a story about chasing a hat

• The background helps tell this story. Throughout the film, couples in the background are staring into each other’s eyes, having picnics, slow-dancing, holding hands, sipping wine at outdoor cafes, proposing to each other, pushing each other on swings, running across fields toward each other, etc.
• Although the protagonist never speaks, this is not a silent movie. Lots of sounds going on.

 

The story opens with a continuous camera shot. The camera is looking up at a tree rattled by the wind. It’s a windy day.

The camera finally looks down. We’re on a street in a town. The breeze blows leaves along the road. A man in a hat emerges from a door.

The man walks down the sidewalk, passing buildings. The camera follows alongside him, not too close.

The man passes a couple passionately embracing. The wind blows the woman’s hair.

He passes a young boy and girl walking together, holding hands.

He passes a newspaper stand. In stark letters a headline reads “Last Day On Earth.”

He passes a man on one knee, proposing to a woman with a ring made of tinfoil.

He passes an electronic store with TVs in the window. The TVs are tuned to news channels. The camera pauses to focus upon one of them. The newscaster seems agitated, and the ticker reads “Meteor arrives tonight at 7:00 PM Eastern.” A graphic depicts a big flaming rock.

The camera hurries back to catch up with the man. He is still walking somewhere.

Oops! The wind blows the man’s hat off his head. He chases after it but accidentally kicks it, sending it further away.

This begins a series of progressively wild and then surrealistic scenes in which the poor fellow tries to capture his hat. It rolls down a flight of stairs onto a subway track, up an escalator, down an alleyway with mobsters, into the gorilla cage at the zoo, through the middle of a ninja battle in China Town, up a Ferris Wheel, onto a rocket that is preparing to launch. These scenes are filled with physical comedy. At each step of the way the man risks his life to grab the hat and fails. He gets a bit throttled in the process.

Throughout the man’s adventures, a mysterious woman keeps appearing – in the window of a passing train, outside the enclosure at the zoo, and so on. They’re never able to talk, but whenever she appears she tries to help him.

One of his adventures leads him onto a crane at a construction site. The crew is evacuating just as the man arrives. The crane is starting to collapse. Rivets are popping out and the metal groans.

The man walks on the arm of the crane at perilous heights to take his hat from a hawk. He steps over a construction worker’s radio. The radio is tuned to an interview program. The interview plays in the background while the man negotiates with death to reach his hat. At one point an expert on the radio says, “People everywhere are choosing who they want to spend their final moments with.” (So that’s what’s going on with all those couples in the background!)

The hawk releases the hat and it falls to the earth. The man races down to it.

Finally, after all of these escapades, the man is on the verge of reaching the hat. He is at a desolate train station near a cliff. From this point until the end, the story is once again told in a single continuous shot.

The hat teeters on the thorn of a cactus on the edge of the cliff. It quivers in the wind.

The man creeps toward it carefully. Surely he has it now. He smiles. A train rolls into the station behind him, out of focus at first.

The woman is in the window of the train. She is the only one on board. She is surprised to see him. She places her hand on the window. “I’ve been trying to find you,” she says. “My name is—”

An automated announcement warns that the doors are about to close.

The man looks back and forth between the hat and the train. He sighs. He makes his choice. He rushes for the train and hops on board just as the doors close.

The man and woman speak to each other, but we cannot hear them through the doors.

They approach each other. The man takes the woman into his arms and they kiss. The train leaves the station. The camera watches the train go. The train shrinks into the distance, finally disappearing into a tunnel.

But the story isn’t over. When the train is gone, the camera pans back to the hat. There it is still, on the cactus. A gust of wind blows it over the edge of the cliff. The camera follows.

The hat falls onto the nose of the rocket from earlier in the story. The rocket is launching.

The rocket blasts off into the sky. The hat shakes violently. The rocket passes clouds and reaches space.

The engine stops. The hat falls off the rocket and tumbles through the void. The camera spins around it at first, but gradually settles as the hat goes still.

The hat begins to glow in an orange light. Something bright is approaching.

A flaming meteor appears, heading right for the hat and for Earth.

Suddenly, the hat blows in a gust of solar wind.

The meteor turns away from Earth and chases the hat out into the solar system.

 

The End