24 Hours on Craig's List

The concept is simple enough: speak to as many people as possible in the San Francisco area who have posted or answered a post on the extremely popular bulletin-board Web site Craig's List. Documentarian Gibson highlights the outré-sounding services and requests that appear on the site, but in doing so, he simply points out the normalcy behind the "weird" veneer of the posts and emphasizes the obvious ways in which the Internet unites kindred spirits. Seemingly comic headlines ("sex party—hot babes wanted") results in the discovery that sex is perhaps the only area in which Craig's Listers are living on the edge. These segments supply the film's highlights (such as when viewers find out the sex party is really just a creepy gentleman waiting for women in his darkened apartment), but ample time also is given to more mundane personal and rental ads as well as the self-consciously outrageous, such as an Ethel Merman impersonator drag queen seeking heavy metal backing musicians. Webheads will be delighted by the film's premise and pro-diversity message. San Franciscans will no doubt spot a neighbor or two, particularly in the nearly three hours of unused material included as a supplement on the second disc.