Infinite Jest (195 page)

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Authors: David Foster Wallace

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The Medusa v. the Odalisque.
’ B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Uncredited cast; zone-plating laser holography
by James O. Incandenza and Urquhart Ogilvie, Jr.; holographic fight-choreography by
Kenjiru Hirota courtesy of Sony Entertainment–Asia; 78 mm.; 29 minutes; black and
white; silent w/ audience-noises appropriated from network broadcast television. Mobile
holograms of two visually lethal mythologic females duel with reflective surfaces
on-stage while a live crowd of spectators turns to stone. LIMITED CELLULOID RUN; PRIVATELY
RERELEASED ON MAGNETIC VIDEO BY LATRODECTUS MACTANS PRODUCTIONS

The Machine in the Ghost: Annular Holography for Fun and Prophet.
B.S. Heliotrope Films, Ltd./National Film Board of Canada. Narrator P. A. Heaven;
78 mm.; 35 minutes; color; sound. Nontechnical introduction to theories of annular
enhancement and zone-plating and their applications in high-resolution laser holography.
UNRELEASED DUE TO US/CANADIAN DIPLOMATIC TENSIONS

Homo Duplex.
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Narrator P. A. Heaven; Super-8 mm.; 70 minutes;
black and white; sound. Parody of Woititz and Shulgin’s ‘poststructural antidocumentaries,’
interviews with fourteen Americans who are named John Wayne but are not the legendary
20th-century film actor John Wayne. MAGNETIC VIDEO (LIMITED RELEASE)

Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony.
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Ken N. Johnson, Judith Fukuoka-Hearn, Otto
Brandt, E. J. Kenkle; 35 mm.; 82 minutes; black and white/color; silent. The intricate
Ocha-Kai
is conducted 2.5 m. off the ground in the Johnson Space Center’s zero-gravity-simulation
chamber. CELLULOID; INTERLACE TELENT RERELEASE #357–40– 01 (Y.P.W.)

Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and Hell.
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernatron Animation Concepts, Canada. Animated
w/ uncredited voices; 35 mm.; 59 minutes; color; sound. God and Satan play poker with
Tarot cards for the soul of an alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman obsessed with Bernini’s
‘The Ecstasy of St. Teresa.’ PRIVATELY RELEASED ON CELLULOID AND MAGNETIC VIDEO BY
LATRODECTUS MACTANS PRODUCTIONS

The Joke.
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Audience as reflexive cast; 35 mm. × 2 cameras;
variable length; black and white; silent. Parody of Hollis Frampton’s ‘audience-specific
events,’ two Ikegami EC-35 video cameras in theater record the ‘film’ ’s audience
and project the resultant raster onto screen—the theater audience watching itself
watch itself get the obvious ‘joke’ and become increasingly self-conscious and uncomfortable
and hostile supposedly comprises the film’s involuted ‘antinarrative’ flow. Incandenza’s
first truly controversial project,
Film & Kartridge Kultcher’s
Sperber credited it with ‘unwittingly sounding the death-knell of post-poststructural
film in terms of sheer annoyance.’ NONRECORDED MAGNETIC VIDEO SCREENABLE IN THEATER
VENUE ONLY, NOW UNRELEASED

Various Lachrymose U.S. Corporate Middle-Management Figures.
Unfinished. UNRELEASED

Every Inch of Disney Leith.
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Medical Imagery of Alberta, Ltd. Disney Leith;
computer-enlarged 35 mm./× 2 m.; 253 minutes; color; silent. Miniaturized, endoscopic,
and microinvasive cameras traverse entire exterior and interior of one of Incandenza’s
technical crew as he sits on a folded serape in the Boston Common listening to a public
forum on uniform North American metricization. PRIVATE RELEASE ON MAGNETIC VIDEO BY
LATRODECTUS MACTANS PRODUCTIONS; INTERLACE TELENT RERELEASE #357–56–34 (Y.P.W.)

Infinite Jest (III).
B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Uncredited cast; 16/35 mm.; color; sound. Unfinished,
unseen remake of
Infinite Jest (I), (II).
UNRELEASED

Found Drama I.

Found Drama II.

Found Drama III
…. conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED

The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Cosgrove Watt, Gerhardt Schtitt;
35 mm.; 21 minutes; black and white; sound. A man undergoing intensive psychotherapy
discovers that he is brittle, hollow, and transparent to others, and becomes either
transcendentally enlightened or schizophrenic. INTERLACE TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE
#357–59–00

Found Drama V.

Found Drama VI.
… conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED

The American Century as Seen Through a Brick.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Documentary cast w/ narration
by P. A. Heaven; 35 mm.; 52 minutes; color w/ red filter and oscillophotography; silent
w/ narration. As U.S. Boston’s historical Back Bay streets are stripped of brick and
repaved with polymerized cement, the resultant career of one stripped brick is followed,
from found-art temporary installation to displacement by E.W.D. catapult to a waste-quarry
in southern Québec to its use in the F.L.Q.-incited anti-O.N.A.N. riots of January/Whopper,
all intercut with ambiguous shots of a human thumb’s alterations in the interference
pattern of a plucked string. PRIVATELY RELEASED ON MAGNETIC VIDEO BY LATRODECTUS MACTANS
PRODUCTIONS

The ONANtiad.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Claymation action sequences
© Infernatron Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P. A. Heaven, Pam Heath,
Ken N. Johnson, Ibn-Said Chawaf, Squyre Frydell, Marla-Dean Chumm, Herbert G. Birch,
Everard Meynell; 35 mm.; 76 minutes; black and white/color; sound/silent. Oblique,
obsessive, and not very funny claymation love triangle played out against live-acted
backdrop of the inception of North American Interdependence and Continental Reconfiguration.
PRIVATELY RELEASED ON MAGNETIC VIDEO BY LATRODECTUS MACTANS PRODUCTIONS

The Universe Lashes Out.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Documentary cast w/ narrator
Herbert G. Birch; 16 mm.; 28 minutes; color; silent w/ narration. Documentary on the
evacuation of Atkinson NH/New Québec at the inception of Continental Reconfiguration.
MAGNETIC VIDEO (LIMITED RELEASE)

Poultry in Motion.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Documentary cast w/ narrator
P. A. Heaven; 16 mm.; 56 minutes; color; silent w/ narration. Documentary on renegade
North Syracuse NNY turkey farmers’ bid to prevent toxification of Thanksgiving crop
by commandeering long, shiny O.N.A.N. trucks to transplant over 200,000 pertussive
fowl south to Ithaca. MAGNETIC VIDEO (LIMITED RELEASE)

Found Drama IX.

Found Drama X.

Found Drama XI.
… conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED

Möbius Strips.
Year of the Whopper. Lactrodectus Mactans Productions. ‘Hugh G. Rection,’ Pam Heath,
‘Bunny Day,’ ‘Taffy Appel’; 35 mm.; 109 minutes; black and white; sound. Pornography-parody,
possible parodic homage to Fosse’s
All That Jazz,
in which a theoretical physicist (‘Rection’), who can only achieve creative mathematical
insight during coitus, conceives of Death as a lethally beautiful woman (Heath). INTERLACE
TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE #357–65–32 (Y.W.)

Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Everard Maynell, Phillip T.
Smothergill, Paul Anthony Heaven, Pamela-Sue Voorheis; 16 mm.; 19 minutes; black and
white; sound. Possible parody/homage to B.S. public-service-announcement cycle of
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
c
a harried commuter is mistaken for Christ by a child he knocks over.

Blood Sister: One Tough Nun.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Telma Hurley, Pam
Heath, Marla-Dean Chumm, Diane Saltoone, Soma Richardson-Levy, Cosgrove Watt; 35 mm.;
90 minutes; color; sound. Parody of revenge/recidivism action genre, a formerly delinquent
nun’s (Hurley’s) failure to reform a juvenile delinquent (Chumm) leads to a rampage
of recidivist revenge. INTERLACE TELENT PULSE-DISSEMINATION 21 JULY Y.T.M.P., CARTRIDGE
#357–87–04

Infinite Jest (IV).
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Pam Heath (?),
‘Madame Psychosis’(?); 78 mm.; 90 minutes(?); color; sound. Unfinished, unseen attempt
at completion of
Infinite Jest (III).
UNRELEASED

Let There Be Lite.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Documentary
cast w/ narrator Ken N. Johnson; 16mm.; 50 minutes(?); black and white; silent w/
narration. Unfinished documentary on genesis of reduced-calorie bourbon industry.
UNRELEASED

Untitled.
Unfinished. UNRELEASED

No Troy.
Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. No cast; liquid-surface holography
by Urquhart Ogilvie Jr.; 35 mm.; 7 minutes; enhanced color; silent. Scale-model holographic
recreation of Troy NY’s bombardment by miscalibrated Waste Displacement Vehicles,
and its subsequent elimination by O.N.A.N. cartographers. MAGNETIC VIDEO (PRIVATE
RELEASE LIMITED TO NEW BRUNSWICK, ALBERTA, QUÉBEC) Note: Archivists in Canada and
the U.S. West Coast do not list
No Troy
but do list titles
The Violet City
and
The Violet Ex-City,
respectively, leading scholars to conclude that the same film was released under
several different appellations.

Untitled.
Unfinished. UNRELEASED

Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt,
Phillip T. Smothergill, Diane Saltoone; 16 mm.; 52 minutes; color; silent. Possible
Scandinavian-psychodrama parody, a boy helps his alcoholic-delusional father and disassociated
mother dismantle their bed to search for rodents, and later he intuits the future
feasibility of D.T.-cycle lithiumized annular fusion. CELLULOID (UNRELEASED)

Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators
. Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Documentary
or uncredited cast w/ narrator P. A. Heaven; 16 mm.; 45 minutes; black and white;
sound. Children and adolescents play a nearly incomprehensible nuclear strategy game
with tennis equipment against the real or holographic(?) backdrop of sabotaged ATHSCME
1900 atmospheric displacement towers exploding and toppling during the New New England
Chemical Emergency of Y.W. CELLULOID (UNRELEASED)

Stand Behind the Men Behind the Wire.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Documentary
cast w/ narrator Soma Richardson-Levy; Super-8 mm.; 52 minutes; black and white/color;
sound. Shot on location north of Lowell MA, documentary on Essex County Sheriff’s
Dept. and Massachusetts Department of Social Services’ expedition to track, verify,
capture, or propitiate the outsized feral infant alleged to have crushed, gummed,
or picked up and dropped over a dozen residents of Lowell in January, Y.T.M.P. INTERLACE
TELENT CARTRIDGE #357–12–56

As of Yore.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt,
Marlon Bain; 16/78 mm.; 181 minutes; black and white/color; sound. A middle-aged tennis
instructor, preparing to instruct his son in tennis, becomes intoxicated in the family’s
garage and subjects his son to a rambling monologue while the son weeps and perspires.
INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE # 357–16–09

The Clever Little Bastard.
Unfinished, unseen. UNRELEASED

The Cold Majesty of the Numb.
Unfinished, unseen. UNRELEASED

Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available
Space With Mind-Boggling Efficiency.
Unfinished due to hospitalization. UNRELEASED

Low-Temperature Civics.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt,
Herbert G. Birch, Ken N. Johnson, Soma Richardson-Levy, Everard Maynell, ‘Madame Psychosis,’
Phillip T. Smothergill, Paul Anthony Heaven; 35 mm.; 80 minutes; black and white;
sound. Wyler parody in which four sons (Birch, Johnson, Maynell, Smothergill) intrigue
for control of a sandwich-bag conglomerate after their CEO father (Watt) has an ecstatic
encounter with Death (‘Psychosis’) and becomes irreversibly catatonic. NATIONAL DISSEMINATION
IN INTERLACE TELENT’S ‘CAVALCADE OF EVIL’ SERIES—JANUARY/YEAR OF TRIAL-SIZE DOVE BAR—AND
INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357–89–05

(At Least) Three Cheers for Cause and Effect.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt,
Pam Heath, ‘Hugh G. Rection’; 78 mm.; 26 minutes; black and white; sound. The headmaster
of a newly constructed high-altitude sports academy (Watt) becomes neurotically obsessed
with litigation over the construction’s ancillary damage to a V.A. hospital far below,
as a way of diverting himself from his wife’s (Heath’s) poorly hidden affair with
the academically renowned mathematical topologist who is acting as the project’s architect
(‘Rection’). CELLULOID (UNRELEASED)

(The) Desire to Desire.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Robert Lingley,
‘Madame Psychosis,’ Marla-Dean Chumm; 35 mm.; 99 minutes(?); black and white; silent.
A pathology resident (Lingley) falls in love with a beautiful cadaver (‘Psychosis’)
and the paralyzed sister (Chumm) she died rescuing from the attack of an oversized
feral infant. Listed by some archivists as unfinished. UNRELEASED

Safe Boating Is No Accident.
Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad(?). Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited/X-Ray and
Infrared Photography by Shuco-Mist Medical Pressure Systems, Enfield MA. Ken N. Johnson,
‘Madame Psychosis,’ P. A. Heaven. Kierkegaard/Lynch (?) parody, a claustrophobic water-ski
instructor (Johnson), struggling with his romantic conscience after his fiancée’s
(‘Psychosis’’s) face is grotesquely mangled by an outboard propeller, becomes trapped
in an overcrowded hospital elevator with a defrocked Trappist monk, two overcombed
missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an enigmatic fitness
guru, the Massachusetts State Commissioner for Beach and Water Safety, and seven severely
intoxicated opticians with silly hats and exploding cigars. Listed by some archivists
as completed the following year, Y.T.-S.D.B. UNRELEASED

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