Influenced by jazz, the beat writers, and early avant-garde films such as Bruce Conner's collages of found footage, Arthur Lipsett made films on the dehumanizing effects of industrial society, counterpoising that theme with suggestions of a search for spiritual enlightenment. Lipsett's first film Very Nice, Very Nice looks behind the business-as-usual face we put on life and shows the reduction of our identities to the objects we create and possess. The film is made of dozens of pictures that seem familiar, with fragments of speech heard in passing.