Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)

Based on the film's actual plot, the provided description is not entirely appropriate, as the protagonist learns magic, not tap dancing. Here is a more accurate two-paragraph description. In *Get to Know Your Rabbit*, a meek young executive named Donald Beeman (Tom Smothers) makes the radical decision to drop out of the corporate rat race and pursue a new career as a "tap-dancing" magician. He seeks out the tutelage of the legendary, and profoundly eccentric, Mr. Delasandro (a perfectly cast Orson Welles), a master of the craft who has grown weary of the world. Donald finds surprising success and a measure of personal freedom in his new, quirky profession, but his escape is short-lived. His former, hyper-capitalist boss (John Astin) sees a new product to market and attempts to pull him back into the world of soulless commercialization he fought so hard to leave. While *Get to Know Your Rabbit* is a far cry from the Hitchcockian thrillers Brian De Palma is famous for, it earns its place on a "best of" list as a crucial and insightful piece of his early filmography. The film is a biting, counter-culture satire that showcases the director's burgeoning cynicism towards American institutions—in this case, the soullessness of corporate America. Tom Smothers' character is a quintessential De Palma protagonist: an outsider trying to forge his own identity against a corrupt system that seeks to control and exploit him. Featuring a masterful and wryly self-aware performance from Orson Welles, the movie serves as a fascinating, often hilarious, exploration of art versus commerce, a theme that would echo throughout De Palma's later, more personal works.