IJ study archive

The Films of James O. Incandenza

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What this is

Endnote 24 is the novel's longest note and its single most useful reference object: "JAMES O. INCANDENZA: A FILMOGRAPHY," a scholarly catalog of the roughly seventy-eight films Incandenza made across a twelve-year career (pp. 985-993). It runs, in probable order of completion, from a thirty-second parody of a shampoo ad to Infinite Jest (V?), the lethal film at the center of the plot. Read straight through, the list doubles as a coded autobiography: the Tucson father, the marriage and its affairs, the mute youngest son, and a mounting obsession with making something entertaining enough to reach that son.

The catalog is not a neutral record, and the archive keeps its unreliability intact rather than smoothing it over. The note announces its own gaps in its opening lines: the works are hard to date (Incandenza refused formal dating and registration before Subsidized Time), they shifted format across the InterLace transition, some were "titled and subjected to critique but never filmed," and the compilers openly call the list "as complete as we are able to make it" rather than complete. Its source article was written by critics who were confederates in one of Incandenza's own hoaxes, so the straight-faced apparatus is quietly in on the joke. At least one film Hal watches elsewhere in the novel (Union of Publicly Hidden in Lynn, p. 687) is missing from the catalog altogether. Where an entry contradicts something stated elsewhere in the book, both versions are preserved here as written, with a neutral flag; the contradictions are part of what the filmography is.

The films, in the note's order

Years use the catalog's own dating: B.S. = "Before Subsidization," followed by the branded Subsidized years (YW, YTMP, YTSDB, and so on). Production companies, running times, and gauges are given only where the note itself supplies them. Films marked UNRELEASED were, per the note's key, never distributed, "publicly unavailable or lost."

Early work (Meniscus / pre-Subsidization)

  1. Cage (B.S., Meniscus). A .5-minute "soliloquized parody" of a shampoo ad shot with four convex and two planar mirrors and one actress. UNRELEASED. First entry of the Cage series. p. 986. — the Cage series
  2. Kinds of Light (B.S.). 4,444 frames of light sources reflected off a single unpolished tin plate; "disorienting at normal projection speeds." p. 986.
  3. Dark Logics (B.S.). A child-sized palsied hand turns the pages of hateful old books to deafening Wagner and Sousa. UNRELEASED. p. 986.
  4. Tennis, Everyone? A U.S.T.A./Wilson advertorial, first of a run of three tennis-world commissions (with 'There Are No Losers Here.' and Flux in a Box); day-job work. p. 986.
  5. 'There Are No Losers Here.' Documentary on the B.S. 1997 U.S.T.A. junior nationals in Kalamazoo and Miami. p. 986.
  6. Flux in a Box. A "Documentary history of box, platform, lawn, and court tennis from the 17th-century Court of the Dauphin to the present." p. 986.
  7. Infinite Jest (I) (B.S., Meniscus; Judith Fukuoka-Hearn; 90(?) min., b/w, silent). "Incandenza's unfinished and unseen first attempt at commercial entertainment." UNRELEASED. The Entertainment was the project of the whole career, not a late idea. p. 986. — the Infinite Jest series · cruxes: the Entertainment's purpose, MacGuffin design
  8. Annular Fusion Is Our Friend. A sign-interpreted infomercial explaining annular fusion for the deaf. p. 986.
  9. Annular Amplified Light: Some Reflections. Companion infomercial on cooled-photon lasers. pp. 986-987.
  10. Union of Nurses in Berkeley. p. 987.
  11. Union of Theoretical Grammarians in Cambridge. Documents the public Steven Pinker debate against Avril Incandenza at the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts convention, "credited with helping incite the M.I.T. language riots of B.S. 1997." UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION. Avril's only explicit appearance in the catalog. p. 987. — the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts

The Latrodectus Mactans years (the family films begin)

  1. Widower (B.S.; first Latrodectus Mactans entry). Cosgrove Watt as a cocaine-addicted father leading his son around a Tucson property "immolating poisonous spiders." Incandenza's own father and the family's arachnophobia, first of many Watt-as-father figures. p. 987.
  2. Cage II. A blind convict (Watt) and a deaf-mute convict (Disney Leith) share solitary confinement and "attempt to devise ways of communicating." p. 987.
  3. Death in Scarsdale. A dermatological endocrinologist (Watt) becomes platonically obsessed with a boy he is treating for excessive perspiration (Marlon Bain, whose real hyperhidrosis was cast as itself). p. 987.
  4. Fun with Teeth. A dentist performs "sixteen unanesthetized root-canal procedures" on an academic he suspects with his wife; silent, "w/ non-human screams and howls." First overt cuckold's-revenge material. p. 987.
  5. Infinite Jest (II) (B.S.; Pam Heath; 90(?) min.). "Unfinished, unseen attempt at remake of Infinite Jest (I)." UNRELEASED. p. 987. — the Infinite Jest series
  6. Immanent Domain. Three memory-neurons in polyurethane costumes fight displacement in a man's brain during psychoanalysis. p. 987.
  7. Kinds of Pain (B.S.). 2,222 stills of middle-aged white males in "almost every conceivable type" of pain. p. 987.
  8. Various Small Flames. Household flames intercut with a man (Watt) drinking bourbon in a dark bedroom while his wife (Heath) and an Amway rep have "acrobatic coitus" in the lit hallway behind him. UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION (Ed Ruscha). Spectation as paralysis. pp. 987-988. — term page · scene 177 (a scholar's identification of the flames-loop cartridge watched there — an inference, not named on the page)
  9. Cage III—Free Show (w/ Infernatron Animation). Death (Heath) fronts a sideshow whose spectators watch degradations "so grotesquely compelling" that they turn into "gigantic eyeballs in chairs." The clearest early statement of the Entertainment's mechanism. p. 988. — the Cage series · cruxes: why it kills, what it shows
  10. 'The Medusa v. the Odalisque.' Zone-plate laser holograms of "two visually lethal mythologic females" duel with mirrors onstage "while a live crowd of spectators turns to stone." Lethal-to-behold femininity and mirrors, in myth form. p. 988. — term page · scene 103 (argued over via its source myths, pp. 528-530; n.223 names the film) · scene 132 (Hal ejects a half-viewing, p. 687)
  11. The Machine in the Ghost: Annular Holography for Fun and Prophet. UNRELEASED DUE TO US/CANADIAN DIPLOMATIC TENSIONS. p. 988.
  12. Homo Duplex. Interviews with fourteen Americans named John Wayne who are not John Wayne. p. 988. — term page
  13. Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony. The Ocha-Kai conducted in a NASA zero-g chamber; cast includes the future E.T.A. janitors Otto Brandt and E. J. Kenkle. p. 988.
  14. Pre-Nuptial Agreement of Heaven and Hell (Infernatron animation). God and Satan play Tarot-card poker "for the soul of an alcoholic sandwich-bag salesman obsessed with Bernini's 'The Ecstasy of St. Teresa.'" p. 988.
  15. The Joke. Two cameras film the theater audience and project it back as the "film," so "the theater audience [watches] itself watch itself." His "first truly controversial project." NOW UNRELEASED. pp. 988-989.
  16. Various Lachrymose U.S. Corporate Middle-Management Figures. Unfinished. UNRELEASED. First of the bare tombstone entries. p. 989.
  17. Every Inch of Disney Leith. 253 minutes traversing one crew member's entire body as he sits on the Boston Common. p. 989.
  18. Infinite Jest (III). "Unfinished, unseen remake of Infinite Jest (I), (II)." UNRELEASED. p. 989. — the Infinite Jest series
  19. The Found Dramas (Found Drama I, II, III … V, VI … IX, X, XI). Each numbered run tagged only "conceptual, conceptually unfilmable. UNRELEASED." The gapped numbering (no IV, VII, VIII) is itself part of the gag; the actual joke, a dart thrown at a phone-book page to pick an unknowing "protagonist," is a grant-funded hoax explained by Orin elsewhere. pp. 989-990. — term page · scene 078 (the inception scene); joke explained at n.145, fallout at n.234

Subsidized-era work (YW onward)

  1. The Man Who Began to Suspect He Was Made of Glass (YW; first Subsidized-dated film; Watt, Gerhardt Schtitt). A man in therapy "discovers that he is brittle, hollow, and transparent to others, and becomes either transcendentally enlightened or schizophrenic." p. 989.
  2. The American Century as Seen Through a Brick (YW). One brick's career through waste-displacement and the anti-O.N.A.N. riots. p. 989.
  3. The ONANtiad (YW; Infernatron claymation). An "oblique, obsessive, and not very funny claymation love triangle" set against the founding of North American Interdependence. The direct parent of Mario's annual E.T.A. puppet pageant. p. 989. — term page · scene 081 (Mario's remake)
  4. The Universe Lashes Out. Documentary on the evacuation of Atkinson NH at Reconfiguration. p. 989.
  5. Poultry in Motion. Renegade turkey farmers commandeer "long, shiny O.N.A.N. trucks" to save over 200,000 Thanksgiving fowl. pp. 989-990.
  6. Möbius Strips (YW). A pornography parody: a physicist who has mathematical insight only during coitus "conceives of Death as a lethally beautiful woman (Heath)." p. 990.
  7. Wave Bye-Bye to the Bureaucrat (YW). Possible parody of the LDS public-service cycle; "a harried commuter is mistaken for Christ by a child he knocks over." One of the few entries with a flicker of grace, and one Hal returns to. p. 990. — term page · scene 132 (Hal's repeat viewing, p. 687)
  8. Blood Sister: One Tough Nun (YTMP; InterLace pulse-dissemination 21 July YTMP). A revenge-genre parody: "a formerly delinquent nun's (Hurley's) failure to reform a juvenile delinquent (Chumm) leads to a rampage of recidivist revenge." Gets a full E.T.A. viewing in the main text. p. 990. — term page · scenes 138, 140
  9. Infinite Jest (IV) (YTMP; Pam Heath(?), 'Madame Psychosis'(?); 90 min.(?)). First appearance of Joelle's stage-name credit in the catalog. "Unfinished, unseen attempt at completion of Infinite Jest (III)." UNRELEASED. p. 990. — the Infinite Jest series · Madame Psychosis
  10. Let There Be Lite (first Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited entry). Unfinished documentary on reduced-calorie bourbon; the alcoholism now in the subject matter, the death's-head in the new company name. p. 990. — Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited
  11. [Untitled. Unfinished. UNRELEASED.] p. 990.
  12. No Troy (YW; also catalogued as The Violet City and The Violet Ex-City). A 7-minute holographic model of Troy NY's bombardment by miscalibrated W.D.V.s and its later erasure by O.N.A.N. cartographers; released only in Canada. One film under several names. p. 990.
  13. [Untitled. Unfinished. UNRELEASED.] p. 990.
  14. Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed (YTMP). A boy helps "his alcoholic-delusional father and disassociated mother dismantle their bed to search for rodents," then intuits the feasibility of annular fusion. Incandenza's own childhood and career-origin myth. (As printed, the entry is listed "silent," but Hal at p. 687 describes it as "all a monologue"; both are preserved as written.) p. 990. — term page · scenes 099, 132
  15. Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators (YTMP). "Children and adolescents play a nearly incomprehensible nuclear strategy game with tennis equipment." Eschaton existed first as a film subject. p. 990. — scene 073
  16. Stand Behind the Men Behind the Wire (YTMP). Documentary on the expedition to "track, verify, capture, or propitiate the outsized feral infant" of Lowell. pp. 990-991. — the feral Infant
  17. As of Yore (YTMP; Watt, Marlon Bain; 181 min.). "A middle-aged tennis instructor … becomes intoxicated in the family's garage and subjects his son to a rambling monologue while the son weeps and perspires." A near-verbatim transposition of Incandenza's father's garage monologue. p. 991. — term page · scene 049
  18. The Clever Little Bastard. Unfinished tombstone entry. p. 991.
  19. The Cold Majesty of the Numb. Unfinished. Anhedonia avant la lettre. p. 991.
  20. Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available Space With Mind-Boggling Efficiency. "Unfinished due to hospitalization." The title Hal's late first-person sections reach for. p. 991. — term page
  21. Low-Temperature Civics (YTMP). A Wyler parody: four sons intrigue for a sandwich-bag conglomerate after their CEO father (Watt) "has an ecstatic encounter with Death ('Psychosis') and becomes irreversibly catatonic." The Entertainment's plot in corporate drag. p. 991. — Madame Psychosis
  22. (At Least) Three Cheers for Cause and Effect (YTMP). "The headmaster of a newly constructed high-altitude sports academy" litigates to distract himself "from his wife's (Heath's) poorly hidden affair" with the project's architect ('Rection'). E.T.A.'s founding plus Avril's affairs, undisguised. p. 991.
  23. (The) Desire to Desire (YTMP). "A pathology resident (Lingley) falls in love with a beautiful cadaver ('Psychosis')" and her paralyzed sister. p. 991. — Madame Psychosis
  24. Safe Boating Is No Accident (YTMP(?)). A water-ski instructor whose fiancée's ('Psychosis''s) "face is grotesquely mangled by an outboard propeller" is trapped in an elevator with, among others, a defrocked Trappist, two LDS missionaries, and "seven severely intoxicated opticians with silly hats and exploding cigars." The mangled-face fiancée pre-figures the Joelle-disfigurement question. pp. 991-992. — Madame Psychosis
  25. Very Low Impact (YTMP). A narcoleptic aerobics instructor (Chumm) hiding her condition. The catalog's one POSTHUMOUS RELEASE (YWQMD). p. 992.
  26. The Night Wears a Sombrero (YTMP(?)). A Rancho Notorious parody: a nearsighted cowpoke's Oedipal revenge plot ends at a ranch where gunslingers are "ritually blinded by a mysterious veiled nun ('Psychosis')." Veil, blinding-to-behold, and Oedipal grievance fused. p. 992. — Madame Psychosis
  27. Accomplice! (YTMP; Watt, Stokely 'Dark Star' McNair). "An aging pederast mutilates himself out of love for a strangely tattooed street hustler." Withdrawn after Cartridge Scene reviewers called it "… the stupidest, nastiest, least subtle and worst-edited product of a pretentious and wretchedly uneven career." Hal puzzles over it in the main text. p. 992. — term page · scene 179
  28. [Three consecutive Untitled. Unfinished. UNRELEASED. entries.] The late collapse rendered typographically. p. 992.

Last work (YTSDB / Poor Yorick)

  1. Dial C for Concupiscence (YTSDB). A Bresson-tribute noir parody ending with the heroine in love with "an armless Near Eastern medical attaché" (Chawaf). An eerie pre-echo of the Entertainment's first on-page victim. p. 992.
  2. Insubstantial Country (YTSDB). An unpopular filmmaker (Watt) "either suffers a temporal lobe seizure and becomes mute or else is the victim of everyone else's delusion" that he has. p. 992.
  3. It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him (YTSDB; Watt, Smothergill; 5 min.). "A father (Watt), suffering from the delusion that his etymologically precocious son (Smothergill) is pretending to be mute, poses as a 'professional conversationalist' in order to draw the boy out." An early scene of the novel, filmed; the title is the family's epitaph. p. 992. — term page · scene 005
  4. Cage IV—Web. Unfinished. p. 992. — the Cage series
  5. Cage V—Infinite Jim. Unfinished. The title fuses the Cage series, the Infinite Jest series, and Incandenza's own name. p. 992. — the Cage series
  6. Death and the Single Girl. Unfinished. p. 992.
  7. The Film Adaptation of Peter Weiss's 'The Persecution and Assassination of Marat …' (YTSDB). Incandenza's only on-screen credit as himself: a "chemically impaired director (Incandenza)" wrecks the play-within-a-play, "Death ('Psychosis') descends deus ex machina," and Incandenza "becomes ill all over the theater audience's first row." UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION, HOSPITALIZATION. pp. 992-993. — Madame Psychosis
  8. Too Much Fun. Unfinished. p. 993.
  9. The Unfortunate Case of Me. Unfinished. p. 993.
  10. Sorry All Over the Place. Unfinished. These last three unfinished titles read as a three-line suicide note. p. 993.
  11. Infinite Jest (V?) (YTSDB, Poor Yorick; sole credit 'Madame Psychosis'; "no other definitive data"). His last film; he died during its post-production. Most authorities list it unfinished and unseen; some file it under the prior year as a completion of Infinite Jest (IV). "Though no scholarly synopsis or report of viewing exists," two essays call it "extraordinary" and "far and away [his] most entertaining and compelling work" (praise with no surviving witnesses). West Coast archivists infer a gauge of "16 … 78 … n mm." from allusions to "radical experiments in viewers' optical perspective and context." One Canadian archivist (Tête-Bêche) lists it completed and privately distributed; everyone else records the Master cartridge as "either destroyed or vaulted sui testator." This is the Entertainment. p. 993. — the Infinite Jest series, the Entertainment, the samizdat, Madame Psychosis · scenes 007, 011, 014, 025 (the first victim), 107 (the government dossier, p. 549), 062, 159 (Molly Notkin's theories); see section 3 below

The Entertainment (Infinite Jest (V?)) and the master copy

The film that ends the filmography is the same object the rest of the novel is chasing: the fatally captivating cartridge, also called the samizdat, whose viewers lose all will to do anything but watch it again. The filmography catalogs it and shrugs, which is the point. Everything the archive can and cannot settle about it lives in the crux cluster rather than being re-argued here:

Fuller life-and-career context sits in the threads James O. Incandenza — Life and Death and Jim's Filmography & the Entertainment.