The Battle of the Bards

A documentary insight behind the scenes of Roberts Altman's Short Cuts.

« When I returned to Los Angeles after my Christmas break, I found a rather belated Christmas present in my letterbox; it was John Dorr’s new film. John Dorr’s Seasons Greetings, the latest in a series of video letters that John sent to his friends each year. (…) Although I’ve never seen John’s other Christmas cards, his latest delivery is clearly different from those that preceded it, in that he knew he was ill when he made it. It begins with a short statement to the camera about living with AIDS, which serves as a prologue to a series of vignettes recorded during trips he made last year with companion George La Fleur. » Bill Krohn, « John Dorr’s New Year’s Greetings », Cahiers du cinéma, n°470, Nov. 1993

Tammy, a teenage timebomb, arrives in Orange County with her ignorant redneck parents, and eighteen years of bottled-up frustration give way to a summer of lethal excess. Get out the body bags; call in the SWAT team! 

The Davises are expecting a baby, which turns out to be a monster with a nasty habit of killing people whenever scared. And it's easily scared.

Out of Nick Huxley's past comes Theresa, a social disease who sleeps with anything that moves and who has decided that she wants Nick back. Nick, a successful photographer with a stable relationship, is determined to banish Theresa and youthful folly from his life. But neither Nick's girlfriend Arliss, a modern spirit who believes in driving buried emotions out in the open, nor Theresa, who seems to have an unseen power on her side, are willing to let it go at that...

Three people take a mountain hike together. Their relationships are explored in a comedy-drama that presents questions about life, evolution, synchronicity and dreams.

Two young couples taste the 'free and easy' life on a cross country motor-home tour until love backfires and tragedy follows.

A horror movie duology: "The Black Veil" is set in 1888, as the widow of a psychiatrist visits a college friend who is performing in a theatre that enacts gruesome mutilations and torture. In "Listen to Midnight" a photographer recounts the events leading up to his murder, which is linked to a story he had heard in Japan about a female dragonfly luring the male to his death.

Shakespearian actress Cordelia Coventry is about to give up on her career when she is chosen by director Bruce Rapport to become the star of a national ad campaign for Sudzall washing powder.

In a sarcastic mood, EZTV's founder John Dorr makes fun of the extensive aspiring Los Angeles spoken word scene of the 1980s and the enormous number of people who routinely approached EZTV asking for free service in getting their project made

It's the Reagan years and all of the husbands in the neighborhood are turning gay.

A woman is hired to clean the house of her husband’s mistress.

In modern day Los Angeles, writer Paul Verlaine invites young provocating poet Arthur Rimbaud into the home of his step-family, losing interest in his wife as he becomes infatuated with the boy.

In 1963, living a routine life on Norma Place in Los Angeles, recluse writer Dorothy Parker and bisexual husband Alan Campbell recall their often-rocky relationship, started thirty years earlier.

Serving as a guinea pig in Dr. Wyoming's REM sleep research at the Second Sight institute, private detective Nick Malace is secretly implanted with a brain monitor by rival researcher Dr. Keiger.