Daniel (Dan) Kapelovitz is a truly multifaceted being – Co-founder of The Partridge Family Temple, lawyer, creative powerhouse, filmmaker, head of media conglomerate Kapelovision, Threee Geniuses founding member, public crusader, and friend of many.
He is also one of the realest people we know.
As a character Dan would appear too over the top for the often constrained world of fiction. Too obtuse in personality to hold any reading for even the mercurial realm of satire.
Indeed, Dan, like the Buddha and other enlightened beings can, does, and only exists in the physical here and now. Pulsating creativity, belief, and wilful action from every pore.
The wow of the now if you will.
(If you don’t know Dan; we highly recommend you first read our 2022 interview with him.)
With David Liebe Hart, puppets, and a fellow unknown member.
Importantly, Dan is not afraid to hustle, promote, proselytise, and do what is needed to get himself, and his various causes out there. Some may deridingly call it propaganda, but to us; it’s all just part and parcel of the game.
If you don’t shove it in their faces – How will they truly know what it smells like, after all?
To that end, Dan recently contacted us wanting to share were he is currently at – With the duel aims of updating us all, and to get further web points for his hopeful Wikipedia entry. Two things with which we were more than happy to oblige! As both friends of Dan and fellow slave to our new god of personal growth, the algorithm.
So, catch up with the current goings on of Daniel (Dan) Kapelovitz; or Keith Partridge as he is known to the faithful, below…
What’s been happening since our last interview, back in 2022?
That last interview was technically with the latest incarnation of Keith Partridge.
This one I am doing as my mortal form – Dan Kapelovitz.
The year 2025 is turning out to be a big one for my media company Kapelovision Productions:
The very first millisecond of the year started with a bang with the world premiere of ‘120 Days of Sodom Literally’ on Kapelovision.com at https://kapelovision.com/120-days-of-sodom-literally. The film re-tells the story of the Marquis de Sade’s ‘120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage‘ in real time, using footage from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.‘ And it, of course, has a running time of 120 days – literally.
The premiere began at 12:00am on January 1, 2024 and ended four months later at 11:59pm on April 30, 2025.
The next screening then began at 12:00am on May 1, 2025.
At 172,800 minutes, ‘120 Days of Sodom Literally’ is currently the longest film ever made.
The runner-up is a film called ‘Logistics,‘ with a running time of 35 days, 17 hours.
A top-secret, much-longer film is in pre-production at Kapelovision Studios. Even if I completed the film today, we will all have died before the movie finishes playing.
Will people be able to view ‘120 Days of Sodom Literally’ anywhere besides online?
Kapelovision Studios is currently in talks with a museum to show ‘120 Days of Sodom Literally’ in its entirety.
The museum – which I can’t name until we hammer out the details – is worried about some of the legal issues regarding the film. I told them that I will personally indemnify anyone involved and that the Radical Law Center would take any lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court of America if needed.
What else has Kapelovision Studios been doing since the last time we spoke?
Right at 12:00 on January 1, 2025, Kapelovision also simultaneously released the first-ever lawfully made derivative works of “white-gloved” talking Mickey Mouse (“Mickey Mice in Kapelovisionland” available at https://vimeo.com/1042969881) and of Popeye the Sailor Man (“Scum of the Earth” available at https://vimeo.com/1043199206) at the exact moment that they entered the public domain.
(Kapelovision also released the first-ever lawfully produced derivative work of any version of Mickey Mouse on January 1, 2024 in another short artificial intelligence film called “Steamboat Willie in Kapelovision,” available at https://vimeo.com/899291884.)
Have you completed your film ’48 Hrs. Literally’ yet?
After more than a decade, we are still working on ’48 Hrs. Literally’ (a 48-hour re-telling of the 1982 action comedy ‘48 Hrs.‘).
But we have completed a 96-minute trailer called ’48 Hrs. Literally: The Trailer.’ The feature-length trailer is playing at the 2025 Melbourne Underground Film Festival later this year. And it will hopefully play in some other festivals and venues around the world before we make a distribution deal.
The 96-minute trailer is so long that it has its own trailer, which premiered at the opening of a brand-new microcinema in Hollywood called Bebe’s Cinema Salon.
(The trailer to the trailer is available at https://vimeo.com/1066302908.)
What’s happening with the ‘Triple Fisher Trilogy’ film saga?
Last year, we finished the final two instalments of the ‘Triple Fisher Trilogy’ and will premiere them somewhere this year.
The first sequel is ‘Triple Fisher 2: Quadruple Fisher,’ which mixes in the porn film that is loosely based on the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco story called ‘Leathal Lolita.‘
(I still don’t know whether or not the producers of that film purposely misspelled “lethal.”)
The final film in the trilogy is ‘Triple Fisher 3: Triptych Fisher in 3D.’
I also have an idea for screening the original ‘Triple Fisher’ in a way where the audience can interact live with the film.
Anything else on the Kapelovision horizon?
Kapelovision has a lot of projects in the works, including the novelization of ‘Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island,’ and then a Broadway musical based on that, and then hopefully a film version of the Broadway musical.
I hired Peter Thompson, one of my favorite writers, to write the novelization about 10 years ago, but he has only given me a few chapters. They are brilliant, but I may have to finish the book myself or hire someone else.
A documentary about the making of the novelization would have been incredible. The writer hasn’t finished the book because his girlfriend was involved with a drug cartel in Mexico that stole his laptop multiple times.
The writer sent me a strange package with scribblings in it that I assumed were new chapters of the novelization. It also contained unusual electronic objects inside, and the package was leaking a suspicious white powder (Fentanyl? Anthrax?) so I had to dispose of it.
I’m also working on a bunch of projects with underground auteur filmmaker Damon Packard (director of the cult classic ‘Reflections of Evil’), including a psychedelic Western and some other artificial intelligence-based films.
Are you working on any music projects?
I just started a record label with Don Bolles called UNISEX. The label is releasing the Klausmeyer album (‘Klausmeyer: Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls’), the Fancy Space People’s long-awaited album (‘Castle Sounds of the Electrical West’), and possibly something by the legendary 1990s L.A. band The Centimeters.
We’ll also probably put out a couple of Partridge Family Temple albums as well, including a rock opera based on the teachings of the Partridge Family Temple, and possibly an album of never-released songs from the early days of the Partridge Family Temple.
A different Partridge Family Temple album was recently released by Discriminate Audio called ‘Family Tree’ and can be purchased here: http://www.discriminateaudio.com/thepartridgefamilytemple.html.
It’s a great record, but I wasn’t directly involved with the making of that album. I’m more of just a figurehead these days.
Photo by Giddle Partridge
Pictured out front of the ‘Cult Rapture’ art show celebration for the release of Adam Parfrey‘s book of the same name.
UNISEX also has a subsidiary label called K-pel Records that will be releasing an album of extremely rare song poems called ‘Music of Today,’ the debut album of the Beatlemania tribute band Beatlemaniamania, a bootleg boxset of never-released songs by the Supreme Dicks, as well as a re-release of Operation Freakout’s ‘Live From NAMM‘ album, which was recorded live at the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Show – Which, if you’ve never attended, is like 100 Guitar Centers all crammed into one convention center.
We may even have a touring group called the K-Pel All-Stars.
There is another subsidiary called Glambient Records that will release the glambient sounds of Kitten Sparkles, aka Don Bolles.
You have worked with, and befriended a wide range of fellow underground travellers over the years.
Can you please share how you met and came to connect with the following people?
Along with regaling us with some memories from your time with them?
Namely:
* Don Bolles:
I had heard about Don Bolles ever since I was a teenager because my friend dated him in the 1980s and from his being in The Germs and 45 Grave.
I met him when I was 16 when he played in Denver with a band called Three Day Stubble.
After I moved to Los Angeles, I had met him a couple of times, and then at 2 o’clock one morning, he called me and he said he wanted to help out with ‘Threee Geniuses.’ [Editor: Dan’s much loved public access television show that ran from 1996 to the early 2000s]
He came to the next show with all kinds of sound equipment and hundreds of records, and he instantly became one of the many ‘fourth geniuses’ ever since.
I would also go to his house with a video camera where we’d film some of the unusual items and record covers that he had collected over the decades using a strobe light and other video techniques and then later mix those videos into the show.
We also did some music projects.
He was in a Partridge Family Temple band called The New Forever that we had. We only played a few shows and played a live set on the radio.
* Ariel Pink:
Soon after I moved to Hollywood in 1995, I started making a public access show called ‘Threee Geniuses’ with Jon Shere and a man known only as Mr. X.
One night, I was walking down the street with Jon Shere, and a teenage Ariel Pink recognized us and said, “Hey, it’s the Threee Geniuses!”
He told us that he taped our shows and watched them over and over again. I don’t even think he was making music at the time.
We all became friends and, in 1997, Ariel made his public-access television debut (I assume) on ‘Threee Geniuses.’
The show was a live call-in show where Ariel and his friend mainly sat there in silence as callers phoned in and asked questions or blurted out obscenities. I and future ‘Zombieland’ director Ruben Fleischer were fielding the phone calls off-screen.
Jon, Mr. X., and I with others also played around town in different bands, including the Supreme Dicks and the Brothers of the Apocalypse. (It was an apocalyptic time, being the end of the millennium with upcoming Y2K fears and Heaven’s Gate cultists committing mass suicide.)
At a Brothers of the Apocalypse show, we invited Ariel on-stage to perform with us. That was Ariel’s first live musical performance.
A couple years later, Ariel appeared in more ‘Threee Geniuses’ episodes, and had by this time started becoming the Ariel Pink we know and love (before he got cancelled).
Footage from these shows was later used for Ariel’s ‘Cable Access Follies’ music videos (there are multiple versions). Soon after, I learned that Ariel was getting pretty well-known as a musician.
Giddle Partridge and I co-directed a video for Ariel’s ‘Somewhere in Europe/Hot Pink,‘ and I eventually directed the music video for his song ‘Jell-O,’ which was co-written by Kim Fowley.
Directed by Dan and fellow Partridge Family Temple member, Giddle.
* Howie Pyro:
I actually don’t remember how I met Howie Pyro, but everyone kind of knows everyone in Los Angeles.
I’m sure I had already met him by this time, but the first time I can remember hanging out with him was at a birthday party we had for Don Bolles at our place. Howie was deejaying and Christian Science puppeteer David Liebe Hart (who achieved some fame from “The Tim and Eric Show”) was singing, “Happy Birthday to Don Bolles” and also singing about how he believed in UFOs.
David was singing over this instrumental 45 record that Howie was playing, and just as the song was about to end, Howie would quickly take the needle and start the song again. So the song went on forever.
You can watch this video at https://youtu.be/Av6Pnp32UeA?si=wptqgIn2Msxdi1oJ.
Howie was also an incredible performer on some Threee Geniuses episodes.
* Kim Fowley
I met Kim Fowley at the premiere of the documentary about Rodney Bingenheimer called ‘The Mayor of the Sunset Strip.‘ Kim had just recently moved back to Los Angeles.
He made a lot of money every year from royalties of songs he had written and/or produced, but he lived very modestly because he spent all of his money on his film and music projects.
He was working on a film/band project called Black Room Doom and shot some it at the Hollywood branch of the Partridge Family Temple.
Public Access had been shut down by then, but the Threee Geniuses would do some live performances sometimes, and Kim emceed the DVD release show of ‘Threee Geniuses: The Re-Death of Psychedelia.‘
He also hosted some events where The New Forever played.
Kim was an intense guy.
One time I was giving him a ride after he had a meeting with Billy Corgan. They met at record producer Kerry Brown’s house which had a recording studio.
Kim thought they were going to record some music, but Corgan didn’t want to; he just always wanted to meet Kim. So I had to listen to Kim complaining for hours about the experience, saying things like, “Having me at a house with a recording studio and not recording music would be like having Jimi Hendrix over and not letting him play your guitar.”
One time Kim had a birthday event at an art gallery, and I happened to be with an outsider artist known as the Bunny Boy, so I brought him to the event.
The Bunny Boy talks constantly about bunny rabbits and classic TV shows, and he kept blurting out questions such as, “When are they going to make a live action Jetsons movie?” and “Where is Andy Griffith buried?”
Kim thought that I had intentionally brought the Bunny Boy to heckle him, not realizing that the Bunny Boy was just innocently asking questions that he wanted to know the answers to.
I heard that the next day Kim was complaining about this and was shocked to learn that many of his friends knew the Bunny Boy.
A friend of Dan’s who created joy for many, yet much frustration for Kim.
He really was a genius record producer and songwriter.
He wanted to be buried in my front yard, but he ended up getting buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery (where Howie Pyro is also buried).
What impact has AI (Artificial Intelligence) had on your personal life so far?
If my “personal life,” you mean “love life,” then it hasn’t affected it at all.
I am not having sex with AI robots or anything like that.
But I am a huge proponent of using AI to make art.
I’ve been making a lot of films and music using AI lately. A lot of artists are against AI (although many have since come around), but to me, that would be like being against photography because it is so much easier to take a photograph of an object than to paint a photo-realistic image of that same object.
Or when people were against color and sound films. But no one today says that photography or color films with sound can’t be “real” art.
Just like most people (and even some animals) can make a pretty good photograph, anyone can make a pretty good AI video or image.
But the great AI artists will leave everyone else in the dust just like the great photographers do.
Writing prompts and inputting images and videos is pretty similar to the cut-up method, where you aren’t quite sure what you are going to get. As AI improves, the randomness factor has decreased, which can be good and bad, depending on what you are trying to do.
I like how AI, at least right now, looks so fake. But this will end soon. AI is improving so fast, that the stuff I made a few months ago already has a “retro” look to it.
Right now, I’m working on an AI psychedelic Western film called ‘Acid Western.’
I’ve had the idea for decades, but there was no way I could make this epic Western that needed an insane amount of special effects and thousands of extras unless I had tens of millions of dollars. Now, I’m making it for the price of the subscriptions to a handful of AI apps.
Where do you see AI leading humanity in 5 years?
I have no idea what AI’s impact will be in 5 years.
In terms of art, it may get to the point where everyone can just make art that would be the ultimate art for themselves to experience, to such an extent that there will be no reason to experience anyone else’s art. And then, of course, there will be a bunch of retro-ists who will insist on only consuming art that was not made with AI, just like we have analog-philes today.
AI programs will probably be making art for other AI programs that only AI programs can understand.
In 25 years?
25 years is so far out that it’s impossible to predict unless you’re Nostradamus or possibly Zager and Evans.
There will probably be a World War using AI weaponry that will destroy most of the human population, assuming that AI robots haven’t killed us by then.
Humans will probably need to get AI brain implants just to keep up with AI robots. If so, there will be wealthy people with AI implants but whose minds are controlled by AI corporations and then there will be those who can’t afford the implants or refuse to be implanted who will be free but not be able to think in AI.
In 100 years?
We are now in the year 2025 so we are exactly 500 years before the year 2525. And as the great futurists Yager and Evans predicted: “In the year 2525, if man is still alive. If woman can survive, they may find.”
And then by the year 4545, it’s going to be such that you won’t need your teeth or your eyes because, “you won’t find a thing to chew”, and “nobody’s gonna to look at you.”
Whilst being a public person – You are adept at keeping aspects of your personal life private.
With that in mind, we were hoping to peel back the curtain on Dan K a bit..
… and were wondering:
* What has made you the happiest in the last year?
… and what was it about it that brought you so much joy?
Probably just hanging out with my girlfriend (photographer Hadley Gustafson) and our two cat companions.
I also enjoy goofing on clouds.
* When did you first get your heart broken by another human?
What happened?
What caused it?
and..
What did you learn from it?
I really can’t remember.
I probably repressed it.
So I guess I haven’t learned anything from it.
* Please share with us the event that most changed your psychological state for the long term?
What was it?
What changes did it bring?
When I was 15 years old, I began experimenting with various mind-expansion techniques.
These techniques definitely changed my world view in that I began to appreciate the psychedelicness of all things.
What’s happening with your criminal law practice and the Radical Law Center?
As for the Radical Law Center, we continue fighting for liberty and justice. Currently we are representing rap artist Big Lurch, who was wrongfully convicted of murder, and where the prosecutor used his lyrics against him in trial.
We are trying to get a new trial based on this and other violations of the American Racial Justice Act.
The majority of my cases are defending indigent people who are falsely accused. When I began practicing criminal law, I was shocked by how many of my cases were against people who were factually innocent.
The rest of my clients are either being over-charged, or the prosecution is seeking to over-punish them – the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino.
We have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) coming to the courthouses arresting people.
Victims, witnesses, and defendants are afraid to come to court now.
Los Angeles has a new district attorney who is adding enhancements to as many cases as possible to either coerce guilty pleas or send people to prison for as long as he can.
Criminal defence attorneys really are fighting against pure evil, especially now.
Last year, I ran for Los Angeles District Attorney.
I lost, but I did get the most votes per dollar spent of any of the candidates.
In 2028, I’m going to run again.
Unfortunately, California has gone so far to the right, it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Last November, the majority of Californians voted against a statute that would have made slavery illegal. It’s insane what’s happening here.
But we just have to keep fighting for justice and putting out experimental films and music.
Links
- Dan Kapelovitz – 2022 Interview via The Aither
- Dan Kapelovitz – Facebook
- Dan Kapelovitz – twitter
- Kapelovision – Website
- Kapelovision – YouTube
- Kapelovision – Vimeo
- Kapelovision – Instagram
- Threee Geniuses – YouTube
- The Partridge Family Temple – Website
- Radical Law Centre – Website
- Triple Fisher Film – Website
- Triple Fisher – Facebook
All images supplied by Dan or sourced online.
