THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH

Film Information

In Charles Burnett’s long-awaited 1999 comedic masterpiece, The Annihilation of Fish , Obediah “Fish” Johnson (James Earl Jones) is an aging Jamaican widower who has spent decades wrestling an invisible demon named Hank. De-institutionalized, he takes a bus to Los Angeles and finds lodging in the eccentric boarding house of Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). There Fish meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who has moved from San Francisco, fleeing her spurned long-dead fiancé, composer Giacomo Puccini. The two lodgers become friends, playing endless games of gin that Poinsettia always wins. Fish persuades her to referee his demonic wrestling matches — Hank does not fight fair…

Shot in 1999, The Annihilation of Fish screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of that year and was acquired for distribution. But following one bad review in Variety, the distributor canceled the film’s release. For almost a quarter of a century, The Annihilation of Fish has been unavailable on all media — it has never been distributed on 35mm, DCP, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, television, or streaming.

In 2003, Burnett asked Milestone Films (distributor of his films Killer of Sheep and My Brother’s Wedding ) to try to acquire the rights for The Annihilation of Fish . Thus began a 19-year-long odyssey that included researching and contacting distributors, producers and heirs, lawyers, the US Treasury Department, and finally the California bankruptcy court.