- Three fellows dream of prize money and a chance for a real Hollywood contract by winning the Liberty-Pete Smith amateur movie contest. They work on a script, as their wastebasket and ashtrays fill. They head outside to shoot: down a manhole, up a telephone pole, through a keyhole, and at night using binoculars. Next they must edit their film, then it's time for a first screening of their product, "The Afternoon of a Rubberband." It's a montage of experimental images, including a razor blade cutting various objects, a baby in a cooking pot, and a snail in the path of a steamroller. After the screening, the boys wonder if that was their only shot at Hollywood fame.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
- "Shhhh!" motions a wild-haired character (Hy Hirsh) with a conspiratorial grin. Three aspiring filmmakers (tall dark Roger Barlow, baby-faced Harry Hay, and bespectacled LeRoy Robbins - the real-life makers of this film) have big plans afoot. They're collaborating to enter a magazine contest sponsored by Pete Smith - yes, that Pete Smith, known for his "specialties" and sports featurettes - to find the best amateur short subject. The prize: $1,000 and a contract with MGM.
The trouble is, they have no idea what to film. A marathon skull session produces only false start "boy meets girl" scenarios, balled up and thrown away as soon as they are written down. Soon the three are tired and insensible: Barlow is reduced to building piles of match sticks as Hay stirs nonexistent sugar into a long since empty cup of condensed milk. Finally Robbins, thumbing through yet another magazine, encounters Daliesque paintings and eye-teaser drawings and has a eureka moment: Surrealism! Reborn in the image of the three famous monkey figurines, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil, the boys revive and resume work in earnest.
Shooting begins as Robbins uses a surrealist print to get a fresh angle on an ordinary curbstone and chases neighborhood cats with his tripod. Hay pulls his camera up on a rope from an open manhole and films the sky through binoculars at night. Barlow, camera in hand, clings precariously to the top of a utility pole, then assumes the (somewhat) safer position of shooting voyeuristically through a keyhole.
Back home, Robbins and Hay get to work on a parody of the editing process. Robbins and his crank operated moviola are so hopelessly snarled in film that he can only snip randomly away at it with kitchen shears. Barlow drops off yet more footage. The moviola being out of action, Hay adopts the simple expedient of holding the film up to the light to see what's on it. Robbins follows suit.
The finished short-within-a-short - "The Afternoon of a Rubberband" - may be avant-garde film's earliest send-up of itself. It takes shots at films by Fernand Léger (with Dadaist constructions of odd household objects), Hans Richter (flying hats and gun play), and Luis Buñuel (whose famous phony-eye-slice scene is echoed by a butter knife cracking a soft-boiled egg). A girl screams as a steamroller approaches a hapless snail. A man at a table sharpens a carving knife, apparently preparing to cook and eat a baby, who is curled up in a pan playing innocently with a parsley sprig. A bearded "communazi" blows smoke; an unknown hand picks the nose of a dead pig. As a balloon bearing a dapper cyclops caricature deflates into its own shirt collar, the closing title card appears: "This is where we came in."
Satisfied with the final work, the boys consult the contest blank to find out where to send the reel. It is only then that the terrible realization dawns. It's just past midnight; they've missed the deadline. Hay sorrowfully blows his nose on a huge rag, out of which fall folded bits of paper. Barlow reads one and beams happily: all is not lost! A blackout and the three are back at work on yet another movie contest: "Tricks and Gadgets." "Shhhhh!" gestures the wild-haired character once more.
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