The Pest

Sunset Boulevard, 1922: a jittery bibliopole with a satchel of unsold sonnets ricochets through a lattice of real-estate rapacity, canine masquerades, and the inexorable magnetism of a damsel one rent-slip from the curb. Stan—gangling, elastic, forever mid-gesture—tries to hawk culture in a city auctioning its own sidewalks; each ringing doorbell detonates new chaos. A lascivious landlord, whiskers waxed like villainous quotation marks, circles the girl’s lease like a vulture in spats. Our hero’s counterweapon: improvised zoology—he wriggles into a moth-eaten dog-skin, tongue lolling, tail wagging absurd allegiance, thereby igniting a Keystone-tinted pursuit that swallows the boulevard whole. Intercut, the eponymous Pest glides in—petite cyclone of petticoats and unsolicited opinion—repeatedly materializing at the worst microsecond to derail every fragile stratagem. Books fly, landlords fume, damsels swoon, traffic snarls; yet within the whirlwind glints a pocket-sized social cartoon of housing precarity, male predation, and the yearning for shelter—domestic, romantic, existential. The whole contraption ends in a gavotte of last-second reprieves, a door slammed on injustice, and a final shared glance that converts slapstick shrapnel into something suspiciously like tenderness.