I don’t remember the title or the name of the filmmaker.

The production values were quite high, with many gorgeously green overhead shots of open fields edged with mist, obviously taken from a helicopter. The film itself was completely incomprehensible to me and rather repellant, though I did maintain a mild interest in the main character, a goat man apparently in the thrall of three beefy eunuchs with pink hair. We first encountered him tap-dancing in a dock house, while two racers tore across the English countryside with something vaguely gray and greasy oozing out of their overalls.

After tap-dancing a hole through the dock-house floor, the goat man fell into the ocean and continuted tap dancing on its sandy bottom, kicking up filmy clouds of silt.

The racers paused to have one of the eunuchs put a pink, phallic-looking wheel on the car and then, after some reflection, remove it.

Audiences at the Art Institute have a high tolerance for the avant-garde, but after about 45 minutes I could sense people getting restless. There were quie a few walk-outs, and I began hearing feet shuffling and throats clearing as the movie went on and on.

I looked over at Michael. He was slumped back in his seat, his eyes closed, his breath deep and regular.

Onscreen, the goat man had found some sort of secret passageway under the ocean and was crawling through it, becoming more and more enmeshed in white foam. The audience shuffled and cleared their throats. I dreaded what might happen if Michael began to snore.

He did not open his eyes until the final scene, a close-up which I will not describe except to say it caused a lot of men in the audience to groan and reflexively gesture towards their crotch. Michael, his eyes bulging, stared at the screen trying to make sense of where he was, what he was seeing, and what the Hell was going on.

The credits began to roll, some in the audience clapped rather defiantly. The rest sprang to their feet with barely concealed relief.

I had seen films at the Art Institute that were stranger and less interesting, but those were usually very low-budget by filmmakers who were obviously struggling. The hostile reception might have been a reaction to the director having so much money to burn.