Has The Cure For Insom­nia final­ly been found?

The con­quer­ing of the decen­ni­al Sight & Sound Great­est Films Poll by Chan­tal Akerman’s Jeanne Diel­man, 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles is a cul­tur­al moment whose rever­ber­a­tions still haven’t even begun to be real­ly felt. Not only for rea­sons of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics (few expect­ed a fem­i­nist work by a 24-year-old Jew­ish les­bian to top the poll), but also in terms of the film’s form. I won’t go into any more detail on that mas­ter­piece, though we all know that it is often dis­missed as ​‘bor­ing’. Well, you ain’t seen noth­in’ yet.

The Cure For Insom­nia is acknowl­edged by Guin­ness World Records as the longest film ever made. It runs for 85 hours, mak­ing Out 1 (13 hours), Die Zweite Heimat (25 hours) and Sátán­tangó (7 hours) look minis­cule by com­par­i­son. Lit­tle is known about its con­tent, though we know that it large­ly con­sists of Chica­go poet L.D. Groban read­ing his epony­mous 4000-page poem spliced, with inter­mit­tent porn clips and heavy met­al videos upset­ting the lull. I think the title sounds quite appropriate.

Direc­tor John Hen­ry Tim­mis IV is a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure. He was a local cult leg­end in Chica­go, whose musi­cal sound was punk­ish and had a sim­i­lar lo-fi aes­thet­ic to ear­ly Liz Phair – search ​‘JT IV’ on YouTube to get a feel for his approach to art. L.D. Groban is sim­i­lar­ly elu­sive – the best doc­u­ment online for giv­ing a pic­ture of who he was is actu­al­ly a page of obit­u­ar­ies. Is his poem nar­ra­tive? Is it didac­tic? Is it just a long stream-of-con­scious­ness? I’ve scoured the Inter­net and found no real clues.

This soporif­ic behe­moth has only ever been seen by a few; its only known pub­lic screen­ing took place in Chica­go from Jan­u­ary 31 to Feb­ru­ary 3, 1987, and nat­u­ral­ly it has long been believed to be lost. Mak­ing things hard­er for archivists is that Tim­mis died in 2002 and Groban in 2011, so the obvi­ous ports of call are dwin­dling. In 2011, a forum thread was begun on a site called camende­sign, with spo­radic posts doc­u­ment­ing fruit­less attempts at sourc­ing the film and pure spec­u­la­tion as to the film’s con­tents and sta­tus of existence.

On 13 Feb­ru­ary 2023, a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to the thread report­ed good news. After email­ing Groban’s sis­ter Deb­o­rah Groban Olson through her work email, they got a promis­ing response – that she has a copy, and would be will­ing to send one pro­vid­ed they pay for dupli­ca­tion and postage, to which they con­firmed they would – though we are not yet informed on the mat­ter of the film’s rights. Camendesign’s users are now wait­ing for the next update in this saga. Some assur­ance comes from Olson’s call­ing – she is a lawyer, and respond­ed via her work email, so it’s unlike­ly to be a scam.

Sit­ting through The Cure For Insom­nia does not seem an attrac­tive prospect to even the most ardent cinephiles, but this is poten­tial­ly a huge devel­op­ment in the world of film preser­va­tion. Who knows what life the film will have if locat­ed – per­haps it will play on loop on a ded­i­cat­ed web­site, serv­ing a sim­i­lar func­tion to the count­less 10-hour white noise posts on YouTube, or host­ed on archive​.org for any­one to skim through as they please. Sure­ly, in 85 hours of footage, there has to be some meme poten­tial in there some­where, right? What­ev­er hap­pens, it seems unlike­ly Janus Films or the BFI will com­mis­sion a restora­tion any time soon.