Making a Living

In these three short films, we examine key issues in the American cultural conversation—incarceration, race, life, death, digital culture, gender—through a distorted lens. They may be fictional, but these dizzying one-take videos do have the ring of truth.

One evening, in his apartment in Paris, Lorenzo is getting ready to receive Marvin for the first time, a boy he really likes. Marvin shows up at the door with Thomas, a homeless man he met on the street in need of a shower. Lorenzo doesn’t dare say no.

A meek young man must find the courage within when a rogue tramp menaces his hometown.

A hapless young man living in New York City rallies to save his girlfriend's grandfather's horse-drawn trolley, the last in the city, from being put out of business by a railroad company.

When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.

A 10-year-old boy is thrust into the tumultuous world of puberty when he gets a new pair of eyeglasses.

Josh doesn't like the way things go at home and decides to quit and get out. Later, his wife gets what purports to be his farewell letter, which is intended to lead her to believe he has committed suicide. He, however, goes to New York to have a good time, and he does, "by gosh." The wife, believing herself a widow, makes a trip to New York with her admirer. Well, you may guess the rest.

Phineas and Ferb team up with the Avengers to save the world from Dr. Doofenshmirtz and a group of dangerous supervillains.

A tramp gets drunk in a hotel lobby and, upstairs, causes some misunderstandings between Mabel, two hotel guests across the hall from her room, and Mabel's visiting sweetheart.

Three men compete for the attentions of a pretty girl. One of them, a little tramp, plays dirty.

Charlie plays an actor who bungles several scenes and is kicked out. He returns convincingly dressed as a lady and charms the director, but Charlie never makes it into the film.

The hero, a janitor played by Chaplin, is fired from work for accidentally knocking his bucket of water out the window and onto his boss the chief banker (Tandy). Meanwhile, one of the junior managers (Dillon) is being threatened with exposure by his bookie for gambling debts unpaid. Thus the manager decides to steal from the company.

After being unjustly attacked, a cook goes on a killing spree.

Madcap couple George and Marion Kerby are killed in an automobile accident. They return as ghosts to try and liven up the regimented lifestyle of their friend and bank president, Cosmo Topper. When Topper starts to live it up, it strains relations with his stuffy wife.

A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.

Lots of places connected through one object, the TV. In the beginning that’s just a coincidence, but as the rhythm of the music increases so does the connection.

Mr. Snookie steals an umbrella and then, while trying to help a woman to cross a puddle, the Tramp appears and intervenes.

This early Chaplin film has him playing a character quite different from the Tramp for which he would become famous. He is a rich, upper-class gentleman whose romance is endangered when his girlfriend oversees him being embraced by a maid. Chaplin's romantic interest in this film, Minta Durfee, was the wife of fellow Keystone actor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

Pierre and Jacques are working as waiters at a restaurant where the cooks go on strike. When the two are forced to work as bakers, the striking cooks put dynamite in the dough, with explosive results.

The Tramp interferes with the celebration of several kid auto races in Venice, California (Junior Vanderbilt Cup Race, January 10 and 11, 1914), standing himself in the way of the cameraman who is filming the event.