23 Minutes

Written, directed, and animated by Geoff Marslett as his thesis film in graduate school at UT Austin
Produced by Melanie West and Tammy Arnstein

Won the Best Animation Award at CinemaTexas Short Film Festival in Austin Texas in September 2001.
Recipient of a Texas Filmmakers Production Fund Grant in 2001 and 2004.

Deep in the Heart of Texas in the year 2020 AD, the suburbs have spread like weeds across the hill country. Everyone lives in a suburban rancho style stucco house with a red tiled roof. They all park their Ford Lemmings next to their Toyota Replica, and absolutely everyone surfs the Internet incessantly. Frank is your average kid in this near dark future until his parents get him the latest in elective medical implants, the locotron. This device is supposed to allow him to access URL’s just by thinking about the site-but Frank is special. He still practices the forgotten art of reading books, and the extra input transforms his implant into a sort of time machine that pulls him into whenever he’s reading about. The US Senate Chambers in 1856, Pangia during the fall of the dinosaurs, Paris, in 1969…eventually stranding a twenty five year old “damaged” Frank in Roswell, New Mexico during a 1947 flying saucer crash.

Frank teams up with a talking monkey and a beautiful scientist in a race across 40’s New Mexico to get to the space crash in Roswell before an Dr. Fortunato and his robot do. All the while, St. Gene, the newly appointed patron saint of time travel is learning the ropes of his new post as he observes Frank’s temporal pioneering. As a stranger out of time Frank gets a closer look at a moment in history when science, cover ups, lies, monkeys, and robots changed the world. Can they stop the crash? Will he get back to his own time? Will mankind’s future be forever changed?
This story is filled with ironic second looks at glossed over history. The characters are brought to life by a team of varied artist/animators, distinctive voices (including TJ MacFarland, Richard Buckner, Howe Gelb, Joe West, Victoria Williams and Jon Dee Graham), and an incredible soundtrack (including Calexico, Joe West and the Sinners, Jeff Lewis and James Kochalka Superstar).