and offered him the use of a Griswold film splicer. Describing cinema as "a rich man's art form", Conner looked to store-bought footage as an economical alternative to shooting original material. He purchased a condensed Hopalong Cassidy western, a short novelty film called Thrills and Spills, a Castle home movie containing German propaganda, and a newsreel compilation titled Headlines of 1953. Conner primarily worked in assemblage at the time, and he originally planned to use the film as part of an installation piece. The installation would fill a cube into which people could walk. The film would have no soundtrack; instead, the installation would play the film as a loop with sound coming from tape players, radio, and television. However, Conner was not able to fulfill his original vision. The cost of a rear projection machine for the installation was prohibitively expensive. He decided to make the film a stand-alone work and edited the segments together using a radio to time them. During one editing session, Respighi's Pines of Rome came on the radio and synced well with the ending. Pines of Rome had been used ten years earlier by Kenneth Anger for his avant-garde short film Fireworks. Conner made a recording from the first, second, and fourth movements and added the music to the completed image track. He was unsure how to clear the rights to the music and used the recording without authorization. He completed the film on a budget of $350 (). Release A Movie premiered June 10, 1958, at the East and West Gallery in San Francisco. It was part of a reception for Conner's first solo art show. Shortly after, the film was acquired for distribution by Cinema 16 in New York. When local distributor Canyon Cinema emerged in the early 1960s, A Movie was one of its more well-known offerings. Legacy At its 1960 Creative Film Awards Presentation, the Creative Film Foundation gave A Movie an Award of Distinction, with Michael McClure describing its comedy "not [as] a free laugh but the reconstruction of human depth, achievement and emotion". It has gone on to be recognized as a landmark piece of avant-garde cinema. In 1994, A Movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Filmmaker Peter Hutton has cited A Movie as an influence on his work. Artist