Computer Boy

Computer Boy is a 2000 short film by Australian director Abe Forsythe. It is a parody of The Matrix. It gained a cult following after being released over the internet, receiving over 350,000 views on Ifilm. It was filmed in Sydney, Australia and uses many of the same locations as The Matrix. Scenes from the film were included on the DVD of Ned, Forsythe's next film after Computer Boy.

For the 2017 song by Poppy, see Poppy.Computer.

It was never fully released, the film had an injunction put against it, forcing them to never really release it fully. The total production cost was rumoured to only have cost $2500.

The movie homepage used to be https://web.archive.org/web/20031009011807/http://www.geocities.com/cobweb_films/computerboy.html but is long since dead. The film was mostly promoted on internet forums at the time being very well received.

This is the transcript direct from one of the hosts:

Metro has often been appalled by the bloated budgets of Hollywood blockbusters. Now an 18-year-old film-maker from Newtown has laid bare Tinsel Town's shameless profligacy by making his own version of The Matrix - which was rumoured to have cost more than $100 million - for $2,500(AUS)! Forsythe, who has seen The Matrix three times, was inspired by spoofs of The Blair Witch Project and his own irritation at Matrix audiences who ooh-ed and aah-ed when they recognised chunks of their own city on the silver screen.

He admits he had to cut a few corners to bring Computer Boy in under budget. Besides writing and directing, he took on the role of Agent Smith, the character played by Hugo Weaving in the original.

"I played him as a mixture of Hugh Grant, Dr Evil and Sean Connery," says Forsythe.

Morpheus, the mysterious cyber-guerilla played by Laurence Fishburne, is portrayed by Marcus Pointon. Forsythe says the resemblance is eerie. "He looks just like Fishburne except he's white and from New Zealand."

The role of "Neo", played by Michael Falzon in a manner reminiscent of Keanu Reeves iconic character "Ted" from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure earned a Best Actor Award at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival[1][2]

Not content with paying homage to The Matrix, Forsythe aimed to enhance the original plot. While the original Matrix has neither a chase sequence involving a Wilderness Society koala or action filmed covertly in McDonald's, Computer Boy has them both.

Cast
  • Michael Falzon as Neo
  • Marcus Pointon as Morpheus
  • Simone Chapman as Trinity
  • Abe Forsythe as Agent Smith
  • Marc Turner as Agent Kowalski
  • Brett Garten as Agent Jones
  • Daniel Peters as Cypher
  • Daniel Tobar as Tank
  • Andrew Brittain as Hobo
  • Alexander Hazelbrook as Spoon Boy
  • Justin Hazelbrook as Colour Book Boy
  • Sharyn Winney as Sheet Girl
  • Charles Falzon as Chuck
  • Ryan Tan as Asian
  • Miguel Sanchez as Bob/Oracle/Hobo/Juggler/Koala

Music
Song Artist(s) Length Scene(s)/Details
New Moon Anders and Matthew Nielson 3:35 Second half of closing credits
Computer Boy Lance Lenehan 1:03 0:00 to 0:21 — during Morpheus's pep talk with Neo, and Agent Smith's interrogation of Morpheus
0:22 to 1:03 — oom-pah-esque or polka tune enjoyed by Agent Smith during and after the car chase

New Moon contains an ID3 artist tag of Sinister Sam.

Lenehan's downloadable version contains several incorrect ID3 tags, claiming the title is Computer Suite from Little Boy - Flight And Countdown (1968), an unrelated song Jean-Claude Risset; the ID3v1 comment field contains Copyright (c) Lance Lenehan. It's speculated that these tags were incorrectly generated by some sort of automatic song detection or ID3-labelling software as a result of detecting the phrase "computer boy". The official movie home page at the time contained references to Lenehan's old MP3 repository at mp3.com.

A post from April 27th, 2000 on Usenet newsgroup aus.films states that the film contains "...new music by Lance Lenehan as well as tracks by up and coming bands Sinister Sam and The Stud & Track House Band."

gollark: That way I don't need to experience the horrible suffering of still seeing ads while on my phone.
gollark: Firefox on Android supports addons, which is neat.
gollark: Wait, you're in *two* cults?
gollark: Except in your web browser, I guess.
gollark: Which are even worse on servers, since cloud platforms run VMs containing not-really-trusted code, while on consumer machines you could *maybe* get away with turning mitigations off since you don't.

References
  1. "MUFF 2000 Award Winners". Melbourne Underground Film Festival. Archived from the original on 27 April 2013. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  2. "Michael Falzon". IMDb.
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