What came across to me in Fast, Cheap and Out of Control was the four men trying to control their environments, and by doing so they could exert control over their lives.  They did not appear God-like to me, but rather they strove to counter-balance the influence of God or nature or whatever you want to call it (I call it God, but nowadays that’s not PC) in their lives. 

The Topiary Gardner

The topiary gardner literally created the animals from the shrubbery he tended to.  He seemed to love those animals the way a mother loves her child.  He nurtured their growth by preening out the unwanted branches while encouraging the new leaves to grow.  He waited for the rain that would feed them and turn them into what he was hoping they would become.   I noticed in several shots that right after he pruned them into their perfect shape, it would rain and you could see the new growth that threatened to ruin the smoothness and perfect shape that he had created.

The Naked Mole Rat Man

This man bothered me because he took the mole rats out of their environment in Africa and transplanted them into the zoo.  They could have very easily died in their new, alien environment.  Then what would he have to study?  Most likely he would have found some other poor, unsuspecting creature to “observe” in the name of science.  For me, he represents the ultimate in man’s selfishness and disregard for other life forms.  He became detached from the mole rats as creatures and saw them as merely objects of interest.  People do this to each other all the time in the name of science or ethnic cleansing (think Hitler or slavery in the US).  This  was very scary and I think Morris intended to show this potential in man.

The Wild Animal Tamer

I’m an animal lover and hate to see animals subjected and lowered to being beaten and forced to perform for mankinds’ benefit.  Like the naked mole rat man, the wild animal trainer was hard to watch.  I kept hoping that one of the lions would eat him or at least maim him to the point that he would have to retire.  Perhaps this guy was the most eager to manipulate his environment or at the very least, try to mitigate the effects it had on him.  He had to employ animal psychology in order to dominate the animals.  However, we all know that those animals could have turned on him at any time.  I don’t know if taming the animals made him feel like more of a man, or if it was just an adrenaline rush and he was a thrill junkie.  I think Morris included him because he was the “ultimate manipulator” of his environment.  It’s interesting to me that he was not hurt more seriously than he was the time that the lion caught hold of his watch and sent him to the hospital for three months.

The MIT Robotics Engineer 

The role of the robotics engineer was to highlight the ego of man.  I mean to think that man is capable of giving life to an inanimate object through the construction of some metal and binary loops is completely insane and laughable.  This guy has an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore.  This guy was so completely ridiculous as to make him pitiful.  He’s the guy that never gets the girl and doesn’t know why.  He may have really be lieved he was God (that’s a role reserved for doctors who think they’re God and lawyers who think they can beat God.  But that’s a whole other dynamic).  Anyway, I digress.  How could this guy reduce the beauty and mystery of life to a set of feedback loops and metal legs?  It takes more than that to create a life.  Every being needs a soul or an essence.  That is what was missing from the robots.  They will never have a soul.  They will never have a temper or appreciate the aroma of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven.  As I’ve said before, this man was the most dangerous in his belief that he could create life.

On a final note, I noticed the numerous times that things were being expelled from things.  For example, the men in the circus were shot out of cannons, bullets were shot out of guns, and the mole rats seemed to burst through their tunnels.  It made me think of childbirth.  I wonder if it’s a mere coincidence that Morris chose to portray men in the film “giving birth” to their creations.  It’s interesting that no women were interviewed or profiled.  Not sure what that part means or if it was even his intention.