AllMovie

When the entertaining short Multiple SIDosis made the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in the year 2000, many had probably never heard of it; it was, in fact, one of the first amateur films to receive that honor, giving it the same designation of such American studio classics as Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane. This nine-minute effort from 1970 emerged thanks to the grassroots production efforts of San Diego suburbanite Sidney Laverents, a General Dynamics engineer turned independent filmmaker ad extremis: not only did he write, produce, direct, and star in his films himself, he also built much of the equipment! As his best-known effort, SIDosis depicts Laverents and his then-wife Adelaide sitting at home during Christmastime. He receives a gift from her, opens it, and discovers a recording device, then proceeds to exercise his skills as a one-man-band, with depictions of himself playing multiple instruments to the tune of Felix Arndt's "Nola." The most curious aspect of this was also the most fundamental and incredible: produced in an age long before digital editing, it utilized multiple, overlapping exposures to include several "Sidneys" on the screen at once, each one made up a little bit differently and playing a different instrument, and up to ten at the same time! The incredibly complicated technical maneuvers behind this feat meant that it took Laverents almost four years from launch to completion to realize his nine-minute film; as a result, Multiple SIDosis became something of a cinematic legend in certain quarters.