Summer Stuff

A Brass Cash Register

2011-12-23T17:01:00.000-05:00

From somewhere unknown or unremembered, my Father purchased a brass cash register. It was heavy, shiny and had wonderful working mechanical parts. The inside was stained with purple ink form some sort of printing device no longer present in the works, but no matter: It made a satisfying "ka-ching," the numbers appeared behind the glass at the top and the drawer opened and closed.

The compartments in the drawer were beautifully made from some dark, hard-wood. Perhaps we had filled them up with pennies or toy money at some time or another, but mostly they were empty.

Originally intended to become a planter (one plant in each compartment in the open drawer), it never acheived that goal. A wonderful plaything that sat on a counter top in our basement for years.

Then one day it was gone with no explanation. Sold for money? for space? because of boredom?

I never knew. It just vanished like so many other objects I loved. And now I'm older or old and soon I'll vanish like the cash register, though I'm nowhere near as heavy, solid or shiny. Where do we all go?

Waking Up III

2011-07-18T17:36:00.001-04:00

Yes. I am moving.

The fact that I'm typing this is proof, isn't it?

But, oh, my brain is still asleep.

So much so, that I didn't finish my morning entry until 5:30 in the afternoon.

Not that you can tell. It all looks like one paragraph to you, but I know the truth. I could have lied and pretended that I finished it all before lunch. But no. It's almost dinner time and it's just being wrapped up.

Let's see what happens on Tuesday.

Waking Up II

2011-07-17T10:25:00.002-04:00

It was my short term goal to add at least a second daily entry about waking up once I had managed to do that. But I didn't manage to do it.

I could have said that I've just been sleeping several days, so that, indeed, I just haven't woken up for all this time. That would have been a swell excuse. Alas, it's just not true.

The truth is that I was lured away from this by email and breakfast cereal and falling back to sleep.

So here I am drinking day old coffee warmed up with some soy milk in it and not quite finishing this.

I've been distracted by the radio, by email, by the swirling rainbows of my solar powered window prism (you should get one).

Now the solar powered prism is a great distraction! It only works when the sun is shining directly on it. A little solar chip powers a tiny motor that turns a hexagonal prism that hangs from the bottom like an earring. It scatters lovely rainbow patterns all over my room and it's hard not to watch it. Better than typing.

Well, now, I changed the radio station so that it's only classical music (though now the announcer is talking about oil in Alaska, but, thankfully, not Sarah Palin) and she's about to play Berlioz. It's far less distracting than talk radio.

So, I've managed to mangle a few sentences and paragraphs after meandering mentally for half an hour, and have communicated next to nothing.

It would have been better to lie and say I was sleeping for two or three days.

Waking Up

2011-07-14T09:38:00.001-04:00

Waking up has become a lengthy process for me.

It used to be I'd open my eyes, zoom to the bathroom (and take care of things), then get on with the day.

No more. Even getting both eyes open requires attention. Stumbling to the bathroom with monocular vision is no treat, either. At least the (taking care of things part) works pretty much as expected.

The next half hour or so requires great volumes of strong tea. (I gave up on coffee: too acid for my early morning stomach) and is usually spent staring at several hundred un-opened emails while my eyes come into focus.

In the old days, I tended to write fiction first thing in the AM. What passes for my mind always had its imagination amped up before I was too awake. But, I think, email overload has usurped most of that.

However, this morning seems to be an experiment, because I'm writing this before reading a single email!

Will this be a new trend? A new awakening?

Stay tuned.

Genuine Cookie Fortunes: Number One of an Infinite Series

2011-03-12T18:13:00.003-05:00

Chinese Fortune cookies often contain astonishing pronouncements.

From time to time they will be quoted here exactly as found within the original cookie.

Number One:

Only listen to fortune cookie,
disregard all other fortune telling
units.

LEARN CHINESE - Eggplant
qie(2) zi(2)
Lucky Numbers 46,26,50,45,56,49

George Pal, Logan's Run, MGM and Wikipedia gets it wrong (again)

2010-12-21T15:16:00.007-05:00

George Pal (War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao) was the first movie producer to attempt to make Logan's Run. According to Wikipedia, however, Pal doesn't exist. Even in the "official" Wikipedia bio, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pal , the notation for Logan's Run requests a citation.

The problem, of course, about anecdotal evidence is that even if you are the one who George Pal told the anecdote to, nobody believes you because Pal is long gone and can't smile and say "Oh, yes, that's true!"

Now Bill (William F.) Nolan is still alive, and thanks to him and Sunni Brock (who, at my request, asked Nolan for the "truth") we have our verification.

And I quote:

“Pal was the first producer, at MGM, to option Logan’s Run for filming. Pal was ready to shoot the film in Brasilia – it’s an ultra-modern city, they were relocating the capitol. Pal was using the book’s 21-year death age, but before he could get it to production, his option at MGM ran out. Pal’s choice for the screenplay was to be written by Richard Maibaum, the 007 writer.”

In the late 19s0x, Pal told me how disappointed he was that the he never got to make the film. One can only suppose that it might have been a much better film than what we got. Pal was a meticulous guy, and I'm only guessing, of course, but his vision of the future would have been pretty interesting.

It's always harder to get films started than anyone thinks in this era of narcissistic digital movies and the great "I'll write a screenplay and get paid $3 million bucks" sweepstakes entered by anyone who thinks they can spell.

So, Wikipedia, now you have your citation. I hope someone will add it in and that the Fascist editors at Wikipedia won't delete it for lack of "verification."

Mr. Popper's Penguins

2010-10-13T21:34:00.004-04:00

All these years I've wanted to make Mr. Popper's Penguins into a "major motion picture," but was never in the position to do so. Now it is added to my endless list of "projects I wanted to make that someone else did instead."

Robert Lawson is, in many ways, the star of this book, and it was absolutely his drawings that have kept me glued to the idea for so long.

Of course, we've now reached a level of CG that makes it possible to animate hordes of "penguins" that look just like the living, breathing, real thing. Heretofore, teams of penguin trainers would have been necessary, thereby rendering the project too expensive, too difficult, nearly impossible.

Born too soon.

Hello?

2010-08-08T02:11:00.000-04:00

How strange to think that no one really reads this.

Breezes

2010-08-08T02:08:00.001-04:00

Sometimes in the night, when it is very still, there are tiny breezes that don't move the leaves, but still stir the soft hair on the edge of your ears and cool your heart.

The Profound Illiteracy of Facebook and the Web. Don't miss the Canon Shooting!

2010-07-18T11:20:00.011-04:00

One of the not entirely unexpected revelations of the endless posts on my Facebook wall, is just how the grasp of the English language by friends and acquaintances has disintegrated. Judging by the near non-existence of proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, one might conclude that we are all suddenly living in the late 19th Century before the advent of Public Schools and education and dictionaries despite the spectacular availability of online resources and spell checkers.

Creative spelling is astonishing as is the equally adventurous ignorance of punctuation.

Here's a "sentence" (paraphrased so as to disguise its origin) that comes directly from a FB post.

time to learn my part I'm performing tomorrow!!!

Now this could be interpreted in a number of ways.

1) It is now time to learn my part which I am performing tomorrow.

2) There is time to learn my part which I am performing tomorrow.

3) It is now time to learn my part. I am performing tomorrow.

4) There will be time to learn my part. I am performing tomorrow.

I sort of think number (3) was intended, but without talking to the person, I have no idea.

I'd be tempted to write it as:

It is time to learn my part: I'm performing tomorrow.

From a journalistic viewpoint, this is highly speculative, but, hey, you've got to take a chance sometimes.

I've changed "I'm" to "I am" since the extravagant use of apostrophes (and commas or the non-use of apostrophes and commas) is a new aspect of modern creative writing.

The favorite trope is the addition of an apostrophe to nearly everything that has an "s" at the end of it.

The previous sentence using this remarkable linguistic revelation would include:

"... the extravagant use of apostrophe's... " to indicate more than one apostrophe. [If there was such a thing, it would be correct to say that "I am visiting the apostrophe's new house."]

The distinction in the mind of many between possessive and plural has vanished in the wake of the eradication of the distinction between "less" and "fewer." Perhaps this has to do with some unknown additive to highly sugared breakfast cereals (or is that cereal's ?) or some other more pernicious plot. Oops. Sorry. That's "perhap's" and "Oop's" isn't it? Or is it Thats' perhaps's and oops's, ain't it?

"I went to visit the Smiths" becomes "I went to visit the Smith's." If it was "I went to the Smith's house" all would be well, but this puts us back into the realm of speculative journalism.

There seems (ummm seem's) to be no cure for all of this. All of my friends (er... friend's) in the educational professions (ahhh... profession's) tell me that high school students and college students come to them unable to write clear sentences (sentence's). Instead of advancing the knowledge of students, these hapless educators slave at getting the kids to disentangle themselves from their IPods and smartphones long enough to consider history or philosophy or home economics. (Do they actually teach Home Ec any more? I wonder.)

I'm going to go right out on a limb here and state the obvious. The majority of this linguistic chaos originates with texting. Now just why any sentient being would want to spend more than a nanosecond informing another sentient being that "hey whoa it rocks" in the midst of watching a movie or eating or taking a dump is totally beyond my compreshension. But, hey, whoa, different strokes... .

The need to contract words so that one's thumbs don't fall off from exhaustion is crucial. T nd 2 contct wds sew tht my thmbs r stil hr iz imptnt. Or something like that with the addition of lots of smileys and other strange symbols alien to my aging eyes, but highly meaningful to those under 12 years old.

There is more at stake here than the generation gap: The continuity of civilization depends upon the communication of various forms of knowledge.

There is a genuine difference between "It's here" and "Its here." The former means "It is here," the latter means "This 'here' belongs to It" (whatever that means).

A sign in the New York City Subway reads "Haircut's." Haircut's what? The Haircut's dog? The Haircut's life insurance policy? You can argue that everyone knows what they really meant. I can argue that this requires lots of unnecessary speculation and that it panders to ignorance.

Indede y bother spelin nething kurectlee in the furst plaze. We kin awl figyour owt whut I mene neeeway, kan't weee?

The world has not collapsed yet, but when I view a subway car full of grown people so plugged-in to their electronic devices that they don't even notice where they are, that they are shoving their backpack into the eyes of some hapless old lady who is blissfully IPod free, that they miss their stop and curse because they weren't paying attention, that they stand in the middle of the door unmoving because they are so involved in whatever music is playing far too loudly into their ears that they haven't noticed that the door is open, that the chime is ringing, that seven people are trying to shove them out of the way to escape, and then, that it's really everyone else's fault for interrupting, bothering and annoying them!

Steve Jobs and colleagues have provided the world with the finest excuse in centuries for rudeness, inattention, small-mindedness and unnecessary redundancy of function with those cute little IPhone thingies. A great, elegant toy. A great, inelegant time waster. A great distraction from the reality of where you are. If you looked up from your smart phone for just a moment, you might see where you are instead of having to call up a GPS application that pings three satellites in orbit around the earth, pings your phone back and displays a map that shows you where you already should have noticed that you were standing in the first place. (Okay, it is convenient to be standing on a strange street corner in heaven only knows what country, to be able to push a button and find out how many steps you need to take to reach the nearest McDonald's. Don't know how I lived for decades without it).

My favorite Facebook malaprop this week is a notice for the "Canon shooting" as part of a Pirate Week Celebration. One wonders what crime the poor Canon committed to be shot! Was it Pachelbel's Canon? Whatever did Pachelbel do to deserve this? Obviously, they meant "cannon," didn't they? But this is an event put on by a government agency and promoted by, oh I don't know, the agency director's sister's son's girlfriend fresh out of fourth grade. I'm pleased to know, in retrospect, that pirates were deeply into Canons. It shows that they were not all lowly, child-raping, thieving scumbags. Some of them appreciated the finer things as they pillaged and burned with their IPods blasting in their ears.

Sew, eye xstole tha vertewz uv lerning how 2 spel ahnd punkyewweight if ownlee owt of consideration to us awld fokz hoo r stuk withe Inglush az it yewst 2 b b4 yew kreeyaytive kidz fixed it 4 us awl. :-)

Oh, wait! I'm sorry. I forgot the punctuation.

S'ew, eye xstole, tha vertewz uv lerning, how 2, s'pel ahnd punkyewweight, if ownlee owt of consideration. to us awld fok'z!!! hoo r, stuk, withe Inglush, az it yew'st 2 b, b4 yew kreeyaytive kid'z, fixed it 4 u's awl !!!! ;-) :-D :-P~~~

That's better, isn't it?

Thank you.

The Days the Earth Stood Still: 1951 and 2008

2010-07-02T22:33:00.010-04:00

The 2008 remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still (a 1951 masterpiece) was not as terrible as I imagined it would be, but it is a pale shadow of its predecessor.

It's interesting to note that the newer version credits the Edmund H. North screenplay as a source, whereas the 1951 film is based in part upon Harry Bates' short story "Farewell to the Master." (full text at http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/bates-farewell-to-the-master.html ). North elegantly riffed on the original and made it a strong and affecting cautionary meditation on the cost of war and violence. Sad to say, despite its high-tech CG effects, and more than a few "moments," the 2009 update never achieves the power of North's work.

Perhaps if I hadn't seen the original so many times, I would have spent less viewing time comparing the two, but we are what we are, and I couldn't help but do that. There's no question that David Scarpa managed to re-frame North's scenario in terms of the modern American military, modern technology and a sketchy, not terribly offensive version of the United States goverment. In 1951, for example, Klaatu simply walks out of the hospital where he is being kept under what seems today like minimal security. It was as though the average citizen would have simply honored the uniform and side-arms and not bothered to try to escape. Not so with the new Klaatu. He is kept under high-tech, computer controlled lock and key which requires that he use his extraterrestrial powers to jam video and audio surveillance systems, deafen and knock out myriad layers of security guards, pick electronic locks on the fly and generally avoid all sorts and kinds of impossible to defeat systems. All of this is plausible and rather clever and exciting, but, in the end it misses the point or dilutes it so badly that in the end it's just a lot of sound and fury.

It's awfully hard to put my finger on what's not right about the Scarpa retelling, but I think it has to do with the aforementioned "average citizen." It had always struck me that the original had the look and feel of a newsreel, and Robert Wise indeed confirmed that to me: he'd intended the film to play like what we would now call a "documentary." It had a simple photographic and editorial style that echoed what the average moviegoer would have seen each week in the black and white newsreels of the day including commentary by actual radio announcers. (Prior to the 24/7 coverage of the every twitch and flatulent sound of every world leader on CNN and the Web, each of the major film studios, but especially Fox and Universal, turned out a 10-12 minute "newsreel" that summed up the major breaking stories of the day with on-the-scene movie footage that augmented what people read in the newspaper or heard on the radio. There are, in fact, wonderful moments in the 1951 DESS with the rooming house boarders sitting around the breakfast table earnestly reading the Washington DC newspaper in order to find out what was going on in the world).

North tells his story through the reactions of these average folks to extraordinary events simply and sincerely. The Scarpa script instead uses the literal internet to show what people world wide are experiencing, but -- although authentic and visually clever -- it lacks emotional and human connection. That, indeed, may be one of the tragic by-products of the web itself: many of us (and apparently the current screenwriter) have lost touch with genuine face-t0-face human communication. Instant messaging and YouTube and blogs will never replace handshakes, conversations, deep meaningful eyeball to eyeball glances or real hugs and kisses. The 2008 film reproduces the cold, impersonal, arms-length modern world only too, too well.

Perhaps 1951 was a simpler more innocent world. I doubt that really, but the realities of military life, inter-continental communication and transport, and technology were certainly less sophisticated, varied and complicated than they are today. To be true to 2008, one must show it as it is.

The original Gort was about 7 feet tall, the new Gort is 70 or 700 feet tall (I don't really know how tall he is, but he's very, very tall). Yet, the itsy bitsy original Gort is mighty scary and ominous and the big tall Gort just looks like yet another slick Video Game robot. We have little emotional connection to this character. In fact, Scarpa (or someone) decided that G.O.R.T. was an acronym instead of a name. Gort like his namesake Gnut in the Bates story was a real character, not a throwaway piece of electronics. The audience cared about what he did, what he might be thinking, what he could do: The signature 1951 dialogue "Gort, Klatuu barada nicto" was absolutely all about Gort as a character, not Gort as an abstract idea or a clever visual effect.

By compressing the drama down to a basically three character story (Klaatu, Helen, and her son Jacob), Scarpa acheives a certain economy that allows lots more time to show nifty CG effects. But it loses the relationship to "every man," to the down to earth man on the street so lovingly set out in North's screenplay and Wise's incisive casting. The 1951 film is all the more terrifying, suspenseful, funny and heart-breaking for the foibles of people that, aside from the sort of clothes they wear and minor affectations of speech, we would recognize as people we know today. I just can't help thinking (perhaps unfairly given the homogenization imposed on so many scripts by studios) that Mr. Scarpa spends far too much time on Facebook and MSN Chat and far too little time sitting and talking to people or getting drunk in some low-life bar where he could hear directly about the petty, debilitating pain of the underprivileged. The montages of the Robert Wise film showing peasants and rich people alike all over the world paralyzed and terrified by the events of the story are eerie and affecting even today. There is no similar moment in director Scott Derrickson's (or the studio editor's) take on all this. While it moves along okay, I could have cared less.

And then there is Bernard Herrmann's score. It's a cliche to praise it as one of the greatest motion picture scores ever composed, but it is true. No offense to Tyler Bates who does good work as a composer. It's just that Herrmann was one of a kind: we will not see his like again. And his score for The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of a kind as well: there will be no other that achieves what this score achieves. It is one with the movie just as Herrmann's score for Psycho is married to that story as well. Herrmann's genius, perhaps, was in the way that his music became an active character in the story telling. Unlike the symphonic, operatic, program music style of Korngold and Rosza which wrapped the story in warm, Wagnerian layers of sugary emotion, Herrmann's music shed all the calories and acted both in counterpoint and to create information that didn't exist in the movie itself. Watch, for example, just the opening title sequence of DESS first without the sound and then with it, and you'll immediately understand what's added: it's rhythm, suspense, mystery, emotion, but all in a subtle and unexpected way with startling instrumentations and sounds that were otherwise non-existent in mainstream music of his day. YouTube Video

I'm not entirely sure what the message of the newer film is. I took it to be saying that humans were polluting their world uncontrollably (although some reviewers I've perused seem to be obsessed with the notion that Klaatu is destroying the world because humans have caused global warming which, they go on to say isn't real anyway as every Fox News Channel watching viewer would already know) and that this was not good form for sentient beings. North, on the other hand, was all about human violence and the threat of carrying wars, idiosyncratic destruction, and nuclear weapons into space where it would harm other more advanced, peaceful civilizations.

Sadly, North's message is as true today as it was 60 years ago: the behavior of Iran in 2010 is identical to the sort of thing North warns us about in 1951. The average citizen of this or any other country was well aware of atomic weapons in 1951: they were frightened by them in a way that perhaps modern citizens -- accustomed as they are to remote-controlled drone weapons that zip around like so many video-game toys -- may no longer be. The every day reality of nuclear annihilation has been pushed from our minds by information overload.

This brings me back to the risky notion that 1951 was a "simpler time." I reject that. No historic time was ever simple. But at any moment in history certain ideas and events stand out in more relief. Polio was not cured in 1951 and atomic bombs and spies lurked in every shadow. The Robert Wise/Edmund North/Bernard Herrmann Day the Earth Stood Still had all of those terrifying shadows faithfully reproduced. When I saw it as a small child, it frightened me in an indelible and, to its credit, constructive way: I never forgot the film and became (perhaps shamefully) a wee bit obsessed with its craftsmanship and message. It will be a long time before I think I'll be moved to dig out the 2008 version to watch it again, but having just watched a few clips from the original on YouTube in the last hours, I can truthfully say that I can't wait to watch the whole thing yet again. It pulls me in everytime.

I've been exploring, in other essays, some sort of practical definition for "masterpiece" in the context of motion pictures. A troublesome, slippery word. But one quality that jumps out at me is the magnetic pull of the great films. You can turn them on, tune in to the middle of them, hear them from the next room, and before you know it, you have stopped washing the dishes or typing in your blog or Instant Messaging, and you find yourself sitting absolutely still and watching the whole movie yet again. You just can't help it. Excuse me, but I want to see what happens to Klaatu...

Warm Feet

2010-04-30T04:18:00.001-04:00

There are few things as wonderful as warm feet in cold weather.

The Biblical Spectacle of Clean Clothes

2010-04-04T20:36:00.006-04:00

It is wondrous and reassuring to know that the citizens of Biblical times were able to wear beautifully washed and pressed clothing.

Easter Weekend on Turner Classic Movies has presented an endless succession of seasonal classics about various religious figures running aground on the shores of the ever-strict and intolerant Roman Empire.

Despite the best efforts of Roman Soldiers in shiny armor to do them harm, the heroes of these Bible stories re-told manage to keep their togas and robes wrinkle-free and smelling, undoubtedly, like Fabreze.

One can only imagine the laundries of those far away times complete with washer-women of indeterminate race who rubbed and scrubbed and then took their flat cast-irons to the robes and pressed them out flat and shiny, starch on the collars, please.

No self-respecting Biblical character, after all, would be caught dead in dirty wrinkly clothing, especially not those of the ruling classes who needed to keep up appearances in order to oppress their victims with impunity and the proper disdain of superior beings.

Clearly, Hollywood spared no expense in researching the daily life of the poor in the Middle East. Let's ignore, for a moment, that authentic Arabic peoples tend to be short, dark-skinned and bearded: the likelihood of tall, blue-eyed exquisitely coiffed characters being marginal at best. But the short, dark-skinned acting pool in Hollywood must have been minimal, and it was, undoubtedly, easier to cast all those tall attractive people.

Then, of course, real history is always a little messy, what with the need for real people to take care of toilet matters in circumstances with little or no running water and a marked scarcity of pull-chain, flushable toilets.

But the appearance of the movie characters must match the cleanliness, grammar, and elocution of their well-constructed dialogue and those gloriously crafted speeches sound better coming from the lips of those tall, blue-eyed performers than they would from drooling mouths of scraggly runts.

There you have it then: Biblical authenticity with the cleanliness of a German HausFrau, the beauty of the best of Central Casting, and the fine, well-chosen words of the college educated. Clearly, the framers of the original Bible were just doing the best they could with limited means. We dare not blame them.

As Hollywood, MGM, Warner Brothers and all the other brothers (and possibly sisters) of the film making community now and then would like us all to know, Cleanliness IS next to Godliness. Thank you, Hollywood.

Adverbs and Adjectives

2010-03-14T13:17:00.002-04:00

Actually overheard in a University Classroom:

Professor: If an adverb modifies the verb, what does an adjective modify?

Student: The "jective."

Things That Have Vanished From the World #2: Books Flush to the Edge of Book Shelves

2010-01-22T10:23:00.008-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a certain way to keep books upon a shelf: All of the spines were lined up carefully so that they sat flush along the front edge of the shelf in a nice neat line. Each spine of each book flowed smoothly into the next, making a flat wall of books. Each title of each book was easily readable as your eyes scanned along them. It looked, and it was, orderly.

Today, however, visit a Barnes and Noble brick and mortar bookstore and you'll find the books shoved to the back of the shelf, the page side lined up, and the spines ragged and leering out at you like angry teeth desperately in need of braces.

There were reasons for lining the books up. It looks nice to begin with. It makes the titles easy to read. And it makes it easy to get the books off the shelf to read them without breaking the spines of clothbound books.

Now there are reasons for not lining the books up. Laziness. Bad examples. Bad training. Ignorance. And the idea that it's easier and faster to do that. Oh, that's just another name for laziness, isn't it.

I once asked a young lady why she was pushing all the books to the back of shelf. She said it was faster. I said it wasn't. She looked skeptical. I stepped over and pulled an entire shelf of books to the front edge of the shelf and evened them off with the palm of my hand in just a few seconds. She looked astounded. Bad examples. Bad training.

No one cares anymore.

Things That Have Vanished From the World: #1 Stars in Dark Night Skies

2009-11-26T01:57:00.004-05:00

50 years ago, you could look up at the night sky and see stars.

The sky was black. B L A C K

And the stars were bright white.

You could see LOTS of them. Including the Milky Way.

Now, you can only see a sort of amorphous fog with a glint of something that might be a star fighting through the misty mush.

Mass Transporation: Salvation for America

2009-11-23T15:39:00.008-05:00

The destruction of mass transportation in the United States throughout the last 50 years of the 2oth Century is undoubtedly a key factor in the decline of that country. Only its restoration and reinvention will bring back desperately needed and healthy cities.

Putting aside the folly of white-flight from the inner city to the suburbs, and noting soberly the contribution of the automobile (and its promise of freedom and mobility) to the creation of suburban sprawl, the loss of light rail (trolleys and trains) and reliable and regularly running interlocking bus systems is central to the isolation of the suburban dweller, to the oil and fuel crises that grip the world, and to the disintegration of community.

Only fifty years ago, neighborhoods across North America contained all the necessary businesses (groceries, hardware, movie theaters, shoe makers, specialty stores) within walking distance. Those that were not quite within walking distance could be reached quickly and easily with light rail systems that ran regularly and between all the adjoining urban areas. Only New York City, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and San Francisco contain vestiges of this functional and benevolent system. Some might classify the NYC system as different from true "light rail," but for these discussion purposes they are interchangeable. Fragments exist elsewhere: Los Angeles, Buffalo, NY, Portland. Wikipedia claims only 20 U.S. cities have significant light rail.

Europe and Asia contain hundreds of such systems. Rail is everywhere, carrying passengers between urban districts and other countries cheaply and swiftly. The automobile is a luxury and, to a great extent, an indulgent inconvenience.

New York City's transportation system offers "carless" transportation to virtually anything within Manhattan and the major boroughs. There are those who take Taxi cabs, but it is a curious luxury, a convenience to the disabled, and often less efficient than subways (though usually faster than buses.) The commerce of Manhattan would fail without the rail systems. Through a combination of walking and riding, visitors and residents can get anywhere they want to in very short periods of time.

Los Angeles, by contrast, has become a 24/7/365 rush hour with wall-to-wall cars carrying single passengers through grueling and time-consuming trips for essentials that could once have been purchased at a corner store or supermarket and that now have to be retrieved from huge food stores that are often 10 miles away. Without a car, people would -- literally -- starve.

It affects culture as well. The city of Buffalo, NY, like many others, was filled with wonderful neighborhood movie theaters. Within a five or ten block radius, residents could take a leisurely walk to one or more single-screen movie houses any time they wanted. That city is now dominated by 14-20 screen multi-plexes that lie four to six miles (or more) from any suburban neighborhood. It's no wonder that film-going has declined nationwide: it's far more convenient to stay home and watch television than to travel those distances for an expensive treat (accompanied by even more ridiculously expensive food). People remain at home -- isolated from large social groupings -- entertaining themselves with home theaters, the internet, video games and other solitary pursuits.

Only churches, sports events, special movies, and occasional rock concerts bring large groups of people together in most smaller cities and suburbs. New Yorkers (for better or worse) are surround by people constantly and shop amongs hundreds of fellow human beings. This is, without a doubt, a contributing factor in the "melting pot" effect of life in large cities. Europeans and Asians experience a similar mixing and crowding daily.

Recent discussions of high-speed rail are extremely promising. New York State is a great candidate for this as is California between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Either of those routes equipped with high-speed trains would eliminate inefficient and often unprofitable short distance plane service. With New York City as a hub, all of the North Eastern United States (and Eastern Canada) would be linked easily with a radial high speed system connecting Washington, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, Montreal, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto and Chicago and all the points in between. The train ride from Chicago to NYC which now takes about 12 hours would become a 5 hour trip. NYC to Albany would take less than an hour by train. At those lengths, trains become a far more attractive alternative to crowded, uncomfortable planes.

There seems to be no feasible solution for the plague of pollution, fuel shortages, non-existant community cooperation until mass transportation is restored. None.

Rendezview

2009-11-23T15:38:00.001-05:00

Rendezview:

To get together to watch a movie (or movies).

Snapple Real Fact #114 Bottle Top

2009-11-15T20:50:00.002-05:00

The oldest known animal was a tortoise, which lived to be 152 years old.

USDA Organic Bottle Top Wisdom

2009-11-15T20:48:00.002-05:00

"If you are going through hell, keep going."

Winston Churchill

The CCCC Principle

2009-11-05T15:42:00.002-05:00

An interesting quotation follows.

" Science reinforces my manager's notion with something called Krause's Hypothesis or the CCCC Principle ("Complete competitors cannot coexist). Howard Ensign Evans in Wasp Farm explains it this way: "The theory behind is that if two species do in fact do everything alike--live in the same place, feed on the same food, and so forth--one of them is bound to do something very slightly better than the other and will, over a period of time, completely eliminate the other."

Here, you'd better open your notebooks, because Mr. Evans goes on with a piece of advice to beleaguered species, and if you're having a little trouble you may wish to note it down: "But if in fact they impinge on their environment just a little differently in some respect, they can coexist indefinitely."

There is a world of useful advice for all of us in that sentence. If, for example, you are a welterweight fighter who is being completely eliminated, you might think about taking on lightweights. If you are an actor who finds too many living in the same place and feeding on the same food, you might try directing or producing or becoming, as one actor did, the governor of California. "

A Studied Madness by Heywood Hale Broun, Second Chance Press, 1979, Pages 266-7

Wikipedia and Me. Some Kind of Affair, but is it Love?

2009-08-26T23:43:00.004-04:00

Through the kindness of strangers some fragments of what you might vaguely describe as my life have found their way onto Wikipedia.

This has not been without incident, however, as those wonderful nameless editors seem to constantly pick at the facts based upon their Googling of the vast depths of the internet. Unfortunately, those depths are not as deep as real life, and often they catch no fish because the objects of their desires are buried not in cyberspace, but in books, magazines, archives and personal recollections.

In the wake of an announcement that Wikipedia will begin to fuss with the biographies of living people and since, as near as I can tell, I'm still living, I can only assume that they will want to fuss with me as well. They've done it before and I expect them to do it again.

I'm posting below the current Wikipedia entry for myself with the positive assertion that to the best of my knowledge it represents (albeit in a rather skimpy form) things that really happened in my life. I've been astonished to find that -- having read this -- total strangers have gotten in touch with me because they, too, recall the people, places and events recounted on Wikipedia. One point for them.

This may not be the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but it is the Edward Summer Seal of Approval. Everything you read below is true as far as it goes. There's much more to it of course and perhaps there is some way for me or someone to fill it in better.

It's all very flattering that it exists and it's posted here with embarrassment in order to affirm its validity.

Feel free not to read it.

Edward Summer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edward Summer has been an award winning painter, motion picture director, screenwriter, internet publisher, magazine editor, journalist and science writer, comic book writer, novelist, book designer, actor, cinematographer, motion picture editor, documentary film maker, film festival founder, and educator.
Among his better known works are the ground-breaking collection of Carl Barks stories Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times, the Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette (one of the pioneering online magazines), the first motion picture based upon Robert E. Howard's character Conan The Barbarian, the novel Teefr, and a prequel The Legend of Teddy Bear Bob.

Contents [hide]
1 Early Work
2 Theater
3 Motion Pictures
4 Comic books
5 Magazines
6 Digital Nitrate Prize
7 Constructive Living
8 Filmography
9 References
10 External links
[edit]Early Work

Born in Buffalo, New York, Summer studied painting at the Albright Art Gallery (now called the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Albright Art School, and with the noted water-color painter Sandra Chessman. He was also acquainted from childhood with another noted water-colorist, Robert Blair.[1]

Charles Summer, his father, was an amateur photographer who owned a then uncommon Exacta single lense reflex camera. The world-famous photographer Milton Rogovin was a family friend and early on exposed him to fine-art photographs.
At fifteen, Summer had a special one-man exhibit of his drawings in a group show at the Buffalo Museum of Science.
[edit]Theater

Studio Theater (now called Studio Arena Theater ), Buffalo, NY. appearance in Many Moons, based on a James Thurber book, choreographed by Michael Bennett. Director: Roberta Sharpe circa 1961.

Worked with Fred Keller and Neal Du Brock as actor and stage manager. Also Joe Krysiak founder of Project Artaud. [2]
[edit]Motion Pictures

Encouraged by experimental film maker Peter Adair, Summer ultimately attended the first year of the New York University School of the Arts (then under the NYU School of Education and called the School of Television, Motion Pictures and Radio). Haig Manoogian, instrumental in starting the career of Martin Scorsese by producing the film "Who's That Knocking at My Door" headed the school and was one of the main instructors.

At NYU, Summer continued painting and studied with, among others, acclaimed photo-realist Audrey Flack. Harry Hurwitz, director of "The Projectionist" was also an instructor and personal friend.

His student film "Item 72-D, The Adventures of Spa and Fon" not only won multiple awards, but was shown worldwide at many film festivals. It was the first film shown at the now famous Film Forum movie theater in New York City when the Film Forum was only a tiny loft space on West 88th Street in Manhattan. Hervé Villechaize, then unknown was one of the stars of "Item 72-D, The Adventures of Spa and Fon" Villechaize went on to fame in The Man with the Golden Gun and as a recurring character in the television show Fantasy Island. A co-writer of the film, John Byrum went on to write and direct numerous other films. Both Manoogian and Scorsese were advisors to the project.

Other early films included: Solstice (1968) - Film Editor High in the Wind Rivers (1970) - Cinematographer, Film Editor Street Scenes 1970 (1970) - Cinematographer, Sound Recording, Film Editor

As a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, Summer received a grant to produce a documentary about the history of American Comic Strip and Comic Book art. This unfinished film covered, among other people, Jack Kirby, Milton Caniff, Carl Barks, Chuck Jones, Ray Bradbury, Dick Huemer and Ralph Bakshi.

He worked with CBS Camera Three on a two-part series covering the history of comic books and comic strips.

In 1975, Summer helped his friend Brian De Palma re-do all of the promotional materials for Phantom of the Paradise. As a result, producer Edward R. Pressman approached Summer for other projects. The result was Conan The Barbarian which took nearly seven years to bring to the screen. The original treatment/screenplay was written by Summer with some collaboration by Roy Thomas who had written and edited the Marvel Comic Book series.

2003 Founded The Buffalo International Film Festival.
[edit]Comic books

Gold Key Comics Several science fiction adaptations for Starstream. Born of the Sun. Shaka
Marvel Comics Plot Red Sonja Issue One. Red Sonya and the Unicorn. This story largely defined Red Sonja's personality and "inner nature."
Plot: The Invaders Involving the revival of the Golem to defeat the Axis.
Plot: Conan The Barbarian The Devourer of the Dead Story about origin of Egyptian pyramids.
Editor: Superman the Movie Magazine, DC Comics
Summer was instrumental in beginning the process that resulted in Shuster and Siegel receiving lifetime financial benefits from their creation of Superman.
[edit]Magazines

Founding editor and co-publisher: The Dinosaur Times
Contributing writer: Written By, Time Magazine, New York Times, Circus, Films in Review, The Perfect Vision, The Absolute Sound, Home Theater Magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptical Briefs, The Monster Times.
[edit]Digital Nitrate Prize

In 2005, Edward Summer founded The Digital Nitrate Prize in order to encourage the research necessary to properly transfer and preserve the worlds motion picture heritage using the developing digital media. Based upon the X Prize, the Digital Nitrate Prize will offer a cash prize for the first individual, group or corporation which is able to exactly duplicate the look of nitrate film (nitrate motion picture film) using digital transfer and digital projection.
[edit]Constructive Living

Edward Summer is a certified instructor of Constructive Living.[3] He studied with David K. Reynolds in Los Angeles, New York, West Virginia and Tennessee.
[edit]Filmography

1968 - Solstice - Producer, Editor
1968 - DeFeet - Producer, Director, Cinematographer
1970 - Item 72-D: The Adventures of Spa and Fon - Producer, Director
1970 - Street Scenes, 1970 - Director/Cameraman, Editor
1970 - High in the Wind Rivers - Director/Cameraman
1982 - Conan the Barbarian - Associate Producer
1989 - Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland - Screenplay
2005 - Silent Music - Producer, Director (In Production)
2005 - The Magic of Magic - Producer, Director (In Production)
2006 - Clicker Clatter - Producer
2007 - Sirens - Producer (In Production)
2007 - Calvin of Oakknoll - Executive Producer, Consulting Director (In Production)
[edit]References

^ Conan The Phenomenon by Paul Sammon, Dark Horse Books, 2007.
^ Interview with Edward Summer http://artaudsf.org/Archives/EdSummer.html.
^ A Handbook For Constructive Living by David Reynolds.Morrow, 1995, page 266.
Partial Comics Bibliography
[edit]External links

Edward Summer at the Internet Movie Database
The Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette
The Buffalo International Film Festival
Summer Stuff Blog
The Digital Nitrate Prize Website
Article: Richard Williams: The Animator Who Never Gave Up
Library of Congress: Orphan Works Legislation Advocacy
Articles in New York Daily News
ZoomInfo Profile
References
Categories: Living people | American comics writers | American screenwriters | American film directors | American film producers | American film editors | American magazine editors | American online publication editors | Writers from New York | People from Buffalo, New York

Life as a Catalyst

2009-08-13T01:21:00.004-04:00

It occurs to me far too often how little I've managed to accomplish over decades of eating, breathing and sleeping.

And yet, an awful lot of interesting things have gone on around me.

I'd like to think that some of them would not have happened if I hadn't been in that spot at that particular moment.

There's some consolation in it.

Not easy to prove, of course, but I can make a case for it....

Summer Stuff: If It's Not in Google, Does It Really Exist?

2009-07-09T10:15:00.000-04:00

Summer Stuff: If It's Not in Google, Does It Really Exist?: "http://www.answers.com/topic/digital-nitrate-prize"

The Eternal Baby

2009-06-30T12:55:00.002-04:00

Human children exert an uncontrollable charm upon other human beings, especially their parents and other vulnerable adults.

It's been said that it's a good thing that kids are so cute, because otherwise we'd all want to strangle them in their less than charming attempts to learn about the world.

Kids, however, grow up. In the process, they lose that special baby beauty.

Nature, however, has connived to keep replacing toddlers with other younger and upcoming toddlers.

It's a kind of replaceable part with planned obsolescence.

Baby born.
Baby cute
Baby grows up
Baby no longer cute.
New baby born.
New baby cute..

and on and on until our species wears itself out.

The new replacements are eternally beautiful. They're nameless as they are wheeled past in a perambulator, carried by in some sort of baby sling, and just wobble along the sidewalk in search of novelty.

It's that child with no label that we all love. Just the mystery of where they come from, where they go, and why they are so incredibly appealing and beautiful.

Transformers 2

2009-06-30T12:50:00.006-04:00

Any eleven year old boy who loves explosions should already have pitched a tent in the closest theater showing Transformers 2.

In the first two hours of this pyrotechnic epic, more things are blown up than have been immolated in the past century of motion picture history. It is almost inconceivable that this much dynamite could possibly exist to begin with.

And just when you think that no building or military vehicle or villain is still standing and operational, the filmmakers find dozens more things to blow up!

Creativity like this must be acknowledged. Our hat is (blown) off to them! Alfred Nobel would be proud, and, indeed, perhaps it is time for the Nobel Committee to recognize quantity of explosions as a new category of world accomplishment.

Summer Stuff: The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"

2009-06-06T04:22:00.000-04:00

Summer Stuff: The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"Publish Post

Womb Graduates

2009-06-06T04:10:00.004-04:00

One morning I woke up and actually remembered something I had dreamt.

It was the phrase "womb graduate."

Seems like a useful concept to me (unlike most dumb things I remember when I wake up).

Most people view "birth" as "the beginning." But it 'taint so.

After all, we spend about 9 months in a womb, swimming and churning and listening to inner body sounds. It is like a little in vitro nursery school. So, when we get born, it's like graduating from Pre-School to Kindergarten.

Womb is stage one. Getting born is stage two.

So, too, there are "egg graduates" including chickens and eagles. Baby amoeboe are 'fission' graduates, aren't they?

We ought to get diplomas for "womb graduation" instead of a slap on the ass.

Why do MacIntosh Owners Feel Obligated to Convert You

2009-06-06T04:00:00.004-04:00

MacIntosh Computers are just fine.

I don' t own one, but I've used them and -- except for the fact that most of them still have a one-button mouse which is kind of like riding on a unicycle instead of a two-wheeler -- they work just the way they are supposed to, and I can get stuff done.

What I want to know is why people who own them are endlessly and incessently telling everyone who doesn't own one how wonderful they are? Or posit Mac vs (whatever other kind of computer)?

It's kind of like Episcopalians telling Presbyterians what's wrong with them. Or trying to figure out if Hulk can beat Superman (or Spiderman take Batman) (Or Wonder Woman whup Red Sonja).

Which afternoon was it that owning a particular computer became an article of faith, a mode of getting into heaven or acheiving salvation and not a tool for getting letters written or drawing pictures?

I don't get this kind of conversation about Nokia cellphones: only about Iphones. I've had IPhone users shove them in my face and show how cool the little video games it plays are. Well, they're right: they are cool.

But.

They don't help me to make phone calls. They don't make the other person's voice clearer. They don't do the things that I expect a telephone to do. They're not cute and cuddly like puppies or kittens either.

Now kittens. They purr! Puppies chase balls and wag their tails when they see you.

I haven't seen a MacIntosh Computer do that yet.

Oh crud. Now someone will invent a purring Mac and tell me what I'm missing out on by not buying one.

It will remind me with a cute voice or a text message every five minutes: "Vibrations sent by I-Purr."

Maybe I shouldn't have written this.

Just ignore the man behind the curtain.

No Snowmen

2009-01-18T21:23:00.004-05:00

It's been snowing off and on for weeks in Western New York State.

I've been walking and driving all over the area and so far, I haven't seen a single snowman!

Given that there don't seem to be kids outdoors anymore, this is not completely surprising.

But it's something like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Life is vanishing outdoors.

The less people venture out into the winter, the colder the cold seems to be. It's like the reverse of air conditioning: The more refrigerated you are in July, the hotter and more unbearable the sun seems to be.

There are no snow forts either. Or snow balls.

Something is seriously missing. The world is a colder place.

Snow but no Kids

2009-01-05T22:35:00.003-05:00

It has been snowing this winter. More than usual. But I noticed something missing. Kids.

There were no kids outside playing. None.

I'm pretty sure that all the children in this neighborhood didn't go away on vacation for three weeks over Christmas. No, I think they were home. And indoors. Watching TV. Playing video games.

What happened to sleds and skis and cross-country skis and snow boards and snowballs and snowmen and snowforts and snowcones and skating and... ?

I guess it's warmer to ski using your WIIIIIII.

Just this evening, I noticed that Harbin China holds an ice festival. Apparently they've been doing it for 25 years. It's cold there. I mean C O L D. 19 below zero? (Don't know if that's C or F, but either way, it's cold.)

There, they build huge ice scultures that are all lit up. And they have fireworks displays (in the cold), and there are LOTS of kids and other people running all over the place oooohing and aaaahing at the amazing ice sculptures. In fact, there are more than 800,000 of them enjoying themselves in the freezing weather. Not sure if anyone dies there of exposure, but given the warm snow suits that kids were wearing, I don't think so.

Have American Mommies given up on putting their kids into snow suits? Putting on the mittens and wrapping scarves so tightly around their kid's head that she can't breathe? I guess it's easier to park them in front of a Nintendo.

The good part was that when I took a walk in the snow, there was no one else around. There were no footprints, no tire tracks, just several blocks of nice white, clean smooth snow with my breath frosting in the air.

But I miss the kids screaming and laughing.

Maybe they'll come back next time it snows. Or maybe I'll have to go to Harbin, China to see children outside in cold weather.

To Octopus. A new verb

2008-11-23T18:10:00.006-05:00

There are hugs and there are Hugs.

There are the namby pamby air-hugs that ladies give each other insincerely to avoid intimacy and smudging their make up.

Then there are friendlier hugs of greeting, football player crushing hugs of congratulations after they win the game, and other shades of grey in between.

But there are those totally entwined hugs (both erotic and not) in which the participants so thoroughly intertwine their limbs (arms and legs, necks and torsos) that the place where the hugger and huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

I think this deserves a better description than "hugging."

So, I've "verbized" yet another noun from "octopus" into "to octopus" meaning for two (or perhaps more) people to so totally entwine their limbs that the place where the hugger and the huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

Examples: They octopussed and then fell asleep.

The two kittens were octopussed as they took a nap.

The teenagers were so octopussed, it was hard to tell how they could stand up. In fact, they toppled over onto the bed, still octopussed.

You're free to use the new verb provided you credit me. You can send money, too. I won't refuse.

And have fun octopussing.

Benjamin Button, F. Scott and Me

2008-11-23T17:46:00.004-05:00

This is another one of those fish that got away stories, or more definitely a story of a story that got away. If you don't like those kind of stories, skip this.

F. Scott Fitzgerald penned a lovely, edgy, witty little ditty called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button during 1921 or so in which our protagonist (like Merlin the Magician) is born an old man who as he gets older becomes younger until finally his befuddled family must hide a pewling infant as, we imagine, he devolves into a sperm and ovum and then vanishes. It seemed a truly delicious way to dissect a lifetime and a milieu and a culture and humanity and how we relate to one another, by turning it all upsidedown.

Benjamin Button always seemed to me the perfect candidate for a movie adapation, but there were problems.

The main ones were that doing the special effects twenty-five years ago was no picnic. Getting a fellow to age backwards involved make-up and casting. You can age someone from, oh, their twenties to their nineties without much trouble. A few latex appliances, wigs and some grease paint, and there he is, an old man! It's the youth part that is diffcult. You must find a succession of teenagers, children and tots who bear a spitting resemblance to the starring actor as young guy. I recall the agonies of the casting director for Superman I hunting for someone to play Christopher Reeve as a teenager, child and infant. They had hundreds of casting photos all over the office and kept putting them up on the wall until they had a succession of boys who looked like they were the same person growing up. Then they had to be available, negotiated for, and quickly filmed before they grew yet more adolescent or less infantile.

The other problem was that no one in Hollywood liked the idea. Or, more accurately, they thought I was nuts. This never stops me: the list of films that I've wanted to make that no one liked but that got made anyway is awfully long now (Benjamin Button being the latest among projects that go all the way to Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddhartha which my agents all shook their heads at), so I've persisted all these years muttering and pleading until, at last, I realized that David Fincher, whom I've never met, was going to fulfill my dream.

David's got it easy. He has a track record for offbeat, if not downright weird movies, and he has the magic of CG special effects to back him up. It's simply a breeze in 2008 to make someone get younger and old: you just use the computer to map the face of the actor onto someone elses, tickele a few pixels and Voila! the aged or infantilized Benjamin Button. I envy him in the most respectful way. It's not that it's being handed to him on a silver platter, it's just that he was the right guy in the right place at the right time. And you can do a period drama with period locations without spending millions on building a 1922 city. I haven't checked to see if it is being done as a period drama of if he's updated it to the 21st Century. I'd have done it as a Jazz Age piece. There's something so appealing and appalling about that. Some of you, by now, already know what it is or if you're reading this after the release date, absolutely know, but I'm still curious and wondering.

Brad Pitt, of course, didn't exist when I wanted to do this. Heaven knows whom we would have cast way back when if someone in The Black Tower at Universal had said "Yes," but it wouldn't have been Brad. I'm sure he'll do a fine job, and surely bring in the audience or "an audience" of some sort, more than an unknown would to a film with an edgy, science fictiony premise like this one.

I look forward to it. Of course, I'll be sitting in the theater muttering under my breath and cursing fate once again. One of these days, I'll get to do the movies of the books that I've dreamt of for decades. Or not.

Are you guys with big bucks out there listening? I've got a BIG LIST of great projects and so far, I'm batting a thousand on which ones get financed, just not on when.

Kitties and Movies

2008-10-23T21:39:00.002-04:00

Cats have virtually no interest in being the first in the neighborhood to see the new hit movie.

The Coming Golden Age of Stereoscopic 3D Movies: A Revolution, or "Oh Grandpa, I don't want to see those dumb "flat" movies!"

2008-09-08T05:06:00.017-04:00

For the past two weeks I've been kicking myself for never having published an essay about my plans for using IMAX as a vehicle for action feature-films over 20 years ago.

I had seen North of Superior, a 1971 IMAX film, in the original curved-screen theater on Ontario Place in Toronto. In that amazing moment when the tiny first image in the film expanded to the full six or seven story height of the screen, and it felt like the building was about to tip over, my vision of the future of the cinema was born.

I wanted to make a James Bond film in IMAX. All of the exposition scenes would have been in horizontal strips across the center of the big, square frame or, perhaps, in smaller, multi-screen sequences ala Charly or the Johnson's Wax film, To Be Alive, of the 1964 World's Fair. But when Bond took to the air, or launched a car chase, the huge screen would be filled with swooping action shots, all sixty or eighty vertigo inducing feet high.

Of course, it occurs to me now, I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want them to steal this incredible idea, so -- until this summer -- you've never really seen a motion picture before in quite this way.

But, somehow, Chris Nolan used some diabolic mind-reading device (this is the science fiction age, isn't it?) to suck this idea out of my brain when I was sleeping or drinking coffee in Zabars or at some other moment when my guard was down, and incorporated it into The Dark Knight: The Imax Experience (as the execs at IMAX like to call it). The entire opening bank-robbery sequence, the climax, and interspersed aerial shots of Hong Kong and other cities were shot in full-sized IMAX, but all those endless exposition scenes were left in normal widescreen format in the center of the frame.

Well, it is small comfort now to say that I was right and it works just great, exactly as I imagined it. But in the long-past interests of secrecy, I never published the notion, and my film producing career never deposited me in the catbird seat long enough to realize the dream, so it's victory served up cold. The Batman team did a great job, but, of course, I would have done it better -- and sooner -- if only someone had listened to me and handed me the money.

There were, come to think of it, real discussions with George Lucas and Gary Kurtz about doing The Empire Strikes Back in IMAX during 1977 Not only did I try to twist their arms to do it, but, Gary told me years later, IMAX had secretly approached them and begged them to do it. What stopped it from happening were the limitations of photomechanical special effects: they would have looked terrible blown up on a screen that big. There were so many photographic generations, that the grain levels would would have looked like dancing basketballs enlarged on the giant screen.

Well, enough sour grapes and regrets.

Here's my new prediction.

Having tried for nearly 8 years now to put together my two new top-secret IMAX films, the steepness of the slope toward that goal is painfully apparent. So, I won't reveal the secret films, but I will tell you what I see in my Movie Crystal Ball.

It's summed up in the sobriquet: "Oh Grandpa! I don't want to see those dumb flat movies!"

When I started putting together an IMAX-3D feature film nearly a decade ago, I envisioned the arrival of a new cinema, a stereoscopic, dimensional one.

The invention of holograms seemed to promise 3D movies with no glasses that could float in the air in front of an astonished audience, but despite Joseph Losey's announcements to the contrary in the mid-1970s, no technology to produce that has materialized beyond some tiny, optical-laboratory experiments that never panned out.

Let's be clear for a moment. The term "3D" has been co-opted by graphic artists. The term has come to be used to refer to graphics that have a "round," rendered look. This is the "look" of WALL-E or The Incredibles or any of dozens of PIXAR animated films or the CG (computer graphic) rendered special effects in live-action films produced by Industrial Light and Magic.

But it was originally coined to designate movies or images that had true, stereoscopic, in-depth, pop-out-of-the-screen images viewed, usually, with either Polaroid or anaglyph (red/green) glasses. I've been calling this sort of three-dimensional movie S-3D or 3D-S to differentiate it from the diluted 3D term in common use for video-games. It's just possible, however, that over a period of several years -- if stereoscopic 3D becomes pervasive -- that kids will simply substitute 3D for the "new" stereoscopic version without missing a beat. But I'm guessing that a newer term will take root.

There have been several previous historic eras of stereoscopic photography. One lasted from the late 19th Century into the early 20th Century and was composed of "stereopticon slides" seen in a special hand-held viewer. There were some experimental 3D movies as early as 1894, but they were few an far between. In the 1930's there was minor upsurge in anaglyph 3D short-subjects shown as novelties using red/green glasses. In the 1950's, however, there was a serious "second-wave" of 3D pioneered by Arch Oboloer's Bwana Devil, a twin-projector, polaroid glasses feature-film thriller that sold out theaters and kicked off a two year frenzy of 3D movies that fizzled out just as Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant Dial M for Murder hit the screens. Let's call thsi the "First Golden Age of 3D Movies."

The "Second Golden Age" dribbles into existance from Arch Oboler's The Bubble (1966), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973) and really takes root through the late 70-s and early 80s with a seemingly endless series of Grade-Z horror and western films all of which used what is call "over and under" single-projector 3D projection. This wave ended rather more abruptly than it started.

Around the same time and in parallel, the original IMAX corporation developed a15x70mm two-camera 3D process which was and still is the most stunning presentation of moving stereoscopic images that we have today. However, these films were almost exclusively travelogues and science-related films, not dramas or deliberate forms of escapist entertainment.

The late 1990s saw the development of a new variation on 3D projection that utilizes a digital projector and an LCD screen to project alternating left eye / right eye images that are viewed through special circularly polarized glasses (that make it possible to tilt your head without losing the 3D effect). Walt Disney Pictures has embraced this technology and has released several films (Chicken Little, Hannah Montana, Meet The Robinsons, and others) using a version similar to the Real-D system.

Not to be left out, Dolby has developed a reliable, non-polaroid method that utilizes incremental differences in the frequency of color light which is much brighter and clearer than the Polaroid methods.

So here is my prediction and, hopefully, you've read it here first.

We are on the eve of the Third Golden Age of Stereoscopic Movies. This one, I believe, will be nearly permanent, and I've even gone so far as to predict that 30% of all new movies in the next few years will be produced in stereoscopic 3D. And eventually, ALL movies (and television) will be in 3D as well.

The crucial factor is the roll out of the infra-structure. There must be enough theaters capable of showing stereoscopic 3D for the studios to make money from it. The final obstacles to digital projection in commercial theaters are crumbling and it's likely that the majority of non-museum movie theaters will be converted to digital by 2015.

What's required here is the "3D Blockbuster." This must be the equivalent of The Jazz Singer in 1927-28. It was the first successful sound film (not the first sound film). It was the one that brought audiences to the theater and established synchronized sound as THE way to show movies. (Grandpa, I don't want to see those "silent" movies.) By the early 1950s color film had established itself, and black and white had largely vanished as a motion picture (or television form) by the 1980s. (Oh Grandpa! I hate those black and white movies!). In the 1970s, the desire to see Star Wars with stereophonic sound forced theaters to install Dolby Stereo systems by the thousands and established Dolby as the sine-qua-non of motion picture sound.

The result must be a critical mass of theaters capable of showing digital, stereoscopic 3D with stereophonic sound. How many theaters is this? There are an estimated 40,000 movie theaters in the United States. Perhaps there are triple that number in the whole world. I can only guess that it must be 1500 or more. That bears some resemblance to the early installed base of Dolby Sound capable theaters in the 1970s.

So where are we in 2008? Well, almost every multi-plex movie theater has at least one digital projector, and hundreds of them have the LCD panel necessary to show 3D, and more of those theaters are going online everyday. Various conversion projects are announced that promise thousands of 3D equipped theaters by Spring of 2009.

Now we need the "Blockbuster." There are two main candidates. Avatar and Star Wars.

Star Wars? Yes. As I type away here, Real-D is slaving mightily converting all six Star Wars movies to stereoscopic 3D. There is a computerized process that automates this, and the results (visible in the converted 3D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas released two years go) are stunning. Knowing the Lucasfilm perfectionism, this will the the ultimate in 3D conversions. Make no mistake, this is high-quality: Much better than mere cutting edge "colorization" of black and white movies.

When the first of the 3D Star Wars hit screens in, purportedly, Spring of 2009, every theater in the world will want to participate in this license to print money. There is no doubt that the promise of this goldrush will push reluctant venues to convert to digital so that they don't miss out. There was talk of having the 3D Star Wars released in 2008, but, clearly, this has been moved back because not enough venues were on board.

And then there is Avatar. James Cameron of Terminator and Titanic fame has, apparently, like me, dreamt of doing a 3D movie for much of his life, and Avatar is it. At 300 million plus dollars, it will be not only the most expensive 3D movie ever made, but also the most expensive movie of any kind.

According to the IMDB, Avatar is "the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival" Hmmm.... could be kewl. Given how expensive it is, it had better be very kewl. We'll find out in December of 2009, all things being equal.

It goes without saying that eventually Steven Spielberg will want to make a 3D movie. The animated TinTin (now in production) is touted as being that, but Steve will want to do a live-action film, his own Creature from the Black Lagoon or It Came From Outer Space.

Everyone in Hollywood, eventually, from Peter Jackson to George Lucas will want to get in on the action. And that, I'm suggesting, will form the basis of the "Third Golden Age of 3D.

Only this time, I think it will stay with us.

There are already patents filed for 3D television sets. I did my own developmental work on a lenticular system, but others have already built prototypes of similar systems that are operating on the streets of Germany right this minute. I've seen them demonstrated, and they are, though crude, very impressive. Spielberg himself has invested in a 3D-TV system of unknown design.

There's the sequence, then:
- Critical mass of 3D capable theaters
- The 3D Blockbuster
- Follow-up and copy-cat movies
- A home-television based aftermarket.

All of these elements are in the works and, barring unforeseen events, will come to pass on a discernable schedule.

"Awww Grandpa! Do we have to see that flat movie? I hate flatties."

"No Dear. You don't. Grandpa is just finishing up converting Citizen Kane to 3D for you. And we're doing Gone With the Wind and Casablanca next month."

And, let me tell you, the tools for Grandpa to do that already exist. I predict that the 3D handwriting is on the wall, and I guess I just wanted the satisfaction of -- at least once -- having a prediction like this in print before it happens. Then I can say, with impunity, "I told you so."

It's not as good as being able to do it myself, but then, if Cameron's movie does well, someone who reads this will come to me and give me my big chance.

I'm here and waiting!

And, of course, when the Hologram revolution finally arrives in 10 or 20 years, when some physicist finally works out a way to mould and bend light waves without benefit of a screen, the next Golden Age will begin. Maybe some of us will be there to witness it all as this pattern repeats itself once again.

WALL-E. Some film-making reflections.

2008-09-08T04:08:00.007-04:00

By now you've either seen WALL-E or read something about the film (or WALL-E himself). Much has been made of the story-telling style of this unexpectedly remarkable film, so it might be worth swinging the flashlight around and attempting to illuminate another part of the picture.

It's facile to say that WALL-E is an homage to, say, Charlie Chaplin since no characters say much of anything until 40 minutes or so into the 98 minute movie. It's a bit more than a Chaplin homage, I'd venture: Motion Pictures as a form had no synchronous dialogue to speak of from the inception of movies in 1894 until 1928 or so. Deprived of "spoken" dialogue, thousands and thousands of films found a way to tell stories through body language, motion, facial expressions, editing, intertitles and the Stanton and Reardon screenplay is absolutely in the classic tradition of the so-called silent era. You have to watch the movie to tell what's happening. This is not illustrated radio (in the way that most modern television shows are which enable you to know what's happening even if you're in the other room cooking dinner and can't see the TV set). This is true "visual" story-telling.

What's stunning about this simple and quietly touching little fable (if one can stretch the definition of "fable" to include robots along with anthropomorphic animals) is the economy and richness of the script. There's hardly any wasted motion here, no fat in the meat, as it were. A second viewing reveals how wonderfully a detail pays off at the end. For example, each and every one of the "mad" robots released by the blast from EVE's disconnected arm plays a specific (and comic) part in the final chase scene. Rich in forwshadowing, the storyline shades in character, emotion, motivation all through tiny details: WALL-E's collection of his favorite garbage, the spare parts library, a tilt of his eyepods or twist of a mechanical wrist, and ultimately the precious videotape of Hello Dolly.

WALL-E himself is something of a simpleton, as one might expect from a robot intended to compress garbage, yet it's that incremental step up from "mechanical device" to "lonely being" that slides unnoticed past our critical inclinations that makes this whole thing work. The "acting" of what is literally a box-shaped garbage scoop on tank treads is amazing. Reduced to minimal cues to emotion, the animators have been forced to express character through the simplest forms of mime. Marcel Marceau would have been proud of them.

Nothing more than "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again" in schematic construction, the plot is woven intricately with the sort of science fiction detail that has -- until now -- been nearly impossible to create on the motion picture screen. I found myself thinking that the late Robert Sheckley, a seminal writer of speculative fiction in the 1940s and 50s would have loved this film. His stories were, twice, made into films (Freejack and The 10th Victim), but without the richness of modern CG graphics. One evening, about a year ago, I found myself watching an aerial shot of dozens of sailing ships gliding an 18th Century Harbor in Pirates of the Caribbean and realizing in that moment that virtually anything we can think of can now be shown on the huge motion picture screen in dazzling detail (soon to be followed by the same thing in stunning stereoscopic 3D). Now, here's WALL-E, the quintessential 1940's science fiction story fully realized in awesome reality 30 or 40 feet high in full color. [It breaks my heart that Ray Bradbury and I will never have the chance to bring The Martian Chronicles to the screen (as it should have been long ago) using this technology to re-create the retro-science fiction vision of the book. But that's a topic for another time.]

Few modern films have the simple, direct originality of WALL-E's screenplay. It has become de-rigeur to overload films with sizzle and flash and to leave the meat in the refrigerator. Young directors and editors, intoxicated with AVID and other non-linear editing systems, overdose with two-frame jump cuts simply because it's so easy to do so, and ignore the needs of telling a good story clearly. Not so here. This film plays out with effortless clarity. This has inexpicably become a nearly lost art. Somehow Hollywood has allowed its current product to become synonymous with "expensive computer graphics." Even the wonderful Star Wars series has gotten a bit too cozy with the aesthetics of computer games instead of the stories of DeMaupassant and perhaps this has led American filmmaking closer and closer to the slippery slope of entertainment based solely upon spectacle.

This, like the movie, is an essay theme worth re-visiting. Fine pieces of jewelry invite the owner to pick them up, turn them in the light, and discover new beauty over and over again.

In the end, WALL-E transcends its own technique and its very origins in digital bits and fractal equations. It's a softly whispered tale of loneliness, dreams, and loss. But most of all, it is a story of hope. Hope for the future, hope for mankind, hope for friendship and companionship, hope for the warm loving touch of a hard, cold mechanical hand.

And in the stunning climactic moment when the technological equivalent of fingers intertwine with passion and life, no words can express the fullness of the relationship between a square, clanking robot and a shining, white, flying egg with arms, and the promise that we, too, will survive our own pollution, technology and human follies with hearts -- filled like theirs -- with love.

Cultural Patriotism

2008-08-31T19:19:00.001-04:00

Cultural Patriotism is the patriotic support of your country through culture and art.

What better route to international progress?

KinDzaDza You-Tubed

2008-08-31T00:00:00.004-04:00

KinDzaDza has been YouTubed.

This is not the ideal way to see this film. But it may be the only way at the moment.

KinDzaDza Part One

WALL-E

2008-08-30T23:42:00.003-04:00

Do you suppose that WALL-E is really named after Walter Elias Disney?

Window Kitties

2007-12-26T05:07:00.001-05:00

Window kitties come and go. They are a big city phenomenon, mostly, but they probably exist in the burbs as well. Discovering suburban window kitties, however, is more problematical: it would involve cruising in a car or walking endless miles and peeking into windows as an unwelcome stranger. Cities allow us to peek into windows with impunity, and cats to peer out at us without censure.

One day these special cats are resting on a second floor window sill and following your progress down the street, the next they are somewhere else taking care of business: lunch, litterbox, or nap.

We usually don't know who they belong to, these window kitties. The owners are seldom seen with their paws on the sill next to their furry friends. They are behind the scenes, out working to support the litterbox, luncheon and nap.

There's something comforting about a window kitty looking out at you. It's through a window in winter and sometimes through a screen in the summer. It is someone who notices you walking down a New York side street when there is no one else around. Of course, they can't call for help if there's a problem, but window kitties have been known to meow a less-than-tentative hello toward faces they find familiar.

Not everyone likes them there, those window kitties, those finding them aloof and mysterious and impenetrable and their eyes piercing through to things that are too private. Many dogs have a goofy, friendly, street-level way of saying hello that's more immediate to a certain temperament.

Window Kitty One lived on a ground floor and vacillated between two bamboo decorated windows on West End Avenue. One could easily be at eye level with her when her eyes were open (usually not for long). But one day, the bamboo shutters covered with rice paper, were closed and Window Kitty One become invisible.

Window Kitty Two lived between Broadway and Amsterdam and you had to look up to her. Sometimes she'd mew hello through the screen because she was only by the window in the summertime. In the winter she probably had a warm spot somewhere inside.

Now Window Kitty Two is gone with her owner to some other place. Some other apartment. Some other city.

If It's Not in Google, Does It Really Exist?

2007-08-21T11:36:00.002-04:00

Woe be unto those who were born before Google took over the world.

Alas! I learned to read books and newspapers and magazines. And -- gasp! -- I talk to people!

Not so, apparently, those who grew up with the Internet fully in place.

For the past two years, I have been trying to have the IMDB list a film I made in 1969. It's a real film, trust me. It's called Solstice, and it was shown at film festivals. Some of the people who made it became "famous." I even have a 16mm print of it, and, if you still don't trust me, I'll arrange to meet at a mutually convenient dark street corner and let you hold it in your hand, and I might even project it so that you can see that the images printed on the celluloid add up to a real living breathing "movie."

The faceless gatekeepers at IMDB (the Internet Movie Database to the rest of you) don't believe me.

"We can't find it in Google," they tell me.

"Well, that's because Google didn't exist in 1969," I tell them.

"Yes, but we can find most anything important in Google," they retort. "How about the distributor?"

The distributor was the New York University Film Library. But. They don't exist anymore. And they don't have a website. Maybe they never had a website.

I tell the faceless drone at IMDB this.

"But we can find anything important on Google," they repeat. "If it's not in Google, we can't add it to the database."

So what's the problem? Do they think I'm lying? Do they think the reel of film I'm holding in my hand is some sort of hallucination? Do they want a bribe? Probably not the latter, because they are too cowardly to tell me who they really are let alone supply an address to mail them a bribe. I'll have an easier time meeting you on a dark street corner to show you the actual film than to find out who or where these folks are.

This problem exists in spades on Wikipedia.

One of the main criteria for deleting facts on Wikipedia is how many entries about the "fact" the so-called "editor" can find when they Google the fact.

We have started an important new not-for-profit called the "Digital Nitrate Prize." Suffice it to say that this is a major service to film preservation: it will encourage the full preservation of the original beauty of real motion picture film in the inevitable transition to digital preservation and projection.

However, the "editors" at Wikipedia won't allow us to have an entry about the Digital Nitrate Prize. In fact, we're now threatened with being banned if we try to add it to the online encyclopedia!

There is, of course, the issue of who these "editors" are. Well, the answer is that I have no idea! Nor, I believe, does anyone else have any idea who they are. They are, one supposes, over weight nerds with some vaguely positive form of autism who can sit in front of their computors 24/7 and try to reject facts from being posted in Wikipedia.

To their credit, let me surmise that there must be the internet equivalent of the unwashed masses who would like to see their Great Aunt Minnie listed in Wikipedia who need to be deterred. I'll give them that. There are too many Aunt Minnies in the world for us to read about all of them in Wikipedia. The logistics of telling one Aunt Minnie from another Aunt Minnie makes my brain spin.

But benevolent not-for-profit cash prizes that will save the world's film heritage? How does that parse out?

These guys go by names like "NightRider" or "SlashAndBurn" or "UpUrFactz" and other cute names. I'm supposing most of them are guys because girls don't usually call themselves "DemonKnight," they prefer the internet equivalent of "FlowerDemon" or "DestroyerInPink."

I discovered yesterday that they get "points" for editing. If they make 100 edits, they get to display a little cute graphic on their page.

So "DemonKnight" wants to have this little graphic on his page and is vaguely incapable of doing real research. (We can safely assume that "DemonKnight" has never read a newspaper and plays X-Box simulaneously with editing WikiPedia. Perhaps there's a Nintendo version of Wikipedia that allows you to censor articles using a game controller). How does he do this? Well, you get points for deleting articles. Delete one article, one point! Delete 90 articles, 90 points! Delete 500 articles and you get an even bigger, gaudier graphic. Wow!

And what research does "DemonKnight" do? You guessed. He puts Digital Nitrate Prize into Google and counts how many times Google finds it. There must be a magic number, but we don't know what it is.

But apparently, if it's under 10 or so hits, or God Forbid, no hits at all, it doesn't exist. The fact of there being a board of internationally famous film archivists involved and discussion in the field about it doesn't seem to matter. It's not in Google, and it doesn't exist.

"Google ergo sum!" "I Google, therefore I am!" Take that Rene Descartes!

-----

LINKS
[Links for The Digital Nitrate Prize: http://www.answers.com/topic/digital-nitrate-prize ]

"Tuh" The New Word In Town

2007-06-30T19:06:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, I've done this myself, so rest easy.

The English word "to," a common and much beloved preposition, has been transmogrified into "tuh" when it is spoken outloud in sentences by an increasing number of Americans (and perhaps those in other countries as well, but I'm not sure because my sample is too small).

It's still spelled "to" (as if it were to be pronounced that way, too), but it is mostly pronounced tuh.

"I went to the store" comes out as "I went tuh the store."

This is not just another case of saying "nuclear" as "new-cue-lar" as one of our current politicians is so fond of doing. No, it is a little hard to keep your tongue moving properly when you say "nuclear" especially if you are not too fond of reading and spelling. Those who say "new-cue-lar" tend to spell it nucular, so they have an excuse. (In case you are confused, it is pronounced "new-klee-are" or something very much like that.)

But this new "tuh" thing is some sort of creeping tongue laziness. We can all see how it's spelled, for heaven's sake. It' s a two letter word composed of "t" and "o." It's hard to mess that up.

It's supposed to be pronunced like "two." They are homonyms, right? 'Two=to' when it comes to pronunciation. That should be easy.

"I want tuh go out tuh the movies."

"Did you take the book back tuh the library or did you give it to you dog to play with." Now there's one where they are differentiated. I think.

Perhaps "to" is pronounced correctly when we want to emphasize it. "Did you give it to her or did you just leave it on the table?" I'll bet you'd say "to" as "two" in that sentence, wouldn't you?
Not that I have any way to know, but when you are reading these sentences to yourself in your head, are you saying "to" as in "two" or do you misprounounce it in your mind as well? I tend to think "to" (as in "two") when I read silently to myself and while I'm typing this.

But, as I previously confessed, I (ahem) do sometimes utter the dreaded "tuh." "So I said tuh the guy that he oughta give it back tuh her! And he told me tuh shove it."

And perhaps you will, too.

Fewer And Fewer Fewers

2007-06-30T18:50:00.000-04:00

Fewer and fewer of us use "fewer" as a word. It has been replaced by less.

Modern folks would say "less and less of us use "fewer," but that's wrong, not that you'd know it by listening to anyone else but me and a few of my foolish (or is that "few-less"?) friends. It annoys me to hear otherwise intelligent announcers on, say, NPR, saying "fewer" less and less, if at all. Every day, in fact, there is less use of few.

The difference, for those of you who are too young to remember or just don't or didn't care, is that "less" is for "amounts" of things and "fewer" is for numbers of things or people.

Here're the examples.

There is less water in the short glass than in the tall glass.
There are six people in the blue car and four in the red one. The red car has fewer people in it.

No one would say "please put fewer sugar into the pie," but no one seems to have a problem saying there are less people in that line than in this one.

That, I guess, is how language changes. It seems to become less precise and much less useful. (Intuitively, one does know that you wouldn't say "fewer precise.")

Is it just laziness on the part of the average person? Or is the difference between "fewer" and "less" just too hard to learn?

I have fewer and fewer ideas about it and less and less time to try to figure it out. Or is that less and less ideas about it and fewer and fewer time to try to figure it out? Nahhh... it's the first one, don't you agree?

Subway Gum

2007-02-28T22:44:00.001-05:00

Years and years ago, they sold gum on the subway platforms in New York City. I don't chew gum any more, but I do see the ghosts of the gum machines.

There were little, flat, square, glass-fronted machines attached to the steel beams that hold up the underground ceilngs at Times Square. You put in a penny and pushed or pulled a lever and out slid chewing gum.

One kind of gum -- Beeman's Pepsin Chewing Gum -- came wrapped in a little piece of translucent white paper. It was flat and a little powdery when you folded back the wrapping. It wasn't quite soft, but not as hard as the pink slabs of bubble gum that came wrapped in every pack of baseball cards sold up until the 1970s. YOu could tell the difference between the pink gum and the baseball card because the gum shattered when you bit it and the cards didn't.

The other kind of subway gum was Chiclets. Those came two to a little yellow box that you had to open before the pieces slid -- white, shiny and pepperminty -- onto your tongue. The cardboard had it's own particular dry, gray taste for the moments that it rested on your tongue before the gum dropped out. Chiclet shells crunched under your teeth then the same way they do now until your teeth mix the shell into the chewy part and all the sugar and mint gets used up.

Under the gum machines were little metal baskets to catch the paper wrappers and little yellow Chiclet boxes. Usually the paper actually ended up in the container.

But the chewed gum was dropped willy nilly, helter skelter all over the subway platform and trampled until it formed hard black blobs on the cement.

Someone in administration probably removed the gum machines because of the troubles scraping the dried gum off of the subway platforms. The thousands and thousands of pennies the gum earned must not have made up for the labor of cleaning.

Ironically, that's the only part of this tradition that's survived: The hard black blobs.

I'm sure they're not the black blobs of my childhood, those were cleaned up or paved over long ago. But they look the same and have the same uneven feeling under you feet when you walk over them that spoils for a moment the smoothness of the cement.

I miss those machines. That was all of the fun: You put in a penny and out came gum. Pennies don't generate that much joy these days. I do so miss those machines.

KinDzaDza - Lost Masterpiece

2006-11-17T22:11:00.000-05:00

No one outside of the former Soviet Union has ever seen this. More's the pity. If you find a way to see the rest of it, let us all know.

Capitalism...its crazy! - Google Video

Tiger

2006-07-08T12:49:00.000-04:00

Tiger mutters.

Tiger's not really his name because most cats in New York Chinatown don't have names. When we asked the wizened owner of the Mott Street pharmacy what the cat's name was he stared at us blankly for a moment then said, "Tiger." Tiger catches rats, so his name might as well be "Tiger" even if it's not.

"He catches lots of rats in the alley," the pharmacist says barely in English. Tiger is a lanky cat. His legs and body are too long and so is his nose. If you look down from above, his head seems almost as long as a puppy's, not flatish like most cats.

Tiger likes to sleep on an old, metal-frame restaurant chair that sits on the floor surrounded by lucky bamboo plants in front of the pharamacy counter, but he looks up when we walk in and meows a "hello" in proper 'cat.' After a stretch and a good chin scratch (chin held up agreeably for convenient scratch access), he will begin to mutter the day's business.

"Mwow. Mwow. Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp." he says. "Those tourists walk in here looking for Lord knows what and nearly step on me. Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp. Mowww. Who do they think they are anyway?"

We think that the Chinese don't feed their cats. They expect them to eat all the rodents they can catch. Mouse buffet or something. Tiger doesn't show the well-fed tummy of apartment cats.

"Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp. And that little girl... . She bumped into me! Can you imagine? And giggling to her friends the whole time. Mooowwwwpppp!"

He's like an old vegetable stand attendant cursing to himself about those crazy "gwai lo" who don't really know what a water chestnut looks like before it's peeled.

Tiger rubs against my left leg and looks up expectantly.

"How's hunting? I ask him.

"Mewwwwwwwwwwwwwp. Moww. Mmmmmppp! I've eaten all the rats in the back already."

He has a long half-healed cut on his ear.

"The rat was bigger than him!" The pharmacist offers. "Real big! He's brave!"

Tiger washes his ear and rubs against my leg again.

"We've got to go," I say.

"MMmmmmowwwp. Grmmmowp. Mewwwwp."

One more well-placed chin scratch and Tiger jumps back onto his chair. He purrs in Chinese and mutters to himself about the tourists as he finds a proper spot on the worn plastic. In two blinks he is asleep. His tail hangs off one side of the chair, his too-long head and too-long neck dangle awkwardly off the other side of the chair as though the empty air was a pillow. He mutters in his sleep and dreams proudly about the vanquished rats.

Cool Clock Confluences

2006-06-13T14:32:00.000-04:00

No mathematical activity is more fun than when numbers seem to line up in a mystical way. Watching a car's odometer turn over from 299,999.9 miles to 300,000 miles is a major numeric event.

So it was that on June 6, 2006 (ummm... that's 6/6/06 in case you weren't paying attention) I noticed several significant times of the day:

1:11
2:22
3:33
4:44
5:55
and last, but not least, the longest one: 11:11.

I wasn't around for both the AM and PM version of these, but that does double the list.

What does this all mean?

Not a thing that I can see, but it is sort of cool to watch these times appear on a digital clock and stare at them for 59 seconds until your eyes water and they pass into eternity.

Summer Dot: Sudoku System

2006-04-18T13:22:00.000-04:00

Having watched dozens of friends and acquaintances scribbling gazillions of jumbled numbers all over their Sudoku puzzles, I've decided to reveal my hitherto "secret" Summer Dot Sudoku system.

I haven't figured out how to either make or post a diagram, so you'll have to use your imagination a little bit, but it's not hard.

What is this all about?

It's a simple, neat way to keep track of which number could/should go in each empty Sudoku square without writing numbers all over the place: It uses dots instead.

First, draw an empty 3 x 3 square with 9 empty boxes. It should look just like any of the 9 square units that make up a 9x9 Sudoku puzzles.

For reference, fill the squares with numbers from 1 to 9
Minus the lines, it will look something like this:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Now draw another empty 3 x 3 square. Imagine that the _ is really an enclosed box

_ _ _
_ _ _
_ _ _

Suppose you want to represent the number 5 with a DOT instead of the number 5. Where would you put it?
Did you answer "the middle square?" Yep!

_ _ _
_ * _
_ _ _

How about 8?

_ _ _
_ _ _
_ * _

So any number can be represented by a DOT (represented by *) in the appropriate square.

Instead of trying to write down all the actual numbers that can go into a square, just put a DOT in the appropriate spot within the empty square. This works best with large Sudoku puzzles with large squares or with a very fine point pen that lets you make little tiny dots.

It takes a little practice to become accustomed to reading the dots as numbers:

*_ _
_ _ _
_ _ _

= 1

_ * _
_ _ _
_ _ _

= 2

and so on.

Patterns of missing numbers emerge very quickly.

If a given square can hold 1, 5, 7, 8 it would look like:

* _ _
_ * _
* * _

with the four dots in the appropriate spaces.

2, 6, 8, 9 would look like:

_ * _
_ _ *
_ * *

As you fill in other squares and use up a "missing" number, simply erase the DOT (if you are using pencil) or draw a thin line through it if you are brave and do Sudoku with a pen.

Any questions?

Happy solving!

Major Dundee "Restored?"

2005-04-19T11:03:00.000-04:00

(April 2005: Film Forum, New York City)

Major Dundee is still lost somewhere on the border between Texas and Mexico. A stunning endeavor to rescue him was mounted by Columbia Pictures recently, but despite fine work work and high-minded idealism, Sam Peckinpah's early film still verges upon the inaccessible and incomprehensible.
One thing is clear, Major Dundee may -- even in a mangled state -- be one of the finest attempts at portraying war in all it's dirt drenched, emotionally maladroit, morally untenable, politically muddled and ethically impossible reality. Where Kubrick's Paths of Glory pinpoints the damned if you do, damned if you don't dilemma of the common soldier caught up in the ego-driven machinations of the highly placed perpetrators of World War I, what's left of Peckinpah's attempt to show something similar never quite focusses on enough tangibles to be either emotionally engaging or clearly provacative intellectually.

It is to the intellect, in fact, that this lengthened by 12 minutes version of Dundee seems to appeal the most. There are fine moments that start to take hold -- the Confederate soldier ordering a restrained, dignified black soldier to take off his boots -- but they never seem integrated into the sweep of the entire motion picture.

At this point in history, it becomes nearly impossible without major research and apologies to determine who or what's at fault. Sam Peckinpah's personal problems were well-known and as his drinking problems took hold, his grasp upon story and drama loosened. For my taste, his best films are Ride The High Country and The Wild Bunch: here the story is clear and everything hangs in its proper place along the tales told.

But it's hard to even determine to what Major Dundee aspired. There are three credited writers. If this were a comedy, having 9 writers would be more appropriate, even de rigeur. But on a drama, more than one writer spells trouble, especially when the writer listed in third place is the director himself. The echoes of ringing lines from "Ride The High Country" ("get the ball rolling" or Warren Oates refusing to bathe) attest to some desperation or lethargy in scripting.

The climax, however, has an unexpected emotional punch: not the battle itself, but rather the abrupt, inconclusive ending itelf. Having barely survived a vague sort of victory over the French, the tattered remains of Dundee's troops simply ride up a hill into Texas. There're no medals, no triumphant music, no romantic closeups of those "brave" few lucky enough to get away with their asses still attached. There's only a straight cut to the end title cast list. That's it. Chilling in the right sort of way, and a confirmation of an intention to show war in a dispassionate, raw way.

Brecht espoused a kind of intellectual distance between his plays and the audience. The "verfremdung" effect, he called it, the "alienation" effect. One was supposed to attend the theater, smoke, eat, chat, ponder while the play was going on. The better to absorb the political ideas that Brecht wanted you to learn.

It's hard to believe that Peckinpah set out to accomplish just that, but too much of the movie exists in the mind trying to fill in the missing parts: who was Dundee? what did he want? what was really going on inside of him? who were all these people anyway. Yes, they are all outcasts, misfits, criminals, but only the horse thief seemed to have any personality beyond stereotype.

Nonetheless, it's hard to not admire the attempt. At any time in Hollywood history, a production that has the balls to try something a little different is the clear exception to the rules. Even Heaven's Gate which is much more of a disaster than Major Dundee and undoubtedly has less at its heart and soul than Dundee does even in this purportedly restored, but still mangled version, needs to be given some credit for "chutzpah." But the proof of the pudding is that -- even at full length -- Heaven's Gate doesn't work and attests to spending money on sizzle (authentic 19th Century roller skates that no one in the audience can even see) instead of steak. Dundee has more meat on its bones, but the bones appear -- from the evidence at hand -- to be a bit rickety.

Orson Welles A One Man Band

2005-03-16T06:55:00.000-05:00

What I most remember about meeting Orson Welles was that he was big and also smiling. I managed to go up to him after a talk he gave at the Director's Guild of America in Hollywood sometime in the very early 80's. He showed some black and white excerpts from "The Other Side of the Wind," and I remember that he said something to the effect that if you took the boxoffice grosses of all of his movies including Citizen Kane and added them together the total would barely come up to the budget of a modern film. That was 15 years ago. And he was right.

In 1975, I was working on a documentary about American Comic Book and Comic Strip artists and I wanted to include an interview with Orson Welles. According to Jerry Siegel, the original delineator of The Joker in Batman comic books and a neighbor of mine, the guys around the comic book offices back in the early 1940's were big comic book fans! This included people you've probably never heard of, but should have, like Will Eisner, and some you have heard of, who you probably should ignore, like Bob Kane. Anyway, these guys liked to go to the movies. And they especially liked real moody black and white cinematography of what came to be thought of as the Gregg Toland school of perhaps even "noir" later on. They'd go see a movie, then come back to the office and draw it into their comic books. If you want to bother to look at the very early Batman and Detective Comics, you'll see it all there: shadows, dutch angles, silhouettes, you name it.One day somebody came back from a certain movie and told everybody else and they all went to see it and they came back and verbally slavered over it and drew it into their comic books. It was Citizen Kane of course and you can see the influence of that, too, especially in Wil Eisner's work up to the present day: both graphic style and story-telling style. Check out Dropsey Avenue or A Message From God.

So, now. Somebody actually talked to Orson Welles around about that time and found out that he (and apparently Gregg Toland) loved comic books. That he had been an avid reader of Detective Comics and Batman and had deliberately made Citizen Kane look like that. !!!!

Peter Bogdanovich was nice enough to give me Orson's home phone number in Los Angeles, and said "Call him up. Either he'll answer the phone or he won't." So I did. And Orson never answered the phone.

This evening I watched a lovely documentary about Orson's "declining" years down at the Film Forum, and thankfully there were more than the 5 people there that a friend reported a few days ago. Most of the audience was young. They laughed at the jokes though, and they were attentive. Not as many as I laughed at. That's because I'm older and more jaded and have more tire marks from Hollywood across my back than they do, but perhaps I'm putting on airs.

When I went up to him 15 years ago, I think I wanted something to rub off. I didn't know just what to say, and I believe I shook hands with him. Maybe not, but I think I did. I was awed, and in retrospect I felt a little like the guy in the color excerpt from "Wind" who goes up to John Houston and says "I'm Joe Blow." And Houston replies, "Of course you are." I'm sure I identified with Welles. Maverick. So did all umpty hundred people in the audience at the interview shown in the film. Oddly, they all probably wanted to be him. I know I did. I haven't gotten close, but I've suffered some of the same indignities. It's just that the detritus of my life isn't quite as interesting as the detritius of his. And the biggest thing I ever did, is awful tiny compared to the smallest thing Welles pulled off.

New York City, December 23, 1996

Ryan's Daughter

2005-03-16T06:52:00.000-05:00

David Lean can hardly be accused of pandering. He wrote once in a late 1940's essay that it went without saying that an important purpose of the cinema was to give a momentary dream to young people on Saturday night dates: for "her" that she was beautiful, exquisitely dressed and adored, for "him," that he was handsome and had conquered."her." And so they wrapped arms about one another and drifted away for two hours. There was no cynicism in it, however, or Brief Encounter certainly would not exist. And, of course, there is Dr. Zhivago, kind of an ultimate Saturday Night hug movie. And Ryan's Daughter.

Through the good graces of a good friend, I got to see a screening of a (relatively) uncut 35mm Anamorphic print of Ryan's Daughter just a few days ago.Before you put this down for fear of some ravings about techie things, I'll come back to it later. Romantic as it is, this film never sweeps you away like Zhivago. Instead, it has a kind of raw tragedy and raw sexuality that is both uncharacteristic of Lean and in many ways ahead of its time for mainstream movies.

So then, what's wrong with this picture. To begin with, it was filmed in 70mm. My recollection of seeing it at the Granada Theatre in Buffalo, NY in its uncut roadshow version projected through the original hand-ground Todd-AO prototype projection lenses, is of a truly stunning and glowing motion picture.

But to every one of my four companions in an almost deserted theatre during opening weekend, it was boring beyond belief. My girlfriend at the time was so bored, she wanted to leave and we had a terrible fight about it afterwards. I was, on the other hand, fascinated by it, and the glow of the film is almost unshakeable in my memories.

That is the first thing that is missing from a 35mm print: the incredible visual detail and the stunning play of light from a 65mm negative projected with the proper lenses on a slightly curved silvered screen from a 70mm release print. Every color is crisp. Every grain of sand is visible. Every mote of dust in every glory of sunshine. Wow.

The second thing is the sound. 70mm mag stripe had seven channel stereo (or perhaps it was six channel stereo, who's counting.) Five channels behind the screen so that the dialogue would move across the vast image with each character as they spoke. Then one (or was it two?) surround channels for scenes with huge waves crashing against the beach. Long since abandoned for the modern super surround systems where all dialogue is mixed to the center channel and the three front channels are basically used to have the sound of a car move from right to left and the surrounds for helicopters flying all over the place (pretty kewl actually), the original stereophonic systems were very focussed on human speech: where it was and who was saying it. Sometimes this got disconcerting when cutting between over the shoulder shots and having dialogue pop back and forth from right to left. That's why it was abandoned.

But in its glory, you couldn't beat it for dramatic scenes!

It's a pity, then, that this recent screening was of a 35mm print (and with no stereophonic sound either) because one of the big losses was of visual sensuality. It is like a different movie then, making you focus on the characters and dialogue and less on the image. A companion remarked that he had rediscovered the film on television, and I realized that it would probably work very well there with its big close ups and medium shot conversations.

That, in fact, is what is so uncharacteristic about Ryan, and why, I think, it don't all hang together. Compared to Brief Encounter or to Odd Man Out or The Rising of the Moon there is virtually no intimacy in the film, and the only characters who are shown in intimate settings are Sara Miles and Robert Mitchum. Nothing is ever revealed about the private lives of anyone else! And it is all played out against the most gorgeous landscapes ever revealed on the screen!

It is a thin story on a huge, huge, huge, huge set. Trevor Howard's is virtually the only character written with both the size and the subtlety to match the huge rocks, crashing waves, and desolate countryside. Setting a romatic tragedy against emptiness cries out for some internal life in the characters. And stunning art direction won't fill that hole.

Imagine that Rose was brilliant as well as beautiful and think what a tragedy that would have been. Instead, we have a woman craving, unknowingly, for a good fuck, for the big "O." Albeit that a woman's sexual life was ignored and to some extent consciously repressed those many years ago, that the story takes place in Ireland (home of the Irish Sex Manual -- filled with 200 blank pages) amongst Irish Catholics, it strikes me that it is not tragic enough that she simply be deprived of physical fulfillment. There is not enough history to the characters to make this compelling: who was Rose's mother really? where did her Dad come from? is it enough only to know that the British won't let the young people work and that all they have to do is to hang out on the main street and look at each other lustfully and make fun of the town fool? It seems to me that these are characters that are conceived of as monolithically and simplistically as the rocks on the seashore.

But, Lean and Bolt manage to pull this out of the fire somehow. Having seen this film now around 4 or 5 times in various incarnations and butcherings, I've never fallen asleep, nor have I ever felt like I was wasting my time. This is not damning with faint praise. Even Lean is entitled to come a cropper. And bad Lean is pretty good. Nonetheless, I think that the only way to appreciate what they meant to do is in the original 70mm format with sound intact. Then all the pieces are in place. It's all very well and good to see the strengths of the story as they reveal themselves (at proper scale) in the P&S TV version, but Lean set out to tell a mythic story with mythic sized characters on a now mythical sized screen with technical systems that seem sadly to be lost in time. Let's bring it all back in IMAX with all its visual and aural beauty and all of its dramatic blemishes.

New York City, December 20, 1996

Theatre Epilogue Epilogue

2005-03-16T06:49:00.000-05:00

It's only a week later, but as I walked home from the final Freeman Dyson lecture, The Amsterdam Theatre had changed again. Each letter of the name A M S T E R D A M was finished. They blinked on in turn, first A, then M until the whole name was spelled out. There are little frills of lights around the letters that blink, too. Beneath the marquee, little yellow bulbs run in a loop that disappears into the infinity of a correctly placed mirror inside the still unfinished lobby, each flickering yellow glow chasing the next around and around and around.

What new restoration wonder will come next?

Wednesday, March 5, 1997, New York City

A New Hope: A Movie Theatre Epilogue

2005-03-16T06:47:00.000-05:00

In the wonderful novel "Time and Again," Jack Finney's hero "thinks" and "emotes" himself from the still unchanged Dakota Hotel into the Central Park of the 19th Century. It is a feat of time travel unmatched in the high tech realms of modern movie science fiction. It is a feat of time travel that we all do quietly in our souls late at night or when we are sure that no one else is looking. We find those memories in our hearts that are brought back by the sight of a knick knack in a store window, or the scent of mustard on a steamed hot dog, and we are transported instantly and totally to another time, another place and we live there fully until the barking car horns bring us back in time before we are run over. We blush and blink it off and hope that no one saw that "look" on our face when it happened and then keep walking uptown or down taking little tastes of the still warm dream while it lasts.

On Wednesday, February 19, I attended a lecture by Freeman Dyson the noted, revered, and wondrous mathematician cum physicist, at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

Afterwards, head full of the history of science, the pacifism of Tolstoy, and the vagaries of Napoleonic educational methods, I wandered West on 42nd Street.

It was after 8 and it was dark as I walked through the desolation of the blocks between Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

I drifted back to my childhood and college days and the afternoons and nights spent in the myriad dirty piss-smelling movie theatres that lined 42nd Street watching movies and movies and cowboys and more movies. The memories shimmered hazily in the empty lots and little stores that live inside the shells of the old 10 cent movie houses.

Then I crossed Seventh Avenue and it was there.

Someone had brought back The Amsterdam Theatre. We all know it was Disney and we all know that our Mayor gave it to them on a silver tray, but there it was, glowing out of the shuttered strip between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. It was clean and lit up and looked for all the world like you could hand them a quarter and walk in and see a movie. It looked like the marble halls and marble men's rooms would smell like opening night. That the screen would no longer be torn, that the cherubim would have their gold leaf smiles buffed up once again. I peeked in past the gates and the inside was still unfinished, but the boxoffices were there and the marble floor was fairly clean and the marquee itself had every light bulb back in place only waiting to blink in some mystical snake-chasing-its-tail sequence.

And the best part was that as I walked down into the subway, it didn't disappear. It's still there, and even though it won't be used for movies, it promises to re-open in June and I can't wait.

Monday, March 3, 1997, New York City

Something There Is That Doesn't Like A Movie Theatre

2005-03-16T06:41:00.000-05:00

Unlike Prufrock and his coffee spoons, I measure my life in the demise of movie theatres.

When I first moved to New York's Upper West Side, there were eleven separate sand-alone movie houses.

There was one tiny one at 72nd Street that showed art films (and I've forgotten the name, Embassy 72, perhaps), the Loew's 84th Street (a movie palace in the Grand tradition replete with balcony), The New Yorker at 89th Street, The Symphony, The Thalia, two now nameless full size United Artist Theatres between 96th and 97th Street (former and badly faded movie palaces with work lights visible through the screen during the entire show), The Metro, a nameless theatre that showed mostly Mexican films with Cantinflas and others, the Edison (the oldest movie theatre in New York and actually built by Edison), and the Olympia.

The 72nd Street Theatre made way for a furniture store, the New Yorker was trashed for an apartment building, the two United Artists theatres became another housing complex, the site of the Mexican theatre sells discount hand towels, and The Edison has become a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Tom and D.W. Griffith would have been thrilled.

Of the rest, the gorgeous, gold-leafed, velvet curtained Loew's was torn down completely and rebuilt next door and now houses six shoebox theatres (the Loew's SexPlex as we in the know call it), these days The Symphony Space (nee The Symphony) shows films once a week, the Thalia passes into and out of private hands for several months at a time and has recently shown very fine African films before it went bust one mo' time, The Metro is twinnned, and so is the Olympia. So, if we count generously, there are now twelve movie theatres where once there were only eleven.

Clearly, clearly, clearly, it ain't the same.

I walk through the neighborhood seeing their ghostly marquees beckoning me. The upper West Side -- not Times Square -- was the heart of movie theatres and even of production in the 1920's and 30's. The tattered remains of the theatres call out to you if you look closely beneath the supermarket signs: the decorated arches that once soared over marquees, the wall-mounted hooks where the supports for the marquees were once attached are all still there. The huge inside spaces got divided up for groceries.

One foolish day Robert Frost visited me at my typewriter (when I still had a typewrite) and wrote this down for me.

Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre
, That sends a wrecking crew onto it,
And spills the marquee onto the street;
And makes the aisles into sidewalks.
The work of moviegoers is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have not left one seat without gum,
And they would spill coke on every cushion,
As they cheer the heroes on.
It is the wreckers I mean,
No one sees them come or hears plans made,
but at Summer Holiday Movie time,
we find them there.
I let my friend know across the park;
And on a day we met to watch the sweating crews
And see the heavy cranes smash in the walls.
We stand across the street as we watch
To see the rubble that once held in magic
And kept out distorting light and noise.
We have to use a spell to watch the destruction without tears.
"Stay as you were when our backs are turned!"
We wear out our minds with calling back the dreams.
Oh, just another kind of nostalgic game,
Over on our side of the street.
It comes to little more.
There where it is, the contractor doesn't need an antique theatre.
He is all progress and higher rents.
Our memories of lush adventures will barely survive
Enhanced by popcorn and thirsty throats.
My friend says, "Good theatres made good neighbors."
A scent of Spring is still in me, and I wonder If we could put a notion in builders' hearts.
Didn't good theatres make good neighbors?" I'd ask them.
"Weren't they a wondrous palace to lure us from lonely rooms?
Before I built a high rise, I'd ask to know
What hand-painted ceiling I was tearing down and throwing out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre,
That wants it down."
I could say "greed" to the builders,
But it's not greed exactly, and I'd rather
They said it to themselves.
I see them there
A blueprint and sales prospectus grasped firmly
One in each hand like an old stone savage armed.
The builders move in darkness as it seems to me,
But not one of celluloid visions and the sounds of wonder.
My friend will not be consoled.
He is sad still to think the thought.
He asks again, "Didn't good theatre's make good neighbors?"

Monday, March 3, 1997 New York City (poem circa 1980, New York City)

Movie Comments

2005-03-16T06:38:00.000-05:00

I don't write movie reviews. And I keep telling that to all the magazine editors who keep asking me to do it, and I keep telling that to all the publicists who invite me to screenings so that I can write nice reviews of their movies for them. I do, sometimes, write articles about movies. It will be an interview, or a recollection, or some other damn nonsense that occurs to me at the moment. Life, however, is much too short to spend more time on a bad movie (I guess there are some) beyond viewing it in the first place. So I only write about movies that interest me. Notice that I didn't say "movies I like." Movies that interest me

1/18/97