On the tape is a black and white video in which John Baldessari describes photographs from National Geographic magazine to Ed Henderson, who picks out pieces of mood-setting stock music and sound effects to pair with the images. Baldessari subtly influences Henderson's selections, steering him towards music that he deems more appropriate. Demonstrating how pop cultural narratives are embedded in the American collective unconscious, Baldessari introduces his sometime collaborator Ed Henderson, who is called upon to interpret a series of movie stills. The blurred photographs, which are virtually indecipherable to the viewer, act as springboards for a series of self-contained narratives. The ease and humor with which Henderson improvises these scenarios (spanning Hollywood cliches from musicals and Westerns to a prison drama and a horror film) demonstrate the extent to which the mythic language of cinematic genres has permeated the American consciousness. Baldessari has commented on his attraction to pop cultural material: 'I guess I'm using images from movies, from newspapers and so on, because... we have to talk in a language we know.'