Sour Death Balls: A Funny, Uplifting Gaze at Humanity

Jessica Yu won the Best Documentary Short Oscar for “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brian” in 1997. I met her shortly after when she was at Ohio State talking about her work as a film maker and showing some of her films. “Breathing Lessons” was wonderful and she was totally charming. One of the short, short films she showed was “Sour Death Balls,” one I have thought about from time to time. To my delight, when I was looking for Gadling mentions a few days ago, “Sour Death Balls” showed up on Hob Gadling’s Web site Hob’s zeitgeist. I watched it and loved it all over again. I rediscovered what I thought was so wonderful the first time. Here are all these people from diverse ethnic backgrounds reacting so unguarded to a common experience. So simple. Give people the sourest sour ball you can find and see what happens. Here’s an article about Jessica written not long after she won the Oscar.