. . . perhaps is the best way to describe Edwin S. Porter, the director of the Edison Manufacturing Company 6 minute, 27-second-long 1906 short DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND and Winsor McCay, the newspaper comic script cartoonist upon whose Jan. 28, 1905 strip for the New York EVENING TELEGRAM this film is based. At a time when Edison's competitors were churning out three flicks daily (not unlike Valley porn creators of the late 1900s) to meet a supply shortage ( = making more money), Porter dilly-dallied with this comparatively short piece for EIGHT WEEKS, as if he were fine-tuning the Mona Lisa's smile. The most original things the normally glib liars who typed out the Edison Film Catalogs could come up with in regard to their RAREBIT FIEND product--pegged at $70.50, pricey for its day--was calling Porter's film strip "humorously humorous and mysteriously mysterious" (how long would a character last on AMC's show MADMEN with such paucity of verbal gifting?). Similarly, McCay's original scripts featured scribbled dialog balloons, which were illegible when reproduced in the newspaper. The phrase which best sums up McCay and Porter's approach to mass entertainment: "I'm just gonna do what I want to do, hang the public!"
Review of Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
