer Daniel Scheimberg on the origins of a seven-year production.
How did Daniel and Phillip begin working together?
Phillip and Daniel first had a Colorado garage band with Daniel’s brother called Tiptoe and Son. In 1998 they made their first short, Famous Last Chances, followed by an aborted attempt at a no-budget feature called The Secret Life of No One. They continued making shorts before Daniel moved to Berlin.
What were the origins of Love Songs for Scumbags?
In 2005, Phillip sent Daniel a bizarre short-film script called Mouth to Mouth, about a neo-Nazi and his junkie wife going through sex therapy as part of a custody battle with the German state. Daniel shopped the script around for two years without finding support.
Where did the feature film emerge?
In 2007, Phillip filmed a short introduction by a fictional screenwriter named Doug Blankenship, played by Phillip himself. When Daniel showed it to friends in the industry, their response was immediate: “That’s your story right there—that guy.” Daniel brought Phillip to Germany in June 2009 to act, direct and write.
Was the screenplay complete when production began?
No. Phillip wanted to see what was available in Germany on their limited budget and treated the writing as a process of discovery. His meeting and eventual friendship with Marilena Netzker, who plays Sophie, became an important catalyst for the rest of the film.
Did the production really “fall into place”?
Hardly. The budget was largely gone after the first weeks, and the shoot grew into a two-year production sustained by friends and family. Thorsten Fleisch lent the camera and translated; Dennis Helm joined as director of photography; Weltfilm helped carry the film through post-production. The full process took nearly seven years.
Trailers
Watch from the archive
Three surviving dispatches from Doug’s world, embedded from the film’s official YouTube channel.
Character piece · English subtitles
Doug Blankenship?
The folk artist, screenwriter and unreliable centre of the film introduces himself.
From Doug’s notebook
Doug on the film’s appeal
Doug makes the case for his story in his own singular language.