Since the 1980s, hundreds of hand-cut linoleum tiles have appeared fused into the asphalt of city streets from Philadelphia to Buenos Aires, all bearing the same cryptic command about resurrecting the dead on Jupiter. Nobody saw them being laid, nobody knew who made them — until a handful of obsessives spent years hunting a recluse who may have been broadcasting the message by shortwave and dropping tiles from a hole in his car floor.
The core mystery: identical tiles reading 'TOYNBEE IDEA / IN Kubrick's 2001 / RESURRECT DEAD / ON PLANET JUPITER,' embedded in streets across two dozen US cities and four South American capitals.
The likely method is almost as strange as the message: lay the tile over hot asphalt, cover it with tar paper, and let passing car tires slowly press it flush into the street over days. No digging, no witnesses.
The 2011 documentary that won Sundance's directing award. Three Philadelphians turn obsessive detectives, chasing the tiles' meaning through decades of dead ends.
The full documentary. Watch the investigators reconstruct a suspect from proto-tiles scattered near one house, an alias phoned into 1983 talk shows, and a theory about colonizing Jupiter with the dead.
The documentary's own trail: a 1983 Philadelphia Inquirer column, a man named 'James Morasco' who turned out to be an alias, and the reclusive Severino Verna the filmmakers believe was behind it all.
Justin Duerr — a self-taught artist and one-time street kid — spent years of his life decoding the tiles. His fixation is the emotional engine of the whole story.
Even after a suspect was named, new tiles keep surfacing — copycats, disciples, or the original tiler still at work. The message refuses to die on schedule.