A fantastical adventure playfully dealing with sexual politics, mens-rights groups, and good old fashioned girl power. Jazzberry is a tale of the tragedy which befell the bizarre city of Beeftown.

Jazzberry! Jazzberry! Jazzberry! Half woman, half leopard, 100 % vixen. Samantha Robinson fully jazzes her role in this completely insane sexualized tale of a leopard-woman trying to bring the mojo back in her town. Directed by Maxwell Nalevansky, the entire production takes on epic proportions with incredible costumes and set designs, an unusually large cast (for a short film) and a twisted-tantalizing story. With such a whacky narrative, we were thrilled to be able to ask Maxwell a few questions.

Can you tell us what inspired you to bring Jazzberry to life?

Most of my ideas start with a song, one night my mind was racing and I couldn’t sleep because I kept singing to myself “If rhythm was a berry, it would be a Jazzberry.” I didnt know what the song meant but it felt like some sort of Ralph Bakshi or Russ Meyer character so I stayed up all night writing the horniest cat tale of the 21st century. That version was very much X-rated, we had to tone this one down a whole hell of a lot. I co-wrote Jazzberry with my brother Harrison and my best friend Max Gottlieb, we wrote the entire thing in cat makeup.

The characters and costumes are pretty authentic, what was the design process like?

Thank you so much! First and foremost the animation was a big part of the project, Sadie Amelia was able to completely bring my vision of a horny Pink Panther character to life, she’s infinitely talented, believe it or not that was her first time animating! Can you believe that shit? With Anthony Taylor her co-production designer and Natalie Nicholas, the costume designer, they dedicated months and months of their lives fleshing out the world and characters with me. Our benefit was there were absolutely zero rules besides making it horny and loud at all costs, so it was pretty liberating in a design sense. Natalie is just so much fun to work with, we spent weeks just bouncing wacky ideas off each other, it was a dream. I lean on Anthony and Sadie creatively on almost every project.

Such accentuate characters, Samantha Robinson really offers an incredible performance. How did you find the cast and did you know exactly what you were looking for?

We really wanted Jazzberry to feel timeless and iconic and Samantha Robinson truly embodies that energy, it’s like she could have existed in any decade of the 20th century. We got so fucking lucky because Sam was our first choice, she fell in love with the the character and immediately said yes, I was like oh… okay I guess were making this movie then! Originally the character was going to be a bit more formulaically sexy but because of a series of unfortunate events with an absent minded MFX artist she ended up having a unique and odd feline face, the fact that this ended up working and benefited the film is a testament to Samantha’s talent.

What were the biggest challenges you faced during the production?

Probably all of the Solvang Karens. Solvangs a Danish-style town in the Santa Ynez valley that we totally transformed into the tantalizing world of BEEFTOWN. When a few Karens walked out of their small family-friendly fudge or knick-knack shops to see about two dozen men with huge prosthetic dicks and a cat vixen walking around to loud jazzy R&B they got pretty upset. All types of tourists were stopping by and taking pictures, it caused quite the frenzy. They kept yelling that we were filming porn…our producers Anne Alexander, Sohaib Ali and Harrison Nalevansky were like believe me I wish we were but were not! So yah we had to take down a few signs that said “PECKERS ATHLETICS” and stuff like that…hope they give it a watch!