Fursuits Aren't Cheap: Local Filmmaker Needs Your Fuzzy Wuzzy Dollars

"I don't drink coffee, I don't eat seafood and I make movies," asked local filmmaker Chris Diani of his Seattle residency, drinking a Coke at the Five Point, "What am I doing here?"

He kids. Seattle has been great to him. Diani moved to Seattle in about 1993, immersing himself in the local theater scene. Eventually he moved onto film, making the beloved gay zombie B-movie throwback Creatures from the Pink Lagoon. He likes grilled cheese sandwiches and sweater vests.

But that's not what we met to talk about. That would be furries. Yes, those furries. For his second feature film, classic film fan Diani is going from making a self-described "campy mix of classic B horror flicks and pre-Stonewall gay melodramas" (Creatures) to Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, which he envisions as a throwback to the classic screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s. Think The Palm Beach Story with fursuits (and without the hunting subplot, because that would be unfortunate).

It goes something like this: there's a gay couple who are both broke artists. They break up to find sugar daddies, and one does! But when he goes to meet said sugar daddy at a hotel, little does he realize that his sugar daddy is a furry, and the hotel is hosting a furry convention. The hotel is also hosting a lightning strike victim convention (a real thing, for those not familiar) -- and because the boyfriend's best friend has been banned from said conventions and is desperate to get in, she bankrolls an epic quest to go win back our hero's heart.

But Diani swears the furries are not the butts of any jokes. Diani himself, although not a furry in the truest sense of the word, has been getting his fuzzy wuzzy sea legs wearing fursuits around Capitol Hill trying to spread the word about his fundraising project. He says he's gained some degree of understanding.

"It takes a lot of commitment to maintain your character," he explains. Not only are the suits hot as hell, but "there's this convention in the furry fandom that if you don't have a fursuit with a moving jaw, you shouldn't speak when you have your head on. So I've adopted that, and I've definitely become one of those voice-free furries... [it] adds to the mystique."

Not being able to speak is the least of his worries -- there's been a lot of pointing and grabbing, and someone even outright decked him once. But it's all been a learning experience.

"I would never presume to make a movie about furries -- it's like making a movie about gays," explains Diani, "there's no way anyone could ever make a movie about blank. But I'm trying to make a fun movie about a few characters that happen to be furries where the backdrop happens to be a furry convention... it's good fun. I went to Rainfurrest last year, the local furry convention, and you know, I had a blast."

Aside from his hands-on understanding, Diani sees parallels to how the LGBT community is treated in film, despite some of the "all caps replies" he gets from furries on Twitter. "Furries are often in a film as a prop, or as random comedic relief," he says, citing Hot Tub Time Machine as a perfect example of such treatment, "Who is this character, where did it come from? There's absolutely no backstory whatsoever... so I mean, I completely understand people's trepidations. I'm with you."

Now that we've been assured it's all in good fun, hear his plea:

"I really like the do it yourself ethic of [Kickstarter] and of the projects, and I like that we are all becoming each others arts funding, now that we have so little arts funding in this country. And there are some really cool projects out there," raved Diani, adding that he'd supported around 15 projects in the past year, including the documentary on Tom Lenk's journey to Edinburgh, an indie game called No Time to Explain, and Wallflower, the film about the shooter in the Capitol Hill Massacre. Sometimes, he says, he'll just search for "gay" looking for a project to fund.

Diani, when I asked where the money is going, revealed his master plan. "Kickstarter is just for pre-production and development funds [that] will allow us to create the legal entity to attract investors," he explained, adding that they can also use the Kickstarter response to show investors how much interest is in the film. "We'll also use some of the money to hire a casting director to get some bigger names in here."

So there you have it. This project is slated to be bigger than you and me. He's learned some lessons since Creatures: "I want to pay the actors, I want to pay the crew, and I want to get this done in time to submit it to a couple of top-notch festivals." (Plus, those fursuits aren't cheap.)

Of course, his real long-term goal is to be "Seattle's answer to John Waters," but there's always time for that.

The Kickstarter campaign for Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits ends at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. Incentives range from a spot in the credits to a walk-on role in the film as a "featured furry"! Who could say no?