Also known as just Live Forever As You Are Now, this short-film appeared on [adult swim]'s infomercial block on Christmas Eve, 2013, produced by Wham City.
"Hot young tech wizard" Alan Resnick hosts an exclusive seminar to teach the audience about his secret to achieving immortality, using his computer, and requiring extensive knowledge about his patients; he creates digital clones, intended to replace a person after their death. The results are...interesting, to say the least.
Watch it here
, and check out the promotional website as well.
Tropes present:
- Annoying Laugh: Teddy's robotic "HA. HA. HA. HA." laugh seemed to embarrass Alan, who just awkwardly laughed along and then cut the scene.
- As Himself: Alan Resnick stars as... Alan Resnick, who in this work is a technology genius, rather than a comedian.
- Blatant Lies: Most of the information presented is blatantly untrue, like the (completely fictional) Schrader clot that supposedly prevents any self-awareness, or Alan stating that the human face only contains six muscles.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Alan is quite eccentric and strange, doing things such as forcing those who go through his program to spend five-hours looking at a mirror and go to his house so he can strobe lights in their face, and describes the Uncanny Valley with an example about putting skin on a rock. At the same time, he's an accredited computer wizard, who did at the very least come up with a way to create digital clones of himself and others.
- Captain Obvious: Alan's Schrader Clot graphic states such helpful information, such as that "people who look at this graphic see a blue brain" and "diagram shows clot in slightly different shade and with extra lines".
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Even for being a digital clone of the already eccentric Alan, Teddy is very odd. He is obsessed and in-love with what can only be described as a writhing mass of flesh, he laughs after giving a basic word description, and he insists on calling himself "Teddy", rather than "Alan".
- Creator Cameo: Wham City member Ben O'Brien appears as the man who shot Alan in his dream.
- Delicate and Sickly: Chester Gwazda, who is bedridden with an IV drip and has an Incurable Cough of Death. It's implied that his mother signed him up for the program because of his failing health.Chester: People don't die, people's bodies die. He taught me that.
- Erotic Dream: The same night Alan gets sent to the couch, he describes having a dream in which he was about to have sex beautiful, nude women in a foggy forest.
- Exiled to the Couch: Alan describes having a "lover's quarrel" with his wife, in which he was forced to sleep on the couch. He admitted to not minding very much, and slept there happily.
- Interspecies Romance: Though both are just computer-generated beings, the humanoid Teddy is deeply in love with... a writhing ball of what appears to be digital flesh.
- Lighter and Softer: Unlike other Wham City creations, nothing outright horrible actually happens in Live Forever As You Are Now, and there's no deep ARG elements other than the associated website.
- Madness Mantra: "I love my wife!"
- Mood Whiplash: Downplayed; Every time Teddy speaks, the bouncy background music is replaced with a jarring ambiance, making the scene go from upbeat, to unsettling, back to upbeat when the scene changes again.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Quietly Played for Laughs — Alan presents his product and its eccentricities in stride, but once Teddy introduces and begins rambling about his "wife", Alan turns to the studio audience (briefly dropping his higher-pitched Cloud Cuckoolander voice to speak as himself) and quietly confides in his disappointment with this roadbump before moving on.
- Postmodernism: The film parodies TED Talks, infomercials selling products to easily-duped customers, and the modern phenomenon of technology attempting to emulate humans but being unable to quite do so.
- Replacement Goldfish: The purpose of the digital clones is to replace the original person after their death; the testimonials section features multiple people who created clones of dead-loved ones, in order to replace them, and seem quite happy with the result despite the clones being, well... digital copies of a character with a few superficial personality traits added in, often not even the ones the original person had to begin with.
- Scatterbrained Senior: "Elderly Woman" Jordan Card claims that drawings of herself are birds and frogs, and talks to her digital clone about nonsense subjects, such as the fact that it's a Monday. Her clone doesn't fair any better, and just rants about how cold the room is.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Teddy loves his wife. She is all he wants to talk about, and due to the nature of him as a computerized clone, there's no chance of him being in love with anybody else. Even on the website, every time the word "like" or "love" comes up in conversation, Teddy just responds with "I love my wife!"
- Stepford Smiler: Alan, who retains his cheery TED Talk-esque demeanor up until he starts describing coming into the viewer's house to ask them questions and Teddy's malfunctions. Implied to be because his marriage is in flux.
- Stylistic Suck: The website is riddled with typos, filled with fake broken links and low-quality jpegs. Some of the links, however, lead to hidden pages, such as the advertisement on top.
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: Throughout the film, upbeat background music plays, as would be expected during an infomercial. However, whenever Alan's digital clone Teddy speaks up, the tone has a temporary shift from comedic to unsettling, and it's underscored with the background music being replaced with a subtle ambiance. Once these scenes are cut, the normal music comes back.
- Twinmaker: Alan's plan for eternal life revolves around creating computerized clones of himself and other people, attempting to make them as similar as possible to the original person, so when that person dies the clone can take over. It... doesn't really work out.
- Uncanny Valley: Discussed, invoked, and mentioned by name, by Alan:"Imagine I'm jogging. And I love to jog, so I'm jogging, and out of nowhere- DAMN IT!- I stub my toe on a rock! On an ugly rock. But hey, I got my pen here, maybe I'll draw two eyes on the rock, and now, all of a sudden, whoa! This rock's lookin'... kinda cute. Starting to like this rock. What if I draw a nose and a mouth on the rock, and now all of a sudden, whoa, this is the cutest rock I've ever seen, I can't believe I'm falling in love with a stone! And then you're gonna want to coat the rock in skin and flesh, and... (whistles) oooh, Uncanny Valley."
- Vocal Dissonance: All of the clones have a digitized-Alan Resnick voice. Fine for Alan's clone, Teddy. Not so fine for the clones of old women or young boys.
