Cinephiles rejoice! It’s just nine days until the start of the 2025 Wisconsin Film Festival. On the City Cast Madison podcast today, host Bianca Martin talked to operations director Ben Reiser about what Madison film fans can expect. Plus, we chatted with diehard festival goers about their favorite memories at the event.
One of the most Madison films at this year’s festival is the 25th anniversary screening of Erik Gunneson’s “Milk Punch.” The indie comedy, following two friends trying to track down a stolen Oldsmobile Delta 88, was shot between 1995 and 1997 and captures a very different Madison, with scenes shot at long-gone places like the old O’Cayz Corral on Wilson Street and the Schenk-Huegel uniform store on Atwood Avenue.
Little seen since it premiered at the 2000 Wisconsin Film Festival, “Milk Punch” is returning to the festival April 5 in a digitally restored print. While tickets for that screening are rush-only, Gunneson is planning follow-up screenings at the Bartell Theater on April 11.
Gunneson, who now teaches media production at the UW-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts, talked about revisiting and restoring “Milk Punch.”
What was the process like of restoring the film?
I have a 16mm print of it and that’s it. The original negative was in a lab that went out of business, so I don’t really know where that negative ended up.
[The UW Department of] Communication Arts, where I work, has really got into the film restoration business thanks to some generous alums raising money and purchasing the film scanner that we now use. So I have a quite wonderful scan of that film that looks better than it ever looked on a 16mm projector. It’s pretty glorious. There are a few scratches and some dirt and stuff, but I’m not taking any of that out.
What’s it like to watch it again after so long?
It's been really fun to watch it again and to kind of think about the way it was made. It was really a film that was unlike any other kind of production. The cast members would join the crew, and if somebody who I had cast wouldn't show up, someone on the crew would have to play a role. There was just this kind of sense of camaraderie.
What gave you the inspiration to make a film?
The project really was just something I'd always wanted to do. When I was a student, I was interested in more experimental kinds of films. Films like “She’s Gotta Have It,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Chan Is Missing.” They were really inspirational to me. All these films showed me this way of making films and approaching story in a really different way. Making films about really specific places and people,that’s what I was interested in.
The Schenk-Huegel uniform store that used to be on Atwood Avenue is one of the long-lost locations that appear in 2000’s “Milk Punch.” (Submitted photo)
Speaking of specific places, there’s a lot of Madison that you captured on film in the ‘90s that isn’t around any more.
There’s a little bit of both. We shot in Le Tigre, and that hasn’t changed. But then we shot in O’Cayz Corral, and we shot at Schenk-Huegel, the uniform shop that’s now Bar Corallini.
Will you ever put the film up for streaming?
That’s probably unlikely. The rights issues are just ungodly difficult. Being young and full of myself, I thought at the time, “Oh, that’ll just work itself out.” It’s just a lot more expensive and time consuming and difficult.
Do you get the sense that the film has stuck with people over the years?
There's a lot of interest in it. It's been fascinating. People will send me a message and quote the film. And the only way they could remember it is having seen it once (in 2000). Maybe a few people saw it twice. It’s just astonishing, in terms of having a life that I didn’t know it had inside other people’s minds.
