Archer’s Super Cool Artsy Experimental Film – Storyboards Version #1
(Runtime: 603 minutes)
INT. LIMINAL SPACE, DAY.
We open on a close-up of ARCHER. He is uncomfortably close to the camera and, like a little weirdo, keeps staring straight at it. He doesn’t blink. From this angle, it’s really obvious that he’s got, like, an oddly proportioned head. We hold silently on this shot.
Something emerges from the nothingness behind ARCHER, something indistinct and nightmarish. It almost has the shape of a man, but where its face should be there is a swirling, inhuman cloud indicating somehow both mutilation and tranquility. What’s that look like? I don’t know. I’m just the writer. Ask the storyboard guy to draw something.
As the hellish monstrosity gets closer to ARCHER, a narrator begins to whisper.
NARRATOR: Saucy boy got the trumpet. Saucy boy got the trumpet. Saucy bringing down the band.
The creature is just about to reach ARCHER, the horrific twisty mass, reaching out to touch him on the shoulder. As it almost reaches him, he opens his mouth to speak.
CUT TO: BLACK
INT. MILWAUKEE MAGAZINE OFFICES, DAY
A close-up of ARCHER’s laptop. All we see is the screen and two hands typing at the keyboard. They move rapidly over the keys, and on the screen, we see the words as they are typed out. Over this, we play some, like, experimental film music. I don’t know. Again, I’m just the writer. Maybe … industrial noises or pigs passing gas or something? You know what I mean – experimental.
The second week of the Milwaukee Film Festival was intense. Monday got going with “The Milwaukee Show,” screening local filmmaker’s shorts, and then it was off to the races with a week so jam-packed with films I wanted to see, I haven’t spoken to my wife or children for over a week. Just kidding. I don’t have a wife or kids. I have a pet mongoose. I’m very sad.
Anyways, your boy is pumped for week three of this thing. It has some of the oddest little films we’ve seen yet. Here are the ones I’m most looking forward to seeing as we bid fond farewell to the 2023 Milwaukee Film Festival.
1. Godland
MONDAY, MAY 1 AT 1 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
We’re talking faith, Iceland and the 19th-century, baby. From what I’ve read this film is supposed to be a slow, bleak meditation on death, so I am 100% on board.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
2. Hundreds of Beavers
TUESDAY, MAY 2 AT 9 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
I don’t know, man. I really just don’t. I mean, this is a black-and-white, 108-minute slapstick comedy with no dialogue about a drunken lumberjack fighting hundreds of beavers to become “North America’s greatest fur trapper.” It could either be absolutely awful, or the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I’m willing to take that chance.
3. Smoking Causes Coughing
TUESDAY, MAY 2 AT 8:45 P.M. | TIMES CINEMA
The French – what a people. First, croissants, and now this. Smoking Causes Coughing follows the Tobacco Force, a struggling team of five superheroes named Benzene, Nicotine, Methanol, Mercury and Ammonia. After a battle with a giant turtle, this fracturing squadron goes on a mandatory week-long retreat. They kind of look like Power Rangers on bath salts. Needless to say, I won’t be missing this one.
4. To Live and Die and Live
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3 AT 9:30 P.M. | AVALON THEATER
A Hollywood film director battling addiction and depression returns to Detroit for his stepfather’s funeral. Hiding from his family, he ends up falling into the seedy after-hours scene in the city.
5. Time Bomb Y2K
WEDNESDAY, MAY 3 AT 9:15 P.M. | TIMES CINEMA
I wasn’t old enough to remember Y2K, and when I asked my parents about it, they said they weren’t worried at all and it was stupid. But I’m still fascinated by the idea that people really expected everything to fall apart because the computers couldn’t handle the idea of 1999 flipping over into 2000. This documentary about that hilarious late-90s hysteria looks like a winner.
6. A Disturbance in the Force
TUESDAY, MAY 4 AT 7:15 P.M. | AVALON THEATER
I don’t really care about Star Wars. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t get mad at me, I’m sorry. It’s just … I don’t know … too many stars maybe? I know, I know, I’m sorry. But there is something I do care about, and that is godawful television specials. And the grandaddy of them all is the cursed “Star Wars Holiday Special,” a production so horrific that George Lucas said that he wished he could track down every copy of it and smash them with a sledgehammer. This documentary traces the bizarre story of the hellish holiday special, and it looks hilarious.
