Most of the features that make Lewis» directorial work such a remarkable exception to the dominance of a realist aesthetic in Hollywood filmmaking are brilliantly apparent in The Errand Boy, including the foregrounding of sound manipulation (most blatant in the sequence involving the post-synchronisation of the song «Lover» for a musical film, and in the tape manipulation of Kathleen Freeman's reaction to having been left by her driver in the back seat of a convertible receiving a car wash) and the placement of actors in a shot so as to
highlight the presence of the camera (as when Morty, an undirected and oblivious extra in a film - within - the - film cocktail - party
scene, keeps looking at the camera from the
background of a shot in which other extras, in their roles as party guests, intermittently block him from the camera).
Decorative gold textile patterns adorn the
background, abstracting the space and
highlighting the fact that this
scene does not exist in the real world.