Arthur Halpern | Futures (and Derivatives) / 2007

redecorating the power point talk

by Douglas Messerli

 

Arthur Halpern (screenwriter and director) Futures (and Derivatives) / 2007 [18 minutes]

 

Marty Simko’s (Bill Barnett) agency is clearly on a spiral downwards, one of the biggest accounts not even willing to meet with him as he seeks for more “personal” attention, which actually means he’s on the lookout for a larger agency with more know-how. Marty’s assistants, Roger (Kelly Miller) and Gordon (Vin Knight) haven’t a clue about the more sophisticated procedures his client is seeking, Roger spending hours in his office consulting, instead, his Magic 8 Ball, remind me a little of the business executive in Eric Muller’s This Car Up (2003)—although he was consulting his magic ball for something far more tangible, a boyfriend.

 

   Nonetheless, Marty begs successfully with a meeting with the big honcho, Wally Beauchamp (Peter Picard).

     Since this company isn’t even hooked up for a powerpoint demonstration, the secretary Adele Lenz (Cam Kornman) calls in an outsider, Elliott (Mark Hervey), who’s given a single night to work out some sort of hookup and plan.

      Elliott, the most unlikely looking of techies, arrives and gets immediately to work, doing exactly what is anybody’s guess. He’s assigned to Roger, clearly a gay man, whose only instruction to the computer whiz is “make it sing.”

      Adele wishes him goodnight, and Roger telephones in just to check up, as Elliott begins by drawing parallel pink lines on a Post-it notepad, hardly what seems as a good omen for a campaign to sell the business expertise of this failing company.

    It is now morning, Marty, Roger, and Gordon, dressed in their very best business suits, pacing the meeting room, with still no Elliott in sight. Beauchamp and his spokesman arrive. After a passing around of a plate of cookies and a few tense moments, Elliott finally arrives with disk in hand.

      Adele puts on her rain cap, perhaps a prediction of the meeting and an indication where she feels she might be heading. Roger pushes in the disk and Marty reads the headings, “A presentation for Prospex Financial.”

      As Marty begins his speech in front the screen, the others look on with confusion at the images being projected, a sky of clouds, a cup of coffee, a line-up of bones, all clearly suggesting trouble ahead. Suddenly a butterfly appears on the screen; another, and in quick multiplication numerous others quickly regenerating into a proliferation of color. We can’t see what’s on the screen, but from the faces of the boardroom audience it’s apparently transformative.

      We get a clue of their wonderment when a secretary peeks in on the room where Elliott worked, which is filled with multicolored paper mobiles in all shapes and forms, a joyful space of paper

banners, colored tabs pasted together as flowers and other colorful creative expressions more abstract.

       Whatever was in the unseen computer presentation, we are made to perceive that it has completely transformed all the viewers’ lives—as suddenly Adele lifts the blinds to look out upon the setting sun and goes home to sit, hand-in-hand, with her husband, Marty looks anew at his portly figure, Beauchamp lays out in his red-hued hotel room bed enjoying one of the pieces of complimentary chocolate candy beside him, Roger wondrously experiences the luster of New York’s night lights (you just know he’ll be going out to a gay bar to enjoy the company of others), and Gordon is seen stroking the chest of his gay lover.

 

     This is not an LGBTQ film—although Elliott is clearly some sort of genius fairy queen who is clearly able to “redecorate” the Power Point talk—but a film about looking for the beauty around us every day. Whether or not that sells clients on investments, I have no idea, but the futures (and derivatives) certainly do look to be positive.

        If this film is more than a bit hazy regarding its narrative, it’s made quite delightful through its colorful images and its positive spiritual outlook.

 

Los Angeles, May 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).