The Mind's Treasure Chest

**The Mind's Treasure Chest** was written and directed by Harry Gottlieb for his company Learn Television, which was later reconstituted into a games and multimedia company now known as Jellyvision. Released in 1991.

The film is a feature length educational comedy that teaches students to think for themselves. This film is a marriage between a Hollywood movie and an educational video. It’s about libraries, research, and information. It’s about history and hypothesizing. It’s about thinking for yourself.

## Plot

Jack Patterson and Richard Manhouse are opponents in the race for student council president of their high school. Richard is the “smart choice,” an intellectual who is always on top of things. Jack, too, is usually on top but his confident politicking has no substantial content: Jack is a master of hollow rhetoric. But, as the election draws near, Jack finds himself trammeled by fact-master Richard in their history class which is taught by Mr. Ekenwall, a teacher who doesn’t take kindly to equivocation. Jack comes to the realization that he simply doesn’t know the facts for tomorrow’s assignment on John Kennedy and the Cuban crises, so in desperation he heads off into the mythical reaches of the school library. A sympathetic classmate and a bewildered librarian help make Jack’s overnight stay in the library the adventure of his life.

This 90-minute video is a librarian’s dream. Jack even needs directions to the school library to begin his quest! Once there he is obviously unclear on the concept as he expects all the answer to somehow come looking for him. Subtly, easily, the story starts with encyclopedias, then the card catalog (the automated one, like ours, comes later), then the Readers’ Guide (ditto automated periodical indexing), to magazines on microfilm, and even to footnotes in books and the concept of the credibility (and honesty) of providing references.

Throughout, The Mind’s Treasure Chest is as charming as an episode of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, instructive but not didactic, laugh-out-loud funny but not patronizing. Jack’s character is acted well as are the roles of sympathetic and cajoled Samantha and Carla Sanchez, the librarian. Carla, jolted from her slumber by paranoid concern over the absence of the 1962 volume of the Readers’ Guide at closing time that night heads back to the school at midnight in her bunny slippers and “027.8” (Dewey # for school libraries) t-shirt. She surprises our ex-information illiterate and his accomplice as they attempt to “break into” the university’s library holdings using the librarian’s computer. Jack’s doe eyes (and glazed expression as future scenarios of an impostor exposed play themselves unhappily out in his fertile imagination) make another convert to the cause (his cause) and, with Carla’s won-over enthusiasm, the trio heads over to the Mecca of knowledge: the university library. There, unchallenged, they use automated versions of the card catalog and Readers’ Guide as well as the vertical (or pamphlet) file to ferret out the last bit of evidence for Jack’s presentation, now only a few hours away.

## Selected Awards

 U.S. Film & Video Festival - First Place Gold Camera Award