Here Laverents refines the idea to show himself taking advantage of the perfect Christmas gift from his wife: a reel-to-reel recorder. Starting off with whistling and a ukulele, he performs the song "Nola" and multiplies on the screen up to eleven times (sometimes sporting Mickey Mouse ears) with other instruments including a banjo, glass bottles, and a Jew's harp. He worked on the film over four years as part of the San Diego Amateur Film Club, where it proved so impressive it was booked into other underground festivals at the start of the decade. The effects were not only impressive at the time but still remarkable, achieved entirely in-camera on his 16mm Bolex.
The genesis of Laverents' experiments wasn't too far off from the one depicted in the film. As he recalled in an oral history with UCLA, "Well my wife bought me a projector - the Roberts Recorder, and about that time Les Paul and his wife Mary were quite popular. They had found out that they could make a combination on a tape, that he could play his guitar, and play the tape back and play another brand of something else that would fit along with that and end up with a thing that sounded like a guitar orchestra... He was going around the theaters and making quite a deal, and I thought, he does that, why can't I do that with pictures along with it? So that's what I actually did, was to work out a way to make the pictures. First I made the soundtrack on tape, I did back and forth between the two signals, the two tracks on the tape. I'd get this one perfect and then I'd add another one, listen to that, and at the same time record another track with it. I did that up to 12 times on this tape. I was amazed that it worked."
Laverents' film took on a new life in 2000 when film scholar Melinda Stone suggested the film to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, where it was accepted alongside a prestigious list of Hollywood features. The surprising choice sparked a renewed interest in the film, which was deeded to and restored by the UCLA Film & TV Archive after Laverents passed away in 2009. In addition to this film, he left behind a diverse body of other work including a whimsical educational short, "Snails and How They Walk," an autobiography, and an ambitious four-part documentary, The Sid Saga, completed shortly before the renaissance of Multiple SIDosis.
Laverents finally made the film available only via VHS to the public for a limited time in the early 2000s, but it has never enjoyed a wide commercial release in any format. However, the saga of Laverents as a DIY filmmaker (who really only started at the age of 50) has given the film an enduring charm with its technical accomplishments still baffling many in the digital age.
By Nathaniel Thompson
