We first meet the enigmatic Mr. Bones (Larry Lillo) as he wanders out of the wilderness in a snowstorm, gesticulating and raving madly, to be swooped off by a hospital ambulance with a t.v. news crew following close on its heels. In the hospital, where nurses give him his fanciful moniker, Mr. Bones responds to every question with a volley of abuse and is treated to a return volley of inanity from hospital staff, media, and police, each of whom expounds an hilarious pet theory as to his condition. Is it amnesia, shock, aphasia, guilt, or innocence? Clearly, Mr. Bones is a survivor of some wilderness ordeal, and there has been a forest plane crash only recently. But just how he has managed to survive--and there are hints of cannibalism--is only slowly revealed, with each answer raising more questions. Actor Larry Lillo pulls off the difficult task of portraying traumatized madness in an individual whose ties to humanity seem to have been severed entirely. However, point-of-view is the key to filmmaker Patricia Gruben's structural approach: in observing Mr. Bones through the “eye” of the video camera, the hospital surveillance, or the television (which watches him back as he stares impassively at it), we encounter a portrait from within of an individual who, much like any other, has been subsumed by a collective consciousness which is riddled with bias and error. Patricia Gruben, an American making films and teaching in Canada, has been acclaimed within avant-garde circles for her short films, which have shown widely at international festivals; Sifted Evidence (PFA, June 1984) was named one of the top 20 films of 1983 by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. Larry Lillo is one of Western Canada's best known theatrical actor/directors.