Cube Variation began as an animating challenge to make objects rotate in mid air. I like what happened, so I developed the film in the form of a fugue. The theme (rotation) and its variations (knife, cube, head, knife/head/cube, red head) with interruptions (“Stop! Stop! Stop!” and “I don’t want to think about it”). The pleading text echoes the text in Water/Breath (“Make it go away”).

One audience member at the Northwest Filmmaker’s Festival wrote the NW Film Center complaining about this film because they thought it could actually cause a person to go crazy. Here’s his comment: ”

“I think it was a great mistake to show Larence Johson’s [sic] film CUBE VARIATIONS Sunday night. NWFC was evidently not thinking of the large percentage of mentally ill people now in our general population. (and the fact that 80 out of 100 Americans now own guns.) This is not a film they should ever view. The first question asked of the filmmakers after the showing was to him and why he had made it, and all he talked about was practising [sic] rotation of animated drawings, never the awful related titles in red that constantly flashed on the screen over them! The man has his own mental problems.”

So please put away your guns before viewing.

Cube Variations: