Peterson's Restaurant

Peterson's Restaurant

168. "Peterson's Restaurant"

- in collaboration w/ Orgone Cinema (shot by Michael Johnsen)

- 16mm -> 1/2" VHS cassette

- 14:56

- 1st 1/2 of '95

Peterson's Restaurant

- a script for a film

February 10 - 19, 1995e.v.

- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

"On the other hand, sometimes comprehension requires us to fill in material that is not explicitly given. Imagine our restaurant scene again. This time, we see our characters reading the menu, we see them paying the bill; we do not actually see them eating. If we know the restaurant schema, we can flesh out this scene and understand that they have eaten, even though the eating is not explicitly shown. We can call this kind of comprehension top-down, or hypothesis-driven, because our knowledge about the world leads us to fill in missing information." - quoted from p. 19 of James Peterson's book: Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order.

The gist of this proposed movie is inspired by Peterson's cognitive analysis of movie perception - especially his "Restaurant example" given above. The idea is that the movie shows scene after scene of 2 initially fairly fat people 1st ordering in a restaurant & 2nd ostensibly paying for the meal just ordered & ostensibly eaten. A variation on this being when only the waitron is shown & the 2 main characters are only heard. This restaurant visitation is apparently the characters' daily habit. As the movie progresses, the characters get thinner. Eventually, they begin to discuss with each other that something doesn't seem "quite right". They don't understand it, but they're never satisfied with these restaurant visits. Eventually, they're shown dying of apparent starvation & the last words of one of the characters is something like "Wait, I think I understand now. Do you remember when.." - the words fade out, the character dies..

At this point, all of the scenes are shown again - with this crucial difference: there are no edits between the ordering of the food & the paying of the bill. In other words, we're shown that the characters never actually ate! The audience's "filling-in hypothesis" that the characters have eaten in fulfillment of the usual order of events was incorrect. Even the characters were so entrapped by normal framing that they didn't realize they weren't actually eating until it was too late! More complexly, the audience is repeatedly set-up for incorrect hypothesises which are then knocked down. At the end of the 2nd presentation of the scenes, the above quote from Peterson is shown & read aloud.

These scenes should be shot either with an Auricon camera (if shot in 16mm) or a camcorder - each scene in a continuous take. Each scene should then be presented 1st with an edit separating the ordering from the paying & leaving. When the scenes are repeated, they're to be shown as originally shot (i.e: as continuous). Given dramatic timing & Auricon technical limitations, these scenes should be shot as quickly as possible without hurrying them into incomprehensibility. I imagine the scenes & dialog somewhat as follows:

1st restaurant:

[ordering]

[paying]

[leaving:

Friend/Customer #1: "Same time tomorrow?"

F/C #2: "Yep."

F/C #1: "OK, see you then."]

2nd restaurant:

{the characters are slightly skinnier}

[ordering]

[paying]

[leaving:

F/C #2: "Our favorite spot tomorrow at 2-ish?"

F/C #1: "Sounds good!"

F/C #2: "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

F/C #1: "I wouldn't dream of it!"

{they both laugh}]

3rd restaurant:

{the filmmaker is shown opening a suitcase on the table - at its opening, a hidden tape recorder inside it begins to play a tape of the 2 main characters talking}

[pre-ordering recording can be heard & seen to be somehow connected with the suitcase:

F/C #1: "You know, for some reason, I just haven't been feeling very nourished lately.."]

{there's a pause in the sound, the camera shows only the waitron who acts as if she's taking a normal order from actual customers}

[ordering can be heard]

{the camera shows the suitcase being carried to the counter where the paying takes place, the filmmaker leaves money on it & the camera shows only the person taking the money while, off-camera, the actual character (not a recording) speaks}

F/C #2: "Keep the change!"

[leaving:

F/C #1: {pausing, as if considering something for a few seconds} "You know, I'm still hungry!"

F/C #2: "Well, we'll make up for it tomorrow!"

F/C #1: {laughing} "OK, See you then!"

{waving good-bye, they separate & walk away}

{in the 1st presentation of this scene, the filmmaker's opening the suitcase at the table isn't shown - but, the putting of the suitcase (which wouldn't be making any sound at this point, would be shown as an unexplained &, apparently, incidental element - this should be somewhat subtle - as if the person just "happened" to be in the shot}]

4th restaurant:

{the characters are skinnier still - but not too obviously}

[ordering]

[paying]

[leaving:

F/C #1: {reaches for F/C #2's shoulder & steadies theirself - as if about to faint}

F/C #2: "Are you alright?"

F/C #1: {temporarily unable to respond}

F/C #2: {upset, supporting their friend, & uncertain about what to do otherwise}

"What's the MATTER?! Is there anything I can do?"

F/C #1: {recovering somewhat} "I don't know.. I've just been feeling funny lately.. I don't know what it is.."

F/C #2: {concerned} "Do you want me to drive you home?"

F/C #1: {more or less recovered now} "No, No.. I'll be alright - Just give me a minute.."]

5th restaurant:

{the characters are skinnier still - very obviously now - both are very feeble now & are discussing with some confusion their mysterious condition}

[pre-ordering:

F/C #2: "You know, I have to admit, I've been losing alotof weight lately & I just don't understand.. I just don't know what to do about it.."

F/C #1: "I know, I know, I've been reluctant to talk about it. I don't know what to do other than to just order another huge meal.."]

[they order a bigger meal than usual saying at the end:

F/C #2: "- & could you make it quick, please, we're very hungry today!"]

{this time, the camera doesn't immediately leave the table - instead we see the food come impossibly quickly (this must be pre-arranged with the restaurant personnel). the characters' faces "light up brightly" with a confused sort of hope when suddenly a new character appears carrying a pendulum who proceeds to swing it hypnotically back & forth in front of their faces & to speak to them in a "hypnotist"'s voice}

NEW CHARACTER: "You are getting sleepy, You are going into a trance.."

{F/C #S 1 & 2 immediately become very still & have blank stares - the new character then proceeds to eat all their food with extreme gluttony - between mouthfulls, he speaks again in his "hypnotist"'s voice}

NEW CHARACTER: "You will get up & pay. When you leave this theater you will snap out of this & you will remember nothing about what's just happened"]

[paying]

[leaving:

{both characters barely manage to stagger out of the restaurant}

F/C #2: {barely able to speak} "You know, something's obviously wrong with both of us.."

{they look at each other poignantly & both collapse}

F/C #2: {struggling to speak} "Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong.."

{character #2 appears to die, #1, hardly noticing, squeaks out their last words & then appears to die too}

F/C #1: {very confusedly} "You know.. You know.. I think I've got it.. Do.. you.. remember when.."

{#1 appears to die, the camera lingers on the 2 corpses for a while & then shows the filmmaker opening the suitcase which is playing the ordering from the 3rd restaurant - he opens the lid to the hidden compartment & the tape player is shown - F/C #1 then is heard on the recording saying: "But, on a different subject, I've been reading an interesting book lately called Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order by James Peterson. Let me read a short section of it to you" - the text is shown with the character's voice-over accompanying it - then all of the scenes repeat, etc.., as outlined above}

{of course, in the 1st showing of this scene, nothing of the serving of the food or of the hypnotist or of the filmmaker is shown}]

Obviously, this "mystery/comedy" is an analytical refutation of reflexive unconscious hypothesizing. The 1st presentation of the 5 scenes is a straight-forward narrative in which the characters' deterioration is a mystery. The 2nd presentation of the 1st 2 scenes solves the mystery by making a moviemaker's joke & showing how the audience was fooled into thinking that the characters had eaten. The 2nd presentation of the 3rd scene refutes the audience's presumed 2nd assumption that the characters were even always there. This also partially clears up the mystery of the suitcase as it was presented in its 1st casual showing. The 2nd time for the 4th scene re-establishes the seeming main analytic point of the movie - i.e.: "Just because you witness EVENT #1 followed by EVENT #2 doesn't mean that EVENT A occurred between them - even though that might be the usual circumstance." This is re-established by simply not deviating from the way it's already been established.

Finally, the hypnotist enters the movie - completely side-tracking everything that's happened so far. This is done by introducing the most dramatic character yet & by re-establishing a more standard narrative. This creates confusion by implying that perhaps the characters haven't eaten previously not because the filmmaker was teaching a cognitive lesson (as may've been surmised by the audience by now) but may be because the hypnotist had been forcing them to not eat all along. When the suitcase's tape player is revealed, the hypothesis about the filmmaker may be re-established or it may just add further to the confusion. The final statement coheres the cognitive end.

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"Either unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon one's disposition toward sound asynchrony, most of tENT's films have separate sound recorded on tape. Last season at MoMA's "Big As Life," "You Haven't Heard the Record..." screened accompanied by tape sound alone; however, at Robert Beck tENT projected a number of the VHS transfers with sound alongside the silent originals. The effect was a double projection of a filmic image either slightly ahead of or slightly trailing a video image with synched sound. tENT commented that one impulse for the double projection was to allow the audience to gauge the extent of the film image-sound asynchrony and perhaps to make mental corrections relying of [on] the video. This idea of this function, whether or not one experiences the dual projection in the manner it proposes, clearly relates to tENT's meditation on aspects of James Peterson's cognitive theory of experimental film presented in the work "Peterson's Restaurant"-- which I will discuss more extensively in a separate post. tENT's brief comment on the double projection points to a set of ideas concerning the filmviewer's responsibility in "solving problems," testing pure perception against the background of various types of schemata, actively filling in the missing elements of the implied representation and participating with the work's construction of sense and meaning. But we also agreed that the double projection also adds yet another layer of "semiotic noise", a prominent feature of much of the work and creates an experience of cognitive dissonance on a different level of participation with the work."

- excerpt from Bruce Stater's "et in ARTemia, tENT... et Cet E'rata" email review of the September 29, 1998 "Robert Beck Memorial Cinema" screening at the Collective Unconscious in NYC - posted to the FRAMEWORKS list-serv

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"Peterson's Restaurant" - NTSC SD (720X480), 29.97 fps, Stereo - 14:51:21

https://youtu.be/m8ty3ReloA4

https://archive.org/details/petersons-restaurant

"Peterson's Restaurant": From 1994 to 1995 I lived in rural Ontario in a place called the "Funny Farm". In January, 1995, I gave my 1st 2 presentations in Pittsburgh at the invitation of Orgone Cinema. Not long thereafter, the Orgone folks (Michael Johnsen, Greg Pierce, Alisa Dix) & a friend (Sharyn Lee Frederick) came to visit me at the Funny Farm, probably for a weekend. I was extremely impoverished at the time, hypothetically living off of the sale of my part of a business I'd started but my former partners didn't seem to living up to our agreement. As such, I had $20 Canadian (about $12 US) to live off of - & I was going to entertain 4 visitors? Story of my life.

I recruited Orgone into making "Peterson's Restaurant" with me. It's a testimonial to how nice the people were around there that we went to 5 restaurants in the area (where I wasn't known because I couldn't ordinarily afford to eat in them) & told them about the movie, explained that we weren't actually going to buy anything (except at the last one), & asked if they minded if we shot the movie there & used the actual wait-staff as actors. THEY ACTUALLY COOPERATED. Amazing. The $20 bill that appears in the scenes was my ONLY $20 bill which I had to keep reusing.

Michael had brought an Auricon 16mm camera that could record sound directly on the film. Alas, he didn't know whether the audio part worked. It DIDN'T so we had to later overdub the sound - making the whole thing even sillier. Alisa was intended to be the 1st character to faint after leaving a restaurant but she couldn't stop laughing so we had to switch it so that Greg collapsed instead because he could keep a straight face. At one restaurant there were 2 bikers who asked me not to film them because they "would ruin the movie". Given that I was wearing a full-body black leather motorcycle suit at the time I don't know whether they thought I was another biker. I waited until they left before we shot.

If I remember correctly (I'm writing these notes 27 years later), at the last restaurant where we actually ordered food they gave me a discount because we were making a movie. I promised all of the restaurants a VHS copy of the finished product & delivered on that promise as soon as the movie was made. I can't really imagine what they thought of it, perhaps they thought it was the worst thing they'd ever seen.

I screened the film when I went on tour in 1998 & I remember Craig Baldwin telling me, after the San Francisco screening, that I should never show it again. I didn't agree with him then & I still don't. Rewatching it I had a few LOL moments, almost in awe at how outrageously absurd it all is. It's hard to get much lower budget than this in film. It may've even been hand-processed, possibly by Mike.

For more detailed information about this movie, including the script, go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Petersons.html .

- April 16, 2022 notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

Tags: James Peterson, Dreams of Chaos Visions of Order, Peterson's Restaurant, Orgone Cinema, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, absurdism, analysis, false conclusions, low budget

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