FlipBoardA while ago I searched Netflix Instant for “Netflix” (BRAAAAHMM) and this is what I found. This video has several duplicates on Netflix, presumably because it’s test footage and there are many variable to test. Hypnotized, I watched it over and over, imagining what went into it, who thought of the ideas, whether or not they intended to traumatize me, etc. It starts off as a very plain collection of ambience. Then, just after a minute, a hand appears. A human hand, the hand of a stranger, slowly and intimately fingers the waterfall of a babbling fountain for well over thirty seconds. The kind of thirty seconds where you’re like, wow that was thirty seconds? That felt a lot longer, I can’t believe seconds can be so slow. At the three minute mark a Strange Man darts about. Is he the hand? Does he have agency? Is he as forgettable and useless as the scenery? HELL NAW, because then he moonwalks behind fountains with a laptop in his hand, and suddenly he is the God and we his subjects. Bow down before his cartwheels and dad clothes. Cut to trains. The babbling water is as constant as lunar silence. The Strange Man treats us to a silent babbling carnival, full of soccer ball tricks and juggling acts. Suffocatingly amateur Shakespeare monologues and the abject horror at the Eight Minute Mark. If this isn’t the weirdest thing on Netflix, I must know what is.
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The fountain is dead. Everything you see after the hand is introduced constitutes the fountain’s refusal to accept it’s own mortality.
This is in my sweet spot (being responsible for probably a quarter of the 12,000 views of K-01 Test Footage and other such camera crap). This is how weird old men spending six hours on a park bench are bred.
This is my favorite new thing.
That’s fascinating. It seems to be the Netflix headquarters, so at least we know it’s them to blame for this soul-scarring footage.
I like this. I might want to use this as part of a found footage piece
Cue Vince giving us a thousand words comparing it to a Sofia Coppola picture.
Someone needs to GIF the moonwalking man holding a laptop.
STAT! I need that in my life
Some of Terrence Malick’s best work.
I remember finding this a couple years back. I had much the same reaction and have revisited it several times with the same sense of awe and wonder.
Christ, Evan, you sound like the Warming Glow kids trying to decode the significance of each hand gesture in Mad Men…
I see you not-very-subtly pushing your taylor swift agenda and I approve
How about 1000 words on how it made me want to take a leak.
Evan, your hard-hitting reporting adds a brilliant je-ne-sais-quoi to Filmdrunk. I hope Mr. Vince keeps you on the plantation.
A few friends and I found this a long time ago and instantly fell in love—but if you think this is great, read the comments page for it on Netflix’s website (sign in first): [dvd.netflix.com]
7 days.
I once watched 1/3 of a Rick James concert movie from 1981 on Netflix. That was weirder.
I had to pee four times during the first five minutes before the water stopped running.