Bartleby is a stop-motion short film by Kristen Kee and Laura Naylor about a stubborn office worker who prefers not to.

Bartleby is a classic tale of how to waste one’s life in a modern office. And of how to stop doing that. Sort of. Our story begins as a handful of motley attorneys putter away in their open office cubes, led by a limp, uninspiring boss — until Bartleby arrives(!). And with him the notion of opting out. Of saying nope, no, I don’t think so. Actually, I would prefer not to. I would very much prefer not to. What is a boss to do…? Let’s not spoil the ending.

We can’t make this stuff up. No, we actually did not make it up at all. Bartleby the short film is an adaptation of Herman Melville’s novella of the same name. But instead of the Wall Street of 1853, it’s set in the Wall Street of ~2011, amidst the tumult of protest. And our Bartleby is a stop motion film — wherein puppets are painstakingly animated and photographed at 24 frames per second, and the images strung together like a flip book. Our creatures speak in animated text, their anxieties manifest in paper hallucinations.