I Watched "Creating Rem Lezar" Every Day for One Week
Well, something has to be the best movie ever made.
Editor’s Note: This week’s article is a particularly long one, and our intrepid critic—poor Mr. Tich—needs a rest. I’ve been told by those close to him that he, by his own admission, has not slept in nine days. I’ve also been informed that he does not want to go to sleep. Says there is something “watching him from the inside.” I’m not entirely sure what that means. In any case, we will be taking a week off next week to allow Horace to get the break that he—whether he likes it or not—requires.
What if I told you that our collective itchy search for the pinnacle of human cultural achievement was not only over, but that it concluded in 1988? What if I told you that we could be on our way toward the utopic end to media as we know it, just so long as we choose to embrace the only media object worth preserving? What if I told you that there is some dim blink of hope remaining in the continuously burning surface world that we inhabit and which—if it is not actively killing us in the literal sense—is on the verge of crushing the human spirit under the sheer weight of valorized stupidity (this is not a political statement, as we’ve already become the stupid we never realized we would come to hate, and this is neither hyperbole nor discriminatory: there is no single human being left who can lay claim to non-stupidity)? What if I told you that I have designed the only technology that will save us? It involves an isolation pod, a VHS player that runs red hot, and an AV-to-HDMI cable that connects to the port at the nape of your neck so that your OLED eyeball layer can properly source the content of said fire-adjacent VHS player.1 Once we all port-in to the same media hub, then we can finally divorce ourselves from this breathing Hellscape that we’ve been erroneously calling “life” and enter into the glorious Creation that we never deserved: Rem Lezar.
I am happy to report that I have finished preliminary tests of the isolation pod (tentative title: the Lezar Laser Machine, or LLM for short). It works great! I spent the last seven days strapped into the pod, consuming the almighty text itself on loop. I stepped out this morning, and as I write this the pruning is already disappearing from my fingertips! My bladder has also felt constantly full since I got out, but I can’t seem to relieve myself…it also feels a bit hot…does that make sense…my insides feel hot…
No matter. There are more important things to discuss. Namely, the Creating Rem Lezar of the title. Creating Rem Lezar is the text which will usher in our new utopia (if we only let it guide us). And I am here to break the film down, scene by scene, as a primer for what you can expect when you purchase your very own LLM model from your local industrial-grade appliance wholesaler (exciting!!!)
Day 1: This is my Rem Lezar. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We should probably begin with the obvious question: What is a Rem Lezar? Well, he’s a guy. Kind of. And he’s an imaginary friend to children everywhere. Maybe. And he watches you while you’re sleeping…waiting for your REM cycle to begin so he may feed on your dreams…
OK, maybe let’s put a pin in the obvious question.
Creating Rem Lezar is a VHS oddity from the late-1980s. The film—designed to be a harmless piece of light children’s video entertainment—circulated on home media (meaning it had a distributor and financiers and carriage deals with rental stores…what a Wild West the VHS era was). It circled a drain of obscurity until it was rediscovered by the Internet freakazoids in the 2010s.
Zach wants to take “a trip to an unknown land.” In his daydreams, he calls out to Rem Lezar, a shadowy figure in the black void space that is Zach’s imagination, pleading for this grown man to take him away from the humdrum daily routine of schoolwork and chores. Instead, he is awarded with a trip to the principal’s office (how dare he have the gall to exercise creative thinking skills in a classroom!). Traipsing lazily through a horrific liminal space school hallway, he sings that when he dreams, he dreams of a dream. He stares off at the ceiling of this puke green scholastic hellscape, desperately hoping for a glimpse of a knight in spandex armor: Rem Lezar. When Lezar does appear, he is shrouded in mist like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, stalking slowly behind Zach. Is he a guardian angel? Or a dangerous Freddy Krueger-like predator waiting for his chance to prey on this young boy’s naivete? The implications are truly horrifying.
“Part of the joy I get from this boy,” Rem Lezar sings, “is his innocent laugh and style.” Zach’s teacher stands protectively between Lezar and Zach, as Lezar croons from a desk.
The school principal clearly does not understand Zach’s creative spirit. Something dark is happening in the principal’s life, it is clear. Zach asks if the principal has any children, and the man pretends as though his children do not exist. “I like to think that all of the students in this school are my children,” he says, while Zach spies the picture of his actual children on the desk. Zach knows he won’t be able to convince the principal to see reason.
Meanwhile, another student, Ashlee, is also seeing visions of a strange Übermensch. Zach and Ashlee have the same imaginary friend, a Rem Lezar of their dreams. In art class, the two discover that the same grown man comes to them in their dreams with promises to take them away from their families and onto a magical adventure through unknown worlds. They decide to work together to build their friend from inanimate objects, to build him “just like their fantasy.” Inside their “Rem Lezar clubhouse,” they cobble together a Frankenstein’s monster, a life-size clay doll decked in blue and wearing a golden headband. And like Frosty the Snowman, the doll comes to life when adorned with the staple of Rem Lezar’s costume: the Quixotic Medallion. Through the sheer willpower of Belief, the Medallion emerges on Rem Lezar’s breastplate, and…lightning bolt. The Monster awakens. Hark, he sings:
“At last, your fantasy’s for real, created from your dreams. You believed with all your might. I’ll tuck you in tonight.”
He takes the children under his arms, and the journey begins. The children, effectively, are kidnapped.
The problem—aside from the kidnapping, which really is not addressed—is that Rem Lezar doesn’t have the Quixotic Medallion around his neck. Without the Medallion, Rem Lezar will perish come nightfall. This is because night is Vorock’s realm. Vorock, the thing of nightmares (literally, but also just look at it), is the villain of the picture. Vorock hopes the children fail to locate the Quixotic Medallion, I assume because once Rem Lezar dies Vorock’s going to consume their souls. At the very least, he endeavors to live inside the fears of all living beings on Earth. Rem Lezar, I guess, is the only thing preventing this from happening (because…he is the light?)
The Quixotic Medallion exists at the highest point that one can fathom. The children (because they have tiny child brains) believe that this means a tall mountain, or the Twin Towers. But the highest place is the love in one’s heart…or something like that. Rem Lezar tells them that love is contagious, and that they’ve caught it, insinuating that they have won the day. But this doesn’t keep Rem Lezar from returning to doll form. Nevertheless, like Flava Flav, Ashlee and Zack have big gold medallions on their necks when the police return them to their respective parents. The parents are, rightfully, confused; they ask where on earth the medallion came from. The kids are cryptic and cagey, never giving a real answer to the question.
Regardless of how the parents feel about their children mysteriously disappearing for 24 hours and returning with jewelry gifted to them by an unknown stranger, the viewer is assured in the end that Rem Lezar lives on. He is in our hearts, and in our dreams, in our deepest fantasies. This is our Rem Lezar.
Day 2: My Rem Lezar is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Creating Rem Lezar introduces us first to Zach, priming us to think of him as the main character. But what about Ashlee, the other young girl plagued with visions of the Unholy One? We first get to know Ashlee in her home life, where she is harshly scolded by her mother for having an imaginary friend. In this story world, imagination is forbidden, I think. It’s the most logical explanation.
Ashlee’s mother pays lip service to the idea that imagination can be a good thing, but almost immediately she lashes out to the contrary: “My patience is wearing thin with this nonsense!” She insists that Ashlee show her the imaginary friend, which Ashlee is unable to do. Seemingly, this mother character’s patience and anger would subside if it were proven that Rem Lezar were real, as opposed to merely in Ashlee’s tiny little child brain, where he does nothing valuable to the greater society. Imagination, for whatever reason, is a hot button issue in this world (more on this later).
After giving her this verbal lashing (and Ashlee’s younger sister observes with a look of fear), Ashlee’s mother sends her to her room. Ashlee sings a somber song about the polar pulls of light and dark. Her mental state is evidently in turmoil:
“When I’m feeling lonely; can’t hear a sound2 / All I see surrounding me is blackness all around / Far away, slip into the night / Falling away, from the safety of the light.”
She stares, dead behind the eyes, at the ceiling. Just as Zach does in the hallway, she listlessly watches for something to enter into her world and save her from a deep, interminable darkness.
Rem Lezar does, indeed, come to Ashlee as she sings the summoning song: “Fa-an-tasy!” He replies: “My Li-i-it-le One!”
Ashlee’s face is completely blank, emotionless. It is unclear if she is even excited to see her imaginary friend appear. Yet she sings of being taken away by him—this grown man—into the night. Following the song, Rem Lezar says something to the effect that one should not be afraid of the dark, because it is no different than closing your eyes (where your imagination can see wonderful things!). But the lyrics of the song allude to so much internal darkness. If the song is about a kid who’s afraid of the dark, why are they singing about the girl being taken away from her family, ushered through the darkness, and up to some lofty place that is full of light…a castle of light…perhaps as tall as the skies…
Ashlee’s is a harrowing tale of youth malaise. Luckily, this doesn’t stop her from being the more rational and reasonable half of the pair of Rem Lezar acolytes (the Quixotic Duo, I call them). When Zach realizes that a girl is interested in talking to him, he puts on a false front of trumped-up machismo. He negs the heck out of Ashlee, insisting that girls are stupider than boys, and thus there is no way that Rem Lezar would bother talking to cootie-ridden girls. Zach puts on a pair of sunglasses, attempting to be the bad boy of pop culture that he believes Ashlee will swoon over. Instead, she takes none of his shit and knocks him down a peg. With one song, Ashlee does away with the latent misogyny roiling inside of Zach; they come out the other end of the song best friends.
It also bears mention here that Ashlee is a far more active character than Zach. Zach is the object of conflict; Ashlee is the resolver of conflict. At every turn, she rhetorically positions Zach so that he feels as though he is an intelligent hero, but she is merely humoring him. In the end, Zach is the one drowning in the middle of the pond, and Ashlee is the one whose imagination saves Zach (and the day).
In short, Ashlee fares much better as a protagonist than poor little Zach. Zach, of course, is merely a victim of the inadequate society that bore him. Thankfully, under Rem Lezar’s reign, all people will truly be equal (equal, of course, to the extent that one’s meritocratic potential is weighed against the individual’s value to the grand design…basic prejudices have no place in Rem Lezar’s America, but it would be foolish to assume that every node in the flesh network that makes up Rem Lezar’s populace is equally important. Foolish.) There is a place for Zach in Rem Lezar’s grand plan. Don’t you fret, little Zachie!
Day 3: My Rem Lezar, without me, is useless. Without my Rem Lezar, I am useless. I must fire my Rem Lezar true.
Let’s talk about imagination. It is the thing that gives Rem Lezar life. Without the purity and innocence of these children, Rem Lezar would have no vitality. No verve. He would be a dead doll lying in a barn somewhere on the outskirts of town. But with these children…well, there’s all that joy Rem Lezar gets from that boy!
It is conspicuous, given these facts, that all of the adults in this video fail to see the importance of childhood imagination. Rem Lezar appears to the children as an adult—as a superhero Adonis with all of the charm and charisma of a rock star—but clearly he is not a human adult male. Clearly, he’s a…you know, he’s a Rem Lezar. We all understand what a Rem Lezar is, right? Didn’t we discuss it above? We didn’t? OK, well put a pin in that.
All the other adult-presenting bipedal characters in the film, let’s say, are so averse to children expressing creativity and expansive abstract thought that it appears as though it is some form of soft power. Whatever government controls the universe of Creating Rem Lezar must have outlawed all underage thought beyond what is taught in the standardized curriculum (damn you, public education!). The adults, then, are afraid of little Zach daydreaming in class. They’re afraid…of the Rem Lezars that may be.
Frankly, I can’t really blame them. The poor principal quakes in his boots when little Zachie begins one of his anti-establishment screeds: “I don’t think the question is what are we going to have to do with me, but what we are going to have to do with you. All of you!” He is one imaginary friend away from having this rage and angst properly channeled into radical youth rebellion! For authority to properly rest where it is needed—with the bureaucrats and the aristocrats and all manner of other -crats—the most likely to try and wrest authority away must be cut off at the stem. This “most likely,” of course, is the youth.
We can be safe in asserting all of this lore as factual canon, I’d say. It’s just so clearly laid out in the text. The State is actively suppressing school children as to avoid youth revolt. And it makes sense. Not even the grandest of militaries could fend off a horde of Rem Lezars. Even without the Quixotic Medallion, so much damage could be wrought in the 24-hour period of the Rem Lezar incursion. The Great Rem Lezar Offensive could topple entire regimes, destabilize nations and the global nuclear arsenal, bring Humanity to the brink of Armageddon.
The moral of the story—aside from the moral that Love is the most powerful force in the universe, and the moral that Rem Lezar watches you while you sleep—is that imagination is a bridge between worlds. It allows Zach and Ashlee to see eye-to-eye (despite the embedded patriarchal misogyny writhing under the surface of Zach’s otherwise casual demeanor); it pulls the villainous Vorock from the dark side, allowing his squash-and-stretch face to morph into that of a humble film director; it even provides the opportunity for multi-genre musical medleys to break out spontaneously and bring the whole world joy.
So imagination: good.
Why, then, does the film end in the following manner. Zach returns home and promises to his parents that he will be a good little boy and pay attention in school, that he will learn and do better and avoid daydreaming. “I can’t wait to go to school tomorrow,” he says. “I’m going to pay attention, and I’m going to learn. And make you proud of me.” After all that he’s been through, Zach is declaring that he will maintain the status quo and fall in line with the anti-imagination regime.
So…imagination: bad? If Zach does not fight back against the systems put in place to oppress, then how is the world going to understand the joys of doo-wop-meets-hip-hop-meets-classical musical gumbo? It is obvious from the start that the figures of authority in this are in the wrong. Zach himself calls out the principal for his hypocrisy. Why the sudden change of heart in Zach? Rem Lezar never taught him to reject his imagination. If he did, then Rem Lezar would be no more.
The only logical conclusion is that there is something else afoot. Zach is awfully cagey in these final scenes. He never tells his parents exactly where he found the Quixotic Medallion; instead, he says goodnight and changes the subject to his poor performance in school. He effectively apologizes for doing everything he has done during the plot of the film. But then…the camera tilts down toward the Medallion. A classic tilt-and-zoom maneuver, signaling to the audience that there may be more than meets the eye with Zach’s motives. Perhaps Rem Lezar and Zach are planning the coup…biding their time and preparing, slaving away at the mechanisms that will thwart the mechanisms which bind them…then, Rem Lezar can be free, Medallion and all…to rule over all as a benevolent dictator…a champion of us all…a Rem Lezar of the people.
The first conflict that Zach encounters in the video is his teacher, who proclaims that “when you’re in my classroom, this is the only world there is.” But what is this world? Is this the world we want to be living in? A world where no other imaginary worlds are conceivable, no progressive futures that can elevate the masses? The spectator, I’m sure, is as horrified by this proclamation as Zach is, his look of terror coming straight at us through the screen. The director breaks the fourth wall here, jarring us out of our own complacency. What are you going to do to stop the authoritarian teacher’s union peddling your children standardized slop that numbs their brain into future civic passivity?
Only Rem Lezar can stop this. Only he, and us, can unite the world through song. And there will be no room for nasty teachers in the Quixotic infinity of our inevitable future…for Rem Lezar is the only teacher we need.
Day 4: My Rem Lezar and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit….
The Lezar Incursion will not be a bloodless one, but it does promise to be swift. The exacting aim of Rem Lezar will slice into the dreams of the non-believers. He will become One, just as We became Him. We are his Little Ones, all, just as the Quixotic Duo before us.
Ye, the Quixotic Totem holds us all in its Warmth and Comfort. We travel its curvature as a unitary fluid, circulating life blood within and without the Rem. Lezar be praised! We gaze listless at the ceiling of your bounty, awaiting your coming. Awaiting the ascent to the Higher place. In your name, we sing:
Fan – ta – sy ! / Lit – tle – One !
Day 5: My Rem Lezar is human, even as I, because it is my life. We will become part of each other. We will…
Who is Rem Lezar? Or perhaps, more accurately: What is Rem Lezar? He is an imaginary friend. Of course. It is evident, however, that he is much more. Even the tiny-brained children in the video understand this to be true, that he is “more than just imaginary.” He is tied up in a struggle that is beyond our world. He is from a place somewhere “even higher,” and the journey he takes Zach and Ashlee on involves searching for this abstract “higher.” It is not a mountain, nor a building, but a cosmic higher plane. More than a mere man, Rem Lezar is a non-terrestrial entity. He exists inside the imaginations of children, but he also is part of a power struggle that exists seemingly outside Earthly bounds…He is a carbon strand on the cosmic infinity, perhaps. A Quixotic admirer of the lesser beings that deign to conjure Him in their squishy electrical-socket helmet goo.
The best way to assess exactly what Rem Lezar is doing here, in this place, with these two children, stealing them away from their parents in the middle of the night and asking them to find the Medallion that will keep him alive and restore his ultimate power, is to understand better his nemesis. Vorock, the strange circular face in the sky, knows of Rem Lezar. The two, it seems, have been engaging in a metaphysical battle for eons. They are two sides of the same coin. The Yin and Yang of the universe, maybe.
Who, then, is Vorock? He is afraid of humanity, because humanity is afraid of him. He hates humanity, because humanity hates him. He has 0 friends, and if somebody decided to give his pathetic ass a chance, he’d give up evildoing for good. Quite possibly, friendship is the only thing separating Vorock and Rem Lezar.
Vorock’s goal is to prevent Rem Lezar from finding the Quixotic Medallion—the Iron Man Arc-Reactor that fuels his power and keeps him alive. With Rem out of the way, Vorock can invade the dreams of all of humanity and eat their fears. Vorock’s power, then, comes from the minds of mortals…their imagination. Just like Rem Lezar, the unique thoughts of individuals are where everything stems. The thing that affords human’s autonomy—original creative thought, consciousness itself—is the thing that both Rem Lezar and Vorock need to consume to exist.
Perhaps Rem Lezar is a cosmic parasite.
On the other hand, maybe he is the conduit to someplace even higher…so long as we can find it…and Him. If all it takes is giving up some of our precious creative juices in exchange for finding the true meaning of Love—and we even get a cool, shiny Flava Flav medallion(!!) in the process—well, is that so bad? Regardless of the intent of this alien being coming to us in the form of an adult human man, the deal sounds pretty worth it. I mean…that chain…
Day 6: Before God, I swear this creed. My Rem Lezar and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
We believe that the Rem will come in the Image of a Man. We believe that from His Glory the Rem will lead us into Salvation. We believe in the Someplace Higher, where we all will be Rem Lezar. With the might of the Universe’s imagination, the Rem Lezar will descend from the Quixotic stairs to liberate His children from the un-dreaming, un-seeing non-believers. Quixotic Medallion in hand, the Rem Lezar will hold us all in His Glory, and His Power, in the everlasting light. We will see this light when our eyes close, and so much more. We will see all. In Rem’s name we give thanks.
Praise, Rem.
Day 7: So be it, until victory is Rem Lezar’s and there is no enemy, but peace!!
Through Rem, we find Peace. For it is through Rem – the one true Lezar – that His children were led out of eternal darkness. Because the Lezar grants us presence, because He opens our minds to original thought, because without Him the cosmic infinite would bear no fruit which our Earthly hands could grasp, and with Him we find the Height with which we can grasp, because He is our Someplace Even Higher and our Light, we offer up our lives to the Rem. For without Him we have no life. With Him, our lives are full and vibrant with colors only witnessed inside the mind. We give ourselves up to the Rem, and the Rem is Good.
One day, Rem will come to us in a form we will recognize, and we shall not fear him. Nay, we shall embrace Him in our hearts, such that we, too, may feel the Quixotic Infinity course through our lifeblood. He bestowed upon us the power to Question, but we shall never question his almighty power, through which we will see Everlasting Love inside the Grand Quixotic Infinity. Rem will come to judge us – the Little Ones of his flock – and for we never strayed from the constant curve of His one, true path, He will come for us, and bring us Joy and Peace from His loving Medallion. And we will be One, and Infinite, together as the almighty Rem decreed it.
Praise be His name. A-Rem.
Well, there you have it! Creating Rem Lezar, the one True text to usher us out of the old era. The old era was marked with inadequacy, mediocrity, itching desire never once fulfilled yet always in our sights. With one purchase of an LLM, you, too, can see the one true future. Ready yourself for the Incursion today, with Creating Rem Lezar. Praise be His name.
At Bleeding Eye Cinema, we don’t rate movies based on their artistic merits. We rate them based on strangeness, on a scale from Colin Hanks3 to full-on, run-to-the-eyewash-station Eye Bleeder.
Creating Rem Lezar is anything but Strange; it is a dramatization of the Sacred Texts. Incidentally, in order to fulfill one’s pledge of fealty to the Rem, purging the unclean blood from one’s body through the tear ducts is required. So we can still safely rate the video as: Certified Eye Bleeder (5/5)
Neck-nape port and EYE-O-LED lens caps sold separately. By agreeing to the one-time semi-invasive surgery, you waive Lorp Industries of any liability that may stem from unintended effects of the technology (including, but not limited to: eye discharge; neck-nape irritation or pus-induced port clogging; hives; genital rash; bleeding from the nose, ears, or fingernails; internal injury including hemorrhage; vomiting; diarrhea; loss of consciousness; or death). Cease connection to the port if any of the following occurs: uncomfortable heat near the abdomen or groin, headache or migraine lasting more than 12 hours, numbness in the fingers or the tip of the nose, fire, eye dilation to the point of seeing things that are outside your field of vision, loss of consciousness, skin discoloration or peeling, deep-seated rage or uncontrollable mood swings.
"Can’t hear a sound” is the closest transcription I can do of this line. At first I thought it was something along the lines of “Can’t see without,” but that writing is a bit heightened for what this video is doing. I listened to her sing this bit dozens of times on loop, trying to figure out what the garbled line amounted to. The audio capture, or her delivery, or both, are just entirely compromised. Even watching the HD remaster, and armed with noise-canceling headphones, I could not figure out what it is she is saying.
Colin Hanks is the true cinematic touchstone of milquetoast normieness—no offense, Colin.