Karen Achenbach

With HOW TO FLY, Bowes abandoned plot entirely, finding other forms of structure. He wanted to show that stories do not have to obsessively organize and explain data, and that television’s hundreds of simultaneous, fragmented narratives – news, fiction, commercials, sports, etc. – had prepared audiences for this new type of structure. — Charles Ruas

The plot revolves around Tom (Ed Bowes) and his girlfriend Kathleen (Elizabeth Cannon) and what occurs when her mother and androgynous brother Tommy (Karen Achenbach) come to visit. Tom is receiving transcripts of his innermost thoughts in anonymous letters. Sexual ambiguity, symbiotic relationships, and self-identity are all at play here. Structured in long, uncut takes with beautiful camera work by Tom Bowes, the real-time aesthetic of the work is the result of the script, in which much of the action takes place in drifting conversations. — Marita Sturken, “Television Fictions: An Interview with Ed Bowes,” AFTERIMAGE (May 1986)

With HOW TO FLY, Bowes abandoned plot entirely, finding other forms of structure. He wanted to show that stories do not have to obsessively organize and explain data, and that television’s hundreds of simultaneous, fragmented narratives – news, fiction, commercials, sports, etc. – had prepared audiences for this new type of structure. — Charles Ruas