Filmmakers Insult Our Intelligence With "Carrot-Bird"

(from The New England Guardian, May 9, 1997. Reprinted with permission.)

by Bobby Pinchot

In the sudden flurry of popularity in the cult-film world for the tiny film known as "Carrot-Bird," one overlooks many points about the film. One such point is the fact that the film was made with no budget in perhaps an hour. No academic who claims to have found a deeper meaning within the pointless silliness in the film can deny the sheer lack of preparation involved. Two men, Messrs. Tony Paglia and Jay Turner, both promising young artists in their own right, got together, found an attractive tree, and created this film about the tree. With this tree omnipresent in the background, the two ham it up, dancing and singing and proclaiming words of worship to the tree. Certainly the silliness is bearable, perhaps even charming, in the beginning, but after about twenty minutes the film begins to drag, and one realizes that there are perhaps another fifteen minutes to go. Why does the film drag, you may wonder?

It is not because there is no plot. Whether the film was pre-written or not, there is a plot. The two young men, played by Paglia and Turner, seek an identification with the beautiful tree before them. The silliness in the film begins when Mr. Turner's character, also refered to as "Jay," posits that the tree is not a tree, but a bird. This begins the segment that many have claimed must reflect upon issues of religious, moral or internal questing, but which I would offer is but a segment of brainless tomfoolery, devoid of any meaning beyond that which is seen onscreen.

Therefore, since there seems to be a plot, the reason the film drags on must be deeper. Yes. "Carrot-Bird" is many things, but what it is not is intellectually fulfilling. Even the oft-derided "Die Hard" films carry within them a message, something that the audience can take away from the film and apply to their every day life. "Carrot-Bird," while full of sound-bites and chuckles, carries no such inner meaning, and so it falls flat as an article or popular media. Anyone who watches the film without any prior knowledge of the film can see that. The thoughts of those who insist that the film holds a deeper meaning behind the excessively-silly exterior can be considered valid, but this reviewer was unable to see such. I found myself watching a film which is on the surface fairly entertaining, but beneath the surface the film was as shallow as a wading pool. Unforgivable in our age of throw-away sitcoms and disposable entertainment.

Yes, something in me was entertained by "Carrot-Bird." And it does include all the elements of a successful cult-film. But to those of us who yearn for more from our entertainment than simple fluff and condescending simplicity, "Carrot-Bird" falls short. If this is the shape of things to come, I think I prefer to spend my Friday evenings curled up with my cat and a Humphrey Bogart movie. The "Carrot-Bird," as they say in the film, is dead.