Clips that are not preceded by title cards in the film are, in the transcript, preceded by a single bracketed, left-justified line indicating the duration of the clip and an estimate of the year in which it was shot.
Distortion
Clips occasionally pixelate, however briefly, and quite a few of the opening and closing paused images of those clips predating 2006 are banded by static, suggesting they were transferred from magnetic tape.
Time’s Passage
Many of the clips, in the lower-right or -left corner of the screen, feature timestamps superimposed by the cameras with which they were shot. Any information regarding the passage of a specific amount of time that is noted in the transcript (e.g. “CUT. Seven minutes later.”) has been derived from these timestamps.
Cures
All cures, unless otherwise specified, are standard-colored, double-legged, medium-tailed, and mature.
[TITLE SCREEN]
A Fistful of Fists
A Documentary Collage
by
Jonny “Triple-J” Pellmore-Jason, Jr.
PerFormulae Product Line Pre-Launch Announcement
(Super Bowl XXV teaser spot)
aka GameChanger
aka Look! Look! Look!
Dollheart-Betty Group
1990, USA
[120 seconds]
As the opening to Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra rises, the camera slowly pans left to right across a group of twelve cures aligned along a surface reminiscent, in its whiteness and gleam, of the space station in the second act of Kubrick’s 2001.
The frame accommodates about three cures at a time. The first three we see are sitting cross-legged, facing the viewer. The fourth is looking screen-right while saying, “Look,” and reaching back to tap the shoulder of the third, which turns its head to the right, squints to focus, and repeats the word “Look.”
The fifth cure is rising to its feet, looking to the right. The sixth, seventh, and eighth are already standing, looking to the right, mouths agape, clutching their chests.
The ninth is performing a handstand while the tenth and eleventh, sitting atop the ninth’s feet, share an Eskimo kiss.
The camera briefly lingers on the gymnastic trio as a man, in voiceover, says, “Curios have always been cute.”
The rightward pan resumes til we see a twelfth cure, facing rightward, away from the gymnastic trio.
Again the camera stops.
“And they’ve always gotten cuter,” the voiceover says.
The twelfth cure reaches behind itself to blindly tap the nearer of the kuniking cures on the back.
“Look,” says the twelfth cure, and the one that’s been tapped breaks off the kiss, looks rightward, goes wide-eyed, and dismounts from the foot on which it’s perched, causing the handstanding cure to lose its balance, and bring crashing down with it the cure that had been sitting on its other foot.
“And cuter,” the voiceover says. “And cuter.”
The cure that initially dismounted helps the fallen to their feet. “Look!” it tells them. “Look! Look!” The ones that had fallen stare off to the right, and the cures behind them (i.e. offscreen, to the viewer’s left) come crowding into the frame to get a better look.
“This summer, though,” the voiceover says, “they’ll all be getting cuter newer.”
The camera pulls back to reveal that what the dozen cures are gazing upon is a towering, sky-blue dropper-bottle. The letters Ch are embossed on the side of it.
A lightning-like flash, and the sky-blue dropper-bottle has been replaced by a navy-blue dropper-bottle embossed on its side with the letters MCh.
A second lightning-like flash, and the second dropper-bottle has been replaced by a third: a black one embossed with the letters PN.
The cures pantomime awe in a variety of ways—palming their faces, jumping up and down, kneeling with their fingers interlaced beneath their snouts.
“Cuter…” the voiceover says. “Newer. But first, they’ll have to take their PerFormulae.”
A third lightning-like flash, and there is no more Strauss, nor sound of any kind, just a still, head-on shot of the three dropper-bottles lined up next to each other on the gleaming white surface such that the viewer can read their labels: Chunker, MegaChunker, PinnochiNose.
Across the bottom of the screen, a glowing red message crawls, news-ticker-like.
PERFORMULAE FOR CURIOS. JUNE 16. CUTER NEWER.
The message, centered, ceases to crawl, and blinks three times.
The screen goes black.
Popsicles
Home Video
Early 2000s, USA
[7 minutes, 43 seconds]
Suburban daylight. Somebody’s driveway. The cameraman’s shadow on the blacktop is long. Barefoot and shirtless, in olive-drab cargo shorts, a college-aged male, forming a visor with one of his hands, exits the garage at the back of the shot. Approaches.
The cameraman says, “You dirty spidger. You goddamn dirty spidger, you.”
The shirtless male bends deep at the waist, pounds the blacktop with the sides of his fists.
“You got eyes like tomatoes, boy,” the cameraman says. “Baboons’ anusi. Gaylordical rectals.”
“Quit making me laugh,” the shirtless male gasps. He coughs, straightens, clears his throat, looks into the camera. “So hi there,” he says. “Hi there, I’m Robbie, call me Dr. Robert round here some of them, and we’re making this like informational video to demonstrate what some of you might call lollipopping or some say it candyappling or I heard it also called all other kinds of things like uh…”
“Buttbuddies,” says the cameraman.
“Buttbuddies! Right,” says Robbie.
“And also too there’s also standylivers. And humdingering. In’eming. Fruit-the-looms.”
“Fruit-of-the-looms? I aint heard that one.”
“Just fruit-the-looms. No of, there, Doc.”