Dr. Chicago

Satirizes television pitches, art schools, and the self-importance of artists.

The premise of the Dr. Chicago feature film trilogy is that Dr. Chicago (Alvin Lucier), a sex-change surgeon, is perpetually on the lam, fleeing the Feds and, in Cry Dr. Chicago, hotly pursued by his nemesis, a French gangster–cum–business tycoon (Claude Kipnis).

Emerald Cities, completing the trilogy, is a story about a young woman who runs off from her Death Valley home to seek her fortune. Her drunken dad still stuck in his Santa suit from the local Christmas pagent, follows and soon comes in contact with the "new dark ages" of 1984. Juxtapositions of "on-the street" interviews (by Willie Boy Walker), punk performances by bands Flipper and The Mutants, TV shows of past-life hypnotism and nuclear destruction, and a crazed ex-con all finally intermix with the characters' own sagas.

From George Manupelli's Doctor Chicago trilogy, starring Alvin Lucier as the evil (and politically incorrect) surgeon on the lam, Dr. Alvin Chicago with his sidekicks Sheila Marie (Mary Ashley) and Steve (Steve Paxton, who dies, dancingly, in each episode).