This article is about the short film and music video. For the transmission barrier and contraceptive device, sometimes known as a 'rubber Johnny', see condom.
This article is missing information about the film's production. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(October 2018)
The film, entirely presented in infrared vision, begins with an out-of-focus closeup of Johnny (played by Cunningham) 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, 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 shot of it being pulled off a penis.
Johnny sits recumbent in his wheelchair with his oversized head hanging over the back of it. He starts dancing to the Aphex Twin track "Afx237 v.7"[1] while his chihuahua watches. His dancing involves him performing balancing tricks with his wheelchair and deflecting light beams with his hands. A door opens and Johnny is interrupted by an aggressive male voice. During this, Johnny is sitting upright in the wheelchair. The voice yells at him indistinctly, a slap to Johnny's face is implied, and the door is slammed shut.
Johnny snorts a large line of cocaine.[1] He screams in the dark and then hides behind a door, avoiding white light beams. Johnny's face smashes repeatedly into a glass surface, and each time chunks of his face articulate the vocals in the song. He is interrupted a second time by the voice, after which Johnny once again reclines back in his wheelchair and babbles at his chihuahua.
The credits roll over a night scene of a train passing in the distance.
Production
Shot on DVnight-vision, the film was made in Cunningham's own time as a home movie of sorts. After filming began in 2002, Rubber Johnny took three and half years of weekends to complete.[2]
Cunningham explained that the effect of an exploding head was made using "just a tangerine and Plasticine with a banger inside it". He created some effects in his own kitchen instead of relying on CGI.[2]
Release
Home media
Rubber Johnny was released on DVD by Warp on 20 June and 12 July 2005. The latter release included a book on the film containing 40-odd pages.[3][4]
Reception
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2018)
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."[5]Treble.com listed the film in its "10 Terrifying Music Videos", calling it "both hilarious and terrifying".[6]
S. McKeating of Stylus Magazine awarded Rubber Johnny a 'B+' rating, lauding it as an "exceptionally entertaining odd short film" but only for viewers "with the right frame of mind". He additionally demanded that Cunningham "take it one step further and give us an hour and a half of warped material".[1]
Founder of fact-checking website Snopes David Mikkelson noted the circulation of claims that the film was a documentation of real happenings. He noted that the "film itself is difficult to describe in ordinary terms".[7]
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