You’ve been warned.
So I’ve been sick all week with a rather unpleasant but manageable infection. If you know me at all, you know I hate what I cannot control, so when my immune system is ravaged by random bacteria more than likely acquired from the lovely germ smorgasbords that are the Newark, O’Hare, SeaTac, and LaGuardia airports, not to mention the ever-so-petri airplanes themselves, you know I am a barrel of laughs. God bless my amazing, beautiful, patience-of-steel girlfriend who had to suffer me. Just thought I’d keep you all in the loop, as you are ever at the edge of your computer chairs awaiting my next blog.
So looking into the indefinable future, there will be some marked changes soon, possibly including banners, a site name change, and alterations in format. I’m going to try and give solid, reasonably long blogs once or twice a week, and as always, throw in some ridiculous nonsense I found on the internet as frequently as possible. I now have what my Verizon salesman referred to as “a real phone” in the Droid Incredible, so we’ll see what juicing this thing up gets me. Wouldn’t it be sweet if I made my own app? You know, you click a little icon of my face and your phone makes a sarcastic comment fused with a Joss Whedon reference? Yep, that’s right. I just summed up my entire blog right there.
Aaaanywho, I did what any sick person does in their bed-ridden existence. I watched a ton of stuff until my eyes started to bleed (hopefully unrelated to infection and in no way Le Chiffre Disease). I started watching some BSG from scratch and it still stands that Season One is damn good. It really gropes you…err…ropes you in. Sorry, Six and Eight are just ridiculous. Also, I read the first five chapters to the Making of Indiana Jones, which are the Raiders chapters, and then watched Raiders of the Lost Ark itself. It was sort of a film thesis-esque experiment. I wanted to see what I’d learned, and apply it to what I’m watching. I tried doing the same with the Making of Star Wars, but that book is so chock full of info, it’s borderline impossible to remember how many things ILM invented (read: a shit ton), and then remember how it’s applied in the movie. However, if you read about one truly cool thing they did for Raiders (and again, there are tons, because ILM takes the cake as ever), it’s the creation of the ghosts at the film’s end. I won’t spoil it, but I just find that to be the coolest job ever, and to succeed is even more amazing. “Hey, guys, we, uh, need ghosts to float all over these live action characters and make it not look like total garbage. Also, no technology exists yet to do this convincingly, and the movie is coming out in six months. Later!”
What is startling for me as a long time Spielberg and Lucas fan is the very contrast in their personalities, at least, from the impression of the book. They’re both perfectionists, which I admire and emulate. But Spielberg seemed like somewhat of a cry baby during the shoot, and Lucas had clearly turned into a marketing machine. They gloss over it in such a way that all these habits are assumed, but reading it carefully, it was incredibly obvious that J.W. Rinzler wanted to respectfully elucidate flaws. Harrison Ford is probably the only character of the bunch who you can tell hasn’t changed over the years. Spielberg has become calmer and more confident, an aged pro, but Harrison, he’s quiet, opinionated, and only interested in the filmmaking process. He was that way then, he’s that way now. Reading about Lucas in the Making of Star Wars, however, oy, he starts out so flushed into his own artwork. He’s neurotic, easily stressed, and very protective of his ideas. This to me sounded like any normal creative. But by film’s end, and certainly clear here in Making of Indy, he’s a cash cow hoping he doesn’t piss off the production company. Essentially, he’s exactly what we feared: a sell-out. A brilliant one who made his own, cough, empire with almost politic sleekness, but a sell-out nevertheless.
Spielberg here respects his need for peacetime amongst creative and backers, but you can’t help but feel like Lucas really gave it all up because he was tired and figured it was easier to let other people do the work. Star Wars was an amazing achievement, a game changer, but buddy, sitting on your laurels doesn’t cut it for the bleeding heart artist. I think Spielberg represented that, and Lucas was sort of a buck passer (though Spielberg is clearly the more talented artist). Then again, I haven’t completed this book through Crystal Skull (god help me), and God only knows what The Making of Empire Strikes Back will lay out. I’m hoping we get a cliffhanger like Empire itself, with Lucas cutting Gary Kurtz’s hand off (metaphorically) with an Ewok lunch box (metaphorically).
No, I want that all to have literally happened, despite the fact that Gary Kurtz has two totally normal human hands.
OR DOES HE??!?!?!
-M
1 year ago
