Rubber Johnny


Rubber Johnny is a 2005 British experimental short film/music video written, directed, and produced by Chris Cunningham.

Plot

The film, entirely presented in infrared vision, starts with an out-of-focus closeup of Johnny, babbling incomprehensibly while being interviewed by an unseen man. At one point Johnny mumbles the word "ma-ma" twice, after which the man asks if he wants his mother to come in. This causes Johnny to start breathing erratically and lose control, so the man gives Johnny a sedative injection to calm him down.
The video cuts to a fluorescent light turning on, then a mouse crawling over a press-sticker credits list, followed by the title, "Rubber Johnny", which is shown written on a condom, in a backwards-playing scene of it being pulled off a penis.
Johnny is first seen leaning backward in his wheelchair with his oversized head hanging over the back of it. As the Aphex Twin track's intro, distortions of a male voice begin to play, and Johnny moves his mouth in time with the vocalizations. After this begins the main electronic rhythm of the track, which Johnny begins to follow while his dog watches. His dancing involves him performing balancing tricks with his wheelchair, and deflecting light beams with his hands as he dances.
About a minute into the video the music stops, a door opens and he is interrupted by someone who appears to be his father. During this, Johnny is out of his delusion and is shown sitting upright in the wheelchair, turning to look. His father is heard yelling at him indistinctly, a slap to Johnny's face is implied, and the man slams the door.
After he leaves, Johnny is seen insufflating a large line of cocaine. After this, the video becomes even more erratic and delusional. First there's a period in which the music comes to a standstill, and Johnny is first heard screaming in the dark and then hiding behind a door, avoiding white light beams, while his dog watches. Then the music goes into a distorted version of the one in the first passage of the video. Nearing the end of the video, it appears as if it was filmed from behind a glass, with Johnny's face seen repeatedly getting smashed into it, and each time chunks of his face are seen articulating the vocals in the song.
After this, he is interrupted a second time by his yelling father, after which the video ends with Johnny, once again, reclining back in his wheelchair and babbling at his chihuahua.
The credits roll over a night scene of a train passing in the distance.

Release

Home media

Rubber Johnny was released on DVD by Warp on June 20th, and July 12th 2005. The latter release included a 40 page book on the film.

Reception

Pascal Wyse of The Guardian referred to it as "virtuosic grossness", stating, "there is more fleeting shock than real haunting. Perhaps, in all the synaptic mayhem, there is just no room for the viewer to contact their own demons." Treble.com listed the film in its "10 Terrifying Music Videos", calling it "both hilarious and terrifying".