WIDE ANGLE SAXON (1976)

This comic short by Owen Land from 1976 could
conceivably be regarded as the Hellzapoppin of the
American experimental film. Just as Hellzapoppin
alludes to the then-contemporary Citizen Kane,
Wide Angle Saxon includes a parody of Hollis
Frampton’s 1971 (nostalgia), called Regrettable Redding
Condescension (alluding to Land’s own 1971 Remedial
Reading Comprehension), which is credited in
turn to one “Al Rutcurts” (i.e., the word «structural»
spelled backwards). But to complicate matters considerably
(if quite obscurely), Land (or George Landow,
as he was known at the time) converted to fundamentalist
Christianity shortly before making this film,
and we are told at the outset that this film’s nominal
hero, “Earl Greaves,” has recently had a religious
conversion as well.

ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE AS CITED BY SIGMUND FREUD IN WIT AND

ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS, OR CAN THE AVANT-GARDE ARTIST

BE WHOLED? (1979)

Owen Land continues his obscure blend of deconstructive slapstick and

various issues arising from his then-recent conversion to fundamentalist

Christianity in this puzzling if hilarious 17-minute short, during which

a “panderer” in one of the textual interpretations of the Marriage Broker

Joke becomes corrupted into “panda,” and then two men in panda suits

proceed to make a structural film about Japanese salted plums -– or

something like that.