Cinema: Based on a Premise

The Troublemaker is an avant-gardish comedy geared to the perceptions of bearded anarchists. But for half of its 80-minute length, practically anyone can enjoy it. Anyone, at least, who is reasonably irresponsible, mad about old movies, and perhaps a wee bit crazy in the first place. Written and directed by Theodore J. Flicker, onetime entrepreneur of a Greenwich Village coffee-and-show house known as The Premise, the movie tells of young Jack Armstrong (Tom Aldredge) who arrives in An Unidentified City—the one substantial clue to its whereabouts is a Statue of Liberty in the harbor—and tries to open a coffeehouse. He finds...