Looking Back On Looking Forward 188
da6d writes "The Independent Online Edition has an article on the release of interviews Stanley Kubrick conducted of numerous prominent scientific minds of the day in preparation for the movie 2001. The topic of the interviews: extra-terrestrial intelligence. The transcripts of the interviews are due for release in book form next month. The actual footage of the interviews seems to have been swallowed by time." From the article: "Some of the interviewees have looked back at their original comments. Professor Good stood by his, including his suggestion that computers might have personality traits: 'My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.'"
Don't anthropomorphize OSes, they don't like it... (Score:5, Interesting)
What is more interesting is that Prof Good is passing off behavior he doesn't understand (I'm willing to bet he's NOT a Win32 dev) as 'neurotic'. Makes one wonder how we'll see mentally challenged people once we have a far better understanding of the brain than we have now...
Re: Looking Back On Looking Forward (Score:5, Interesting)
This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.
When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?
Ten years after the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the Ancient Greek perspective is certainly appropriate. What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight.
No Change (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see how we have come very far - that is still how Science Fiction is portrayed to the masses. Space battles against aliens, aliens invading the earth, etc. etc. What I find fascinating with all this is the science fiction that I read does not usually have this type of plot - just most science fiction movies.
Re:What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An explanation of the movie (Score:5, Interesting)
According to IMDB [imdb.com] trivia:
1) Rock Hudson walked out of the Los Angeles premiere, saying, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?"
2) Arthur C. Clarke once said, "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."
Re:Don't anthropomorphize OSes, they don't like it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Looking Back On Looking Forward (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not "insightful" cynicism? You got gipped.
I think a lot of us who cut our teeth on '80s home BASIC machines have typed in an Eliza program and the self-induced wonder was cool. But that was then. I hung onto a '90s feeling that my OS/2 desktop was a "magic desktop" of sorts. But they're just machines to me now -- often X&*#@#@% machines. Where's my facial recognition desktop that comprehended and remembers our last discussion? As a rhetorical question, I think the answer is a long, long time away since epistemology and consciousness are a lot more complicated than this century appreciates.
Granted Kubrick was a person for over-the-top set design but I saw 2001 twice, original theater release and at a sci fi convention in -- 2001, so I got hit hard with the cognitive dissonance of my memories and how dated it seems today. Science fiction's inevitable clay feet guessing the future grounded in today.
Re:Cultural/storytelling inertia and focus group r (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an interesting film out right now called Stay, also sometimes claustrophobic.
I work in film and here's the general audience's biggest gripe about sci-fi movies. No one wants to feel dumb. This is marketing 101 - the reason why films are rehashed and plotlines redone over and over is because only a small minority are comfortable in uncertainty... with not knowing. It's a manifestation of the adventurers spirit.
So you do a smart sci-fi film that challenges a Christian's notion of the universe, and they get scared. They dont want that feeling... that they're wrong, that they don't know. So next summer, another alien space movie will probably come out, and some elite team will be sent it to investigate, the lesbian gunner will die first and the black guy second, etc. and most will eat popcorn and they'll go home satisfied that aliens can never defeat us with our crude projectile weapons, religious sentiment and irrepressible warrior ethos. It's collective masturbation. And they'll polish their guns and dust off their bibles unafraid.
I've worked as a script consultant and 90 percent of my work over the past year has been to "dumb-down" scripts. Three modalities: get a PG-13 at the script stage, nothing more complex than a sixth grade level (aforementioned PG-13 rating; nothing troubling; no f-words, etc; avoid religion, no frontal nudity), after which point the one-liner guy comes onto the script and does what is called a polish (read: "smarten" up the dialogue with one-liners and slang, etc).
If you enjoy reading what people of... (Score:3, Interesting)
Progress...or not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:An explanation of the movie (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cultural/storytelling inertia and focus group r (Score:2, Interesting)
If you liked the Soderberg/Clooney version, you should watch Tarkovsky's orginal. Tarkovsky's penchant for dragging the viewer through some scenes at near-real-time adds significantly to the weight of story. It captures Stanislaw Lem's book much more effectively. Be warned, though, it doesn't mate well with modern western film sensibilities. It's too long, too slow, and you have to think too damn much.
Re:Cultural/storytelling inertia and focus group r (Score:4, Interesting)
My first script consult gig; I made the mistake of voicing general discomfort with the dumbing down process and lost the contract.
I'm not voicing my opinion; this is the machine. This is the way Hollywood goes about making wide swath films. I agree that it is not art.
You have to understand a bit about how films get made.
Studios do not spend their own money on making films. They finance films using loan/credit/financing structures. So as a producer of a film, it is in your vested interest to produce the biggest budget movies possible for two reasons: 1. because producers collect around 10% of the budget as a fee, and 2. high budget films condition the audience against lower budget films which stifles innovation and competition and prevents decentralization of the industry. I watched Primer with my girlfriend (now mind you Primer is a GREAT film) and all she complained about for 90 minutes, was how cheap the film LOOKED. More on Primer later.
When a film's budget approaches 100 million, it has to appeal wide swath. This isn't an artistic demand - this is a corporate demand, coming from finance execs that have to contend with intractable investors. So it's damn near impossible to get a singular vision film made at that scale because of the financial strictures involved. It just doesn't happen.
Studios make money off the library and make structured payments on debt. Individuals (executives, actors, etc.) draw individual weath from the system because they are getting paid from those same VC//investment/banking funds. There is little room in this structure for art.
The system is horribly corrupt and bloated. Since investment funds are being used, everyone in the revenu stream tries to draw the fattest chunk of cash they can, further inflating costs.
What you mention is actually being done. I'll find the link and post it later, but an arthouse distribution network is being currently designed. Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters is also considered an arthouse distribution model, andhe's experimenting with day-and-date via DVD and digital distribution.
The ability to do an artistic film is directly correlational to the cost. A great movie that came out recently is Primer, a sci fi done by some engineer turned filmmaker in Texas, I think. He did it for 7 grand of his own money, shot on super 16 mm. You want to be an artist in the film industry, be prepared to suffer for your art form. He got a film deal out of it, butthe film had made little to no cash - and he'll probably be presented with some hackneyed stuff so he can cut his teeth in a more professional setting. It's the way.
I personally am using some of the cash from my script consulting to do my own film. The subject: Stanley Kubrick of course. I'm gonna focus specifically on his early years, when he hustled chess in Washington Square Park in New York.
To belatedly answer your questions. Do I want to "make" art, yes. Do I want Hollywood cash. Yes. Can I do both. Yes.
Hollywood responds to the critical mass audience, the lowest common denominator.
Re:An explanation of the movie (Score:2, Interesting)
They made a bunch of money and tried to rush a half developed concept in order to get more
and have no idea what happened in the 3rd).
The trick for the second matrix worked, so they went from a half developed concept to no concept whatsoever, and tacket some cheesy philosophical stuff at the end when they realized they had really just made Jesus with guns and kung fu.