Danielle Elliott

Staff Writer

VCU’s Department of Sculpture and Extended Media along with Fountainhead Fellow in the School of the Arts, Sam Ekwurtzel, opened a series of short films this month based on David Foster Wallace’s monumental 1996 novel “Infinite Jest,” whose nearly 500,000 words and sprawling subject matter have earned it not just status as a masterpiece of modern literature, but also bragging rights for those who dare read the whole thing.

“A Failed Entertainment: Selections from the Filmography of James O. Incandenza,” which opened on March 7 and ends March 21, features fifteen vignettes based on a single footnote in Wallace’s novel: tangential, intricately-detailed footnotes make up a sizeable portion of “Infinite Jest,” one of the longest of which is an extensive filmography of fictional director James O. Incandenza, the father of the book’s main character.  (In the novel, based in a corporate-dominated state that was formerly Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, one of Incandenza’s films – from which the novel takes its name – is supposedly so moving that viewers lose all interest in life after watching it.)

The filmography, whose lengthy section in the book preambles with “The following listing is as complete as we can make it”, includes such titles as “Tennis, Everyone?”, “The Medusa v. The Odalisque”, “Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony,” “Various Lachrymose U.S. Corporate Middle-Management Figures,” “The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass,” and “The Machine In The Ghost: Annular Holography For Fun And Prophet”, among many others, many of which are listed as “conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED.”

The show’s name, too, comes from the novel: instead of calling the film by its name, characters in the novel refer to “Infinite Jest” only as “The Entertainment.”

‘”A Failed Entertainment” was originally shown at Columbia University and features artists from England, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Canada, as well VCU painting and printmaking student, Reid Ramirez, garnering attention from publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, among others. The short films vary in style from documentary and technical to conceptual and parodic, each relating to the invented filmography in Wallace’s novel.

Other ideas touched upon in the novel, to make a very short list, include tennis, substance abuse and the recovery process, child abuse, advertising, and quasi-topical themes like Quebec separatism.

However, none of the films attempt to solve the many mysteries throughout “Infinite Jest.” This allows each short film to easily be viewed together with the novel or on it’s own.

“It takes the text as a departure point,” Ekwurtzel said in an interview with the VCU News Center. “But these works can also stand on their own.”

– B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Cosgrove Watt, Pam Heath, Ken N. Johnson; 16 mm; 25 minutes w/ recursive loop for automatic replay; color; silent w/ sounds of human coitus appropriated from and credited to Caballero Control Corp. adult videos. Parody of neoconceptual structuralist films of Godbout and Vodriad, n-frame images of myriad varieties of small household flames, from lighters and birthday candles to stovetop gas rings and grass clipings ignited by sunlight through a magnifying glass, alternated with anti-narrative sequences of a man (Watt) sitting in a dark bedroom drinking bourbon while his wife Heath and an Amway representative (Johnson) have acrobatic coitus in the background’s lit hallway. UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION BY 1960’S US CONCEPTUAL DIRECTOR OF “VARIOUS SMALL FIRES” ED RUSCHA- INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE RE-RELEASE #330-54-94 (Y.T.S.D.B.)


“Cage III – Free Show” – B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernation Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P.A. Heaven, Everard Maynell, Pam Heath; partial animation; 35 mm; 65 minutes; black and white; sound. The figure of death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators’ eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of Life (Heaven) uses a megaphone to invite fairgoers to an exhibition in which, if the fairgoers consent to undergo unspeakable degradations, they can witness ordinary persons gradually turn into gigantic eyeballs. INTERLACE TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE #357-65-65


“The Medusa v. The Odalisque” – B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Uncredited cast; zone-plating laser holography by James O. Incadenza and Urquhart Ogilvie, Jr.; holographic fight choreography by Kenjiru Hirota courtesy of Sony Entertainment-Asia; 78 mm; 29 minutes; balck and white; silent w/ audience-noises appropriated from network broadcast television. Mobile holograms of two visually lethal mythologic females duel with reflective surfaces onstage while a live crowd of spectators turn to stone. LIMITED CELLULOID RUN; PRIVATELY RE-RELEASED 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 ‘poststructual 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 RE-RELEASE #357-40-01 (Y.P.W.)


“Pre-Nuptial Agreement Of Heaven And Hell” – B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernation 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 Ecstacy Of St. Teresa.’ PRIVATELY RELEASED ON CELLULOID AND MAGNETIC VIDEO BY LATRODECTUS MACTANS PRODUCTIONS


“The Joke” – B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Audience as reflected cast; 35 mm x 2 cameras; variable length; black and white; silent. Parody of Hollis Frampton’s ‘audience-specific events,’ two Ikegami EC-35 video cameras in the 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 ‘anti-narrative’ flow. Incadenza’a first truly controversial project, Film & Kartridge Kultcher’s Sperber credited it with ‘unwittingly sounding the death-knell of post-poststructual film in terms of sheer annoyance.’ NON-RECORDED 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/x 2 m; 253 minutes; color; silent. Miniaturized, endoscopic, and microinvasive cameras traverse entire exterior and interior of one of Incadenza’a 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 RE-RELEASE #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 Quebec to its use in the F.L.Q.-incited anti-O.N.A.N. riots of January/Whopper, all intercut with ambiguous shots of 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 Infernation Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P.A. Heaven, Pam Heath, Ken N. Johnosn, Ibn-Said Chawaf, Squyre Frydell, Marla-Dean Chumm, Herbert G. Birch, Everard Meynell; 35 mm; 76 minutes; black and white/color; sound/silent. Oblique, obesessive, 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 Quebec 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


“Mobius Strips” – Year of the Whopper. Latrodectus 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, Pamel-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, 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, Dianne 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; 16 mm; 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, QUEBEC) 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, Dianne 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 incomprehnsible nuclear strategy game with tennis equipment against a 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 ‘CALALCADE OF EVIL’ SERIES – JANUARY/YEAR OF TRIAL-SIZED 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 fiancee’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


“Very Low Impact” – Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Marla-Dean Chumm, Pam Heath, Soma Richardson-Levy-O’Byrne; 35 mm; 30 minutes; color; sound. A narcoleptic aerobics instructor (Chumm) struggles to hide her condition from students and employers. POSTHUMOUS RELEASE Y.W.-Q.M.D.; INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357-97-29


“The Night Wears a Sombrero” – Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad (?) Ken N. Johnson, Phillip T. Smothergill, Dianne Saltoone, ‘Madame Psychosis’; 78 mm; 105 minutes; color; silent/sound. Parody/homage to Lang’s Rancho Notorious, a nearsighted apprentice cowpoke (Smothergill), swearing vengeance for a gunslinger’s (Johnson’s) rape of what he (the cowpoke) is secretly in love with, loses the trail of the gunslinger after misreading a road sign and is drawn to a sinister Mexican ranch where Oedipally aggrieved gunslingers are ritually blinded by a mysterious veiled nun (‘Psychosis’). Listed by some archivists as completed the preceding year, Y.W. INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357-56-51


“Accomplice!” – Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt, Stokely ‘Dark Star’ McNair; 16 mm; 26 minutes; color; sound. An aging pederast mutilates himself out of love for a strangely tattooed street hustler. INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357-10-10 withdrawn from dissemination after Cartridge Scene reviewers called Accomplice! ‘…the stupidest, nastiest, least subtle and worst-edited product of a pretentious and wretchedly uneven career.’ NOW UNRELEASED


Untitled – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


Untitled – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


Untitled – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“Dial C For Concupiscence” – Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Soma Richardson-Levy-O’Byrne, Marla-Dean Chumm, Ibn-Said Chawaf, Yves Francouer; 35 mm; 122 minutes; black and white; silent w/ subtitles. Parodic noir-style tribute to Bresson’s Les Anges du Peche’, a cellular phone operator (Richardson-Levy-O’Byrne), mistaken by a Quebecois terrorist (Francouer) for another cellular phone operator (Chumm) the FLQ had mistakenly tried to assassinate, mistakes his mistaken attempts to apologize as attempts to assassinate her (Richardson-Levy-O’Byrne) and flees to a bizarre Islamic religious community whose members communicate with each other by means of semaphore flags, where she falls in love with an armless Near Eastern medical attache’ (Chawaf). RELEASED IN INTERLACE TELENT’S ‘HOWLS FROM THE MARGIN’ UNDERGROUND FILM SERIES – MARCH/Y.T.-S.D.B. – AND INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357-75-43


“Insubstantial Country” – Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt; 16 mm; 30 minutes; black and white; silent/sound. An unpopular apres-garde filmmaker (Watt) either suffers a temporal lobe seizure and becomes mute or else is the victim of everyone else’s delusion that his (Watt’s) temporal lobe seizure has left him mute. PRIVATE CARTRIDGE RELEASE BY POOR YORICK ENTERTAINMENT UNLIMITED


“It Was A Great Marvel That He Was In The Father Without Knowing Him” – Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Cosgrove Watt, Phillip T. Smothergill; 16 mm; 5 minutes; black and white; silent/sound. A father (Watt), suffering from the delusion that his etymologically precocious son (Smothergill) is pretending to be mute, poses as a ‘professional conversationalist’ in order to draw the boy out. RELEASED IN INTERLACE TELENT’S ‘HOWLS FROM THE MARGIN’ UNDERGROUND FILM SERIES – MARCH/Y.T.-S.D.B. – AND INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE #357-75-50


“Cage IV – Web” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“Cage V – Infinite Jim” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“Death And The Single Girl” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“The Film Adaptation Of Peter Weiss’s ‘The Persecution And Assassination Of Marat As Performed By The Inmates Of The Asylum At Charenton Under The Direction Of The Marquis de Sade'” – Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. James O. Incadenza, Disney Leith, Urquhart Ogilvie Jr., Jane Ann Prickett, Herbert G. Birch, ‘Madame Psychosis’, Marla-Dean Chumm, Marlon Bain, Pam Heath, Soma Richardson-Levy-O’Byrne-Chawaf, Ken N. Johnson, Dianne Saltoone; Super-8 mm; 88 minutes; black and white; silent/sound. Fictional ‘interactive documentary’ on Boston stage production of Weiss’s 20th-century play within play, in which the documentary’s chemically impaired director (Incadenza) repeatedly interupts the inmates’ dumbshow-capering and Marat and Sade’s dialogues to discourse incoherently on the implications of Brando’s Method Acting and Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty for North American filmed entertainment, irritating the actor who plays Marat (Leith) to such an extent that he has a cerebral hemorrhage and collapses onstage well before Marat’s scripted death, whereupon the play’s nearsighted director (Ogilvie), mistaking the actor who plays Sade (Johnson) for Incadenza, throws Sade into Marat’s medicinal bath and throttles him to death, whereupon the extra-dramatic figure of Death (‘Psychosis’) descends deus ex machina to bear Marat (Leith) and Sade (Johnson) away, while Incadenza becomes ill all over the theater audience’s first row. 8 MM SYNC-PROJECTION CELLULOID. UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION, HOSPITALIZATION


“Too Much Fun” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“The Unfortunate Case Of Me” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“Sorry All Over The Place” – Unfinished. UNRELEASED


“Infinite Jest (V?)” – Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. ‘Madame Psychosis’; no other definitive data. Thorny problem for archivists. Incadenza’s last film, Incadenza’s death occurring during its post-production. Most archival authorities list as unfinished, unseen. Some list as completion of Infinite Jest (IV), for which Incadenza also used ‘Psychosis’, thus list the film under Incadenza’s output for Y.T.M.P. Though no scholarly synopsis or report of viewing exists, two short essays in different issues of Cartridge Quarterly East refer to the film as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘far and away [James O. Incadenza’s] most entertaining and compelling work.’ West Coast archivists list the film’s gauge as ’16…78 mm’, basing the gauge on critical allusions to ‘radical experiments in viewers’ optical perspective and context’ as IJ (V?)’s distinctive feature. Though Canadian archivist Tete-Beche lists the film as completed and privately distributed by P.Y.E.U. through posthumous provisions in the filmmaker’s will, all other comprehensive filmographies have the film either unfinished or UNRELEASED, its Master cartridge either destroyed or vaulted sui testator.

(above excerpt from David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)


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