Acting
When a San Francisco librarian decided to produce a filmed remake of the Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat, a large number of actors and aspiring performers auditioned. The auditions, which included performances by nudists, tap-dancing nuns, and turtles were later televised, and this film includes that footage as well as interviews with the performers.
A MAN, A WOMAN, AND A KILLER is the story of a small-time gangster (Dick Richardson) writing his journal in a Mendocino, California, farmhouse, as he awaits a hit man who is coming to kill him. In this first part of a trilogy, realities continue to shift between the story, and the actual making of the film, as seen through unscripted scenes, real-life narrations by lead actors, and the real relationship that developed on the set between Richardson and the actress (Carolyn Zaremba) who played his girlfriend. A bumbling, local librarian (played by Ed Nylund) is mistaken for the "killer" and plays along with the game.
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.
